Help me name my new book about blogging!

Can you help me please? I need help naming my new book!

I’ve been working on a new book about blogging for a while now and I expect to finish it off next week – the main draft at least. The focus is on content marketing and how more CEOs than ever are blogging and appreciating that blogs and social media are a very important way of reaching out to their customers *and* the people who influence their customers.

I need to think of a title for the book so does anyone have any ideas? I was thinking of ideas like ‘Your boss – the blogger’ but I need something catchy and creative… all comments appreciated and if I do actually borrow an idea then I’ll make sure you get a credit in the book!

You can comment here on the blog or if you follow this link to my Facebook then feel free to comment there – thanks in advance!

This blog is one of the best – official…

This is a great blog. Official!

Even though this is my personal blog and I rarely talk about work here, the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network awarded my blog the first place in their annual ‘top 15’ blog awards.

I’m delighted to get this award. I’m pleased that even though this is my personal site, there is still a lot of interest in what I’m getting up to and the challenges of moving from Europe to Brazil and starting a new business here.

I’m an official London 2012 blogger!

A few months ago, I entered my details into the BT search for storytellers who could write, film, and blog the London 2012 Olympic games. About a month back I heard that I was on the shortlist and I needed to write more information about why I should be chosen.

A couple of days ago, I was told that I have the job. I will be blogging and tweeting live from the Olympics.

The preferred sports I asked to be closest too are cycling, boxing, and diving, but I have not had a full briefing yet so I don’t know exactly when I should get started and what my boundaries are.

What I do know is that this should be a great opportunity to see the Olympic games from the inside, as someone who is a part of the machine telling the world about what happens in London in 2012.

I’m really looking forward to being an Olympic writer and I already have a lot of ideas about how to start blending London 2012 with Rio 2016…

Ealing Tweetup with Ronan MacManus

What a fantastic evening last week in Ealing! Ronan MacManus did an amazing job with the music, even managing to avoid the temptation of playing Stairway to Heaven… despite offering to play ‘any’ requests!

The team at the Rose & Crown did a fantastic job keeping every glass full. It was a Tuesday evening, but the pub was packed… Thanks go to Xerox for ensuring that the food and drinks were free for the bloggers attending the event. Neville Hobson wrote a great overview of the tweetup here.

BBC Radio 6 came to cover the event and about 90 people showed up to talk, network, chat, and hear the music. It was the best Tweetup yet. I was thinking about trying to do another one before Christmas, but with all the usual parties at Christmas and with only a month left to plan, I think it’s too much of a rush… Early February looks like a better option to me. Opinions?

I have over 40 vox pop videos – people giving their opinion on the event – and the entire set by Ronan, so you can expect to see me tweeting some video links soon. I’ve been holding back on the video because it’s taking a while to get everything edited, but you can expect to see it all arriving soon.

Are you a west London blogger or tweeter?

Then we want you!

The Ealing Tweetup has been going from strength to strength over the past couple of years. The last meeting attracted around 60 bloggers to the Rose & Crown pub for a July evening of sun and beer whilst chatting about the world online.

The next Ealing Tweetup – October 26th – is going to be even better! It’s at the Rose & Crown once again, but this time we have the support of Xerox – so the food and drinks will be on the house for thirsty bloggers, and we have some live music too. From 7.00pm, Ronan MacManus will do a one-hour solo set in the pub especially for the Ealing Tweetup!

So if you are a blogger, journalist, IT industry person, or just interested in meeting west London Twitter users in real life, go and register here! See you at the Tweetup!

The Pope in Britain

I’m a Catholic because I’m half-Irish-half-English and, as my dad isn’t much of a believer, I ended up getting baptised – not that I actually go to church. My attendance record is pretty much based on weddings and funerals.

But, when I was asked if I would be interested in working with the government Cabinet Office to follow Pope Benedict around the UK during his visit, providing live commentary via Twitter and blogs, I jumped at the chance. Though I’m not a follower, the teachings of his church have permeated their way into my consciousness just because I was always surrounded by Catholics when I was growing up – and who wouldn’t want to be embedded with a head of state providing a live Twitter feed of what really happens ‘backstage’?

But it was the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who invited the Pope to the UK. And Brown is no longer in office. And the current Prime Minister is either less interested in the Pope visiting, or more attuned to the scandal that will be caused by his visit. Most probably the latter as the child sex scandal furore only seems to be getting worse and the present Pope was previously in charge of handling complaints against the Vatican, and should therefore be acutely aware of the issues – and be handling them rather better.

So the regular media will continue to cover the visit, but all additional nice-to-have coverage (like a live blogger backstage) were all canned.

It’s a shame as I was looking forward to trying to offer some insights. The views of the church often rub directly against my own liberal opinions – I was working in Malta last week and I was surprised to hear that divorce is illegal there because the church won’t allow it. The Catholic church has some way to go to reach the standards considered acceptable in a modern-day society where free expression and respect for Human Rights are considered essential.

But the church has an immense history and tradition and is followed by hundreds of millions of people. I was looking forward to exploring these questions of how faith collides with modernity, but now I won’t get the chance anyway. Another thing I can blame on David Cameron.

What a shame.

Leaders of IT waiting for your questions…

Have you been to a conference recently where Twitter was used to create more interactivity?

I’ve been to a few. It’s easy to do at all the social media events. Just put up a big screen and agree on a hash-tag and everyone will make comments. Whether it’s anything useful is another matter entirely. I’ve also been to some events where Twitter was introduced as a good idea, yet the people in the audience had no idea how to use it despite their supposed status as leaders within the world of IT.

So I was thinking about this when I was asked by the National Outsourcing Association to add some ideas to their annual summer party. It’s usually a great event, full of people from the tech industry, and usually on a London rooftop somewhere drinking in the sun.

The party is going to take place next week on July 15 in London, but the part I managed to add starts from 4pm. It’s going to be some really interesting tech leaders speaking ‘TED-style’ for just 10 minutes each one after the other… so it’s a full-on session of ideas, with questions from the audience all being taken via Twitter.

Take a look at the speakers here. If you want to ask them a question – right now – then just ask it on Twitter and use the hashtag #noaeue. Live commentary of the event will be published on the day on the account @thenoa, so follow that user if you can’t make it in person.

– BBC, Michael Stock, Stretch Project Director, Head of Partnership & Contract

– Department for Work and Pensions, James Gardner, CTO

– Marks & Spencer, Darrell Stein, Director of IT and Logistics

– Symbian, Ian McDonald, Head of IT

– BT, Sarah Manning, Head of Services Improvement and Supplier Management

– Centrica, Kevin Devoy, Manager, Procurement and Supplier Management

– Guardian Media Group, Andy Beale, Technology Director

Third Ealing Tweetup

We had the third Ealing tweetup, in the Rose & Crown pub, on Sunday. Thanks very much to those who attended, including @clicooke, @haydens30, @angelicamari, @ruskin147, @franprotti, @rodsloane, @qhphotography, and @benpopps – plus various friends and family who might not even be on Twitter!

It was enjoyable once it got going and the chat started, however it was a lot smaller than I had expected. Over 20 people had confirmed that they wanted to come along so I ensured that a section of the pub was reserved for us. That was 5 tables all blocked together and on a busy Sunday lunchtime it was good of them to reserve the places for us.

All three of the major political parties had emailed me about coming along, and not a single politician showed up. I can only presume that as the election campaign is a moment away, they were up to something else on Sunday. I know it was the campaign launch for the Labour party on Sunday, but you might assume that they would in fact want to be talking to local people who are broadcasting opinions online everyday?

Anyway, I sat there all alone for the first half an hour, feeling a lot of pressure at holding all the seats to myself, as people were clearly looking for places to eat lunch and all our section was marked as reserved. I eventually started giving up tables, and people started arriving for the Tweetup, so we managed to find a nice medium where some tables were returned, but we blocked out a smaller section and chatted there.

@ruskin147 even managed to broadcast a live video from the pub while we were talking. Next time, I might bring a couple of laptops so we can stream video and tweet from the table.

I think that trying it on a Sunday was clearly a mistake as most people seem to associate something like a Tweetup as work and networking, and so it doesn’t fit into Sunday. Second, if we plan another event like this on a weekday evening and you say that you are coming, then please do turn up, or send a note in advance… it would really help with the planning for how many places to reserve.

And I really don’t need the stress of being an event organiser – this is supposed to be about getting together local bloggers and Twitter users in an informal environment, not me trying to get experience hosting events and rushing around explaining to venues why the numbers are different!

See you next time for the fourth Tweetup, hopefully in May, and this time with some corporate backing to help the drinks flow… more to be revealed soon!

Ealing Tweetup is today!

Today is the third Ealing Tweetup – a fairly random gathering of Twitter users from Ealing and west London. Last year I thought I would just try asking some locals out for a pint on Twitter, to see what happened. We filled a big long table with people from all walks of life and it was a great evening.

I did it again, on another Friday night, and it was a bit smaller because we could no longer sit outside enjoying the evening sun on the second one, but even so there was still an entire section of the pub that was just for Twitter users all meeting in person, rather than online.

All three of the events have so far been at the Rose and Crown pub in Ealing… it’s a nice pub with a great garden and we might even be able to enjoy it today as the weather is looking good.

So, I’ve scheduled the third one on a Sunday afternoon instead – just to see if it’s easier than a weekday evening for some people. It’s interesting that there has been a lot of interest from local politicians, councillors and even parliamentary candidates. They know that local bloggers can get their message out more efficiently than just pounding the streets with leaflets.

I’m looking forward to seeing some old mates from the past couple of tweetups, and online chat, as well as some new faces.

The fourth Tweetup is probably going to be in May, and this time it looks like we have a corporate sponsor for the drinks… I’m also arranging to host another at the Brentford Festival on September 5th so if anyone is interested in sponsoring a blogger meeting that day then get in touch with me.

Oscar Lopez, where are you?

When I wrote my first book ‘Outsourcing to India’ I remember attending an event at London Business School and hearing a distinguished Indian business commentator tell me that he could have written a better book. My advice to him was to write his book rather than talk of the hypothetical possibility of him ever publishing it – even if it is better than my own effort.

I’ve never claimed that my first book was a masterpiece. It was an observation on the changing nature of business at that time and specifically dealt with India from the perspective of an outsider – so the critic would have struggled to achieve anything similar as it was intended to gaze at India through the eyes of a visitor anyway.

And that book did the job. It’s out of date now because the industry moves so fast in India, but it’s remarkable how much of that commentary is still valid today.

At present, I’m writing on the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum blog. The forum is the biggest IT and IT-enabled services event in India and takes place every February, I’m leaving for Mumbai on Sunday. I’m blogging in advance of the event and will be reporting on that blog with information about what is going on at the event itself.

It seems already that the debate over Indian companies using social media has touched a nerve. A recent blog post by Vishal Gondal criticised the lack of insight many Indian tech firms are showing when it comes to social media. He got several quite nasty comments. I added a comment suggesting that his views should be listened to because even if it is painful to hear, some of his observations ring true. Then “Oscar Lopez” commented on me!

“It is easy for someone like Mark Kobayishi Hillary to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude – he himself has been known NOT to respond to criticism of his views – especially in the wake of his diatribe against Indian software companies in the UK. Mark, you will do well to read your own words and follow them.”

Well , that’s a surprise. So now I have anonymous critics who won’t even put their own real name on blog posts or engage me in conversation about what they think and feel?

The real issue here is over opinions. Clearly I have expressed an opinion that has upset Oscar. But then if I never expressed any opinions, I couldn’t write or blog very effectively. However, I’d like to imagine that most of my opinions are formed from an intelligent analysis of research, facts, and experience. Clearly Oscar doesn’t agree.

I’d be interested to hear more from “Oscar”, in particular to understand what my diatribe against Indian companies in the UK might be all about. And as my contact details are all publicly available and I’m actively participating in a number of online forums, I’m not sure how I have failed to respond to some critical points.

Oscar, it’s over to you.