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I first met Brad in 2005 when he was rushing around Somerset promoting his marketing services and delivering pizzas in the evening. At the time I was working for Business Link and he nearly broke the door down charging in with an A4 folder filled with one zillion creative ideas. And his biggest one was the idea of creating a new breakfast networking group in Somerset, which in those days was very well covered by BNI. The 4Networking success has been astonishing and very well deserved and he has built an outstanding team around him. When I made a short film about 4Networking in 2006, there were thirty 4N breakfast clubs in the West Country. There are now over 400 breakfast clubs throughout the UK with 22,000 network members. Buy his book and catch some of the infectious Brad Burton enthusiasm. It has already achieved the highest accolade in the publishing world. Get off your Arse was voted ‘The Best Business Book of 2009′ by his Mum.

A Phone you can finally carry!

In researching material for a presentation on thirty years of technological innovation, I came across this priceless clip of a 1990 mobile phone ad from Radio Shack. What I’d give to be a time-traveller and return to the park bench saying ‘In less than twenty years this phone will have shrunk to the size of a credit card and you’ll be able to roam the Internet, send and receive emails and text messages, navigate with GPS, film, take photographs, listen to music, manage your diary, read newspapers and download books’. Then of course I’d have the problem of trying to explain what the Internet was…..

A revolutionary centre of learning

If you need time away from slaving over a hot keyboard, why not challenge your creativity with one of the wonderful courses at Urchfont Manor? I did a drawing course there and absolutely loved the fact that there were no computers – just an opportunity to re-discover the dormant motor skills needed to hold a pencil and start drawing again. Wonderfully therapeutic grounds for walking in, yummy food and brilliant tuition all wrapped up in a graceful Georgian House just outside Devizes. As the Principal, Jim Ross, says in his delightfully anarchic and inspired introduction to this year’s programme of courses: ‘Urchfont is one of a tiny band of revolutionary centres. By coming here you will be in the beginning of a new world order, part of an underground movement engaged in a dangerous idea called learning. You’ll find like-minded revolutionaries, passionate about an incredibly diverse range of subjects – Yoga, Homer, Fred Astaire, Poetry, QiGong, Mosaics….. And if you don’t have time for a weekend workshop, then give your chakras a twirl with one of their day workshops. Vive la revolution!

‘Early morning, semi-detached Highgate, London’ The received pronunication voice-over has BBC written all over it and in fact was recorded by the great Derek Cooper of the Food Programme fame. In the late sixties, the web as we know it wasn’t even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, but already the idea of networking was starting to take shape, as this clunky teleprinter was connected to a ‘giant brain’ ten miles away. I remember the teleprinter from the Grandstand football results in the 1970s but had no idea they were quite as noisy. No wonder his wife sent him and his teleprinter to the spare bedroom. Fascinating glimpse too of what must be the first on-line diary held by ‘the brain’.

Daunted by the blank page in front of you?

Communication technologies may be rapidly changing, but it still takes time and skill to write compelling copy for your email or print-based newsletter.  If your newsletter writing has become a chore, here are 100 of the most successful sales letters ever written. Guaranteed to get your creativity going again!

It is hard to believe these days that in the early 1980s you needed to connect your computer to a telephone line, using an acoustic coupler, in order to send an email. The coupler converted your electronic mail into a series of audio pulses.  This vintage BBC clip captures the early days of electronic mail, via an Apple II computer, with some seriously impressive floppy discs in support.

Binary Joke Department: There are 10 sorts of people in the world.  Those who can read binary code and those who can’t.

As the web continues to offer up free tools for publishing (Wordpress), blogging (Blogger), SMS (Twitter) and video (You Tube) the opportunities to publish content and build your own audience have never been greater. One person who is well worth listening to on the phenomenon of the new media is Clay Shirky. Clay is the Professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Programme, teaches and consults on the social and economic effects of the internet and is the author of ‘Here Comes Everybody – The Power of Organising without Organisations‘. My two favourite quotations of his are: “We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have Wikipedia. Suddenly big things can be done for love” and ” “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.” If you haven’t time to read the book, here’s the video!

I’d always thought that the jazz guitarist Joe Pass was a purveyor of languid, ballady style, laid back jazz-riffs with an extensive use of walking bass lines.  Nice, in an afternoon tea sort of way, but not exactly taxing for the performer or the listener. How wrong can you be? This little gem surfaced and my jaw hit the keyboard before the end of the opening bars. Here he is, in 1979, at the very height of his powers, accompanied by that towering virtuoso of the Double Bass, Niels Henning-Orsted Pedersen, playing the fantastic Miles Davis composition Donna Lee. What a stroke of genius to transpose a trumpet composition and play it on two stringed instruments.

banksy-cctv

For anyone wanting some historical perspective on our technological age, I can highly recommend the splendid Glasgow Mechanics’ Magazine.  This article may be the very first to propose the use of a camera for public surveillance.

An occurrence originated in a Camera Obscura exhibited here during Fair Week, which shows the important use to which this amusing optical apparatus may be applied.  A person happened to be examining, with great interest, the various lively and ever shifting figures which were portrayed upon the white tablet during the exhibition, when he beheld, with amazement, the appearance of one man picking another man’s pocket. He opened the door and recognising the culprit at a short distance, ran up to him and seized him in the very act of his crime. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, that he was immediately handed over to the Police.

From this circumstance, the utility of placing such apparatus in all places of public amusements and exhibitions, must be obvious. Whether it might be proper to erect it in the streets of a populous city like this and to place it under the inspection of an Officer for the detection of mischief and crime, is a matter worthy of consideration by the local authorities. Would it not be an eligible plan, indeed, to employ the Camera Obscura to take a view of what is passing in the streets of the town, and to communicate the result, if necessary, to the Police Office, or the Jail, by means of the telegraph?  If any impropriety or misconduct were observed, it would only be necessary to send a posse to the particular spot where it happened.

The startling thing about this article is the date. It was published in the Glasgow Mechanics’ Magazine in 1824.  And whatever happened to the posse?

The second LP I brought with my pocket money was a live recording of the Dutch rock band Focus playing live at The Rainbow in Finsbury Park. A laconic genius of a guitarist, solid bass player, fantastic drummer and outrageous yodelling keyboardist blew away all the cobwebs of those dark and dingy three day weeks in the early 70s. I remember playing air guitar to Jan Akkerman’s shredding riffs while I was revising for my A Levels. This is them at their most wildly creative in front of an appreciative American audience, introduced by a vibrant Gladys Knight (of ‘and the Pips’ fame), playing the fastest version of Hocus Pocus you’re probably ever likely to hear.