the plot

I was asked to pitch for some work the other day.  The client and I got on very well and he showed me round his delightful premises.  Masses of visual potential for filming I thought and made copious notes.  What will it cost?  I told him that I would work out a budget and check his existing website.  Later that day I looked at his website.  Bad doesn’t come close to describing it. It was severely undercooked. And even though he got a grant the design still cost him thousands. I wrote a friendly email saying his first priority should be to update his website so that his customers would find him more easily on-line.  Multi-media content could always be added later. I sent a second email with lots of design and usability tips. I sent a third email warmly recommending a couple of excellent local designers.   No replies or returned calls. I think I upset him.  Sadly, I don’t think his is the only under-performing, overpriced website out there. 

Avoid at all costs

The other day I turned up at a local Chamber of Commerce event only to be met by an anxious organiser.  One of their speakers had cancelled because of problems with an excessively runny nose or some other man-flu excuse.  Would I mind stepping in and talking for ten minutes about New Media to an audience of about eighty local businesses in an hour?  Well, I prefer some time to prepare entertaining and thought-provoking fare and this wasn’t going to be the evening for that.

I was sitting next to my friend Simon, who is one of the those people who can just casually stand and talk compellingly without notes, PowerPoint, flip charts, laptops, notebooks, projectors, televisions, blackboards or pointy sticks.  Go on he said smiling, Just do it.  I raced home, grabbed my laptop and crashed two old presentations together  (It’s called a ‘cut and shut’ in the motor trade). The floor was littered with bits of old Arial and Helvetica. I dropped the presentation onto a USB and ran back into a full seminar room waiting for the next speaker (me). This was one of those times when you just want everything to work. And it did - thank God. I smiled, took a deep breath and and dived into a world involving a slowly rotting Cheddar Cheese, Morecambe and Wise, San Deigo Zoo and the Evolution of Dance. The more I use applications like PowerPoint or Keynote, the more abstract they become.  The great Seth Godin may have written this excellent piece four years ago, but it is bang on the money.  Forward it to anyone who still uses PowerPoint as a Teleprompter.