Also, through listening to this playlist, I’ve downloaded 3 albums and a few songs through emusic today that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. See, record companies? Put your music on Spotify and I might still buy it (downloading through emusic counts as buying, doesn’t it?). Don’t put your music on Spotify and I probably won’t even hear it.

Having spent the best part of the last 10 years ‘doing digital’ from the client-side, I’ve been thinking good and hard about moving (digital) agency-side. Most of the people I’ve spoken to have been encouraging in principle.

But then I’ve spent the last 4 years working within the non-profit sector, and I’m aware that an end product that results in ‘good’ is pretty important to me. So I’ve been in a bit of a quandary.

I recently went to talk to an up-and-coming, exciting design and branding agency with a great roster of clients. They didn’t ‘do digital’ but wanted to. The interview had gone quite well, I thought. At the end, when it came to the inevitable ‘do you have any questions?’ bit, I asked: ‘Why do you exist?‘.

The ECD (and co-founder) didn’t really have an answer. I ended up feeling embarrassed for having asked. It wasn’t a premeditated question – I just thought of it there and then – and it wasn’t as accusatory as it might come across written down here. But at least it’s given me a marker for the sort of organisation I want to work for.

It’s quite an important thing, isn’t it? Existing for a good reason. I’d like to think that most organisations do, though maybe that isn’t the case.  And, no, maximising financial profit alone doesn’t count as a good reason. That might be for another blog post.

So what, or who, am I looking for?

You can obviously be a non-profit or charity.  Working to inspire political and social change is brilliant.

You can be a business. I’d love to work for a full-throttle commercial company that’s making or doing exciting things (in as sustainable a manner as possible). ‘New’ is fantastic, as long as it’s ‘new’ and ‘better’ at the same time.

You can be an agency. As Oliver Payne says: “The ‘problem’ with advertising is that it creates desire where there is none. But it’s the ability to create desire where there is none that could be our saving grace when it comes to persuading people to use less water to wash, or to walk instead of driving.” There’s definitely scope for agencies to do good. At least in part, most do. I’d love to help people do wonderful things by letting other people know about them. I haven’t worked agency-side before, but I think my skills would sit pretty comfortably within an agency framework.

I can do digital. I can do ideas, strategy and I can do a bit of creative. I can do getting things done. I’d like to think I ‘add value’. I’ll sit wherever you like.

Here I am on LinkedIn, for a full profile.

Anyway, if any of the above sounds like you or your organisation, and I sound like someone who could help you do what you do better, I’d love to talk.

You can email me at Steve at this domain name. Or DM meltingman on twitter. And please feel free to RT or in other way forward this to anyone else who might be interested.

1. Stick it in the end pocket of a soft bag when you’re travelling and rest your feet on it.

2. Pick it up off the bookshelf late at night when you just want to re-read a chapter for old times’ sake.

3. Dog-ear a page (and then blog about it).

4. Get deliciously overwrought about bending the spine. Although attempting 1. might have a similar effect.

5. Waft across the pages and breathe in the dusty woodiness.

6. Use someone important’s business card as a bookmark in it.

7. Bend it ever-so slightly to fit in a jacket pocket.

8. Write your name in the front of it, so when someone else buys it in a second-hand book shop they can google you to get a bit of lovely insight into the book’s provenance.

Enhanced Editions found via James Hogwood

Intrigued by this. A multimedia iphone ebook app that lets you switch between text, audio and video without losing your place. It all looks beautifully seamless.

Despite the fact that I’ve never been one for audiobooks or ebooks, I’m seriously tempted to give this a go.

But although I completely appreciate the amount of work that must go into producing this,  it still feels a bit pricey at £15. I’d pay that much for a hardback. But whenever there’s ever a book that I want so much that I buy the hardback, then I want the actual physical hardback rather than a digital version (if that makes any sense?).

If it were £9.99 I’d be playing with it now rather than writing about it. But then, as I say, I’ve never been one for audiobooks or ebooks.

Saying that, Nick Cave is a brilliant one to launch with because…because it’s Nick Cave for chrissake. If there’s anyone I’m going to watch reading a novel, it’s him. Sod it, I’m going to do it.

http://noticin.gs/

A friend and his friend invented a game when they were young. I never played the game but I remember it involving a tennis ball (or a number of tennis balls), an oversized rag doll, and a series of spaces. I think you had to somehow manoeuvre  one or all of the balls to the doll.

There was a strict set of rules defining how the game should be played. Well, actually, the set of rules wasn’t very strict at all. Whenever a player did something that wasn’t in the rules, a new rule would be defined, named and added to the rulebook. Over the years the game evolved, becoming more and more complicated as the rulebook became larger.  By the time I discovered the game, only my friend and his friend knew the rules well enough to be able to play, but that didn’t really matter.

Which is to say that inventing games is good. And noticings is a good, simple  game, concocted by Tom Armitage and Tom Taylor.

All you have to do is take pictures of things you’ve noticed, geo-tag them and upload them to flickr tagged ‘noticings’. And that’s it. You get points for each noticing and bonus points  for noticing something near another player’s noticing. You now also get bonus points for being the first noticing in a particular neighbourhood. The game is evolving as the Toms get a feel for how the players are using it.

And of course it’s extra nice when your noticing gets noticed…