Random burblings since 1999
Your New Core Strategy: Employee Retention: “one day in the not-too-distant future the job market will swing back toward the job seeker’s advantage. And when it does, the effect on some organizations—particularly those that let employee satisfaction and retention strategies take a back seat to seemingly more pressing issues of corporate survival—could be severe”
Interesting take on the current job market. US-focussed but still valid I think.
Yes, the tree is up, as well as the rest of the decorations.
Photo of that and hopefully a nice one from Lomond Shores last night where we had dinner.
Ohh and you are all keeping an eye on the miniblog, aren’t you?
The recent Bloggers Xmas Party (in London), and an aside by Lori has pinged a little light bulb in my head. I doubt I’m the first to think of this…
By all accounts, the Bloggers Xmas Party was a huge success, and already there are little in-jokes springing up, jokes that, if you weren’t there, you won’t get. Next up, Lori mentions Lyle, both of them attend a Manchester meet recently.
And this gets me thinking – how long before the blogging world starts to splinter into geographically focussed ‘groups’ (or cliques if you prefer?). And have we already?
Let’s back-pedal a little first.
Someone asked me on Friday night “Why do you blog?” and I gave my usual answer of “I started before blogs, and er… ” followed by a fumbling response consisting of ‘for my own record’ and ‘but referrer logs…’ and other mumblings that didn’t really answer the question. Anyway, one thing I can’t add to that list, not completely anyway, is that I’ve met new people. Now, I have (and do) chat occasionally to some of you on MSN (snowgoon2206 AT hotmail.com if you wanna say hi), but that’s not really much removed from reading that person’s blog. The connection is still mine to manage and control, to the extent that it’s not really a friendship but a pastime. I need to be sitting at my PC, and willing to interact before I visit a blog or respond to an instant message.
Hmmm I’m not sure I’m making my point very well, maybe I’m slightly jealous. A lot of the blogs I read (check my blogroll) are based in South-East England… and right there is another interesting thing, I still have separation between blogs and their authors. There is no gap, GreenFairy is both a person and website, as is Hydragenic, etc etc (Vaughan is just obfuscating).
So without having met Gert, I judge her personality from what she says on her website, and the comments she leaves on others, same for Adrian, and countless others. And that is the thing that will start to change the layout of weblogs as we know them, personal information, connections, “real” connections to your peers.
I’m not saying this will be a conscious decision, or even that it will be all encompassing, but it is slowly starting to happen anyway (it’s human nature to talk about what you know). The question is, how can we harness it and gain benefit from it? Or need we try? Weblogs are the modern equivalent of word-of-mouth, and a damn efficient version they are too, but as they become more and more popular, we will tailor our content based on feedback (comments) and slowly the splinters will appear. Why read about another adventure on the Tube, when I can read about an adventure on the Clockwork Orange? A farmer’s market in Camden, or Stirling? No it won’t be a wholesale switch, our innate curiosity will make sure we keep reading sites from places other than our locale, but I’m sure those numbers will shrink.
What say you?
The answer was the last one, in case you were wondering.
And I forgot to mention the wonderful subtitles for Top of the Pops that included a mention of that well known urban cross-stitching group “Sew Solid”… hey you couldn’t make this stuff up…
I don’t know where to start. Just this morning another news article about rising figures in the UK, are we heading back to the hedonistic days of the 80s? Haven’t we got the message?
The Link and Think campaign urges participants to publish links, discuss personal stories, comment on news headlines, and more. The frustrating thing is why we need to at all. The information and knowledge is already out there, yet people seem to be choosing to ignore it. A quick fuck, a quick hit from a shared needle, such transitory pleasures. Is society to blame? The buy everything, do everything now, faster, faster, faster environment we find ourselves in may be one of, the many, traps which are causing the figures to rise again.
In parallel, the ban on using mobile phones whilst driving is seen as the first step towards making that activity socially unacceptable, something I thought had already been achieved in the fight against AIDS.
Yet it doesn’t seem to be going away. Do we make the message harder? Shock treatment? Or try harder to educate? CAN we do more in this country? Or are we resigned to the fact that AIDS cannot be beaten? What do we do when we reach 100 million HIV+?
Picture this: How many people work in your office, or live in your street? On average 8,000 people die from AIDS every single day. CAN you picture that?
And the reason that you, statistically, don’t directly know someone who is HIV+ or has died after contracting AIDS is because 95% of all AIDS cases occur in the world’s poorest countries.
Today is World Aids Day – do you have the time?