Birmingham Post - Business Blog

Birmingham Creatives - I can't hear you

2008-07-18T12:58:28Z

Actually I can hear some of you, particularly those of you that are on the same social networks as me or that I happen upon as result of my work. I can hear you loud and clear and you've got lots to say about this city and how it values or doesn't value the arts and why what you do matters. What I can't hear is the voice of the organisation that's been set up to represent you collectively. Or to put it another way: what's the point of Creative Republic? If they're the voice of the creative sector aiming to make it "stronger, louder and more effective" then why does it all seem a bit quiet out there.

]]> Actually they have had a few events, one as recently as June during which creatives got to mingle and have a nice drink. In fact the Facebook invite for the last event emphasised: "No Pack Drill... No Speeches... And No Charge". That struck me as pretty depressing for an organisation that's trying to represent us at the highest level in the city. So that's an event that won't be asking creatives how they want to be represented? No chance for attendees to have their say? No 'we'll fight them on the beaches' rallying call for creatives to raise up their pens/brushes/mice/cameras and get themselves known and heard? No chance for the next generation of creative leaders to push themselves to the front of the room and tell their colleagues why they can make change happen?

There's an economic downturn under way. Maybe it won't be too bad but research tells us that growth in the Creative Industries are cyclical, that is, when the economy grows they grow more but when it slides they slide more. So we might be entering a downturn that puts the jobs of regional creatives on the line. Not just in service sector jobs such as design and interactive media but in cuts to the arts and support organisations. We should be ideally placed in having an organisation like Creative Republic to point out to city fathers that even if times get bad we're worth sticking with. If Brum wants to be a must-live place then it should continue to support the arts no matter how sticky those council meetings get.

I have no doubt that there's plenty of politicking going on by Creative Republic board members behind the scenes but why is it so quiet? Do they have a view on the impending closure of Culture West Midlands, the organisation from which it takes it statistics? How does it feel about Advantage West Midlands' strategy for the Digital Media and Music sector?

As I understand it Created in Birmingham is part of the Creative Republic set up but that serves a different function - that's about saying "come and look at all this great stuff happening in Birmingham's creative scene". What's needed instead is a voice (a blog would be a start) that reflects what Creative Republic is trying to be - a political organisation that has an opinion and is fighting the good fight for the city's creatives.

Politics and policy are dominated by the voice of business at the moment and here we are with an organisation that has a real chance to be the voice of the worker - for that we need pack drills and speeches rather than a free drink and cosy chat.

The Power 50: Is it better to have been and gone, than never to have been at all?

2008-07-18T11:13:59Z

The Birmingham Post and Birmingham Future's Power 50 is hot off the press, and I can't help but wonder if those people who have 'dropped off the list' in 2008 are mulling over the whys and wherefores of power as they sip their coffee this morning.

It's fair to say that the atmosphere at last night's launch was full of the usual anticipation, accompanied by a few raised eyebrows. But the interesting part for me was how quickly circles of influence can change in Birmingham.

]]> By my counting there are 26 new names on the list, representing a vastly different 'Who's Who' in Birmingham to just 12 months ago. The list does not pretend to be scientific, but as the selection process was cast further afield with nominations sought from a broader range of sectors, this year's list feels far more reflective of the real influencers in our city.

So, as the new entrants to the list enjoy a warm glow of recognition this morning, are those who were relegated to the periphery reflecting on the challenges that lie ahead in regaining their status? Or are they joining the ranks of a few other big names that didn't quite make the final cut, and drawing consolation from proclaiming that the whole thing is a pointless exercise?

What's genuinely exciting for the rest of us observers is that, while our city continues to develop at such a pace across all sectors, the opportunities to get involved and play a part in its future are endless. For those looking to make their mark, organisations like Birmingham Future, Creative Republic and the IoD offer unrivalled opportunities to rub shoulders with and work alongside the city's key influencers, whether or not they have been and gone from the Power 50.

Read this before suing your builder

2008-07-07T17:48:31Z

One of the (rather unpleasant) clichés of life as a lawyer is that economic hardship can be good for business. During boom times, lawyers who specialise in running disputes supposedly twiddle their thumbs as deal after deal is drafted and negotiated. Everyone is too busy trying to do the next deal to worry about what might have gone wrong in the last one. When the deals dry up, or so the thinking goes, people start re-examining the bottom line and dispute work takes off.

The truth is rather more mundane, but it's against that background that I offer the cautionary tale of Mr and Mrs Western. In 2005, they bought a new house in Essex. It had problems - about £20,000 worth. Because it was a brand new house, the Westerns had the benefit of insurance from the National House Builders Council - the NHBC. This contains a dispute resolution procedure which Mr and Mrs Western followed. They won, which is how we know the cost of putting things right.

However, the Westerns had also employed a building surveyor to help them with their case. His fees came to £7,000 and the Westerns wanted to be compensated for that expense. The builder was more than happy to fix the dodgy work, it just didn't want to pay the £7k as well.

Here's where things started to go wrong for the Westerns. They tried what they thought was the proper next step and appointed an arbitrator to decide things. The builder disagreed - both sides in a dispute need to agree to arbitration and the builder denied ever reaching any agreement. The dispute revolved around the precise wording of the NHBC documents. Ultimately, it went all the way to the High Court for a judge to decide whether or not the arbitration should proceed.

The judge agreed with the builder. In his judgment last month he found against the Westerns and ordered them to pay just over half of the builder's costs of taking the case to court (these came to £4k).

To make matters worse, the judgment explains that the builder had not actually been back to the Westerns' house in the meantime. They had refused him entry until the question of the surveyor's fees was resolved.

So, over a period of about two years, Mrs and Mrs Western have lived in a duff house, been through three different dispute resolution processes and, despite their underlying case being strong (the house has faults which the builder has agreed to put right), are over £11,000 out of pocket (they will have their own solicitor's costs on top of the surveyor's fees and the £4k paid to the builder).

Litigation is a risky business. It's great when it works; and more often than not a nightmare when it doesn't. The Westerns must be wondering what they have let themselves in for.

Public it's not. The art of first impressions.

2008-07-02T09:41:08Z

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Or, in business terms, you can only launch once.

If it goes wrong, quite a bit of PR effort can be required to persuade dissatisfied customers to return.

Earlier this year we were advising a venue (not in the Midlands) of the merits of a 'soft' opening. There would be no fanfare, just a few invited guests and critical friends, a chance for the staff to iron out any unforeseen problems. This came back to me at the weekend when I was a customer at a new venue closer to home.

Having read Terry Grimley's preview of 'The Public' in the Birmingham Post, I took the kids along for the opening day. We arrived when West Bromwich's new gallery/venue was just an hour old.

]]> My oldest, who is really into modern architecture, thought the building was fantastic. The free-form pink-framed windows on the huge black box gave just a hint of the neon and silver interior. Lots (and I mean lots) of friendly staff were on hand. They even leapt to call a lift for us (everyone was meant to start on the top floor and work their way down).

A shiny steel slug shape, basking in pink and purple neon, stretched from the reception desk to the lifts and it was this structure that concealed the toilets. First impressions were still good as the boys wowed at the spaceship style design. There was no difficulty in persuading them to wash their hands: the main feature of a giant circular washbasin looked like a fountain as all the central taps came on at once. It's a pity the emphasis on form over function appeared to overlook the need for soap dispensers, as the few bottles of soap left on top of this washing sculpture looked like an afterthought. I also did wonder afterwards whether it was really environmentally friendly to have a dozen taps switch on to wash one tiny pair of hands.

Have you ever noticed how we only voice these sort of niggling criticisms later on if the rest of the experience starts to unravel?

After a brief glimpse of the theatre space where nothing was happening yet, we accepted the lift and were ushered to the top floor.

The array of touch screens looked quite funky, but had nothing to interest the children as the interactive element wasn't working yet. It was at this point, as we walked towards the empty gallery - which Terry Grimley's preview told me would slope back down - that we were politely told we would need a timed ticket "because of health and safety".

Now if the gallery looked packed and there were eager art lovers tripping over the exhibits, I might have understood. To my untrained eye the ticket queues looked more risky. Right up to the time we left I scarcely saw more than a dozen people in the gallery space.

A venue aimed at families needs to understand the practicalities of asking young children to wait two hours for no apparent reason. As it was too early for lunch, we decided to go elsewhere.

In the lift back down a few more niggles started to surface as we were joined some local people sharing their opinions about the cost of the building. When they have got to be persuaded to part with £7 per person for the next visit that's not a good sign.

Will I return with the family? Possibly, especially if they have some good kids events during the summer holidays - though the admission price is certainly an issue.

Pete's West Brom Blog has some good images and a video item from Channel Four so you can get a better feel of what the venue is about (as long as the commentary doesn't put you off from venturing anywhere near the town)

Far more likely for us however is that we will go to Wolverhampton Art Gallery, which we discovered for the first time after our earlier disappointment in West Brom. It has pop art, a hands-on sculpture gallery and real family-friendly displays (as well as stuff for grown-ups). It's brilliant. And free. Now that was an excellent first impression.

Are we talking ourselves into recession?

2008-06-23T12:34:30Z

Last Thursday, I was a guest at Drivers Jonas's annual crane survey for Birmingham. As its name suggests, this is a review of development in Brum's city core (measured by the number of cranes in the skyline) over the past 12 months. The survey results themselves were upbeat. This isn't a surprise (or shouldn't be) - there have been (and continue to be) lots of cranes in the sky.

And the survey wasn't all doom and gloom for the next 12 months. Although the residential market is going to slow significantly (just how many more studio apartments does the city centre need?), there is plenty of Grade A office space coming on stream.

However, the people I talked to over breakfast were uniformly downbeat about prospects for the next 12 to 24 months. Predictions ranged from the jokey - "I will be spending a lot of the next 12 months reducing my golf handicap" - to the downright suicidal - "It's 1929 all over again".

It's not just Brum's property and construction industries that are worried. A quick scan of the headlines suggests that people are concerned about at least some or all of the following: house prices are falling; interest rates are on the up; the price of fuel and food is increasing radically; you can't get a mortgage for love nor money; America's economy seems to be in an even worse state than ours; and the great and the good all seem to be predicting doom and gloom.

If you believe the pessimists, we are either in recession already or headed that way at a rate of knots. But, with all the authority I can muster from having got an A in an economics exam 21 years ago, I'm not so sure.

Hopefully more persuasively. I've also come across this very interesting article by Anotole Kaletsky in which he (with a lot more authority, knowledge and ability than I can) challenges the assumption that America is in recession. His basic argument is that a downturn in the housing and banking industries is just that: a downturn (albeit a painful one) but not a recession.

I can't help but wonder if the same argument doesn't apply to the UK. That's not to decry the difficulties people are facing, or that we live in challenging times, but are we really in recession? To pinch the definition used in Kaletsky's article - "A recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income and wholesale-retail trade. A recession influences the economy broadly and is not confined to one sector." - the argument goes that we have not actually seen evidence of that.

Which brings me onto the question posed at the start. If we are not actually in recession, isn't there a danger that we will convince ourselves that things are worse than they really are? What do people think?

Indiana Jones and the Search Engine of Revelation

2008-06-22T12:03:09Z

A whip cracks in the darkness of an ancient tomb. Flickering torchlight casts the shadow of our fedora-clad hero as he stoops in the gloom, his hand sweeping away ten thousand years of grime from a forgotten relic. As the dust falls away an ancient clue is gradually revealed and the secrets of a long-dead civilisation come slowly into focus.

Like practically every 20-something bloke I know, I've been swept up in Indiana Jones fever, eagerly anticipating last month's release of Indy 4 by reliving all of those backyard fantasies of fighting Nazis, dodging fiendish booby traps and snatching priceless relics from highly improbable places.

Whether watching an ageing Dr. Jones creak his way through two hours of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo was actually worth the 19 year wait is a matter for debate, but the recent tidal wave of Indy mania got me pondering our own place in the annals of recorded history.

And I came to the conclusion that we're a future anthropologist's dream come true.

]]> I mean just think about it- the social networking boom of the early 21st century has seen millions of ordinary people documenting the minutiae of their everyday lives like never before.

From the momentous to the banal our actions and experiences are recorded in millions of blogs, wall posts, twitters, tags and comments. Every inch of the planet is put on display through Google Maps, Youtube videos, and Flickr photos.

Factor in the environmental doom-mongering about air travel, carbon credits, dwindling resources and the homogenisation of our global culture, and it's no stretch of the imagination to conclude that we might be the last generation with true freedom to explore our planet and document the unique cultures we encounter.

But, with more and more social networking horrors stories emerging all the time, many of us are already beginning to fall out of love with our urge to lay our lives bare online. Indeed the full consequences of the social networking revolution may not be felt for several years. Sooner or later, however, as those skeletons begin to tumble from the digital closet and people find their careers, personal relationships and personal privacy increasingly tarnished by the things they've uploaded in the past, the social networking bubble will probably burst for good.

So in a nutshell, the present civilisation blogging and uploading its way to distraction will have documented its existence in infinitely more detail than any generation before it. And, when the inevitable fallout kills the craze all together and we wise up to the consequences of what we have done, then it is likely that no-one will ever be naïve enough to do it again with such fervour, passion or candidness.

In short, we could be set to become like a digital version of the citizens of Pompey, caught in the fall-out of an impending digital disaster but with our lives perfectly preserved around us; a perfect snapshot of a few short years at the turn of the 21st century. Presuming that digital archives are transferred from generation to generation over the next 100, 1000 or even 10,000 years, we could well turn out to be the most scrutinised, analysed and discussed generation in history.

This should give us food for thought in terms of our current notions of online privacy. Sure, you can beef up the security settings on your Facebook profile to Fort Knox proportions today to stop your boss seeing your dodgy holiday snaps, but who's to say you won't fall pray to the digital grave robbers of the future?

After all when King Tut's sarcophagus was interred in the Valley of the Kings it would have been presumed that he'd rest in peace there forever, unmolested by future academics and trophy hunters. But today's grave robbing is tomorrow's archaeology and notions of eternal rest and sanctity go out of the window when there are museums to fill and academic papers to write.

So who's to say what we think is secure and hidden today will remain so when the digital archaeologists of the future begin peeling back the layers of history?

Will that photo of you drinking tequila with a dodgy stripper at Dave's stag night one day be exhibited next to the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum as a genuine 21st century artefact?

Could that Twitter post about the amazing bacon sandwich you had for breakfast spark a mountain of dissertations on post-millennial eating habits?

Will a future fedora-clad hero be navigating the pitfalls of your Myspace page for hidden nuggets of long-forgotten knowledge or Googling your Wordpress blog armed only with a nice cup of tea and a chocolate hobnob?

Which not makes for only a sobering prospect next time you're uploading those incriminating photos the morning after an office party, but also a presents a rather depressing thought for future movie-goers everywhere.

Indiana Jones and the Search Engine of Revelation? Give me a giant boulder, a legion of Thuggee guards and a runaway mine cart any day.

The weighty issue of the recycling business

2008-06-19T13:35:36Z

To help us save the planet, what we need is lots of really heavy rubbish.

Go on. Start throwing it in the recycling bin. The more it weighs, the better.

That's nonsense of course - so why do we give our local councils recycling targets measured by the tonnes of waste collected?

As part of it's recent Climate Change Festival, Birmingham City Council challenged all residents "to increase the amount of waste they recycle over the coming months by at least 20 kg per person."

I was discussing the issue with someone who knows the waste management industry pretty thoroughly (someone who journalists writing about fortnightly bin collections would call 'an industry insider').

]]> Something concerning his company right now was a tendency for big retail brands to opt for heavier recyclable packaging over lightweight alternatives. Some of the lighter materials can be far more environment-friendly and even made of recycled materials themselves. So why shouldn't the big brands who are competing to have the greenest credentials not go for the most sustainable option?

It was interesting (or worrying) that he claimed the heavier - and sometimes less green - packaging was favoured because it was more likely to help meet recycling targets. Never mind the carbon, it meant more tonnes recycled.

Let's look at the bigger picture.

If we re-use stuff - or simply use less in the first place - we don't contribute to recycling at all. So what we really need to work on are the appropriate measures of sustainable living.

From my family point of view, what really pleases me is that since we've had the council's kerbside collection of all our paper, glass and plastics, plus the compost bin in the kitchen, we now put out a single black bag for the binmen almost every week. That's not bad for a family of four and a significant improvement on when I used to buy extra black bags even when I was living alone.

Interestingly, it means it now takes our family two weeks to fill a dustbin of household rubbish. And if we had a wheelie bin, it would take us perhaps four weeks to fill it.

So here's another interesting question: What is more environment-friendly? Driving a big lorry around the streets every week, or waiting till the bins are full and saving a journey?

I say these facts are 'interesting' because I don't know if they actually provide the answer. They simply serve to stimulate debate and seek an answer without being too wedded to the way things have always been done in the past.

To make sound decisions on very important issues we really need a full appreciation of all the facts. The problem is that in this soundbite generation everyone wants simple answers and they want then NOW. And that's a real challenge for people in the communications business.

For example, an easy message might be: "don't buy food that's air freighted from around the globe". It's easy for consumers to visualise the huge energy consumption of refrigerated cargo planes.

But what if those same consumers then switch to buying fruit grown in the UK in greenhouses heated by fossil fuels? How does that help?

Perhaps to make some real impact on slowing down climate change we have to give up a few luxuries (or a few weekly bin collections even). That's going to be a much harder message to sell and a real challenge for the PR industry in the years to come.

OGC gave me OCD

2008-06-13T15:38:13Z

So, i'm a bit behind on this story (and on my blog) but when the new OGC logo was unveiled a few months back something happened to me which has born a new obsession for amusing designs. By now most people will have seen, read about or laughed at the new OGC logo commissioned by the HM Treasury. Aside from costing £14,000 to create and being pretty underwhelming in appearance the main focus of attention has been the completely unintentional appearance of the logo when rotated 90 degrees. Suffice to say, a few red faces must've ensued given that the error wasn't spotted until the logo had not only been unveiled but also printed on a load or collateral including mousemats and pens! The point of this blog however, isn't to talk any further about that logo in particular by instead about the joyous OCD I now have for hunting down these 'design classics'. Perhaps it's the morbid fear that as a designer myself one day I could be responsible for one of these amusing slip-ups, but either way this month has been a month of coffee break 'googles' for more of the same.

]]> My first port of call was the pages of thisisbroken.com, a blog dedicated to highlighting 'broken designs' that people have found around the globe. The blog is run by Mark Hurst a 'champion' of customer service and is aimed at 'making businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it'. As well as providing some pretty amusing examples, the site also reassured me that I hadn't become a complete freak when it comes to hunting for these examples of design foul ups! It turned out there was quite a community around this whole thing, with users sending in 'broken designs' most days to contribute to the blog.

The designers Job.....come up with a simple advertising campaign for this chocolate bar....hmmm. how about a 'Break in to 4 pieces' strapline. 4's in to 18 go..?

Next up I dived in to the always amusing world of contextual advertising. Contextual advertising or targeted advertising is the term applied to advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile phones, where the advertisements are selected and served by automated systems based on the content displayed to the user. A great idea 99% of the time, but pretty cringe worthy for the other 1% whereby the systems 'guess' on which ad should be served doesn't quite do the trick. A few of the most unfortunate examples were included in this article found through Digg..

Finally, it turned out that Flickr had a group of 428 members contributing to a pool of useless designs. Again, a couple of gems in here including the images below!....

So, there we have it, a months googling which has finally quenched my new found OCD! Interestingly it's got me thinking about the 'value' of press that 'bad design' can generate. Obviously, you never aim for bad feedback, but you do wonder how many people wouldn't have known about the 'Office of Government Commerce' if someone had tilted their head to the side! A new hobby and a new found sharpness for double and triple checking designs....the hunt continues!

Time to revisit stamp duty

2008-06-13T11:32:09Z

I'll begin with a confession - this is really a plug for my favourite telly programme masquerading as a business blog. So, first up, let's hear it for the best thing on TV by a country mile - Location, Location, Location hosted by Phil Spencer and Kirstie Allsopp. Brilliant presenters who are witty, authoritative and very good at what they do. They also combine a great personal chemistry with a passion for their work. And Mrs P gets to shout at the telly when the couples Phil and Kirstie are helping ignore their advice. What more can you want out of an hour of light entertainment?

But the latest series has adopted a more serious tone as Kirstie and Phil consider how to stop the bottom falling out of the housing market. Their solution - asking the government to take a serious look at stamp duty.

If you've bought a house, then there's a strong chance that you've come across stamp duty (or stamp duty land tax to give it its full name) and you may well think it's rather unfair. I certainly do.

In fact, I'd go further - in the 21st century, it's a real anachronism. That's because most taxes are based on something tangible - income, capital gain or value to think of three of the most obvious ones. Stamp duty isn't. No: it's the cost of getting a bit of paper that the government insists on before you can register your purchase at the Land Registry. The cost to you depends on the value of the house. Up to £125k, there's no charge. Then it's 1% of the purchase price up to £250k, 3% up to £500k and 4% for houses worth more than that. The average house price in England and Wales is £183,626. So, if you have bought an average house recently, there was nearly 2 grand extra on the bottom line in return for a bit of paper. It's perhaps no surprise that the total value to Alistair Darling is north of £7 billion.

Kirstie and Phil aren't advocating the abolition of the tax altogether, and it would be naïve to expect the government to find an extra £7 billion by magic from another source. Rather, their concern is to keep the property market buoyant - the volume of sales has fallen by roughly 30% between February 2007 and February 2008.

Their suggestion:

(i) First time buyers should not have to pay stamp duty when the value of the purchase property is under £250,000.

(ii) It should then be graduated for everyone else so that buyers generally pay 1% on the first £125,000 to £250,000. Above this threshold, the 3% would only be charged on the amount over £250,000 (rather than the full amount) and similarly the 4% only on the amount over £500,000.

Am I the only one who thinks that there's a lot of sense in this?

Social Media's hidden legacy

2008-06-08T22:00:57Z

Two things trouble me about social media. The first is that everyone I read or connect to via Twitter or Facebook or whatever, seems to be having a much more exciting life than me. It's a world of gallery openings, launches, great nights out or simply wonderful sunny, lazy days untroubled by personal dramas or upheavals.

Not that I'm jealous of course. Well actually of course it's because I'm jealous. I even get invited to some of the same events that my friends and colleagues go to I just never seem to get round to going to them - either through a lack of willing babysitters or, more likely, a general acceptance that I'm a long way from being renaissance man. A beer and night in front of the telly are usually all the cultural activity I can muster after a day at work.

]]> The key thing that troubles me though is what historians will make of the social media footprints we're leaving behind us. Specifically, I wonder what social historians will make of Birmingham and its people when they come to look back on our early 21st century twittering. I suspect they'll immediately smell a rat - what, they'll ask, our these people hiding? Was life really a joyous social whirlwind? What kind of lives did Birmingham people live and why didn't they use the new media tools available to tell us about it?

If you lay out this city's social media network in front of you it would be a bit like those formal, rigid family portraits that adorn our walls as they did our grandparents' walls. That is, they conceal more than they reveal. The great academic Stuart Hall, himself linked to Birmingham through his time at Birmingham University's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1960s and 70s, pointed out how immigrant communities of the 1950s were represented by stiff family portraits, dressed in their Sunday best. What they concealed were lives plagued by prejudice, persecution and social injustice.

Of course Hall was talking about a medium that was already mature. Its rhetorical devices, particularly in portraiture, were already well established. If you popped into your local high street photographer back then the only input you had into the image-making process was what background you would be sat in front of. Social media on the other hand allows for endless choices of expression. Okay so with Twitter you've got a maximum of 140 characters but there's nothing to stop you twittering all day if you want to.

Although social media platforms are in their earliest phases the historian's gaze will inevitably turn to them as a source of evidence to tell stories about us, probably sooner than it did with photography. It took until the 1970s for academics to see value in personal photography as an area of study and immediately they realised the interesting stuff was behind the image rather that in it.

Plenty of people tell me Birmingham seems to have been quick on the uptake with Social Media. Both in terms of using and testing new services and in terms of having a small group of entrepreneurs who are trying to develop new social media applications from which there is business to be made.

But if we are at the forefront then we need to listen to ourselves now and again. At best we demonstrate the vibrancy of living in an exciting city with lots to offer but at worst it descends into a curious uncritical mush and represents our city as one with its head in the sand - too excitable to see the wheat from the chaf or tell the good times from the bad.

It's time to think about what's not being said. Not so much 'Digital - More Power or Powerless' but 'Useful or Useless'.

What on earth is that pylon doing in Victoria Square?

2008-06-03T10:58:21Z

Last night, my wife assured me that, at the age of 37 and ¾, I have officially become a grumpy old man. The cause of my ire: the blinking ugly electricity pylon which has been plonked in Victoria Square as the "centrepiece" of Brum's Climate Change Festival.

According to the organisers:

"The pylon brings home the reality of climate change - it makes the issue of climate change visible and local. It isn't just happening far from home and in the future: it's happening here and now...The climate change festival has been designed to make the invisible (carbon emissions) visible, and the idea lies at the heart of our problem with energy: we are rarely conscious of how much we use."

Am I the only person who thinks this is utter gobbledygook?

Don't get me wrong, I am very concerned about climate change (who isn't?) and try my best to be a responsible citizen. I also work with clients who are passionate about building a new generation of carbon-neutral buildings (although the jury is still out on what carbon-neutral actually means).

I know it's not fashionable in some quarters to admit it, but I found Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth a very disturbing film and I worry like crazy about the future of the planet (especially the fact that no-one appears to be agreed on what the solution - or indeed the cause of the problem - actually is).

But, I also drive a car, heat my home with gas, watch the telly and fly places on holiday - and so do lots of other people. Those are facts of modern life and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. If, as I suspect is the case, the pylon is supposed to make us feel guilty about living (and consuming electricity), then I can't help but feel a wee bit patronised. It is also hideously ugly and ruins the best bit of our city centre.

I also agree with this comment I saw on the web-page of Building magazine, the key journal for the construction industry in the UK: "If the organisers feel people need to see a giant pylon to get the point, why there are plenty within five minutes of my house - it would have cost nothing to show people those".

The only saving grace: the wretched thing gets dismantled on the 8th.

Hold your breath as the Olympics forces up world prices

2008-06-02T20:46:15Z

We've heard suggestions before that the London Olympics is going to suck money out of the regions.

Our own market square project for Kings Heath could be the sort of minor victim if, as one voice suggested at a recent meeting, all the Lottery money is going to pay for the spiralling Olympic costs. Without this it would have come our way for local regeneration projects of course (?)

There's also the suggestion I've heard that the massive construction projects in East London, as well as CrossRail etc, will increase the demand for labour and building materials so that the price for other UK projects (such as New Street Station?) are forced upwards.

If anyone has got any ideas whether either of these will actually materialise, please let me know.

But here's a new one on me. The global cost of steel is, I'm told, being forced up by the Beijing Olympics, now only a few months away.

]]> China is possibly the largest manufacturer of steel and the gigantic factories around Beijing are preparing to shut down in an effort to cut pollution for the Games. As many as 70 steel mills in Hebei Province could face closure unless they clean up their act by 15 June.

The Olympic venue is one of the world's most polluted cities, with smog levels five times higher than World Health Organization safety levels. So in the run up to the Games they will be banning cars, shutting factories, banning spray painting, quarrying and all sorts of noxious activities. Five provinces around the capital will be closing plants and restricting traffic.

If the air is too nasty when the athletes arrive the IOC has warned it could postpone some outdoor events.

Who said sport and politics and business don't mix?

Sex, Lies and Video Games

2008-05-22T22:19:09Z

Whilst browsing the web the other day I happened across a fairly innocuous-looking story that, at first glance, seemed nothing more than one of those "strange but true" tales that you mentally file away to impress your mates with down the pub after work.

However, something about it set a few alarm bells ringing for me and, on further inspection, this throwaway story turned out to be a nugget of pure viral marketing gold.

It also prised open a family-sized can of worms in my hardened TV researcher's brain and set them wriggling in the part of my cranium that exists to remind me that the web can also be a truth-hunters worst nightmare.

The story concerned Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old kid in Texas who had been arrested after he swiped his dad's credit card and embarked on an epic $30,000 spending spree. This misadventure wound up with him and his mates holed up in a hotel room with a pile of junk food, a brand new Xbox and two nubile $1000-a-night prostitutes procured from the local whorehouse. It also landed Ralph in the arms of the law when the hotel room was raided by the local Texan constabulary after being tipped off by a delivery guy who'd supplied the boys with snacks.

Apparently our young hero claimed he was funding this escapade through the winnings of a World of Warcraft video games contest and, when the high-class call girls questioned his age, he convinced them that he and his friends were in fact "people of restricted growth" who worked for a travelling circus. Even better he went as far to inform them that, if they refused his custom, they would be in direct violation of the state's disability discrimination laws. Only when the boys seemed more interested in playing Halo than getting to grips with their "hired help" did the penny finally drop.

In a strange twist of narrative the poor, misinformed sex workers were released without charge whilst young Ralph was slapped with a three year community order for fraud, presumably ruing the day he figured out his dad's pin number.

Unsurprisingly the story turned out to be complete hogwash. It was later revealed to be the result of a viral marketing experiment by Cornish social media marketer Lyndon Antcliff (aka Lyndoman) who unleashed the story on popular finance site Money.co.uk.

Lyndoman deliberately laced his Munchaussen-esque tale with every conceivable narrative trigger point needed to ensure its viral success.

]]> There was sex, crime, comedy, teenage rebellion, video gaming references and a certain wacky "urban legend" preposterousness that made it perfect fodder for the target audience of nerds, bloggers and social news sites who would then disseminate it into the mainstream.

And as experiments go it was a damn successful one. Within days the story had spread like wildfire across the web appearing on more than 2,000 websites, ascending the ranks of social news websites such as Digg and attracting 450,000 to the money.co.uk site to read the article.

It was only later, when a curious reporter contacted the Texan police department in question to uncover further details about the story, that the hoax was finally uncovered.

By this point several media organisations including The Sun, Fox News and Radio One had all recounted it as fact. This is the part of the story which got me a little bit twitchy from the perspective of a professional researcher.

You see, back when I was a clueless new entrant to the TV industry, I had it drummed into me by my series producers that any statement made on screen had to 100% legal-proof or I be flayed alive by hoards of rabid lawyers baying for litigation.

As a general rule of thumb this meant, if we wanted to report anything as fact, we would either have to have first hand proof or find three published sources that had successfully made the same claim before us without getting sued.

Now pardon me if I'm wrong, but The Sun, Fox News and Radio One certainly count as published sources in my book and, as a naïve young researcher, this would have been all the evidence I would have needed to unwittingly weave a bogus story thread into a broadcast programme and subsequently hand Ofcom my arse on a plate.

Now, this is obviously a case of lazy journalism on behalf of the media outlets who published the account as fact and it may seem like overkill to labour the point with such a silly story. It is, however, brilliantly indicative of a problem that the modern media researcher has to face- just how can you sort fact from fiction on the web?

Whilst any researcher worth his salt would never rely on the word of a random blog he had Googled without checking the sources, it does raise a pertinent question about just what does count as an "official" or "published" source these days anyway.

Take this post you're currently reading for example. It is an officially sanctioned blog by a respected local newspaper. It appears under a big fat banner that reads "Birmingham Post" which you would expect would give it some degree of gravitas, and it is just a few clicks away from the "news" section of the website which doesn't look wholly dissimilar to the blog section. We even have a section labelled "news blogs" which muddies the water even further.

However, I'm not a professional journalist nor do I pretend to be. Everything you read here I've stumbled across on the web and noted down because I think it's interesting. As a reader, however, you have no way of knowing whether I spent several hours painstakingly researching it or whether I knocked it up in 15 minutes on my lunch break. And as I'm not bound by a journalistic code of ethics, I don't really have to tell you either way.

But if I write articles in an authoritative style, creating content that appears on the official website of a trusted media outlet, shouldn't that content be considered as "journalism" that has been "published" by the Birmingham Post?

Undoubtedly the creative and professional debate surrounding blogging being labelled as journalism is a contentious topic that is guaranteed to raise the hackles of many traditional journalists. From a legal perspective, however, I'm pretty sure the newspaper would be held just as responsible for the publication of a dodgy blog post as it would for a badly researched article by one of its newsroom staff.

And if it's good enough for the lawyers to label as an official publication then presumably it should be good enough for a hapless junior TV researcher desperately looking for "reliable" sources whilst his producer is breathing down his neck?

The minefield of truth becomes even more peppered with the unexploded ordinance of litigation when you analyse the mechanics of the blogosphere.

Here is a platform where turnover is fast and the attention span is low. To get mass attention quickly (and by that I mean spontaneous viral attention not a loyal following built over time) stories either have to be sensational or they have to break the news first before the competition gets a look in.

These are hardly conditions that lend themselves naturally to extensive fact-checking and, as breaches of truth aren't exactly newsworthy or PR-friendly for the erring blogger, mistakes are distinctly under-reported compared to the noise-making stories that cause them in the first place.

Also, if you add the echo-chamber effect where blog posts refer to other blog posts (just as this one is doing) and the fact that stories remain archived and searchable for many years to come, it is easy to get lulled into believing that a story is true simply because it is everywhere.

As we can see in the case of fictitious teenage playboy Ralph Hardy, all it takes is one piece of naïve or reckless publication by someone at an apparently "reliable" source to open the floodgates for others to follow in their wake. Soon, the story gets cited in other trusted sources, amplifying the effect until a piece of fabrication snowballs itself into "truth".

As someone who has been employed to both generate attention-grabbing online media content and to fact-check stuff for broadcast, I can see both sides of this story.

Marketers are getting more and more sophisticated at figuring how to push those attention-grabbing buttons so researchers need to wise up accordingly or wind up with egg on their faces.

Whilst my inner web geek is smirking along with the viral marketers, the professional fact hunter in me is nervously reaching for the valium.

What's in a name? (or welcome to the Kings Heath International School Fete)

2008-05-22T11:58:53Z

All of us doing business in Birmingham are tied up, whether we like it or not, with the reputation of the city. We help create it and we are measured by it.

Your address is a part of your company image. That's presumably why big corporates like tall buildings (and why helicopter shots of Canary Wharf feature in the title sequence of 'The Apprentice' even though Sir Alan Sugar's office is miles away in Brentwood.

Or it's why traditional craft industries like to use pictures of country cottages and rural workshops in their literature.

]]> I've recently been having a debate with a company about whether to keep quiet about their history or, as I believe, use their geographical roots to build some great PR. More later perhaps.

So what of the image of Birmingham? And why did the Rover Group use to use a Warwick address for its international HQ (castles and Shakespeare perhaps?)

For too long Birmingham used to think it had to call everything 'national' or 'international' - hence we are known by initials: the NEC, ICC, NIA. This sort of self-important naming does not build an instant reputation and merely downgrades the word Birmingham.

Around the time of the ICC opening, you couldn't go out in Birmingham without stumbling across an international this and that. We had an International jazz festival with mostly the same artists as Brecon Jazz (great for the image of Brecon), an international street festival, international film and TV festival etc etc. I remember once questioning the organisers of an event about the rather grand choice of title only to be told the mother of one of the performers was from overseas. International it was not.

So last night I was at the Kirov Ballet at the Hippodrome (told you I'd write about it Marc). Brilliant!
It was part of the International Dance Festival Birmingham (website: IDFB)

Now from a glance at all the dancers biogs from Baimuradov to Tershkina, the cyrillic lettering in the theatre and the name 'Kirov' itself I was pretty sure this was international - but thanks IDFB for letting me know.

The other week I also went to see Hofesh Shechter and 2FaCeD DaNcE Company in Victoria Square. It featured local dancers and was directed by Tamsin Fitzgerald from Hereford. Hofesh is Israeli-born, but now based in the UK (Eastleigh according to his website).

We didn't really know beforehand who would be performing in Victoria Square or where they came from. The 'international' tag wasn't the slightest lure. Yet the performance was stunning. It was just as brilliant as the Kirov Ballet and it was part of the BIRMINGHAM dance festival. Let's be proud of our city.

"International". You're fired!

Tall buildings: friends or foes?

2008-05-21T13:53:47Z

There's lots in today's Post on the merits or otherwise of tall buildings. There's the lead story, a supportive editorial and (although I don't think it's linked to the other two) a great blog from Jon Bounds on the magic of the Rotunda.

Maybe it's because I'm on the vertically-challenged side of things height wise, but I have long been fascinated by tall buildings. It's not just their size and scale that impress - although I have to admit that they do. Done well: they can be inspiring visitor attractions. Think of the Empire State and Rockefeller Centre in New York or the John Hancock Building and Sears Tower in Chicago. You have stunning buildings with great facilities that attract tourists like magnets. What's more, they have become symbols of their cities recognisable the world over. And having dragged (an admittedly somewhat windswept) Mrs P to the top of all of them bar Sears Tower, I can confirm that they have great views.

So, am I a fan of tall buildings? Unequivocally yes. Would I like to see more in Brum? Same answer. Do I think they would be good for business...dear reader, I think you can guess my response.

Which brings us to the (for me at least) more interesting question of why people might not want them. So far as the debate in Brum is concerned, there appear to be two points. One is the understandable concerns about tall buildings following the dreadful events of September 11th. However, I think that is a concern about the truly awful things that extremists can do and not a criticism of tall buildings per se. I agree with the approach being adopted by New York. The proposed Freedom Tower is a bold and brave response to the terrorists. I hope to visit it.

Which brings us onto the local objections from the Victorian Society, most recently regarding the proposed redevelopment of the NatWest Tower. Their allegation is that the redevelopment is nothing more than "political, economic and architectural opportunism" which blows "a destructive hole" in the "consistent fabric" of buildings along Colmore Row. I'm not an architect but I'm a bit surprised at the blowing-a-hole bit of the argument. Isn't that what the current tower has done? As for the opportunism, my understanding of the proposals is that British Land hope to turn an ugly concrete monstrosity into a 21st century office building. What's wrong with that?

Having said all that, I still don't like Beetham Tower. Too green.