Bad Language

Want to make better decisions? Learn another language.

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:20:10 +0000

I’m a great believer in learning something new. I got a private pilots licence and then a commercial licence between 2000 and 2010 and I’ve been learning Dutch for the last five years. But now, Wired has given me a good reason for it: it helps me make more rational decisions. The article reports:

A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived.

These guys ran interesting experiments and the results are encouraging. Check it out. What do you do to make better decisions?

Unattended cranes and the power of emotion

Matthew Stibbe — Sun, 13 May 2012 08:47:08 +0000

Do you think anyone would notice if I just had a go? What is about these cranes that turns me into a schoolboy? Fire trucks and planes also have the same effect. As Freud said the mind is a great rationaliser of childish emotions.

Four lessons on entrepreneurship from an old campaigner to a new start-up

Matthew Stibbe — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:53:26 +0000

I used to run a computer games company, called Intelligent Games, and occasionally I get emails from people who played our games. That’s always a pleasure and I had one today from an Australian architect (and SimIsle fan) who is just starting out in his new practice. He made the flattering mistake of asking if I had any advice for him. Here is what I wrote and this is what I might have done differently if I had known then what I know now (it’s also what I’m trying to do now at Articulate and Turbine):

Hiring people is very expensive

They are ‘sticky’ in that it’s hard to unhire them when you can’t afford to pay them or don’t need them. Keep flexible and hire contractors, freelancers or remote workers as well as full time employees. Also – and someone said this to me when I was 20 and I ignored it then but it’s very true – don’t hire someone until you need two of them.

You’ve got to plan for the long term

We didn’t really anticipate the shift to multiplayer games or console games or the internet. We could have exploited any of these opportunities to grow the business but instead stuck to what we knew – PC strategy games. So you need to be a step ahead of the market and constantly looking for the next new thing.

Build value

Find something that you do exceptionally well or find a way to create some branding or intellectual property or proprietary technology that gives your business value beyond the cost of just hiring your staff or other employees like them. For an entrepreneur this is the most important thing because it will help you differentiate your business from its competitors and it will build value in the business so that you can earn the option to sell it.

After emailing him, I thought of another tip:

Spend your time on the good people

Once you have a reasonable number of employees, some of them will cause you problems. They’ll want pay rises, make complaints, threaten to leave, underperform, break the rules etc. It happens. As boss, you end up spending a lot of time dealing with these people. But you should try to keep that stuff as efficient and brisk as possible and spend much more time on your good people. Pay attention to them, help them get better, recognise their successes. Generally be a good boss to good employees.

Essential SEO tip for writers: How to configure Google Authorship to get your byline in search results

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:00:23 +0000

If you are a blogger or a journalist, check out Google Authorship. It’s a way to link your articles with your Google+ profile so that your profile gets included in Google search and people can find other articles by you. It also gives you analytics for your content in search.

On the face of it, this looks like a must-do if you want to maximise your visibility on Google and get more traffic for your writing.

You need to do a bit of work besides setting up a Google+ profile, as described on Google’s help page. Here’s how I did it on this site (Bad Language).

Register for Google+. Here’s my profile: https://plus.google.com/u/0/107157893087110752471/about
Edit the profile in the ‘Contributor to’ section to include this blog.
Make sure each post has my byline on it.
Add a link to my Google+ profile on the site with ?/rel=author on the URL. I did this by adding it to my list of free update subscriptions. I’ll tidy up the formatting and add icons later. This is what it looks like:

Note that the link is formatted like this (note the ?/rel=author): https://plus.google.com/u/0/~~107157893087110752471~~/?rel=author. Obviously you will need to change the struck-through Google+ reference number to match your own.
Tested the link using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool. Here’s what the result should look like. If you don’t see ‘Verified’, you’re not and it’s not working.

I’ve set this up on this blog, Golf Hotel Whiskey, my HP Business Answers blog and my Forbes Aviator column. It took me about an hour, and some of that time was spent writing this article and figuring out some of the wrinkles, so it’s a pretty painless process.

HP Folio 13 Ultrabook Unboxing and Review

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:16:43 +0000

Check out my video review of the new HP Folio 13 Commercial Ultrabook. Nice!

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to give a great presentation part 3: Warm-up

Matthew Stibbe — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:15:16 +0000

In this video, a professional director and two actors show you (plus me!) how to relax and warm up before a big presentation. Do this before your next pitch and it’ll help you chill out and give a better performance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to give a great presentation part two (video)

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:14:50 +0000

My wife Aileen and her colleague Nick Dana give inside tips on how to control nerves, stay focused on your objective and increase your confidence before a presentation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to give a great presentation part one (video)

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:47:39 +0000

Last week I made some videos for the HP Business Answers campaign about presentation skills with my wife, Aileen Gonsalves and an actor from her theatre company, Butterfly. Here’s the first one, which is all about getting your attention out onto your audience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The most astounding fact about the universe

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:37:58 +0000

Deil DeGrasse Tyson cements his position as the Carl Sagan of our times in this moving answer, illustrated by Max Schlickenmeyer’s beautiful video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now I know what I want for my birthday: a LEGO Space Shuttle

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:43:49 +0000

Ed Diment, Annie Diment and their colleagues, OptimalControl and Euphonica, built this 1:37 scale model of Space Shuttle Discovery for display at the National Space Centre in Leicester, U.K. The model shows the shuttle’s external tank and two solid rocket boosters. Hat tip: Wired where there are more awesome LEGO science models.