Morning all.
It’s a bit wet and grey here today, but I’m feeling good
Rubin’s watching CBeebies and I’m just going to grab a coffee and tell you about my week.
When I worked in the Business School at Bournemouth University, we always had cream cakes from Ida’s Patisserie on Friday mornings at 11am. Many days people worked through without taking any breaks, but on Fridays we all made the effort to get together as a team and blow off a bit of steam. And the cakes were bloody good too.
Working from home, and being a home-mum, those are the little things you often miss. Spending the day working in my pyjamas just doesn’t make me feel good about myself, so sometimes I have to put the smart clothes and shoes on regardless, and get down to work.
And not having other people around to chat about work with can be a drawback too. Being only accountable to yourself, are you more likely to slip off and watch a bit of ‘Merlin’ or ‘When Harry Met Sally’ if your productive juices dry up? That’s when I start to think about baking a cake, or making some soup.
Who’s in your coffee club?
Yesterday I was chatting with some entrepreneurs on Twitter about the value of working with others and sharing ideas {the group is called #twitterpreneur, and meets on Thursdays at 2pm CST/8pm GMT}. We all agreed that it helps to sound your ideas out loud to others, though we had different preferences for who we chat to about our stuff.
For me, it comes back to collaborations that rock. Having someone to riff and jam with, someone who also has good creative ideas of their own. You can cover a lot of ground over coffee and cake, and bring new projects into being, so that they start to be more than just an idea.
As the old saying goes, two heads are better than one.
Wooo ~ I’m in the Spotlight this month!
This week I got my face on another great website. Tara Joyce interviewed me for her November Spotlight at Rise of the Innerpreneur and it’s up and published now. Check out what I had to say about my new business adventures and my new project for 2010, How to build a really good business (dotcom!).
Things are moving fast round here, and there are some other great plans in the pipelines too. Just waiting for the right moment to come to fruition. So watch this space.
Is there anyone worth following on Twitter?
I’ve only been on Twitter a few weeks and I’m really trying to experiment with it, and discover its drawbacks, its worth. It’s certainly giving me much food for thought. Some days I find links to useful content; much of the time it’s a stream of endless ennui. Even the blissful Rumi quotes get cloying after a while. But I do think there is scope for making connections with people that matter to you.
I’m not saying you can use it to get in with big names in business or big celebs like Stephen Fry (though his use of the medium is something rare to observe). And it can be another tool that just turns you slightly obsessive about numbers and followers, and all that sycophantic crap.
Real People, Real Tweets
I’ve found that I enjoy following people that can use a bit of intelligent wit in their Tweets, like Mr Fry, Charlie Brooker and Derren Brown, or even comedians like Simon Pegg and Jimmy Carr. They keep it real, they send their own tweets (as far as I can tell), and they keep it live in the moment. Business gurus like Guy Kawasaki, who uses a small army of staff (well, 3, I believe) to send his tweets, and an autotweet function that reposts them at 8 hour intervals, could learn a lot from the likes of these.
Because who wants to trade off high follower numbers for authenticity and credibility? Not me.
Anyway, rant over. There’ll be more to come from me on the subject of the twittersphere soon.
The sun’s coming out here now, so Rubes and I are off to buy croissants and cakes for lunch (his request). Have a beautiful day.
