Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

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Marginal Improvement and big thinking

In Digital,Lessons,Life,Marketing,Work on February 10, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

This is a post about marginal improvement and my recent list of rules

I’ve had a few people chat to me about my recent bunch of rules I’ve posted and have been saying that life needs fewer rules or that they thought I used to be a rebel would would always break the rules so I thought I would explain.

I’ve already posted these:

My Twitter Rules

My Train Rules

My Cinema Rules

And I’m currently working on a set for Facebook, LinkedIn, Vine, beach, elevators, escalators and more.

However, what I want to say is that they are more guidelines than rules. I follow the majority of them most of the time and I try to do what I can to be considerate to others. The guidelines or there just as a reference that if we all did all them well maybe, just maybe, the world would be a little bit of a better place.

Which brings me to marginal improvement. I’ve recently taken an interest again in economics (yeah I know who would have believed I would start enjoying that stuff all over again) and have been devouring podcasts on them.

The ‘Team GB’ cycling team in the UK won so many Gold Medals thanks to the their Head of Marginal Improvement, Mr Matt Parker. There is a good article on him here.

Basically he looked at how he could help increase the team’s performance marginally. Just a tad. Just enough to make them a little bit better. For instance he made the team where heated shorts before races to stop the players muscles going cold. The only team who did this were Team GB and I have no doubt at the next Olympics all cyclists will have toasty legs.

Now normally I’m the kind of guy who likes to take risks and who isn’t afraid to speak out. I’m always willing to go for the long shot and see how it pans out and I dream big – however I see that one of the best ways to dream big is to start small and that is with marginal improvements.

I’ve been re-focussing how I work by seeing which small things I can change and what things I can do that will make a small but important change in delivery and result and so far, so good.

I realise that you need a mix of marginal improvement and long term thinking. You have to dream big but also look for the small things that improve your life and your work marginally because the small things really do make an impact.

I’m not saying that from now on all I’ll be doing is looking for the little wins, oh no, I’ll always be looking to make a big impact but until they pay off I’ll be making small leaps rather than massive bounds.

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Articles

My Twitter Rules

In Lessons,Life,Marketing,Media,Social Media,Technology on February 6, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

Rules.

We all all live by them. We all have our own code.

Twitter.

It’s the second love of my life. It’s the communications platform I always dreamed of. It gives anyone the ability to talk to anyone else in this world as long as they have a Twitter account. Not once in the history of the world has this been possible. Yet here we are exchanging words across the globe with anyone and everyone.

I’ve been using Twitter for nearly five years. I don’t cheat the system. I don’t play the follow me and I’ll follow you game. But I do reply to nearly everyone who speaks to me – its only polite – and I do hunt out fun and interesting people to talk to because its what makes life interesting.

But you got to have rules and that’s where My Twitter Rules come in to play.

1. If I follow you and you send me an auto-DM then I’ll unfollow. It’s rude to think that because I’ve chosen to engage with you that you suddenly have the right to barge into my life and try to sell me something or direct me to your blog or your website. If it’s in your profile chances are I’ve already looked.

2. If you tweet more than five times in my timeline in less than a minute and it’s not a scream for help because you are in a dire situation the I’ll unfollow you. I follow you because I’m interested in you. I didn’t follow you to know the exact contents of your mind one a second by second basis.

3. I don’t read celebrity gossip. I don’t wait patiently every week to find out which celebrity has been knocked up, divorced, having an affair or simply put on some extra pounds. You know what? I simply don’t care. Everyone deserves their privacy and I’m not a fan of peering into people’s lives through an 800mm lens.

4. Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Retweet them and I unfollow. I have no desire to know anything about either of those two. Basically I suggest thinking about your followers before you retweet certain things. I always hover for a second and think about my followers before I retweet.

5. Quotes. If you think continually tweeting quotations is cool well that’s just swell however if I want to read quotes the I’ll head on over to one of the million quote pages on the web and read some.

6. Every week I try and find a few people I’ve not engaged with in a while or at all and see what they have to say and try to chat to them. Find something they have said I have found interesting and let them know.

7. If you have connected your account to a site that is sending DMs to me telling me ‘people are saying this about you and has a link’ I’ll DM you back and let you know. You may not know the account is sending on your behalf so it’s only right I let you know.

8. If I have just followed you and we haven’t interacted and you send me a DM asking me to subscribe to your YouTube channel or your blog you can be assured I won’t be visiting your site and I certainly won’t be following you any more.

9. I will block you if you are a troll. I have been abused a few times on Twitter (this one comes to mind!) and I simply won’t put up with you being an asshole. I’ll accept it a few times as you may be having a bad day but if you keep at it it’s block city

I guess they are my standard rules. I’ll probably come back and update when I think of others I use. If you have any rules I’d love to hear them.

22 Comments

Articles

The lone keyboard warrior

In Life,Social Media,Technology on February 10, 2012 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , ,

Last night I had a strange incident and normally I would leave it alone but not today.

While on Twitter I noticed someone saying that Australia’s NBN is already outdated. I wrote a small note back explaining they were incorrect.

And their response? The lovely gentleman (whose Twitter profile says: ‘Father of 5 kids, Loving Grandfather of 10 Grandchildren,and 2 Great Granddaughters. love to give heaps to Pollies and Poofters) said to me: ” Go and lick Gillards C*** out U commie Prick” (I’ve edited the swear word but they didn’t)

Yup. They seriously wrote that.

In four years of being on Twitter it’s the first time I’ve been visibly shocked by a tweet.

I never mentioned politics.

I never mentioned communism.

I never mentioned sex.

Oh yeah and I’m Scottish and not a citizen in Australia so I can’t even vote here!

Yet there they were attacking me for correcting them. Which brings me to the world of the lone keyboard warrior. I spend a lot of time online and more and more I’m seeing this kind of thing. I’m used to it on forums where long-term friendships and hatreds are born. I’ve even been a moderator on a gaming forum where daily abuse was the norm but Twitter – where people are more likely to use their own names – I’m noticing a marked increase in the attacks.

Maybe it’s because I’m spending a lot more time looking at certain issues which people are passionate about but even then the debate should be cordial and without personal attacks. But on Twitter the area I have noticed the most hatred and vitriol is from the political area. It seems that when people start talking about politics there are those online who revert to the most vile and disgusting abuse … but only behind their keyboards.

I’ve never really had the urge to troll nor attack people online. I’ve occasionally defended myself but I see online and offline as two worlds that have less and less of a gap between them and people at some point will have to stop being keyboard warriors and start realising that what they say online can and will have repercussions for them offline. If you wouldn’t say it to someone in a street then don’t say it online.

Have you had any dealing with any crazy keyboard warriors?

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The burger plea of special tastebuds

In Food,Lessons,Life on June 14, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

While noticing parts of Masterchef last night – it was on the TV – I noticed the burger that Heston Blumenthal put together had no beetroot on it. Nor aioli.

I tweeted that Australians should realise this is how a burger should be. It shouldn’t have beetroot. My twitter feed was a flurry of pro and anti beetroot fans. It all went a bit mental. I seemed to have touched a part of the Australian psyche that many were attacking me and my attack on the beetroot. Even an MP got in on the act telling me that every good Aussie burger should have beetroot on it. Thankfully there were some beautiful people out there who came to my defence and said NO to Beetroot!

I guess I should have said before I posted that being a supertaster means I taste more than other others and beetroot’s on a burger bascially means it becomes totally overpowered by only one taste – that of the purple coloured monstrosity.

I enjoy a good burger. All of my friends will testify to that but I cannot stand a few things when I eat out.

1. Aioli. Listen you gourmet chefs out there beefburgers do not and should not ever have fucking have aioli on them. I’m sick of going into a restaurant or a pub and ordering a beefburger and it turning up with fucking aioli on it. Which brings me to point 2.

2. Menus where the chef has failed to list all the ingredients bar one and that one is usually aioli. So you get the burger and you have told them you don’t want beetroot or pickles and suddenly this burger appears slapped with tomato sauce on top and aioli on the bottom. WTF?!?

3. Beetroot. Keep it off the burger please.

4. Pickles. Not a fan but hey if it pleases most people fine I’ll just flip those suckers on to the side of the plate – please note you cannot do this with beetroot as the moment it gets slopped onto a burger it starts to spread like Eboli.

5. Chefs stop putting the parmigiana ON TOP OF THE CHIPS. Seriously. How the fuck am I supposed to cut the thing? If anything put the chips on top so I can eat them first THEN hit the Parma.

6. Pepper. Leave it out unless I request it or at least you ask me if I want it. Too many times have I been given pepper on a burger or whetever only for me to not eat the food. Not everyone like it so please have a care for us tongue disabled.

7. If you decide you want to spice up the food. Please put it on the menu. Too many times have I stumbled upon food with hidden chillis in it only to find that I cannot eat for hours afterwards.

8. Cripsy bacon should be crispy and not simply a wee bit hard at one end.

9. Thick bread is not good for French Toast. You should always use thin sliced bread. Thicker bread ends up being sopping and gooey.

10. Seriously drop the beetroot from the burger but get the bacon and egg in and the onion rings and ketchup or bbq sauce but never aioli or mayonnaise.

I should also point out that after making the comment about that Aussie burgers shouldn’t have beetroot I had a few people tell me that if I don’t like it then I should leave. This is a post I shall leave for another day but it’s a very interesting one about the amount of people in Australia that have said that to me when I complain about a tiny aspect of the country or culture.

Anyway, what’s on your perfect burger?

9 Comments

Articles

SHTBOX

In Life,SHTBOX,Social Media on April 15, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

Surry Hills Twitter Beer O'Clock Exchange Superhero Party

The SHTBOX Superheroes

It stands for Surry Hills Twitter Beer O’Clock Exchange.

It stands for fun and good times.

It’s an informal meet of awesome people who use Twitter.

Thanks to SHTBOX I have met so many fucking superb people – you all know who you are 😉

Myself and two legendary characters Mal Damkar aka @maldamkar and Mitch Malone aka @mitchmalone met on Twitter nearly two years ago and decided to catch up in the real world – SHOCK HORROR!! For all I knew both of them could have been killers/stalkers/nerds thankfully it turned out they were just cool motherfuckers. On that first night a few other people turned up including the lovely Emily Wearmouth aka @EmVicW and Mandi Bateson aka @mab397. The first time we all met was so awesome we did it again the next week and more people came…and more people came.

In fact I believe Emily, who met her fiance at SHTBOX, is marrying him this weekend in London!! How cool is that!?

Some weeks we had thirty to forty people turn up at the same location – The Clock Bar in Surry Hills in Sydney (see how Surry Hills fits in to the name. Mal came up with the whole name. He’s a genius that lad).

Sometimes we organised crazy nights of fancy dress. The last one we did was superheroes. Last count there was six Superman. It was amazing. We’re in that picture up there.

Everyone is invited and we only have two rules:
1 – No name badges
2 – No cunts

Simple huh!

Alas I have been sadly remiss in not attending this year. In fact just close to its two year anniversary I seem to have stopped going and I think that this has to change. Starting in May I’m going to revitalise this awesome event with gusto!

It’s time to bring the SHTBOX back. It’s time to round up all the old faces and invite so many new ones.

Let’s get SHTBOX back on the map after Easter!

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Video Gaming

In Digital,Life,Video Games on April 4, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , ,

Had a very interesting night tonight on Twitter. I noticed a woman say she had bought her kids Bulletstorm (a really fun but uber-violent First-Person Shooter).

I asked what age her children were and she said 10 and 13 years old. This made me take a step back. I was actually stunned. A 10-year old playing Bulletstorm!! Madness. I have a massive list of games that I wouldn’t let a 10 year old play and that is one of them…there is a blurry line as to what age I would let kids play that game but 10 just seems to be a tad too young.

I’m not judging the mother here. Maybe she believes that her kids are sensible and stable and can handle playing that kind of game. She probably knows them better than anyone and she even said she knows her kids ‘know it’s only a game’ but what happens when they go to school and tell their friends.

Those other kids will want to play it. They will want to get their hands on it. Or they will want to head to their mates house to play it.

And this is where i have the problem I guess. We have ratings for a reason. Many of us in Australia have been fighting for an R18 rating to ensure that certain games are seen by certain audiences. It’s for a reason. Across the globe there are a lot of games that have an 18 rating because the content is deemed unacceptable to 10 year olds in the eyes of most gamers.

I have grown up playing games. I play Pong back in the 70s and I have played every single GTA game. I played Modern Warfare for hours and hours (not Black Ops though that was a bit shit). Hell I even played Leisure Suit Larry when I was 16 and was baffled as to what a profalactic was but I believe that we have rating systems for a reason.

Yes they are a guideline

Yes they are an option.

But if a storeowner sells a 10 year a copy of an 18 game in Britain or an NC-17 game in the US (I think that’s the rating) then they can be fined a damn lot of money because it is illegal.

In Australia there are some people who don’t believe an R18 should be introduced and who are doing their damned best to stop it ever happening.

I could go on but the amazingly talented writer Mark Serrels who writes for Kotaku in Australia says it so much better than I:

R18+: Rationality Is Dead

Ultimately it is the choice of a parent to choose what film their kids watch, what content they see on the internet and what games they play.

I have no doubt the mother I spoke to is a good woman who knows her kids and I hope she sits with them while they play. But for the handful of fantastic mothers and fathers out there there are also a whole bunch who just want their kids out of their hair and will buy them any game just to keep them away…and that’s where the problems arise.

We need games ratings in this country.

We need parents to adhere to the ratings to ensure that those trying to stop the R18 don’t get any more fodder for their battle against us.

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Articles

Check your Twitter facts

In Digital,Media,Social Media on March 14, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

You know what? It only takes one minute out of your life to check some facts before you click ‘enter’.
A long time ago in another period of my life I felt like the last bastion of truth and honesty when it came to fighting against the evil curse of the ‘forwarded email’ which contained alleged facts like ‘did you know you eat 8 spiders while you sleep through your lifetime’. Total and utter rubbish.
I spent a small piece of my time linking people to Snopes.com and telling them to check facts before sending useless and pointless emails filling people with untruths.
And now with the advent of social media we have the tweet and retweet. Over the past few days since the terrible tragedy in Japan people have been tweeting about the deaths of Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri and Hello Kitty creator Yuko Yamaguchi in the tsunami. Only they aren’t dead.
Neither is Maria Ozawa. Who is allegedly some adult film actress…
Over the past few months Twitter has been aflame with the alleged deaths of Justin Bieber, Jim Carrey and Charlie Sheen. Hell, a guy on the forum I use made a fake story about Jeff Goldblum as a joke to a friend which went way out of control and had a presenter on the national news talk about the story as if it was true!! Mental
Can we all just stop.
Can we not just retweet every single thing we read on Twitter.
It makes you the equivalent of the idiot who spammed me by email with those idiotic untruths years ago.
Take one minute out of your life and research something before you decide to retweet it.
Take one minute out of your life and research something before you decide to Facebook it.
Take one minute out of your life and research something before you decide to forward it in a goddam email.
C’mon let’s get the truth out there more often.

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Articles

Online etiquette

In Digital,Life,Social Media on March 7, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

My mum and dad, who by the way are the best people I know, brought me up to live by a code of rules … no not Dexter-esque type rules! But instead by a code of ethics, a code of living. Be nice to people, treat people with respect, don’t steal physical objects etc.

They also brought me up with a sense of chivalry and with a sense of etiquette.

I treat people the way I want to be treated.

I always ask people how they are. I always hold doors for women (even though some scowl at me for doing so), I hold chairs out for women to sit at the table and I believe in helping people for no reason other than to simply be nice to help them out if they need a hand.

I ask for nothing in return except to know that I have done a good deed (curse my cub scouts training) however what I’m not a fan of is blindly helping someone to win a prize.

I will help someone out with their digital marketing as I specialise in that area. I’ll re-write their press releases. I’ll edit their web copy. I’ll go over to a friend’s house at 7am and help them move their entire home but I don’t really like helping someone I don’t know for nothing more than to enable them to beat others who are trying their best to win it fair and square.

Sorry for the blurb on me but it will explain my annoyance.

Tonight on Twitter I got followed by a person who shall remain nameless – cause I’m not that much of a heartless bastard – and they said:

“Hi Scott, may i ask a favour, 1 digital marketer to another? Please LIKE and RT this link so I can win a trip o/s”

I mean seriously that’s rather rude. I had been following them but they hadn’t been following me and then they follow and ask this. That’s rather rude isn’t it?

And so I reply: “Not sure of the etiquette of following and asking for favours before knowing the person. Bad digital etiquette?”

Now I figured this would be the end of it. I put it to Twitter and everyone said yes…RUDE!

Also it wasn’t over. Oh no. No no no. Not at all. Nup.

“I’m just asking a favour.” he says. “You’ve been following me for a while so I thought u would know a bit about me. If i don’t want to then don’t” – please bear in mind that I follow over 3,000 people and can’t know everything about everyone. I’ll help people out if I have spoken to them and they need a hand and sometimes I’ll reach out if someone tweets something that I can help with but I’m not on Twitter 24/7 and don’t know ALL about the people I follow.

He follows it up with: “Remember the time you were super passionate about something? Did etiquette matter? Nope. Twitter isn’t an English tea party”. – seriously what the fuck?

I still tried to play nice and said back: “Yup I’ve been following you however you just begun following me and asked a favour. Surely that’s impolite?”

He came back once more: “Seems we have different views on what is polite or not. I consider anyone sharing their passion for digital as a positive thing.”

Passion for digital?? He’s trying to win a Ben and Jerry’s trip overseas!!!?? What the hell does that have to do with digital except he reached out to me by DM on Twitter.

I’m not naming you kid but you have a lot to learn about being a digital marketer … and being polite!

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Articles

The tragedy around us

In Media on February 23, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

On each side of the Atlantic two tragedies act out before our eyes and a large number of us are part of the problem and part of the solution.

I’m guilty. You have no idea just how guilty I am.

I’m complicit in crimes against humanity and everyday I further compound my guilt.

I fuel media outrage. I fuel media gossip. I fuel the downward spiral of mankind and yet I feel compelled to do so because I enjoy the discussion around it – what I don’t enjoy is knowing the pain that those people must be going through.

In Australia there is a girl. A girl not even 18-years old who sits at the eye of a gossip and media whirlwind. Miss Z tweets, she video blogs, she talks to the press. She is on a one-woman vendetta against the St Kilda football club (AFL).

What worries me the most about this whole situation is that the media, her followers on twitter and YouTube, even her parents seem to have walked away from their humanity. I haven’t heard of one person reaching out a hand to say ‘can I help?’.

I could write for hours on this subject but instead I will link you through to Virginia Trioli’s article that covers this with far more compassion and depth that I am able to http://www.theweeklyreview.com.au/article-display/Little-Girl-Lost/3642

A few thousand miles away the self-destructive (or is he?) @charliesheen has joined Twitter. Within six hours of sending out his first tweet he has amassed nearly 550,000 followers – bear in mind it took Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk and no I don’t follow him) three months to get to the one million follower mark.

He has cemented the hashtag #winner as his rallying call to his fans. But with each tweet, with every interview and with every quote the man seems to be on some kind of head-on collision with either reality or his death.

He seems to be surrounded by people wanting something from him whether it be drugs, money, fame, sex (I’m guessing?!), connections or who knows what. But at the centre of it all is a man with five kids.

Five kids who get to see their dad plastered across the news just like the mother and father of Miss Z have to watch their daughter get slammed by the media as the feed themselves on the tragedies occurring.

I never forget being in Australia and hearing the news about the murder of my uncle. How three teenagers left him in a pile of blood of seven hours before he was found. How they taunted him laughing about the damage they did to him.

Then I remember reading the news stories surrounding the case – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4513896.stm

I felt helpess.

I felt lonely.

I felt angry

I feel the same way when I see Charlie Sheen and Miss Z.

I want to reach out and tell them that they don’t have to do what they are doing – just like I would tell those kids who attacked my uncle that they didn’t have to do it.

I want to tell Charlie Sheen and Miss Z that at some point their lives will get better and they will regret what they are doing. I’d love the media to pull away and find different stories to write. To tell them to just walk away and stop using it to fill gaps in the news cycle. I want to tell everyone I know to stop mentioning it, stop talking about it and to stop keeping the story going.

But I don’t and I’m as guilty as all the others who tweet about it and who write about it. I don’t do anything…and that, like the loss of my uncle, is the tragedy.

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