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Thinking Digital Conference 2010

By on May 28, 2010 in Work

It’s strange that I’m personally writing about Thinking Digital Conference (another one of Codeworks‘ conferences), yet I didn’t write about DIBI. I think the only reason is even though I was working on the team for Thinking Digital I wasn’t in on the talks throughout the couple of days. I was happily working away with the films crews, our own J6 and with Sara Allison from Microsoft so that they could both get the most out of the conference. Working with the film crews is so great as you get to spend a little bit of time with each speaker notably David Siegel, Mary Ann de Lares Norris from Oblong, Joi Ito, Ken Banks, Tom Wujec were some of the faces I managed to have a chat with.

tdcbuscards Thinking Digital Conference 2010

Christian Payne managed to stalk me via Gowalla and I found him to be one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met more so as he gave me one of his business cards with a photo of his dog having a wee on it (there were other strange one i.e. of him half naked – I opted for the dog!)

All in all it was a great week, so many friendly people, so much networking so many good talks! It was also interesting for me to see how many people from DIBI were at Thinking Digital, it was great to catch up with you all.

During the day Tim Allison from the IDI worked on a little project which was played in the closing session of Thinking Digital 2010 which can be seen below;

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Too Little Time, Too Many Domains

By on May 10, 2010 in Other Stuff, Work

I have the most random amount of ideas quite a lot of the time. Ideas which I think I can put in to action but then I get busy with something else. It never stops me from buying the domain name though, I always end up buying the damn things. My domain portfolio has expanded quite considerably over the past two years. Some of them are absolute rubbish yet some of them aren’t bad at all. I’ve also set up sites on some of the domains, mainly to get a small amount of traffic and somehow gather some affiliate earnings from them which does work, however small the affiliate income might accumulate to.

I’m going to be completely honest. I don’t know the first thing about selling and buying domains / websites so no doubt I’ll get a few emails about buying them for a penny. No Thanks!

So this is what I’ve got and what I may be willing to sell on should the right offer be made. I’ll go into my creative thoughts for the domain names below.

365qanda.com – I was thinking about setting up a website where I’d answer any random question per day, it could have been on absolutely anything but I’d find a way to answer it. Yes, I know, a rubbish idea. icon smile Too Little Time, Too Many Domains

businesscardgallery.co.uk – Self-explanatory, I was going to set up a showcase of business card designs.

designerssketchbook.com – Not sure to be honest, was going to be part of something a lot bigger which is no longer happening. Not a bad domain name regardless.

floobe.com/.co.uk – floobe.com is one of my oldest blogs. I’d originally set it up as a design blog with interviews/tutorials/showcase etc It probably gets between 400-1000 Page views a month with nothing new posted in around 6 months now.

howtostartblogging.co.uk – Was going to set this up as an affiliate website, started it and became immediately bored.

identitygraphics.co.uk – Used this for various things over the years I’ve owned it. Mainly web testing.

moovees.co.uk – Movie trailer website. Had it running for around a year now and I publish (when I can) the latest movie reviews from around the web. Depending on which film is a hit, it can receive regular traffic if I get the trailers up there quick enough.

muddledup.com/.co.uk – This was going to be a web app at one point but I’ll never have time to do something with it.

startingchoice.com/.co.uk – Jen and I were going to set this up as a private project which we’ve not got round to doing yet.

themehype.com – Theme Hype has been up and running since Christmas time, and was setup as a blog for theme design related posts with an emphasis on being affiliate related, I can’t directly relate my affiliate income to this site as everything is linked up however it is pretty well indexed for some search terms.

validationsicons.com – This is my longest running websites and was started shortly after my blog in 2007. I’ve redesigned it a couple of times and it gets around 1000 hits per month. It’s very well indexed and is ranked No.1 for various search terms. I’ve never added affiliate links to the site.

w3cicons.com/.co.uk – These domains simple forward to the site above.

webcalendr.com/.co.uk – This is a private project domain which I would still like to work on should I ever find the time.

So what are your thoughts? Leave a comment, get in touch or follow me on twitter.

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The Best Piece of Customer Service Advice

By on May 3, 2010 in Marketing, Social Media, Work

I’ll make this short. If you want a sound piece of advice in customer service this is it, no matter what you’ve done, what you’ve made or what you intend to do.

Never forget who you’re serving.

The minute you forget that, do something else as you just lost your heart to business.

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Why I’ll probably never work in an agency again

By on March 25, 2010 in Design, Work

probably Why Ill probably never work in an agency again

The most used word in this brain dump is going to be ‘probably‘, I can tell you that right now. That’s even before I’ve fully thought how this is going to pan out. It’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while and obviously more about the reasons behind it.

I currently work at Codeworks, and don’t get me wrong it is brilliant. Working on such projects as Thinking Digital and the DIBI Web Conference is crazy good. I wake up every morning stoked that I have the opportunity to do it. It is hard work, my weeks feel more like days and there is always a to-do list but it’s exciting. I’m doing everything I want to do and then some. I’ll probably be doing this for some time as I do enjoy it that much.

Natural progression in my head stated that when I was freelance a few years ago I needed agency experience to see ‘the other side’. That agency was small in size and big in ambition and there were some great times but at the end of the day the agency wasn’t mine. My views and my way of doing things would never have been implemented and I would never have seen the outcome of how everything in my head would have worked live within an agency.

The opportunity to work within the agency on various projects was great but I never had the opportunity to run the agency like I would have liked to.

In an agency there are always more people involved in the company than you and certainly more than the thoughts going round inside of your head. When you’re freelance or working for yourself, every decision you make is down to you, you in essence are the control freak running everything. You don’t have to rely on other people, you don’t have to carry people and you don’t have to wait for things to be implemented. Everything happens right there and then as soon as you think of it when working for yourself. If you are working within an agency you probably never have the opportunity to implement things that you’d like, unless you’re the MD/CEO.

I now feel after having the experience of both sides of the coin that I need more control in that scenario. I probably need to relax somewhat but when you’re putting your working reputation on the line you certainly don’t want to have to rely on other people. If I was to work within an agency again, it would be small and it would be my own. I’d keep it very small working with people I’d trust my life with with the same amount of ambition and love for their work as I do, but again this may probably never happen as I’m enjoying myself far too much.

I wonder how many other people who have both been freelancer and agency employee think about this? Your thoughts would be great on the subject. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, 600+ other people do…

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