Flickr is messing me around

You may notice that my 'Ooh & aah: content that inspires me' (right-hand column on this page) is filled with Instagram pictures and not a selection of interesting content clips. It's a Flickr issue I'm trying to work my way round so, for now, 'purdy' pictures it is.

The cathedral that never was: a lesson in pragmatic creativity

A sketch of Lutyens’ cathedral design for Liverpool, UK.

I recently listened to a BBC Radio 4 feature called ‘Unbuilt Britain: Liverpool’s Other Cathedral‘ which tells the story of the renowned British architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens (29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) and his never-built work, a cathedral of such magnitude and magnificence that it would have dominated Liverpool’s skyline and rivalled any around the world.

The cathedral was commissioned in 1930 and was for the most part to be funded by the working class Catholics of Liverpool’s growing industrial port. The cathedral plans were so ambitious however that even the finely detailed model was never fully completed.

Hearing the story of Lutyens’ cathedral brought home for me the pitfalls of allowing creativity and vision to override resource and circumstance and of taming an initial vision to a practicable size. The story is a poignant allegory of digital ‘cathedral’ making and a lesson in the timeless value of pragmatism when developing any architecture or space, even digital.

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Content strategy for startups: blazing a new trail

During the first half of this year I was contracted to develop a content strategy for a newly formed organisation. I say ‘newly formed’ in that at the time of starting the project I didn’t know very much about the client and, bizarrely, hadn’t quite wrapped my head around the idea that they were a startup.

I’d always (silly now it seems) associated startups with technology. Since working with this client however, I’ve re-educated myself. I’m now fully cognisant of the fact that ‘startup’ can describe an infinite variety of sparkling new ventures from richly funded to pigeon poor, from independent to nested within a corporation, and from digital culture to any other field. The one thing they have in common though is that they all start at the same place, with nothing.

In this post I share how my tried and testing content strategy methodologies were turned upside down (startups are a creature unto their own), what I did instead (with a focus on R&D), and how I discovered that the work of a Content Strategist can be so much more creative and strategic than I’d ever realised.

Tried and tested

As a consultant Content Strategist I’m used to the idea of learning a lot about a client’s business in a short amount of time.

I start every project with R&D and Diagnosis, a process of learning and discovery that results in a project plan and an informed foundation upon which initial strategic concepts can be formed.

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Create waves, not ripples

Yuko Shimizu, The Big Wave, 2003

‘The work of the Pirate is to create waves, not ripples.’ - @dolectures

One of my favourite quotes from 2012.

As a consultant/freelancer (a Mercenary, a Pirate), I’m often called on to make waves where they’re needed and to steer a content vision through personal undercurrents and political rip curls without inspiring mutiny.

My work very often includes adjusting people’s work routines, their foci and perhaps even their job titles. These things are more than just an adjustment in the eight hours they spend at their desks – it’s career focus and future security, it’s job satisfaction, it’s position and power, it’s effort and pay cheque.

I make friends, observe, ask, listen, remember, work with people, attend endless meetings I don’t really need to be in, manage expectations, under-sell what I can do (without killing enthusiasm), and a string of other things I haven’t listed or figured out yet. At the end of the day, even with all this friendly-making and evangelising, the reality always surfaces that I am there to make change.

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The full birdsong: inspired by ‘Strategy on the Inside’

I’ve been inspired to write this post by an online conversation that sparked up over a tweet I sent out last week. The tweet resulted in a multi-person twitter exchange and the writing of two very thoughtful blog posts (one by Rachel Lovinger, the other by Destry Wion) regarding the word ‘strategy’ and whether it is an appropriate title for the kind, and variances, of the work we as digital and content-focused people get up to – not a new discussion but one that seems to revive with fair regularity.

Tweets are funny things – they’re short enough to show a sentiment but really not long enough (and often too staggered) to share the context or full point of the view that gave rise to them. They’re like a single note in a song but not the full melody; a chirp but not the complete bird song, so to speak.