BlackBerry, Apple or Pomegranate?

I'm not quick to jump on new tech gadgets however quick I am to read about them. So I've been letting reviews, personal recommendations and a few hands-on sessions percolate through the stubborn layers of indecision before upgrading my antediluvian brickbat of a phone. (Actually I decided today that for all my love of all things Apple, I was going to be sensible and go for the BlackBerry Curve 8900). In the course of many happy Google hours interrogating the fruit salad of options, I came across the Pomegranate. Someone out there had even more time than me - check out especially the coffee brewing and shaving options.

Is it all vanity?

Over the last few months I've found that I was being asked quite frequently for examples of my various verbal outpourings, and being naturally disorganised, was spending silly amounts of time scanning in pages from dog-eared copies of the FT or various magazines and emailing them off. Then I thought why not put all this stuff together on a personal site? Much more sensible.

So it came to pass that lizbolshaw.com was born. It's unavoidably self, self, self and writing about yourself in the third person is somehow cringe-making, but on the other hand at least now people can drop in and find my various musings on Web 2.0, interviews with entrepreneurs and even a rather surreal piece on extravagant treehouses.

It comes as I succumb to Twitter and connect with old friends on FaceBook and generally paddle in the shallows of social media. All this mental junk food gives one a hunger for a bit of Proust or Foucault to chew on.

Opentable IPO

A quick trip to Sardinia to lie on the sand and swim in transparent seas, and I almost missed the Opentable furore. I have to admit to having followed this intently - as soon as Silicon Valley grinch Sarah Lacey poured scorn that it would never float let alone fly. And has it flown...

Here's VentureBeat's summary:

Online restaurant reservation site OpenTable (trading as OPEN) has stunned the market with the best IPO performance of any company since 2007 (Orion Energy Systems), reaping a 59 percent gain with share prices closing at $31.89 on the Nasdaq — a staggering upsell from its anticipated $20.

The stock spiraled as high as $35.50, a 78 percent gain, as market analysts watched, both concerned that it was overstepping its bounds and positing that the small size of the offering was buttressing its price. Only 3 million shares were sold. In its success, OpenTable defied the economic downturn — not only the recently frozen IPO market, but also a dip in business from its core customerbase: restaurants.

So far, the San Francisco company seems relatively untouched by its reported 10 to 15 percent drop in reservations between 2007 and 2008. The recession has eaten into consumers’ dining budgets and restaurants are clearly feeling the pinch. As mentioned in previous articles, the main reason OpenTable was even poised for an IPO is its consistent revenue stream from restaurants, which pay for the installation of its software system and monthly subscription fees. But the downturn cuts both ways. The site says more restaurants are actually signing up these days, viewing the service as a convenience that could lure more customers. Overall, OpenTable’s revenue rose 36 percent in 2008 (despite a net loss), and 21 percent in the first quarter of 2009 (bringing it back to black).

It's tempting to equate the UK's toptable with OpenTable, but that would be to overlook some substantial differences in the two companies' business models. Toptable has concentrated its efforts beyond the convenient and transactional to providing a much richer consumer experience for its user base. There's very clever personalisation going on behind the scenes - even more so since the launch of its bigger, multi-lingual site some weeks ago. The proof is in its revenue streams that include a healthy slice of third party advertising on top of restaurant booking fees and marketing. If toptable can break across borders to capture audiences in Europe, as it has set out to do, it will be a very serious force to be reckoned with.

Death of the Word

If you haven't read it and aren't yet sick of all things social media, Throwing Sheep into the Boardroom is a good place to get your head around the roots and branches of this explosive tree. Author Matthew Fraser is an academic at Insead and has one of those highly polished domed foreheads Victorian phrenologists would have loved. I'd also recommend his blog. His latest post about the demise of newspapers and more serious magazines isn't original but it's a useful summary of where things are.

We're about two weeks' in to the launch of digital magazine, Smart People. It's very American in that loud yet improving sense and on current form won't be getting my $25 sub, but it's good to see people getting together to launch digital, interactive alternatives to newspapers. Richard Addis, who knows a bit about newspapers, has been arguing for digital innovation in news for some time, while he goes round the world relaunching papers of the traditional kind. I'm a firm fan of la Huffington whose digital organ continues to do what it does better than the competition.

Suwender to Twitter

Yesterday I finally gave in and got myself a Twitter account. To be honest I don't really get it yet, but within a few hours some 30 people I have no connection with are my followers. Some of the time it feels as though you are at the centre of a massive crossed line eavesdropping on conversations that you barely understand: the next you plug into something unexpected, immediate and wonderful. I have drawn the line at Denver Real Estate, web-dating and half a dozen earnest female Christians pushing out depressing messages of hope that belong on motivational posters of sunsets and seascapes. I mean really. Forster's "only connect" may be the motto de jour, but surely a small degree of editorial control is permissable.

Here, in a life-affirming paean to the power of a laptop and a few microphones, is a Twitter find. The digital world bringing raw street music together.

Stephen Fry has almost half a million followers, and no, I don't understand how he has time to breathe let alone tweet.

Do I have a witty, ironic avatar? No - if you really want to see me dribble, I'm lizbolshaw. As usual

A Butt of Sack

There is something rather wonderful about Carol Ann Duffy finally being appointed Poet Laureate, after she was apparently rejected last time round by a Tony Blair, nervous of the impact of her sexuality on a blushing Middle England. The anachronistic royal appointment famously carries remuneration in the form of a £5,000+ per year stipend (which Duffy has asked to be donated to the Poetry Society to endow a new prize) and a butt of sack. Interviewed on Radio 4 this morning, Duffy said that she had discovered that outgoing Laureate Andrew Motion had yet to receive his quota of sherry so she had asked to get hers up front. A butt = 600 bottles.

It may have taken 341 years to get here, but raise a glass with and to her.

If, for any reason, you don't know her work - start with Rapture, her astonishing collection of love sonnets.

The T word

There is hardly a news story now not centred around the R word - the economic reality that started as a slow-down, grew quickly to be an acknowledged recession, and for some particularly lugubrious columnists, is darkly hinted at a possible depression. But to stay with the majority, let's call it by the R word. Working, as I do, writing about and sometimes for business, I am acutely aware of the multifarious ways that the R word is impacting on the culture and behaviour of businesses affected by the nervousness, strangled cashflow and retrenchment that fills the corporate air now. 

Lymehound works for a range of businesses in different stages of their lifecycle: some are babies at that fragile point when idea blooms into reality; others are mature and street-savvy, playing the media, ducking and diving. Like any other business, we have to collect debts to survive, and we have been very lucky in having honourable, well-meaning clients who, because they're pretty happy with what we do, pay us on time or thereabouts. We know that sometimes that has been at personal cost, and we appreciate it all the more because of that. We do the same. Why? Because we have an instinctive knowledge that we should act as we want to be acted on, so to speak. 

Interestingly, the only real problem we, as a new media company, has had in collecting our debts, has been with our biggest and oldest client. This client is one I have known personally for many years, and one I admire. It never occurred to me that this high-profile, well-established, highly-appreciative firm should be our one late payer. I left it a while. But when I was getting no replies to emails or phone calls, I started to worry. Here was a vibrant, savvy firm, led by a high-profile CEO who speaks with gung-ho positivity at numerous events and conferences, who would regularly email me perhaps six or ten times a day, simply going silent on me. I decided that I couldn't sensibly continue to work without communication and said so. And today, she called me to tell me she can't afford to work with someone who needs to be paid on an agreed timeline. It was kind of my fault for having the unreasonable expectation of getting paid in a vaguely timely fashion.

Now I'm a grown-up and know there will be many business relationships that for all sorts of reasons come to an end. But what upset me about this wasn't the fact that Lymehound was being sacked (incidentally in open violation of a contract, initiated and signed by the client only weeks ago) but the absolute breaking of trust. "Trust men and they will be true to you," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Trust is so much more valuable than legal contracts. Trust is what makes you bust your gut for a client; over-deliver; introduce them to valuable business contacts without any payback or chance of payback. Trust has to do with a feeling that you understand the lay of the land and you are working to do something important together. Trust stops you billing for every hour, every train journey and expense. Trust makes the world go round. 

When  you can't pay a supplier, call him. Ideally call him before he calls you. Tell him how it is. Don't suggest it's unreasonable to expect payment or any other game you might play. Just level with him and keep close. You may think you can do without your suppliers - plenty out there clamouring for your business. But at some stage, maybe next month, maybe next year, you're going to need business relationships that are based on trust. If you've forgotten that, the R word may be the least of your worries.