As the self-appointed Christmas king of NixonMcInnes, I wanted to let you know what we’re doing over the festive break. As a team, we’re largely taking some well-earned holiday after what has been a brilliant year; moving offices, hiring several new team members and working with super clients. 2010 is going to be an even bigger year for us, and the industry as a whole as more and more people wake up to power of digital and the implications of living in a networked world. As an agency we’re keen to remain at the forefront of innovation, bringing cool stuff to our clients and keeping ourselves excited by never becoming complacent, and a proper mulled-wine fueled break will enable us to hit the ground running in January.
Read more…
Ross wrote this on 22.12.09 – 1 comment
It's filed in the Funny, NixonMcInnes, Off topic box
I realise this isn’t the usual topic we blog about on the NM site, but I had a wonderful experience doing some overseas work earlier in the year in Africa and I wanted to share my story with the world and I thought a blog would be a great way to do this.
Back in February I had the opportunity to spend 2 weeks at an orphanage in rural Ghana, West Africa.
Rather than tell a deep story about my trip, I thought I would highlight the main observations I made during the trip, documenting a little of what I was able to experience. I hope it provides an enjoyable read..
Travelling there
It took a 7 hour flight to get to Ghana, then a days travelling to get from Accra (the capital) up to Sekyere. A long old trip! From Accra we caught a coach to Kumasi, and from Kumasi had to catch a ‘tro tro’ to get to
the village. A ‘tro tro’ is essentially a ragged out old vehicle with too many people squeezed in, often with no doors and little of a windscreen, quite often with an individual hanging off the side. Quite a hair raising experience on those roads I tell you.
Location
I was staying at an orphanage based in Sekyere, a medium size farming village in Rural Ghana, about an hour or so’s drive from Kumasi, which is Ghana’s second largest city. The village consists of one main road (or dirt track) that
stretches the length of the village, with shacks, huts and the early stages of brick structures strewn out to the left and right of the main road. Running water and electricity are present for some, but are limited and the reliability varies.
The orphanage
The name of the orphanage is Revelelation’s Children’s Home. It is a small orphanage, run by a man, Nana, and his wife, Margaret. There are 15 children, half of them disabled and the orphanage is run very much as an extended family as opposed to an institute. What this essentially means is that all children at the orphanage have their names registered as children of Nana and Margaret and all are treated equal, as family. The orphanage is essentially a largish, old building, with 5 rooms: 4 bedrooms and one main living area. Bedrooms are sparse, with an old bed and a sheet per child, and the living area consists of an old wooden couch/chair and a coffee table.
Outside the orphanage the grounds are used to grow food such as casava or coco-yam and chickens run free until a
time comes that they are to be used (for celebrations, or sale). The toilet is outside the orphanage and up a little track and is essentially a toilet sitting over a deep hole in the ground. You do need to watch out for the bugs hitting your bum cheeks.
The villagers
Upon first arrival I was very nervous. Everyone looks (well, stares) at you and are very, very intrigued. After all, my friend and I where the only white people for miles around, certainly only in the village. Indeed, we had one little girl run away crying and it’s only after we found out it was because she had never seen a white man before.
The locals call you ‘Bruni’ which means ‘white person’ – and the children in particular like to sing ‘oh bruni, oh boobuni’ – which means white man amongst black man. They are very sweet and call out Bruni and jump around as soon as they spot you, even from a distance..
We had to meet the local village chief on arrival, who, even though he speaks English, had to have a translator present – it’s tradition apparently that he speaks in his local tongue when greeting visitors.
We also met the local police chief, which left some to be desired I have to say. A glass eyed, scarred man, working out of a shack and spending the most of day sitting on a bench. Not sure how quick to the mark he would be if there was a crisis, but he was friendly all the same.
After a few days, word had quickly spread that there was 2 bruni’s in the village, and before we knew it people left right and centre were telling us ‘I like you’ and wanting to shake our hands. Very endearing, though also somewhat nerve-racking when most of the time they have a bush knife in the other hand.
Local cuisine
The food is probably the strangest I have eaten anywhere. It’s quite a stodgy diet, usually of rice or yam (which is a kind of peanut mush ball) accompanied with ground plantain leaves mixed with a fiery chilli and lots of oil to dip it in. Plantain, cassava, coco yam and rice are typical daily food, most of which are farmed from the surrounding lands.
The food doesn’t stop there though. One evening, on a foggy night driving back from the medical centre through the bush we felt a thud beneath the car. Nana ran out of the car and came back a moment later with a huge grin on his face and a large animal in his hands. He had run over a huge bush rat which he exclaimed is a delicacy and is worth more than a live chicken locally. I then spent the rest of the evening watching Junior and Sarfu (the two older boys) skin and prepare this rat. The following day I had it in a hot stew – it was delicious!
The children
The children are, quite simply, adorable. They are a real mix of ages, from different backgrounds with different reasons for being at the orphanage. Some simply have parents that have passed away, other have a more worrying background of being cast out due to beliefs in witchcraft and other tribal beliefs. A shame.
One thing that was clear and apparent was the generosity, willingness to learn, and sheer playfulness of the children. They all want to go to school, they all want to learn and they all work – very, very hard. Outside of school, the older children cook and wash the clothes for the household as well as farming and tilling the grounds. They support each other as a family unit. The other obvious thing is that children are children – wherever in the world you are. They love to play, tease and have fun. I was gobsmacked at how happy these children are given the fact they don’t have an ounce of what children have here in the western world – a leaf could be taken out of their books when it comes to acceptance, humility and happiness.
The local schools and children’s approach to schooling
I spent a couple of days at the local school (we had to walk the children each day) and met the teachers. It’s amazing! The response you get saying good morning to a class of 60 children is quite impressive. They leave early for school, usually before 7.30 and are back for 3pm. The day is similar to ours, lessons, lunch, lessons, home. The main difference is the infrastructure they are taught in and the subjects. I have to say when helping some children with maths homework I was struggling myself.
The culture/religion/social observations
In my eyes, the culture was one of a very old, developing country, though on the brink of change. Ghana is a model country by African terms, with peaceful, democratic elections taking place and (recently) free schooling for all primary age children (the problem is access to it).
Late one night we heard lots of chanting and drums – this went on for hours and hours. We found out later it was a religious (Christian) ceremony. It’s an interesting combination of Christian beliefs and traditional African rituals.
Another thing I noticed as I travelled around, was the occasional white marquee being set up for what looked like a wedding. As the time passed I realised these are for post funeral gatherings. They celebrate the life of an individual with a huge party when a person passes away and go to great lengths to advertise the celebration party of a passing person.
Hygiene
Hygiene varies depending on where you are, the plot of land you are given by the chief (that is how homes are allocated) and what your approach as an individual is to personal hygiene. We saw some areas, particularly near the cities that were awful, and others not so bad. One huge problem they have is plastic. All water and packaging comes in either plastic bags or similar – these are sold roadside, and dropped after use. They are everywhere. I spent three whole days clearing up just the plastic bits from around the orphanage grounds – but it comes back so quickly. There is no rubbish collection.
Malaria
Malaria is rife in the area – we spoke to one missionary that said he had caught malaria 3 times in the past 2 months. One evening we noticed that one of the smaller children, Adjunem, was very quiet. He went to sleep very early (whereas normally you can’t keep him quiet) and I was concerned. We checked him, and he was very hot, and we couldn’t wake him. Unfortunately, Margaret and Nana weren’t aware of the severity purely because they aren’t educated enough to spot these problems. We told them something was wrong and insisted on taking him to the next village to get to the medical centre. Upon arrival, a very strict women took two looks at him, confirmed his symptoms and said ‘Malaria’.
A cocktail of 4 types of medicine and a suppository later and the boy was back on his feat saying our names – all in 10 minutes! That must have been some drug cocktail.
The nearest city – Kumasi
Kumasi is the nearest city to Sekyere, it takes an hour or two by tro tro to get to and is a completely different experience. Away from the tranquillity and bush knives of the country side there is a massively overcrowded and busy city. This really was a completely different world.
Kumasi is home to the largest market in West Africa and indeed it is like a labyrinth. Turn after turn of markets stalls, cooking foods, fabrics, rice, bartering and homelessness. Thank goodness we had Nana to guide us else we would have surely got lost. Earlier, we had agreed to purchase the children new school clothes and some much needed covers for the old sofa they had and this was main reason for coming to the city. We walked in and out of dusty alleys, eyes everywhere, past a bush rat outdoor kitchen with literally hundreds of these things being cooked until we came to an opening in a wall where a little fabric workshop was busy bustling away. It was here we selected and placed an order for the school uniforms and for seat covers from a sweet old tailor with purple lips. Within the week the tailor came to the orphanage with everything as requested for the children. Happy days.
What I took from the experience
Sure, a visit to a small orphanage in Ghana isn’t going to change the world, but it gave me an opportunity to experience first hand a lift style that has always fascinated me and provided me with an opportunity to make a small difference to a wonderful set of individuals that I now have ongoing contact with.
There is much, much more I could talk about, perhaps in another blog post. If you’d like to hear more, let me know.
I hope very much Ghana continues to develop as an emerging nation in Africa and I very much look forward to my next visit early next year.
I’m keen to hear of similar experiences others may have had – have you done any overseas volunteer work? How did you find it? Would you go back?
Thanks for reading.
Matt wrote this on 15.09.09 – 6 comments
It's filed in the Blogging, Democracy, Ethics, Interesting, NixonMcInnes, Off topic box
I have just found out I have won a place to stand on the forth plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley’s ‘living monument’ project One & Other. I will be on the plinth from 7-8pm on Sunday 2nd August.
For more detail of what this project is about this is an exerpt from the One & Other website:
This summer, sculptor Antony Gormley invites you to help create an astonishing living monument. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. If you’re selected, you can use your time on the plinth as you like. One & Other is open to anyone and everyone from any corner of the UK. As long as you’re 16 or over and are living or staying in the UK, you can apply to be part of this unforgettable artistic experiment.
And to see what Antony Gormley has to say about it check out his video here.
I feel very honoured and excited to be involved and want to make the most of the opportunity. Antony talks about the democrotisation of society and representing people in the UK today, and I would love whatever I do up there to reflect this.
So, I have had a couple of ideas about what I can do with the help of a few of my colleagues, and I would really like to do something which involves crowdsourcing and letting others input to what I do.
One idea is to ask people to twitter to me (create a hashtag for this project within the project) with tweets they would like me to hold up written on card while I’m on the plinth.
Another (which is my favourite so far, from the genius ideas machine that is Jenni Lloyd) is to get people to tweet me stuff they would like me to draw while I’m on the plinth. I could take a flip chart, some pens, and have a lot of fun in that hour. I could even mix it up with requests from the crowd (the real life one, in Trafalgar Square) and take in live tweet requests. I could fold up each finished giant drawing and send it out into the crowd in giant paper planes (so long as people don’t throw them back to me and knock me off!)
What do you think? Any other ideas? Really open to ideas and would like my time up there to be a collaborative peice made by all of us.
Anna wrote this on 02.07.09 – 6 comments
It's filed in the Democracy, NixonMcInnes, Off topic, Social media box
Here in the heart of the NM engine room, or the dev-den as we like to call it, we love to celebrate the most pointless of events, and this week sees the Unix timestamp (the number of seconds elapsed since midnight January 1st 1970) reach 1234567890!
This fantastic event will occur on Friday 13th 2009 at 23:31:30 UTC, it’s not a particularly significant time or date but it’s interesting and fun nonetheless. As we love to celebrate things like this we have knocked up a Ruby script that will update a Twitter account, letting you know exactly how far off this historic milestone we are, so you can celebrate with us!
Follow @utcwatch to get in on the action (or visit www.coolepochcountdown.com to watch the event unravel in real-time). Also check out Wikipedia if you’d like to know more about the Unix timestamp.
Thanks to Flickr user totalAldo for the image.
Edward wrote this on 12.02.09 – 6 comments
It's filed in the Development, Funny, Interesting, Internet, NixonMcInnes, Off topic, Strategy box
Last night, FlashBrighton hosted a Code-along session, the primary objective of which was to develop a genetics algorithm collaboratively. Edd and I were there, desperately trying to follow the proceedings in our languages of choice, C# and Java, respectively.
At the risk of massively over-generalizing, from my understanding of last night’s session, the general pattern of a genetic algorithm is thus:
- Create a random population
- Evaluate the ‘fitness’ of the members of the population
- Destroy the ‘least fit’ members of the population
- To make up the numbers, the sad loss of aforementioned weaklings is replaced with mutations of the ‘most fit’ members of the population
To whet our appetites, we were given a quick demo of SmartRockets, a clever population of rockets that, over time, learn how to hit a random target.
So, with the groundwork covered, it was time to crack open our respective IDEs and attempt to follow along. As GA newbies, we didn’t quite reach the lofty heights of the SmartRockets algorithm, but we did create a population of bit streams, whose goal was to eliminate all 0s in favour of 1s.
Here’s the ActionScript implementation and, for those that attended last night and are interested, my Java implementation of this algorithm is here (execute it using this Java class). And Edd’s C# implementation here.
Sadly, I had to leave before the end of the night, in the midst of everyone debating how to evaluate a population whose sole intent was to evolve into a certain colour (at least that was my understanding, had my head stuck in a cloud of 1s and 0s, so it was hard to tell!) — for anyone that was there, I’d love to see the end result of this discussion!
Steve wrote this on 20.05.08 – 3 comments
It's filed in the Brighton, Development, Interesting, Off topic box
‘War…[boom boom, bam bam, donk], what is it good for?’
Yeah brother. Well what about social media? [boom boom, dank dank, dom] Haaaaaa-bsolutely nuthin’...
(Or is it?)
This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. You see, I’m a bit crazy, a bit driven and I need to achieve. But I’ve been a bit like a rocket-jet without a steering wheel. I’ve achieved bits and pieces but at the highest and most important level, I’ve lacked PURPOSE.
Which has led me to question how I use my skills and especially those of the wonderful team we’ve assembled at Nixon McInnes. When such great people come together and gel, is it reasonable to allow them to work bloody hard in an interesting, fast-moving and fun area without occasionally stepping back and asking ‘are we really giving the world our very best here?’.
Isn’t that a responsibility I have to myself and my team, to check the reason why we’re doing what we do?
Another way to frame the same question is to look at our team, our skills, our knowledge and our passions and ask: what is social media *for*?
One thing social media can be harnessed for is improving how organisations conduct their marketing. This is our line of work, and we are building a good name and reputation for ourselves here. These days we tend to work with larger organisations and so our efforts can genuinely help our client’s consumers. So in a very very small way, we’re making a positive difference one project at a time.
But that’s not enough for me, and I don’t think it’s enough for our team.
I know you, dear reader, know this and don’t wish for me to patronise or come over all sandalwood and tie-dye (duuuuude), but this world that we live in has far greater problems than how to sell handbags. And so whilst as anyone who has worked with me knows I do have genuine passion for improving how big brands communicate with their consumers, I reckon I can recruit a whole new level of passion and energy for using social media to work on the world’s biggest and most real issues.
Here’s a few of the biggies off the top o’ me head in no particular order:
- Health
- Poverty
- Education
- The environment
- Politics & access to democracy
- Human rights
- Equality
You get the idea.
If it’s big, important, worthy and you (or I, more accurately) immediately pretend it isn’t there and wish it’d go away and stop interrupting your (my) thoughts about whether to buy the prawn or the roast beef sandwich, it’s probably on the list.
So this is pretty much where we’re up to, at the very start of this thinking and talking process as a team.
We’re absolutely not about to stop doing what we do, that’d a damn good plan B to tease us away from a Plan A that is currently fun and rewarding. But what we do is ever-evolving and adaptive and that is why we have survived and thrived over the years – and so we are about to start thinking about other things we can do in addition to our work harnessing social media for marketing. It’s another iteration of Project Nixon McInnes.
And please allow me to be very clear: this ain’t about Corporate Social Tickboxing either. This is about real differences made by harnessing our team’s unique blend of skills and experiences. And it’s not about not-for-profit necessarily. I guess the vision is of a blend of things: online communities, websites, applications & tools, channels, campaigns, resources, events (real world, even!) – whatever we feel can make a difference.
So here’s some questions for you, and I’d love to hear what you think.
- What do you personally think social media are for?
- Can social media be employed effectively to make even a tiny difference to these issues?
- What is it about social media that might help address these causes?
- Which projects or causes inspire, grip or otherwise distract you personally?
I look forward to the conversation now :)
Will McInnes wrote this on 08.02.08 – 12 comments
It's filed in the Business, Internet, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Off topic, Social media, Strategy box
The word ’social’ has several meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary. The social in ’social media’ most likely refers to meaning number three: “relating to or designed for activities in which people meet each other for pleasure.” The keyword there is ‘meet’. Like chimpanzees and ants, humans are social creatures (see meaning number four: “breeding or living in colonies or organised communities”), and our social bonds are cemented by face-to-face meetings. Read more…
admin wrote this on 10.01.08 – 69 comments
It's filed in the Interesting, Off topic, Social media box
