Following a whirlwind first couple of weeks at NixonMcInnes, I thought it was about time to introduce myself. My name’s Louise Greeves and I’m NixonMcInnes’ new Helicopter Commander, which, luckily for my piloting skills, is actually code here for social media consultant.
Having somehow got through the company’s selection process – and believe me rigorous is not the word (I’m still having nightmares about one of the role play scenarios in the windowless meeting room), I’ve been relieved to discover that psychological turmoil was only part of the interview process. Democratic business is very much a mantra that the whole team at NixonMcInnes is committed to and, although I don’t get the coding jokes that have been flying around the meeting room table yet, everyone’s quickly made me feel at home. Read more…
Louise wrote this on 24.11.09 – 1 comment
It's filed in the NixonMcInnes box
Are you, or is someone you know our new Office Manager / Bookkeeper? We are looking for the right person to join our fun and lively team of social media experts…
Read more…
Ruth wrote this on 01.04.09 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Brighton, NixonMcInnes, Recruitment box
NixonMcInnes is proud to be sponsoring Brightwest; the Brighton variation of Twestival.
On 12 February 2009 more than 175 cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals; bringing together Twitter communities for an evening of tweeting, meeting, raising awareness and money for global causes. This year’s chosen charity is ‘charity: water’.
The Brighton event will be held at the Black Lion pub on Black Lion Street where the Brighton Twitterati will gather to meet, greet, drink, dance and be merry, play games and of course twitter until our hearts are content; festivities and fundraising begin at 19.30.
The idea of Twestivals was first devised in 2008 by a group of London Twitterers who got together and decided to organise an event for and by the local Twitter community. The event would allow them to meet up in the real world, have a few drinks and share some entertainment. Whilst they were at it, they cleverly decided to put their Twitter addictions to good use and do something worthwhile and used the event to fundraise for a local homeless charity.
Most of the event was organised by volunteers via Twitter and in a short, lightening space of time; under two weeks. Easy huh?
News spread and similar events started popping up, worldwide! Stories of local Twitter communities coming together, taking action and raising awareness for local and international charities were being reported. Twestival was born.
What’s the big idea? If cites can use their local events as a platform to support a wider united cause then together a greater impact can be achieved; demonstration of the power of the social web in action. Lovely – social media goodness.
How do I get involved? You can take part by:
• Attending one of the events detailed on the city sites listed on the Twestival home page
• Uploading or buying music at Twestival.fm
• Taking part in the t-shirt design competition
• Donating to charity: water
Follow the Brightwest Twitter stream and get your tickets now.
Follow the NixonMcInnes Twitter stream.
We look forward to seeing you on the 12th.
Ruth wrote this on 06.02.09 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Brighton, Events & conferences box
The short version:
We are inviting applications from consultants at senior and mid-weight levels to join our growing team of specialist social media practioners. We have one vacancy immediately, and possibly another soon. Please find out more here and apply.
The long version:
A while back I announced, in a blaze of glory*, our search for a PR Pirate – someone to come from the ‘traditional PR’ world and help our clients with their new digital communications strategies.
Unfortunately, no sooner had I launched the search than we won a couple of significant pieces of work which this new team member would’ve – in an ideal world – helped to deliver. Instead, Anna and I went into full-blown delivery mode, which meant that the hiring process went on ice. There was literally no time (OK, not literally).
Being upfront, there were also issues with the hiring process, which was no bed of roses**:
- the title I gave the role of Account Director didn’t meet the scope of the role, which my PR pals told me was more what you’d call a ‘Board Director’ – a naive mistake on my behalf
- the double-bubble challenge of finding someone this niche AND keen on living or already living in Brighton seemed to restrict the number of the most senior-level candidates
Something good has come out of all of this, though.
Having done the work ourselves so far, Anna and I have been able to evolve a much clearer of understanding of what the company does and DOESN’T need. My understanding of how we’re going to shape our teams in the future has evolved, and I’ve been refining these ideas with Jenni, Pete and Tom.
As a result we now have a clearer idea of our needs.
We were building here at NixonMcInnes is a hybrid consultancy offering clients a range of services focused not by the ‘what we do’ but by the ‘where we do it’.
The ‘what we do’ range of services now regularly spans Research, Strategy & Planning, Training, Digital PR and Design & Build. This range gets our clients from ‘don’t know a thing’ to ‘actively engaging’.
The ‘where we do it’ remains the same as we continue to grow and enhance our ability to help clients in the specialised and evolving sphere of social media.
So our needs are a little broader than when we kicked off the search before.
We would still love for a senior consultant from a PR background to be this next hire: that will be spiffing if it happens. But equally we are now more open-minded to the benefits that someone from a market research, online marketing, agency planning or other related discipline can bring. Because our clients need help in a range of areas.
So if you or someone you know is passionately online, and keen to participate in how the internet is changing the world we live in from an HQ here in Brighton, UK, please read the job description and get in touch.
Alternatively, if anything is unclear or you have some feedback, I’m almost all ears. Thank you.
(* and ** are Bon Jovi references. No idea why).
Will McInnes wrote this on 11.11.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Brighton, Recruitment, Social media, Strategy box
Notes:
- We’re looking for an excellent, nice, smart person to join the team!
- The backstory can be found here
- Everyone uses the terms ‘Consultant’ and ‘Social Media’ – in our case they both actually apply to the role and aren’t meaningless buzz words :)
Role:
Consultant
We are currently looking for mid-weight and senior-level consultants – packages will be negotiated based on skills and experience.
Purpose
The purpose of the role is to:
• Profitably deliver measurable business value to clients by consistently solving their problems and helping them learn.
• Nurture and grow our relationships with a small number of major brand clients.
• Develop a unique and profitable practice area in the company.
Brief overview of responsibilities
Understanding client needs: At all levels from market and business needs to specific project and personal needs.
Build relationships: Build a strong and trusting relationship with the key sponsor, the day-to-day clients and as many additional client contacts as possible.
Creating a practice: With the team’s support to begin with, create a personal practice of topic and/or sector expertise and package this knowledge into services that profitably meet both client needs and the company’s mission.
Deliver to clients: Profitably deliver the projects and engagements that give the clients the results they seek.
Managing people: Lead, influence and manage team members working on projects, when they may not directly report to you.
Providing intelligence: Keep the internal NM team informed of the client’s strategic and tactical direction.
Developing NixonMcInnes: Contribute to the broader development and growth of NM.
Passions and interests: A passion for the web and social media, commitment to our highly open, transparent and democratic company culture.
If you are interested in applying (or know of someone who may be!) please download the full job description which includes details on how to apply.
Thank you.
Will McInnes wrote this on – what do you think?
It's filed in the Brighton, NixonMcInnes, Recruitment box
For the uninitiated, Flash on the Beach is an annual three-day conference held in Brighton every year. It now has a sister conference in the warmer and sunnier Miami. The content is mostly, as the name suggests, Flash-based, but there’s a lot of stuff that can happily be applied to many other mediums. Here’s my round-up of the bits that stood out for me over the three days.
Chris Orwig:
The Art and Craft of Photographic Impact
Bearing in mind that I’m an avid camera-weilder, let’s kick it off with my first stand-out session… and not just because it’s a talk on photography at a Flash conference!
One point that stood out for me was Chris’ notion of photography being very much like poetry, “what the novelist says in 10,000 words the poet says in 10.” That a photographer takes an idea then reduces and simplifies it. A process that easily translates to many creative endeavours, including design and development. We can use always less to communicate an idea. Less is very often more, reminding me of this very famous quote by writer Antoine de Saint Exupery:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
He ended his session with a series of projects (they’re online so you can play along at home) as well as some book and lens recommendations.
Talking of lenses, he also touched on the perceived need to get more kit to make you a better photographer which is, of course, not true. Get out there and take photos, carry your camera around and shoot.
Erik Natzke:
Beyond the Knowledge: The Art of Play
Erik took us through his creative process of sketching out his ideas through to the finished product. His latest work involves using particles to create a brush which then draws colours from an underlying photograph to generate “paint”. Incredibly difficult to explain (Erik did it so much better!) but the results speak for themselves.
Aral Balkan:
Grab the Low-Hanging Fruit (or 5 Rules for Hedonistic Creatives)
Create. Share. Profit. Play.
Is that five? Er, anyway…
Create. Make something that works and worry about evolving it later. Don’t be scared about bashing something out and architecture… crappy code is better than no code and you can always change things later. Get it working, out there, and go from there.
Share. If you share your idea before you’ve started to create anything you create a responsibility to move on get it done.
Profit. Earn money doing what you love. If you aren’t doing what you love in your day job, make a little money on side-projects.
Most importantly… Play. There are no mistakes. Make and use happy tools… simple things that are practical, hackable and delightful.
There was one little app that Aral demonstrated that I thought was rather cool. Scratch is a MIT-developed drag and drop programming language. Basically a really intuitive way to help “young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.”
Jeremy Thorp:
Emergence
Jeremy demonstrated a couple of his recent personal projects he’d developed in Processing. Firstly, The Colour Economy:
“What if pixels were free? What if they could trade their computer-given red, green, and blue values in pursuit of a profit?
Here, we see a clear example of what I call ‘bridging behaviour’. Though individual traders are limited as to how far they can ’see’, colour groups often form ‘trade routes’ allowing them to trade over much longer distances. This is not specifically programmed behaviour, and indeed was somewhat surprising to see.”
Secondly, Plumage grabs photos from Flickr based on a keyword search and creates feathers with the colours within that photo.
Carla Diana:
Robots! The Interface Designer’s Holy Grail
I’ve always been fascinated by robots and other miscellany automata so was naturally curious about this session. Carla was the lead industrial designer on S.A.M., an emotionally expressive robot. S.A.M. is the product of Andrea Thomaz and the Georgia Institute of Technology and, sadly, I don’t seem to find anything further on it online.
What was fascinating were the ways she tried to redesign it so it no longer scared children(!), how they overcame it not having any legs and so on.
James Paterson:
Modulating a lot
Now, I’m going to have to be perfectly honest here; I didn’t actually attend James’ talk! While his name seemed incredibly familiar at the time it wasn’t until I checked out his stuff online that I realised he was the co-founder of the online (and later offline) magazine Half Empty with age-old online friend Marty Spellerberg.
Anyway, before I start to ramble on about my Internet adventures circa 1996, I’m really disappointed I missed it. He’s doing some really fun stuff nowadays! Including this (not quite as disgusting as it sounds) blackhead squeezing simulator.
And this, the Sonic Wire Sculpture, an illustrative sound engine developed by Amit Pitaru:
Well that just about rounds up the first part of this two-part retrospective extravaganza. Watch out for part two shortly!
Trevor May wrote this on 30.10.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Brighton, Design, Development, Events & conferences box
Josh Russell has done a fantastic job of importing Social Media Cafe to Brighton. I’ve never managed to get to one of the London events so it’s great to have one on our doorstep.
It’s a free and informal meet-up for anyone interested in social media to chew the fat with their peers. Even the coffee is free, which is supported by sponsors (naturally we volunteered to sponsor the first event.) If you’re thinking of coming along, add yourself to the wiki. See you there.
First event: Sat 16 August, 11:00AM – upstairs at The Quadrant pub (map)
Tom wrote this on 09.08.08 – 1 comment
It's filed in the Brighton, Events & conferences, Social media box
As a kind of precursor to the Develop games conference in Brighton in a couple of weeks time, The Guardian Gamesblog’s Aleks Krotoski and Keith Stuart are hosting a games-themed pub quiz at the Caroline of Brunswick, just down the road from here (and well within stumbling home distance too, which is always good).
I’m certain there are enough games geeks here to take on the already mighty (and slightly intimidating) list of attendees from Black Rock Interactive, Linden Lab, NCSoft, Zoe Mode, GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, Pocket Gamer and Future Publishing.
More details over at the Gamesblog.
Bring it!
Trevor May wrote this on 16.07.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Brighton, Gaming, Industry news, Virtual worlds box
Coworking most definitely fits into the ‘useful, important, enjoyable and therefore coming to a place near you’ basket, the same basket that contains unconferences, lightweight structures, wikis and wikification in general, democratic working practices and yes, Twitter ;)
What they share is a new remoulding and levelling of the world, a move towards collaboration over command and control, a shift towards warm, human and flexible over cold, automated and rigid: just a better way of doing things, where the fluidity and sharing that is enabled by the Internet and portable easy to use technology (mobile phones, mobile internet, laptops, stuff) are embraced and exploited to their full extent.
If you’re new to the coworking concept you can find learn more by reading this NYT article on coworking in general or indoctrinate yourself on the Coworking Wiki.
Coworking has real momentum, although many with a more historical bent would have no truck with this recent-schmecent rubbish: look at medieval guilds and the like, as Dan McQuillan suggests. Yet again Tara Hunt is at the heart of the recent digital rejuvination of this grassroots-style movement (hats off to she that makes good things happen).
Today I needed to be somewhere else: home would be too crazy; the office would be too interrupted. I had to make serious headway in developing some training materials and needed a productive working environment with low hassle high bandwidth wifi, light, space and Brighton & Hove coworking space The Werks came to mind.
I don’t know an awful lot about The Werks’ story but I do not that their Friday co-working – where all and sundry are welcome for a spot o’ co-working – has gained and gained and gained momentum over time, and that my regular Friday appointments with our business advisor and team lunches have kept me away, but at an interested and enthusiastic arm’s length.
When we recently used a Werks meeting space for a client workshop James mentioned that co-working is now anyday of the week (a good decision all round I reckon) meaning that those wanting a drop-in desk space (or sofa!) can pop in free of charge and get involved. Wickedly nice gift to the community, if ever there was one. So I took James up.
It werked wonderfully for me.
Although I have to confess I didn’t really cowork as work in a coworking space, given my deadline and the need to focus. But I did catch up with the very nice Richard Dallaway, local community pillar Rosie Sherry, the talented Josh and Dave and met for the first time Jim Callender who’s been a contact on Flickr and then Twitter <californian accent> for like ages </californian accent>(Wow, what geekery – marketing guy using pseudo HTML in blog posts, time to buy that farm in Patagonia methinks).
Next time I’ll go with less specific tasks to complete and more of a nosey, collaborative attitude. And I’ll seek to give as much as I can.
But even so, perhaps there’s the rub: though I was focused and working and productive and largely opting out via headphones (and not knowing most of the others on my bustling table of 7 or so other peeps) I still managed to chat to good people I rarely see and have the space to talk with. It was actually really nice.
I love what James and his gang of supporters have been able to achieve. And I can see how the momentum and success is going to grow. The Werks is a wonderful experiment that’s working: the metaphorical petri dish is bubbling with growth and energy, and I’m just delighted that we – the Brighton digital community – have such a wonderful asset to take from and give to.
Will McInnes wrote this on 27.05.08 – 1 comment
It's filed in the Brighton, NixonMcInnes 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
