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If anyone works for Royal Mail and wouldn’t mind searching for my invite, I’d be ever so grateful. I know it must be there somewhere.

Happy Thursday. Enjoy the monumental day tomorrow.

Much love, M xox

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I know that you’ll be stuck with that song in your head for the rest of the day. You’re welcome. Truly.

Happy Thursday. Much love, M xox

Some 3 years ago, I had my blog designed by the wonderful Andrew Pepperell (now famous for the awesome Alfred app). Whilst I love the design, heck it’s served me well, I feel like I’ve grown a lot in that time and it’s time to update my blog to reflect that.

My Thursday videos are back with a vengence and I’ve no intention of losing them. However, I’ve been on a huge learning curve in that time – from growing communities to a Head of Marketing and now onto managing blogger relations.

I know that some of the more interesting posts that I read are those ‘warts and all’ posts from others admitting their mistakes and sharing their learnings and I’d hope to do the same. I’d also like to start to interview thought leaders from different industries all connected by their passion for the web and I need somewhere for that to live.

Therefore, I put out a tweet last week and was inundated by kind offers, for which I’m very grateful. Having been approached by Christina Fowler, I looked at some of her work and felt it suited my style well.

My brief was clear – I’ve grown up and I wanted my blog to grow up too. It needed to remain a level of fun and it needed to be approachable – the whole purpose for my blog is to encourage conversation, to engage and listen rather than just push content. And, so, there it is, it’s currently in the hands of the design gods, well Christina, and she’s working on wireframes as we speak. I’m excited to get back the initial mood boards, which will be shared with you here and I’m hoping to ask her to explain her design inspirations here too.

In the meanwhile, I’d love to hear of your favourite sites in terms of design. I think I have a design eye and love good typography (shame that I’m lacking the skill!), so any pretty sites you can point me in the direction of, would be awesome.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on other obvious giveaways… plus you know, comments make me smile.

Happy Thursday!

M xox

With higher expectations than ever before, let me first go to the Microsoft presentation done by Charlie Kendel, the head of their Developer Ecosystem. The presentation starts promptly with Loic questioning how many handsets have been sold using the Windows platform to date. Charlie dodges the question and refuses to share how many this number of how many they plan on selling over the next year. It appears that Microsoft are a very closed organisation and as Loic points out, as a developer developing for the Windows platform, it’s impossible to get information such as how many downloads your app receives.

Charlie says that the new platform that they’re launching is very much focussed on the customer segment as opposed to operators which is what previously has been the case. It appears that Microsoft now recognise that people manage both their business and personal lives on one handset.

The new Windows 7 phone being launched by Microsoft appears to be much more social, encouraging development from the cloud. The phone comes with Xbox Live is built in with high quality games, they want it to be known as the Xbox phone. To date, 3500 applications have been uploaded to the market place one month after launch with 1500 developers already registered.

From the presentation, it would appear that Microsoft have seen the error of their ways and are attempting to change their direction to keep themselves in the mobile market as a credible platform provider. What that means for the future of their platform is yet to be seen.

Apologies for being so slack at updating the blog of late, things have been crazy mental since going freelance and I’m more than aware that I’ve been neglectful. That’s all about to change, I promise – watch this space.

Now some of you may have seen that I’ve recently been working on pulling together some resources for designers. I recently created the World’s Biggest List of Design Resources…

Today I launched the World’s Biggest List of Influential Tweeters…

… and created this Twitter list to make your life just that little bit easier if you wanted to follow them.

If there’s anything else that you’d like to see that you’d find helpful, let me know and I’ll see what magic wands I can wave!

M xox

I’ve taken recent circumstances in my life to reassess my approach to my work. What’s the point in having a better title, more money if you’re not happy doing what you’re doing? For me, marketing, social media, blogging, copywriting, events, branding and product development are where I get my kicks. It’s what I’m good at and it’s what I love. If my morning starts with coffee, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb or Mashable, it’s going to be a good day.

I can work in my PJs?

For this reason, I’m happy to share with you that I’ve taken the leap into self-employment…. scary…. but it also means that I’m able to deliver the best possible work because I’m doing what I’m passionate about…. helping people and making the web a better place. I’m excited to have been contracted full-time by ProofHQ to head up their marketing function and I have to say, it’s awesome to be back in the web app industry and with design in particular.

For those of you who aren’t aware of ProofHQ – it’s an online collaboration tool that helps you markup, review and approve static, web and A/V files. It’s awesome to be working with a teenie tiny startup again, amongst guys that live and breath the web.

You can read what I have to say about design on their blog, which is edited daily! I’ve also created the world’s largest design resource list here which hopefully you might like too.

Personally

In my down time, I continue to work on a number of other small projects, including a little startup called ShoppingVouchers.co.uk which I’m honoured to be involved with. I consider myself to be very lucky to be in a position where I can pick and choose which projects to have involvement with, focusing only on those that I passionately believe in.

What for Randommel?

The random videos will continue, I know that they’ve been a bit sparse of late, but I promise that they’ll get better. I’m hoping to re-design Randommel to reflect my maturing experience. I’m keen to write more of my thoughts around marketing and the movement of the web and I think it deserves a new home to do that. If you have any requests as to what you’d like to see, please let me know.

Thanks

As always, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support. You guys make the web a rocking place and for that I’m eternally grateful.

M xox

with twitter being a huge part of my life, i can’t help but pay particular interest when i notice new features. i was therefore particularly interested when i just logged in to find a shiny new box….. locations!

now as far as i’m aware, this isn’t something that’s particularly new, depending on the client that you use – but this will be a visual display of your location. much like foursquare, you’ll have to manually choose whether or not to show your location and remember to turn on and off where appropriate.

i don’t think i’ll be using locations yet…. the thing missing for me is that if i wish to show my location, this is displayed to the whole of the interwebs and not just my friends as i can currently do on the likes of foursquare. i’d love to get your thoughts on the latest addition though!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read a number of articles on the culture of businesses and the role of the CEO as Chief Psychologist. I love the subject, I’ve read Delivering Happiness ten times over and still I can’t get enough of it. Given that it’s something which affects all companies, their staff and consumers – it’s still an area that is often done badly and worse still, over-engineered.

Who wants to be in my gang?

With the rise of the cool company, more offices than ever before are boasting shiny gadgets, games rooms and beer in the fridge to entice the very coolest kids to their working bunch. I’ve personally worked for a number of companies and don’t get me wrong it’s great. But it’s only great if it’s heart felt and genuine.

Building a business strategy around creating a cool culture is one that, in my opinion, will never succeed. Yes you can have your staff sitting comfortably in a lovely Aeron chair and the latest version of the iPhone in their mitts – but ultimately if it’s not in your core, not what you believe, not what you live and breath – it will never be sustainable.

Clock in. Clock out

To be seen as one of the cool web crowd, founders have stopped dropping vowels from their names and have taken to trying to create really cool working spaces with a “different vibe”. Whilst this is fabulous and beers will never be turned down, the shine starts to tarnish if the culture isn’t sewn through every part of the business. For example, enforcing a strict 9am-5pm regime to a non-customer facing role, when as part of your culture you’d be wanting them to focus on getting the job in hand done (often burning the midnight oil in the lead up to product releases) will start to cause a jar and the strain will begin to show.

Similarly, if you want to become a genuinely transparent company and to give your teams a voice – you can guide them, you can lead by example but you can’t control what they say. Ultimately, if you’re making the right hires for the culture of the business, you shouldn’t have to worry. Nobody is perfect, consumers want to know that there are humans behind the brand and sometimes that means them discovering your staff went for drinks on a school night – they probably do the same too.

Stop shouting, start doing

Not only are many companies now really good at creating their own ecosystems, they’re becoming bloody great at shouting about them. Self promotion has never been easier thanks to the likes of Twitter, Facebook and multiple video and photo sharing platforms.

Whilst this is amazing for communicating your culture and aiding recruitment, unless you really are living the life you’re selling, this can do more damage than good. Nothing worse than someone turning up to work at a weenie startup and being forced to create board packs and Powerpoint presentations (yuck!). Whilst you’ll get great people on board initially, they won’t become your advocates and essentially aren’t likely to stick around for as long as you’d like.

Company karma

Whilst you’re trying to stay cool, you’ll always be chasing for something outside of your control – after all “cool” changes and is very different in different people’s eyes. However, if you live by your “company karma” (I’ve just coined that phrase btw), this IS in your control and will be very hard to deviate from. Initially it will come from your core – the people that know what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going to achieve it – but in time, through hires that fit, you’ll have a solid base for your company and all of the decisions that you make.

Of course, some of these decisions may challenge the norm, some people may think that you’re crazy, some people will tell you that they’d do things differently – but you’ll be confident in your choices, knowing that they’re right for you and your teams, after all, it’s come from your heart.

The companies that I really respect are those entirely focussed on producing amazing products, not those trying to be cool. That’s not something you can manufacture.

I’d love to hear your views on what makes a company successful, what culture means to you and how you think it’s sustainable as businesses grow. Please use the comments below and I promise I’ll respond

One last thought

The cost of a Macbook Pro: £1,649.00.
The cost of a pool table: £1,950.00
The cost of an iPhone 4: £499.00
A sense of belonging and passion: Priceless.

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make me feel better and leave your confessions in the comments, let’s have a big confession session.

love to you all.

m xox