David Emery Online

Remembrance

I will be away for the next two weeks – hopefully some of you will be still reading when I get back…

Modern Graffiti

As seen in Wandsworth, South London.

The Doctor is [ OUT ]

I’m in New York this week.

I may get a chance to post, but then again I may not.

I hope you all manage ok.

Maybe you should set up a support group or something.

Sneak

Look.

I’m very busy, all right?

Too busy to post properly.

Above is a sneak preview of the upcoming redesign of this site.

Enjoy.

Watch this space tomorrow for proper paragraphs.

Lull

Hmmm. Not too much going on at the moment.

tumbleweed rolls past

I’ve got a whole raft of things at work that are going to launch soon-ish, but nothing I can show you guys at the moment. The redesign of de-online is going nicely – it’ll be completely fluid (finally!), and have some natty tricks up it’s sleeve as well.

Since my post on YouTube I’ve seen two stories about potential competitors; from both AOL and also Yahoo. It doesn’t surprise me in the least – this area is only get more and more competitive, and someone at some point is going to find a decent business model to support it. Don’t forget, of course, that we’re talking about the future of TV here – online video distribution like YouTube is the future of broadcast, there’s no doubt about it.

Happy Birthday

Whoops.

My blog celebrated its 1 year anniversary on the 18th April.

And I didn’t even notice.

It’s been a fun year, and I’ve learnt a huge amount, and gained a huge amount from blogging.

Here’s to another year!

Where art thou?

Above is St Ives in Cornwall, England, which is roughly where I was over the last week.

Wasn’t quite as hot as it looks like it should be from that pic, though…

Disclosure

I’m sure you all read my post yesterday on Be Your Own Pet, and how great they are.

In the interests of full disclosure, I feel I must point out that I work for there record label. Which puts me at a tricky little conundrum. I was a big Be Your Own Pet fan before I started working for there label, and even if I wasn’t working there I would still have bought the album, still gone to the gig on Saturday and still recommended the album.

Which is why I didn’t put a disclaimer on the last post.

But the thing is, I know that the sales of the album have been slightly lacklustre, and I really want people to hear the album – so hence no disclaimer, as obviously it takes the shine off any recommendation.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who goes through small moral dilemmas like this when posting on their blog, and I’m really not sure the best course of action.

For you, the reader, I’m sure the choice is easy – the truth, please; disclaimer and all. We want to make our minds up on our own,...

Questions First

Ok, so my post yesterday did sound quite a lot like Mr Godin.

I admit it.

But I think we can all learn something from Seth, and it’s something very simple really. Something every child does, that most adults forget:

Ask questions.

About everything. Little ones. Big ones. “Why doesn’t it work that way?”. “Why not do it like this?”. That sort of thing.

The corollary to that is quite simple; once you’ve asked the question you then have to do one thing:

Think.

It’s amazing how many times people forget to think. Always a bit of a downfall, I find.

Biscuits

On Saturday this weekend I was out doing a bit of shopping and was faced with a choice between two different supermarkets; the first one is slightly cheaper and also very slightly larger, and is the one I normally go to. However, it almost always has very long queues on Saturday. The second one is a bit smaller, more expensive and has less choice.

To try and avoid the large queues of are normal store, we opted for the second one – hoping that the queues would be a bit shorter. When we got to the checkout we were, however, faced with similarly long queues. We will be going back to the second store next week, though.

The reason?

While we were waiting in the queue, a staff member went round and offered everyone a biscuit from a box of biscuits, and apologised personally for the wait.

The cost to them? In the region of £2.

It’s the small things that can really make a difference from a customer service point of view, and most of the time they don’t cost that much. The first store, in contrast, puts a bored sounding employee on the tanoy who apologises for the queues.

Does your business give out...