meish dot org: life, unfolding

On Friday I attended The Story, a London conference about stories and storytelling.

The stated proposition for the event laid it out as

a celebration of everything that is wonderful, inspiring and awesome about stories, in whatever medium possible. We’re hoping to have stories that are written, spoken, played, described, enacted, whispered, projected, orchestrated, performed, printed – whatever form stories come in, we hope to have them here.

The Story is not about theories of stories, or making money from stories, but about the sheer visceral pleasure of telling a story. Whether it is in a game, a movie, a book, or a pub, we’ve all heard or told or been part of stories that have made us gasp, cry or just laugh.

There have never been so many stories, never so many ways to tell them. The Story will be a celebration of just a small sample of them.

It was an interesting day which has already been well documented elsewhere, but after the event I found myself reflecting on the content and which bits I’d enjoyed and craved more of, and which less so.

Throughout the day, I was variously amused, intrigued, distracted, confused, impressed and challenged at points, but didn’t leave feeling overly inspired to create myself - or at least, no more than usual. It felt like a brilliant event showcasing brilliant creators, but with less emphasis on the audience - a room packed full of potential creators - and how they could also play, create, bring stories into existence, either from their imaginations or from life.

Without dwelling on particular contributors and their participation, I tried to think about the wider classifications of activity experienced throughout the day and how I found them, and how they fit together. As I see it, there are four potential story-related events which could have appeared under this banner:

The first is a forum for established, published authors to read their works aloud in public. This is most like “an audience with” and suffers from three potential problems. Namely: that things that work when written down don’t necessarily work so well read aloud; that authors reading their work aloud rarely add anything to the interpretation except their identity (in this situation, their fame tends to compensates for the diminished quality of a live performance of a written text); that the audience can usually read for themselves and don’t need to attend to do so. In this context, the story is subservient to the identity and presence of the author. You are in the presence of a creator. The audience is required to participate only through attention and appropriately-timed ripples of laughter. This kind of event is opaque.

The second is a platform for the telling of original stories. The identity of the storyteller isn’t as important as their ability to tell a good story, and this is only heightened by context-specific or unique stories: tales woven specifically or only for a particular time and audience. There’s a long-established tradition of doing this - think about Fray Cafes for example - and like open mic nights, they require the audience’s support and potential participation. The story is more important than the teller, and the audience tends to want something which doesn’t feel like a well-honed routine, because that makes it seem more like a rote performance and less like an act of engaged sharing. This kind of event is levelling.

The third is an event about the craft of telling stories - via multiple media - from storytellers themselves. In this sort of event, writers and creators share their thought processes, techniques and patterns of working out ideas, and secrets of their industry or approach, while exploring how and why they do what they do. This provides additional layers of context and insight into the stories themselves, as well as positioning the author or storyteller as a skilled and thoughtful creator. The audience is let in on secrets, and gains a great and inspiring understanding of how these artists tell their stories. This kind of event is inspiring.

The fourth is a more theoretical platform for discussion of stories (plural rather than specific), in which the speakers may not be practitioners of storytelling itself but come from related disciplines and fields such as academia, publishing, commissioning, adaptation and editing. They speak about the patterns and particular aspects of storytelling as it relates to wider contexts than the urge to share a particular story, and may reflect on topics such as the art of the cliffhanger, how narrative curves engage the reader, the seven basic movie plots and why the future of stories is games. The audience is challenged to make a mental leap to the semi-abstract, and in the process gains insight into the general activity. They take lots of notes. This kind of event is stimulating.

The Story was none of these events, specifically. It was a combination of several of them - some of the first, a few sessions of the third and one or two of the second with (purposefully) very little of the fourth.

Personally, I’m fascinated by the third and fourth, and would really enjoy a day of them combined with a more relaxed evening participatory cabaret of the second type described above. The first leaves me a little cold, I’m afraid - possibly because while I like hearing from authors, I mainly want to hear them talk about their work and their ideas and their approach and their stories, and less straight reading from the printed page.

I know Matt Locke, the creator of The Story, has already stated his intention to put another event on next year. I look forward to seeing how The Story develops - or, to put it in more appropriate terms, what the next chapter contains.

(sorry, couldn’t resist pun)

Just spotted (via James Wallis) this New York Times article - one of a series of seven about how people allow themselves to be fooled. This part cites the case of the infamous second world war forger Han Van Meegeren, who managed to fool Nazis, the art world and all sorts of other people with his clever forgeries of Vermeer works in the early part of last century.

The article references two books from last year about the forger and his story: Edward Dolnick’s The Forger’s Spell and Jonathan Lopez’s The Man Who Made Vermeers.

While I’m sure these are both excellent works, it would be remiss of me not to point out that an earlier biography also exists and is well worth a read (as reviewed in the Observer here) - I was Vermeer: the forger who swindled the Nazis by my good friend (and former colleague) Mr Frank Wynne.

Get it from:
Amazon UK (paperback)
Amazon UK (hardback)
Amazon US
Bloomsbury

I’ve just finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon for the second time.

Phew. Such a fantastic book.

And such a different book from what I remembered, from the first reading.

Thanks to having 9+ years of blog archives on this site (!) I can accurately pinpoint the first reading to December 2000 - I was up in the Hebrides with my family for Christmas and New Year and (true to form, at that time of year) there were loads of powercuts (winter storms) and not much else to do. So I just curled up on the sofa in front of the fire and ploughed through the book in a matter of days, stopping only to sleep and occasionally rummage for another candle to illuminate the pages. As a result, it read like a blockbuster movie - a long, exciting romp of characters and scenes and intermingled plots.

This time around, I didn’t have the luxury of an uninterrupted read. Instead, I had to tackle it a chapter or so at a time on my 80+ minute (each way) commute by bus and train every day. That meant that the experience of reading it was entirely different.

For a start, I didn’t remember great chunks of it, while other bits seemed very familiar. And it was harder to keep track of the various threads of the story (each chapter is focused on one of several characters, taking place across 60 years and many airmiles. I kept picking it up and having to remind myself. Oh yes, this guy was there, and he was just about to do thaaat. Gottit.

But there was something else, too - the fact that I’d read a chapter in the morning meant that all day at the back of my head, behind any other task I was performing, there were a few firing synapses devoted to dandling through the latest turn in the plot. What would happen next? Is this somehow related to that other part of the story? Then I’d read another chapter on the way home, and have another 12 hours of sleepy (and asleepy) consideration of the story.

Despite the fact that my first reading of Cryptonomicon was immersive, this second readthrough has felt infinitely more considered and enveloping. And possibly more enjoyable for it.

Yesterday, though, on my final day of reading it, with only a tiny handful of pages to read, I was sitting on the early morning tube with the book open, when a woman came and sat next to me, glanced over at the page I had open, tutted loudly and then moved elsewhere in the carriage.

It was only after a moment that I realised what she must have glimpsed as she glanced at this wonderful, well-written and intelligent book about cryptanalysis and war and hacking and espionage.

Please see the photo below and see if you can spot it.

I swear, that’s only about the third mention of same in the entire book.

It just goes to show: you can’t judge a book my its cover. Or sometimes, not even by its content.

If you haven’t read it: do.

In early January, two years ago, I wrote a blog post about reading habits and used books (and passing them on) which included an idea about how charities could set up book exchange schemes to rival the free newspapers which people end up reading on the tube because they’re bored and they haven’t got anything else handy.

It might be really interesting for a charity like Oxfam to set up a stall/shop for a limited period in few big stations - Paddington, Waterloo, Victoria, Manchester Piccadilly, Brighton, Watford, and so on - operating a sort of book exchange of commuter-friendly paperbacks only.

They’d have to offer to take old, read books off commuters. Let them browse for a new one and take it away for an (optional) donation of £1 or £2 - it would have to be low, but I think people would bear a cost like that. My guess is, you’d end up with multiple copies of The Book Everyone’s Reading On The Train This Month, which others would be happy to pick up for a small amount, and would probably return anyway. It would also be a good way of cycling through some of the back stock in the shops, too, and a way to get people involved who wouldn’t otherwise go into charity shops.

It works because people don’t really value commuter-type books, but they need to have one anyway, or be at the mercy of one of those free papers made by people who hate London. They might buy their own book, but chances are they’ll be happy to read pretty much anything. Even better if they don’t pay much more than a paper for it.

Anyway, two years on, with a longer commute, I now read more than ever on the tube (currently: Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, for the second time) and I still think this is a good idea - especially now, when people have less money to spend on fripperies like reading matter.

Which is why I’m excited to learn this morning that a not-for-profit organisation called Choose What You Read has been set up and will be handing out free books outside various London (only, for now) stations on May 5

Co-founder Alfie Boyd [...] began the scheme with friend Claire Wilson to give commuters an alternative to the “tonnes of free newspapers dished out and thrown away every day”.

(The books) don’t generally get thrown away by people, they just go back into circulation
Co-founder Alfie Boyd

All the books were donated to the scheme by the pair’s friends.

Once they have finished each commuter is encouraged to add their name to a list of readers inside its cover before returning it.

“They don’t generally get thrown away by people, they just go back into circulation,” said Mr Boyd.

Great idea! Even better if it carries on.

* D’you see what I did there?

The trouble with wildfire is, well, it spreads. Quickly. And uncontrollably. With dangerous consequences.

On the day I arrived in Australia earlier this year, the country was reeling from the loss of whole communities in the state of Victoria which had been decimated by raging bushfires which, kindled by a gruelling midsummer heatwave (which hit 46°C), had swept through townships on the outskirts of Melbourne leaving nothing but the blackened ribs of buildings and cars smouldering in their path.

Scores of people died, along with several million native animals.

As someone from a (thankfully) bushfire-free country, it’s all-too-easy to read about situations like this and wonder why people don’t just run away - until you realise a crucial fact: wildfire runs quicker than you.

In forests and dense undergrowth, the frontline can advance at a rapid walking pace (10-20km/hr) but across open farmland and urged on by a following wind, in some cases it can advance at 80-100km/hour - that’s the length of a football field in a matter of seconds. Twisty turny country roads and raining embers slow down those trying to escape, if they managed to even reach their cars at all.

Hitting temperatures of up to 1000°C, the radiant heat from the racing wall of fire destroys everything before the flames even get close.

The best advice for those who choose to stay and defend their property, is to put out spot fires as long as possible, then find somewhere safe that won’t burn - usually inside a building, and wait until the front passes over - less than ten minutes, in many cases. But that will likely be the longest ten minutes of your life.

So even though they can be survivable, wildfires are dangerous and the fact that they spread so, quickly, virulently and unpredictably makes them worthy of suspicion and careful regard.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the internet.

This weekend, something happened to the Amazon sales rank infrastructure which meant that lots of (fiction & non fiction) books which it had classified as adult, erotic or about sexuality suddenly had their sales rankings zapped.

Cue mass public suspicious blamestorming, name-calling and moral outrage, fuelled in no small part by Twitter.

Some of the kvetching was justified: certain books were harder (but not impossible) to find - which must be frustrating if you’re an author trying to sell books in those categories - plus the changes seemed to be applied inconsistently across the service (viz. a Playboy centrefold photo book retaining its sales rank, while Stephen Fry’s tender and gently rollicking (but not steamy in the slightest) autobiography lost its statistic. Weird.)

Some was not particularly justified, and just plain knee-jerk overreaction: “This is outright censorship!” people frothed. “Amazon have a homophobic policy!” “Let’s googlebomb them,” cried others, “I can’t wait to see them squirm!” “Boycott them!” “Book nazis!” “Why is Amazon removing the sales rankings from gay. lesbian books?”

That’s a big leap - making an assumption that it was a deliberate and malicious attempt to suppress a particular kind of literary work, or to discriminate against particular authors. And we all know what happens when you assume things.

It’s worth remembering Hanlon’s razor here:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

(as mentioned by at least one Twitter user)

Now, it’s still not completely clear what happened, or why - and doubtless there’ll be repercussive rumbling and grumbling about this online for some time to come, until the full story is revealed - if it ever is.

(Though whether it should be Amazon’s responsibility to submit to public interrogation of their software release practices and allow a public hue and cry to take place is another question entirely - but let’s gloss over that for now.)

But for now, it seems to be a cock-up (no pun intended) which has been/is being rectified.

Anyone who’s ever worked in big complex technology organisations knows that stuff like this happens, and that 99.9% of the time, it’s because someone didn’t test something, or didn’t think that X schema would affect Y, or one bit of the business (the bit that handles the doohickeys) failed to consult another bit (the bit that slams the whammer) which meant some small, key issue was overlooked.

That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, obviously, but it does mean that - as Occam and common sense instruct - the simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations.

Sometimes, stuff fucks up.
Usually, no-one outside of technology knows about it.
Mostly, it gets fixed.

But as explanations go, it’s not as sexy or controversial or worth spreading as an explanation which includes the board of Amazon in a photo line-up for next year’s annual report, all wearing neon comic sans “We hate teh gayz” badges, though, is it?
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I have to walk past this bookshop to get to The Guardian’s new offices in Kings Cross, and every day I find myself wondering whether they stock special books for and about the scourges of the seas. As well as yer actual books like Red Rackham’s Treasure (from the Tintin series) and The Pirate’s Daughter, my suggested stocklist would include:

1. Where the Wild Things Arrrrrrr
2. Blackbeard Beauty
3. A Yarrrrr in Provence

Any more suggestions?

Challenged by m’colleague Neil to reveal what I’ve been consuming, media-wise this week, I am delighted to flash my digital hem, as it were, particularly because it affords me the parallel opportunity to apologise for being AWOL since before Christmas. I’ve been away, you see, and as a result, my media consumption for the past week has been a bit different in many ways to what I might otherwise have consumed.

What I read
Despite not being in the office (or perhaps because of it), I’ve enjoyed reading the paper: The Guardian, of course and particularly enjoyed the NYE quiz special edition of G2 - I got further with King Williams College Quiz than in previous years (i.e. managed to answer a whole 23 questions), and the general quiz of the year kept me guessing for at least a few pots of tea. But since I’ve been up in Scotland for a few days, I’ve also been reading The Oban Times (which is handy for broader local news as well as the cult-reading that is D Morisson’s weekly roundup of Scalpay news) as well as Round And About Mull, the monthly island paper, for local perspective (i.e. in order to understand the contexts of what many local conversations are about).

In addition, I flicked through the Birmingham Airport free magazine (called Destinations, I think) and had a saunter through both The Herald and The Daily Record in the BA lounge this afternoon, though I don’t think we can really count that as reading. Oh, and I read an article about the Isle of Mull Weavers at Ardalanish, which featured in Country Life of all things, which my mum had borrowed from a friend. I swear I didn’t read anything else in there, though.

I also dipped into Utopian Dreams by Tobias Jones, which I’d heard snatches of when serialised on Radio 4, but found a copy of at my mum’s house. But managed not to touch the book I took up with me for holiday reading (A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon) until the train/plane today, because I was so busy. Busy relaxing, of course…

What I watched
Not a right lot. This is basically because my mum doesn’t have a television. However, in the few days I was in Shropshire at the end of last week, I saw The History Boys on the BBC, and the news. On DVD, I watched a couple of episodes of Coast 2 with my mum (showing her how to watch DVDs on new laptop) and after dinner with some friends on the Ross of Mull, An Inconvenient Truth, which I’d somehow managed to miss. And on New Year’s Day, when particularly hungover, I took the laptop back to bed and watched Dara O’Briain’s live solo standup gig via the streaming version of iPlayer. And let me tell you, for that alone, I *heart* the BBC.

I singularly failed to watch either of the DVDs I carried around with me because they’d just arrived from Lovefilm before I set off on my travels - The Magicians and The Lives of Others. Maybe this weekend - could make for a slightly random double bill…

What I listened to
Being in a rather (how can I put this politely?) radio-wave-light area, radio didn’t feature too hugely in my daily audio diet, but I did manage to receive Radio 4 (sort of) when driving across the island yesterday, and used the BBC’s Listen Again to catch up on news from R4.

Musically-speaking, I listened (with my dad) to some Peter Skellern, a lot of Bach, some Ella Fitzgerald and a bunch of 1950s Trinidadian London Calypso and (with my mum) to Julie Fowlis’ excellent Cuilidh album, plus Kate Rusby’s Awkward Annie, among others. On my ipod, I continued to plough my way through the This American Life archives (from about 1999), mainly. I didn’t listen to much music via ipod, really, which is odd for me.

What I surfed
Given that I’ve been away, a lot of my normal surfing patterns were disrupted, and so any surfing fell into two distinct classes: Maintenance (which included Gmail, Twitter, Netvibes and Flickr) and Random Weird Shit (which included ebay searching for sonic mouse deterrents for a friend of mum’s, Nestoria property porn and the official rules of shinty). When I could (and it wasn’t often) I used my phone to keep up with twitter and gmail. I used the web to create, though - both within flickr and for the local community on Mull following the annual Hogmanay Shinty on the beach shenanigans.

….and finally, though this wasn’t in the original meme: What I played
I can’t let an opportunity go by without mentioning Peggle (and specifically, Peggle for iPod) which kept my thumbs occupied for much of the journeying. I also played a lot of cards: Shithead, mostly.

I know I’m supposed to tag someone with this meme, though I don’t want anyone to feel under pressure, especially this early in the year. So, um, feel free to share what you’ve been consuming (if you want), Caroline, Tom, Gordon, Cliff and Wendy. Or don’t. It’s all gravy.

I’m a big admirer of Douglas Coupland’s work. I’ve read all his books, and am especially fond of Girlfriend in a Coma and Hey Nostradamus.

So a couple of months ago, I went into a biggish branch of a high street book retailer to pick up a copy of GiaC to give to someone, because I’d been raving about it over lunch a few days before. I rifled through the various titles on the shelf, disappointed that they didn’t have the one I wanted in stock, when my fingers alighted on…something unexpected.

The Gum Thief is Coupland’s keenly-awaited and newest novel, due to be published in at the beginning of October. And yet there it was, on a shelf in a shop, in the middle of July.

I looked closer. It was bound in unfinished thick paper, and the back cover carried details of how it was planned to be marketed, and likely sizes and prices. At the bottom of the front cover was a small legend - UNCORRECTED PROOF: NOT FOR SALE. Yet there it was, on a shelf in a bookshop.

Which was rather odd.

So I took it up to the cash desk, queued, and then when it was my turn said to the assistant, “Look, I know this is a weird thing to ask, but this book….it shouldn’t be here, but it is. Can I buy it?”

He took hold of the book, examined it, and then said, “Hmm. How did that get there? How weird!”

He had a think.

“Well, I can’t sell it to you. It’s not for sale. And it’s not out yet, so it’s not in our system, so….well, there’s nothing to stop you, um, just walking out with it.”

I peered at him. “You mean to say, I could stick this book in my bag and leave, and I wouldn’t get into trouble?”

“Yes,” he said, “it can’t be stealing. It doesn’t exist, and besides, it isn’t on sale. So no, you wouldn’t be shoplifting.”

This was clearly too good an opportunity for a Coupland fan to pass up.

“Right then,” I said, still slightly unsure about the whole thing, “….er, thanks very much.”

I picked it up, and walked out of the shop, still expecting to feel a heavy hand on my shoulder as I passed through the door, but it never came.

And that’s how I came to have a super-early copy of The Gum Thief in my sticky little hands, which I sneakily read during the summer. I’m on my second read through now, and let me tell you: it’s good.

Go out and buy it. I just might, too.

I’ve just come back from seeing the latest HP outing, in which Harry and chums do, y’know, wizardy things in the face of evil. This is the fifth in the series (the ‘difficult’ fifth Harry Potter tome is apparently much like most recording artists’ ‘difficult’ second album) and I don’t think I’ll be spoiling it for anyone if I tell you that the fact that there are two more books after this one both of which contain his name means that Harry scrapes through this one ok.

This was the book I didn;t read - or rather, this was the one that I bought, tried, and eventually hurled at the wall in dismay after several chapters - which took a sizable chunk out of the plaster, unfortunately, though that’ll give you some indication of its main problem - with a cry of “For feck’s sake, won’t someone get this woman an EDITOR!”

See, I’d read the first few books, though not when they’d first come out. I’m a bit anti-hype when it comes to media consumption, which means that the more people are shrieking about how everyone simply MUST read X or see Y, the less likely I am to do it. I’m contrary like that.

So thanks to having been blogging for yonks, I am able to note that in the middle of 2000, I still hadn’t read any Harry Potter, and in fact was steadfastly holding out on doing so, thanks to this contrary streak.

In this post, I predicted

what will probably happen is this: I’ll hold out on reading them for another year or so, until the fuss has died down, and then I’ll read them surreptitiously, and probably bore everyone to death on how much I enjoyed them, waaay after the fact is pertinent. I did it with Trainspotting. I did it with Memoirs of a Geisha. I did it with Letter to Daniel. I’m doing it with Cryptonomicon. I think I can manage it with a twelve year old wizard, don’t you?

Though that’s not quite the way it happened, because for one thing, the fuss didn’t die down in a couple of years, and for another, I suddenly found a pressing reason to read them, unrelated to having something to consume on the tube.

About 6 years ago, I was running a commercial publishing department within a big media company, which meant that my team dreamt up, designed, developed and delivered bespoke editorial projects for commercial partners. Essentially, whenever an advertiser or agency was talking to the general ad-sales team and said they wanted something “a bit different” - and remember, back then, that “a bit different” was anything that wasn’t a flashing gif banner, or a straightforward sponsorship - my phone rang. Drywipe markers were my wands, and with them I’d convene brainstorming sessions with people from all over the company, sketching possibilities on on the whiteboard until we came up with something magic.

Anyway, one Friday afternoon in August 2001, I got a phone call to say that we’d been asked to pitch for a particular piece of work with a major global brand, who were launching a promotion with a Potter theme, and wanted us to come in and talk ideas with them first thing Tuesday morning.

Around me, the team started buzzing excitedly, reaching into a vocabulary which I had no familiarity with, chuntering away about sorting hats and muggle this, dumble that. When someone said we could create a virtual Hogwarts, I thought “hog-whu?” and said we should take the weekend to think and come in with ideas on Monday.

On the way home that evening, I eschewed the lure of my friends and the pub, and went instead to Books Etc, where I bought the box set of the first three books and the fourth for good measure.

And then I sat down and read them.
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When The Office appeared on our screens a few years ago, I barely watched it. This is because despite there being some very perceptive - and no doubt funny - writing, Ricky Gervais makes me want to grind my teeth into sand but also, and probably more significantly it was, in some ways, too close for comfort.

The thing is, anyone having worked in an office environment, whether large or small, can identify with and recognise the reality in many of the situations it depicts - team bonding training days, bosses who want to be liked and feared at the same time. Petty workplace resentments and squabbling. It’s uncomfortable. It’s cringesome. And I haven’t been able to watch it because of that.

In a similar vein, on the recommendation of a friend and colleague, I’ve recently been reading Martin Lukes’ book, Who Moved My Blackberry, which is based on his popular and long-running Financial Times column.

Although documenting the ins and outs of someone in a much more important position in a much larger organisation than David Brent at Wernham Hogg in Slough, it is, in places, so uncannily accurate a representation of experiences I have had or heard about from friends in other companies, that I have occasionally found myself having to check the name of his company on the back of the book to confirm that no, he’s not writing about any company I know or have experienced.

In addition, so much of it - dealing with life coaches, innovation agencies, organisational consultants and global teams - is so close to the bone that it makes me have to close the book, put it down on my lap, and take a few deep breaths while looking out of the window of the bus for a bit, just to stop my blood pressure from rising.

I think it’s the buzz-words and management consulting guff that rankles me more than anything: the deliberate obfuscation of meaning and sense by burying information under piles of nonsense, wreathing knowledge and data in pointless complexity and turning everything into a powerpointable diagram or analytical framework.

Speaking of which, I’ve collected a few of bits of consultant-garbled data-free knowledge voids over the years, via contacts in many industries around the world. I thought that the “relationship jigsaw” was fairly out there, but this is my favourite (actual data removed, for obvious reasons):

Just the sort of thing that would come out of Mr Lukes’ department, I’m sure.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that frameworks for analysis can be very useful, and as a visual thinker, I’m drawn towards explaining concepts via pens and whiteboards, as well as words. But there comes a point when the message gets lost - buried, even - under the medium.

If you are a consultant in the business of providing information, then make the provision of information the primary focus of your output, rather than demonstrating how clever you can be at dressing datapoints up so that it looks like Cheops which means you can call it “The Pyramid of Pricing” or whatever. Pur-leeese.

In some industries, the more you dress information and insight up, wrap it in frameworks and and polish it to present via powerpoint, the more valuable it is. Surely the opposite should be true? The more clear, useful and actionable information and insight is, the more it can be understood and acted upon. If time is money, then surely hours spent on templates and getting curvy lines for a speech-bubble to come from the month of a clip-art character extolling the virtues of X initiative is a criminal waste, compared to the same time being spent on actually implementing the initative?

I’m a big fan of clear communication, which includes plain english, absolutely, but also includes common sense and clarity when communicating any message: Is it clear? Is it appropriate? Do people know what you expect them to do with this information, or how they should respond?

Same with data presentations: is it clear? Does it contain an appropriate level of detail (with access to more, if required)? Does the recepient know what the point of you presenting this information is?

This latter bit is what I like to call the “so what?” Whether I’m creating a presentation or an email or an announcement, I try to think about the “so what?” factor, to make sure that there’s value there for the audience. Otherwise…well, so what?