Over the last couple of weeks I've come across two organisations who are aiming to get more use out of the things we own. Streetbank was set up to bring neighbours together - to foster community and generosity by encouraging people to share their things, skills and time. Trying to combat the trend towards owning more and using it less (Streetbank say that the annual average usage for a household drill is a mere 14 minutes), Streetbank encourages people to post items they would be happy to share with their neighbours from books and DVDs, to electrical equipment and even skills and services. A common trade is language teaching in return for cleaning. I've always had an aversion to throwing things away, so when on signing up I was given an option of something to rent, a skill or an item to donate, I immediately opted for giving away an overly fluffy wool dress that was waiting for me to take it to a charity shop. I wasn't sure if I'd get a response, but sure enough a message appeared in my inbox 3 days later from a local lady offering to pick it up. A few emails later and the dress had a new home and I had a heart-warming new message "Thank you so much Zoe, the dress is really beautiful.". At the other end of the market from my simple wool dress, Anna Bance's Girl Meets Dress has all of the designer offerings you could wish for. Cited as "The answer to your prayers" by Vogue and "Rental's answer to Net-a-Porter" by the Sunday Times, Girl Meets Dress has both found a way to increase utilisation of those wear-once-in-a-lifetime pieces and to make them more affordable.
Anna thinks that the rental model is win-win for consumers and designers, “The ability to wear several different outfits is a definite crowd pleaser. Imagine it: you can wear a bright yellow cocktail dress to dinner tonight and a full-length ball gown for tomorrow night's party. Different crowd, different place, different you. Around 98 per cent of our customers try a new brand they have never worn before in their lives – that is a huge marketing opportunity for designers trying to reach new customers, and the next generation, on a mass scale.” So if you've got a party to go to, get more chic than usual at girlmeetsdress.com, and if you've got some shelves that need putting up and no drill, head over to www.streetbank.com.
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I have to admit that I am completely addicted to my smartphone. When I find it getting close to running out of battery, I start to get a little frantic. Because I use it so much, I can often think of situations that would be better served with an app on my phone - so imagine my joy when I was presented with a life changing app that I hadn't even considered!
Meeting some friends in The Plough on London's Museum Street I found that the triangular cardboard advert had some more exciting news that usual. The Plough were piloting a new app called Orderly, which allows you to choose your drinks from the comfort of your seat and avoid the crush at the bar. The app is a web app, so you don't need to download anything before you order, and the free wifi in the pub means that it works however strong your signal. Reception amongst my friends was mixed, with some finding it exciting and some prefering to walk to the bar. Orderly is only on limited release trial at the moment, but Know, who are the digital agency behind it, plan to expand the system in 2013. I see a lot of technological innovations, but this is one of those that I think will be commonplace within a few years. I'm now back from visiting Ghana with Ashanti Development and what a truly inspirational visit it was. If you didn't read my last post, you can see here for an explanation of why I was in Ghana and a description of what Ashanti Development do. Although we stayed in the main volunteer centre in Gyetiase (which was very comfortable all things considered), we were able to visit neighbouring villages that are taking part in the adopt a village scheme. This scheme allows an organisation or individual to sponsor a a village to buy latrines, clean water and whatever else is needed for that village, perhaps microcredit or health facilities. We went both to villages that had not yet been sponsored, and were being surveyed to see what was needed, and to villages that had already been helped. There was a huge difference. The villages that were new to Ashanti Development were in a state of disrepair, people were poorly clothed and there was a general air of despondency. In Abutia village, their water supply dries up in the summer, meaning that they have to drink water from the main river in which, amongst other things, people wash their motorbikes. I hope they get sponsored. In the villages who already have a donor, life is very different. In Old Damaang, one of the first villages to be adopted, the village is regenerating with new building as people who had previously left are returning. One lady told us that Ashanti Development had changed her life: now that latrines and clean water have been installed, her children no longer get sick (when previously they had been sick all the time) and microcredit has meant that she could start a business to support her family. My husband and I went out to Gyetiase to try and help with whatever we could. When you go out, it takes a while to get your bearings. One of the first things that you realise is that although it's easy to say what needs doing in general: water, sanitation, health, education, technology, it's not so easy to see the actual concrete steps that you can take to get there. In development the skill is absolutely in the detailed on the ground management - there is very little that you can achieve by theorising. After a day acclimatising, we found a couple of useful jobs to take on. Firstly we took the children for extra reading lessons before school started. English teaching is taken very seriously in Ghana and when children reach the Junior High School all school lessons are taught in English. However most children have been taught to read by reciting aloud, and as a result there is sometimes a disappointing lack of comprehension even for children who seem to be able to read very well. Secondly we helped out with computer (ICT) classes. Ashanti Development have just installed a new computer centre in Gyetiase. This was much needed as prior to this the compulsory ICT lessons were taught on a blackboard, with children simply reciting the steps that they would take on a real computer! Despite the new centre, there aren't enough computers for one each so it's really useful to have extra teaching assistants to go round and help each group to achieve the task that the teacher has set.
We saw some amazing things in Ghana. The all day church services with singing and dancing that you can pop in and out of as you please were a particular highlight. But most of all I learnt a lot about how to start if you want to help make a difference - either dedicate a substatial amount of time (maybe a year or so) to go out, learn about the local conditions and try to help, or find a charity that is achieving what you want and give your money directly to that charity. Having seen Ashanti Development in action, I'm proud to count myself amongst their supporters. If I count, I've been volunteering with Ghanaian charity Ashanti Development for 4 years. I've organised sponsored walks, helped to promote their amazing annual Gala Ballet and taken minutes in Trustees and Doctors meetings. But I've never yet been to Gyetiase, the village in the remote Ashanti region that the charity was set up to help. Ashanti Development was started when Ghanaian Martha Boadu moved to London to work and save money to install piped water into her home village of Gyetiase to prevent the local women having to walk for 4 hours/day to get collect water.
After getting a quote that was much higher than she had thought possible, Martha and her neighbour Penny contacted Water Aid and solicited donations. Because they set up the organisation as volunteer-only and spent their initial grants exclusively in Ghana with no money spent on administration or UK helper's salaries, one of the corporate donors extended their initial grant to an ongoing £10,000 annually. This meant that Ashanti Development could help the village in even more ways including water and sanitation, healthcare, education and income generating activities. And finally, after 4 years, I'm off to Ghana tomorrow. Unlike the UK doctors who regularly volunteer I don't have any special skills, so we've agreed that I'll probably be teaching English or computers or helping out with simple jobs like hammering up mosquito nets. I don't know what to expect. One thing that I'd really like to think about while I'm out there is how technology could be used to improve standard of living. This is a really difficult challenge when there is so little infrastructure - (unreliable) electricity has been brought to the village since Ashanti Development started in 2005 but high-speed internet is a long way off. I'd like to thank Softwire Technology for supporting me with charity matching holiday for this endeavor and for all their support of Ashanti Development in the past via matching money raised and choosing them as charity of the year. I met the lovely Miss Philbin at a Girl Geek Dinners event. Carrie-Anne Philbin is an ICT teacher who supports her students with extra activties and coursework online - making full use of modern technology. She's recently set up an initiative called Geek Gurl Diaries with which she aims to inspire women into technology jobs. She came along and interviewed the female developers at my company Softwire and we've had more female applicants as a result, with some citing the video as "inspirational". Carrie-Anne has been nominated for a Digital Heroes award for her work - if you like the sound of what she's doing, please take a moment to vote for her at http://www.talktalk.co.uk/digitalheroes/region.php?region=london.
Over 130 people registered for the first Tech Talkfest event, at the very swanky Shoreditch House. Attendees ranged from coders, through tech lawyers and startup founders to journalists and creatives. Unusually for a technology event, the attendee gender ratio was evenly balanced - with approaching 50% of the audience female. Speaker Nikhil Shah talked about the love at Mixcloud.com - for radio, legality and communities: "Making the service legal was a key cornerstone of Mixcloud". He expertly answered questions posed to him from the audience, including questions about how to set up a startup and what he had had to sacrifice personally. You can see a clip of the event on the latest episode of Tech Talkfest TV which will be released on 5th November 2012. Having Nikhil speak was something that I personally was really excited about as I use mixcloud.com for all of my technology, new music and arts radio shows. In a rather nice touch, if you search for "Tech Talkfest" on Google the 4th link is the first Tech Talkfest radio show, hosted on Mixcloud! Reponse to the event has been amazing - Jas Chana of Mobcast tweeted "met just the most loveliest and bright people. a rare combo!" and "Inspiring event" was amongst many other comments. One of the things that I found most heart warming was two students who had found the event through Eventbrite and were amazed to meet Nikhil. "I met nikhil shah one of the co founders of #mixcloud today at #techtalkfest"
The topic of the next Tech Talkfest will be "The future of TV". Liz Rice of new TV tech company Tank Top TV and Richard Kastelein, second screen and connected TV expert are confirmed to speak. Tickets are available on Eventbrite. A few weeks ago, I visited the very impressively named Academy for Chief Executives (yes, I did feel important).
Amongst many interesting things that I learned while I was at the academy, one of the things that most caught my attention was a 50 word Word Cloud by group leader and management expert Glenn Watkins (@glennwatkins), with which he introduced himself. Glenn believes that writing down 50 words can be a great way to help you think about yourself, or any challenge that you are facing. It can also be a great technique for writing an article - I shall use it on my next blog post! Inspired by Glenn, I decided to write my own word cloud. Often people can struggle to find enough words. In that case you can try thinking about what words your friends or partner might choose - would they be the same as yours? I had the opposite problem when thinking of words - my unedited list contains 97, nearly double the target. This is the unedited list. I like to think that I can now pick and choose a subset depending on what impression I want to give my target audience. My two main passions are technology and music, so I'm always on the lookout for ways to combine the two. The area of music that I most love is hunting down new artists and giving my support to those who I think have the talent and dedication to make a big impact on the music scene.
When you're starting out as a band, you have a daunting task ahead of you. You have a bootstrap problem. People need to listen to your music to know that it's great, but they also need to already know that it's great in order to pick you out from among the tens of thousands of other bands. Traditionally this is where a record label would step in. They have the capital to combine with your talent. They are prepared to invest hundreds of thousands - to recoup millions, of course - and catapult you to stardom on the way. For many bands without their own capital, which is, sadly, the usual state of affairs as those investing their time earning money have less time to spend on music, this has often been the only route to creating a high quality album. You have to spend the money making the album before you can sell it and recoup the costs. Well no longer! Tech startup Pledge Music (www.pledgemusic.com) allows you to sell your album _before_ you make it. You can put up a song or two, explain about the band and put a price on what the album would cost if you were to get enough support to be able to make it. You can set this limit yourself and when fans sign up to buy the album, they are only charged when the total money "pledged" reaches the limit that you set. One of the nice touches about Pledge Music is the fact that in addition to just selling a digital album, you can also configure a range of extra options for hardcore fans. For a lot of bands, it's these options, rather than the basic ticket price, that generate most of their revenue. Extras I've seen include a physical copy (CD or vinyl), your name in the liner notes, album themed t-shirts and jewellery and even private gigs in your own house! The poster boy for the Pledge process is Ginger Wildheart, most famously of 90s rock band the Wildhearts but with many other credits to his name. His first album 555% (named after the % of the Pledge target reached the day of release) was such a success that he has carried straight on with a further two pledge projects (currently live at http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/gingerwildheartmutation). Brit-pop Jackdaw 4 have just closed their campaign on a whopping 366% and I've personally pledged for Roberta di Francia, a beautiful singer-songwriter and favourite of my new music Shoreditch Radio show. If you're a band looking for a new audience, or a music-lover who wants to support the best in new music, get over to www.pledgemusic.com and put your money where your mouth is. I've been looking forward to two things for ages - finally making a technology TV show to combine my day job and my outside interests, and running a technology event where all the cool people in the tech industry can meet up. The first episode of Tech Talkfest TV launched on 4th September. I'm super excited about the cool guests that came to talk to me - Maggie Philbin (of Tomorrow's World fame) about her initiative to get young people (especially girls) interested in technology at the crucial age before they pick their GCSE's and Julian Matthews of Tiger Nation, who founded a tech heavy tiger conservation website, known in inner circles as "Facebook for Tigers". You can see episode 1 here - if you have any comments or feedback let me know! We should be starting on episode 2 shortly for an October release - you can also ping over any tech news or ideas. Or if you'd like to give me your feedback in person, why not come along to the first Tech Talkfest event, which will take place at the fabulous Shoreditch House on 22nd October. More details available on the website: http://www.techtalkfest.com/next-event.html.
I've recently signed up to Dalton Caldwell's new advert-free Twitter-equivalent, App.net. Launched in February 2012 with go live conditional on raising $500,000 (which is 10,000 users buying in at the yearly registration fee of $50 - met ahead of schedule) App.net is an online community with a difference. The latest user numbers are high tens of thousands and of these a significant proportion are app developers. Whereas Twitter and Facebook allowed applications to connect in only as an afterthought, App.net has been set up to be developer friendly from the start. This raises intriguing possibilities about where the network will go. "In the long run, App.net will become whatever apps developers build, and whatever apps members use", says Ben Friedland on the App.net blog.
But what has struck me most about joining App.net is the way that it strips the concept of a social network back to basics. Developers have already created applications that can scan your Twitter followers and the users that you follow to find out who is on App.net. Of the 400 or so people I'm connected to on Twitter only three were on App.net - Professor Brian Cox, who posted three times on his first login and disappeared back to Twitter, Stephen Fry and a fellow software developer from Softwire UK. Everyone starting on App.net is in the same position, which mean that just like when you start at university, it's easy to make new friends. Celebrities who are drowning in followers on Twitter welcome the change of pace. It must be a relief to be saved from the near non-stop spam and chatter from fans. "*Hides under the warm welcoming skirts of ADN after causing a DDoS-style server outage on a friend's site*" confides Stephen Fry, reveling in the lower follower numbers on App.net (2,300 vs 4.7m on Twitter). So will it succeed? The skeptics point out that people almost never pay for something that they can have for free, even if they claim that they would. Bitter articles about low cost flights from companies like Easyjet and Ryanair abound, yet these companies are driving higher cost, better service airlines out of business. App.net does have one advantage over rival free sites like Google+. Charging for a service gives it a higher value, at least psychologically. It's hard to imagine people who've paid $50 or $100 (for developer access) not giving the new network a good go before writing it off - I know I will be. The crunch time will come in about one year when people need to renew their subscriptions. If numbers aren't up substantially by then it may well signal another nail in the coffin for the advert-free model. |
Zoe Cunningham
Managing Director of Softwire, technology and backgammon presenter. Plus a little bit of new music radio. Archives
June 2014
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