James Barbour

Goodbye.

2007-01-19T11:39:00Z

Well, this is it. My last day at Hill & Knowlton, and the last entry in this blog.

The blog thing's been fun, if a little short-lived; it's not even been six months. Thanks to those of you who've made it into a dialogue. I'll miss you all.

H&K's been fun, too. It's a been great place to work, testament to some of the people who work here. They got me a USB Missile Launcher for my leaving present - it rocks.

But now I'm off on the next adventure.

'bye.

Big Bother

2007-01-18T09:37:00Z

It's been nigh on impossible to escape the controversy centring around "Celebrity" Big Brother this week. For those of you on Mars, there's a useful synopsis here.

Let me lay my cards on the table. I find most "reality TV" fairly loathsome. I think there's something particularly distasteful about the sort of television which makes a spectacle out of other people's misery, incompetence or misfortune.

There's enough debate out there already on the current Big Brother spat, so I'm giong to try not to duplicate what's already being said. Is it racism or is it just fear-driven bigotry? I think Christian O'Connell summed it up quite well on the radio this morning when he pointed out that, by definition, the adoption of racism requires a certain level of intellect. In the case of Jade Goody, I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Over the course of this blog I've mentioned Carphone Warehouse and Charles Dunstone once or twice. CPW sponsors Big Brother. I think they should reconsider. Not because of any allegations of racism, not even because of the bigoted and really-quite-scarily-strange freaks and weirdos that Endemol seem intent on throwing together for the purposes of entertaining the masses.

Here's why.

Jade Goody, much like Chantelle Houghton, has secured her fifteen minutes of minor fame not through talent but simply by making a spectacle of herself on reality TV. Fair enough, but in the process she's secured role-model status among a generation of teenage girls desperate for their own fifteen minutes.

Danielle Lloyd, too, is an aspirational figure for the same generationl, having held (briefly) the crown of Miss United Kingdom. We'll leave her downfall out of this for now.

Jo from Steps - also a role model, in this case for the "tweens" - kids the same age (or a bit older) as my daughter.

So here we have three role models, each exhibiting the kind of deplorable behaviour of which they should be thoroughly embarassed. I just hope that the kids and teenagers who, hitherto, have idolised these people now realise they've been duped.

I gather that Act Against Bullying has dropped Jade Goody like a hot potato. In view of the above, CPW should do the same to Big Brother, and the sooner the better.

A footnote: Theo reckons we should boycott CPW. I'm not sure that will help - I'm not boycotting Guido or Bloggerheads either. (no, nothing else on them today).

Fight!

2007-01-16T11:10:00Z

My Google Reader is on fire this morning thanks to the flaming Tim Ireland has unleashed on Paul Staines. Bloggers everywhere, from proppa blogga Tom Watson to Stuart Bruce and, er, Stuart Bruce, are barely able to contain their excitement.

It reminds me of the Hugh Grant / Colin Firth fight scene in Bridget Jones, the one where James Callis is so excited he rushes to the nearest pub, bursts through the door and blurts out "FIGHT! A real fight!", to the bewilderment of the clientele.

Now. To my mind, some sort of anti-Guido movement is arguably long overdue. And I don't mean that in an anti-Guido way. I enjoy reading his blog, although I do think Guido / Paul needs to guard against a tendency towards smugness and pomposity - much as Tim Ireland's Bloggerheads can appear hyperbolic at times. I guess like anything that gains mass popularity, Guido was bound to gain its fair share of detractors.

Tim raises some very serious issues, both in terms of how Paul Staines exercises editorial control of his blog, and in terms of a potentially serious flaw in Blogger's handling of comments. I'd like to see responses from both Paul and Blogger.

In both cases, the response (if any) will directly affect how I view their product in future. As I've said before, it's important to read anonymous, or quasi-anonymous, blogs with the appropriate caveats in mind. Ditto the importance of uncensored comments.

Ideally I'd like to see measured responses without the fisticuffs. But that's about as likely as Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver sitting down to a civilised cup of tea.

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tags: Bloggerheads Guido Fawkes Paul Staines accountability blogging

Google hilarity

2007-01-16T09:30:00Z

To the person who ended up here after Googling the phrase "James Barbour naked", my apologies. I suspect you were looking for the other guy.

If you read one article today

2007-01-15T12:05:00Z

Make sure it's this one.

(apologies for the link being a couple of months old - found this morning via another Mojo blog article)

Five things

2007-01-12T11:48:00Z

Simon tagged me with the dreaded Five Things meme last month and like he says, it can't hurt to know a bit more about each other. I generally avoid chain emails and the like but since it's Friday, here are five (short) things you probably didn't know about me:

1 - I like Saabs. Very much. I bought the first one in 1999 to use as a wedding car, and we're now on our ninth. I also have a 1966 Porsche 912, but alas I haven't seen for a couple of years.

2 - I speak Xhosa.

3 - I wish I wasn't so good at fixing things. But I am, so there's no excuse for not getting the house fixed up.

4 - I'm scared of bananas. Really. My children find this hilarious.

5 - The fifth thing, sadly, I can't tell you just yet. But it's very exciting. You can read about it, I'm told, in next week's PRWeek.

And for my tags, over to Connie, Jeff, Phil and the Gecko3 guys. And Owen, who's already pooh-poohed the idea once.

Cross with Chrysler

2007-01-11T09:26:00Z

With all the excitement coming out of San Francisco and Las Vegas this week, it's easy to overlook the good ol' Dee-troit Motor Show.

It's been a relatively exciting affair, too. And from the level of publicity being generated by Chevrolet's planet-friendly Volt concept, an optimist could perhaps be forgiven for hoping that the Motor City, birthplace of the gas-guzzler, might be accepting the realities of the effect of fossil fuels on the environment.

Er, no. Just to shatter that hope, the BBC today quotes extensively from DaimlerChrysler's Chief Economist, Van Jolissaint, in the context a 'private breakfast' of industry peers yesterday morning. Mr Jolissaint, according to the Beeb, was pretty joli forthright in demonstrating his disdain for us "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and our "Chicken Little attitudes toward global warming".

Stern is bunk, he continued, based on dubious economics, with global warming but a far-off risk of uncertain magnitude.

Let's contrast Mr Jolissaint's remarks in Detroit with some of the language on the parent company's corporate website.

Taking centre-stage on the corporate front page is an announcement of DaimlerChrysler's new BLUETEC joint-venture diesel engine, which promises 'particularly clean, highly fuel-efficient passenger cars and SUVs with diesel engines'. So far so good.

Click through to the Sustainability page, and we're reassured that 'our vision is one of sustainable development – worldwide'. On the same page Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of DaimlerChrysler AG, tells us 'we are committed to protecting the environment and meeting social needs within our company and in society in general'. Excellent.

Dr Zetsche again, in DaimlerChrysler's latest Sustainability Report, goes further:

We believe climate protection is one of the greatest challenges automakers face today, and our goal is to continue to improve our vehicles and production processes in order to further reduce pollutant emissions.

Page 44 of the report trumpets sustainability partnerships with the UN, while page 56 outlines a vision for climate-friendly motoring involving a long-term strategy to develop viable fuel cell technology, backed up by cleaner and more efficient petrol engines in the short and medium term. All great stuff - I'm impressed.

But which DaimlerChrysler was Mr Jolissaint representing at yesterday's breakfast? the responsible corporate citizen as depicted in its own Sustainability Report, proudly working with the US government to develop hydrogen-powered vehicles? Or the head-in-the-sand, founder member or the Global Climate Coalition, slated by one US environmental think-tank as being "at the bottom of the heap when it comes to addressing greenhouse gas emissions", ?

Two great names may have merged, but I suspect the cohesion of both policy and attitude between Detroit and Stuttgart is perhaps rather less complete than we've been led to believe.

Disclaimer: The H&K London Public Affairs team works for Toyota, arguably the leader in hybrid automotive technology, although I don't personally work on the account. But I do care about climate change. Mr Jolissaint, you should too.

[EDIT 12.45 11/1] Just noticed (thanks, Statcounter) that someone from Chrysler Motor Corporation, Royal Oak, Michigan, read this at 12.27. Woot!

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tags: DaimlerChrysler climate change alternative fuels sustainability Detroit motor show

Wow.

2007-01-10T10:11:00Z

They've done it again.

We thought it was going to be good, but this is absolutely phenomenal. The '5 years ahead' tagline, far from being dangerously hyperbolic, looks about right. No wonder RIM and Palm each took a 7% dive yesteday. Please, please, please, look at the website, watch the keynote if you've time. I thought I was impressed with the i-mate K-JAM I had for a bit last year, but now it seems frightfully old hat.

So when can I buy one? Please?

Let's not forget the other exciting stuff from yesterday's Stevenote, though. I mean, John Mayer! When did you last see John Mayer on stage with Bill Gates?

Mayer aside, the new 802.11n Airport Extreme looks good. I hope it doesn't break like my Airport Express did, though.

And Apple TV looks pretty cool. But I'm not sure I need one as badly as I need an iPhone, - my current "media centre" project, based around an old (but upgraded) G4 tower still has a way to go.

Unsurprisingly there's been a small amount of blogosphere bleating that some of the other expected announcements - a Leopard ship date, iLife and iWork 07, new desktop hardware and so on - didn't materialise. But it makes sense - why compete (unsuccessfully) with the iPhone for media attention?

We'll see the rest soon enough, I reckon. And in the meantime, wasn't it nice of Microsoft to announce Office 2008 (for Mac) yesterday?

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Today is Macworld day.

2007-01-09T09:25:00Z

The public must never know ...

2007-01-08T13:37:00Z

Blogging will eat itself. Maybe.

2007-01-04T00:40:00Z

Year of the Blog, blah blah, You - Person of the Year 2006 yadda yadda User-Generated Content mumble mumble Blogging and Social Media mutter mutter Web2.0 blah technoratiyoutubeflikrdiggmyspacesecondlife zzzzzzzzzzzzzz ........

NME suggested, in the mid-1980s, that Pop would eat itself. That hype and hyperbole ultimately crowds out originality, the hype implodes, resulting in a mainstream music culture that simply recycles the best existing ideas. My friend Mitch Benn puts forward much the same hypothesis, arguing variously that modern chart music either steals its sounds from the 1980s, or simply that everything sounds like Coldplay now.

And the connection with blogging, social media, web2.0 and all the other buzzwords?

Simply that I'm wondering if, and perhaps when, the blogging bubble will burst - or if in fact it already has. Apparently there are upwards of 25 million abandoned blogs out there - depending who you believe, anything up to 200 milion. How many of them started - and ended - in 2006?

Will blogging really eat itself in 2007? Gartner certainly seem to think so. But I'm not so sure. I think perhaps Richard's heading in the right direction by suggesting that we're 'out of the early adopter phase and into the early majority'.

The BBC quotes Gartner's David Plummer, at the end of 2006, thus: 'most people who would ever start a web log have already done so'.

In 1899 Charles H Duell, US Commissioner of Patents, stated: 'Everything that can be invented has been invented'.

Spot the similarity?

Social media, web2.0, call it what you will, it's maturing and evolving so fast we can barely keep up. It's only natural for blogging, the relatively primitive concept of a chronologically-ordered collection of articles, comments and opinions, to mature and evolve too.

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Everybody's makin' it big but me

2006-12-15T17:24:00Z

Well I paint my face with glitter just like Bowie does
And I wear the same mascara that Mick Jagger does
And I even put some lipstick on,
But that just hurt my dad and mom
Everybody's makin' it big but me

There's nothing like a Dr Hook lyric to kick off a blog post. But what am I on about?

Kate posted at the end of October about getting to the top spot on Google. Looking quickly down my Blogroll, Owen, Simon, Simon, Ian, Alex, Lydia, Chloe - not to mention pretty much all the H&K Collective Conversation bloggers - each and every one of them, when you type their name into Google, has their blog as the top search result.

Today I'm just thrilled about being at number five. It's the highest I've been and, given that I'm about to take some time off for Christmas, I doubt I'll get much higher any time soon.

I'm not bitter either. It's not my fault I have the same name as a Broadway actor and a one-time Governor of Virginia. Number five's good enough for me.

Not sure when I'll be back - I'm out of the office, bar the odd fleeting visit, between now and January 4th. I suspect I'll sneak the odd post in between now and then, though.

Happy holidays.

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An early New Year's resolution

2006-12-14T14:44:00Z

We at H&K London had our Christmas party on Tuesday. A great bash it was, too, at the rather posh Tantra.

To get everyone in the party mood we kicked off at 5.30 in the H&K bar, with a little live music - provided by what has become known as the Barbour-Laurence duo. And you know what? We weren't half bad.

The background to this, and the need for the New Year's resolution, is that up until a couple of weeks ago I hadn't touched my saxes (or my harps) for around seven years. But thanks to Andy Laurence persuading me to dust them off for Tuesday's party, I've got the bug again.

The resolution, then, is to play a heck of a lot more music in 2007 than I did in 2006. Which won't be hard ...

Oh, and it would be grossly unfair of me not to link to the video of our Grads shaking their thang ...

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Lobbyists out of a job?

2006-12-11T12:00:00Z

The latest from Dave’s “Anything Labour can do, the Tories can do better” school of campaigning: Cutting out the middleman.

We’re all aware of Bell Pottinger’s red-faces-at-Party-Conference incident, in which their “Meet a Minister for £5k” offer didn’t work out quite as planned.

Well, according to the Mail (don't forget your large pinch of salt), the Tories have once again decided they can do the job better - and in this case cut out the middleman and add a zero onto the fee, too.

Which paints a pretty bleak future for the likes of Bell Pott, if / when the Tories win an election.

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David Cameron lobbying Bell Pottinger Conservative party Labour party

... as read by NASA

2006-12-09T20:27:00Z

Thanks to StatCounter, I can see that someone from NASA in Hunstville, Alabama, read my blog yesterday. I have to say I'm rather chuffed.

I got quite excited when writing yesterday's Be Prepared post. I'd stumbled upon a significant (and relevant) piece of history - in this case William Safire's In Event of Moon Disaster memo - that I hadn't heard of before, and just had to write about it. So, whoever you were, whether at Space Camp, the Marshall Space Flight Center, or wherever else, thanks for dropping by - I appreciate it.

Oh, and whoever it was, they were running Firefox 2.0 and Max OS X. Respect.

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NASA William Safire moon disaster statcounter Huntsville Alabama