Like Minds

Let's be frank, I thought Twitter/MySpace/Facebook/Narcissism.com et al was just dumb. Not for me. Do I care about the minutiae of other people's lives? No. Do I think anyone should be interested in mine? No.

So when Richard Carpenter of Enterprise Assist suggested  attend Like Minds Social Media Conference in Exeter, I  was sceptical. But it is always worth listening to Richard. He's is a smart cookie. So I booked in, scrubbed up and turned out. 

There was a definite buzz in the queue at the venue. Everybody, and I mean everybody, had a nailed on, maximum battery-drainage, iPhone/PDA. Was it a press launch for a new Apple iTeacup? A rumour that the next-best-thing band might turn up? Bit geeky for me surely? This Social Media gig has to be a blizzard of personal trivia meeting an avalanche of marketeers digital junk-mail? Sign-up bandits . . . bullshit detectors on stun.

Wrong! This is one class act.

At every stage the LikeMinds event was slick, organised, fast-paced, informative, highly professional and very good-humoured. I sat up and just listened- and listened. Blimey! Great speakers, lively panels and open floors to lively participants. Heard how the NHS was effectively reaching out to youth advising on STDs. How information could outpace the bad guys. Why everybody loses when big business tries to coat-tails youth vibes. How major corporates can engage with, and respond to, customers as multiple-individuals. How SMEs can communicate with some character and personality. How ideas can light a wild-fire. Hang on, that's where I live!

Still percolating my thoughts, but in kernel-form it comes down to this for me. Content and quality tops my list. And yup, you can Tweet "Starbucks, 11, cool!" but "E=MC2" fits in 140 characters too. Social Media may be in need of a better name (?) but a lot of smarter people than me are finding a gazillion ways to use this phenomena for good, for profit, for better communications, and still evolving . . .

So now I am a Week Two Newbie on Twitter @GaryDayEllison and learning how to engage with people online while living and working somewhere beautiful. And present ourselves and our skills in a way we can feel comfortable with. 

More than just a Thank You, these are smart people you should check-out. LikeMinds,  JonAkwue, Kevin Anderson, John Bell, Olivier Blanchard, Trey Pennington, Steve Bridger, Heléna Holt, OK, too many to list - Follow the LikeMinds link. There is not a dull one there. Chris Brogan - come and live in Devon!

Special thank to ScottGould & Drew Ellis for conceiving LikeMinds and making it run a hell of a lot better than clockwork.

Great Women No. 2

The second in the Great Women series has appeared in The Lady. We had a bit of a grumble about the layout especially as the portrait miniature by Sandy Nightingale was enlarged! But being constructive we sent in a suggested layout for the series to the magazine. Sandi Toksvig likes it too, as does her splendid agent Carol MacArthur, so we wait to see if they thought it was helpful.

Great Women No.2 - Elizabeth Woodville

Elizabeth was born in 1437 to a noble family who were good at most things apart from spelling. Today we write Woodville but in her own time anything from Wydeville to Widvile would have been just fine which suggest a pleasing medieval disinterest in identity theft.

Elizabeth was said to be the most beautiful woman in Britain with ‘heavy-lidded eyes like those of a dragon’ – not a compliment you hear much these days. When she was about 19 she married Sir John Grey of Groby, a Lancastrian, who history books say ‘fell at St. Albans’ in 1461. Many have fallen at St Albans during parky weather but sadly, John was killed in battle and left Elizabeth with two sons. By now Edward IV, a Yorkist, was King of England (hold on tight as we race through some parts of history). As a Lancastrian Elizabeth was on the other side of a dispute over the correct colour for roses that had managed to rage with the Yorkists for about 100 years. Liz, however, was bold. She wanted land for her sons so she went to see King Ed and, after one of those romantic meetings in the woods you normally only get in films, she and the king plighted their troth and married secretly.

It’s fair to say no one was pleased and things got worse when Elizabeth, who I think has been dead long enough for me to get away with calling her greedy and unscrupulous, kept getting the King to give land and money to her relations.Liz and Ed had ten kids of whom the ‘Princes in the Tower,’ Edward V and his brother, Richard, did least well. When Liz’s husband Edward IV died a heady game of numbers followed where, trust me, I can only scratch the surface. Ed V was only twelve so his uncle Richard of Gloucester (the hunchback one in Shakespeare) took the throne as Richard III, imprisoning Ed V and young Richard. Richard III then demanded that Elizabeth also turn over to his custody her daughters so she did. Eventually Richard III was killed by Henry Tudor (Bosworth Field but there isn’t the time). Henry became Henry VII and married Elizabeth’s daughter (also called Elizabeth) who followed in the family business and became queen. The Princes were probably murdered in the tower and Elizabeth Woodville retired to a nunnery where she had plenty of time to consider her failure to win Mother of the Year. She died there in June 1492 aged 55.

Abbey Road Revisited

A while back we posted about our homage to the Beatles iconic album cover. Click. Well, it just popped up yet again. This time, as we rummage through the archives for material for The Music of the Lord of the Rings. While using the hallowed recording studios, Director, Peter Jackson and Composer, Howard Shore stepped out to get their own snap. Come on English Heritage get the studios listed!

Community Blog

We set up a Blog for the village called NB (standing for North Bovey & Notice Board). Easily adopted by a good proportion of the demographic and people are becoming more active in expressing their opinions on village issues using the blog. Democracy in action!

Dick Francis

We would like to pay our respects to Dick Francis, who died today at 89. He wrote fast-paced thrillers set in the world of horse-racing following a highly successful career as a champion jockey. We were proud to have designed covers for 20 of his bestselling books.

Great Woman/Emily Post

The very first of the Great Women series by Sandy Nightingale & Sandi Toksvig has been published in The Lady magazine. They will appear in the first issue every month, with the next on February 2nd. 2010. Image and text are © Copyright of the artist & author respectively and pilferers will be pursued relentlessly!

EMILY POST 

Emily Post was the doyenne of American Etiquette, a title which some Europeans might have the poor manners to suspect of not being hotly contested.  Emily was awash with good manners.  There was nothing she didn’t know about tea gowns or the rather complex rules governing which kind of lifts require a man to take his hat off or indeed, the answer to the rather vexing question - Should damask be hemmed or hem stitched? (hemmed by hand, of course.  I’m surprised you had to ask.)

Emily began her journey towards social grace from the beginning by not being clear about her birthday. She may have been born on October 27,1872 but it could just as easily have been October 3, 27 or 30th 1873. It is not a subject a woman of breeding should dwell on. Emily also knew enough about etiquette to realise it is easier to have all the right place settings for any event if you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth in the first place. 

She was born into a wealthy, socialite family in Baltimore, Maryland and led a heady life of chaperones and cotillions. (Curiously ‘cotillion’ is the old French word for petticoat yet the Americans used it to describe a ball where showing your underwear would not go well.)  Educated at home Emily was then polished off at Miss Graham's finishing school in New York.  She married a society banker,  Edwin Main Post. Sadly Edwin liked society rather too much and they divorced after he banked in the wrong places. Finding herself financially embarrassed Emily began writing. 

In 1922 she published  Etiquette - The Blue Book of Social Usage, a book to help the nouveau riche and became pleasingly riche herself. The publication went on to hold the distinction of being second only to the Bible as the book most often not returned or stolen from libraries. Clearly people read her work but didn’t entirely follow the rules. In 1945 USO clubs for American troops reported Emily Post as the most requested book after the Rand McNally Atlas. This suggests many soldiers didn’t know where they were going or what to say when they got there. 

The Blue Book in a nutshell –

1. Be nice to others

2. Don’t go on overnight automobile trips with a man.

3. Never wear light stockings on a heavy ankle.

4. Remember - a woman is ready to meet most emergencies if she has a hair-pin and a visiting card.

The book went through ten editions and nine reprints but good manners forbids me to tell you how much money she made. It seems that people across America were desperate for advice, so she also had a radio show and a daily column on good taste syndicated in more than 200 newspapers from which she received more than 5,000 letters a week.

The Chicago News reported 'While Betty Grable is the armies Pin Up Girl, Emily Post is their Look Up Girl'.

Season's Greetings to all.

A few years ago, Sandy was commissioned to create a series of 6 pastiche Victorian Christmas cards – and the client wanted them ‘aged’ so they looked as if found in the attic. Beautifully executed, exactly to the brief, half the printed cards were returned to the client as ‘damaged!’

Sandy's cards have started to go online and can be found here.

Here's to a great 2010 . . .