Tweet-Splurge

I got annoyed today, and vented on Twitter, which is the height of bad manners.

For that, I apologise.

However, I stand by my point. Basically, I had a minute of breathing space in what had turned out to be another mental day, so thought I'd catch up with the twitterverse, see what people thought of Shk Ahmed' mistress heading to the UK, and marvel at the blessed lack of celebrity focused chat from the cloud of people I follow.

Then my whole feed column that displays people I follow was suddenly full of tweets from one person - all packed with detail, but when 8 tweets that all start with the same three letter acronym are stacked on top of one another, it is hard to muster the will to sift through them.

As the topic does interest me, I clicked on two of the links in a random selection of the spammed tweets. The first was to the brochure of the event which was tweeting.. And to be honest, that was enough - I closed the link and moved on.

Oh, and posted a grumpy tweet to them telling them I was annoyed.

See, the thing is, the event is being held by one of the really reputable big media houses in the uk; one that is supposed to 'get' social media.

And the event? It's all about social media.

Yet in my opinion, this vomit of tweets, all in one go, worded with marketing at top priority, and comms with the twitterverse somewhere around the 4th or 5th mark.

Learnings, for me?
* stagger your tweets.
Don't be ashamed of using this as a marketing tool, but just as you wouldn't ring one journalist and babble through a list of 8 clients, and expect them to do the work picking through the blurb, time your tweets. Make sure the people you're headlining know when it's going out, so they can give people in their company the heads up to retweet it, start conversations around the topics, get your brand some credibility.
* don't clutter
Sticking your website as a bit.ly link in a tweet w/out reason wastes space and diminshes my respect for you and your brand. If I follow you, I know this info already. If I don't, I'll click on your user profile and find it. The 140 is not the place for back-up / support info.

That's it for now, as I'm on the blackberry in a traffic jam. I'll review when I'm slightly less irate. Do I stick to these rules religiously? No - but I represent brand-me, so I'm allowed to be erratic and indecisive. But when you're tweeting on behalf of a 'cutting edge' social media event, you should be getting this stuff right.

Happy Bloody New Year, The Times. Love, Dubai.

So, The Times embraced the seasonal spirit of goodwill, cheer and positivity with a lovely little piece decrying the obscenity of the Burj Dubai, and pitting it head to head with Masdar down the road - I quote - "the new city of Masdar, now being built in Abu Dhabi as a carbon-neutral eco-city (call it the green suburb of Babel), will stand as an architectural rebuke to the great tower of hubris next door"

There is a lot wrong with this town, I am the first to admit it. But there is a lot right, and I just really feel like these are cheap shots - this story echoes all of the other Dubai-bashing articles that have gone before, offers very little that is new. However, from a local perspective, the direct comparison between Masdar & the Burj Dubai is really interesting, and this is the first time I have read such a direct comparison with such explicit value judgements thrown down.

Masdar is an interesting concept, and if they can pull it off as intended, it will be an incredible achievement. It will indeed serve as a model of how cities can be built in the future, and could be an interesting blueprint for the region, where cities are still being built from scratch, and there is room for this kind of growth. Hopefully, the Masdar team is pioneering practices that can be adapted to cities that have been in existence for hundreds of years, as it is really there that we need to start putting carbon reduction measures in place, rather than focusing on some green utopia that we can create out when given a blank slate, unlimited land, a booming population, and bottomless pit of oil wealth. Not really a transferable model to most countries?

I for one am looking forward to the opening of the Burj in a week or so. It astounds me every time I go for dinner to the Souk al Bahar how many people gather to take photos of the tower, to ooh and ahh (and applaud?) the fountains, which are actually stunningly beautiful. It is a tourist attraction, built in the Gulf, for the Middle Eastern and Asian market, and it works. People here love the clean lines, love the powerful water jets, and choreographed antics of the fountains as they dance to opera, Lebanese folk, Celine Dion, or music hall hits. It's not my scene, but it works. And that is the point.

The tower may be OTT, and to many it will always symbolise the end of Dubai's property boom, but to many others it is an achievement that puts their country, their region, on the global map. These bitter articles always have a tone of something not far from jealousy - like an aging sportsman making snide remarks about the slapdash style of the bright young thing lifting all the trophies... they may be right, but they still aren't winning anymore.

For me, I hope that the opening of the Burj will mark the beginning of a slightly more sensible era, with scaled down madness. It will be flashy, it will be mental, and it will be very, very, 90's Dubai. Perhaps there is a parallel to be made about Dubai living it's flashy 30s (the UAE turned 38 in early Dec) and looking to settle down with a family and a more sedate lifestyle as it looks towards the onset of the big 40 in 2011? I hope so. Because this place has been pretty damn great for me this decade, and I would love to see it succeed in the next one.

Christmas is coming...

...and the best, most Christmassy, and generally cleverest card that I have seen to date has been this from London-based ad agency Mother.
What I love about this e-card is that is features uber-cool London agency types, presenting a 'crazy idea' well executed, and then ties it up really neatly with a great feelgood ending. And takes a couple of neat sideswipes at stereotypes while they're at it, somehow avoiding a preachy or patronising tone. Nice.
There is no way that this wasn't scripted, apart from the lucky lady at the end. I think what I like most about it is that there's a real heart to it, and that, sir, is what Christmas is all about.

Raging against the X-Factor

So little Joe McEldry has lost out to the Facebook campaign, which hoisted Rage Against The Machine to the top spot in the UK pop charts as our Christmas number one.

There are a couple of things about this story that intrigue me, and are worth commenting on.

Firstly, a disclaimer. I was an avid watcher of the X-Factor. I love the combo of reality tv, underdog does good, singing skills of various levels, a tinge of jealousy, and lots of glitz. I have never, ever, taken this Sat night tv guilty pleasure through to actually purchasing any of the singles. They are, without exception, cheesy and manufactured. Miley Cyrus, I ask you. I digress.

Much has been written about the irony of a Facebook campaign exhorting youngsters to buy a single that shouts "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" as part of a group movement. Much has also been made of the fact that many of the people who joined the movement didn't care a jot whether a song they'd never heard from RATM beat another song they'd never heard from someone called Joe backed by someone evil called Simon Cowell. They just joined the online movement, because they wanted to identify with a cause. Similarly, I saw a video recently of the founder of Reddit - Alexis Ohanian - talking about how the users of Reddit got behind a campaign that Greenpeace put out there to name a whale - the users chose the name Mister Splashy Pants. Greenpeace weren't too impressed, and tried to extend the campaign to get a serious name selected, and it turned viral.

So, is this about UK music lovers seizing control of their charts, as the RATM guys have gleefully stated? Or is it more about the growing power of social media, and a generation of people who want to be part of movements that they identify with - which are increasingly online, to the consternation and confusion of the management generation. Increasingly, I think it is more the latter, as I would wager that the people who stood up to be counted in this campaign haven't bought a cd single in approximately 15-25yrs. Just a guess.

I loved the campaign, as I do think it is important for people to stand up for something they believe in. I also thought that Joe took it in really good humour, which is important to me, as it could have been taken as a personal attack on a young 18yr old new to the fame game. He was quoted as saying it was "exciting to be part of such a hard fought race", and I think, I hope, that he has a sensible enough head on his shoulders to understand that the machine he just leapt in to isn't necessarily popular with everyone. He stands to make quite a bit of cash out of said machine though, and is following his dream, so he should be just fine.

I do hope that the trend for people joining movements online 'to be part of something' doesn't morph in to something that obscures the meaning and messaging behind some of these movements. Things like the 'Charter for Compassion' deserve to be read, understood, and implemented in the lives of the people that sign up. They shouldn't become meaningless movements that people just sign up to because it's as easy as typing your email address in to a form online, or clicking a box and paying 28c (in the case of the RATM campaign).

One final word on all of this. Large kudos to the RATM guys. They had the nouse to stand up and say - this wasn't us, we didn't start this campaign, it isn't our fight, but we're proud of people standing up against things they don't like, to reclaim music against "happy meal, prefabricated pop". Their interview on Radio 5 also made me smile, where they blatantly ignored the request by the BBC to edit out their famous line: "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me".
Naieve of the Beeb to think that they'd really honour that. Quite amusing to hear the presenter at the end squeaking - "get rid of it!"

But the best bit was their promise to donate the extra profit from the single to Shelter, the homeless charity, right before Christmas. That, to me, is what this season is all about, and it gave me lots of warm & fuzzies.

Here's looking at you, kid!

I read an article recently about mentoring in the comms world, and it struck a real chord with me. Over the past two years, I've developed a mini-mentoring relationship with a couple of exx-employees, and it has been an amazingly positive experience. It has also been somewhat of a surprise to me, as although I'm somewhat experienced now with about 10years under my belt, there is lots of room to grow before I become a guru on anything.

The point about mentoring, for me, is that it is essentially about nurturing talent and encouraging others, based on mutual respect and a sort of friendship. I think I see it as continuing to be a good boss, after you've stopped working together. The two people that I have helped used to be on my team a few years ago, and we worked really well together. By which I mean they were really good at understanding me when I went off on a crazy brainstorm, they knew which rants to ignore, and to listen carefully to others, and they understood when to laugh with me or at me, and when to tell me to shut up.

In the years since I left that company I've stayed close to both people, but interestingly we never really changed our friendship - they still look on me as their old boss, who they call for work chats, work advice, and occasional insights on various regional or economic topics. Sometimes we would schedule time to sit down and talk about certain questions, situations or projects that they were working on at the time. And recently, when I heard of a perfect job for one of them, I put her forward, and have been on the phone with her before a few of the many interviews the company put her through. She aced them, as I knew she could. What was interesting for me was the real gratitude she had for my role - which is crazy when the real reward for me was seeing her achieve this goal.

All getting a bit cheesy and motivational, but I think the point is, although I'd rather work to live, the lines are blurry at the moment, and work is a very central element of my life. It won't always be that way, but for right now, when it is such a focus, I need to get the rewarding, soft/fuzzy, non-bottom-line related benefits where I can. And if that is mentoring someone to achieve a real goal, then that makes me feel pretty damn good.

Little hurdles

We're in our new office today, in Abu Dhabi's twofour54. I still haven't worked out what the name means, but it is clearly the media zone, as there are trendy types with their Mo-vember tasches still firmly on display, sauntering around in slacks and 'tees' in stark contrast to our pencil skirts and heels. Well, the boss isn't sporting the pencil skirt look. Yet. We will convert him.


My desk has a rather nice view of a car park, which seems to be the hangout of choice for out resting bus drivers. I have taken an appallingly bad photo with the blackberry, which will have to do until such time I manage to start carrying my camera around with me again.

We aren't sure what these buses do - they occasionally multiply, then furtively sneak off again, but we never actually see them moving. Perhaps there are Bond-esque trapdoors leading in and out of the grassy knoll behind. We aren't sure what that is either. What we do know, is that the orange building behind the grassy knoll on the far left.... houses a pub. Yes, we got the important information sorted before we finished unpacking the boxes.


However, we didn't account for the dongles.
I'm quite tempted to just leave that hanging.

The dongles are these amazingly expensive little gadgets that plug in to your computer and connect you to tinternet... but we only have two between three of us, as one broke mysteriously earlier on. So you type about three emails, then have to hand the dongle over, and try and remember what kind of work you did before there was email or internet. Amazingly difficult, actually.

Other hot topics of the day have covered whether or not access cards work if you hole-punch them, identifying local landmarks (atm, coffee providers that don't fob you off with bran muffins, ways to get mana'ish that looks like Lebanese Flower's version, rather than Carrefour's minging doughy round thing) with varying degrees of success.



Mini-hurdles - they brighten a quiet day in the office.

Head above the parapet...

It is winter in the sandlands, and weather is stunning. But I've been stuck inside trying to get to grips with whatever is going on with my darling adopted country, as they stick two fingers up to the international investment community, and shoot themselves in the foot where future funding from said community is concerned.

I feel like it has to have an impact on us local folk, but I can’t really work out what that will be. At the most selfish level, will I be taken seriously as a candidate when I leave this crazy town? On one level, my cv might be more interesting because of my exposure to a place on steroids. Or employers may see this period as so far removed from “reality” (whatever that may be) that my experience isn’t actually transferable back to the Western world. Not going anywhere any time soon, so I shall park worrying about that!

It is true that I’ve been pretty bloody negative about the sandlands since the announcement on Wed about the Govt not backing Dubai World’s debt. As the dust clears, I’m still a bit bruised, as if recovering from an hurtful and unexpected jibe from a long-term lover, but I am regaining some pride in this ridiculous adopted homeland of mine, and some objectivity that sits between the blinkered nonsense of the local media, and the doom & gloom pedalled by the UK media.

I’m afraid that it does seem to me that the invective unleashed by the UK and international media recently is something of a cathartic exercise for people who don't feel able to heap the same scathing scorn on their own governments when they feel betrayed and lost at home. Dubai is handy, in that regard, as it is a tiny country, unafraid to stick its head above the parapet and say "hey, world, look at us" ... which we all know is just-not-done in UK culture. Hence many of these puffed chested, soap box, told-you-so type editorials. But to me there is a real undercurrent of fear in many of these stories, a recognition that what happens in this tiny nation state in the middle of a region that confuses and frightens the western world, might actually impact the rest of the world, but cannot be controlled by them. There are no dictators here that can offer a robust excuse for western governments to storm in. Oceans of cash wash through from every corner of the world, good, bad, and ugly, but tell me that doesn't happen in Switzerland, London, or New York?

So the state of the world economy bothers you? Good. It bothers lots of us. But take a second to look at your own doorstep – UK debt for example. 400% of GDP, isn’t it? Dubai is just over 100, I think. No excuses, but a bit of realistic comparison would be useful instead of listing celebs who may or may not have been given free villas in some development complex that happens to be shaped like a palm tree.

In the UK, the government is bound to (albeit foggy) levels of transparency that make Sheikhs snort coffee through their noses at the very thought of releasing such information. I do still think that the “shut up” or “they know nothing” messaging has to stop, and at some point, someone at the top will have to go and get trained in the art of communications, come back, and teach their uncles/elders the art of sticking to messages, and working with, rather than against, the global media. Someone that they'll listen to. Like Fazza - the Crown Prince. Why not?

So what happens next? A much cleverer person than I said yesterday that the question should be – where are the questions? What are the questions? No one has the answers just yet – the meetings are starting to take place, and the restructuring staff have been appointed. So let’s start thinking of the questions that need answering.