Chris Bose -

Chris Bose is the head of Internet practice at In Press.  For me his outstanding qualities are a razor-sharp mind, huge curiosity, a sense of fun and willingness to take himself and others out of their comfort zone.  The following comes from a conversation we had in Bristol, UK on May 26th 2010, recorded with his consent for the purpose of this piece.

"Everyone plays to their own rules within the constraints of the system ... constraints are really important.  In a prospect situation, people ask 'what would you do if you had infinite budget?' but that's a ridiculous question because there are always constraints and the best ideas come from constraints and discipline."

"I was challenged by one of my teachers when I was 17.  He said 'you've just given a very precise answer' and I said 'actually I think I've given a very accurate answer, precision is something else' ... so I explained the difference and he said 'yes, you have a very precise mind.' "

SH - You have everything it takes to be a total pain in the arse, but you're not.  How do you manage it?
"Because I make no attempt to be pendantic and I love to explore where the ideas go.  So I hope that I give people the scope to explore their ideas. But  I don't have this conversation with anyone else except you."

SH - So you can be a pain in the arse with other people?

"I can come across like that, yes.  But I've now chosen to use it as one of my filtering rules ... people who still think I'm a pain the arse, I will filter out from future contact."

"I would always be the one to put his hand up and ask awkward questions ... it takes practice, believe me ... I assume very little.  I test everything.  I set up experimental solutions ... I use conversation to test people out."

"My bigger purpose is that I was trained as a scientist, a research chemist.  I want to continue being a scientist ... so I want to organise my business arond the principle of research ... on the Internet the numbers give me the ability to do that."

"You have to have an edge in life ... I believe it's important to hone my defensive skills all the time, even though they may never be called into action.  But that's not the point .. I think it's right to have an edge all the time, but it's not an edge where the intent is to wound someone, verbally or whatever.  That's quite a fine line sometimes - that's why it's called an edge (laughs)."

Flickr vs. Smugmug - why does one generate so many more views than the other?

I share my photos online on two sites.   One seems to generate far more views than the other.

Smugmug was the one I used first, starting in June 2007.  I just used it as a photo gallery and didn't take advantage of any of the community aspects.  I didn't comment on other people's photos, and nobody has commented on any of mine.  My bit of Smugmug is here >>>>>>.

I started using Flickr around a year ago.  It's the site my local photographic group uses, so there's a community aspect to it as well.  We comment on each other's photos.  Since I started using Flickr more, I pretty much stopped uploading photos to my Smugmug account.  My Flickr photostream is here >>>>>>

Now here's the puzzle.  I'm  been active on Flickr and passive on Smugmg.  I know people on Flickr and I know nobody on Smugmug.  YET the site stats show that I get far more views on Smugmug than I do on Flickr. According to the Smugmug stats, to date I had 823 views in May 2010.  Last night I uploaded four photos and on May 30th alone I had 150 views.  Compare this with the Flickr stats where my May stats look around 530 views.  I uploaded seven photos to Flickr in the same session as the Smugmug upload yesterday, and my viewing stats combining yesterday and today to date show 51 views.

My question is this: Why is there the huge disparity in my views between the two sites?  Especially bearing in mind that I'm active on Flickr and not at all on Smugmug.

Challenging your prejudices - country music

About 20 years ago a young French visitor overturned my prejudices about American country music.  I was showing her my multiple TV channels and quickly skipped past CMTV.  "Stop I want to see that one."  So we went back and watched a couple of music videos.  The girl said "these people can really sing" and she was right.  And the lyrics told stories - some mawkish, some touching, some funny, some outrageous.

From then on I was a regular CMTV viewer, until we moved to Amsterdam and I drifted away from country music.  Then one afternoon one of the creative teams were raving about Emmylou Harris.  I had previously heard her and not been much interested, but I bought her album "Wrecking Ball" and then "Red Dirt Girl".  RDG is all her own songs and they are as deep as anything I've ever heard.  Don't just take my word for it.  Check out this clip of "Michaelangelo" and tell me it doesn't reach deep inside.

One subtle but important effect of Twitter

My first-ever website is currently nearing completion and I was discussing the finishing touches with Andrew Eberlin, who is also the chairman of the town Chamber of Commerce and a fellow stalwart of our local photo group.

We discussed integration of Social Media features into the website, which led on to Twitter. The core members of our photo group, plus the odd honorary member, keep up with each other on Twitter between face-to-face meetings.

Andrew described how Twitter has brought him closer to a couple of old friends who leave just a few miles away in Bath. Over the years, they contact each other sporadically, each time finishing off with "we must meet up" - but they rarely did. Then Andrew and his friends started bumping into each other on Twitter, getting familiar with the latest in each others' lives, and started meeting up in person more often. Now they see each other regularly.

What happened?

One of the problems with people we don't know, or people we know but see rarely, is that our lives are out of sync with each other. Or rather, our knowledge of each other's lives is out of sync. So at a first meeting, or first meeting for some time, there's a lot of catching up and trying to find common ground. In NLP terms, we're trying to get into rapport. In IT terms, we're trying to get into sync.

What Twitter does, for those who are patient, is to enable people to stay more or less in sync with each other's lives. Of course it's hard to be profound and deeply meaningful in 140 characters, but it is possible to enhance meaningful connections through regularly interactions on Twitter. I'm not talking theory here, or conjecture - I'm talking about my own experience and the experience of people I know.

Calling all ROI specialists - what's the answer to this one?

Most business conversations sooner or later (usually sooner) talk about ROI.  I've thought about the subject a lot and would like to share the following considerations and finish with a question.

The principle of ROI or Return on Investment is pretty simple.  When you invest resources in something, you have to get a return that amounts to your original investment plus a bit, or a lot.  If your return amounts to less than your investment, you've lost out.  You would have been better off not investing it.

ROI is a basic principle of nature.  Take sustenance.  If an organism such as an monkey or a bird uses up N calories of energy to gather 2xN calories of food, it's ahead of the game.  It will thrive.  It will put on weight, which is handy for lean times such as winter.  If on the other hand it uses up 2xN calories of energy to gather N calories of food, it's in trouble.  A zoologist friend of mine devised a PhD-earning system for working this stuff out precisely.

It's also a basic principle of business.  The simple calculation is:


I've had several experiences of ROI with my own money over the years.

A few years ago I got chatting to an IT guy about my mail access issues.  He said he could sort it out, did me a proposal and I went for it.  It involved acquiring a Dell server (£800) and having him set it up (another £800).  It quickly became apparent to me, in practice, that this was not only a poor solution, it was worse than the original situation.  So I quickly nixed it and returned to the status quo ante.  From that the £800 set-up charges were lost and I eventually donated the server to a local school.

My gain from the investment was zero.  Sure, there was a little learning, and a moment of good feeling from giving the server away.  But against that was the loss of time (hence money) in sorting it out.  So let's be generous and call it zero.  Now, using the ROI calculation, I had gain (zero) minus cost (£1600) = -£1600.  Divide that by the cost (- £1600) and unless I'm much mistaken the ROI was -1.  Somebody may put me straight on the detail, but I think the principle is right.

Contrast that with an Epson GQ 3500 laser printer I bought for £1,600 in 1986 or thereabouts.  My previous printer took hours to print out the translations I was doing, thereby tying up the computer.  The Epson printed in five minutes what the other printer needed four hours to print - literally.  At the time I was probably averaging about £12.50 an hour or £100 a day.  Assuming the laser printer gave me 4 hours extra working time a day - £50 - and assuming I worked 200 days a year, that would be equivalent to a gain of £10,000 a year, all other things being equal.  So the ROI on the laser printer was: Gain (£10,000) minus cost (£1,600) = £8,400 divided by cost (£1600) = 5.25 or 525%.

So far so accountable, right?

Around the time as I bought the laser, I had a £1,500 "retraining allowance" to spend, and I spent it with a guy called Frank Bowyer.  He was a former engineer, businessman, wrestler and I don't know what else.  Quite a character.  He used to come to my place once a week for a couple of hours and we talked.  It was unlike any other conversations I had.  All of my friends heard about these conversations and used to ask what was the latest with Frank.  Some still refer to them, 25 years later.  They were conversations that provided me with more value than I could quantify in any meaningful way - they're still providing value, and in that sense the value has been infinite - literally.

So if I apply the ROI calculation here, I have return (infinite) minus cost (£1500) divided by cost (£1500) = What?  Is it Infinite ROI?

What entrepreneurs and business people don't appreciate

Over the past 30 years, and especially the past 20, we've seen the lionisation of business and entrepreneurs. In no particular order, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Mark Zuckerberg, Alan Sugar,Sergei Brin and Larry Page are all celebrities recognised and admired by millions. The Apprentice and Dragon's Den are prime time viewing.

Many people aspire to have some of that oomph and to be entrepreneurial in one way or another. It's exciting, it's self-expressive, it's changing fast, it's very now. Sexy. And of course as we have learned to the point of orthodoxy, virtually everything in our society depends on business and entrepreneurs coming up with new products, employing people and keeping the wheels of the economy turning.

Now, with austerity looming and the need to pay down the huge debts the UK (and other countries) have run up, business people and entrepreneurs are looking to their wallets and passports and wondering whether they should move somewhere that's more business-friendly and takes less in tax.

I don't like paying tax any more than anyone else and I don't like waste of tax money of the sort highlighted routinely by the Daily Wail and others. I don't like "big government" that demands and controls increasing proportions of the national pie.

I don't like selfishness either. Among entrepreneurs and business people I see a great lack of appreciation for ordinary people who provide vital public services for pretty poor money - teachers, nurses, servicemen and women, emergency service workers, police, prison officers etc. Every country has them - has to have them - and every country has to pay them. How they are funded is a moot point - the business models that they work by. They have to be paid a living wage, even if they're imported from low-wage countries (ooops, immigration issues).

There seems to be a general assumption that a lot of public service workers are in their job because they haven't got the wit or energy or courage to do something more entrepreneurial: that they're losers and slackers with no get-up-and-go. Somehow we have lost the understanding that public service can be an honourable and admirable calling, a source of great satisfaction and pride and even moral principle.

It's a huge paradox that the people who earn least do jobs we rely on most, and the people who earn most do the most superfluous jobs.

"Like talking with a brochure"

Having a conversation about Richer Conversation with a local professional today who came up with a beaut.

"With a lot of middle managers it's like talking with a brochure.  After a conversation with them I feel exhausted."

Whatever the context, business or private, feeling exhausted or glum afterwards is a sure sign that the conversation wasn't rich.

And then she explained what Art is

"What is art?"  I really don't but I have long felt that I was missing out on something by not even having the vaguest idea.  Sure, I've seen all the paintings in Rome and Florence and Paris and various museums around the place.  I've got a few art books, notably Vermeer, a favourite.  I've got a few books of art photography - Mapplethorpe, Ernst Haas and the like.  But I didn't really know.

So I called my friend Sarah J, who's a mature art student in her first year (second if you count the Foundation Year).  We met up yesterday for a coffee and she had brought along a load of reading materials, including a copy of her autumn term essay comparing Art Photography with Non-Art Photography.  So that's where the conversation started.

It was a treat.  It ranged far and wide in (as I discovered from Sarah) a way that the Surrealists would have liked. Neither of us was embarrassed to use high-fallutin language or struggle with abstractions, and it all felt rooted in experience and passion.  I learned much more than I expected, both from Sarah, from myself and from the conversation.  And even if I can't give a pat answer to the question "what it art?" I have much more of a feeling for what it means.

Male fashion and the vexed question of shirt collars

Men of a certain age don't face many fashion questions beyond "shall I throw those trousers out or lose a few pounds and use them again?"

One that has vexed me of late is: "Why are virtually all shirt collars now of the sort that I don't get on with?"  Namely the spread shape in the image below.



I have tried a few variations on the spread collar and I like none of them.  Button-down, straight or tab are my preferences.  I tried at Lewins a couple of months ago and they were all spreads.  I tried at the Bath M&S on Saturday and out of a huge selection, I reckon that 90% of the shaped collars were variations on the spread.

Maybe I'm just completely out of tune with the sartorial times.  Mind you I did manage to get a shirt that should meet the approval of LaRae Wilkins, who alerted me to the fraught issue of colours.

These days every day feels like Christmas

I'm finding that every day can feel like Christmas as long as I have a good conversation with somebody and I do it in a spirit of openness, curiosity and no ego tripping.  

In practice Christmas isn't everybody's favourite event (certainly not mine) and it's not even relevant to non-Christians. But what I'm talking about is the idealised version - giving and receiving gifts.

Take today. Going into the office I passed the owner of the cafe downstairs. Smart arse that I am, I said "Good day" to her in Polish (she's Polish). Idiot that I am, I actually said goodbye. She laughed and explained.  I laughed and slapped my forehead.  So I got her to write the words for good day (dzień dobry), Then her Guatemalan husband joined in and we had five minutes of lively chatter when we both learned something - about the words but also about each other.

The more I explore conversation, the richer I find it.

On being like Leica - the Richer Conversation analogy

What is Richer Conversation?  I know what I mean and people who have spent time with me know what I mean. But what about everyone else. I have been looking for an analogy to illustrate / communicate the essentials of this premium service. I was fiddling around with Rolex and similar luxury brands, then I realised a better analogy for Richer Conversation is Leica cameras.  Here's why.  Your feedback will be valued and I guarantee to respond.
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For those of you who aren't familiar with the brand, Leica is a German brand with over 75 years of heritage, being the favoured camera of photography legends such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. The classic Leica concept, embodied in the M-series, is unlike anything else in photography.

Mechanically they are extremely high quality and last forever, both the cameras and the lenses. This makes them very expensive. The M7 film camera body alone costs around £2,758.00 and the digital M9 costs £4,850.00. A simple 50 mm lens will cost at least £1,000 new - they don't do zooms.

Technically, they don't use the mirror/reflex system you get on an SLR. Rather than looking through the lens, you look through a viewfinder. There's no clunky mechanism flipping the mirror up and down with a judder and a noise. It's quiet, small and discreet.

They don't come loaded with gadgets enabling you to "point and shoot" - they demand some knowledge of photography and they take learning to use. They're not for happy snappers and they're not for photographers who like chunky great bits of kit.

People who use Leicas have a whole different mindset and feeling about taking photos. Every aspect of the Leica (history, design, brand, technology etc.) pushes the user to see things differently, with a heightened sense of awareness.

The essence of the analogy for me is this. Everyone can take photos but when someone uses Leica, they engage more with their photography and get more out of it. Similarly everyone has conversations, but people who embrace Richer Conversation engage more with it and get more out of it.

- How would you boil the Leica analogy down to the essentials, so that it communicates quickly?
- Any other brands that might have a similar dynamic of fundamentally changing the user's relationship with the function the brand serves? I rejected Rolex because it doesn't change the owner's relationship with time. And Apple is too mass market.

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* No offence to happy snappers nor to "serious" photographers. For the record, I use a Canon SLR and lenses and I don't (yet) have any Leica kit.