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.

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

Make sure it's this one. 

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

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

I'm trying to fight off the ClementClarkMooreitis, but I can't help but be excited.

TUAW will be liveblogging, and I'll be watching.  I might even play a bit of MacWorld bingo.

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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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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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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