5 episodes in, I think we’re off to a good start.

Episode 1 – Exploring esports with Angela Natividad

Featuring esports agency entrepreneur and strategist Angela Natividad, our conversation spanned gaming culture, esport stereotypes, the brand of sports vs esports, athleticism and health, the quirks of intellectual property law & the business of esport. A free-ranging conversation about part of the world I knew so little about beforehand.

• Substack – with links to all apps
• Apple Podcast episode

Episode 2 – Deep Fake, bots & Synthetic Art with Eric Drass

Featuring respected synthetic artist Eric Drass – who you may know as Shardcore – about his work playing with neural networks, machine learning, Deep Fake, bots, conspiracy theories, and his work using all of these to create art. And, at the heart of the conversation, the increasingly pressing question of how we can know what is true and what is not.

• Substack – with links to all apps
• Apple Podcast episode

Episode 3 – The Future of Food with Dr Morgaine Gaye

Featuring food futurologist Dr Morgaine Gaye – you’ll hear Morgaine’s rarely-shared predictions for future themes in our food, confront what Dr Gaye believes will be an extended period of disruption and unearth newer, clearer connections between fashion, technology, geopolitics and broad societal change.

• Substack – with links to all apps
• Apple Podcast episode

Episode 4 – Online Investigations and Open Source Intelligence with Eliot Higgins

Featuring Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, the foremost pioneer worldwide in online investigations and open source analysis, whose work uses publicly available online resources and content freely – and often bizarrely – shared in social media to expose alleged Russian state killers, and identify the exact anti-aircraft unit involved in the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

• Substack – with links to all apps
• Apple Podcast episode

Episode 5 – Digitizing the City of San Francisco with Carrie Bishop

Featuring Carrie Bishop, Chief Digital Services Officer, sharing her perspective on the gritty realities of ‘digital transformation’ in public services. Considering San Francisco’s 976 lines of business, there’s an exhilarating aerial view of what can be possible, together with an unfussy account from the frontline of just how creaky legacy systems that power our world can be.

• Substack – with links to all apps
• Apple Podcast episode

So what’s next?

I’m enjoying it enough that I’ve decided I’m going to do another 95 episodes.

And you can help shape those 95 episodes. If you have ideas about potential fascinating, diverse guests who can give an interesting perspective on how a facet of everyday life is changing right now, I’d love to hear those suggestions – here, on Twitter, wherever.

Join us.

If you haven’t already, join me and the growing community of other smart listeners on the journey towards 100 episodes – subscribe for free here. Thanks for listening 🙂

I’ve been asked twice in the last few weeks by super-smart and very capable humans what resources I’d recommend to them as a new manager. It’s an exciting moment in a career and just to ask that question is already a wonderful sign. I knew when they asked that I wanted to write this down rather than just send it once, so here I am with you writing these words that you are reading.

Only problem is I have an exciting Zoom meeting (genuinely) on SEO for one our high performing business units so I’ve got 16 minutes to get this done 🙂

1. Management is fundamentally about communication…

So I recommend Crucial Conversations.

The principles and very practical method has worked highly for me in saying the things that need to be said and hearing the things that need to be heard. Whatever I have tried at and failed at as a manager and a leader (and the list is not short), I have not swerved the conversations that mattered most. This framework gave and gives me scaffolding for those crucial moments. You can also find the courage this approach gives you to be useful in the rest of life too. (I’ve also heard good things about Radical Candor and love the core concept, so you might try that one too – Radical Candor by Kim Scott – which is worryingly the only resource produced by a woman in this list).

2. Management fundamentally requires self-management…

So I recommend The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

By ‘self-management’, I’m not only talking about prioritizing and so on – I’m talking about self-awareness, self-development, mutual benefit. I think better managers know and manage themselves better, which in turn amplifies their ability to be a decent helpful manager. This book is 25 years old, which sounds a lot but then there’s a small tree in my garden that’s probably older than that, so when you consider the age and timelessness of human wisdom, that shouldn’t really matter. There isn’t a day that I don’t myself apply some principle from this slightly cheesy but helpful, clarifying book. (I’ve got 11 mins until that meeting!)

3. Better management is about coaching rather than directing…

So I recommend the Coaching for Leaders podcast series, hosted by Dr. Dave Stachowiak.

Of course there are books and stuff, and I especially recommend going on a course – I did a 5-weekend course with CTI that was hugely beneficial but a big commitment and even a 1 or 2 day course can give you massive gains in this area, as can being coached yourself – but given the year is 2020 I’m going to recommend this podcast. There’s a huge back catalog, they are relatively easy listening but jammed with tips, approaches, scenarios, ideas. I just scroll through, pick one that sounds right for my mood and current challenges, and I always, always get something valuable from each one, even if I finish early or don’t love the guest or they don’t solve the universe in one go, whatever.

4. GREAT management is about developing your portfolio of approaches and styles…

So I recommend the Leadership That Gets Results article from Harvard Business Review which I personally and other developing managers I’ve worked with found somewhere between helpful and life-changing.

I have returned to this seminal piece once or twice a year for many a year [looks to camera with elderly twinkle in his eye]. It is so utterly freeing to realize that there are styles of management available to us, and that when and how we use those styles is situational, and that some styles will feel very comfortable, and others may feel, especially at first, a massive reach. And that THIS is the work of being a good manager. Trying always to stretch, learn, to adapt between the moment, the characters, the challenge and what will elicit the most productive, helpful response. Great article. 20 min read and reflection. Get it! Balls, 2 mins left, will have to finish this later.

5. Management has a huge role to play in the battle to overturn systemic racism

So I currently recommend Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, though it is not a ‘business text’ I found it to be a great read to truly confronting and understanding the nature, influence and roots of systemic racism – in this case, with a British history and lense. White Fragility, which I haven’t read yet, may be a better American perspective. This Confronting Racism at Work reading list from Harvard Business Review brings these issues and opportunities firmly into a business context. And this visual model from Andrew M. Ibrahim, MD is a neat device to conduct a shallow self-assessment from. I need to go much further myself to provide a fairer playing field that draws from the most broad and exciting talent pool that exists, so I share these as a fellow traveller not as someone sat on their laurels.

Bonus content:

Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager by James Stanier. Whilst cast through the lense of software engineering management, I’ve skimmed this very recent, fresh book by my Brandwatch colleague Dr. James Stanier and it is very clearly THE GOOD MODERN MANAGEMENT PLAYBOOK regardless of managing software developers or [insert other jobs].

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Just a good primer on the craziness and intensity of managing in a high growth, high turbulence environment where the demands on leaders and managers are high but the guardrails and supportive processes less visible.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Prof. Richard Rumelt. Y’all talk about strategy. You use the word strategy. If I asked you to create a strategy, I think it might likely be a plan that you create and I think this book might help you – as it did me, MASSIVELY – in getting very clear about what strategy is, why it exists, what makes it so powerful, and what the components are. Not about people management, but it’s the next neighborhood over, my friends, so peek over the hedgerow and see if you like it.

Good to Great by Jim Collins. It was old when I read it. It’s probably ancient now. Doesn’t matter. Core concepts endure. An absolute central piece of the ‘business / MBA canon’ and rightly so. I learned loads of good principles and ideas about organizations, teams, leadership and management from this book.

I should also recommend my own book, Culture Shock. You can do a little vomit in your mouth all you like at the self-promotion, but ultimately I sat down to try and encode what I believed then about management and it’s in the book. Personally, since I wrote it 8 years ago I’ve changed my views on the direct application of ‘democracy at work’ stuff, but the principles and direction of the book are still very representative of what I believe is required of managers and organizations to thrive today.

Good luck. Given how big a part of daily lives our work is, and how influential management is on peoples’ lives, this is a worthy endeavour and one I salute, whoever and wherever you are.

PS. The Zoom meeting was at 10.15 am. I finally finished this at 2 pm between calls and a bit o’ lunch 🙂

I knew side projects were good.

I can’t trace back to where or why, but I know that earlier, when I was running my own business, there were times I felt highly possessive of a team member’s time and attention. Like I owned them. Like anything other than THIS was betrayal. Even though we looked for and hired people with a breadth to them, who demonstrated through action their creative energy. (I can only apologize. I was young).

It wasn’t quite as binary as I make it sound there, but in time I came to see that only great things emerged from team members side projects, their creative explorations, their learning. Of course they fucking did. It’s embarrassing to write, now. But I guess I get and indeed first came from that ‘all in’ mindset that many leaders, investors and managers may still feel.

As I grew and evolved myself, as I saw team members bring so much richness from their worlds outside of work, as I wrote a book that was mine alone but also helped our work, as I stopped running my own business and shifted to a purely friendship based relationship with ex-colleagues and saw them crafting and learning outside of work and how that made them so good and unique in what they offered to their clients, their users and employers, I saw more and more clearly the extra contribution that side projects made. It wasn’t and isn’t even a neutral sum, it’s a positive add – of course it is.

Since then, I’ve been a better, more enlightened supporter of team members’ side projects. And starting my Here Right Now podcast project has been the best thing I’ve done for me, creatively, in years.

A side project has given me creative independence and autonomy that you just can’t come by, even and maybe especially in a more senior role. I can use CAPS if I want to. I can explore fringe topics. I can shape it and screw up and blunder my way through and it’s all mine and all on me. I make every decision.

It has re-awoken and actually increased my empathy and respect for creators of any kind. Every side project comes from a good place, from an energy to see something in the world – artists, activists, entrepreneurs, lifelong learners. When I see someone’s initiative pass me by now I feel: I feel a connection with someone striving for something. And I want to support them somehow, see them succeed more.

And doing my side project has helped me realize that most of the time most people don’t give a fuck. The apathy, even of those you might’ve thought would be right there with you if they knew how much it matters to you, it’s utterly humbling. In a good way. I get more interaction for a photo of a pizza than a podcast I put hours of work and thought into. It’s got me back on a level. I am reminded what it takes to get something going. No one really cares that much. Oh well – so no one cares – cool, well let’s have at it then 🙂

New practical skills is an obvious benefit. I’ve learned new stuff about microphones, audio quality, transcription, about podcasting services and platforms, but also – as someone would’ve graded themselves as highly competent at hosting and chairing panel discussions (lol) – doing the podcast has forced me to confront that I’m actually an average-to-poor interviewer, that great interviewers have actually mastered their craft, and that instead I have to edit out 50% of my long rambley questions, my weird affirmative MMMMMMs and other quirks. Good learning.

Extra networks are created through side projects, too. Just 3 episodes in, and I have 3 new connections, 3 super smart humans out there in the world that I know and that know me. This is how good things happen, and if the right moment or project arises, we will find one another.

Lastly and by far the most important benefit, it’s reminded me who I am. I am not my job. My job is not my total identity. I care so much about my work and about the last two organizations I’ve worked for (my own and then another founded by a friend in my home city) that I have allowed them at times to over-dominate and to try and meet every need through them. Breathing space and variety is good. I’ve also allowed myself to not think of myself as creative, and defaulted to always allowing others to take the creative lead. That’s a mistake, I’m very creative (honest) and having a solo project allows me to stretch all of that unfettered and unrestrained. I AM CREATIVE!!!!!!!

And all of this? All of this washes into everything that I do every day in my fantastic, demanding role at Brandwatch. This stuff isn’t divided from my committed work in my day job by some impermeable membrane, some ‘imma build a WALLLLL’. Just as Anna’s artistic experimentation feeds into her work delivering creative, life-changing digital transformation at Hyper Island, Jed’s music writing and curating must add richness to his strategy work and client relationships at Initiative, I have seen Phill’s consumer psychology podcast directly contribute to his product positioning and messaging at Brandwatch, and Ross’ playful experiments in video making are a conduit for behavior change at one of the UK’s biggest banks. This stuff makes us better at what we do. I know I am a better, livelier, more energized CMO for Brandwatch since I started this than I was before.

I praise the side project. What’s your next endeavour, just for you?

While you’re here, you should probably sign up for Here Right Now – it’s a podcast about the future that’s already here. Also available on Apple podcasts and Spotify.

As a creative experiment I have started a podcast called Here Right Now, and I wanted to let you know about it as a reader of this here weblog.

Inspired by that incisive – and for some, overlabored – William Gibson quote, ‘The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed’, Here Right Now explores the future that’s already here.

Each episode a special guest brings a new perspective on how a facet of everyday life is changing right now. Through their expert eyes we go deep into emerging new trends around the world, from the rise of esports to the changing design of cities, from interesting new food trends to the latest evolutions in dating behavior.

I hope that each episode is a beginner’s guide to the evolution of our everyday life.

If you’re interested head to HereRightNow and subscribe. You’ll get an email each time there’s an episode, with links for popular podcasting apps.

My promise to you is that my guests and I will do everything we can to warm your earlugs and edutain your brain.

Will

I played rugby, which commentators like to say is a ‘collision sport’. As a result of those collisions I spent quite a bit of time with the physiotherapist. Working with physios, the most amazing realization – and many of you will have experienced this – is when you tell them confidently where the problem is.

‘Yes it hurts there, just under the left shoulder blade, when I twist like this’…’ah! YEP. That’s it’.

They start doing their thing. Tracing back.

‘What about this? Hmmm. And now, what about if you try to touch your toes? OK, and now lift your arm and twist to me – what about here?’.

And suddenly – KABLAMMO – they prod a completely different part of your body – sometimes literally your butt not your shoulder, or your inside foot and not your lower back – and you are rewarded with a completely unexpected electric shock of pain.

Physios call this ‘referred pain’. And in these sobering moments you learn a few things:

Firstly, you don’t know shit about your own body. Secondly, physios are not only professional sadists – the experienced ones call on thousands of hours of practice, such that their work can feel more like magic than medicine. Thirdly, the actual cause of your issue will very often be in a completely different part of your body than where you experience it.

Just like our bodies, our teams, organizations and societies are organic, and are interconnected, complex systems. And often I find that – quite understandably – in work our focus is on the symptom that is most obviously present. The customer enquiries left unprocessed and unloved. The high turnover in a particular role or team. The lack of verve in some marketing copy. The failure again to restock a particular product two days before it runs out.

And the takeaway that I find useful today is that most of the time we’re fixing downstream issues. Consequences of something else. The ‘referred pain’. Symptoms, not causes.

As leaders, our job is to always be going upstream.

Like physios, we need to track back. Call on instinct and experience. To trust the curiosity and intelligence of our teams and ourselves and ask why the things happened that led to the particular issue that has presented itself today.

Downstream we can make quick fixes. Band aid the problem. Temporarily alleviate the pain. But it won’t go away.

If we don’t really go and do the work on the root cause, our body, team, organization or society may well cleverly reroute around it, patch things up, do the best that it can. (I have a left knee that doesn’t bend fully, a right forearm that won’t grip totally, a wonky shoulder that leaves me with a stiff neck sometimes – I function, but old unfixed injuries hold me back). Things can still function. 

It’s upstream that we’ll actually solve it.

It’s upstream that we can really amplify our impact by locating and fixing the issue at its cause, once and for all. It’s upstream that we can fundamentally reroute how resources are allocated and directed to unlock the best performance. It’s upstream that taking the time to be calm, deliberate and bigger picture will pay 10x, 100x or often 1,000x back over the coming weeks and years. So leadership – for me – is all about going upstream.

A sidenote to finish.

There’s another benefit to always going upstream. It takes us to interesting places. We learn more. We’ll end up speaking to interesting people about bigger opportunities in areas that are often ‘outside’ of our direct scope. Whether we’re fixing problems in a company we’ve lived in for many years or being recruited somewhere new, when we ask ourselves and the people we’re working with ‘OK, and why is this happening and where does it start?’ we open up a much bigger horizon of opportunity for them and for us.  And that’s not only good, it’s how interesting explorations and big adventures begin.

Always go upstream.

Life is interesting now. I have many thoughts but no theme to wrap them up, so I’m going to slide them into this blog post, like pouring pebbles into a bucket. Feel free to look away.

Learning

I’m in my 12th month at Brandwatch, and I feel that I now fully understand the company, the market, the people, the dynamics. Obviously it hasn’t been linear – probably a nice s-curve – but it’s interesting to me how long it took. 12 months to nail it. As an aside, the company has doubled in staff size in that time.

(Knowing all of that how the company works stuff isn’t necessarily helpful. I feel the value of fresh eyes, when new people join us. As much as I’ve understood the status quo, I am now part of it too. Gotta watch that.)

I have loved taking services-side experiences and skills and using them inside an organisation. Especially having worked with so many different types of personality and spent time learning about listening / motivations / organisational culture etc. So for me the transition from external (consulting/agency) to internal (client-side) has been very rewarding. Seeing things through. Being at the heart of it. I love it. I don’t think I will want to go back to services, but never say never.

The only two things I miss from the type of work you do services-side are:

• Winning deals – I am one step removed from our sales teams and their selling to clients, so that incredible adrenaline that I used to feed off has gone. There are lots of warm, fuzzy moments when we win, or launch great stuff, or see particularly sweet inbound enquiries from great organisations, but it’s less raw, less heart-racing. I miss that.
• Space to be creative – I only noticed this recently, in two more creative, spacious conversations with team mates. And I realised how lacking we’ve been in our NYC office in places to draw (white walls, flip charts) and how rarely I’ve been in that mode. We can be very head down – there is so much to do. I can do more of this and plan to, now that I’ve noticed it, but also learned the business.

America

Still loving living and being in New York. We had a great summer (bloody hot, but unseasonably mild apparently – I shudder at the thoughts of ‘normal’).

My subway card swipe (no Oyster card here) still needs work. Really pisses me off. How can I consider myself settled before I can confidently swipe through with 99.9999% success?

Favourite moments are still where the melting pot blends ingredients that were just not available back in Brighton & Hove. Like taking the kids to the playground, and there being 5 or 6 families cooking BBQs for their kids parties, Puerto Rican music blaring out of proper sound systems, while I push the kids on the swings in the sunshine. Or seeing snakes and eagles on our summer holiday. The variety, the difference.

Some of my language has changed. I say apartment instead of flat, even to Brits. Elevator. Resumé. Soccer (I know). But not all. I say Surname. And said ‘trainers’ the other day – I’m never saying sneakers. It’s a non-negotiable. Mrs and kids have gone further: they say chips instead of crisps (this upsets me greatly). Accent-wise, I think I’m still largely unchanged. Some gentle rounding of Ts, maybe. Our eldest said ‘peanut budder’ the other day. Our youngest deliberately pronounces ‘wadder’ to make himself understood at school. Sweet.

Challenges

Perception – this is a bit abstract now, but I am becoming more and more fascinated by perception. It seems to be a central opportunity and challenge for us at Brandwatch, and principally for me given my role. And for anyone who has something they want to share with others. I can’t really explain all of it, but it’s about I suppose it gets called and relates to (but isn’t entirely about) Positioning, a lot. It’s a magical area. How people feel about a product, a company, a sector. I am looking forward to learning and playing in this area.

Face time – I spend the first 2/3rds of every day in Hangouts and on Skype calls, some one to one, many with multiple attendees. It is often a frustrating experience. This area is still so flawed, technologically, for consumers. What’s great is that I have found that strong relationships can continue to thrive through these channels, but really working through challenges when the relationships aren’t there yet or are suffering is very difficult. It’s also hard to contribute to important, dynamic conversations when the majority of a group are together in a physical space and one finds oneself the voice from the screen. A challenge. (And the reason that business travel continues, despite tech).

Time for writing – I write best in the morning. Morning is now when I catch up on 5 hours of the UK’s productivity (and to a lesser extent, 6 hours of Germany’s) and start jumping on video calls with people. I need to find a way to hack this. I enjoy writing and I know it is a great investment.

And those are the thoughts I’ve been carrying around with me.

I’m starting to get a bit miffed with THE CLOUD.

I was on a flight, went to listen to some podcasts I subscribed to especially for time spent on trains, planes and automobiles, piped through a mini iPad bought especially for travelling, and yet none of the podcasts were available because the default setting is to stream them from the cloud.

Making various changes to my iTunes account has also resulted in my biggest commitment to Apple, my music library, first being uploaded to the cloud (iTunes Match) and then gradually disappearing from various devices. I got Genius support early on in the process, but one step after another it went wrong. Somewhere along the line I’ve overwritten the fullness of my previous library, and with it a chunk of my lock-in and goodwill with Apple.

Actually, what pissed me off the most wasn’t losing the back-catalogue of music, but losing my beloved favourites playlist, which had over 600 tracks that I’d manually rated as either 4 or 5 star. It was my go-to music resource, whether head down in some PowerPoint or post-pub kitchen-dancing at friend’s houses. The first transfer of music to the cloud and a new Macbook worked, but that tiny file of metadata was lost, and with it a slowly curated and highly personal compass that helped me find the best of my music. I would pay good money to get that playlist back. Not the tracks, just the listing.

And as I whittle down my inbox of several hundred emails flagged for reply or action, it gets to the point where the 100 or so left all contain links that point to the cloud – to Google Docs, to Soundcloud, or that need reference to my calendar (Google Apps) or just the straight good ol’ internet. I’m in an internet deadzone, thirty thousand feet above the Labrador Sea.

The cloud is great when you’re online, but it rather sucks when you’re not.

I’m not knocking the internet. I love the internet. It’s given me knowledge and connections and a job that I love. But there’s a utopian feel to how the cloud is described. It reminds me of part of Honor Harger’s utterly brilliant talk at Meaning 2013, where she talked about how the dreamy branding of the cloud belies its inherently physical nature of big ugly datacenters. A mesmirising and potent talk.

And I think what else is niggling is that some of the time that this disguises some of what is good for the vendor company than for the consumer. Like those irritating cards in hotel rooms proclaiming green credentials and asking the guest (quite rightly) not to drop towels on the floor unless they really want fresh ones, but pretending it’s all out of the good of their hearts. Why would my brand new mini iPad default to streaming podcasts? I can’t see how that benefits me.

What would help is simple. Better offline support for cloud-based platforms. Offline platforms that work intelligently and carefully deploy precious storage to maximize the chances of me being able to access what I want to. And more wifi everywhere. Good wifi, free wifi.

Then we can cherish the cloud more as we traipse around our busy lives down on the ground.

Fun few weeks in the world of social analytics (or whatever you call it now – more of that ‘what do we even call this any more’ conversation another time).

Our partners in Boulder, Colorado Gnip got bought by Twitter, who we at Brandwatch also proudly partner with as a Twitter Certified Product.

Totally unexpected, totally logical. And in our little social data village, this is big news.

This makes complete sense – it continues Twitter’s strategy of buying up or clawing back control of the crucial elements of their ecosystem – buying Social TV companies like Bluefin Labs and Second Sync because TV is so crucial to them, buying TweetDeck for its high-rolling users, and this move buying their data-channel-to-market in Gnip.

If I remember correctly, Fred Wilson who had invested in Twitter and was at the time on the board, wrote back in 2010 that the company would consolidate and integrate the developments on its platform that were ‘hole-filling’. And Twitter did. This isn’t quite that, but it does feel to me like something very similar: integrating core assets that are strategically important.

So the deal is done, or at least announced, and while a lot of the detail is missing, from what we do know we feel positive about this. We know and love the Gnip guys, we recently announced our Premium API, of which part is driven by our partnership with Gnip. So far, so good.

The next question for most people was ‘what does this mean for DataSift, as Twitter’s only other data wholesaler?’. My view at the time was that is must’ve been a blow for them to hear, but that it could actually be good for them.

These were my thoughts that I chipped into an interesting management discussion – for me:

– Their major competitor has been effectively taken out of play (in the broader social data provision business).

– People in our market suddenly need someone else to solve their specialist data source problems

– So didn’t their potential customer base just expand and their competition lessen (outside of the Twitter piece)? My thought would be that this means that their data wholesaling business just got more attractive.

All speculation. And of course they have other paths open to them too that they may well prefer over data wholesaling.

By chance I saw Rob Bailey, DataSift CEO at an enjoyable Altimeter dinner last week, and he seemed happy. He’s saying that they’ve had an acceleration in enquiries and deals closing, which I believe.

Looking ahead it will be interesting to see what unfolds next with Gnip’s integration into Twitter, and with initiatives like Big Boulder.

But with the way this market is popping at the moment, it will also be interesting just to see what happens next. The action is so constant it’s like a soap opera at the moment, but with less douchebags and better acting 🙂

Which reminds me – Susan Etlinger said Silicon Valley is worth a watch. Happy viewing!

We moved to Brooklyn from Brighton & Hove 17 days ago. These are my field notes.

Food, drink, etc.

• I’ll start with food, because I always start with food.
• The food is better than anything you can get in the UK, including London, by sheer quality, variety and how dense those options are. I don’t care what you say. This is a fact. 
• Seamless is a mobile app that you can order takeout from – imagine two or three hundred 4 or 5 star options that will deliver to your home within 30-45 mins, stored in your phone with your card details. *PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING*.
• Brisket.
• For better or worse, much of the US culinary genius lies in blending salty and sweet. In cookies, with bacon and syrup, or whatever. If it’s sweet, they’ll make it salty. If it’s salty, you’ll get a sweet twist. 
• Most things taste saltier here (tortilla chips, bread, peanut butter etc). Gotta watch that.
• Buying food in shops is more expensive in general than in the UK
• We found a good wine shop with reasonable prices (phew).
• A pickleback is a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice. Love dem.
• Smorgasburg – 60 food and drink independents selling their Ethiopian / organic fruit slushies / Donuts / Lobster Rolls, weekly on Saturdays in a small park by the East River. Weekly.
• The peanut butter part of the aisle in the supermarket is impressive. PB FTW.

Culture and stuff.

• New Yorkers are as obsessed with the weather as Brits. It’s brilliant! They love bitching and speculating and the whole damn weather thing. They do it well. We unite on this.
• Related: knowing the location of things is a badge of honour for New Yorkers. “It’s on 14th and sixth”. “No, fifth”. “That’s right, 14th and fifth – they moved their last year”.
• People talk on their mobile headphones as they walk more than they do in the UK. Jabbering away.
• We think as Brits we know American celebrities (or I did), but of course we just know the top 10% – many conversations reference celebs I have never heard of. (I hope I retain this ignorance.)
• Grilled cheese is Americanese for cheese on toast – for once*, we are more literal than them. (See: sidewalk).
• When people don’t understand my accent, they react as if I am stupid. Like this: “HUH?!”. It happens about once every two days.
• In NYC, no one cares about your fancy British accent. (SF, also).
• On the other hand, colleagues tell me that if people hear you have a British accent, they assume you are smarter than you actually are. So it’s not remarked upon, but it gives you a little upgrade in the intellectual dept. Useful.
• The Mrs has been saying ‘kinda’ way more than usual. Noticeable uptick. (Kids haven’t started school yet).
• People are friendlier. It’s just a fact. And some of it is lip service, but most of it isn’t.
• Walking around busy Manhattan is no different to walking around busy London – the whole tough New Yorkers thing is only really apparent when it comes to two things. Hailing cabs. And being a busy metropolitan person in brutal winter conditions.
• A homeless guy, wrapped in many layers, apparently asleep on a bench in the subway, gave me correct directions when other commuters didn’t know the answer.
• The Social Security office has been my only real perspective of the real, rest of American life. Grim.

Physical stuff

• On his impressions of NYC, our oldest offered “on the one hand it’s big and scary, and on the other hand it’s safe and secure”. +1 to that.
• Subway is quick and easy. Apparently the platforms get horrifically hot in summer (the carriages are AC).
• Consumer electronics stuff seems much cheaper – from TVs to Apple gear.
• IKEA Brooklyn is exactly like IKEA in Croydon. For better or worse.
• Transition from (small ish) house to (large ish) apartment has not been claustrophobic as feared – in fact, to our surprise, it’s actually been quite liberating
• On the liberating front, we await our cargo shipment not with eager anticipation but more the fear of an impending tidal wave of old junk we’ve been without for 6 months. Shipping companies should offer a ‘nuke it’ setting – push the button, they burn/eBay it. If you ever do this, make a clean break. 

 

I’ve always been through real phases with things.

In recent times it has been mountain biking (no longer an obsession), CrossFit (current phase, but not the white hot obsession that it once was), looking further back, rugby, outdoorsy stuff.  I wrote the book in a kind of obsessive bursty way too: 3 months of disciplined writing, done and dusted from start to finish in 6 months. 

From a work point of view, it was marketing, then entrepreneurship, then digital, then social media, then culture and organisations. Now it’s my new role. I am noticing as I immerse myself. So is my wife.

These phases or cycles last different amounts of time. But the patterns are similar.

I devour everything on the topic. With mountain biking I subscribed to two magazines, read a forum daily, rode when I could, lovingly washed the bikes, took photos of them, ate and slept biking. It is obsessive. These things become ‘my thing’. It has been the same in work. When a world catches my interest, I immerse myself, I turn almost all of my available attention and energy to it. There’s both a learning energy and a doing energy.

Quite funny really.

Family and friends seem to be less cyclical, fortunately. But some of the people I love to be with the most are newer friends. That said, nothing compares to people I’ve known and who’ve known me for decades.

So for me, cycles are interesting.

It’s the winter solstice today (I just remembered, as I write). Another cycle, another turning point. In my work, I am seeing cycles and phases – as Brandwatch becomes a bigger company, with bigger international teams, moves into its next and most ambitious (yet) phase, as our market moves into a new phase, as I move into a new phase, as my team start a new cycle. We are all shifting.

These cycles are irresistable. They just are.

The best advice my mum gave us when we had our first child was that, now matter how rough things were at any time, to ‘remember that everything is a phase’. She was right. And not just about coping with new borns 🙂