As the snow comes down across large parts of the country, schools across Britain are bracing thenmselves for a flurry of activity.  It’s the launch of Make Your Mark with a Tenner and 20,000 school pupils have signed up to take part!  They’ll be seeing what they can achieve with just ten pounds in the month of February!

The money has come from Peter Jones of Dragons’ Den and from Michael and Xochi Birch and the challenge is supported by NESTA. 

I’m hoping that this year’s challenge will raise a few questions;

With the financial crisis making some jobs more and more uncertain, why shouldn’t we be encouraging people to think about entrepreneurship or self-employment as a first option rather than a last resort?

Many parents are worse off than they were a year ago.  In fact, according to an annual Halifax survey, pocket money is down by two pounds to just six pounds a week.  So as well as encouraging money-saving tips, why not money making ones for school pupils too?

Finally, with interest rates at a low (that tenner will grow by only 4p in a month in your high street account), isn’t it time that the amazing power of enterprise got a wider hearing?

I really hope you’ll wish everyone taking part the best of luck, and that you’ll keep in touch with this year’s ‘Make Your Mark with a Tenner’ here.

“Welcome to this morning’s event.  I know that some of you in the room may be following us on Twitter.  In which case, may I suggest that you turn your mobile phone off, concentrate for once in your life and listen to what I’m saying.  You might learn something.”

This was NOT how Robert Phillips, head of Edelman UK chose to welcome guests to this week’s launch of their 2009 Trust Barometer.  In fact, he encouraged us to use a special code to ‘tag’ our messages, so that they could be more easily found later on.  They were even displayed on a large screen in the room.

Now reader, you may think that I could ignore this early morning temptation to join the Twitterati. Alas, this special tweet was more than I could resist.  Two minutes later I was tapping away into my phone, providing anyone who cares to follow me an ‘exclusive’ peek at the contents of the report.  A report which, let’s not forget, would be online half an hour later and had been loaded carefully onto a memory stick for each and every guest.     

All of this got me thinking about how I confuse what is new with what is interesting.  In the case of the Trust Barometer that morning, the report was both.  What worries me is the extent to which my appetite for ‘freshness’ has developed.  I’ve moved beyond the vegetable section at the front of the supermarket and I’m peering up the road to see if the next lorry is arriving.

I walked into Waterstones this week and headed to the business section.  Picking up a tasty-looking tome, I opened the flyleaf to discover that it had been written in 2007.  I dismissed the book almost immediately.  I’m not looking for a book that’s two years old.  2008 is pushing it.  I want a book that’s stamped ‘2009’.  Yeah, that’s made its way onto the shelves in the last month.  And that, reader, is absolutely ridiculous.

So my Old Years Resolution starts here.  My magpie ways must change.  I’m going to try to leave the surfers and body-boarders to their own devices, much as I’m drawn to the excitement of rushing up the beach (and wiping out) on the latest wave to break. Wish me luck! I’m heading out into the stiller, deeper waters.  Whether its books, films, video clips or subject area, I’m going to make the most concerted effort I can to ask “How GOOD is it”, rather than “How NEW Is It?”.

Now where did I put that 1950s novel?

 

For one US commuter, it was almost a swansong.  Having slipped onto the tracks of a subway train, disaster loomed for a 68-year-old woman, in town for the inauguration of Barack Obama.  From swansong to Swainson then, as a passing cop, one Eliot Swainson, saved the day by leaping to her rescue and helping her to duck down beneath the platform.  Any passers by may wish to boost the officer’s career still further by logging onto the increasingly popular Rate My Cop Website to add their feedback on the heroic deed. 

Such superhero behaviour was largely befitting of the day in which so much of the world said “yes we can”.  It is an incredible coincidence that one of the most inspiring people in the world is now the most powerful.  Amazing too, to think that just over a dozen years ago, Michelle Obama reckoned;

“There is a strong possibility that Barack will pursue a political career, although it’s unclear. There is a little tension with that. I’m very wary of politics. I think he’s too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism.”

I find this comment, taken from an interview with the New Yorker, strangely inspiring.  Doesn’t it make you wonder if there is another couple somewhere in the United States today, who may have no idea that one day one of them will run the country?  I wonder who she will be.

One person whose school friends may have been more than a little surprised by where he ended up, was a man born in a one-room log cabin and whose parents were two uneducated farmers.  As I was reminded by the excellent Caspar Berry recently, here is his resume;

Failed in business at age 21.
Was defeated in a legislative race at age 22.
Failed again in business at age 24.
Overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26.
Had a nervous breakdown at age 27.
Lost a congressional race at age 34.
Lost a congressional race at age 36.
Lost a senatorial race at age 45.
Failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47.
Lost a senatorial race at age 47.

The next line on his CV?

Was elected PRESIDENT of the US at age 52

The name at the top of this Curriculum Vitae? 

Abraham Lincoln. 

 

 

In 1205, it was so cold in London that the River Thames froze over between mid January and mid March.  Which makes today’s parky British weather seem positively mild by comparison. 

I read that chilling fact in today’s Times Newspaper, which seems to have risen in price to ninety pence.  That would mean that a Times-a-day for every week day this year is going to set you back two hundred and thirty four pounds.  That’s almost twenty pounds a month.  It’s four pounds fifty a week.  I dread to think what that would have bought in 1205.

Over lunch yesterday, a friend shared his view that in these challenging financial times, we shouldn’t be worrying about the little expenditures, like the Starbucks on the way to work or the daily newspaper for that matter.  He reckons that cutting back on these can only make us miserable and that instead, we should look to cut back on the bigger things.  Avoiding that restaurant and eating at home, for example.    

As New Year’s Resolutions begin, I turn back to something I wrote in August last year about business books.  What’s far more interesting than my words, is the comments which follow in which some of my favourite people have chipped in with their suggestions.  Hopefully you’ll find something there of interest!

Whatever your plans for 2009, let me take this opportunity to wish you all of the very best for a safe and successful year ahead.

 

There is something oddly comforting about the Minister for Digital Engagement sending a formal invitation through the post.  Tom Watson MP is on warm and friendly form as he welcomes a group of us into Admiralty House this evening.  I have been in the main room for less than thirty seconds when one of his team takes me by the arm, asking if I’ve ever met Peter Mandelson.  We move across the floor towards the new Secretary of State for Business.

Lord Mandelson wonders in what way I am digitally pioneering (A good question, and a reference to the event’s title, ‘In Honour of Digital Pioneers’), so I mention WebMission, causing him to reflect on a trip to Silicon Valley in the nineties.   More recently, I confess, I’ve been helping his department to connect with each other in a less high-tech manner, at a recent Speednetworking event at his department, BERR!  I sense he may feel that he had a lucky escape…

Sam Michel talks through some of the successes of Digital Mission and invites Untld World’s Alberto Nardelli to share his own reflections on the recent trip to New York.  Favourites including Ben Hammersley (newly installed as Deputy Editor of Wired magazine) and Matt Locke of Channel Four make up part of an excellent crowd and I cross paths with the Beeb’s own Rory Cellan-Jones.   Finally, Mark Prigg,  the Evening Standard’s technology correspondent is in the house, and though I mention that I’ve just read his colleague Nick Curtis’s article about Twitter, I am too polite too offer my fuller opinion of his conclusions.   Perhaps I will write him a letter.