A few years ago I emailed Honda UK and asked if they’d ever bring the Element into the good old Blighty, not to everyone’s taste I know but with two dogs as passengers it seems a practical if maybe quirky choice.   The reply puzzled me though by stating that the Element,

represents Honda doing what it does best – being individualistic, doing things differently, boldly going where other companies cannot or dare not

but sadly for all sorts of reasons they’re were no plans to give UK buyers the benefit of this rather prosaic vision.  Odd seeing as it’s available in right hand drive form in Japan and as we know with the large number of grey imports from the Land of the Rising Sun on UK roads it couldn’t be that difficult with the resources at Honda’s disposal to sell them here. 

But now Ford US are getting in on the box with a wheel at each corner act with the Flex.  But as you’d imagine being American it’s done on a much bigger scale, whereas the Element is underneath a modest Honda Accord the Ford is 3.5l V6 with fuel figures to match.  Apparently it comes with something called ‘Eco Boost’ which gives it a huge 16mpg around town, maybe someone from Honda’s marketing department has moved to Ford in the intervening period. 

Can’t help thinking though the Flex looks like the love child of a Mini Clubman and Range Rover Sport.

Like most people I missed the Sony Qualia range, largely I’m guessing due to the not insubstantial cost and you couldn’t get them from your local Currys.  But six years later would the now discontinued Sony Qualia 016, which is still the smallest consumer digital camera ever produced,  be available at eBay prices or if you’re after a small digital camera for pocket money and of course 2.0 mega pixels don’t worry you look for used Sony U40 instead?  The 016 It looks like some Joe 90 would use so of course I want one. 

Another year another Eurovision but this year was different.  Graham Norton stepped into Sir Terry of Wogan’s shoes and did a sterling job, the Russians spend a whopping thirty three million Euros using apparently the worlds supply of LED panels to create the stage.

As is the tradition here’s a brief overview of the runners and riders.

If you haven’t watched Professor Brian Cox’s Horizon episode on Nuclear Fusion you should, it’s a fascinating look at the subject in it’s own right but the best bit is when he talks to Saul Griffiths a serial entrepreneur and inventor, about energy production and consumption.  Griffith’s view is about as pragmatic and uncluttered as it gets. 

Here we are on this finite little ball that’s spinning through the universe, if there is a limit to how much power per square metre we can get, we shouldn’t be afraid of that limit but we should certainly try to operate within it. Let’s as quickly as possible get the debate about energy away from the emotional, qualitative, polar bear issues and to a very rational, “what do we have to do”?, “how do we get this done”?

Griffith’s thinking came from examining his own energy consumption.  He assumed as he commutes by bike, uses public transport and owns a wind energy company he be a “good human”.  The devil is of course in the details, he worked out for example how much energy is consumed having the New York Times delivered to his house, 507 watts if you’re interested, how much to take a how shower everyday, drive, fly etc etc.  Griffiths was shocked by the results. 

The two then went through a calculation to establish what energy needs might be based on on a number of  premises. 

• Energy equity. The average American currently consumes 11.4KW of energy per year whereas the world average is 2.2KW making a world total of 13TW or 13 million million watts.  So if we pick a number somewhere in between 11 and 2 that’s equitable for all of us on planet earth that would be fair wouldn’t it? 5KW per annum making a total of 30TW. 
• No fossil fuels.
• Target date of 2035.

In the West we’d need to consume a whole lot less even with more than doubling world total , but those not as fortunate than us could enjoy a live style approximating our own.  Again sounds fair doesn’t it?

• If we choose then to generate a modest 5TW of our needs from Nuclear Fission Reactors we’d need to build 5000 of these in 25 years or two and half full size reactor every week.
• Every 3 minutes for the next 25 years we’d need to install a full size 3MW Wind Turbine and cover about 2% of the land mass with such turbines for another 5TW.
• 10TW from Solar.  250  squared metres of Solar Panels would need to be installed every second for the next 25 years.
• Bio fuels.  2TW.  We’d need to produce 4 Olympic sized swimming pools of genetically engineered bacteria every second for the next 25 years.

They didn’t get to include tide, geothermal or hydro as the numbers were probably equally as mind boggling.  As Cox ten points out they didn’t factor in population growth and every minute or second we do nothing the numbers above just keep climbing.

He then asks if we can get over our ‘addiction’ to fossil fuels?  Even if we bend and twist the calculations above you’d have to conclude things don’t look good.  Now of course this was a programme about the possibility of Nuclear Fusion and we just don’t know if it works or could ever work on an industrial scale, but it might be the ‘get out of jail free’ card. 

Humanity then has a couple of choices.

• Assume Fusion is too far away and increase the use of fossil alternatives until we get it to work.
• Take a gamble with Fusion and spend 100 times what we do on R&D at the moment.  In the UK we currently spend more on ringtones than Fusion research.

I came away from the programme both encouraged and disappointed by our progress, on one hand there is some amazing research going on the field of Fusion power all around the world but it’s painfully slow progress.  The problem of course as much about money and politics as it is scientific but if we were to take Fusion power as seriously as we take Fusion bombs we could be on to something. 

A Manhattan Project for energy anyone?

I think I might have already confessed before that I’m a fan of board games.  Now if you think that just means games like Cludeo and Monopoly you’d be wrong, a quick look at BoardGameGeek proves that and they also scratch the gaming itch in a way button mashing can’t.  Being an aficionado of Z-Man Games’ rather brilliant Shadowfist, if only it wasn’t a CCG, I recently picked up a copy of Pandemic one of a growing number of co-operative games like Shadows Over Camelot and Lord of the Rings where the challenge is to beat the game not each other.

The premise is you’ll not be surprised to found out is about saving the world from deadly diseases, four of them in fact, by finding cures before there are too many ‘outbreaks’.  Not overly complex or bogged down with an encyclopaedic rulebook it’s a seemingly straightforward game that is in fact crammed with subtlety and tons of choices.

Recommended.  But don’t just take my word for it.

As someone who has seen a fair few business speakers over the years some stand out.  Charles Handy and Dave Snowden are two of my favourites and now I need to add another; Seth Godin…thanks to Steve Clayton who furnished me with a ticket.  It was a fairly high octane performance from Seth as by his own admission he squeezed seven hours of material into only one plus an impressive two hour Q&A.  There was as a result a lot to assimilate so here’s a list of what I remember or more accurately scribbled down in no particular order .  I hope at least some of it makes sense.

- Personality in large organisations is found at the fringes
- Large organisations feel they need to hit a home run every time but the world now doesn’t allow that to happen
- The future is about doing small things really well and growing from there
- Authenticity is all important
- The CD hid the fact the music industry was dying
- With less money about there is less noise
- We are in a new Industrial Revolution
- In organisations the middle is about the status quo
- For serious change you need to ignore the middle
- Ideas that spread win
- Marketing is normally about interrupting
- The TV Industrial Complex’s days are numbered
- Harrods in empty not because of the economy but because it’s boring
- We deal with clutter with more clutter
- When you get to the edge everything gets easier
- The Scion xB out sold the xA three to one
- We are all in the fashion business
- The internet doesn’t care about you
- The internet directly connects you to consumers
- The internet means individuals have more power
- The internet says ‘I want it now’
- Be internet friendly
- Remember the ‘Long tail’
- Everyone has their own channel
- Connect people
- It’s not about how many but who?
- Gatekeepers are less important than they’ve ever been
- Talk to people who want to listen
- Remember the ‘Seinfield Curve’, be scarce or ubiquitous
- People like people who like the things they like
- Only 1 in 50,000 heretics get burnt at the stake
- Find people who want to follow
- Always be clear and honest about what you do
- Seth doesn’t watch TV, go to meetings or Twitter?
- Tribes are people with the same mission
- Tribes will split when the mission is over and create new missions
- Marketing is not evil but there are evil marketers
- Most organisations aren’t as stuck as they think
- What story can you create that’s true and scarce?

If you’ve ever been to the US and switched on the TV you’ll how completely and utterly awful it is.  So why then are they so much better at making drama series than we are?  Casualty vs ER, no contest.  The Wire vs The Bill, ditto.  Then of course there is the mashup of sci-fi and horror where we again offer little in the way of resistance to the invaders…only a certain Doctor able to keep the British end up.   Which brings me to the end of the first, and as it turns out probably only season of Demons, the guys at Digital Spy, have already written an end of season report so I don’t have to.  It’s sad really as there was buried in the middle of this TV equivalent of hastily made trifle was some nice ideas and Philip Glenister.  So where did it all go wrong?  It’s simple and is the reason the Americans are consistently better at this kind of TV than we are.   The writing…pure and simple.

Hat tip to Andrew for the link.

One of the reasons I originally started to podcast apart from trying to mimic Radio 4 was, and I’m not sure I should confess to this, the opportunity to get hold of some new ‘tech’.  A childhood obsession with a reel to reel tape recorder made digital if you will. 

My current podcasting ‘rig’ is the same one I used when I first started and follows the time honoured tradition of not splashing too much cash just in case we didn’t get along.  In retrospect it hasn’t been the easiest to live with, whilst all three major hardware  components, Tapco Mix 100, Griffin iMic, and Behringer B1 mic are all individually great they don’t always play well together, the iMic and Mix 100 being the main culprits.  I always spend an inordinate amount of time getting the levels right, monitoring via headphones never seems to work predictably and for some reason there is always some line noise to deal with in the edit. 

I’ve been pondering for sometime about swapping the mixer and iMic for a dedicated USB audio interface, something along the lines of the M-Box 2.  My hope is that it will eliminate the need for endlessly playing around

until the levels are right plus it’ll plumb directly into the PC without the need for extra cables.  It also means my current DAW Magix Music Maker might end up in retirement as most USB interfaces come with some kind of bundled software, in the case of the M-Box it’s Pro Tools LE.  The question though is do I go through this process whilst in the middle if the current BTHP series on the Royal Navy or wait until it’s finished?

I heard someone quote Tom Peters the other day that we’re not in a ‘recession’ but a ‘recalibration’ and this intrigued me.  After a quick search on t’interweb it wasn’t Peters but Steve Yastrow, a like minded thinker who regularly posts on Peters site.  Either way it’s an intelligent, relevant and thought provoking post.

The way your business generates results is different, now.

Your customers think differently, now.

Your customers care about different things, now.

Your customers act differently, now.

Your customers may actually be different people, now.

Customers aren’t disposable anymore; more than ever, you have to create sustainable customer relationships.

Everything is different now.

It also made me wonder if business expectations in general are in need of recalibration too.

The podcast has found it’s way onto the ‘Podcasts’ front page on iTunes.  I’m still stunned that so many people enjoy BTHP and my continued thanks to anyone who listens.