What is ‘The Way of the Web’

February 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

When I started blogging years ago, I had no idea that one day it would become the main public face of my business and career. It started because I’d made a few attempts to launch websites before becoming employed as a journalist, but had never made the effort to learn how to code and develop a decent site, so when technology offered me a way that I could publish whatever I wanted with no Editor, it seemed like a wonderful freedom.

If you’ve ever tried to name a website, business, book or band, you’ll identify with the problem of coming up with a name for something – until it’s established and familiar, most names just sound odd. Considering I was once guitarist with a band named ‘Inflatable Hostess’, this shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise!

But as the site has grown from friends and family to thousands of people every month, I’ve been increasingly asked about the name (Although not as much as my Twitter username ). So with a lovely new logo now in place, it seems like a good time to explain what on earth I was thinking…

What does ‘TheWayoftheWeb’ mean?

The name of the site was inspired by a number of things, but is mainly inspired by my interest in Japanese culture, particularly around martial arts. I’d read the ‘Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai‘ not long before launching the site, having seen it referenced in the film ‘Ghost Dog‘. It’s an interesting book of notes provided by the samurai Yamamoto Tsunemoto, around the time the samurai class switched from being mainly warriors to administrators.

But the main inspiration comes from the philosophy behind Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do. If you only ever considered Bruce Lee a film star, then the insight into his approach to martial arts and fighting styles might be a little bit of a surprise, but the key element that inspired me is that Jeet Kune Do isn’t a fixed style like Karate. It’s fluid and changing, hence why it’s often called a ‘style without a style’, and that a good martial artists should be like water, and moving fluidly without hesitation.

And that’s the personal hidden joke within the name.

There is no one set ‘Way’ of the Web – the important thing is to set out on the journey and find the way which works for you and your business.

 

So what does ‘TheWayoftheWeb’ do?

The succinct business philosophy is simple – it’s much easier to find what works for you with experienced help. The longer version is providing:

  • Content creation - Content is a foundation of success in digital, whether you’re a publisher, retailer, manufacturer or service provider. Sometimes it’s hard to see how you can produce amazing writing from inside your business, which is why hiring someone with experience in journalism and writing online can really transform what you’re doing by asking the right questions.
  • Marketing – You need people to see what you’re doing. But how do you achieve that with the ever-changing state of search engine optimisation, or the constant launches of new social networks? What you need is someone who can advise on where to start, and give you a solid foundation to work from.
  • Training – Whether or not you want someone to provide content and marketing services for you indefinitely, at the very least you probably want to know exactly how to measure whether it’s successful or not, and the world of analytics and social media monitoring can be daunting with so much potential data to turn into insight. And if you do plan on transferring content and marketing to an internal resource, then you can shortcut a lot of time, money and experimentation.
  • And lastly there’s this site – which aims to provide insight and guidance into journalism, writing, and marketing in a digital world, with the occasional more personal post to avoid becoming an endless stream of tutorials, and to provide an insight into the actual person you’re hiring – the most qualified person in the world won’t be effective for your business if you decide within 10 seconds that you hate them, so by taking a look around you hopefully get an idea whether there’s a fit with your business.

And that’s it in a fairly large nutshell. Of course, it also provides you with a way to Contact Me, and who I am.

 

Your turn: I’d love to know how you came up with the name of your own blog/site/business and how it came about… And what you think of mine!

Filed Under: Blogging, Dan Thornton Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Apologise like everyone is watching…

February 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How do you apologise when you’ve made a serious mistake? I wrote about how brands can actually be more successful by admitting imperfections and mistakes last week – and tonight I happened to read a jaw-dropping example of a mistake by a newspaper (via Newspaper Death Watch).

The summary is the photo of an innocent 40-year-old man named Angel Ortiz was used in a front page story about a horrific crime comitted by a 20-year-old with the same, and apparently very common, Spanish name. As a result, the innocent party has lost work, been persecuted and is effectively reduced to hiding in his house in fear of what might happen in public.

I’m sure that noone involved in publishing the story ever intended this to happen, but when a lawyer for the innocent Ortiz wrote to the paper demanding a front page retraction, the newspaper responded by removing the image from its website, and the ‘retraction ran on the bottom of page 2, with no photo‘.

Why apologies are business-critical:

I understand that sometimes the ‘right’ thing to do can run into roadblocks when lawyers advise on the ‘correct legal’ thing to do. But certainly retractions need to be an equal size and prominence to the original content, and reach the same audience.

Secondly, there’s been no personal apology, or any help and assistance in correcting the situation, which would have gone some way to rectifying the situation. I’m trying to think of any legal reasons why the paper couldn’t have run something asking for help in finding work for an innocent man, for example, besides their own guilt?

But here’s the thing – I don’t know the newspaper or any of the parties involved, and I’m located halfway around the world, but I’ll now associated the MetroWest Daily with this debacle. I’ve now also written about it to you, and shared it via Twitter etc. Besides my personal feelings about whether I’ll ever read or do business with the company, some quick google searches for relevant terms shows a number of sites picking up on the screwup, and nothing on the newspaper website offering any explanation or apology to make me think any better of them.

What they should be doing:

Anyone using a search engine for related terms will see coverage of this horrendous mistake. What the paper should have done is looked at how this error happened (and how to prevent it in the future), and then published a full apology in print and online which explains how they’ll avoid making such a disaster in the future. A human response would at least appear online and in search to provide some mitigation.

They should then have followed that up with a decent effort to try to rectify things (along with a personal apology), perhaps by running follow-ups to help Ortiz find work – again, this would show that despite the mistake, there are decent human people working at the newspaper, as well as that evidence appearing in search and social networks.

It’s how you handle mistakes that matters:

Errors have always happened, even if they seem more and more likely due to widespread editorial cuts around the world. But whereas the outcry even 15 years ago would have been barely noticeable in another country, the internet means that everything is catalogued and saved for all eternity.

If you understand that any mistake is extremely likely to be publicly indexed, then you understand that the response is key. And that response is going to be seen around the world, for as long as we have an internet, so responding ethically is more important than any other consideration.

And if you’re publishing or re-publishing any image online, double-check and triple-check the source, the content and the licensing restrictions.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers, traditional media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Fighting for the internet, and for my son…

February 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you read my blog regularly, or follow me on Twitter, you’ll doubtless have an idea of my views on SOPA, PIPA, ACTA etc. I’m one of over 2 million people who have signed a petition to try and get ACTA rejected, and I support the hundreds of protests taking place later today in cities across the UK and the globe.

I’m against these measures for 2 reasons, and it’s not about being able to pirate films, music or books. In all honesty, I can’t remember the last time I consciously attempted to download pirated content – I’m too busy to spend time worrying whether my laptop is secure enough to be safe and locating a decent copy when I can generally pay the ‘lazy man’s tax’ and download from a legal site. Generally many of the acts, artists and authors I enjoy tend to be aware of and use Creative Commons licences anyway.

The reasons I’m against the attempts by large media companies to shore up their moribund traditional business practice by funding politicians to bring in laws are simple:

  • I believe that a free and open internet provides far more benefits to the whole of society than it damages, and that copyright is an incentive for creation which is meant to serve society as a whole, not restrict innovation and ideas in the service of extending profits for large corporations.
  • I’ve enjoyed the benefits of a free and open internet which allows me relative freedoms of self-publishing and self-expression, which has enabled me to continue to build a business and career based on creating content, training journalists, and helping companies to connect more effectively with their customers. All of this will become more difficult due to the lack of understanding shown in all new bills and treaties proposed so far by people who have little empathy with the users of the world wide web.

And there’s an additional reason why I’m standing up against these proposals with more strength than ever before – my son. I don’t want him to grow up in a world where the greatest tool for access to knowledge, community and enabling basic human rights is castrared by large media companies because they haven’t evolved and want to keep doing business the old fashioned way.

After almost 4 years, I still occasionally feel surprised and amazed that I have responsibility for another human being – looking after a cat and a rabbit were stressful enough, let alone remembering to eat healthily and get enough sleep when I’m working hard. But as a parent I share what I presume are normal concerns – worrying my son might get ill, hurt, be unhappy, etc. As a geek parent I also have two concerns specific to technology:

  • I want my son to benefit from education and access to the tools to be able to take things apart, modify them, and create with them to build his own inventions and ideas, whether that’s hardware, software, art or ideas. I don’t want him to be a passive consumer forcefed applications and content which is so protected that it can’t be examined, played with, and learnt from.
  • I want my son to benefit from a free and open internet which allows him to potentially connect with a global network of people who may share his ideas, beliefs, and passions. He may turn out to be the most popular kid in his school, but he may also have interests which aren’t shared by everyone else – the internet is an amazing tool for establishing other people share the same problems or hobbies, and reducing the isolation which can be a symptom of being a teenager in particular.

With my limited knowledge of politics and finance, I have little hope that the current administrations and electoral processes will change enough to stop the constant challenges to our digital evolution. So it’s my duty, and yours, to stand up for the things we want to preserve, for ourselves, and for our children, family, friends and everyone else.

If you’re in Europe, contact the relevant MEPs now – the questions being raised over ACTA have led to positive signs in both Poland and Germany, and there’s no reason why we can’t make a change in other coutnries if we all act. I have no doubt that eventually an open system will prevail no matter what laws are passed, but lets not allow the current generations of teenagers and children to have their potential wasted while that happens.

 

Filed Under: news, open source, Personal, technology Tagged With: , , , ,
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