We have a special offer for all Black Pearl members for this year of our inaugural membership at The Oyster Club.

For those who don’t know about it, The Oyster Club is a new different type of networking organisation. The difference is: “No format, no rules, no badges, no pitching, just introductions, bubbles and fun. It’s business, of course. It must be the Oyster Club.”

As a Black Pearl Member I have additional access to more events, workshops and member offers and I am doing a special offer for fellow Black Pearl members – a one hour consultancy session with me to “improve your presence online”.

I did an offer like this for 4 businesses earlier this year and have had some great success – including the launch or Tumblr blogs to replace people’s out of date or non existance web presences. A blog is not a website but it’s a good start.

Here are the things we can cover:

• Social media – how you use it, what you are doing right, what you could do better or more of
• Twitter strategies – how to expand contacts, build relationships and move connections to “real life”
• Events – how to incorporate your event planning with your online marketing – you can work plans and strategy – based on your and your team’s current capabilities
• Email newsletters – What you use now for email marketing, what options are out there for you to use this better
• Blogging – How to make the most of blogging tools around, what kind of customisation options are there

So, for Black Pearls reading this offer Click on this link to apply!

Once you email us your details and a bit of background information about your current online presence and marketing situation, we can book in a meeting at a convenient time. Meetings will take place at our Central London office and will last one hour.

What about the other Oyster Club members – do we get a deal too?

For other Oyster Club members I am still doing a special deal of only £55 if you get in touch by the end of June 2011 – just email me and ask me what it is!

CD's are now used to scare away birds

Ahhh those were the days… Remember when an AOL CD came free with everything from a newspaper to a loaf of bread? You wouldn’t be able to get out of your house in the morning due to the pile of pointless shiny discs underneath your letterbox. On occasion, you had to take days off school or work whilst digging your way out. Our postman would feed us Mars bars through the letterbox. Digital snow days were such a nuisance in the 90s.

I think everyone knows what I’m talking about. It cost over $300 million to produce these CDs, and to what end? There were the obvious “green” issues, which are hard to ignore when you’re wasting that amount of plastic (and card packaging). I can honestly say that I never once actually used an AOL CD for it’s intended purpose – and I wasn’t alone – gaze upon the AOL Throne, or these alternate 61 uses for the spam CDs.

If you miss the 70's, just cover your walls in CD's

Thankfully, this is no longer the case – at least not to the same extent. In case you hadn’t noticed, retailers have begun to take (or been guilted into) the eco-friendly path in recent years, with packaging becoming more efficient, and with a big lean towards offering an online option where possible. This has been made possible mainly due to significant increases in both hardware and our broadband infrastructure. With the advent of ADSL came the demise of dial-up internet, meaning software no longer had to be posted out to you. Now you could order and download via the internet – whatever next, flying cars?

Guess again – The last 10 years or so have seen a digital explosion of technology, ranging from flashy smartphones to electric smartcars. Technology is relentlessly becoming cheaper, smaller, and better. It’s Moore’s Law at work, and it doesn’t look like things are going to slow down any time soon.

Moore's Law - Exponential Technological Growth

So why are we still using CDs and DVDs? If you want media today, you don’t need to leave the house. Music can be downloaded from the iTunes store or streamed from services like Spotify (who now have over 1 million users!) or Last.fm – to your computer and even to an iPhone or Xbox 360. Films and television shows are readily available via online streaming services (now with Facebook getting in on the action) and we’re on the brink of a major overhaul in terms of what we consider to be an effective media medium.

Before long, you wont see a CD or DVD in a shop.

A bold statement I’ll admit, but one based on simple observation. We’re not there yet, but once a few technologies catch up, there is going to be a digital Cambrian Explosion of epic proportion.

Let’s take a look at what is hindering our progress:

1. Internet speeds and infrastructure (and the cost of data).

Only so much internet can fit down these lines at one time

Until both residential and mobile internet speeds are drastically increased, physical discs will not be outlawed. The day you can download a 1080p film to your iPad in the 3 minutes that you wait on the train platform, is the day you can start saying goodbye to our shiny circular friends. At the moment, while “on-the-go” internet has advanced in leaps and bounds, it is still temperamental at best. If you happen to live in Japan, I envy you.

Restrictions on the amount of data we are allowed to download will also need to be either abolished or drastically increased. “Unlimited” internet rarely delivers on it’s sensationalist claims. You often need an “unlimited” bank account to go with it. Across the pond in America, competitive mobile phone networks are trying to tempt new customers by offering unlimited data plans. Will this battle of service and price undercutting be the kick in the teeth that the industry needs?

2. Cost of hardware and storage.

Dave here is working on making your internets faster

You only need to look at the Apple store to realise that the days of a smartphone or tablet being affordable to every demographic are still quite a way off – and until such commodities become as standard as owning a pair of trousers, CDs and DVDs will still need to be available for those “without”.
Moore’s Law again rears it’s beautiful head here thankfully – with newer models being released each year, items are steadily becoming cheaper and more advanced.

lee_stott

(Lee Stott)

YEAR -- Price of a Gigabyte 1981 -- $300,000 1987 -- $50,000 1990 -- $10,000 1994 -- $1000 1997 -- $100 2000 -- $10 2004 -- $1 2010 -- $0.10

On 9-3-2011 07:05:50 from Twitter for Windows Phone

My biggest peeve however, is that the price increments are ridiculous in comparison to the size of storage. Between say a 16GB or 32GB model of a device, you can be charged around £100 extra – when we start to see TB instead of GB, and when such portable storage becomes built into an affordable handheld device, we might be getting closer to the “online switchover”. There’s simply not enough room for media on current models to consider such a step at this point.

As I write this, there has been a 64GB protoype iPhone leaked – check out the video here.

3. DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Do not pass go. Do not copy music from one iPod to another.

One of the main obstacles in the way of a non-physical media utopia are the restrictions imposed on the actual digital media itself. With a CD or DVD, if you want to share some music or a film with a friend, you put it in their hand and it’s theirs. With digitally purchased media however, there are certain restrictions imposed, many of which might not be immediately obvious to even the most discerning user. Music or video purchased and downloaded using the internet often has hidden file protection, which can stop you from transferring the files to any device for which it was not originally intended.

While this is necessary to a certain extent, for the obvious piracy issues, it can also hinder the innocent user from enjoying their legitimately paid-for media on their playback device of choice. You can put music ONTO an iPod, but you can’t take it OFF to use elsewhere. If I buy a DVD I can keep it forever – a lot of online services only allow you to rent a title before it expires and the file becomes useless. This may be the biggest threat to a digital revolution – people want the freedom to do what they want with something they have purchased. We shouldn’t be told how to watch something, or that we can only listen to an album on a certain device. CDs and DVDs have the upper hand here. Recently however, Apple made a step in the right direction by offering certain music DRM-free.

4. Cross device compatibility

Device linkage can be a bit ropey

Currently it is possible but not seamlessly easy to stream media from one device to another. Yet, like with everything else, it is becoming more supported with every day that passes. Considering the push from online services for consumers to purchase their media digitally, making use of networking and device cross-compatibility is becoming a neccessity.

If I download a movie from on my computer, how do I watch it on my HDTV? There are ways to stream the file wirelessly, using software such as TVersity. Or if your TV has a USB port, you could watch straight from a hard drive or memory stick, though these methods require a bit of legwork in getting things set up or transferring files. Apple are pioneering with Airplay and Apple TV, which allows you to stream both audio and video to your home media centre. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but like so many other things, is still too expensive to become commonplace.

Steam offers full game downloads for PC users

One place to look at ingenuity is the computer game industry – again, there are methods being tried and tested which are on the brink of becoming the norm, but until internet speeds become consistently faster, and storage becomes a lot cheaper, the adoption rate is not going to skyrocket.

Currently you can download an Xbox 360 game VIA the console, which is then saved onto your hard drive. Full retail games come in at around 6-8GB of data on average, which when compared with the average bundled 120GB harddrive on the console, does not leave much breathing room once you have started to build a collection. Another nice feature is the built-in Sky Player which allows you to stream on-demand movies and TV shows to your console. Built in Last.fm allows you to stream music through your TV as an added bonus. PC gamers have been exposed to “on demand” games for a little while longer, with Steam software providing a one-stop shop for a variety of popluar titles for many years now, but with the freedom of cheap storage.

Not only that, but you must take into account your evil ISP, and the bandwidth throttling they will impose should you decide to download what they consider “too much”. DRM is again an issue, as you can’t just bring a game around to a friend’s house if it’s stored on your console and locked to your particular account.
So once again, we can see the battle of innovative technology, hindered by the legal restrictions set by the powers that be. It’s an uphill struggle.

PREDICTIONS / CONCLUSION

How long before high street stores are a thing of the past for our media needs?

How long will it be before you can walk into a shop with your smartphone or tablet device and “bump” to pay, leaving with the file in your pocket within seconds? And then when you get home, transfer it directly onto an inbuilt multi-terabyte TV hardrive.
Or better yet, sit in the park and download a 1080p film to your tablet within seconds, while your friend lays down the picnic blanket…

This will happen, it’s just a question of when.

I envision a time when CDs will be laughed at, much like we laugh at formats of days passed, such as VHS or floppy disks. They will be kept only as collectors items, and not as a convenient and applicable medium, as they are barely still considered to be.

They will go the way of the Dodo, as vinyls did before them. Even collectors vinyls are already being replaced with collectors vinyl replicas on CD. How’s that for meta?

Bricks and mortar stores will exist for a long time still, but may downsize as media goes digital. Higher online sales means retailers need to rethink highstreet stores – as we have seen many high street stores go into administration as more and more consumers opt for digital versions.

acton

(Michael Acton Smith)

GAME group and Tencent had similar revenue last year but Tencent's market cap is 100X larger. (EBIT margin of 3% v 51% perhaps)

On 2-3-2011 14:58:07 from Twitter for iPhone

acton

(Michael Acton Smith)

The moral of that last tweet is Virtual Goods are a hella better business model than High Street retail

On 2-3-2011 14:59:37 from Twitter for iPhone

Storage is still too expensive, but getting cheaper. A digital conversion certainly seems like a step in the right direction in a world where we consume so many natural resources; digital = no packaging.
Until our internet speeds are supersized, alternatives may be used in the interim – maybe flash storage to replace CDs, DVDs and Blurays – this would revolutionise high street stores. Imagine seeing a shelf full of USB sticks as opposed to chunky DVD cases? Or a terminal you can walk up to in order to purchase and transfer files onto your phone. Retailers would certainly save money on floorspace.

We’ll see convergence of media into existing devices, allowing us to more freely access the content we want, when we want it, and what we want to watch it on. Already, I can stream HD quality BBC programming through my Bluray player.

Apple’s new Thunderbolt technology – which allows data to be transferred at 10Gbps – could be the stepping stone to offering digital media to be put onto your device at the till.
Will Bluray be the next minidisc? There was a very short lifespan between music CDs and the widespread adoption of the MP3. Maybe Bluray will be the stop-gap between DVD and the download?

Whatever happens next, CDs will be clawed onto until the majority are ready for non-physical media to become the mainstream.

When was the last time you used a CD?

Mr_Marty

(this is MARTEH)

@TremulantDesign CD related: my car has a CD player, so ripped a playlist from iTunes to play in my car. How 2005 of me. :P

On 23-2-2011 14:08:38 from web in reply to Michael Hobson

TonySanchez1

(Tony Sanchez)

@TremulantDesign last time I used a CD was to scrape ice off my car windscreen

On 23-2-2011 14:12:14 from web in reply to Michael Hobson

HanaAbaza

(Hana Abaza)

@TremulantDesign @topleftdesign To install acrobat on a Mac. Switched from PC to mac, had to wait for CD in the mail (no download option)

On 23-2-2011 14:14:03 from TweetDeck in reply to Michael Hobson

janetdelicakes

(janet mckenner)

@TremulantDesign to rest my coffee cup on of course - dont want to ruin the desk

On 23-2-2011 14:14:34 from web in reply to Michael Hobson

thiswasregina

(regina viveiros)

@TremulantDesign bought Joni Mitchell this week and burnt it on to my iTunes and iPhone and won't be using it again for a while now

On 23-2-2011 14:15:10 from TweetDeck in reply to Michael Hobson

BananaOffice

(Ashley Price)

@TremulantDesign Nope, just don't listen much to MP3. At home I'd have to put the laptop on - just easier to put CD in CD Player of stereo

On 23-2-2011 14:24:24 from TweetDeck in reply to Michael Hobson

MetroPrinting

(MetropolitanPrinting)

@TremulantDesign we use them for archiving.

On 23-2-2011 14:22:24 from TweetDeck in reply to Michael Hobson

rrricky

(ricky burgess)

@TremulantDesign Used a CD yesterday to upload and add to my iTunes library. I'll prob. come across that dusty round object in a year or two

On 23-2-2011 14:22:19 from TweetDeck in reply to Michael Hobson

Snetty

(Simon Stevens)

@TremulantDesign I use CD's in the car still.. I can plug my iPhone in, but unless I'm particularly bored of my car CD's I don't often.

On 23-2-2011 14:28:12 from Twitter for Mac in reply to Michael Hobson

lesleywriter

(Lesley Morrissey)

@tremulantdesign Listened to music CD about a week or so ago; but I haven't got into MP3 stuff yet, am I a luddite?

On 23-2-2011 14:33:03 from HootSuite in reply to Michael Hobson

tamhall

(Tamlyn Hall)

@TremulantDesign Erm, about 3 years ago.. on a cd player, but only because I was lazy to switch my computer on for the gooood stuff!

On 23-2-2011 14:59:35 from web in reply to Michael Hobson

Prophet4Profit

(Joe Entwistle)

@TremulantDesign Was scraping some old food off a plate with a cd of 'The Best of Download 2001'

On 23-2-2011 16:51:05 from web in reply to Michael Hobson

I have been a member of BNI since the summer of 2002 and I am now at BNI Mayfair. During that time I have learned many skills, and I think it would be useful for anyone running their own business. BNI doesnt suit every one, as there are several rules to follow, it’s a big commitment, and the meetings occur very early in the morning. But a recent thread on Twitter inspired me to write this post.

For those who don’t know, BNI is a professional networking organisations where members meet weekly for breakfast and help each other by finding new business for each other and making referrals. These are tracked and statistics are carefully kept for attendance, participation and the amount of business passed.

I posted a Tweet with the hashtag (which is a clickable topic on Twitter) #ThatsWhyIDoBNI after doing some quick calculations.

But it’s important to note the other benefits of BNI so I have written a list of 11 things people will get out of membership.

1. Public Speaking practice – because you go to BNI every week and do a 60 second speech, you get lots of practice in public speaking
2. Learning to speak concisely – this is related to the above but there is an individual skill beyond speaking confidently, and that is getting your message accross within a short space of time. This has been compared to an elevator pitch as well
3. Taglines – many BNI members add a tagline to the end of their 60 seconds – and some people don’t have these when they join BNI but after being inspired by seeing others, they come up with clever ones. Have a look at the blog post I wrote about this recently.
4. Making friends – everyone I have spoken to about BNI has said they have made new friends through it – even a connection with just one or two members makes it all worthwhile.
5. Other networking opportunities – through BNI you will get to hear about other networking events – open networking events, monthly lunches,  awards events, workshops and seminars and often its contacts you get there that will help you grow your business
6. An education on how to network – there are many behaviours you can pick-up from other members which will improve your networking skills –  for some this will come more naturally than for others, but it definitely can always be improved.
7. A focus group – for testing out new products, marketing, and even new businesses
8. Joint ventures – It happens quite often in BNI groups that members team up for pitches, new business ventures, events, partnerships and collaborations. Seeing each other every week at BNI means you can easily meet regularly to move things along.
9. Knowledge of other types of businesses – Every week in the 60 seconds and the 10minute speeches, members share a bit about what they do, and through this you get a broad understanding of many different types of businesses. Through one to ones with other members, and with the potential clients and introducers they refer you to, you get even more.
10. Meeting the introverts – at parties, non member networking groups, and open networking events, introverts are a rarity and may not meet quite as many people. But so called “introverts” can join BNI and over time, they will be able to get to know other members and vice versa. Often introverts are the funniest and most intelligent people to meet and it’s interesting to see them come out of their “shells”.
11. Business referrals – This is the reason people join BNI in the first place – and yes, you do get these, and you learn how to along the way.

There are more benefits but I thought I would let this be a time for other BNI members to comment on this post and add their feedback!

Hopefully this will encourage more people to give BNI a try in 2011. If you would like to visit my BNI group please email me or visit www.bnimayfair.com

BNI is great – Keren has been an active member for 7 years, and has seen all sorts of people from all sorts of businesses come through the system. Many left without seeing the benefits, but there always seemed to be a correlation of INPUT and OUTPUT. Our business here at Top Left Design is built on referral and we still can track a majority of our incoming enquiries back to people we wouldnt have met if it werent for Keren’s membership at BNI.

The best members of BNI have a good attitude. This means they HONESTLY believe in BNI and understand that nurturing relationships takes time, effort and good intentions! Givers gain and all that!

My top eleven tips to make your BNI membership a sure-fire success!
(Important – these tips work for ANY breakfast group of a similar nature to BNI!)

1. Come every week
2. Have a clear speaking voice and a clear message when you do your 60 seconds
3. Be specific in asking for referrals
4. Consider who your introducers would be in your business – parallel companies who can partner up with you – and ask for those as well as direct referrals.
5. Make an effort to help their fellow BNI Members – by making introductions, giving advice, giving feedback – and avoid conflicts if you can!
6. Spend time helping the running of the chapter itself – by taking on roles like visitor hosts/commitee members or leadership team roles.
7. Be welcoming to visitors and follow up on them – you may be the only one in your group who does so, and they may come back to visit again because of you – or become a good contact for you.
8. When receiving a referral, no matter how small it is, make an effort to follow it up.
9. Have regular 1-2-1s with other members.
10. Spending time preparing your 10minute speeches, and doing a good job with this opportunity.
11. Attend training, at least until you feel you are comfortable – there are plenty of great ideas given at the BNI training days, plus great networking with members of other chapters.
12. Try subbing and seeing how other BNI groups run – it really helps to expand your network and make the most of your membership.

And even with all this, you have to have a good attitude and believe in BNI. Then it works wonders!

As a bonus for reading to this point, here are some 60 second specific tips for you – FREE!

BNI 60 second tips:

1. Don’t sell TO the group – you are asking for introductions to THEIR contacts
2. Stand up to do your 60 seconds and also for the rererral/contributions part of the meeting too
3. Remember – the referral part of the meeting another chance to market yourself, so make an effort to speak clearly and be specific there too!
4. If you are doing your 10 minutes that day, the worst thing is to say “I wont bore you with my 60 seconds” – the 60 seconds part is another time to promote yourself and you need to make the most of it! A very common mistake.
5. Use your memory hook (also known as a tagline!)
6. Be specific when asking who you need to meet and why – as for specific companies or sectors

Related links

Hook Line and Sinker – secrets to a great memory hook
Networking – combining online and offline
BNI Mayfair chapter website

Networking can be interpreted in many ways
but activities should include:

- going to networking events, parties, trade shows, and other gatherings where you meet new people
- making sure you keep in touch with those people
- connecting those people with other people you know, where it would be of mutual benefit
- meeting people again for “1-2-1s” and finding out more about their businesses
- Joining a group such as BNI, NRG, Business Junction, Athena, or Chambers of Commerce where you meet regularly to continue to get to know other members.
- Building relationships with other business people and showing yourself as an expert in your field as well as a nice reliable and helpful person.

All of these are typical of traditional networking.

What we are seeing now is that there are a lot of online groups as well. These have been around for many years and their usage is growing. Examples include Ecademy, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

There are many benefits to making proper use of these:

- They are way you can control your online reputation and raise your profile – if you are conscious about how all content you post online can affect this.
- They are easily found by search engines so if people “Google” you then your profile can come up so its good if it shows you off as an expert in your field and a nice friendly person.
- Social networking websites are extremely low cost and has huge potential for spreading your sphere of influence.
- You can see who your contacts know and ask for introductions, and use their list of contacts as a reference point in your 1-2-1s
- It’s important to put some effort into your profile so you really show off your skills/personality/etc – best to look at other’s on the same website to see what to follow – or ask us!
- If you do have Facebook Profile, a Blog or a Twitter account, all of this can be interlinked with your online profile – to take people on an online journey all about you and how great you are!
- Status updates can remind you of what others are doing and prompt you to get back in touch with them

And now the crux – offline PLUS online – combined!

We really would encourage you to get in touch with people when you have met them in real life via searching for them on one of the online networks where you may both be a member. Why?

- it’s an ice breaker, and means you have something else in common
- you can read a bit about them on their profile before you get in touch and then have more to talk about
- Once you connect with them on an social networking site, you can be “friends” or “contacts” which means your status updates and news announcements get fed to each other’s news feeds.
- On an ongoing basis you can see when your new contact has done something new – like posted a blog, or visited a place you have been to, or made a contact you know – and this can prompt you to get in touch again to discuss this new topic.
- As above, if you meet someone online, meet them in real life and really get to know them on a 1-2-1 basis. The right contacts in your network can make the world of difference! As Dave Clark from NRG says, you will build up a network of advocates – people who recommend you and speak highly of you once they have gotten to know you and understand your business.

We have seen time and time again the magic of this – and we have many stories about it we would love to share. Please call us on 020 7486 2629 and we can tell you all about them – and also help you with your online profiles, the content of your status updates and blogs, and getting your head around all the technicalities – it really is easy once you learn how!

We are also offering one on one training sessions on these – email us if you would like to know more.

The Social Networking websites we wanted to recommend as a good starting point:

Ecademy:
www.ecademy.com

Some people find it annoying to join Ecademy because all sorts of random people contact you when you join, but you can adjust the permissions (go to “My Settings” and then “Notifications”) so you don’t have this happening.

We recommend to stick with Ecademy, it’s really brilliant once you get the hang of it!

There is a very good searchable database on Ecademy, and you can use this for looking up people’s profiles, putting up your own, and contacting people who YOU would want to talk to. They would the look at your profile so it’s good to make sure this is properly finished.

See http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=21731 for Keren’s profile.

Twitter:
http://twitter.com

This is all about status updates and “following people” – you can follow Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, and Barack Obama – and Top Left Design of course!
http://twitter.com/topleftdesign

See also http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ce3a368-f82d-11dd-aae8-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 for an article about Twitter.

LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com

This is a very worthwhile network and and it’s full of people in the corporate world as well as SME owners – so it has GREAT potential! Most people are on LinkedIn even if they are somewhere in their career.

If you would like to know more about this or indeed how to make better use of Social Media within your business and website, please get in touch!

I thoroughly enjoyed Keren’s “9 Deadly Website Sins” presentation. Clear, professional, entertaining and to the point, demonstrating the key problems that take away from a website’s effectiveness. All done without resorting to “dumbing down” techniques for the less technically minded.
Keren from Top Left Design is Top Class!

Denis Cahill – Director
Scorpius Solutions Ltd

——————

I recently attended a seminar that Keren gave at an NRG networking meeting. The theme, “9 deadly sins of website design”, was enough to draw me in!

Keren delivered her presentation to a mixed audience, ranging from technophobes to web designers; it is my opinion that she held all present equally enthralled by the clear and informative content of her talk and by her honest approach to sharing her companies guidelines to impactful web sites. If you have the opportunity to attend one of her seminars…

…grab the chance, you will not be disappointed!

Mark Keatley-Palmer
Director – Sycamore Design

——————

“Great presentation Keren! Very informative, useful and understandable. I took a lot of notes! I am very impressed with all your work and the numerous websites which you showed. I’m so impressed with you that I will be putting my web design business your way! I will also confidently refer friends and clients to you. Now that’s the BIGGEST commendation I can give you! I trust you. I think everyone else in the room feels the same way now too. You converted the audience into raving fans! And your Net Promoter Score must have jumped through the roof!”

Very Happy Phil,
www.veryhappyphil.com

——————

“…How refreshing it was to attend a seminar with a potentially technical and complex subject matter, and to be presented with a straightforward user friendly approach which even the worst technophobe could have understood. Highly informative and effortlessly delivered…”
Thomas Gilder

——————

‘Keren’s presentation is a very interesting and informative insight into how to create a useful website, Keren uses lots of examples to demonstrate how a good site should work and it is clear she has a lot of experience with a flair for high quality design’
Peter Cordery