cube

Words of business wisdom

2010-01-12T12:03:00.000Z

Originally posted at my company blog @ www.clearlypresentable.wordpress.com

View more presentations from Clear Presentation Design.

Google's lesson on presentations

2010-01-08T11:30:00.002Z

Presentations matter, and this week we have been provided with a good example that proves the point well.

This week Google have entered the mobile phone market. Their phone, the Nexus, is the company’s bid to join the likes of Apple at the top of the smart phone market. The launch took place at Google’s Mountainview campus in California and… well… it sucked.

Above you can see a picture from the “big” event. I am not really quite sure what Google were thinking of when they decided to launch of the Nexus in this manner. To begin with it appears as though they had no more than a few dozen reporters and bloggers in the room, they also appear to have used a screen completely incapable of projecting pictures with any sort of clarity or contrast and finally, the presenter appears to have resigned himself to standing behind an old overhead projector/lectern which isn’t even in use. The whole affair seems awfully amateurish.

Compare this to the launch of a similar phone 2 years ago. Mr. Jobs always puts on a show and didn’t disappoint with his launch of the iPhone. Jobs’ presenting style is the stuff of legend and has even been the subject of one or two books. He practises tirelessly and makes sure that everything is just perfect… he most certainly doesn’t stand behind a podium. He also ensures that his slides are perfect… I can’t imagine that Steve Jobs would have settled for a small room with a screen washed out with too much light.

Some people might say “hey it’s just a presentation, what’s the big deal”, well the problem is that these product launch presentations are a vital piece of the marketing process and like it or not journalists who are uninspired or confused by your product launch pitch will write uninspired and confused articles about your product. Or perhaps write nothing at all.

When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone tech bloggers and journalists whipped the web up into an utter frenzy with articles about the new phone, when Google launched the Nexus with their lukewarm presentation the journalists appear to have relied with a collective shrug of the shoulders.

CNBC’s “Fast Money” news segment even took time to actively slate the presentation (one of the analysts even called the presenter a “Johnson”, an American reference lost on me perhaps), the presentation has now not only created little interest it has attracted negative coverage… this really isn’t the way things should have gone.

This week Google taught us a lesson, presentations matter.

Originally posted on my company blog @ www.clearlypresentable.wordpress.com

World's worst slides award goes to...

2010-01-06T10:33:00.003Z

My interest in this topic stemmed from a tweet posted by Garr Reynolds @presentationzen: “Holy what’s the plan in Afghanistan, Batman!” Does this PowerPoint clear things up? http://snipurl.com/tyvxc h/t @Durf”

We have all seen our fair share of bad presentations, if you have not yet been subjected to many bad presentations then you are privileged individual indeed, just don’t expect it to last.

In reality, although bad presentations might put us to sleep, waste our time and be totally ineffective all they really do at worst is waste our resources – be they time or money – but hey at least it’s not a case of life or death, people still leave the boardroom alive, bored… but alive.

If a presentation were to be dealing with a topic sufficiently important that it could potentially result in the life or death of numerous individuals you would surely expect that the presenter would want to ensure that the slides used got the information across in the most effective, understandable and memorable way possible… right?

Well, it would seem that not everybody thinks like that. In the past few years a number of internal presentations from the United States Army have been leaked into the public domain and my god are they bad. These slideshows do not just exhibit the normal levels of incompetence that we have come to know and… love, but instead take powerpoint (and audience) abuse to whole new levels.

Take for example the slide below, there is a message there somewhere in the slide, really there is… but the chance of every member of the audience achieving an understanding of this message by the time the presenter has moved on to the next slide is surely as close to zero as you can get.

Exhibit 2 (below) is – although you might have thought it impossible – even more ridiculous than the first. I understand where the presenter is coming from though, I believe I used to draw diagrams like that when I was younger. I would sit at the kitchen table with a box of crayons and a juice box and just keep drawing swirls around the page at random, however at that time I was 2 years old… and I wasn’t trying to run an army engaged in a war.

Now while I make fun of these very poor powerpoint slides, there is a serious point to be made, if your audience can’t understand the message you are trying to tell them, you need to change the way you are telling them. These US Army slides are so ineffective that I find it hard to believe that they are any use to anyone whatsoever, and although the issues they are dealing with are undoubtedly complicated they still need to be communicated well. Perhaps they should all sit down together, watch this talk by Hans Rosling and read some books by Edward Tufte to get a crash course on how to communicate complex information.

Originally posted at my company blog @ www.clearlypresentable.wordpress.com

What you do...

2009-12-29T17:10:00.002Z

Why less is probably more when it comes to presentation length

2009-12-14T14:20:00.001Z

From a young age we are led to believe that more is more, that is to say that your essays should be as long as possible, your projects should be far in excess of the minimum length requirement and your show and tell should be as lengthy and detailed a talk as possible.

It is rather unfortunate that we are allowed to believe this from such a young age as it results in what only can be described as truly awful speeches and presentations!

When it comes to giving a presentation LESS is often more, the reality is that people have limited attention spans and their brains can only absorb so much information in one sitting, therefore they will remember the first and last few minutes of your hour long presentation... and no more than that.

Great public speakers across the board from politicians to comedians recognise this fact and put it into practice when they talk to their respective audiences. They recognise that a presentation is about the audience, not about them. They recognise that it is their job to get the message across in a way that will be memorable and that will result in an action, not to stand atop a podium and show off how eloquently and comprehensively they can discuss an issue.

Abraham Lincoln is best remembered for his “Gettysburg Address”, a speech which is widely regarded as being one of the best speeches made by a US president. And while many people have heard of this speech, they have most likely not heard that Lincoln was not the main speaker at event, and more importantly that his speech was under 275 words and lasted less than three minutes.

Edward Everett was up before Lincoln on that day, and delivered a speech that was 13,500 in length... I have never heard of Mr. Everett and his role in the Gettysburg Address, in fact I doubt very few non-historians have heard of his speech.

Length is often not everything, if you can get your message across in a short concise talk, like Mr. Lincoln then you should probably do so!

Originally posted at my presentation blog www.clearlypresentable.com

The reality of meetings

2009-12-10T08:38:00.000Z

I found this beauty on the 37signals blog. Very true stuff.

Clear Presentation Design - an exciting new direction

2009-12-05T17:21:00.003Z

After much thinking on the matter I have decided to try putting my presentation skills to some use and start up my own presentation design business. Clear presentation design, found at www.clearpreso.com is my main website. Clear presentation design will offer services such as presentation makeovers, content generation and video presentations to begin with.

I am really looking forward to overcoming the challenges of self employment and directing my efforts towards this venture. I hope I can help people develop and deliver high quality presentations and we can all wave goodbye to the crappy, awful, horrific and ineffective slides that we see from day to day .

I have also started a new blog found at www.clearlypresentable.wordpress.com, it will discuss all things presentation related.

So go on, give them a look!

www.clearpreso.com

www.clearlypresentable.wordpress.com

Images from the road 11

2009-12-02T12:23:00.001Z

At Niagara Falls, NY

The right mind set for approaching tasks...

2009-11-25T16:47:00.003Z

Meetings are expensive... very expensive

2009-11-24T11:59:00.002Z

It might not occur to most people, but meetings are expensive, very expensive. I am not talking about room rental, equipment rental, the cost of the tea and the chocolate biscuits that Doris the tea lady brings in to the meeting room (although add this in later if you really want), nope I am in fact talking about the cost of the time wasted in the vast majority of meetings.

Although you may think that meetings are just part and parcel of the way your business operates and therefore should not be subjected to criticism, I must tell you that the cost of most meetings is easily calculated, and absurdly large and underestimated.

Let’s imagine that Mr. Director of company X would like to call an internal meeting to discuss the launch of the company’s wonderful new product. The next afternoon all 50 employees shuffle into the large meeting room to hear the Director talk about the new product. The presentation is quite awful, it is poorly structured, conveys little to no information and does little to clear up uncertainties about what the new product will mean for various employees’ roles.

Let’s imagine that this presentation droned on for an hour, a very reasonable estimate. That was very much a completely wasted hour for each employee in attendance, 50 working hours are now firmly down the drain. If you were even more adventurous with your analysis of this meeting you could try and put a financial costing to it. Assuming that the average per-hour wage of the employees is €30 (very conservative here) that meeting has cost the company €1,500 in potential working hours and has given the audience little or no real value or information.

The lesson to be learnt here is that presentations are often an inappropriate form of communication. The Director could have chosen to send around a Word document in this situation describing the details and consequences of the launch. Or, if the Director was hell bent on making a presentation out of it, he could have at least practised out his presentation several times, been clear on the facts and trimmed the presentation down to a reasonable timeframe.

While this might go unnoticed in internal situations, the same will not be true for external meetings. People don’t like having their time and money wasted, so calculate the value of your next presentation (time x people x average wage per hour) – is it worth it? Have you worked hard enough to deliver real value and information? If not… START WORKING ON IT

Fox news try to display info. Fail!

2009-11-24T11:55:00.001Z

Worst. Piechart. Ever.

From Fox news... who would have thought that all the segments should add up to 100%?

Good graphs are like good jokes

2009-11-23T01:03:00.002Z

Best graph related quote I have ever heard:

Good charts are like good jokes (they don't need to be explained)

from Jorge Camoes Blog

Thierry Henry's little "mistake"

2009-11-19T12:47:00.002Z

After last night's Ireland versus France game concluded with a frankly absurd judgement by the ref with regards to Theirry Henry's handball some are calling for a boycott of Gillette products if Mr. Henry continues to be one of their cover boys.

Mr. Manuel Yoacham, wrote on this blog : "I think Gillette needs to implement some damage control, and quick" and to be fair he has a point, a lot of Irish people are calling for him to be banished to a dark hole somewhere.

I think the problem is that while this memory will last forever in the hearts and minds of the Irish, I suspect the distaste with Henry will by temporary elsewhere. Gillette create adverts that can be run anywhere in the world because they have some pretty recognised cover boys. This means they only have to make one advert to satisfy most of their advertising needs, will they care of piddling Ireland stop buying their razors? I suspect not. However we will see what happens.

Ireland played the best I have ever seen them play last night, we should all be very proud, and in terms of the boycott, I haven't used a Gillette razor for a few years now, my views were obviously ahead of their time!

"Flashmob" in Cork

2009-11-16T10:12:00.002Z

I found this by way of the wonderful http://www.pkellypr.com/blog/ a blog worth visiting for definite.

The following wonderful video is one filmed in Cork City center of a group of 800 or so people getting together to spread the word about the National Campaign for the Arts, if you like the song Mr. Blue Sky, or you like smiling, I suggest you watch this video.

Images from the road 10

2009-11-10T10:47:00.001Z

Vancouver, Canada

Aer Lingus Rant Continued

2009-11-05T12:49:00.003Z

I mentioned previously here that I would continue my rant on Aer Lingus, so I will.

I have been searching around for a particular few lines that I read not too long ago in a George Orwell book that reminded me of the Aer Lingus situation. Unfortunately I never found the lines but I remember what the jist of the matter was.

It was referencing his time in Spain where he fought in the civil war, here he witnessed in-fighting on the side he was fighting for just at a crucial time, I believe he compared it to starting a civil war when the murderous enemy is knocking at the city gates... not the best timing.

I like to think that this is what is happening with Aer Lingus, with the unionised staff provoking the civil war. Given that the staff appear to be vowing to fight all cutbacks and layoffs survival is looking very slim... are they really so foolish as to want to stop all changes? Option A: Some people get cut, working conditions change - Option B: Stay the same and everyone loses their job (perhaps an odd show of solidarity?) - Those are pretty much the two option Aer Lingus have... do they really want to commit industrial suicide?

Madness I tells ya.

Pretty Pumpkin

2009-11-01T15:55:00.003Z

Well pumpkin carving time comes but once a year, and after the initial gutting of the pumpkin -which I really hate - it's actually quite fun to carve this vegetable/fruit/not too sure into a nice design.

I present to you my pumpkin for Halloween 2009

The missing office floor - floor 13

2009-10-29T17:17:00.004Z

I am very probably one of the least superstitious people you will ever meet, this is a fact I am rather proud of, I walk under ladders and regularly laugh in the face of black cats.

I would like to think that most people that most semi-intelligent people also lend superstition very little time and attention, however I increasingly think that perhaps I could be wrong about this.

The last place you would expect to find a fear of absurd superstitions is the business world, however as a little experiment, if you happen to find yourself in an office building in the United States go into the lift and ask to go to level 13... I think you will find there is no level 13.

Check out the picture below, floors in this Chicago office building go from 12 straight to 14(a). You may insist that this is surely just a mistake on the part of the lift manufacturer... unfortunately not. It seems that all over the US businesses are very reluctant to rent out floor space on floor 13's around the country, so in an attempt to shift this "unlucky" floor number many offices are now just calling it the 14th floor... this sort of logic worries me.

(Plus if you are on the "14th floor" and ARE a superstitious indidivual, surely you know exactly what floor you are on - the horrific, deadly, unlucky, haunted one.

Images from the road 9

2009-10-23T10:48:00.001Z

The Bean, Millenium Park, Chicago

2 Facts about trains

2009-10-19T16:37:00.003Z

While listening to "The Bottom Line" a BBC business podcast I heard some information that both shocked and appalled me regarding trains. They may just shock and appall you also.

The UK Chief Executive of Bombardier, the Canadian based airplane and train manufacturer, was being quizzed on the ins and outs of the train manufacturing arm of the company and was asked to estimate in rough terms how much a train costs the buyer.

The answer? 1 MILLION POUNDS! and that's PER carriage! It is therefore little wonder that train operators are doing so abysmally in these rough times. Let's imagine that you want to buy a brand new 8 carriage train for a busy route, that's an instant £8 million you have to recoup to break even... absurd.

The second fact, which quite amused me, was that because of the lack of foresight on the part of the nice folk who built England's (and presumably Ireland's) train infrastructure, we can only have trains of a certain height (too low) and width (not wide enough). Anything in excess of what they thought we would need in the 1800's would simply scrape off the sides of tunnels etc. resulting in what we can only presume would be a rough journey. That is why everyone trains often feel far too cramped...

So there you are, 2 interesting train related facts.

Images from the road 8

2009-10-16T11:51:00.000Z

Washington DC, Obama in his limo leaving the back of the Whitehouse. It was followed by about 30 blacked out SUV's (oddly enough I'm not exaggerating).

Ryanair, Aer Lingus, Rants

2009-10-12T18:51:00.003Z

In the last short while I have been hearing a few stories about Ryanair and Aerlingus in various newspapers and radio programs and the like and unfortunately for you I can hold my silence no longer!

Unfortunately these issues drive me so up the wall that I don’t think I can put them together in a coherent flowing manner, so in place of a well written article, I present to your a series of points that have been grinding my gears for the last while.

1. People saying have to support Aer Lingus “because they are Irish”

This one is particularly stupid as it tends to be used most often in conversations that also make reference to the Ryanair vs Aer Lingus debate. To WHAT extent could Aer Lingus be considered any more Irish than Ryanair? Is it because the planes have a green colour scheme? Because the tail fin has a shamrock on it? Because they were a (but are now a failed) airline set up by the state? I really don't know...

Now correct me if I’m wrong but Ryanair is Irish too, and rather than being a dismal financial failure like other (unnamed...) Irish airlines Ryanair is turning a profit in a time when all around them are doing poorly.

Also Ryanair is Europe’s biggest airline in terms of passengers, so why aren’t people supporting a Irish company that has become the leading force in European aviation, a globally impressive example of how Ireland can take on the big players and win. This make my little brain angry.

A quick scan around the board room of the two airlines would also be advisable to those who are emotionally attached to the “Irish element” of Aer Lingus. CEO of Ryanair = Michael O Leary, a successful Irish businessman – CEO of Aer Lingus = Cristoph Mueller, a successful German businessman.

2. People thinking Ryanair owe them anything

Watchdog, the BBC consumer issues programme contained a piece on how Ryanair were to double the cost of checking in baggage on planes, and do away with manned check in desks starting in the near future.

Members of the audience were asked what they thought about it and as per usual the usual assortment of anti-Ryanair folk chipped in their 2 cents about how awful it was, that Mr. O’Leary could do such things. They then had a satellite conversation with O’Leary who told the audience, and viewers of the programme, that he basically couldn’t care less if they didn’t want to fly with his airline, there would be 67million people willing to take their seat.

Why do people feel that Micheal O’Leary and Ryanair owe them anything? They don’t owe you cheap flights, cheap added extras, cheap anything. They are a business, and a successful one, not a charity.

More to come on this later in part 2... I must go calm down somewhere nice and quiet.

They weren't going to miss out on this one

2009-10-09T09:25:00.003Z

More thoughts about Ryanair on the way soon.

Images from the road 7

2009-10-01T17:36:00.000Z

Ireland Park, Toronto

Death rates of various diseases visualised

2009-09-26T12:00:00.002Z

Well I think the graphic below offers an insight into how unbelievably over the top the hype and hysteria surrounding swine flu has been. I have personally become very, very sick (not of any type of flu) of the whole thing and wish the newspapers, news channels and general public would stop giving it so much coverage.

Take a little look at the graph below and make your own minds up about what you want to be afraid of. (You may need to click on it to make it a reasonable size for viewing)

Job hunting in a recession

2009-09-25T16:09:00.005Z

Here is a presentation from the presentation/career guru Mr. Rowan Manahan on how to hunt for jobs in a recession. Well worth a look!

Job-hunting in a tight market

View more presentations from Rowan Manahan.

Arnie on jealousy

2009-09-21T10:11:00.002Z

Cheating with charts

2009-09-19T14:17:00.007Z

Great post at the Duarte Blog (found here) about how people cheat with the charts to make information fit with their version of events.

By simply manipulating the length and height of axis units you can tell what look like very different stories. As Duarte describe it:

"The flexible grid: One of the easiest ways to give more or less movement to the trend of a curve is to expand or contract the horizontal or vertical axis of the chart. The chart below shows a correctly scaled trend and six ways the visual image changes by expanding or contracting the grid layout."

Slideshare competition - How did I get on?

2009-09-18T16:09:00.003Z

Well the 2009 Slideshare competition is coming to an end, the public vote is now over and the control is now in the hands of the very qualified judges (including one Mr. Guy Kawasaki - who as you might know is a good friend of mine that is to say I met him once).

So how did my presentations do in the public voting I hear you ask with baited breath... well Let me tell you...

Out of the 3,000 entries I had presentations that placed @ 9th, 60th, 94th, 153rd and 167th (all in the top 5.5% for you stats people out there).

I am pretty happy with how I got on although I do realise that the public voting didn't always reflect the quality of the presentations so I will leave it to the judges to decide if any of mine were actually any good!

If you voted for me, thank you, if not... damn you :-)

Steve Jobs: Back in action (for now)

2009-09-12T12:16:00.004Z

Well Steve Jobs is officially back in action with Apple and he took to the stage this week to launch a few new (but very minor) products.

I am happy to see Steve back on stage again, but I must say that he still doesn't look, or sound, like a particularly well man which makes me a little sad.

Below are two pics of Steve, at the top is one of when he was healthy (albeit a tad overweight), below this we have Steve Jobs in Sept 2009, I think he looks very very frail and if I was an Apple shareholder I might be getting a tad worried.

Images from the road 6

2009-09-11T12:17:00.000Z

At the edge of Niagara Falls

A gutsy pitch

2009-09-05T16:09:00.000Z

I read an interesting piece in the great book “The Definitive business pitch” regarding a rather unorthodox and gutsy pitch given to British Rail management in the 1980’s.

The managements at British Rail were holding a day of pitches to try and identify the best marketing agency for their requirements. At the end of the day the final agency hadn’t shown up for their slot...

After 10 minutes had gone by and there were no sign of the presenters the management present decided that enough was enough and started to get out of their seats in somewhat of a “huff”.

It was at that moment that the agency team – who had been waiting outside – strolled into the room... “We know how your customers feel” and by this stage so too did the management: left waiting, with no information and staff who seem uninterested.

Gutsy

Aer Lingus - Debt tripled in 1st half 2009

2009-08-27T22:57:00.001Z

From RTE business news:
"Management at Aer Lingus say the outlook for the airline is highly uncertain following publication of the latest financial results.

The company has also said it can no longer afford to pay what was described as 'legacy-style' pay rates to staff.

Losses at the airline have tripled to €93m in the first half of the year."

Perhaps Aer Lingus should call it a day and stop keeping up the illusion that they can turn the airline afloat... what's that noise? I think I hear Michael O'Leary knocking at the door...

Images from the road 5

2009-08-27T21:14:00.001Z

Chicago

The Alternative Big Mac Index

2009-08-22T13:54:00.003Z

The Economist magazine recently produced what it calls "the alternative Big Mac index" , it details how long the average worker, weighted across 14 industries, must work in order to afford the price of a Big Mac at local prices.

Interesting stuff, I wouldn't fancy working for 6 days like the average worker in Nairobi. Does that mean Big Macs are essentially fine cuisine there?

The problem with pies

2009-08-19T23:22:00.004Z

The editor of "Simple Complexity" found at http://simplecomplexity.net/ came up with a very strong argument as to why pie charts are not always the best way to go when trying to put across numbers, and are actually quite misleading at times due to the fact that our poor little brains aren't all that good at judging the areas of the various segments.

Check out the pie chart below, take a second to work out for yourself how the segments rank from highest to lowest.

It's not all that easy is it? Now check out the dot chart below and try and do the same ranking exercise.Which is easier to understand? the vast majority of people will find making sense of the numbers involved in the dot chart. Both charts show the same numbers and are as follows A = 25, C = 21, D = 18, E = 10, F = 10.

Very nice example of why some charts can be innappropriate in some situations.

For more gems head to http://simplecomplexity.net/

Inspiration from Roosevelt

2009-08-18T22:17:00.000Z

Inspirational

View more presentations from Edward Fidgeon Kavanagh.

Nine A1's in the leaving

2009-08-15T14:21:00.003Z

Only one student achieved 9 A1's in the leaving cert this year.

Behold the face of Ireland's (nerdy) future!

Aer Lingus numbers improve - not enough for Ryanair

2009-08-15T12:38:00.003Z

The Irish Times recently published an article on increased Aer Lingus passenger numbers for July... Ryanair's Head of communications Stephan McNamara wasn't going to let this one go unchallenged.

Here is his letter to the Irish Times:

Madam, – I am contacting you in relation to the large article which appeared in your business section (“Aer Lingus passenger numbers rise 8.2 per cent”, August 11th). There was no reference to Ryanair’s passenger numbers for July, which reported growth of 19 per cent to over 6.7 million passengers.

Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, is one of only a few indigenous companies to lead its sector in Europe and it is worrying that our July passenger numbers, which were six times those of Aer Lingus and detailed our remarkable and newsworthy July growth, were overlooked by The Irish Times.

While I do not expect any editorial favour to be shown to Ryanair I request that our good news stories be given the same consideration and space in your business pages as those of other leading Irish companies or small regional airlines such as Aer Lingus. – Yours, etc,

STEPHEN McNAMARA,

Head of Communications,

Ryanair,

Dublin Airport,

Co Dublin.

Images from the road 4

2009-08-15T11:24:00.000Z

Calgary Skyline, some small animals footprints in the foreground

Me & Google Earth

2009-08-09T14:42:00.000Z

My Life through Google Earth

View more presentations from Edward Fidgeon kavanagh.

Another entry for the Slideshare competition

Images from the road 3

2009-08-09T11:28:00.000Z

Ballard, Seattle

Worlds Best Presentation Contest

2009-08-04T19:50:00.002Z

Well I have a small favour to ask any readers of this blog with Slideshare accounts. I am entering this years "World's best presentation competition" over at Slideshare.net and need your vote!
The presentation in question is below and if you click through to here http://www.slideshare.net/edfk/why-statistics-need-context you can give me a vote... Pleeeeease.

Thanks in advance

Why Statistics Need Context

View more presentations from Edward Fidgeon kavanagh.

Pharmacy situation getting ugly

2009-08-04T09:37:00.004Z

According the the Irish Independent the Pharmacy situation is becoming a bit sinister, an article in today's paper starts "Garda protection drafted in as pharmacy row turns ugly".
It would seem disgruntled pharmacy owners have been turning up to the temporary dispensing centres and abusing the staff there... Pharmacists have obviously commenced foot shooting in earnest.

Michael O'Leary's finest quotations

2009-08-03T14:10:00.003Z

Although I will aknowledge he is not everyones cup of tea I have to admit that I quite like his quite "to the point" way of speaking. Below is a presentation I put together detailing a short selection of his finest remarks.

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary in Quotes

View more presentations from edfk.

Man on Wire

2009-08-02T12:32:00.003Z

Phillipe Petit walked a tightrope between the 2 WTC buildings in 1974. Pretty epic...

Irish Pharmacists - Shooting themsleves in the foot

2009-08-02T11:33:00.006Z

This week roughly half of the pharmacies in Ireland are planning to stop dispensing medicine to those with medical card as a form of protest against the governments proposed cut in their fees.

To me this seems like the most ill thought out protest possible, and will result in the public having a VERY sour attitude towards their local pharmacy, and perhaps will expose the somewhat cut throat nature of the "local friendly pharmacist".

What tomorrows actions mean is the following - elderly people who need their medicine will have to travel around and find a pharmacy willing to give them their medicine "Can I have my heart medicine so I can stay alive?" - "No they are cutting the margin on that slightly so I don't want to give that to you", very sick people will not know for certain whether they can get medicine they need... I'm not sure that's how you get the public on your side.

Furthermore, pharmacies who do stay open will poach customers from the ones that are protesting, For example: "Boots Ireland has confirmed that all its pharmacies across the country will remain open for business to dispense a full pharmacy service from August 1. Boots will continue to dispense all medicine schemes to ensure customers ‘are not disadvantaged’"
... That is how you win customers and keep them.

The IPU are shooting themselves in the foot here, rather than protecting small pharmacies they are going to be driving people to the larger ones and indirectly killing off the smaller guys. Bravo IPU. Should be an interesting week

iPhone apps - overated? (Yes)

2009-08-01T11:42:00.006Z

I have to say I am becoming a little sick "bright shiny object" syndrome that has struck a large portion of the marketing community regarding iPhone apps. My two favorite statistics about the apps are below.

In the US the market share (in terms of handsets) is currently at 2.4%... When you are developing apps with the intention of using them as advertising vehicles 2.4% is not a very large target to be aiming for. While I acknowledged that this share will rise, Apple will never own the entire market - you will always be aiming for a portion - rather than all - of phone users.

Now, once you have reached your 2.4% of the market, or whatever % it may be, you must now contend with the fact that the chances are that people will not use it more than once. The numbers above tell the story quite well.

With poor reach, poor usage, and questionable value-for-advertising-dollars I am not very positive about the marketing potential of iPhone apps.
(By the way I do acknowledge there are some useful fun apps out there, some, and I am talking about this from a marketing perspective)

Fox "News" - Not a fan of Amsterdam

2009-07-30T14:24:00.005Z

Below is an amazingly funny video that I came across by way of "pharma gossip" blog. It was made by an Amsterdam native who was a little bit upset with how Fox "news" described his home city. According to Fox news "Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption, crime, everything is out of control, its anarchy"

The video is a witty rebuttal and proves a point by using a few key statistics.

Images from the road 2

2009-07-29T10:34:00.000Z

Up Cypress Mt. - Vancouver

Assault on Canadian healthcare continued

2009-07-28T12:33:00.006Z

Continuing on from yesterdays piece: http://cube1986.blogspot.com/2009/07/ridiculous-attack-on-government-run.html

I put together a nice little graph below using OECD and CIA figures on average health spend per person and average life expectancy, I realise the two are probably not perfectly related, but maybe they should include these in their pathetic little advert.

When you are spending almost double -but not getting better results than - who you are insulting... you may want to think again?

Ridiculous attack on Government run health care - take that Canada

2009-07-27T21:44:00.003Z

US media is ridiculous at the best of times, but now they have been able to combine stupid adverts with a sill disliking of anything that can even slightly resemble anything close to socialism... In the firing line now: Public Health Care.

I find it greatly amusing that "patientsunitenow.com"s supposed poster child of "Bad Health care" is Canada... which boasts far better health care records than the US...

Here is the advert I am ranting about, have a look and be astonished.

Education

2009-07-25T14:41:00.002Z

Irish rail - On track

2009-07-25T13:44:00.003Z

I know its all the rage these days to be critical of all things state run in Ireland, especially supposed shortcomings in transport.

But I must say that I think some very impressive changes have taken place in terms of inter city transport, that cannot be ignored. Recently I took an Irish Rail train down to "the Kingdom" of Kerry, and to be honest I was rather surprised at how nice the whole experience is...
Gone are the days of the hulking orange trains with seats as comfortable as granite, now Irish Rail boast of fleet of pretty damn modern and comfortable trains which offer a pretty comfy ride.
The trains are also fairly nippy and as an added bonus the seemingly run ON TIME!

If you would like to see a contrast to this take a little trip over to the US of A and have a peek at their equivalent "Amtrak", the trains are outdated and rickety, as slow as push bikes and furthermore judging by the constant swaying and bumping of the carriages they haven't even lay the tracks down properly.

So I think we should all give Irish Rail a round of applause... I know I will *starts clapping*

Images from the Road 1

2009-07-21T16:34:00.000Z

Shouldn't we have bins like this?

A matter of phraseology

2009-07-20T09:28:00.002Z

Is it all a matter of phraseology

"cold, dead fish - low on parasites"

Sushi?

Reality is...

2009-07-18T15:20:00.001Z

USA, Sports and Presidents

2009-07-16T22:16:00.002Z

You better be good at sports if you want to be deemed a good president in America. Poor Mr. Obama's baseball pitching skills have come under scrutiny after this video

The video has prompted fairly amazing comments from some viewers such as "Why can people not see what this guy is , he is a fraud ,the sad thing is, we are a country without a leader"... Jeez harsh, just because he throws like a girl?

He can however shoot some hoops!

No more to take

2009-07-16T18:24:00.000Z

Oldy but Goody - Stress at Work leads to... Penisectimy

2009-07-08T13:30:00.002Z

Occasionally I get comments left on some of my older posts and it often reminds me of some of my funnier discoveries from days gone by. Some individual searched "Stress in the workplace" and came across this rather horrific article I had seen in Metro "news".

From January 07

This was in the classy free "metro" paper recently
Doctors' unions in Romania have criticised a decision to make a surgeon pay£100,000 in damages after he lost his temper and hacked off a patient's penisduring surgery. Surgeon Naum Ciomu, who had been suffering from stress atthe time, had been operating on patient Nelu Radonescu, 36, to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper. Grabbing a scalpel, he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theatre at Bucharest hospital.

I hope this article gave the searcher all the information he needed to know about stress in the workplace... It's a bad, and occasionally life altering thing!

Graphing it up

2009-07-07T14:22:00.004Z

My poor eyes have been subjected to a number of horrific graphs over the past few days, and I genuinely fear that they may never recover.

The Sunday Times produced a graph trying to explain to people how much food is being thrown away in the UK, however the graph was fantastically pointless and hard to understand as it's creator had the great idea of trying to depict numbers of - potatoes, loafs of bread etc - on the same scale as tons of others things... needless to say it looked fairly stupid and made little to no sense.

There have been others too, but the one below has been my favorite as it brought a little cheer to my day. Take a look for yourself (I know its small) and marvel at how

1. the colours are AWFUL

2. the graphs are blatantly too small

3. The fact that the figures have NOTHING to do with the corresponding bars in the back (esp on the top graph)

4. The fact that this was part of a promotional piece trying to sell something.

Poor show, thats all I have to say.

Irish pharmacists get cranky again

2009-07-03T01:53:00.002Z

Well it would seem as though the Irish pharmacists union is kicking up an almighty fuss again about the governments attempts to reduce the somewhat absurd amounts of profits to be made in handing packets of pills to customers. The arguement being put forward by the IPU is that profit reduction will lead to closure of many pharmacies...

What isn't realised by most people is just how much money there is to be made in this line of business, and with this much money sloshing about, I do understand why the IPU don't want these cuts to go forward. Go to any mid sized town in Ireland and you will find 3 or 4 pharmacies... All selling the same things... To a small population.

Any industry that supports that many of the same business in small population centres is too profitable for my liking (when it's tax payers money anyway). It would be hard to name any other business that you could you open 4 identical outlets in the same small town and still make money (that isn't a pub)

I think the government are completely correct here and hope the cuts go through, snip snip snip.

From the phone - Fads

2009-06-28T15:09:00.004Z

The photo below was taken at the Science Museum in Boston (in the "kiddies" learning centre), I thought it was pretty interesting... ah Rubik's cubes, where did they go...

Tampa Bay - Mugshot hell

2009-06-27T16:27:00.005Z

It's bad enough that a search of your name on Google can throw up all sorts of unwanted bits and pieces from your past and present, from dodgy photos on your social network site to silly things you might have written about on your blog... but it can be much worse if you live in Florida. Seems in Tampa Bay, Florida, the St. Petersburg Times have teamed up with the local Sheriffs office to produce a fine website called www.mugshots.tampabay.com , where as the name suggests, they post up mugshots of the most recent criminals booked into their police stations.

Quite humorously you can even browse criminals by all sorts of metrics: weight, eye colour, height and age. The screenshot below shows "Shakara Tabira Waters", who turned up under my "300 pounds or more" search... It becomes even funnier when you realise he crime was... Food stamp fraud.

Great site! and I would say that for some people who would consider undertaking small crimes this may be somewhat of a deterrent

Scientologists running ads on TV now...

2009-06-27T13:20:00.002Z

As if the whole Scientology cult, sorry, religion thing couldn't get any weirder, it just has. Seems the nice folk as Scientology HQ have decided that in order to spread the good word of their intergalactic deity Xenu they need some flashy ads on US TV to improve how the public views them... here is one of them... its not that bad really, maybe we should all join up?

Easily Impressed

2009-06-25T16:11:00.000Z

10 Business lessons - a presentation

2009-06-17T09:10:00.002Z

This presentation is one of the best ones I've seen in a very very long time. Entered as part of the Slideshare "Tell a Story" competition, this presentation combines slick design, and some pretty nifty lessons too. Maybe I will be this good some day... (probably not)

10 Business Lessons Learned

View more OpenOffice presentations from rfashing.

Man has too much of the following - Post-its, Time

2009-06-13T12:43:00.003Z

I came across this video while going through the many, many unread blogposts that I am going to catch up with today. This rather cool/bored guy has made a very impressive stop motion video with the aid of post-its.
Check it out

Silly figures from silly men

2009-06-11T19:42:00.003Z

The recent local elections here in Ireland have brought with them a number of excessively silly figures being quoted from the opposition leaders. The most repeated, and foolish of these comments came from Enda Kenny...

I'm paraphrasing here, but he implied that as Fianna Fail had only secured 25% of the overall vote around the country- that therefore 75% of the population had shown - by their voting for others - that they had no confidence in the current governments ability to do their job...
At a first glance it might be easy to be taken in by this logic, beacuase if only a quarter voted for the incumbent government then the rest must be against them... right?

Well, Enda Kenny's party got a whopping 32% of the public vote, so by his same wonderful logic are 68% of the population against his party? To me this doesn't seem like too much more of a margin to be boasting about... but perhaps thats just me.

What made the situation even more farcical that Eamon Gilmore, leader of the Labour party also decided to use the same statistic, saying that 75% of the public hadn't voted for Fianna Fail, so they should therefore step down... Well Labour received 14% of the vote (4% less than random Independents) - 86% of the population didn't vote for them...

What I don't want deny is that the opposition party have clearly made large gains over the last few year, and probably rightly so, however the excessive usage of this utterly pointless statistic makes me worry for the general intellect of the class of people we have running/potentially running our country.

Controlling & Measuring

2009-06-08T19:33:00.000Z

Taylorism - revisited

2009-06-05T14:16:00.008Z

Well folks, as a special treat I have decided to revisit the first ever post that went up on this blog all the way back in January of 2007, I have slightly ammended a few sentances here and there but the post is for the most part identical.

I was recently involved in helping design an eCommerce website that is being put forward for a grant proposal. During the process of designing the interface, I noticed that above all - even more than complaining about things - I enjoy looking for the most efficient ways of doing things.

My task in assisting in the site layout was to create an interface where the most functionality could be fit around minimal and optimal amount of actions, and importantly aiming to reduce the “click distance” from place to place, and also how much space each item is allocated (most used function = most space allocated)

For me, the shining lights of the beauty of efficiency and simplicity have come from the works of Jonathan Ive. Mr Ive has won numerous awards for his product designs, based on their simplicity, beauty and ultimately their levels of efficiency in one regard or another. In the last decade the Englishman has brought you products such as the iMac, iPod and more recently the groundbreaking iPhone. In terms of devices such as the iPod and iPhone, efficiency is measured as the amount of processes it takes to achieve your end product and their simplicity. (E.g. to send a message do I need to press one button of 4 different ones) The modern iPod has five buttons (see this really was written in 2007) that will navigate you through simply laid out menus, which themselves never leave the user more than 4 clicks (click distance) away from the media they want to access.

- Enter Taylor -

We are now in an era where the quest is to create the most efficient way of using our technology, and this pursuit of efficiency can be attributed in a large part to one man. The end of the 19th century saw a push toward increasing the efficiency of industry and manufacturing, and at the forefront of this was a man named Frederick Taylor. Taylor was born in 1856 and was a huge proponent of the industrial efficiency movement, and is widely acknowledged as the “father of scientific management.”

His theories improved the efficiency, output, profitability and quality of life for workers, and set the basis for the modern day manufacturing processes seen all around us, and the reason why so many of our everyday consumables are relatively much cheaper than before his reforms were introduced. He claimed that all industrial processes should be standardised and based on scientific research rather than more unreliable rules of thumb or anecdotal evidence, by finding this “one right way” efficiency would be increased, this was achieved by bringing in mechanisation and assembly lines in which jobs were broken down into their simplest aspects and standardised. (Taylor was also the inventor of the “time – motion study” which breaks all the processes involved in a product down into seconds and allows accurate estimation of ideal output. I saw in a recent documentary that the modern day masters of this are Nike who measures their processes in terms of thousandths of seconds. 6.6 minutes is assigned to the production of each t-shirt, pay rate in Dominican Republic = 70c an hr = 8 c per t-shirt = 3/10ths of 1% of the retail price is labour costs!)

It was also of the utmost importance for appropriate worker must be assigned to each task, it would seem that Taylor wasn’t all that interested in being politically correct.
“A man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work."
-

Where's the incentive?

Linkage of wages to output was another key foundation on which his theory was based.Taylor observed that people, especially in monotonous jobs, will tend to work at the slowest rate at which they will not be punished, a condition known as “loafing” (I have seen this in action, and I would guess that anyone who has worked in a summer job as a student has either seen this loafing in action, or fully taken part)

This is due to the fact that people tend to be inherently lazy unless motivated by some factor (not always money) to be otherwise, and, when paid the same people will tend to benchmark their productivity against that of the slowest worker.
I have worked in only one real job so far in my life and that was in Marks and Spencer, and I have witnessed the problem posed by lack of incentives first hand, Taylor from what I can see was entirely correct. For instance in this store we knew that if we just worked a little faster than the mentally dim guy who turned up about only half of his allotted days we’d be safe in our jobs.

Here a condition existed in which striving for to be the best did not exist, instead people strived to be slightly more acceptable than the worst.

The simple fact is that in absence of an appropriate incentive staff will tend do the least work they can do for the same amount of money.

Work breaks

Taylor was also one of the first advocators of regular breaks in the working period. Although at first giving workers time off every hour might seem counterproductive it was found that when tested scientifically, a ten minute break for every hour worked would increase productivity and efficiency hugely, and as an added bonus also led to happier workers.

Taylor undertook these studies in the 1930s and these were seen as pioneering findings for the progression of the industrial revolution, and brought with them a new era of critical and scientific thought on how things are done and how they can be improved for mutual benefit of management and employees alike.

The example that convinced me of the genius of Frederick Taylor was shown to me in a class I had last year and can be quite easily demonstrated by the following chart.

Taylor agreed to pay his staff far above what their peers were earning as long as they would unquestioningly abide by his new techniques, and as you can see the numbers speak for themselves.

I do apologise to have kept you this long and I realise that the chances are that this interests none of you in the slightest, but I do still think its important to know that the products you use and the price you have paid for them are often influenced directly by the theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor and the era of industrial improvement that he introduced over a century ago.

- Well there you go that was my first ever post. I recently received a comment from a reader that said the following: Thanks for your extensive analysis of Taylorism. I do believe that Taylor had a very cynical understanding of human beings and the Battery Hen mode of working is demeaning to workers. Workers cannot being new ideas and fresh insights to their workplace and a this rigid top-down structure throttles innovation and flexible and intelligent approaches to labour.

I guess I do mostly agree with what the reader says, Taylor did have a rather cynical view of workers, and the do as I say method does indeed throttle innovation. Firstly I suppose I am trying to express the business value of what his theories brought about, NOT whether his theories left a warm fuzzy feeling in the hearts of the workers. I suppose it is worth noting that when Taylor came up with these theories England was a major manufacturing nation, and of course in more recent time the more developed countries have seen their manufacturing industries move to the likes of China etc.

Taylorism in its raw form is obviously not applicable to some of the new more creative industries in operation in the western world – However as unpalatable as it may be, for manufacturing jobs this approach is probably as close to perfect as you are going to get. Mining, sewing pieces of fabric together, operations robots that make cars, packaging things etc etc do not require high levels of innovation from staff, Taylorism offered staff much higher wages than competitors could offer, and much better working conditions than competitors could offer, while making much greater profits than the competitors. And although his methods do not result in a workers paradise, all things are relative.

Natural Disasters - are we doomed? No

2009-06-03T12:24:00.006Z

Among the numerous "nerdy" sites I visit on quite a regular basis is a gem named "Swivel", a site where users upload data captured from various databases and share it with Joe public. The more interesting charts tend to generate conversations as to the relevance of the data, and people often point out simple factors which might explain trends which at face value seem astonishing and miraculous. Imagine if we had this sort of analysis going on in mass media... (I wont get started on this right now)

One of the graphs featured on the website yesterday that I found to be very interesting is a bar chart showing the "the number of natural disasters by decade since 1900"... take a look and see what you can make of it.

So on first glance you might come to the conclusion that we are all doomed, and for the next few decades we will be incurring increasingly more natural disasters, after all that is what the trend on the graph is showing.

Now, while this may indeed be true, and there is evidence to show that tropical storms may increase with global warming, it is important to consider if there are any other factors at play.

A very valid, and often ignored, argument to bring up is that technological advancements have allowed us to increase our ability to detect hurricanes, earthquakes etc *to clarify, by detection I do not mean forecasting, or prevention, rather I mean recognition of past or current events* . On the weather website "Epicdisaster.com" one writer put it well when they said: "In 1931, there were only about 350 earthquake detecting seismograph stations in the world. Today, there are 8,000 stations. It only stands to reason that 8,000 stations are going to detect more seismic events. Further, our equipment now is more sensitive. Quakes that were undetectable—either because of intensity or distance—now are recorded"

Examples like this demonstrate aptly the importance of examining charts and data at more than face value, and to delay jumping to conclusions before you have considered all related factors.

It all shows the importance of visiting the site... which you should do now... by clicking here.

Canada logo - too boring for comfort

2009-06-01T15:20:00.003Z

If you know me to any extent at all I am sure you know that I am a huge fan of all things Canadian. Having been there several times over the past few years I have a real liking for the place and I most certainly intend on returning to Canada in the near future.

However I do have one, albeit petty, gripe with the Canada, one thing I cant get out of my mind is how poor the Canada "logo" is, this "wordmark" accompanies all government documents, buildings etc. and is just... well... very boring. Behold the Canada logo in all its boringness:
According to Wikipedia: "Established in 1980, the Canada wordmark is essentially a logo for the government of Canada: it consists of the word "Canada" written in a serif font, a modified version of Baskerville, with a Canadian flag over the final 'a'"

I have to say, if first impressions are worth anything, this logo does not do a whole lot to allay the false conceptions that peoples have about Canada, primarily that it is the boring version of the USA, which it is most certainly not.

I suppose its a silly complaint to have, but the Canadian government should consider coming up with a logo that represents their country in a more exciting light than "we are slightly more exciting than times new roman".

New blog on the block

2009-05-30T18:07:00.003Z

My friend Manuel has decided to start up a blog in an effort to put to text the undoubtedly strange and wonderful thoughts and ideas that bounce around his brain.
The blog, "Ireland via Chile", can be found here.

His first post brings up an interesting argument about the levels of customer service we enjoy (or not) here in Ireland. Well worth a look. So go. Now...

Where's the Beef?

2009-05-28T16:48:00.003Z

While reading through an article on "Mad cow disease" (great name for a condition) yesterday I came across this data that shows the decline of grams of beef per person from 1974 to 1999, and accompanied rise of consumption of poultry.

Scares surrounding mad cow disease started in the late 80's and intensified in the early 90's, however the rise of poultry consumption could probably also be attributed to other factors such as cost and poultry being perceived as a healthier alternative.

If you ever dream of beating me...

2009-05-27T00:15:00.002Z

From the wonderful "Fistful of boomstick" blog:

Jo on the merits of Consumerism

2009-05-25T09:47:00.003Z

After having disappeared to parts unknown for the last long while, today sees the return of every ones favorite guest poster: Johannes Boegershausen (nice surname huh?) from Germany. Read away at his wonderful thoughts below... DO IT

Recently while sorting the papers and folders that accumulated during my undergraduate studies, I rediscovered some older notes of mine that I prepared for an essay about consumerism and its critics in a course about globalization. As this topic has received reasonable attention amid the current crisis, this short blog entry will highlight some of the key ideas of this argument briefly.

“We all know that Coke “adds to life” and Toyota open our eyes to show as that “nothing is impossible”. Obviously we are living in a commercial age, but what’s this consumer culture about?
Consumption of goods and services as such is a typical human activity. However, some argue that most of today’s consumption in the Western world is consumption in excess of needs. Consumerism is associated with dysfunctional societies, in which shopaholics are bound together by shop-bought items rather than by cultural identity. Following this notion, most consumers buy products for the social identity they bestow on them (e.g. Adidas shoes, Rolex watches, BMW cars etc.). Moreover, the excessive consumerism may negatively affect the environment as well as the health of the consumers (just think about overeating fast food etc.). While there is undoubtedly some truth in this criticism of consumers, one may right ask what are the alternatives? Many of the critics of consumerism call for legislation and regulation to limit consumerism. But what are the consequences?

Libertarians tend to defend consumerism by stating that economic materialism is natural. However, there is a more convincing argument pro-consumerism: consumer behavior (and thus shopping and consumeristic behavior) is obviously driven by the personal decision making of each consumer. Subsequently, the only way to limit excessive consumption beyond needs is the personal decision of each individual. It should be noted, that the term “needs” itself is full of ambiguity, just think of luxury goods – are they per se waste or excessive consumption? Can needs be defined by an authority/state agency in democracy? Rather not. The only other model to eliminate consumerism is to introduce systems with centralized planning and sumptuary laws (welcome back GDR and Soviet Union) – a vision not even popular among the most persistent critics of consumerism…

Just do it.

Rather silly confessions of a Sales Rep

2009-05-24T15:09:00.002Z

By way of Peter Rost's blog I came across an interview piece with a rather charming contestant off the hit US tv series "Survivor" pictured above. The person in question is Corinne Kaplan, who prior to the show was, according to her LinkedIn profile a "Senior Executive Sales Rep " for GSK. Her profile also states that "My goal is to excel at a challenging senior level sales position"

However I would imagine that the follow information might make future employers a little less likely to hire her.

According to the ex-sorority girl she is ultra competitive and admits with glee "I have no moral compass." But wait, her admissions become even more comical - "Selling drugs is a lie" she said, adding "I sold Vioxx for Merck before it got taken off the market for killing people. I knew damn well it was dangerous; I went around telling them to write it. There’s a lot of serious lying I’ve done in my life"

"It’s not for me to say. … Don’t listen to me. Read your fucking journals. Why the fuck are you listening to your rep? Just because I’m pretty? You think I know more about the drug? No."
..What a charming young lady... and to be fair she has a point, the doctors should not trust every attractive rep that marches into their practice, HOWEVER, if reps are going to start telling the doctors that there is essentially no point in seeing them, and insist on telling them to "read your fucking journals" they might find themselves being banned from seeing certain doctors (I think this happens quite regularly - certain doctors refuse to see reps altogether).

Necessary, not necessarily practiced

2009-05-23T18:24:00.000Z

Veterinary woes

2009-05-22T13:10:00.002Z

Last week my favorite podcast in the whole wide world ("More or Less") reported a rather shocking statistic last week regarding the employment situation of British vets.

It would seem that the veterinary community have fallen foul of troubling economic times. Believe it or not the number of unemployed vets claiming welfare have risen by 350%. So as of this week there are now 45 unemployed vets claiming welfare in England, yes that right... 45, not 45 thousand, or 45 hundred... just 45 - but seeing as the base number was a whopping TEN, it seems like an astronomical increase when you consider it in percentage terms.

I'd check out that podcast if I were you.

GQ expose more bad Army slides of a biblical proportion

2009-05-21T08:01:00.008Z

The US military have a long and proud history of, among other things, producing the most woeful graphics and slide shows on the planet. There are some pretty famous examples out there such as this one: I often wonder how people can come up with slides that are this bad, and I suppose for the most part you can put it down to the fact that people's brains work in different ways, and some people are not particularly graphically minded, that's what I like to tell myself in order to calm down.

However what I just cant get into my mind is why in the US Army, where surely some of America's best and brightest reside, they cant get something like PowerPoint right, and with that in mind I bring you to exhibit B.

GQ, the men's lifestyle magazine has recently published an article and related slide show on their website (here) of some of the cover slides for the Department of Defence's "World intelligence update". Here's one of the beauty's below

Since the leaking of these seemingly top secret documents (shouldn't someone get in trouble for this?), there has been widespread condemnation about the fact that every cover slide seems to use a quote from the bible, accompanied by pictures of either combat, or freedom bringing troops - needless to say it is deemed a little inappropriate to indicate in any way that this is a holy war.

As for me, I don't think I mind all that much about the fact there are bible quotes on the cover slide, I find that it actually matches the complete shoddiness and shambolic nature of the slide overall. Again, who makes these slides? (again... shouldn't someone get in trouble for this?), I understand that in this case my gripes are solely of an aesthetic nature, but really if I were on the mailing list for this document I would probably bin it straight away.

Head over to the article here and amaze yourself as to just how ridiculous the US Army can be.
Apologies for the pun in the title.

The funniest moment in radio history?

2009-05-19T11:24:00.004Z

I don't listen to the radio all that much these days, but maybe I would if I was assured such comical over the top political commentary as can be found on the American airwaves. While browsing Graham Linehen's blog I came across this beauty.
I would think that if an Irish host did this on radio they might very well be taken into some sort of special care.

Proposed tax on Soft drinks in the US: what about the fun?

2009-05-15T11:05:00.006Z

It looks as though various states in the USA are considering bringing in a tax on soft drinks that contain sugar in an effort to curtail the somewhat ludicrous consumption habits of the American population. According to John Berman of World News “The average American drinks the equivalent of 50 cans of soda a month. And we drink more soda than bottled water, milk or coffee.”

This is quite clearly a problem, seeing as there are approximately 150 calories in every can. I suppose you might say that in reality this is not all that much, even if you drank nearly 2 cans per day, but I think its worth keeping in mind that this average figure of 50 probably has large deviation, I have been to America several times and seen the drinks sizes consumed at McDonalds and the like -WAY more than 2 cans - probably more like 4, and then we are talking of more like 600 calories.

“A 1 penny per ounce tax-on sugared beverages could lead to a bout a 10 percent reduction in population consumption which could be a public health home run.” is what Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center Director for Obesity at Yale thinks about the matter, and most people would agree that additional taxation on products that cause health problems is entirely reasonable, especially in a country where the obesity problem is out of control.

This view is not held by the soft drinks industry, and I suppose in reality that is not all that surprising. Susan K. Neely, president of the American Beverage Association, recently appeared in an interview and had a slightly absurd contribution to make the issue. "Soft drinks don’t play any role in the obesity epidemic" said Neely, adding "Soft drinks are just a fun beverage along with a lot of other beverages and foods that we like to eat or drink. It’s eating too much of something that is a problem".

Now excuse me if I am being overly harsh, but to say soft drinks "don't play any role" in the obesity problem seems like incredibly wishful thinking, perhaps you could say they play a small role, a minor role, something - just don't say they have nothing to do with it. Secondly I don't think I have ever heard anyone come to the defence of a product by citing its "FUNness", that sounds like the sort of arguments a 8 year old might make.
The whole "FUN" theme seems to be a constant feature rolled out by the American Beverage Association, they say in their blog:

"Like we often tell you, we’re a fun industry with a fun history full of fun stories that happens to make fun beverages meant to be enjoyed"

I like what comedian Stephen Colbert had to say about this importance the organisation is putting on "fun": "Yeh... things that are fun are never bad for you, we learned that from unprotected sex"

Although soft drinks are clearly not the only factor to blame for obesity they are however a large contributor, and an easy target to start the reform off, I think that taxing (and btw the proposed tax isn't all that high) sugar laden soft drinks makes complete sense, and if it leads to better health for the population, and tax revenue that can be spent on the health system I say go for it.

Bad Science: What a book

2009-05-14T10:19:00.003Z

At the moment I am reading the book "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre, a regular columnist for The Guardian for a section by the same name - Bad Science.

This book is unreasonably good and preposterously funny, furthermore it also manages to give you a very good education about the basics of science and thinking in a more scientific way.

Mr. Goldacre seems to share a great many of the pet peeves that make me a little angry from time to time, and has entire chapters dedicated to, among other things, the likes of Homeopathic "Medicine", how the media contorts & misrepresents data, how journalists get it wrong and much more.
My favorite chapter to date is the one concerning his views towards "Dr" Gillian McKeith, every one's favorite television nutritionist.

Goldacre records his first introduction to McKeiths existence by way of an a letter from a reader of his column informing him of her TV series, Goldacre writes:
"She was also quoted saying something a 14 year old doing GSCE biology could have identified as pure nonsense: recommending spinach, and the darker leaves on plants, because they contain more chlorophyll. According to McKeith these are "high in oxygen" and will "really oxygenate your blood"
He goes on...
"Is chlorophyll "high in oxygen"? No. It helps make oxygen. In sunlight. And its pretty dark in your bowels: in fact, if there's any light in there at all then something's gone badly wrong"

My favorite part of the chapter is Goldacre's analysis of McKeith's "professional qualifications", it turns out that her PhD was obtained from "Clayton College" which offered a non-accredited correspondence course for a mere $6,400 in fees, furthermore. McKeith's defence of also being a member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants is also questioned by Goldacre: "Well. My dead cat Hettie is also a "certified professional member of the AANC. I have the certificate hanging in my loo"

I could go on about this book forever, so for my own safety I won't, all I can say is that you should try and get hold of a copy of this book... or at the very least have a look at this video of him... and then get the book.

FDA: Cheerios being marketed as a drug

2009-05-13T08:11:00.005Z

It would appear that General Mills, the manufacturers of Cheerios among other things, are in a bit of hot water at the moment with the FDA.

The FDA which regulates the production and promotion of food and drugs in the US has taken particular exception to the strong health related claims made by the manufacturers regarding the health benefits of including the cereal in your diet.

"You can lower your cholesterol by 4 per cent in six weeks"

In a letter sent to Ken Powell, CEO of Gen Mills, the FDA claim that "Based on claims made on your product's label, we have determined that your Cheerios® Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal is promoted for conditions that cause it to be a drug because the product is intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease"

It would seem that the marketing team behind the cereal chose to essentially ignore the "Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act" and have landed themselves in some trouble.

I'm sure that General Mills will find a creative way to rephrase the meesage they are trying to send out regarding the health effects of consuming their cereal, but part of me hope that that don't because "Failure to promptly correct the violations specified above may result in enforcement action without further notice. Enforcement action may include seizure of violative products and/or injunction against the manufacturers and distributors of violative products"... Part of me likes the image of FDA agents storming in through the front doors of a Wallmart and energetically removing all offending "violative products" off the shelves in a very over the top manner.

H/T Pharmagossip

Hans Rosling on Swine Flu reporting

2009-05-11T08:40:00.008Z

Great video posted on YouTube by my favorite stats man Hans Rosling. He decided to take a look at the recent occurrence, and subsequent coverage of, the swine flu compared to another disease Tuberculosis.
I wont quote all the figures in the video because it would ruin the video, but the one stat that I will quote is Deaths over the same 13 day period: (from swine flu = 31)(from tuberculosis = 63,066)

Missing out

2009-05-10T12:48:00.003Z

Decided to recycle this "oldy but goody" post from a while back

Ryanair, being nice... not really though

2009-05-08T08:06:00.002Z

I read on the "Value Ireland" blog about a very cunning little plan that the chaps at Ryanair have thought of regarding flights to Scotland this coming weekend which are very much in demand from Leinster Rugby supporters wanting to go see the Heineken cup final.

It would seem that to those Munster supporters that had bought flights in advance - seemingly in the assumption that their team would be in the finals - are being offered a refund of up to €100. Now at first glance this seems like a pretty nice gesture by Ryanair, because it is usually more Ryanair's style to tell you to fupp off.

Upon closer inspection you can see that this is not really ALL about the press they might gain from the stunt. According to the Ryanair website "All seats are now available for just €349 return between Dublin and Edinburgh and €199 return between Dublin and Glasgow (Prestwick)." A great example of supply and demand in action here, €249 extra revenue anyone?
Smart stuff.

Sildeshare.net - a website you will like

2009-05-07T07:53:00.002Z

http://www.slideshare.net/ is one of my favorite websites, and is a great source of information and insipration for anyone looking to gain new ideas about how to present information in the form of powerpoint slides. I usually describe it as "like youtube, but for presentations". The site really is cooler than I make it sound, trust me.

I have had the distinct pleasure of being included on the frontpage of the website on previous occasions, and now the good folks at the website have decided that my "Slide makeover of a slide makeover" should also feature on the frontpage for a while, I am convinced that I must have some sort of unkown insider at the website.

However this time, seeing as I am actively critising someone elses work I am expecting that he might get in contact with me and we will have to have a powerpoint duel... Nerdyness of new proportions!!!

Slide makeover... of a slide makeover

2009-05-06T08:51:00.003Z

The presentation below is what people in the know seem to term as a "Slide makeover", whereby you take a slide which was previously hideous and attempt to make it less so. I was shown this video on youtube by a friend of a guy who does this, and some how seems to make a living off it...

So anyway, below is a step by step guide of how I made the slide in question, and while it is by no means perfect, I would be fairly confident it is more effective at conveying the information in question.

Slide Makeover... of a Slide makeover

View more presentations from edfk.

Mass Karaoke - A T-Mobile production

2009-05-05T08:13:00.003Z

I found this wonderful video via "adfreak" blog, and I have to say I am fairly impressed with it. It would seem like the good folk at T-Mobile, and their advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi thought it would be a great laugh to cram 13,000 of their customers into Trafalgar square and have them do a bizarre sort of... Mass karaoke!

This no doubt drummed up plenty of local press and by the looks of it they probably have some decent footage for an advert or two.

If you like the Beatles' music you might be slightly annoyed to hear people butcher "Hey Jude", but its quite good honest!

China: Smoke more please

2009-05-05T07:45:00.003Z

Today the Irish Times have run a story about how the Chinese government are aiming to combat their economic woes... by telling people to smoke more.

"In Gongan county in Hubei province, the order has come down from above that employees of all local government departments, organisations, service centres and corporations must consume at least 23,000 cartons of cigarettes this year" ... One can presume that that quantity is not per person.

This order by the government might seem unrealistic, and well, a little silly, but there are 350m smokers in China so it would seem as if this quantity would have been consumed anyway, the main purpose of the initiative is to get people smoking local brands only.
Citizens are "required to smoke local brands, and anyone smoking other brands can be fined. The smoking allowance aims to boost the regional economy by encouraging more consumption of local cigarettes."

However it would appear like many newspapers have missed the boat on this one and are reporting yesterdays news as Reuters news agency are now reporting a change in heart by the provincial government who seemingly rescinded the order as of today... Not an entirely surprising move to be honest.
Nice try though

Dunnes - "The difference is we're Irish"

2009-05-03T12:57:00.005Z

I have a rather large bone to pick with Dunnes Stores and their new tagline... but before I complain about that it’s probably important to consider the trends in retail that have become apparent in these troubling economic times.

1. It has become very apparent that people are now more price conscious than ever. Large numbers of customers who would have been quite price insensitive are now deciding to “trade down” as such and shop at lower priced retailers such as Aldi and Lidl, often forgoing brand-name goods, for lower prices.

2. People have streamed across the UK border to take advantage of the very favourable € to £ exchange rate despite the governments urges to refrain from doing so, essentially saying that to do so was an unpatriotic act. The pleas were completely ignored and as a result the Christmas 2008 shopping period was the worst seen in Ireland for decades

With these 2 very important facts in mind it startles me that Dunnes Stores (relatively) new tagline is “The difference is we’re Irish” ... I mean seriously... THAT’S IT... that’s all you have? Of all the things people look for when they are choosing a retailer I would imagine that the “Irishness” of the operation is probably quite far down the list. What’s more I would like to know how they have come to the conclusion that they are considerably more Irish than any other major retailer.

In terms of their product range they sell almost the exact same range of products that can be found in any supermarket in the country, and which are quite obviously all made by the same multinational companies. I assume they have a number of locally sourced potatoes or some other inconsequential product like that, but Dunnes Stores do no more to champion Irish brands than Tesco, or Superquinn for that matter. And in terms of the hiring policies of Dunnes vs. Any other supermarket there is absolutely no difference.

So I guess in summary I strongly dislike the new Dunnes tagline on 2 main grounds, the first being it is completely irrelevant to what customers are looking for in a retailer at the moment, and secondly it is essentially a false statement. As far as Im concerned its a completely useless and ineffective branding campaign because "The difference is, the customer doesn't care about that"

"Empowering" Patients through advertising

2009-05-01T08:14:00.005Z

In society it would seem that some people are generally deemed to be more trustworthy than others. Politicians for example tend to be thought of as residing at the more "untrustworthy" end of the spectrum, and I would imagine those involved in marketing are probably held in roughly the same regard. At the other end of the scale I would imagine you might have people like family doctors and firemen (or something like that)

With the theme of trust in mind I find it quite shocking that in America the FDA allow any sort of direct to customer advertising for pharmaceutical products, especially through the medium of social media. The absurd argument in favour of this is "customer empowerment" to have better informed customers making better choices. (Because of course they are going to be advertising objective clinical information...)

Now excuse me if I am wrong, but a GPs main interest in life is to make his patients better through usage of the best drug available on the market, and a marketers main interest in life is that the patient takes their drug regardless of its efficacy... Who should be allowed advise sick patients?

This coupled with the fact that the vast majority of patients cannot understand the medical consequences of various treatments, and are easily impressionable, says to me that DTC advertising is a complete farce, and despite the protests of pharma companies should most certainly heavily regulate usage of social media.

Roll Call

2009-04-30T00:40:00.003Z

Just wondering if I have many regular readers out there in the blogosphere, if so how about you leave a quick comment so I can get an Idea of who and where so I can make my posts a little more customised?

I'm sure only about 0.01% of my loyal fans will respond so I'm reckoning for about 50 comments here... haha... Leave a quick hello if you have time, and a link where we can read your wonderful stuff... (Tumbleweed rolls by)

Parallel Importation: A Pharma perspective

2009-04-29T00:18:00.004Z

PI presentation temp

View more presentations from edfk.

Parallel Importion has grown hugely in the last few months, but what is it all about?

Read on and be shocked and appalled (and educated... probably)

Google Reader

2009-04-27T10:39:00.002Z

I have recently had my life ruined, that's right ruined. A previous problem I had with spending too much of my life reading blogs was recently made much much worse - I discovered "Google Reader".
I suppose that on balance I am now reading so much great stuff every day that it would be unfair to say that Google reader has ruined my life, but it has certainly made me more addicted to reading blogs than ever.

The concept is fairly simple, the reader allows you to subscribe to your favorite (or most hated) blogs and then have the new articles from these blogs sent to your Google reader account. This means that seeing as you don't have to click around to many different blogs you A) Save alot of time and B) gain the ability to read a much greater volume of material.

I have gone from reading about 10 blogs regularly to about 50 now, and as soon as any of these blogs post new material Google reader will highlight which blog it is and how many unread pieces they have put up... Wonderful stuff.

Sign up to Google Reader @ reader.google.com and you too can have your life ruined (in a good way)

Quote This!

2009-04-25T12:29:00.002Z

QUOTE this!

View more presentations from edfk.

Well I decided to update my slideshare presentation on the various quotations that have appeared on my blog since the beginning, the end result is "Quote this" a rather nice collection of quotes - hope you enjoy!

Ryanair: Considering charging by weight?

2009-04-24T09:00:00.005Z

All the way back in July last year I mentioned how some airlines (Ryanair) should be charging passengers based on their weight (see here), with the logic that people should be paying for a proportionate amount of fuel they are using.

I believe I wrote:
"If an airline lowered the weight of its average passenger, through enforcing restrictions, by say 7kg (just a bit more than a stone), and assuming a plane holds 200 passengers that would mean having 1400kgs less to be lugging through the air"

Well Ryanair launched a competition recently asking for customers' suggestions on how they could best cut costs and... well look what came out as the most popular idea:
“Over 100,000 passengers logged on to ryanair.com to take part in our competition and almost one in three (over 30,000) think that very large passengers should be asked to pay a fat tax,” Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said.

It has to be said though that there are fairly obvious problems with this plan, firstly what is the definition of fat? (for example a grossly obese midget might weigh less than a skinny 7 footer - should you charge on absolute weight or excess weight?) secondly unless you are going to stand people on a scales in the airport how are you going to calculate it, and thirdly it could backfire and be a PR disaster.

However I still maintain that if it is acceptable for car insurance companies to discriminate based on sex, a way of getting cheaper rates to a group that contribute less cost - then it should be acceptable for other services to do this too... Just need to find a way to implement it.

Pfizer: Dangers of buying drugs online

2009-04-23T18:18:00.003Z

I came across this ad via "Adfreak" blog. The ad, seemingly sponsored by Pfizer, aims to detail the possible dangers of buying prescription drugs online (which may be fakes), rather than from authorised licensed pharmacists. It's better if I don't ruin the fun for you, but lets just say it involves a rat and a mouth.