Was it inevitable? the Human race replaced by more efficient low maintenace robots? Is this the begining of the end for human capital?
Selfridges has just appointed their first robotic barman, who is described below:
"Robotic barmen don't have attitude problems, they work a bit quicker, they don't need to eat, they don't need loo breaks, so I think they are perfect."
Thinking of getting myself one....on second thoughts, this may give my boss some ideas.
I love books. Not just the fantastic content and knowledge that they promise and often provide, but how beautiful they can be as an object to hold and admire. My favourite books are the old fashioned hard backed classics with gilded spines and pages.
On a recent visit to Havana Cuba, we went on a tour of the government Capital building and we passed the library room. It had rows and rows of gilded hardbacks from the floor to the ceiling and had one of those huge step ladders on wheels to access all the higher placed books - absolute catnip.
Before I went on my holidays I was contemplating what books to take (what high brow books would I take to weigh down my suitcase and complement my essential Jackie Collins read).
It was also at the same time, a few weeks ago, that I saw the launch of The Kindle; Amazons new wireless reading device with revolutionary electronic paper that provides an experience on par with a normal book.
Hmmn....I was dubious. I went to the site to check it out and see what it was all about. Thinner and weighing less than a normal paperback, allowing a download of a book in less than a minute, a battery life that allows you to read War and Peace in one sitting, (should you wish), I have to say, the flexibility and benefits are really intriguing. You can download daily newspapers to access when you wake up each morning and keep up to date with your favourite blogs.
My next thought was what advertising opportunities can this device offer? This is where it will get really interesting - I'm sure just as in normal newspapers we will be able to place recruitment messages to relevant people.
Also, perhaps for the first time we can associate our employer brand and message with particular books. We want to target females - we can perhaps be associated with the numerous female orientated books on the best sellers list. We want to target business minded professionals - we can be associated with books such as The Tipping Point and Wikinomics.
The Kindle (and its competitors like the Readius) will be successful if they truly provide benefits and added value to consumers. As a traditional book lover, I have to say, I can see real potential with such a device, especially on my commute or on my holidays, but it may be a while before books are just consigned as lovely ornaments on my bookshelf.
I'm back, its been a while. You know what its like, you have plenty to say in your head but don't get round to blogging...
Anyway, imagine the scenario:
'Bertha got into her car to begin the commute home. She had been working in Reading for a global IT firm for 2 years. They were a good company to work for but lately she felt a bit stifled, didn't really see a clear path for her development....if anything she was getting itchy feet and 2 years was a decent enough time to stay at a firm, wasn't it? anyway the incident at the Christmas party still left her feeling a bit uneasy.
The mellow tunes of Magic FM filled the car, she loved that Gloria Estefan track, reminded her of an old boyfriend. After ten minutes she heard a jingle from her satellite navigation system - it was instantly recognisable, similar to the Intel jingle and just as catchy.
Looking at her sat nav screen she realised she was being alerted to that fact she was passing the premises of a rival company. A message filled the car telling her there was a perfect and very relevant position for her at the company with huge opportunities. At the push of a button she could respond by either having an initial conversation there or then or to receive a subsequent email to set up a good time to discuss......
Maybe I will push the button, she thought.......'
Rightio, I may not win the booker prize anytime soon, but I thought of this cool scenario after reading a rather interesting article (you have to register - 'Why Your Car May Soon be Driving advertising) last week. It was all about how satellite navigation systems are allowing geo-targeting advertising and two way dialogue. We were excited when we were the first to use GPRS geo-targeting on bus sides for The Metropolitan Police (community based roles were advertised with digital messaging that changed as buses entered different post codes - nice and personalised)
The satellite navigation scenario is obviously more evolved than what we did for the Met Police but what is also different is that in a car when people are commuting you have a captive audience (much like when flying) which in an incredibly fragmented media landscape is like gold dust.
The digital world continues to excite.
Think of 'Allo Allo' the 1980's comedy set in occupied France during WW2. Now think of Herflick the Gestapo commander character uttering the phrase 'Ve 'ave vays and means of getting you to tell us the truth'.
Now think of Facebook.......eh? Bear with me on this one.
I was sent the below link today by Nicola on our team. Its an article on Facebook and I don't think I have ever read an article about the Internet that has filled me with so much dread. Its a pretty long article on Facebook and the political and philosophical views of the people/venture capitalists who are behind it. The gist of the article is that Facebook 'is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information-gathering tool'. We are all voluntarily giving our most private thoughts and information up to a company who hold right wing Neocon views and who will provide our information to big corporations to advertise to us.
The article is obviously one sided, however it does make me wonder that whilst the Internet is incredibly positive in so many ways there are some areas that concern me in a Big Brother kind of way.
I finished my last new business pitch of the year this morning and I can now allow myself to wind down a little and reflect on the past year. Yay!
What a year its been! so much has happened that I can't sum it up in one post so I wont try, but overall its been great.
I will instead blog about my morning.
When I was getting ready this morning I was, as usual, listening to Terry Wogan on the radio when the news came on. One of the stories summed up a key theme that has permeated 2007 and will continue to be a real influencing factor on the business, social and political world in 2008 and beyond.
It centred around the development of medicine for Aids sufferers. In the past, patients would have had to take around 30 different tablets a day, often on an empty stomach. Today they can instead take one tablet to treat their symptoms. This is quite an amazing transformation, but how has this vastly improved scenario come into play?
- well, three of the major pharmaceutical companies who are major competitors collaborated to make this a reality. The sharing of intellectual capital and resources for a greater good...fantastic.
Collaboration between companies, people and organisations is transforming the social and business world we now operate in. This goes back to my earlier post in May when I got excited to hear about Proctor and Gamble operating an open source policy, something more and more companies and organisations are doing to great effect.
What has enabled this age of collaboration? - The Internet.
The company we pitched for this morning is the world's largest steel company and through research over the last couple of months it been really interesting to note that three of the most important factors affecting businesses, certainly according to Global CEO surveys are Collaboration, Innovation and People.
In a knowledge economy, collaboration, innovation and great people are critical to business success. Its clear that in 2008 things are going to get even more interesting for us all
To my fellow bloggers, its been a real highlight to work and get to know you all in 2007 and thanks everyone for contributing to the discussion. Look forward to chewing the fat in 2008.
Have a lovely Christmas and New Year everyone.
p.s. thanks Matt for getting the whole blogging thing started.
Well well well.... I guess we all knew Google wouldn't take kindly to the rise of Facebook, the young whippersnapper. One of the really cool things about Facebook was its open source policy, letting outside techies develop applications that Facebook users could download and share on the site - enabling real collaborative creativity and in the process contributing to its success.
Not to be outdone or out manoeuvred, 'an alliance of companies led by Google is planning to introduce a set of common standards that will let software developers write programs for Google's social network, Orkut (huge in Brazil), and others such as LinkedIn and Friendster.'
'A cross-site, open platform will, Google hopes, be more attractive to developers than Facebook, and siphon off some of the momentum from the rapidly growing site, for which more than 5,000 applications have been written since it opened its platform in May.'
So widgets (as these open applications are known) will become more and more integral to websites development and offerings. Their potential is as yet unclear but certainly huge.
Have a look at the full article from The Times
Ever feel like you are suffering from information overload? That your email inbox is creaking under the weight of inappropriate emails asking whoever borrowed the big presentation folder to please return it to the second floor. Or how about that flashing red light of your blackberry? Who would have thought that a small flashy red light would have so much control over us? ‘…Light is flashing must check it now!,… the light is my master….’
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I came across this article on my hometown newspaper website, The Belfast Telegraph a while back now and found it really interesting in terms of just how fast methods of communications are at changing and evolving. The full article can be seen in the link above, but to summarise, it centres around an incident with a top executive at the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort who at receiving 250 emails a day had a fit of Crackberry rage and smashed the handset on his kitchen worktop. When his bosses found out about the incident rather than issue him with a reprimand they actually set about an initiative to find a system that would limit the use of actual emailing within the entire company. Their belief was centred on the premise that too much information harms productivity and that email is controlling us rather than the other way round.
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The alternative that these guys came up with was a type of wiki (Socialtext) which:
‘Much like Wikipedia, Socialtext allows people to set up pages for specific projects, and invite anyone to collaborate: edit text, add comments, hold discussions, and link to other documents, graphics or internet sites. In short, it removed the need to send e-mails – something that everyone at Dresdner Kleinwort agreed had only caused confusion, with all the endless conversational threads and differing versions of documents.’
Use of emailing at the company has dropped significantly.
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We recently won a global client who works using a wiki system and it does faciliate better sharing of information, a clearer understanding of where we are at with our projects and instills a real sense of collaboration between all parties involved.
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The article goes on to touch on the benefits of Google applications like Goggle Docs which enable a community of people to contribute to and edit the same document. The use of wiki’s and applications like Google Docs are more examples of the ‘open source’ culture the digital age is facilitating – people (especially in a global business context) can have dialogue with each in a more productive, collaborative and efficient way like never before.
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The World really is Flatter.
Google's recent declaration of intent to assemble the most comprehensive database of personal information has shed some light on the future evolution of recruitment and digital media. Google’s ultimate aim is to use the data at its disposal to make the experience of its users much more tailored and rewarding.
The future of advertising will be all about Personalisation.
Rather interesting was the example that Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, gave during this announcement "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'."
It is obvious that Google see the digital age and its targeting capabilities as being the primary avenue for candidates to secure their ideal career. It’s also apparent that the digital age represents huge opportunities to engage in effective and accountable dialogue with prospective candidates across a range of industries and geographies.
With Google purchasing the ad serving technology firm Doublclick, MSN buying aQuantive, the owner of Atlas ad serving tracking technology and WPP buying 24/7 Real Media, the leading players have at their disposal the tools to monitor and track online users behaviour like never before.
As a result they will be able to provide industry leading tailored messages in their conversations with target audiences. As we all know, having a conversation with someone who actually ‘knows you’ is more engaging and has the propensity to become a longer term relationship.
With The Age of Dialogue comes real value for the job seeker, a bespoke service can be offered, it's as if you have your own personal recruitment consultant without all the disadvantages that a real life one can bring.
It’s important to note that this new era and its technology truly brings the job seeking conversation beyond the realms of job boards. This is why, more than ever, Job board needs to be harnessing the technology that enables them to really know the job seekers on their site and more importantly provide them with the personalised service that meets their career needs. If they do not provide this service they will be supplanted and become redundant.
Having attended a Fish4jobs breakfast meeting this morning about their job search functionality, it was interesting to see that they recognise this and are providing amongst other things, RSS feeds and Amazon type search functionality for their job seekers. This is just the start and obviously this is the area of development that will determine which job boards survive moving forward.
The team at work went out for drinks last Thursday night and I was asked by a couple of them how the Guardian Recruitment 2020 event had been that I had attended in the morning. I've a questionable memory at the best of times and the extent of my recollection was yes it was very interesting, I found the Futurologist speaker very good and enjoyed the four possible scenario's presented by the Demos think tank research. It was clear as you would imagine that technology and the economy would be at the heart of recruitment moving forward. Of course I also mentioned what mutual friends in the industry I had bumped into which is always nice and of interest to people.
Apart from the insightful quote by William Gibson - "The future is already here. It is just unevenly distributed" the one big thing that really stuck in my head and got me thinking was when the key speaker Andrew Curry also mentioned that Procter and Gamble were operating an open source policy for the development of their products.....this really had an impact on me. Typically when you think of open source you think of IT software development. Techies collaborating together on open and available software with the aim of pooling the best talent to produce the best possible product. Democratization of product development and its availability, allowing people to benefit from software without having to necessarily pay for it or at least at a reduced rate. This is often to rebut companies who may exercise market dominance or monopolies over certain products e.g. Microsoft Windows.
Without a doubt the Internet facilitates this ability for everyone to share, work on and review products and information, without it companies like Procter and Gamble would find it difficult to truly benefit from widespread intellectual capital that an open source model provides.
What role does open source play in recruitment? Is this blog a form of open source? – collaborative discussions and sharing of information yes, but perhaps a bit diluted in the desire of its contributors to share our deepest most innovative idea's on what we want to do and are in the process of doing for our clients. Or maybe we need a clearer focus on a specific objective or outcome we aim to achieve.
If I were a client perhaps I would set an objective for the industry under the auspices of an open source collaborative project. Or perhaps why should it be a client who lays down the gauntlet to achieve a wider industry good? Should agencies grasp the nettle? should the media open their products to the great and the good?
One area that would provide real tangible benefits to the industry as a whole would be a forum or regular think tank on tracking in online recruitment. In my experience the ability to prove that online works has always been fundamental to migrating clients online. I've heard people moan about how some clients and some agencies just aren't with it yet, perhaps this could be the way to kick start things.
Any thoughts welcome.
The big news today is that Google has bought the ad serving firm Doubleclick for $3.1 billion. This follows a bidding war with Microsoft which resulted in a buying price well beyond the $1.1 billion that was spent on Doubleclick in 2005. This also towers over the $1.76 billion spent on Youtube in 2006, Google obviously mean business.
So what does this mean for the digital environment? well, it shows that Google aren't content with the search market and are moving into the online display advertising market in a big way, which is a bit of a bummer for Microsoft who if anything could count display as its real area of strength...oh well....
It also demonstrates that tracking and optimisation in online advertising is seen as and is supremely important and a fundamental part of any solution.
By the way, we can't have this blog and not mention the fact that the online advertising market was worth £2 billion in 2006 and even better, recruitment accounted for nearly 25% of this market!!! Amazing.
This shows us how far we have come and yet there is still so much to do. Exciting times.
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