Think. Story. Experience.

A constantly changing context

Working in the live experience space I'm always talking about how the world is changing...how the world of online is affecting and shaping and enabling the world of offline...and vice-versa. It's a constant battle to make sense of the changing context and landscape we're all living and working in, and to understand the implications for a bunch of other stuff.

On theat note, I liked the way Charles Saatchi responded to a Guardian interviewer when asked...

Should the country be spending money on saving old masters for the nation, or buying up works by the next generation of artists?

His answer was a perfect example of understanding how a changing environment (travel, wealth, connectedness) requires a changing response...

At the risk of being lynched – again – by the art crowd, I don't think there is a great need any more to save paintings for the nation at the cost of supporting new art. What difference does it make if a Titian is hanging in the National Gallery, the Louvre or the Uffizi? This isn't the 18th century: people travel, so there's no need to be nationalistic about the world's art treasures. Much more important is to back living artists.

Living and working in phases

It will not have gone unnoticed to my (occasional) regular readers that my output has slowed to an almost complete halt over the past few weeks. 

I wondered the other week that the weather and the general humid apathy that seems to descend on New York in summer was to blame. But perhaps it's something more fundamental. 

Perhaps, when I began blogging eleven months ago I was in an intellectual comfort zone. I had begun my third year of working in the same role. I had completed a lengthy apprenticeship in the world of brand experience marketing. And I had lots of learnings and outpourings to share. I was, in other words, in a very blogging-friendly phase of my career. 

Now I find myself in a different situation, a different career phase. One where what I think is being challenged, shaped, and refined daily as I work with new people, on new problems, in new surroundings, and for new clients. 

There's no profound observation here. Other than that perhaps we shouldn't be surprised when not every week, month, or year is the same. Perhaps it should be no shock that we (both as individuals and organisations) often find our priorities and preferences shifting rapidly and unplanned as things move from one phase to the next. 

Off the radar

It's summer in New York City.

It's hellishly humid.

Manhattan stinks like an open sewer.

Anyone with the time and money to escape the city is long gone.

The rest of us are left behind, stumbling along sweatily.

It has been no time to keep a blog up to date.