Tom Nixon

One seriously cool way to invest 250 Euros

I'm mega excited to be amongst the first members of C4-world, an incredible project that allows private investors to fund entrepreneurial projects in Africa.

The Danish brainboxes behind the project are working towards a goal of eradicating poverty through business. Now that sounds like a great way to invest to me.

According to the email I received yesterday:

We have funded everything from Frank’s loan of 170 Euro to build up his business selling 2nd hand bags and to Joshua’s Printing Service that wished to borrow 1,000 Euro.
The investors have accomplished a wide spread of interest rates from 5% to 50% on their amounts invested!

Love it! I can't wait to get started.

Can technology save us from climate crisis?

At the end of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, he exactly nailed how I felt about global warming. I was one of those people who had gone from a state of blissful ignorance about the subject to: "Oh fuck, we're completely doomed". Gore counters this by saying that if we can change a few things (e.g. CO2 emissions from cars, houses, etc) by a small percentage, this will add up to a big change.

He doesn't talk about it much in the film, but I think that new technology will play a huge part in the fight against climate change. Instinctively it feels like the technology we need to turn things around is too far away, but I read recently about the Law of Increasing Returns - the counter-intuitive theory that says:

"...we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially."

There is already some incredible stuff happening. Check out this blog - Meta Efficient. It's an inspiring guide to technology working to counter climate change. Things like zero emission houses; solar powered cities; and even an electric SUV are not far away, and the law states that the pace of technological advancement will only accelerate.

The thing that still bugs me though is dwindling natural resources. Where are we going to find the raw materials to make all of this great new stuff? Answers on a postcard, but let's keep believing and investing in the technology because it will play a big part.

7 reasons why flexitime and duvet days are WRONG

At the last job I worked at before I set off on my own I used to work pretty long hours. I didn't mind because I enjoyed the work and believed the company was going places.

One morning, following a fairly late finish the evening before, I was munching on a bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes at 9:30AM before starting work. One of the directors wandered into the kitchen and said, 'Tom, it's nine thirty, you really should be at your desk now'. I didn't work at the company for much longer after that (my choice!)
The director used to be a manager at McDonalds so I don't blame him, he was probably indoctrinated.

Since then I've had a pet hate for control of people's working hours. Unless you're running a sweatshop making designer trainers, employees are adults. Nobody tells an adult when to go to bed. So why should an adult be told when to get up and go to work? Do companies really have that little trust in their employees?

Flexitime is not much better. If you want to leave a bit early then you work through your lunch break. wow-wee. If you want to get into work a bit later one day then you damn well better work late another day to make up for it. And don't forget we're keeping track. How very adult.

And duvet days. Is there a more patronising concept? "We realise that now and again you really won't want to come in to work. But no need to pull a sickie - take a duvet day and eat Ben and Jerry's in bed." Oh please! We're adults for fook's sake!

OK, so here's how I think it should be (and this is directed at bosses who have the power to change things)

• People shouldn't go in to work unless they're ready for work (and not feel guilty about it)
• If someone is having a really crap day and just can't get into a flow then they should head back home and chill out (and not feel guilty)
• People should be free to come and go to fit the job around their kids, the rest of their life, and their natural work and sleep patterns (we're not all morning people!)
• If someone works a few hours less than normal one day they don't have to explicitly make it up another day (or feel guilty about it)
• And when they need to work a few extra hours to get the job done, they don't automatically claw it back (and the company doesn't feel guilty about it)
• If anyone is really not pulling their weight, pressure from their colleagues is more effective than pressure from a boss.
• And if people are stressed or over-worked, it's the responsibility of the whole team to help them out, and encourage them to take some time out as soon as they can.

There, that's a little more adult isn't it?

Why it pays to be nice

I watched a really intersting film about Moby last night. There was a cool anecdote from one of his friends about when he produced the song GO, which *ahem* 'borrowed' the haunting synth chord sequence from the Twin Peaks theme tune.

Apparently when the tune made it into the big time, Moby received a letter from David Lynch basically saying 'Oi! you ripped off our music, we're going to sue your vegan ass' (OK I paraphrased that a bit but you get the jist.)

So how did Moby handle it? Did he go to his lawyers and start preparing his defence? Did he go public with a campaign against litigious capitalist swines? Nope, he just wrote a nice letter back to Lynch explaining (genuinely) how much he loved the show and about his favourite characters/plot-lines, and asked Lynch nicely if he'd mind them using the chord sequence.

And David Lynch's response? 'Oh what the hell, it's a great track so good luck with it. Glad you like the show'.

Cue feelings of warmth and good karma all round. Nice.

Here's the track by the way:

Moby – Go

Employee performance-related bonuses with a twist

I've heard some pretty bad stories about how companies award performance-related bonuses to their employees. This ranges from 'number plucked out of the air' by a manager, to putting all members of a department in some kind of one-dimensional ranking and awarding bonuses on a downwards sliding scale according to where you you have been placed.

We wanted to do something a bit different at our company and we have come up with the idea of setting a list of performance criteria (e.g. completing objectives that were set for you; project performance; soliciting and acting on personal development feedback etc) but instead of the manager making the judgment call, the employee rates their own performance for each area as a percentage, and then they are awarded that percentage of the maximum available bonus.

The manager has power to increase the percentage if they feel the employee has been too harsh on themself, but not to decrease it, thus leaving it to the integrity of the person.

To make a system like this work you have to have a very transparent culture. We have open-booking accounting so salaries and bonuses are public knowledge. This makes the system self-policing. Who would want to be seen by their co-workers as taking a bigger bonus than they deserve?

[Credit to Phil Herborn for developing this idea]

Why I'm excited about Second Life

[Just unlocked my Typepad account after some billing hassles. Normal posting now resumed!]

Couldn't get to sleep last night for thinking about Second Life. I'm still not personally blown away by this virtual world as it is right now (as my comments on Will's blog atest), but it's slowly dawning on me just how significant virtual worlds are going to be in the future and it's the excitement of these possibilities that's keeping me awake at night.

The big shift in my position on SL came when I stopped thinking about it as an enclosed space (like Compuserve, AOL and other 'online services' once were) but as a new medium in its own right, like the Web.

Linden Labs made a brave and wise move to open source the SL browser software, so I think it's just a matter of time before it becomes seamlessly integrated into Firefox and other web browsers. This will change around the paradigm from 'going into second life' to just a new method of browsing. I think users will flip between an SL view and a regular web browser interface depending on the task in hand. It sounds less exciting to think of SL as a user interface rather than a virtual world, but I think it's this change that will take SL into the mainstream, and for me, that's what is really exciting.

As a shameless marketer, my interest in SL is what it means for business.
Seeing the clumsy efforts of big companies entering SL reminds me of the Web in the mid-nineties when so many business realised they had to get a website, but they had no idea why, or how they should go about it, and used out-of-date metaphors (treating it like TV or a magazine) to guide them. In 2007, companies are building grand company headquarters in SL, but they don't actually DO anything useful or engaging for the customer. Just like the pointless Flash introduction on the typical 1997 corporate website.

In the late nineties, best practice for website development began to emerge. In particular, user-centred design grew in popularity and has become standard practice today. A successful website design would think through who the target audience were and the tasks that they are trying to complete (Buy a book; get a date; find a good restaurant; pay a bill etc) and then a user experience was designed that would easily allow the user to complete those tasks.

This same thinking now needs to be brought to the virtual world. Businesses need to think about the tasks that users want to complete, and identify those tasks that are not well suited to the web, that can be catered for in a virtual world.

Tasks like online shopping are already well served by the Web. Whilst a 'virtual shop' in SL is novel, it's never likely to be as powerful as a website which can help a customer to search for, filter and compare products.

I believe that tasks where human interaction is key will be the ones that thrive in virtual worlds. A Second Life version of Expedia or Lastminute.com? probably not all that useful. But for boutique, bespoke holiday planners where the interaction, advice and service from your advisor are key... possibly.

There's going to be a hell of a lot of action in this space over the coming months and years. I'm looking forward to seeing where it all ends up. Like the web, it'll probably turn out to be something different to what we all expect and we'll all marvel at how obvious it was, and how we missed the point for so long.