But in a very dictionary definition – namely, whether something is what it is supposed to be – it’s becoming a big issue in the digital world.

Two examples. You may have seen this extremely powerful photo.

Gaza Burial photo by Paul Hansen. Winner of 2013 World Press Photo of the Year.

Now people are asking whether it has been faked. Not faked like a painting in The Thomas Crown Affair but in the sense that it might be a composite of shots or it has been digitally manipulated to too great a degree. You can read more about the scrutiny here and then about the confirmation it wasn’t faked. But because of the sensitive subject matter, this was no small dispute.

In the same week that this became a big debate in photographic and political circles, I came across this viral video.

I must admit I loved it, shared it on Facebook and Twitter (after seeing a friend mention it there), generally had a smile on my face for a while.

Then you see people question its provenance. Was it too good to be true? Was it real? Was it – at least in some way – a set up? (I even shared it on Facebook with the suffix “Please tell me it’s real.”)

There you go – authenticity again. I’m too jaded to believe most things at face value online, partly from bitter experience.

After all, how many hoaxes are on the internet and how often do you see people fall for them all the time? I recommend sites such as www.hoaxbusters.org. At least it might help me see that ‘Bill Cosby’ right-wing rant a bit less often.

The tricky natural place we get to with all this is simply: Does it matter?

Was there enough truth in that picture from Gaza? Does the video from NBC’s Jay Leno Show still work even if, say, the two singers weren’t quite as spontaneous or randomly selected as we’re led to believe?

There is often also a thin dividing line between real and fake. Is it faking it if the photographer, Swede Paul Hansen, in the award-winning Gaza Burial shot had enhanced colours too much or joined together two photos?

We all see these lines slightly differently. And it’s not getting any easier in a digital world where images – moving or still – are everywhere.

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Immigration features in my family, in its own way. My mother, although a resident for over 30 years and a UK passport holder, wasn’t born British. My wife is American, meaning not only is my daughter half (quarter?) British but she has the mixed ancestry of my wife’s side – which confusingly brings her back to the British Isles (Scottish, Irish) as well as elsewhere (German, Cherokee).

I don’t feel any of this is at all unusual. It feels natural to me and not just because it’s my life, mostly laid out before me with little choice (unless you include your choice of partner – and some people even consider that fate).

We live in south-west London and in my daughter’s class of 30 students there must be over 15 languages spoken. That’s not at her school – that’s just in her class.

She shares her days with children whose parents are local white British (working class and other), and others who have one or both parents from Bangladesh, Barbados, Brazil, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Kenya, Lithuania, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and Uganda. I have inevitably left somewhere out but you get the point.

There is not a single child who cares about that. They all speak English to each other and make friends across every racial/religious/cultural divide you can imagine. They’re still young and as they get older maybe society will get to them. Isn’t that sad? But the point here is to remember that to them it’s all about who you are and how you act – not where you “came from”.

Me, age 7

When I was a kid it was very common for me to be asked, not just by children, where I “came from”. Although I liked to answer “Sunbury”, I knew most people were asking about my family background.

It’s a stupid question, especially put like that. But it’s also a valid question. Today I don’t feel bad about asking people “What’s your family background?” or “What part of the world did your family come from?” After all, everyone’s family came from somewhere. (And more on that in a bit.)

But “Where do you come from?” in my case, in the late 1970s or 1980s, carried undertones of being ‘other’. Like I said, “Sunbury” was the answer they deserved, though somehow never believed.

I grew up in a school in some ways – size, set up, even school colours – very similar to my daughter’s, only a few miles west of where we live now. The area was and still is suburban.

But in important ways it was very different. There were literally one or two faces that weren’t ‘white’. As a result, by the age of seven or eight plenty of kids felt I should be grouped with all those who were visibly different, with pretty much every racial slur you could imagine, which I won’t repeat here.

On the one hand it was hilarious. Any kid who came from an Asian or African background literally laughed at it – to them I was another white European with all the advantages that gives you.

(Off on a tangent for a moment, the other day, during a recent racism in football row (AC Milan players walking off after suffering insulting chants from a lower league team’s resident racist mob) several prominent black footballers talked about the issue of lack of top managers of colour. One commented that “maybe one day we will have a black Guardiola or Mourinho”, meaning there’s no reason why the best managers in the game today should only be white. Wait a minute – I’m the same colour as those guys. Would that quotation make any sense to the racists from my childhood?)

So I had that whole experience – bizarrely – of experiencing racial abuse for years. I never told my parents or many other adults because they would hardly have believed me and I had heard them say racist things. A few close friends of mine saw it up close, so they inevitably knew about it and how strange it was, but they were the exception. We all got on with our lives.

But it did mean I always felt strongly about being anti-racism. It was quite something when I first found out (in the 1980s?) that people campaign against such things and – no matter what people say in the street – even right-wing politicians had come around to saying racism makes no sense.

It also means I appreciate my daughter’s school all the more.

She will find out about racism in the wider world. It’s inevitable. But the thought that it could happen in her school, in her class, is ludicrous. (This is also a product of more enlightened and aware teachers, I should add, which is a big difference to 35 years ago.)

Economy

Coming back to the Channel 4 News segments, one show gathered people together in Southampton – a mixture of long-time residents, some of whom may or may not have been aware they were descendants of French Huguenots or immigrants from farther afield – post-war immigrants such as Sikhs from India, and then recent immigrants including Poles and others from the EU.

There turned out to be too much hysteria about a supposed crime wave as Bulgarians and Romanians are allowed to travel freely to the UK – a point not lost on politicians who exploit such situations.

What the politicians are less inclined to do is talk about how immigrants are net contributors to most societies in the form of taxes and in other ways. Certain tabloid newspapers or blogs will always find a large immigrant family that claims benefits – they won’t always show the many thousands who start new businesses, do jobs others won’t or can’t do and add to the cultural richness of any community.

Living on benefits is shit, make no mistake. Coming to a new country, often without knowing the language, and supporting yourself – quite possibly also people back home (remittances of that sort far outweigh any government aid programme, by the way) – is hard. But it happens every day.

All of this is without mentioning the demographic time bomb of countries such as Germany, Italy, Japan and to some extent the UK (though not the US, where young immigration is happening and generally positive, whether legal or not, frowned upon or not).

However static, in population terms, leaders of those countries want to keep things, they know that as their populations grow older there are fewer people of working age and those people carry an increased tax burden. Bringing in younger people who will work – often the least attractive or rewarding jobs – is one of the few options. Cutting benefits for older people, who have mostly worked hard for decades and know how to vote, isn’t an option.

Back in Southampton, those contributing to the programme complained about full schools from a baby boom from the mid-noughties, when the economy was buoyant and immigrants from the then ascension countries (Poland, Baltic states etc.) settled in the UK.

Who would build the secondary school the neighbourhood would need as those children turn 12? Maybe the extra money those children’s parents contributed in taxes could have been used? Just an idea.

Roots

And for all the problems of here and now – overcrowding, budgetary shortfalls, petty racism and more – aren’t we all essentially immigrants?

I’m lucky in that I know where I ‘came from’. (That includes leaving Sunbury.)

Others, even the most bigoted on those Channel 4 segments, don’t. A few years back cultural critic Andrew Graham-Dixon filmed a slightly left-field TV show in which he invited various English people – famous names such as Carol Thatcher as well as non-famous participants – to take a DNA test that would break down their genealogical heritage.

To cut a long story short (see the link), it turns out no one is 100% English.

Everyone had their own definition of what it’d take to qualify, some people more strict than others. One man said you should be able to trace Englishness back 10 generations. So that’s 2,078 people. No chance.

As Graham-Dixon says in the article:

“Perhaps the most interesting thing about these tests is that they cut through pretty much all of our notions of nationality and cultural identity (which are, of course, social constructs) to a much greater truth: we are all related to one another.”

Later on he quotes an 18-year-old soldier: “For racists to find out that part of them may be what they have discriminated against for years, well that would certainly throw them off their game.”

Remember the Hungarian anti-Semite politician who found out he is maternally Jewish? Yeah, that type of thing but for any of us.

A few years back I found myself in a bar, drunkenly speaking to a South African who kept on telling me he was English. In fact he could trace his English roots back one thousand years. He had the name of that relative and how dare I ask if he was South African. (He was. And even more drunk than me.)

I worked it out later but assuming 25 years per generation, going back a thousand years you could have an incredible number of forbears:  109,951,162,776. Of course that’s more than the total number of people who have ever lived. But even for allowing the fact that people marry relatives (however distant) means the number is nowhere near as large, pinpointing one relative from the times just before William the Conqueror’s big day trip got out of hand doesn’t really mean much.

Not only are all of us related in the not-too-distant past but we are rarely of one place, even for a period of several hundred years.

(When I lived in Japan, a good friend of mine was a Buddhist priest. His family had lived on the same plot of land in his village for 400 years (his Buddhist priesthood was handed down to eldest son each generation). Not only that, he knew the town the family had lived in before that. That is truly exceptional – and note wives for all those first-born sons came from sometimes hundreds of miles away.)

What does all this mean?

Racism makes no sense. We are all related to each other, every family has wide roots (“Where are you from?”) and nationality is a social construct that some people exploit (politicians, man-in-the-street racists et al).

The good news is that our kids are less and less likely to make major decisions based on how someone else looks or where their family roots lie. (If they ever read this, they might also be inclined to wonder what the heck ‘roots’ actually means.)

In the here and now, we should be tolerant to those who are – for now – strangers in a strange land. I’ve been that stranger abroad, as are millions of British people now. (Did you know 15% of our annual immigration each year is actually returnees?)

The world has always been about people moving (by choice, by necessity, by tiny raft, by large plane) and always will. For the most part it’s better that way, for all kinds of reasons. Don’t let the ignorant tell you otherwise.

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It isn’t something I care about deeply but for anyone interested in reaching people – professionally, who isn’t? – then it has become a big deal, especially given where we’ve got to with social media and the ongoing effectiveness of email newsletters.

But something irks me about the whole thing. There’s a fundamental, not-taking-a-step-back-ness about the subject.

MailChimp, a popular platform for sending out newsletters, nailed it for me. When you go to send a newsletter manually there’s an option called ‘Send With TimeWarp’. Some of you might guess what that means, though it isn’t obvious.

In short, if you have a newsletter you want to deliver for a morning commute – say 8:00AM – then that send, just like putting a piece of content live online, only works in one time zone. So TimeWarp will put in place a rolling hourly send of 8:00AM across zones.

You see, time is relative.

That 8:00AM newsletter, if sent by a publication in New York, otherwise becomes a lunch time (1:00PM) newsletter in London. Or anywhere in the UK. We’re not complicated when it comes to time zones.

In the US, this kind of scheduling isn’t a new issue. For some TV shows, the four main US time zones have been an issue. Certainly they can be for watching live events such as sport.

So far, so such-is-life. But when we come back to the advice about ‘When to post to Facebook’ and so on, it takes on a new meaning.

Every person/company/government/other isn’t posting for the same audience. If someone tells you that you should post to Facebook on a Wednesday at 3:00PM, that means for all posts that is statistically the most effective time (by volume? likes? shares?). But you’re not all.

In this recent piece, Jon Bernstein shows how the Guardian nails the rhythm of its online readers by time of day, version (eg m-site) and device.

That seems sensible. But when you’ve only got one shot – one article to post, one newsletter to send – you will always poorly serve those users who aren’t in your sweet spot, who aren’t average.

Remember, that could be a user in Europe getting a Good Morning email from California at 4:00PM. It could be much more important.

All we can do is be aware that we’re all now connected – by newsletters, by social media and so on – to people who could be anywhere. That’s not a bad thing. It just makes things complicated.

See also:

When to tweet [tphallett.com]

The best and worst times for Facebook, Twitter engagement [Marketing (US)]

*photo credit: BramstonePhotography via photopin cc

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One of a set of 27 stunning photos from Jason Fawkes

There are shots of well-known buildings and landmarks such as Tower Bridge, the Bank of England, St Paul’s, Canary Wharf, Regent Street with Christmas lights, Waterloo Station, the Albert Hall and Hyde Park, and the O2 Arena (if we still call it that).

I love the way you can almost feel the day ahead coming in some of them (as the night progressed?), while others in the dead of night are just stunning.

If I knew anything about the technicalities of photography I’d surely be waxing on about that aspect of his images.

More at TotallyCoolPix.com – and once again, this series of outstanding series of aerial photos of London from Jason.

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Why is no-one else there? Possible I was there very early. (More likely than being there late.) Possible it was after we were bought and it was an inbetween day.

There are several things I love in these pics…

This was one of the desks I had in our four years at Anchor House in Chelsea. Dig the chunky monitor, personal tech by Compaq and Palm and all the paper. Almost looks like I was a conscientious editor (hard copy OED and all).

Also note the copy of the Economist, with the cover story The case for war. That helps place this photo in time. (And btw Economist – what were you thinking?)

This is looking towards the reception. Those four posters talked about the four Ws of e-business. Or was it the five Ws? Whatever happened to them? Whatever happened to ‘e-business’?

Looking the other way, this is mainly the old newsroom. Again – those mighty monitors. The island of desks off to the right was known as Guernsey. Or Jersey. Or… what?

This is a meeting room. I won’t disclose its nickname. I did once fall asleep in here after a company party.

Here’s the boardroom. Woohoo! Believe it or not that plasma screen was considered quite the item back in the day.

Out of the window of that room you could look down over the car park (that’s the anchor of Anchor House in the foreground) and then a little bit of Kensington and Chelsea that included the lovely Builders Arms Arse pub. The Silicon wake was held there about a year ago. If this was a good photo you’d be seeing more Silicon mouse mats on a roof.

Let me know what else you might remember.

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Steady on, Foursquare. You’re coming across as desperate. 

But that’s just a detail, possibly a problem of culture. What I’m talking about is more fundamental.

It’s not that it’s a social network too far. It’s not that it’s not as hip as it was 18 months ago.

No, for me it’s because it doesn’t work that well.

I mainly use Foursquare through its Android app on my phone. Only it’s a clunker. When I’m on a familiar wi-fi network it still nudges me to turn on GPS if I’m trying to check in. Then after a minute or so it doesn’t narrow down where I am, which I totally understand is harder if I’m indoors. It then routinely lists places from my last check-in, which these days tends to be from several weeks back.

C’mon. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Yet this is something that happens again and again in tech. A first wave of business models and companies, who look like they’ve got a problem licked (not so sure Foursquare is addressing a problem in my case but it’s an opportunity) often fail. A few years later others try the same market, even with the same business models, and succeed.

Why does that happen? Often tech has improved. Sometimes behaviours or other factors have moved on.

We’ve seen it in retail, mobile internet (remember WAP?), cloud services, MP3 players and more.

What will happen with geo services? There is no doubt that the quality – speed, reliability, accuracy – of geo technologies will get better, barring government interventions that hamstring what’s possible.

Although some geo-related services are possible now, many aren’t easy.

In the meantime, many seemingly great models and start-ups won’t be able to hang around until the technology and our take up have got to where they need to be.

A Foursquare might be able to play a long game. Hundreds of others can’t.

*photo credit: Jorge Quinteros via photopin cc

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And there’s been a lot of Sylvester Stallone in the media this year, partly because of a new film out.

What do the two have in common? Very little, in all probability, apart from this story. 

A good friend and sometimes partner in work was having trouble getting something done. (He won’t mind me relating this story but I’ll keep it anonymous.) In his case the problem was setting live a new corporate website, a project for which he is ably equipped and had done 95 per cent of the ground work.

To illustrate the whole ‘Done is better than perfect’ saying, I decided to tell the story of Sylvester Stallone. In the mid-1970s, as a largely unknown and penniless actor and would-be film director he knew he just had to write Rocky, which would go on to be his big breakthrough (Best Film Oscar in the US bicentennial year and all the rest).

To get the job done he bought some food and drink, locked himself in a dingy room with a lamp and typewriter, painted the windows black and told himself he wasn’t leaving until it was written.

The rest is history.

The bigger point to the story is that sometimes you just have to do it. No asking someone else. No more faffing around. Do it.

What did my friend say?

“So you’re saying I should get Sylvester Stallone to do my website?”

Now I can’t honestly tell you if Sly’s available for any website relaunch projects. But I think the ‘just do it’ message, to borrow from somewhere else, shines through.

*photo credit: alessandro silipo via photopin cc

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First, there are those who get Twitter followers because of their position, status, celebrity and the like.

Most don’t deserve large numbers of followers but some get them. (And they get churn, as people duck out almost as quickly as they sign up.) 

The second group – let’s very neutrally call them the Good Guys – get followers because of what they say and what they do.

These are the people who prolifically and skilfully post content – their own, someone else’s, doesn’t matter – that is helpful or makes you feel good. This group is interesting to you. Might not be to your nearest and dearest but is to you.

Now the superstars of Twitter – let’s say those with 250,000+ followers, are likely to be a mix of the first and second groups. They may well be a household name but they also provide value.

And there’s a third group, let’s not forget. It’s an obvious one. It’s the rest of us.

Some of us post interesting links, craft interesting tweets. (At least we like to think we do.) We just don’t do it as well as the Good Guys.

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Follow Tony on Twitter – @tphallett . How could you not, after this post.

But there is one thing that trumps all that.  

How about the web product manager who created an Amazon product page  – about himself.

Apparently the whole thing “went viral”. I don’t honestly know if he’s landed a job.

But I once witnessed an example first hand. We’d had an editorial intern. He’d been great for the month or so he was with one of our teams and there was a timely job opening for a reporter. But given we operated the whole intern thing by the book, we still went to market advertising the post.

He got the job. It was in the main because he was the best candidate, partly because he’d already proved he was good and also because his application was in the form of a press release launching John Jones 2.0. (John Jones isn’t his name – some of you will know the person I’m referring to.)

I wish I could show the application now. It’s not unique. And there are plenty of jobs out there where an applicant trying something like this won’t get in the door.

But in crowded fields, in a still-weak economy, showing your ability as well as talking about your ability has got to be worth a try.

photo credit: Zach Klein via photopin cc

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More than when I was at big companies, the last 15 months have seen me able to pick and choose how I spend my time.

I’m not Ollie (even if I look like him) but I still like to WFH.

I do four or five school runs a week where previously I was lucky to do one. I get to visit my dad five times per week. No amount of compassionate leave would have allowed that, at least not for a period of six months and counting.

And while I might put in a few hours on a Saturday, I have a rule that I don’t dump work on other people then or respond to non-urgent messages. It just feels right.

There have been plenty of days when my me-time can mean a long run or trip to the gym at 11AM. That couldn’t happen in plenty of other – more rigid – environments.

Whenever I’m off doing those things I remind myself I still put in the hours. Not to feel guilty.

But I’ve learnt that I love my unique rhythm. I like days spent with clients. I like driving or cycling to one of those client sites sometimes. I like those days that see early mornings and late nights head down in the home office – while I now get to see plenty of winter daylight in the middle of those days.

As mentioned, part of this is to do with doing your own thing, being self-employed. That’s not for everyone, though the number of people working this way is on the rise.

It’s also related to technology. More and more people can work flexibly. That doesn’t just mean from home. (Working from home = WFH.) It can mean stopping and taking that important call on your headphones during that mid-morning run (I’ve learnt).

During the recent disruption caused by a bit of snow in the UK it was interesting to hear news channels still talk about people “making it to work”. They (who?) estimated a third of the working population wasn’t “at work”.

Don’t they know the already-clichéd line? “Work isn’t a place you go, it’s a thing you do.”

I bet a lot of that third were at least as productive as they would be after a commute, with all the time, energy and money that wastes.

The overriding reason I haven’t jumped back into a staff position somewhere isn’t that I’m building my own thing, as interesting that is. I just can’t imagine jobs with the same flexibility.

They can exist – I might be proved wrong someday – but the world is changing. And it’s being led by individuals, not by companies.

* photo credit: marc0047 via photopin cc

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