Clients

From Hollywood to Aylesbury (and UK freelancers)

September 4, 2011 By Dan Thornton

When I dreamed about entering the movie business, I always assumed it would involve luxurious offices in Los Angeles or London, rather than a suburban semi-detached in Aylesbury. As it happens, I’m helping out the immensely talented Dalang Films, who are now releasing their own projects after working on many of the biggest films of the last decade.

Chatting about their plans and introducing them to a few ideas around licensing, digital distribution and marketing, I couldn’t help thinking about the way business is changing every day in the UK, with more and more freelances, entrepreneurs and small businesses appearing every day.

A recent story on the Atlantic shared some relevant stats from the U.S.

In 2005 1/3 of the US workforce participated in the ‘freelance economy’, with data showing that number has increased ever since.
2009 saw the highest level of entrepreneurial activity in the U.S in 14 years.
Online freelance job postings rockets in 2010, and companies are increasingly outsourcing various functions, along with increasing support for telecommuting.

I don’t have the equivalent UK figures, but I’d suspect we’re probably a bit behind due to cultural differences, but the same change is definitely happening. And despite the media fascination with ‘Silicon Roundabout’ in London, or even the ‘Silicon Fens’, there’s a huge amount of small business and individual endeavour that’s being missed.

For instance, the 40-50 people in Digital People in Peterborough are almost entirely comprised of small businesses and individial freelancers, with just a handful of exceptions. And I’d bet a similar picture is true of a huge number of geek meet-ups, or business networking events outside of London.

It’s not an easy life, and I wouldn’t romanticise the challenges of choosing between buying food or paying the bills when client invoices get missed and paid late. Or of working late into the night on something because there’s simply no-one else to help. But I do believe that there’s a cultural and business change happening which not only makes freelancing and telecommuting more acceptable, but will also enable it to become easier, with more support from the various necessary institutions.

And if you’ll excuse me, I have some client work to finish before I sit back with a beer and practice my Oscar acceptance speech. I know there’s not one for marketing, so I’ve offered to help out on various odd film jobs to make sure I get included in the nominations!

I’m still here…

April 19, 2011 By Dan Thornton

It may not seem like it, but I’m still here! And I’m remembering why quick informal ‘Tumblelog’ style updates can be so useful when there’s not enough time for the epic style which suits WordPress better, because at the moment there are a number of plates spinning, and not a lot of time to write my own stuff.

Just some of the multiple dinner sets currently rotating at high rpm include:

1 big client contract coming to an end – already had one team member say I’ve made their job much easier, which is nice.
2 really interesting proposals for new business, including one which is right up my alley.
2 Jodanma website builds either reaching client sign-off or completion. Which means we might be able to put some awesome plans into practice for the actual Jodanma site at last.
A couple of new writing assignments for clients.
A decent output on OnlineRaceDriver and FPSPrestige, plus the launch of a third niche gaming site with MMO News now up and running (Anyone who fancies volunteering any articles etc, PR people looking to send out info/review copies of games, or advertisers, please do get in touch!)
Some business admin stuff.
Talking to a number of very skilled people about bolstering both the marketing and design/development resources I can offer.
And the joy of having major car maintenance issues, and all the other accumulated stuff that goes on when I’m not glued to a laptop…

Plus there’s numerous other existing leads and clients, videogames to test and review, WordPress continuing to deliver interesting new bugs and problems, and a final potential longterm project to flesh out in the next couple of weeks. But it does mean that I’ve got a stockpile of things to write about when I get the chance to sit down and blog again, so it’s almost like a holiday in terms of recharging my creativity here. Except with less of a suntan.

The freelancer prayer…

January 31, 2011 By Dan Thornton

I’d forgotten about this prayer until I happened to pick up Slaughterhouse 5 in a spare five minutes. Regardless of your views on religion, the sentiments seem pretty suitable for anyone freelancing. Apparently the ‘Serenity Prayer’ is the common name for an originally untitled work by theologian Rheinhold Niebuhr, and it was later adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, which probably makes it even more relevant for journalists and freelancers.

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Pretty appropriate whether you’re mid-proposal, mid-negotiation, or mid-contract. It’s a reminder to me that I’m hired to offer the best possible value for my clients, even if it means that sometimes I have to find different ways to accomplish the best possible results.

It’s also useful at the point when a client might decide that they might not need you any longer, or might be looking to cut costs etc. Sometimes it’s worth putting up a passionate defence of why they should continue your contract, or offering them a different solution to lower the cost. But sometimes it’s also worth accepting that the decision is a logical one from the client’s perspective ad it’s better to part graciously on good terms without fighting it.

And I don’t think there’s ever a time when you don’t wish for a little more courage, serenity and wisdom…

East vs West approaches to using Twitter

June 3, 2009 By Dan Thornton

Interesting contrast between the attitudes of China and the U.S to Twitter at the moment.

In China, access has been stopped to Twitter (and new Microsoft search engine Bing). The likely reason is the anniversay of Tiananmen Square protest. However, like a lot of people analysing usage figures for Twitter, the Chinese authorities seem to have forgotten about Twitter clients, such as Seesmic Desktop, for the moment.

Compare that to the U.S – with the military unveiling a social media strategy for news from Afghanistan which includes Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. There’s an official Twitter account at www.twitter.com/usfora which currently has 2985 followers. There’s some more detail in a Wired article.

The top Twitter clients – more people tweeting via mobile than desktop clients

February 8, 2009 By Dan Thornton

I didn’t realise that Twitstat has a list of the clients which post most frequently to Twitter (that are tracked by @twitstat), until I saw the recent list published by Mashable.

The web interface tops the list at 29.57%, then it’s

Tweetdeck 10.58% (Uber client for Twittering and monitoring)
Twitterfeed 5.54% (Automated website and blog feeds)
Twhirl 4.92% (Effective Twitter client)
Twitteriffic 3.79% (Twitter client for mobile).

And the next four places are all mobile clients, with Twitpic in tenth.

Warren at Twittermaven took things a little further by aggregating the mobile, desktop and utility categories, and pointing out more people use mobile to post than desktop clients. One of his posters has also pointed out that the data could be misleading as people might post through the full web page on mobile internet.

But I’d expect the trend to be fairly close to reality. A mobile-optimised experience is likely to be an easier ‘sell’ than moving from the web interface to a client. And although early adopters and corporate Tweeters can find huge value from tools like Tweetdeck, that’s not the average Twitter user.

The top 10 applications account for 70% of usage, which conforms to The Long Tail. Friends on the list include MrTweet at #40 and disapointly Cesare’s great Posty client is down the list at #211.