Being Blonde

……the wee, but very important, two little words at the end make it all worth while :o)

Mark Wong joined us recently as a developer in our London office (aka Blondon).

Talking of aka, it’s Mark, aka “Wonky”, aka “Wonkenstein”, aka “the Wonkenator”.

In a previous post Fraser talked about developers being machines that turn coffee into code.

Wonky is clearly a machine that turns beef flavour Hula Hoops into code.

(Plus the occasional banana).

OK, they are, but our company being blessed with the name it has gives some very interesting search terms leading to our blog.

One in particular caught my eye: “blonde shows nice arse off”.

They must have been so disappointed when they ended up “At home with Mr Dearson“….

One of the trickier things about social skills is to get your message across.
One reason why people have difficulty with this is because they use more words than needed. As Lee Iacocca said “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere”.

read more | digg story

Not being ones to blow our own trumpet, it’s nice when someone else blows it for you (apologies to Hugh Grant).

In this instance our trumpet is being blown by NMA magazine.

Oh yeah… oh yeah… oh…don’t stop…

We’re officially “one to watch” in their 2007 Top 100 Agencies survey.

Here’s a thumbnail of the full Blonde entry. Click to enlarge.

I’m actually only writing this blog post to move that picture down the page a bit.
(The blog’s our default virtual host so at the moment any time we set up a new website we get a picture of Rhys Ifan’s arse until the virtual host is configured)

But anyway, today we’re taste-testing new coffee for our coffee machine:

We’ve had this thing for a year and I’ve decided we should try some different types of coffee to make sure the stuff we’ve been using is up to scratch (so far, the verdict is “yes” - the incumbent has won two bouts… one more to go)

Programmers are machines for turning coffee into code. The better the coffee that goes in, the better the code you get out at the end (or possibly the more liable to caffeine-induced psychoses your techies are, details details)

Either way: none of that brown gravel stuff here, thank you very much.

A. They both reduce your inhibitions.

I guess that, like a lot of people my age, many of my early Facebook “friends” are actually current or ex work colleagues.

In an office environment it can take weeks, months or even years to develop a level of familiarity with a colleague that is anything akin to genuine friendship. Even then there’s a level of familiarity beyond which working relationships just don’t go.

Not so on Facebook.

Whilst I obviously maintain an appropriate level of professional detachment whilst socially networking, I’ve noticed that interaction between friends (i.e. work colleagues) and friends of friends (i.e. colleagues of colleagues) can move from familiar to very familiar to mildly flirtatious and beyond at a pace that would be unheard of in an office environment.

None of these people are hiding behind Second Life alter egos. It’s their real life selves interacting (for which read flirting) with real life colleagues that they’ll see in real life the next day.

I know several people who would be worried if their partner saw their Facebook profile. Not because anything bad is really happening, but because some of the content would be hard to explain to anyone unfamiliar with what is clearly a different set of rules.

A. People tend to underestimate or deliberately play down their level of consumption.

This applies equally to the number of alcohol units consumed in a week, and to the extent to which spare time is consumed by Facebook.

Behind every “I’m not that fussed” you can bet there’s a beautifully manicured, regularly updated, application-heavy profile who’s owner spends hour upon dark hour cultivating their friends, groups and wall posts.

Personally I’m not that fussed.

What are you doing after work?

I brought some Cornish Blondes back from holiday, and we enjoyed a few on Friday afternoon.

Skinners Brewery in Truro donate a portion of the purchase price of each bottle to Surfers Against Sewage.

It struck me that we at Blonde all enjoy surfing. And we hate coming across crap whilst doing so.

So Blonde is now a fully paid-up corporate member of Surfers Against Sewage.

I like the idea that our CSR is partly the result of a donation to the SAS.

N.B. Cornish Blonde is good, but not as good as Grolsch Weizen.

***NO AGENCIES PLEASE***

Blonde London is recruiting and I was wondering if you might be able to help me fill one of the roles.

I’m looking for a Junior Account Manager / Project Manager hybrid with some digital/interactive experience. There’s lots of room for career progression as this will be one of the first roles in the growing London team. In on the ground floor, so to speak. Well, hot-desk permitting.

Their initial responsibilities, though, will be fairly junior: contact reports, helping to create project timelines, ensuring that the studio team in Scotland is consulted for resource availability and costs, being the client’s primary point of contact for project-specific queries, monitoring project milestones, unicycles and bat-wrangling.

If you know anyone who might be interested, please let me know: phil.dearson@DELETETHISBITblondedigital.com

Thanks in advance for your help.

Two significant extra projects awarded by an existing client, and a pitch win. A nice way to end the week.

More detail on the business gains once we’ve agreed with the clients in question what we’re able to say.