Blogging and all that Malarkey

Finally, yes finally, Anna and I get around to the first of two, maybe three, episodes about contacts. We talk about the ‘ Contract Killer,’ why we think it’s important to always use a contract and why some people think otherwise. We discuss the essential elements that should go into every contract and why, on top of any legal benefits, how a good contract says a lot about how you do business and why writing yours should be a creative challenge you should relish. (Don’t miss the gag wheel and ice-cream banter after the show. It’s a scorcher.)

In this week’s episode, Anna and I discuss Motorhead and motorcycles and how I’m too much of a ‘wendy’ to lift one. Really. We talk about how Stuff and Nonsense’s pattern of weekly working sometimes doesn’t work and how to deal with competing client demands when you have limited time available.

In this week’s episode, lycra wearing, tightrope walker* Anna Debenham and I ask “who would win in a fight? Boba Fett or Batman?” “If the world was ending tomorrow, which endangered species would you eat?” and other important business questions. More importantly we talk about reviews and how they can help improve your business. * We lied about the lycra.

While I was preparing the slides from my full day CSS3 For Responsive Web Design at Smashing Magazine, I got very excited by the new filters in CSS. (313 onwards in my slide deck.) These filters — not to be confused with those legacy, proprietary Microsoft filters — are now well on their way to becoming part of a standard.

In this, the 25th anniversary episode of Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about working in a supermarket (a while ago, obviously) and how my professional level skiving almost lead me to a career in supermarket management. We talk about selling an experience as well as selling design or code and how creative services are as much about putting on a show as they are about doing work.

I’ve just come back from a trip to beautiful Freiburg in southern Germany where I hosted my new CSS3 For Responsive Web Design workshop at Smashing Magazine. I went to Freiburg last September when Alex and I attended Smashing Conference and we had a brilliant time. The folks at Smashing Magazine were genuinely welcoming and I jumped at the first opportunity to work with them again.

I’ve lived with the new video feature in Instagram for about a week and while I was originally sceptical about whether video and Instagram would be a good match, I thought it best to wait a while before forming an expressing an opinion.

This week, while Anna’s away, I talk to (Alex’s friend) Brad Frost about iOS7, dropping pretzels and chocolate Hobnobs. (Spoiler: Brad had no idea what they are.) In between we talk about speaking and contributing and what you gain by giving away information freely.

In this week’s episode of Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about me being robbed of my iPhone in Geneva and the implications, both personal and business of what happened. We talk about the importance of ensuring that insurance is up-to-date (spoiler: mine wasn’t) and how to secure your iOS devices and Mac in case of theft.

And here’s what happened: