Don't Drink the Kool-Aid

Comes a time when your leader is Hell-bent on a scheme the rationale for which is utterly mystifying. In fact, it seems plain wrong to you. But the message from on high is that it has to be pushed through and you have to do the pushing. Willingly, enthusiastically, with your usual passion and zeal.

How do you get there? How do you summon the energy to override the natural urge to question, debate, argue, or rebel? Or to get the hell out of your office and run? Or to cross the floor and sit with the Tories? Or maybe even the Lib Dems?!

The only way to get there is to imbibe the same stuff your leader is on. You've got to "drink the Kool-Aid".

But the derivation of this expression tells you that drinking the Kool-Aid, is very uncool indeed. Fatal, even. Okay, so most of the 913 victims in the Jonestown massacre actually drank their poison in the less-memorable rival Flavor Aid (apparently a British knock-off). And plenty of people probably did survive the Merry Pranksters' LSD-laced cocktails featured in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" without lasting psychiatric issues. But you get the drift. When it comes down to it, drinking the Kool-Aid is about the last thing you will ever do.

So, people, next time Gordo and his advisory clique dream up one of those wild and crazy 10p-tax-abolition, 42-day-detention, ageing-vehicle-duty, let's-call-citizens-in-the-dead-of-night reform ideas of his while £500m worth of military helicopter sits motionless in a shed, please don't go rummaging for another can of the Kool-Aid. Get yourself strapped to a gurney and go cold turkey if you have to, but please say to the big lump, "Gordon, that's a really bad idea and I don't want any part of it. Let's do something calm and rational instead. Something that will save the country a shedload of public money. Let's get the whole cabinet into one of those mint condition Chinooks and fly out to meet the Taliban."

Even I Now Have a Crackberry

Yes, even I have finally succumbed - a decade of Nokia loyalty overturned. With my Nokia E61 forlornly relegated to back-up status, my life's data is now on the dreaded Crackberry.

This Seismic Shift was caused by the internal communications etiquette of my current client. The company generally requires employees and staff to have their own mobile phones. So, to avoid the undue use/cost of mobiles, the preferred modes of communication are email or calls on the company's internal telephone system. Most requests that someone call your mobile seem to go unheeded in favour of email, as everyone assumes that your mobile is a Crackberry - you'll see the email anyway.

Ironically, I can't get email on my new Crackberry as the relevant server isn't responding to my password yet. So, the only way to communicate effectively would be to throw it at the next person I see...

Worse still, I remain deskbound, since approval for remote email access via my company-issued laptop is yet to reach the Guardian of the VPN.

Woe betide the next person who passes my office door!

A Further Sign of the Credit Crunch - Luxembourg

A Sign of the Credit Crunch - Luxembourg

Too Early to Call Time on Web 2.0

It's fascinating to see the mainstream business press calling time on "Web 2.0". Presupposing that the Web 2.0 tag constitutes a definitive cohort of businesses who must be earning substantial revenues today, if they are ever to be successful...

This as just another consequence of the credit crunch, rather than evidence that it's suddenly crazy to start a web business dedicated to enabling users to take control of their retail, entertainment, financial and other personal affairs. It's a sign that the institutional herd is headed for safe havens and wants a slow summer at the beach, free of write-offs and any doubt that it might be missing key opportunities through its inability to invest in the current tidal wave of innovation.

But the curtain is barely up on Web 2.0, and at this rate the FT's core readership will miss the whole show.

There is plenty of non-institutional money to be had - and you don't need much of it - to help start a Web 2.0 business. The angel world is also still awash with pre-Crunch bonus money and the likes of ex-Googlers cashing in their options to do help Facebook or do their own thang. Seedcamp is happening again, and (the ironically named) Techcrunch is alive with plenty of news, even from Europe. Remember, too, that venture funding is not required to build any of the infrastructure necessary for Web 2.0 businesses to flourish. The big corporates in the internet game have taken on that job, and are still investing heavily to create the bandwidth and computing capacity on which low cost, web development start-ups like Ooyala are feeding greedily.

Seems to me that September is going to see a whole new tidal wave of innovative business launches - so it's gonna be a pretty intense summer for some!