Creative Agency Secrets

We had a lodger from Italy (Hi Sandro if you’re reading this) whose speciality when coming home from a hard day (or night’s) work to announce "I am destroyed"!

Right now, that is me.

Did my first Rowperfect session in preparation for the Pairs Head …. and this is the outcome.Download RC3X10.SES

it is in Rowperfect DOS software if you want to read it [also readable in Rowperfect for Windows].  Three 10 minute pieces at 22-23.  Darn I felt it in the last one.

Needs some analysis but I think I did the same distance in the last one as the first (about 2.25km) which is OK but overall rather pathetic as my legs ceased to function normally around the middle of the second piece.  It shows in the force curve - develops pronounced bulge as back / arms don’t combine well with increasing tiredness.

Double darn.  I hate the start of a new season.  Those numbers always show me up.

I love this - from Adriana Lukas (queen of the blogosphere and sometime client of mine). She maintains a couple of blogs one is  Media Influencer

She writes "Technology is dangerous! Ben Clemens is a Yahoo! employee and his mobile phone was stolen
on his commute. So far, so mundane. His phone had a camera and a photo
blogging software called ShoZu configured to post any picture taken by
the phone camera to his Flickr photostream. Nice. The fun starts when
the thief not knowing about it, takes pictures of his family, dog etc and they are automatically uploaded. Ben becomes a 15 minute celebrity."

This just cracked me up.  A thief gets caught red handed without knowing as he takes photos with a stolen phone.
Similar to the story of my mate Piers Schreiber who got his phone nicked in Spain on holiday… got the bill when he came home…fully itemised… calls to Morocco!

Nuff said.

Row 2k has featured Hilary Cook awesome competitor and sometime crewmate of mine.

Received this email this morning

NESTA
is a lottery funded organisation that invests in business and supports
creativity. Their Insight Out programme is a training and funding programme
designed to support recent graduates set up interesting new businesses.

Anyone who has
graduated from a higher education course in the creative industries and plans
to develop an exciting and original business can apply to one of the
participating regional areas.

Divided into
four phases Insight Out offers a unique approach to business and professional
development through a series of workshops and one-to-one meetings led by key
experts in the fields of finance, law and business. Regionally based each
Insight Out programme accepts up to 20 business ideas. Those who attend will
have the opportunity to apply for up to £5,000 in business start-up funding
from a total pot of £20,000.

The following
Insight Out Programmes will be accepting
applications from August to October 2006:

• West Midlands application
       deadline: 22 September
• North East – application deadline: 27 October
      

• Northern Ireland - application deadline: 29 August
      

• North West – application deadline: 31 August

• Yorkshire and
       Humberside – application
       deadline: 29 September

Read more, and apply here:NESTA 

Copies of Martin Cross’ book, Olympic Obsession are gaining value as scarcity kicks in.  A recent discussion on rec.sport.rowing shows Ebay and Amazon to have price discrepencies of over £60.

Martin - get a reprint ordered.  Or do it privately via a digital publishing outfit like Booksurge who do print on demand and also ’self-publishing’. 

Working with a squad of athletes is one of the ultimate challenges in sport coaching.  Can you develop enough talent in order to get a large-ish group of athletes to be successful year after year? 

I have been conversing with Ray, a club coach who emailed me recently with this observation

To
be honest it’s been a steady build up over the last few years, we had a fairly
solid eight the season before, but just missed out on the headlines. This year has been great as we seem to have
had the midas touch.

Not
sure what’s happening next year, some of the girls have been pretty full on for
a few years now and may be feeling the pinch. There’s also the issue of not
really having a bridging target between top of the domestic and international
(which is at least a two year programme for them), so finding a suitable incentive
may be difficult - we’ll see. Hopefully I’ll have something to play with! If
not, then I get some free time back!!! :o)

This is not an uncommon situation. and so I thought i’d share some of my experiences having been part of a couple of very successful squads that got to dominate for a few years.  Here’s what I wrote back.

Yes,
Ray it takes three years plus to build a successful squad.

I
was in the Marlow crew that won the 8s at Nat champs and 4s at Henley Womens in
1996 and 1997. What we did in year two /
three was to take the top girls out of the 8 and move them into pairs / fours
and fill their seats in the 8 with newcomers. The benefit was they learned new skills including steering and pair
rowing and the new girls were brought on quickly being in a boat with more
skilled athletes. The aim was to get a
squad of 12 - 16 who could dominate sweep rowing and win the 8, 4+, 4- and 2-
at Nat champs.

But
you could run a larger squad if you have people racing at lower statuses but
still follow the same template.    

Hope
that helps….

Thinking
further,

Grant Craies did this exact
thing at TSS  for the years he was mens coach as the Nat Champs results below
bear out:

Year
1: Fourth in Lwt 4x

Year
2: Second in Lwt 4x,

Year
3: Win Lwt 4x; win Lwt 1x, Silver Hwt 4x and gold Hwt 2x and fourth in Lwt 2x
and Lwt 4x (2 crews entered)

Year
4: [new coach takes over] win Lwt 4x, Hwt 4x and 4-, Bronze in 8…. you can see the progression. I think TSS won more Nat champs medals than
any other club this year…. but it takes 3 years to build it up and then you start
reaping rewards. The Lwt 4x won by 15
seconds clear margin. They then raced at

Duisburg and
Canadian Henley as well, coming 6th and 5th in the finals against international
crews….. learning about the step up to international. Then they won 2x at Home Countries and one of
them was in GB Lwt 4x at Eton and two were Lwt 2x and 4x at Commonwealths this year….so
it does work.

I got into a private email discussion with a fellow coach who is concerned about meeting his new squad for the new season.  They are already successful and, of course, this is a potentially daunting situation.  Here are my views on the subject.

Meeting new teams:
This is very personal.  BUT I’d suggest about twice as much listening as talking as a rule.

Also - get each athlete to send you his own rowing CV (so you know what they’ve done before) and include a section on where their ultimate rowing goal is (is it Olympic representation or just winning
a National title) and the timescale for them to achieve this.  Knowing this will help you assess how hard to push them.

Secondly, set some clear boundaries for your relationship with them. e.g. keeping a training diary, being responsible about telling you about injuries, daily pulse check.  Let them know what you won’t
tolerate and where discussion is allowed.  As with small children, boundaries are an important part of relationship building.  And so, for example, if you are not prepared to discuss your reasons for crew selection, tell them.  And if your selections are only based on 2k scores or sculling speed or are a combination of factors [mine include those that turn up regularly beat ’so-called stars’ who don’t come out to play all year round] let them know.

and another nice bit of news, my sister’s business Bennett Caroe Partnership (BCP) who do local and regional PR very cost-effectively.  They have been shortlisted for the second year running for the Small team award and the Low Budget categories Shortlist

Way hay, well done lasses!

By the way they have a great business model.  Employ skilled PR talent that is large-agency-trained but now are working mums with young families or coming back from a career break.  Facilitate remote / home working and part time employment and you get top talent working on your campaign without big agency / London prices.  Bonza.

Happy, happy, happy.
Just had a call from Lucy King at Buffalo Communications that they have won another new client.  Toucan  part of IDT Corp have hired them to launch a new product into two separate marketplaces.

She was kind enough to say "it’s all happening now and it is thanks to you and the work you’re doing with us to win new business."
Thanks, Lucy.

This world is really getting real.  I read this on Brand Republic Tory networking site which is supposed to "court community spirit". 

FRUSTRATION because the journalist writing the piece doesn’t get what social network sites are about.  Starting a two way dialogue with your voters [in the case of the Tory party] and using the open-ness of that dialogue to forge a real relationship.

Now the politicians may be into spin. Or desperate for votes [likely] or some spin-wheeze thought up by an ad man.  Or possibly, just possibly, an electable party who really wants to make changes based on a dialogue with the electorate.  I expect there’ll be comment from the lads at Samizdata the political blog… this is really their space not mine.