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Year: 2009

3 questions to structure your filter of economic data

Published September 23, 2009 by Jo Jordan

All over the internet yesterday, people were chattering about filters.

What sense do you make of the world? And the 100 million dollar question, what is your understanding worth to anyone else?

Scary thought?

Well, here is an easier one!

Which indicators do you use to judge the health of the economy?

Last night, Forbes suggested that men wear brighter ties when the economy is on the up.  And wear duller ties when it is going down.  And the dull ties came out before Lehman crashed!

What do geeks wear when the going is good?  What do Kiwis wear?   They seem to wear black forever.

How do you judge the state of the economy?

The Forbes indicators tell us about confidence in the economy. What else should we be looking at?

When I lived in Zimbabwe, a leading economist advocated that we look at the state of people’s lawns.  Lawns are expensive and tiresome to look after.  Someone who is ‘staying’ will look after their lawn.  Someone who is ‘leaving’ will let it go.  Drive down the street and you get a fair idea of what people intend to do.

So if guys’ ties tell us how chirpy we feel, and where the economy might be headed, what tells us what people are going to do?

Which behaviors do you look out for and which leading indicators suggest the behavior may increase (or decrease)?

And what deceives us? What is just another dazzling bubble?

I remember another economist being overly impressed by the growth of flash chain fast food outlets in Harare.   I was stunned because I saw fast food outlets as a sign of non-investment activity.  When we have money that we have ‘won’ rather than ‘made’, we tend to waste it.  It’s a sure sign we are in a bubble.

Another working economist reckoned that he could judge the viability of a working farm in a glance as he drove up.  If there were more vehicles than drivers, the farm was going under.   The motivation was a little different, but once again money was being spent on decoration rather than functionality.

British political scientist, Parkinson described this phenomenon in other terms.  When organizations build monuments to themselves, they are on the way down.

Others may call this ‘chi’ – or lack of it.  We can feel the focus and vigor seeping away.

Which warning signs do you notice?

Three questions for your economics filter, then.

  • In your world, what tells you when the economy is on the way up, and does the same indicator tell you when the economy is on the way down?
  • In your world, which behaviors are so important to the future health of the economy that it would be good to have advance warning? What might that leading indicator be?
  • In your world, which behaviors suggest our eye-is-off-the-ball?  Or, that we are playing with funny money – or stolen goods – or money not made in the productive economy?

What else should I be looking at to structure a useful, working filter of the economy?

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The secret of an un-junked life is your own filter

Published September 23, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Do you remember the days when you needed a ‘big man’ to present you to the world?

I barely remember, yet it was not so long ago that we had to find a patron, if we wanted to be heard.

  • If we wrote a book, we needed a publisher.
  • If we were into politics, we joined a political party.
  • If we kept counted the beans in business, we found ourselves an employer.

Some of these ‘big men’ were indeed patrons of quality

When we wanted information and advice of quality, we went to the same ‘big men’.  People of quality gathered around them.  We could randomly pick anyone of them. They would probably be OK.

Clay Shirky explains why we needed ‘big men’

Taking newspapers as an example – printing on paper was expensive.  Journalists couldn’t invest in the prohibitively expensive printing presses and distribution networks.  And newspapers proprietors wanted to be sure their printed papers would sell.  So newspaper owners had a vested interest in promoting quality and they become the arbiters and promoters of journalistic quality.

The internet has broken the ‘big man’ model

The internet has made publishing cheap and easy.  Working together has got cheaper and easier.  In short, the internet allows us to present ourselves to the world without going through a ‘big man’.

Every man and his dog has a story up on the internet and we feel drowned in a deluge of material – unfiltered and of indifferent quality. Junk food, junk mail, junk bonds, more junk.

The flip-side of everyone being their own ‘big man’ is that refereeing quality, and promoting quality, has become our job – perhaps our only job.

The secret of an un-junked life is our own filter.  And as the art of speaking is the art of being heard, for the first time we are faced with the task of truly understanding how other people filter.  We cannot rely entirely on ‘big men’ to do it for us.  Too much is going around and past them.

How do we filter the deluge of junk?

#1 Work with the ‘big men’ who remain

Political scientist, Matthew Hindman, reminds us that the old patronage systems are still up and running.

In so far as these systems provide a quality filter, there is no harm in using them.  We still go to university.  We read good books.  We even watch good TV programs!

What we have to get our heads-around is that as little as five years ago, the ‘big men’ provided the only channels, and the only filters. We lived with their definition of quality – like it or not.

Today, we do have a choice.  And we find ourselves having to judge the quality of the ‘big men’.  Do the filters that we’ve used for so long have the quality they promise?   Sadly, the alternatives, even the alternatives produced by amateurs, are exposing many ‘clay feet’.

#2 Actively reconstruct our filters on a regular basis

The power, and responsibility, for judging quality has shifted to us.  Our next step, fortunately seems to come quite easily.  We figure out what matters in the world.

Much of what happens is not worth reacting to.  I loved President Obama talking about racist responses to his initiatives.  Looking utterly relaxed on the Letterman show, he began, as if to make a serious point, then with good timing, reminded us he was black before the election.   It is true, he reminded the audience, with mock insistence.  How long have you been black? said Letterman.  Our mental models have become important. It doesn’t do any more to borrow from the great and the good.  We must have mental models of our own.

Julius Solaris, intrepid London networker, also wrote today of pruning his huge networks, much like my neighbors pruning their roses. A healthy network is free of dead wood and dead heads.  And for that matter, free of ‘dittoheads’ as they have become to be known on Twitter.

But do other people actively filter? Will they hear us among the deluge of junk arriving on their screens?

I count 5 ways to understand how information reaches, and doesn’t reach people.

#1 Old forms of patronage count

We shouldn’t dismiss the power of old establishments.  They might not fully comprehend the loss of their old monopoly, but they will defend their territory, and they will use the weight of their considerable resources to defend their position.

Be wise and take the back road to the high ground.

#2 Recommendations of friends still matter

Though many people are incredibly trusting of the old filters, they still trust their friends more.

Old fashioned communication systems remain influential.

Get close to the people who matter to you and be in touch – literally.

#3 Understand Google

How do we find information on the internet?  We can put up a website but does anyone ever look at it other than us?  Understanding the algorithm used by Google is part our our new literacy.

#4 Join social networks

Our lives are now lived virtually as well as on the street.  Join up to major social networking sites and take part.  To be off the network today would have been like refusing to read newspapers in the 1960’s.  Odd to say the least.

#5 Become a respected filter

Build your own web presence as a filter that other people can rely on.  Let people see the world through your eyes.

If you are a fan of junk food, then yay, the world can discover junk food in your wake.  If you have an understanding of the deep structure that underlies good food, like Daniel Young, then show that to the world.

Working consistently on our web presence helps us understand our own filters.

Using the many statistics packages available (like Google Analytics) helps us track what other people respond to and deepens our awareness of their filters.

Sometimes this is deeply depressing – but hey, knowledge is power. If people come to this site to find out if they are good looking (told you it gets depressing), or at other extreme, how to do HR in the recession (deeply depressing), it tells me a lot about them. And it tells me a lot about how I manage my relationship with the world’s cybermediary, Google.

It is a brave new world. The deluge of junk can get overwhelming.

This is no time to be lazy.  Our job in this age is to define how the world works, to gather quality information around us, to digest it, and to put our understanding back out there for the next person to use.

Can you imagine doing anything less? If you can, I would like to know.

Because the quality of our filters seems both to preserve our sanity and be the basis of our earning power.

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Eureka! Why bad treatment rattles me so much.

Published September 22, 2009 by Jo Jordan

I think I get unreasonably distressed when big companies treat me badly. I take it badly. And I take it personally. Which has to be unreasonable. After all they don’t give a jot about me!

Double-bind

Being bullied by people in power is called a double-bind. It’s basic structure goes like this.

  • You treat me badly.
  • But I can’t walk away.

So I have to absorb three bad things about myself.

  • You treat me badly.
  • I can’t walk away.
  • I am in a position where I cannot resolve this dilemma or even talk about it someone else. You certainly won’t listen. You will just deny that you are treating me badly.

Side-stepping a double-bind

I understand all this stuff. I am a psychologist after all.

So why do I take bad treatment like a kick in the solar plexus and spit in my face?

I pondered this a few days ago and had this ‘eureka’ moment.

Because suffering humiliation suggests I am investing in the wrong things. Because the petty humiliations hint that I have been horribly mistaken about what is true and good in this world.

If I catch the fleeting hint and look at it squarely, I can ask myself why I continue to pursue this life.

If this life is what I want, then maybe I can find a way to remove the irritant, compensate for the irritant (or pay it back), or simply put it in the irritant box.

The key question is not what to do about the irritant.

The key question is in the fleeting hint : is this the life I want? What have I assumed about what is true and good?

Do I still believe I have chosen the right direction in life knowing what I know now?

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Be a social media star: a menu board of 5 competences

Published September 22, 2009 by Jo Jordan

We are in social media because we really have fun

Most of us who get into social media because we love it.  We like computers and we are fairly sociable, though curiously, often introverted too.

We do what we love, and we do it happily all day long.

It’s only when we start to think about making money, that we start to think about monetizing. And then we start to think a lot about money. And we start to talk about it too.

Have you ever noticed that people in other industries don’t talk about money nearly as much as we do?

That’s because they have more than us.

Why other people make money

My ‘day job’, or at least my day-job in years gone by, was as a psychologist to commerce and industry. We put in systems – pay, performance appraisal, selection. Hell, even pensions.

Most social media firms are much too small to be bothered with such systems. That’s lucky. These systems tend to be rather dull.

The guiding principles behind the systems are another matter though.

Take competencies, for example.

We try to understand a job in terms of its essential skill base. What do we get done? What are the main clusters of tasks?

I’ve been edging toward a model for social media and this is what I’ve come up with.

Menu board of 5 competencies in social media

Competence 1: Customers

Who are our customers? If they used our service, what would they use it for? How do they satisfy that need without us?

Once we’ve introduced our service, how do they use it? What tweaks do they introduce?

This isn’t a customer-service role. It’s a strategic-role where our expertise is watching the people we serve.

Clay Shirky is the best example of a person who is expert in this role He works at the role of macro-strategy. What affects all of us?

We also need mavens working at the level of micro-strategy – our own industry, our own locality, our specific demographic. Anthropology and sociology are good foundations for this expertise.

Competence 2: Technology

Today, Seth Sternberg, founder of Meebo, posted his thoughts on managing startups over on Techcrunch.

He believes that the core team needs at least two technical people: the pixelator (design of the front end) and the person who makes the servers fly (backend).

That’s a useful framework to start with. Where is design and processing going? What is likely to break onto the scene in the next five years? What is flair and what is competence in the field?

In the social media world of south-east England, many of us rely on LoudMouthMan to give us an overview of what is happening.

I suspect many geeks are very specialized and are micro-micro, so to speak.  What are the slightly broader ‘chunks’ that match clusters or groups of apps who compete with each other?

Competence 3: Marketing

Now we get to looking after customers.  Marketers in the social media space are quite competent technically.  They use social media to find customers, respond to customers, and tweak the system to manage the % ROI.

This space is very noisy. But I perceive most people are chasing the business of big traditional companies who are perceived to be flush with cash.

I haven’t met too many social media marketers who will manage a startup.  The closest that I know of is Julius Solaris who is his own startup, so to speak.  He arrived in UK less than 18 months ago and has built an extensive network of entrepreneurs in London.

I’ve done a little work on the broad mega-picture of Facebook & Twitter and Linkedin users in UK

To work our own space – to go from zero customers to 1000’s of customers, we need to copy Julius.

Competence 4: Keeping it all together.

I have met some accountants at Julius’ meetups. Accountants who specialize in social media are as rare as hens’ teeth though.

Lawyers are a little more common, but not common at all. Omar Ha-Redeye, reading for his JD in Canada is the closest I know.

This post is my contribution to this competence ‘Keeping it all together’ by thinking ahead about our skill base.

Competence 5: Emergence

And lastly, who is Hannibal of the A team?

We sometimes bring ‘old world’ attitudes to social media. We want to be in-charge, largely because we don’t trust each other and we are terrified of losing control of the ‘rent’ – the unusual profits.

In reality, of course, we barely have any profit at all. This is part of the creative sector and few people get rich.

Hannibal doesn’t play this old fashioned role. Hannibal thinks up the game plan. Hannibal builds the missing trust and gets out some fair and cast iron contracts (that the lawyers, accountants and psychologists will make happen in their detail).

Hannibal coordinates. Hannibal sizes up the progress we make in our distinct arenas and passes information between us to help us stay together.

And second only to building trust, Hannibal senses the emergence of new understanding, clarity and more finely tuned goals. Hannibal represents the group to itself . . . represents the group to itself.

Hannibal must love the group, seriously love it.

We are Hannibal in our own lives. We think up our game plan. We help all the people who help us to trust each other. We pass information between them when they cannot do it themselves. We sense what we can do together and we represent this possibility so everyone can imagine a future that includes us . Universities have started to offer full semester courses to start students developing personal leadership.

Five competencies for managing a social media business

  • We need them all in part
  • It’s great when we find a maven who will keep us informed of broad changes
  • It seems to me that there are many opportunities to become experts at “industry” level (between niche and the broader picture).
  • “Keeping it all together” is calling for people with professional skills to specialize in social media.
  • We are all Hannibals in our own life.
  • Some people play the role of Hannibal in project teams and get very good at it.

Any use to you? Has this list helped you to check off your strengths and the strengths of your network?

Can you start a project team in the next month?  Who is missing from your team?

When you next go to a meetup, who are you hoping to find, probably standing somewhere quietly?

Any thoughts?

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Events Managers teaching us the central concept of management

Published September 21, 2009 by Jo Jordan

I had an interesting exchange today with Events Impresario, Julius Solaris.  Well, I had two, but I will tell you about this one.

Julius tweetedd about the lack of creativity in events.

  • I asked whether lack of creativity mattered and whether we would rather have events where creativity happened.
  • Quick off the mark, Julius tweeted: “@jobucks but providing a creative environment is key to foster creativity IN the event”

Yes!  Which the boundary conditions does the Event Manager create, so that you and I can be creative when we meet at the party?

These days, people do Masters degrees in Event Management.  So, somebody must know.

How do students learn this double-layered approach to management?

Which conditions do we manage to raise the likelihood of creative activity by the guests?

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Exuberant Monday: What atmosphere would you like today?

Published September 21, 2009 by Jo Jordan

“There  is no place on earth more exuberant than Venice on a breezy, hot, cloudless, day.  The boats rock and swell in the Lagoon as if launching themselves, crewless, on adventure;  the ornate facades brighten in the sunlight;  the water smells fresh, for once.  The whole city puffs up like a sail, a boat dancing unmoored, ready to float off.  The waves at the edge of the Piazza di San Marco became raucous in the wake of the speedboats, producing a festive but vulgar music like the dash of cymbals.  In Amsterdam, Venice of North, this jubilant weather would have made the city sparkle with renewed purpose.  Here, it ended by showing the cracks in the perfection – .  .  .”  The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova.

I do love exuberance.  What atmosphere do you like best?

I was delighted last year to stumble over the work of Kay Jamieson who researches exuberance – mainly in scientists.

This piece in The Historian led me to reflect how inarticulate we are at describing the atmosphere that we prefer.  We probably fumble toward what we like and when we have the chance, attempt to re-create what we enjoyed in the past.  We probably recognize quite easily the surface features of what we enjoy.  But do we understand the deep structure that allows these surface features to emerge?

Kay Jamieson studies exuberance in individuals.  Saying it is OK to be exuberant is probably one of part of deep structure we need.  What are others?  To recreate an exuberant atmosphere – or the atmosphere we prefer.

And your preference is .   .  .:

Kay Jamieson on exuberance

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoXAK9qbRh4]

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8 must-haves for conferences in 2009

Published September 20, 2009 by Jo Jordan

About once a year, I go to a formal conference, I am not sure why.   I prefer unconferences and most conferences these days are streamed. I could put my feet up and watch at home.

So for me, there is an increasingly “high ticket to entry”.

I think these 5 are what are called “table stakes” .  They are the minimum to be credible.

1.  I want the venue to be clean (it usually is in the UK).

2. I want parking (preferably free). Importantly, though I want details on how and where to park. That means the postal code and how I will pay and for what period. Should I have trekked off to bank to find pound coins in advance, etc. What do I do if the machine is broken, etc.

3.  I want the postal code of the venue. Google has maps and cars and phones have satnav. I don’t want a diagram or written instructions. I want a postal code so I can use the map of my choice. But peculiarities like the number of exits at the Tube, the one for me and direction I should turn when I hit fresh air would be good. London is notorious for not marking its streets.

4.  I want working WIFI and it should work the minute I switch on my device.

5.  I want to know where to get refreshments. In the UK, we usually travel a long way. When the hosts provide refreshments, they really do need to be healthy and match the diversity of UK.  Otherwise arrangements at a local eaterie might be preferable.  I don’t want to ruin my health for the sake of being cheap.

With Web 2.0, I think we get another list which allows us to prepare before we come to the meeting.

We don’t want to spend several days following people up afterward. Ideally, when we walk out the door, we’ve wrapped up our routine business and moved on to coordinating opportunities that arose out of the meeting.

1.  Registration on Amiando because they provide a community. Meetup is fine for non-conferences.

2.  Registration information that does not dwell on rank or institution. Life has changed. I don’t want to talk to you if you don’t want to talk to me! Tell me why you are there and what I can do for you.   In advance. Put up a link to your blog and give me your Twitter name.  I’ll scan the lists and connect up with you before the meeting.

3. A Twitter stream is good but so is a way to find each other.  We must have contact information in advance and our twitter names should be on the participants’ list.

I am looking forward to the wider use of ecards too. I don’t want to enter cards when I get home. I want to send an ecard directly to my contacts database. That’s for 2010.

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Surprise! US is not overborrowed. But does it have Growth Story?

Published September 20, 2009 by Jo Jordan

If you have even the slightest interest in living in the manner to which you have become accustomed, can I recommend you find 5 hours to watch these three videos of 12 economists talking what is happening in the US financial system and its dealings with the rest of the world?

I am just a lowly psychologist so I try to boil down economics to actionable rules of thumbs that we can use.  When you are done, I’d be interested in your take of mine.

1.  Find your growth story . . . and stick to it!

Find an industry that you enjoy, find the bit that is growing, and grow with it, wherever it takes you.

2.  Help you kids find their growth story

Invest in the things they love to do and take them on holiday to parts of the world where growth is happening.

Think abut a good trip to Brazil, Russia, China or India once in three years, rather than a time-wasting, resource-frittering holiday every year.

And if they have any inclination for languages, help them by doing their homework with them.   It may help when you talk to you grand-children who might be living in another country!

And may be include Arabic on you list of possibles.  Bang on the door of the mosque in your neighbourhood and ask them to include your children in their after-school activities?

3.  Remember that money is losing value as much as houses are losing value

Unless you have a lot of it hanging around, this is a good news story for you. Investors will want to invest in your growth story.

Don’t be desperate for their money. You have something as rare as hens’ teeth.

Bring in investors who believe in your story as strongly as they believe in returns on their capital.

And then write a tight contract for them!  This is a borrower’s market, whatever the mass media tells you.

4.  Learn the numbers and ask your MP and business leaders hard questions

The more we show that we know the numbers, the quicker they will get down and dirty with them too.

Let them watch 5 hours of videos on economic more often than we do.  That’s their job, after all. Let’s get our money’s worth!

5.  Vote with your ballot and your feet for people and firms with growth stories

Question the panic about government borrowing.

It may be different here in the UK – I wish we had a forum like these 12 economists here.  Common sense tells us, though, that we will only get out of our mess with a plan – a plan for getting out and moving along with growth stories in Brazil Russia India and China.

We don’t have to eat and drink ourselves silly to keep up. But starving ourselves and living in sack cloth won’t make us any richer either.

Government borrowing is only a problem when don’t have a plan to make businesses better over the next 5, 10, 20 years.

We want a growth story!  Can we start a fashion?  What will happen if we ask everyone you meet, what is your growth story!

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RSS’d to make your dream come true?

Published September 20, 2009 by Jo Jordan

RSS’d?

If you aren’t, it probably won’t!  As a work psychologist, that was a subterranean text that I was hearing at the Oxford Social Media Convention on Friday.

Matthew Hindman, for example, a political scientist from Arizona, tracks how the internet is used in politics in the US.  While we are raving about my.barackobama.com, Matthew is noting details that pass us by.

For example, Obama won Ohio through marginal gains in Republican states which, in turn, were made on the back of careful statistical analysis of voting patterns.  I live in a small town in rural England, and RSS’ed or not, putting my hands on his book, The Myth of Digital Democracy, over the weekend is not a possibility.

[If anyone knows how to efficiently read 200 page pdf files on a screen, please doooooo tell me the secret]

Internet politics is not for the faint-hearted

What I gathered of the overall message is this.

The internet is a powerful tool in the hands of people who understand statistics, who understand politics, and who are motivated to get out there and do the work.

What can political scientists (who watch the way we use the internet) teach those of us in business?

Without benefit of the book and not knowing how to read long pdf documents efficiently on screen, I’ve been thinking about what I heard against what I already know.

  • When the barriers to entry are low, as they are on the internet, “every man and his dog” is able to enter the space.
  • Because so many people are in the space, competition is fierce, and profits are low.
  • Because profits are low, consolidation and scale is important.
  • And people who have already invested hugely (think TESCO’s for example) will protect their investment and are going to play hardball with we ‘noobes’.

Porter’s 5 factor model and my internet business

I like messing around with numbers and seeing what they can tell us about what we are doing and where we are going.  So I look forward to seeing the data Matthew has put together and seeing what analyzes we could do here in UK in both the political and business arenas.

The progress that I’ve made so far, is that I am hearing the principles of Porter’s 5 factor model of business conditions.

  • The internet is an unattractive industry precisely because it is easy to get into. [Barriers to entry are low]
  • When we work in the internet, we have to organize our work to “take care of the pennies”. [Cost leadership]
  • We also have to get quite big to have enough volume to make a profit.

Can I conclude from this train of thought that in the internet world, organizing and organizational skills are critical?  Have we even thought about the challenges of “taking care of the pennies”? [Not a lot! Time to begin!]

And am I RSS’d to do the work involved?

Which of my ventures can I be RSS’d to do ALL the work it takes to win?

[I am trying to remember who made the RSS joke. Iain Dale! Politicians do not know their RSS from their elbows!]

Parallels with running a psychological practice

This isn’t a new problem for me.  I am a psychologist by trade and I’ve spent countless hours over the years talking about exactly the same issues in our businesses. . . oops!. . .professional practices.

We have exactly the same ‘problem’.   Anyone can dispense psychological advice – and they do.  My profession tries various tricks like protecting the name and putting up artificial licenses to stop other people using various procedures.

We do all that to escape the the hard reality that we need both organization and professional knowledge to run a profitable practice.  The amateur sees our interaction with our clients.  They copy that.  They pinch our materials and copy what they see us do.   What they don’t see and don’t copy is the back end.

That infuriates us because the back end is expensive.

When we get over being annoyed, we can turn this relationship around. Our back end is worth what we pay for it because it allows us to answer three questions consistently and better than the amateur who trying to copy us without sufficient investment in the ‘going concern’.

  • Do we understand our clients deeply in ways that they care about?
  • Are we there for them when they need us?
  • Does our analysis of their issues and concerns help them act and act effectively in the mess, rough and tumble of their own lives?

It feels so ‘wrong’ to have to compete with amateurs. And ‘noobes’ deeply resent the cost of the the organization structure to deliver a competitive service and the time it takes to put it together.  Oh, the conversations I’ve had and the time I’ve spent getting my head around this.

But that’s business when barriers to entry are low.  It is part of our professionalism to know that.  Porter’s Five Forces does explain that – in every first year business text.   We should know that we need a professional organization to give our message efficiency, effectiveness and edge.  Sadly, the internet is not easy pickings in politics or business.

Our RSS’d about boxes

So we’d better know what we are RSS’d about!  And hang out with people who are RSS’d about it too.

Maybe we can have two boxes?

Hobby – enjoy it, but can’t be RSS’d to win.

Profession – sooo committed that being RSS’d to do the details comes easy.

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Add these 2 places to your guidebook of the British internet

Published September 19, 2009 by Jo Jordan

At the Oxford Social Media Convention, I met a young man from Nominet UK. Nominet UK registers all top level domains dot.uk.

Nominet UK is a not-for-profit company.  It took a while of clicking around their website to find that out!

That information should be in their footer, shouldn’t it?

This young man told me he was a Trustee and employed by ??? Nominet or a Trust run by Nominet?. Couldn’t find the Trust on the Nominet website so I googled.

There is a Nominet Trust and its institutional framework is clearer.   It is a charity and the information is on the front-page.  I must have been talking to James Kemp.

Here is its purpose

“We will consider funding UK-based and international Internet-related initiatives in the sectors of education, research and development, safety and inclusion.”

What odd wording “we will consider”.

The project must be capable of delivering what is promised.  Shouldn’t we take that for granted?

But this is a link you should remember if you are interested in inclusion and the internet.

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