Adrian Trenholm

Comment policy

I am delighted with the warm, witty and thoughtful comments which readers have posted on this blog. One or two bloggers have suggested, however, that it is time for me to publish a comments policy, and reluctantly, I think they are right. To be absolutely clear, I am not doing this to prevent commenters disagreeing with what I post. Debate is good. I am not however, going to let one or two people turn this blog into a platform for offensive or misleading comment. So:

1. In almost all cases, I don’t moderate comments. I like people to comment here and I think it’s good to have comments appear immediately, so that others can join in the conversation.

2. I request that all commenters stay on topic, avoid misleading anyone, avoid bad language and refrain from insulting others. If a commenter breaches those guidelines I will do one or more of the following three things:

   • comment myself, asking the commenter not to do it again
   • email the commenter at the address provided, asking him or her not to do it again
   • delete the offending comment and add all future comments from that IP address to a moderation queue

3. So, I will moderate some comments. The comments which automatically get added to the moderation queue are:

   • comments from the people who breach the guidelines in point 2
   • comments which contain multiple links (I do this to protect against comment spam)

Thank you to everyone who continues to add such positive, thoughtful comment here. I am very grateful for your support.

2 comments September 15th, 2005

Face to face with Dwayne Melancon and James Governor

Last week I met up with Dwayne Melancon and Chris Morgan from IT firm Tripwire and James Governor from analyst firm RedMonk . I am afraid that the more technical parts of the discussion went over my head, but I was delighted that my hunch to put James together with the Tripwire guys was a good one. We talked about IBM , VMware , the theory of constraints and the name RedMonk , among other things. Chris gave James a good natured grilling about analyst ethics and marketing . And there was some drinking .

To my mind, the story behind the meeting is nearly as interesting as the conversation we shared. Dwayne told Hawaiian business coach that he would be travelling to London. Rosa replied to Dwayne and emailed me to say “why don’t you two meet up?” Dwayne and I duly emailed one another and started to work out a date. Dwayne also invited me to join him on . When I saw all the enterprise IT guys in Dwayne’s network, I realised that it would be good to introduce James, so we set that up. Dwayne brought Chris along and that was the final team sheet.

Rosa, Dwayne and I had never met face to face. We communicate by a mixture of email, blogs, LinkedIn and telephone - no one element would have been enough to fix this up. A few days later when I read this quote from Adrian McEwen , reporting on Ben Hammersley at Our Social World , I had to smile:

We have new concepts of friendship, of how to work together, of relationships…

This is how we can get people all over the world to connect to each other, and although it seems ridiculously far-fetched at the minute, it will change the world in huge ways.

4 comments September 9th, 2005

Business blogging seminar

Spurred on by the attention that 173 has been getting recently , Johnnie, Max, Freddie, James, Andrew and I have decided it’s time we put together a seminar for business bloggers in London.

As business blogging seems to be reaching its tipping point in the UK, we feel the time is right for an event which brings PR and marketing professionals and business directors together with experienced business bloggers. Wherever you are with your blog strategy - from merely blog-curious to committed business blogger - we want to meet and work with you.

The seminar will take place in London, in the first week of November. The agenda is still not fixed so if you have any business blogging questions you want to hear discussed during the seminar, let us know.

Provisionally, the cost of the half day session will be £250.

We want to keep this small, so we can tailor the seminar to participant’s needs and experiences. Places will be limited, and it will be strictly first come, first served. To register for the seminar, email and don’t forget to tell us where you are with your blog strategy and what you would like to achieve at the seminar in November.

2 comments September 4th, 2005

I am an ass… but CAPTCHA is still the devil’s work

Was it the provocation from Louise that made me do it, or am I just an ass by nature? Let me recap:

I post that I think CAPTCHA - a technique for stopping comment spam - is the devil’s work , for it is not accessible to visually impaired users. Louise comments: it is spam that is the devil’s work, and I should put up - suggest practical CAPTCHA alternatives - or shut up. I respond with alternatives and Louise - rightly - calls one of those alternatives into question, for discriminating against another group of users. She says the other alternatives are too resource-hungry. She asks:

Just how many blind people are using the internet anyway? And how many spammers?

It is then that the red mist of battle takes over. I roll out my dogma cannon and FIRE!

Louise, your view seems to be “discrimination is OK in this instance, because I only discriminate against a small number of people. Being inclusive takes too much effort.”

I disagree with your view very strongly. No matter how few are disadvantaged, discrimination, in my view, is not OK.

Like I said: was it Louise made me do it, or am I just an ass?

Having slept on it, I began to get some fresh perspective on this. I live in a flat on the second floor. There are no ramps or lifts. Does that not discriminate against people in wheelchairs? I can just about get away with it, because:

1. Our flat is not a public space and no one, in a wheel chair or not, is entitled to enter without permission. In public spaces, there will be places a disabled person is entitled to go which are inaccessible to him or her.
2. We do not own the stair well, so even if I did want to invite someone with a wheelchair to come up, I still cannot fit a lift or ramp.
3. Even if we had permission to fit a lift, we couldn’t afford it

So is there a more workable principle: discrimination in public spaces over which I have control, except when I don’t have the resources is not OK? Am I finally letting some shades of grey dominate my previously black and white thinking? Yes, I think I am. But what about web accessibility? Are CAPTCHAs OK now?

No, they are not. We are not, after all, taking something which is already inaccessible and applying massive resources to provide access (like building a lift in a block of flats). We are talking about taking something which is accessible by nature (the web) and then deliberately denying access. Using a CAPTCHA is like ripping the lifts and ramps out of an accessible building and replacing them all with stairs, then justifying your actions by saying the ramps and lifts made it easy for thieves to come into the building.

The web is a public space. The website owner has control over his or her site. And the resources required for the various alternative anti-spam methods are, in most cases, not significantly more than those required to implement CAPTCHA, and in some cases less. CAPTCHAs, in my view, are still not OK, and I would like to see them consigned to the scrapheap.

No doubt Louise will disagree. That’s OK. If Louise has a blog and wants to take up the discussion there, I will happily link to it. Through all this, I have learnt something new about myself and about blogging, specifically about how I respond to comments. I intend to be less of an ass in future. But one thing is sure, I won’t be shutting up about web accessibility any time soon.

16 comments August 25th, 2005

Simplicity is hard work

A quick addendum to the earlier post about business investment in blogging . You will recall that a Washington Post journalist suggested anyone who “sells” blogging services is a conman, on the basis that blogging is a simple concept . Of course, I disagree with that line, so I was pleased to see Simplicity Is Hard Work by Gerry McGovern in Marketing Profs today. The article is not about blogging, rather the importance of simplicity in delivering competitive advantage, and the investment required to achieve it:

To achieve simplicity, an organization needs to be genuinely customer-focused. Extra investment will be required, as well as a special commitment from designers and management.

Is it worth it? Certainly, organizations such as Apple and Google are showing that simplicity can become a genuine competitive advantage.

Business blogs can help organisations be more customer-focused. They make conversations between business and client simple. Investment and commitment will be required. Competitive advantage? Absolutely.

1 comment August 24th, 2005