I gave up coffee one time and noticed my kidneys started to hurt, so I had to go back on it only to ween myself off it. Now four years later I am still a non-coffee drinker. 

This year I intend to give up chocolate, ice cream and all things sweet. (I'll still take naturally sweet things like fruit, honey and my wife.) I'd give up smoking and alcohol but I no longer do them either.

I think Lent is a good thing. It offers the second chance of the year after New Year's Day to make a new start on things. 

What are you giving up?

Image by _SiD_

China has 1.3 billion people (or a fifth of the world's population). The people of China have an interest in the goings-on in the West. China has internet retrictions whereby some websites are blocked. You can view a list of websites blocked in China.

Image by hey mr glenIf you were to start a blog on Wordpress or Tumblr and spent a few years on it garnering a build up of traffic, and then you decide to sell stuff then you'd have no visiblity in China. Next week I'll be building overhauling the website of my composer friend Ed Bennett. Now Ed might not have any plans to play in China any time soon but he may get a call in a couple of years saying that one of his orchestral pieces will be played by Beijing Symphony Orchestra. If the Chinese want to find out more about Ed, subscribe to his gigs or buy his CDs it would be good if they could access his site.

I should say also that SquareSpace is pretty good. They are very responsive when it comes to customer service and seem to be working hard to develop their service offering all the time.

So next time you go to Wordpress, Tumblr or Blogspot to start up your new blog, think twice.

So without any further ado please send in your funnies.

Image by Eugene Hamill

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. Basically I went on holiday and Nick moved house. We could have updated but hey, it was Christmas. We ate - and didn't drink alcohol!

What do you think about it all?

Image by joe adams

Here is a great video explaining it all.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

He has polarised society mostly with this remark: some say he should be sacked by the BBC (which frankly I can't see as his show Top Gear is the Beeb's largest export); whilst others think it was a huge over-reaction. Anyway this was a few days ago now so it may have been forgotten about already. 

And so I am bringing him back into the limelight! 

The pic below was taken by my uncle Patrick J. Heron during a break in the studio shooting of one of the Top Gear shows back in 2008.

Well done to Gerard Brightman who wins the accolade of best caption in last week's WC.

Image by Patrick J. Heron

So what's being said. Test yourself!

1. Many hands make light work

No one person can build a Formula 1 team. The fastest cars in the world can only be consistently so when people collaborate. Take away the collaboration and they fall behind. The same can be said for organisations. OK you may have the brightest people in the industry working in your team, but if they are not collaborating you are missing a trick. Collective knowledge is better than individual knowledge.

2. A problem shared is a problem halved

A continuation from point one, it's easier to find the answer to a problem when you apply more brains, skills and ultimately people. 

3. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy

Work can be fun, and easy. Wikis can promote collaborative working by making the process of working together easy and fun.

4. Employees cherish a sense of inclusion

Wikis can create a greater feeling of common purpose - by, for instance sharing the thinking going into policy creation and encouraging participation. The result is a greater sense of ownership for the work produced. This all brings about a greater sense of respect for the company that they work for and for the work that they do. 

5. What's your problem?

Wikis are great for dealing with bottlenecks in an organisation. Social Media guru and Deloittes Director of the Centre for the Edge John Hagel once told me an example of a bus company using social software for dealing with broken down vehicles and locating spare parts. When you think of social software bus companies don't spring to mind yet this was a great example of how social media was applied to a problem area in a "non techy" organisation and delivered amazing results. 

6. This I have seen before this I have seen this before this I have seen.

Wikis can enable duplicated work easier to identify and co-ordinate, particularly if wikis have wide accessibility.

7. Who's not looking over your shoulder?

Make the best practice process open and available to all. Why would you want to shut out the extra brain power of your organisation? 

8. Team building on the best parts of the team

Create a greater sense of unity within a team or group, or organisation by letting all contribute to creation of documents bringing their particular strengths to bear. 

9. That's my idea!

Wikis can enable contributions e.g. seed idea, to be identified and rewarded if that is the culture of the organisation.

10. Reduce time getting up to speed

Wikis can enable faster integration of new people into the organisation and more rapid payback, because they can get up to date information on "how-to" to reduce onboarding time.

11. Reduce travel costs

Wikis enable instant communication via the web. This means that meetings can take place for example of the phone and notes can be captured via the wiki.

12. Know what you are talking about

How many times have you gone into a meeting without knowing what the agenda was. By posting an agenda on a wiki you can get the answers thrashed out before the meeting takes place.

 Image by Jinx1303

This brief list highlights potential benefits of using wikis in your organisation, and outlines how much of it applies to organisations of any size.  We use wikis to work together in our two man band. Arguably the benefits are greater the larger the organisation.

The benefits of using wikis are magnified the more people who have access to them, but of course some risks are magnified as well. The main ones being loss of Intellectual Property and staff thinking that the knowledge gained enables or entitles them to do things they are not qualified to to do.  All risks can be mitigated, but that's another topic.

I could go on and on with advantages but I thought 12 is a nice number to digest. What are your thoughts on all of this?

Definitely kind of creepy indeed!

Image by zoomarThanks to Lance Morrisey for last week's comment!

Coogan made a good point yesterday in the Leveson inquiry which was that in the olde days a scandalous story would be forgotten about in tomorrow's fish and chip paper but now, with the web, it stays forever.

What I particularly like about Twitter is that it allows you the freedom to publish your own version of events. Coogan unfortunately has yet to join the Twitterverse which is a shame as I feel he would probably be as frank and entertaining as Stephen Fry.

Anyway here he is a photo I found in Flickr which has Creative Commons licence. It's Coogan in conversation back in 2005. Send in your funnies.

Image by Mirka23

Special thanks to Arthur Peffers, Sybil Wieners and Kurt Whitner for their great comments in last week's WC.

Lee has started up his own comapny called Raw Talent Academy. Lee has a massive 11k followers on his Twitter account - follow him on @leemcqueen. I had a good chat with Ash Holmes who is their dude in charge of Raw's operations. I thought Ash was showing some good signs of social media cleverness. Let's hope that they can harness those followers into pulling them into where it is that they want to be.

Meanwhile hit us with your comments on this one!

Lee McQeen at Fresh Business Thinking Live

Thanks to Vivian Kendricks for her comment in last weeks WC.

Filip Matous tells you to build a storyI've written about Filip before in the FreshSocial review and my view of his is the same: he's a sharp guy with his eye on the 'ker-ching' of any deal, whether that is using social media or getting customer service in a cafe. A great insightful fella and it would be difficult to waste your time in his company. Here's some of Filip's many tips: 

1. When creating a video ask yourself "Can this video carry an emotional way of engaging with the viewer?"
2. Who are your influencers? Find them out and namecheck them. "We all got egos, right?"
3. Have a strategy around your blog post. Who do you want to read this? What emotions do you want them to have?
4. For YouTube (or YouToob as the Canadian accented dood calls it) you need these key fields sorted out:
   1. Title
   2. Keywords - why not use a person's name?
   3. Description - fill this in full with the link at the top linking to where the action is
   4. Likes and comments are important also
   5. And of course views
5. Don't worry too much about getting 50k views. If you get 100 quality views that's much better. If you get 3o views and it's who you want to view it, that's great. If you get 3 views and it's by the three people you want to then "awesome". If you want to get to one guy make a video addressed to that person - and tag their name in the keywords.
6. imovie is fine - you just want to fade in and fade out. 
7. 88k views is what it takes to get onto the front page.
8. In your About Us section of your website why not put a video in there? (Take note Cormac!)
9. It's easier to join other tribes than to start one.
10. Get 3 keywords, type them in and see what you see. 
11. Use the filters well. You can find the main cats that way. 

I'm sure I've missed bits out. Feel free to add to this if you like by using the comments section.

Mark Mcguinness was next up and he looked at the what, why and how of using a blog to bring in business. Mark was great. Very unassuming but a hard hitter in terms of delivering value. here's some of his points:

1. A blog is the best SEO tool you have as search engines love them with all that freesh content, keywords and linking thing that they do.
2. Mark is a specialist when it comes to helping the creative types.
3. He is a masterful headline writer. He has had great success by using snappy headlines and posting onto Twitter.
4. If you do one thing get a 'Subscribe by email' section on your blog. I must say I have been reluctant to do this as I tend to view email as 'non-social' - however I totally get Mark's point that getting people's emails and their permission to contact them is a no-brainer. Expect to see this functionality added to our site soon. (You can still sign up to our newsletter by clicking this.)
5. When starting off a blog it is important to blog often (e.g. one entry a day at least). Once it is established then you can blog once a week. 
6. It can take years for the traffic to come along.
7. Best not to write news as the traffic is not as effective. (I know I write up reviews of events quite a lot but I like doing it.)

Again feel free to add to what I have missed out. 

Afraid I missed a great deal of Mecca Ibrahim's presentation as I bumped randomly into @littlemartian whom I first met at the World WaterSkiing Championships of 1998 when I was on stilts and she was dressed as a giant dinosaur!

Next up was the all-knowing David Terrar who offered a really excellent run down on why you need to be on top of analatyics as well as the tools on offer from the free ones to the paid for services. Some thoughts from David:

1. This social media thing ain't going away. You may as well accept that it's here to stay and work out how you're going to get value from it.
2. "The fundamental interconnectedness of all things" ~ Douglas Adams was onto something computery when he wrote that one. (Shame Nick missed this mention as it would have made his whole day. (Adams is Nick's favourite author.))
3. The free tools are pretty good actually.
4. When replying to people in Twitter David takes the time to check out their Klout score.
5. It's important to have a Social Media "Mission Control" whether that is one person who looks after your activity or whether it is a whole team
6. He looked at Dell and how it came from Dell Hell to a place that takes social media seriously. 
7. Dell's journey took years! 
8. Steve Jobs saw technology as moving rather slowly actually.

1. Lee is a pretty infectious guy. Busting with enthusiasm, passion and, er, muscles.
2. In terms of being an entrepreur he is "1 years old". 
3. He has set up a company called raw talent Academy.
4. He sets goals for his staff which is a good way to motivate them. I don't doubt that for a sec.
5. Lee is the only guy to have starred in The Apprentice and not have been in any final three shoot out with Lord Sugar or King Alan or whoever he is at this stage.
6. He missed an interview by being at the birth of his daughter. That could have cost him a deal of 80k. "That will never happen again!"
7. @leemcqueen has got a massive 11k followers on Twitter.
8. The questions from the audience all prefaced with words along with "Loved your presentation!"
9. My question to Lee was asking how he sets himself goals that are balanced between being achievable and not too much of a walk in the park. He responded very candidly by saying that it is the organisation's aim to being the number one talent academy in 5 years. 
10. he's a funny guy. Likes to throw jokes in there for the craic. And why not!

Overall I found Lee as a likeable chap. He was very obliging with everyone who wanted a piece of him in their mobile photo folders. I can see him doing well. As well as Alan The Ruker Of The Universe? Time will tell.

I've made Lee the star of this week's Wednesday Caption.  Please add your funnies. Also let me know what you thought of FreshLive. Thanks.