by Matthew Stibbe on May 17, 2012
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Does anybody know that parlour game where you have to invent the real meaning of high-falutin’ words that people use. For example, ‘coup de grace’ is actually a French lawnmower and ‘magnum opus’ is a fat Irish cat.
Well, here’s a great list of neologisms new words from a recent BBC article. I saw it and it made me think of this new competition.
There’s a prize (in the form of a shiny new Articulate Moleskine-style notebook) for the reader who comes up with the funniest definition for any of these stupid invented words and phrases.
- Re-mode
- Gains to be got
- Pepper-potting
- Referral pathway
- Beaconicity
- Deplaning
- Neutralising debt
- Calling points
- Progressive consensus
- Worklessness
- Incentivising
And a second prize for anyone who suggests the most opaque neologism that’s not on the list. But you have to provide a source to prove it really exists in the wild.
To enter, tweet your word or definition to @mstibbe or leave a comment on this blog post. Small print: I’ll decide who wins and when. Hey, it’s my prize so it’s my rules!
by Matthew Stibbe on May 14, 2012
I’m a great believer in learning something new. I got a private pilots licence and then a commercial licence between 2000 and 2010 and I’ve been learning Dutch for the last five years. But now, Wired has given me a good reason for it: it helps me make more rational decisions. The article reports:
A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived.
These guys ran interesting experiments and the results are encouraging. Check it out. What do you do to make better decisions?
by Matthew Stibbe on May 13, 2012
Do you think anyone would notice if I just had a go? What is about these cranes that turns me into a schoolboy? Fire trucks and planes also have the same effect. As Freud said the mind is a great rationaliser of childish emotions.
by Matthew Stibbe on May 10, 2012
I used to run a computer games company, called Intelligent Games, and occasionally I get emails from people who played our games. That’s always a pleasure and I had one today from an Australian architect (and SimIsle fan) who is just starting out in his new practice. He made the flattering mistake of asking if I had any advice for him. Here is what I wrote and this is what I might have done differently if I had known then what I know now (it’s also what I’m trying to do now at Articulate and Turbine):
Hiring people is very expensive
They are ‘sticky’ in that it’s hard to unhire them when you can’t afford to pay them or don’t need them. Keep flexible and hire contractors, freelancers or remote workers as well as full time employees. Also – and someone said this to me when I was 20 and I ignored it then but it’s very true – don’t hire someone until you need two of them.
You’ve got to plan for the long term
We didn’t really anticipate the shift to multiplayer games or console games or the internet. We could have exploited any of these opportunities to grow the business but instead stuck to what we knew – PC strategy games. So you need to be a step ahead of the market and constantly looking for the next new thing.
Build value
Find something that you do exceptionally well or find a way to create some branding or intellectual property or proprietary technology that gives your business value beyond the cost of just hiring your staff or other employees like them. For an entrepreneur this is the most important thing because it will help you differentiate your business from its competitors and it will build value in the business so that you can earn the option to sell it.
After emailing him, I thought of another tip:
Spend your time on the good people
Once you have a reasonable number of employees, some of them will cause you problems. They’ll want pay rises, make complaints, threaten to leave, underperform, break the rules etc. It happens. As boss, you end up spending a lot of time dealing with these people. But you should try to keep that stuff as efficient and brisk as possible and spend much more time on your good people. Pay attention to them, help them get better, recognise their successes. Generally be a good boss to good employees.
by Matthew Stibbe on May 8, 2012
If you are a blogger or a journalist, check out Google Authorship. It’s a way to link your articles with your Google+ profile so that your profile gets included in Google search and people can find other articles by you. It also gives you analytics for your content in search.
On the face of it, this looks like a must-do if you want to maximise your visibility on Google and get more traffic for your writing.
You need to do a bit of work besides setting up a Google+ profile, as described on Google’s help page. Here’s how I did it on this site (Bad Language).
- Register for Google+. Here’s my profile: https://plus.google.com/u/0/107157893087110752471/about
- Edit the profile in the ‘Contributor to’ section to include this blog.
- Make sure each post has my byline on it.
- Add a link to my Google+ profile on the site with ?/rel=author on the URL. I did this by adding it to my list of free update subscriptions. I’ll tidy up the formatting and add icons later. This is what it looks like:
Note that the link is formatted like this (note the ?/rel=author): https://plus.google.com/u/0/107157893087110752471/?rel=author. Obviously you will need to change the struck-through Google+ reference number to match your own.
- Tested the link using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool. Here’s what the result should look like. If you don’t see ‘Verified’, you’re not and it’s not working.
I’ve set this up on this blog, Golf Hotel Whiskey, my HP Business Answers blog and my Forbes Aviator column. It took me about an hour, and some of that time was spent writing this article and figuring out some of the wrinkles, so it’s a pretty painless process.
by Matthew Stibbe on April 23, 2012
Check out my video review of the new HP Folio 13 Commercial Ultrabook. Nice!
by Matthew Stibbe on April 20, 2012
In this video, a professional director and two actors show you (plus me!) how to relax and warm up before a big presentation. Do this before your next pitch and it’ll help you chill out and give a better performance.
by Matthew Stibbe on April 17, 2012
My wife Aileen and her colleague Nick Dana give inside tips on how to control nerves, stay focused on your objective and increase your confidence before a presentation.
by Matthew Stibbe on April 10, 2012
Last week I made some videos for the HP Business Answers campaign about presentation skills with my wife, Aileen Gonsalves and an actor from her theatre company, Butterfly. Here’s the first one, which is all about getting your attention out onto your audience.
by Matthew Stibbe on March 12, 2012
Deil DeGrasse Tyson cements his position as the Carl Sagan of our times in this moving answer, illustrated by Max Schlickenmeyer’s beautiful video.
