Sylwia Korsak

I met Chris recently in London. We seem to have similar views on life and social media possibilities, but Chris is braver than me – he is full of ideas and energy to actually turn them into profitable projects. Currently, he seems to be carefully looking around to find the best industry for himself, which as a student is a great proof of his long term thinking. Great fan of Seth Godin, very open and positive thinker, Chris just started his blog, giving me excuse to interview him;)

Syl: ‘Man with ideas’ is this your brand? What is the origin of this approach?
Chris: Well the idea came when people started asking me what I do, as it’s hard to define myself I wanted to have a universal “branding” and that’s how “The guy with ideas” was created.

Syl: You have just started a blog. How do you feel about it? What convinced you to write it?
Chris: I have been meeting a lot of already successful bloggers and read a lot of blogs on various subjects.It’s an interesting and dynamically growing field which in my opinion will have a growing impact on lots of industries as it provides a pure word of mouth reviews and spreads very quickly.

Syl: Do you have any other presences online? You are on Twitter, somewhere else?
Chris: I use most of the BIG social media tools like FaceBook, Linkedin, YouTube, FriendFeed, Meetup etc. and each one of them has a different purpose and usage.

Syl: How does the blogging change your perspective on social media presence? Does it affect your personal/offline life too?
Chris: I got involved in social media because of the great connections aspect. It still amazes me how many interesting and interactive people join social communities and share information. For me it’s the best way to grow both on and off-line.

Syl: I have met you in one of the London social media meet ups. What is your view on offline networking?
Chris: Networking has become a very intangible word. It’s hard to define if networking is effective because it depends on the venue and types of people that get together.
For networking to be truly successful the people who meet and the topic around it should be as close together as possible. In other words, a bunch of random people meeting, talking and exchanging cards is hard to succeed.

Syl: What is your experience with social media? I think you have mentioned a project around educational usage of social media?
Chris: Yes, I was involved in a marketing campaign for my university and used social media as one of the tools. It’s a field which I really got involved with about 7 months ago and it completely changes the way I approach online relationships. It shapes the way people communicate nowadays but is still considered unnecessary for business.
In my view, it has great potential for business because when you think about it, business has always been about people getting together and exchanging goods or services.

Syl: Do you plan to attend the MediaCamp in December? (one of the main topics is social media and education)
Chris: Yes, I am planning to go there as I have been on the previous one and learned about LinkedIn which helped me tremendously in networking. So I am looking forward to meeting new social media enthusiasts and learning the cutting edge technologies as they evolve so rapidly.

Syl: You are Polish, so I guess I should not ask about what associations you have with our homeland, but I would like to ask you about your three words that come to your mind when you think about UK based Poles:)
Chris: Hard-working, motivated and curious.

Syl: Do you network with local Poles engaged with social media as well? Would you like to? (it is one of the goals of Bar Mleczny)
Chris: Because I study and temporarily reside in the UK I didn’t get a chance to get engaged with Polish social media. However, it would be an interesting experience to see their side of the technology.

Syl: Do you attend Polish events in the UK?
Chris: No, because my reason for coming to the UK was to get to know the British culture while studying, improve my language and engage with other students. I did go to those events back in Poland 🙂

Syl: What is your favourite Polish and British dish? Do you cook?
Chris: Yes as a student I have to cook 🙂  Favourite Polish meal: most soups like Barszcz, Zurek, Rosol
Favourite British meal: fish & chips 🙂

Syl: If we were to organise a social media event for local Poles would you be up for it?
Chris: Sure, I am always up for meeting interesting people and it does not matter where they come from.

Tt’s been a while since I posted an interview, but I have been actually working on one – just this time I gave Andrew, the author of this blog, time to answer each question separately – so this one is a result of two weeks’s worth e-mail correspondence. Enjoy!

Syl: Hi Andy, thank you for agreeing to take part in the interview! Here’s the first one? When did you start blogging and why?
Andy: I started blogging in September, which marks a year from when I stopped doing science for a living. Now as I can take myself back and enjoy the best bits. I wanted to think about how world-changing discoveries are presented and what people think when re-hashing them on the internet. Maybe later I will look at what the people who design and organise the internet can learn from the way scientists use information.

As for self-promotion, for now, I will try my best not to keep my blog light-hearted, avoid inflicting it on the uninterested and talk about other things when not blogging. Maybe one day I will change the world, or at least ruffle the feathers of some of those black hole makers and Frankenstein farmers.

Syl: That sounds very ambitious and I believe you can change the world! Tell me, did blogging change your life or affect it in any way so far?

Andy: I think blogging has helped me be a bit more expressive and articulate. When I’m writing a blog post I feel a real pressure to get the point across simply and in as few words as possible. The biggest plus is having something constructive to do when on the computer at home. Now I see that there are plenty of hours in the day, I just have to fight laziness. This has helped me tidy my life up and keep up with my sporting and voluntary activities.

Apart from that, no big changes, blogging’s  quite one-dimensional for me at the moment. I will spawn further presences and meet people online at some point but I want to hit the sites with a bang rather than a sporadic whimper. For me this requires real-life motivating factors until these occur I won’t try to be something I’m not.

Syl: Hey, join me on Twitter then;) Seriously, do you think you will move to a different level with blogging, do you consider doing it more seriously, learning new tools or blogging for business in the future?

Andy: My attitude to tools is sometimes a bit like Michelle Greer’s, that is, I want to see them applied to real-world situations before discussing them at length. I think some of the meet-ups you and Lolly have been talking about recently sound really interesting as opportunities to do just that.
see here.

I have thought about business blogging as it could be a great way to collate consultancy ideas and gain contacts. So the next question is what would my personal brand be about? My best guess at the moment is:

Managing knowledge better in business, science, and the voluntary sector.

But then how I would present that in a lively, colourful, engaging and concise form whilst “getting my butt off my computer” as Michelle puts it? I guess I could use some of the great community-built graphics programmes available on my Ubuntu desktop. As far as blogging on the move goes, I am still quite attached to my landline (I enjoy people thinking that it’s their mum when I phone them) and not prepared to spend more than about £10 a month on my mobile, but maybe I could stretch to a linux tablet now wifi is getting more widespread.

As for Twitter, @strets123 signed up a few weeks back but needs to think of something suitably profound, insane or insightful for a first tweet. I’m also hosting a few bits on Flickr, play on last.fm and would like to try Linkedin.

Syl: Do you think about those presences as additional to your blog? Or you just like trying them out?
Andy: Part of me joined twitter because it would be a good way to get to know other people interested in blogs. I also like the low effort involved and a hickledy pickledy mixture of posts you get to read. Additionally, I think wiki tools like the cool thing you added to your blog recently could prove very useful.
Time will tell whether I will commit myself fully to other sites. It’s certain that some are more equal, than others, I guess I’m hoping for the market to become more mature and the way of using each site to involve fewer steps. Just like my favourite gadget, my DAB radio.

Syl: Did blogging change your life so far?

Andy: Yes! – it’s been great having a window on the lives of my colleagues and fun interacting with you and others on different subjects. On the other hand, I want to stay in touch with my grumpy old man side, having reviewed “Blind Faith” I will have to take a look at Will Self’s “Book of Dave” next.

Syl: 🙂 I will need to shift the questions to cooking now (due to the fact I usually publish a part of the interview on Bar Mleczny) Do you know anything about Polish cuisine?

Andy: Not a lot, I think I’ve eaten quite a lot of great pickled gherkins from Poland over the years.  As for barmleczny I love milk and the idea of a milk bar intrigues me… The milk marketing people here in Britain are often trying to rebrand it and sell it as a soft drink. Take a trip to an ageing ice rink or swimming baths and you might see nice simple milkshakes available without thickeners. The AMT milk steamers at stations are good too. There could definitely be a niche in the market to exploit.

Syl: Great, Andy, thanks for that feedback!:) So, if I say ‘Polish’ what are the first three things that come to your mind?

Andy: My Polish bridge friends and their ‘Polish Club’ bridge convention
The once growing, now possibly diminishing Polish community in Britain and the various opinions about it.
Word with lots of zs in them

Syl: Zs, and sh, and csh:) And how about you, are you cooking at home?

Andy: Zs, and sh, and csh:) And how about you, are you cooking at home? Cooking has been a big part of my life for most of it. My late, great mum had me in the kitchen as soon as I could walk. We would make jam tarts, scones and nig-nogs (a name for brown oatmeal biscuits from our 1950s cookbook, unrestrained by the era of political correctness). I guess my mum taught me to just get on with it and not fear failure. This means I can often salvage an edible meal when others have given up hope.Either my girlfriend or I cook almost always, tonight it was a casserole with pork and home-produced cider.

Syl: Ah, you just made me hungry:) If we were to do a small Polish food party would you like to join us?:)

Andy: Sound’s fun, I’m in!

Syl: Thank you, Andy!:)

The Meetup on Thursday was brilliant – exactly what I needed: to sit down after quite a stretching day of business ethics training and relax with interesting people. I am glad I managed to have coffee with Chris before that so we could both meet rest of you guys! The place was packed but our little, quiet corner was just perfect for networking and chat. I shared my dilemmas on podcasting with podcast specialist, Janet Parkinson, and thanks to her encouragement I am digging the topic:) Fiona Cullinam, Billy Abbot, Anthony proved to be really cool people with great ideas! And every one else I talked too, of course!:) I had a sec to talk to Matt, the organiser, about the idea to keep it up as a monthly meetup (next up scheduled for the 20th of Nov) and I hope to be able to attend most of the meetups. It’s fun!:)

More info here.

Yahoo news wrote about it, others did too, so I guess it’s not news for you, my dear readers, still I find it fascinating that those three big names are associated with work on a unified code of ethics to promote freedom of speech!

“We seem to be getting more grey areas in terms freedom of expression versus censorship, legal versus illegal and border versus non-border” (Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang)

Apart from the obvious need for a unified code of ethics for the web users in general, we see people like Yang addressing the issue of freedom of speech in talks to US government, as well as in relation to problems in China.

I am glad to see this initiative exactly when Amnesty is promoting celebrations around the 60th anniversary of Declaration of Human Rights.