OPEN

You’re overdue an explanation, so here it is…

These are interesting times – in a good sense – for me, as I close the chapter where I was employed at iCrossing, and indeed the the section of the book – to extend the metaphor – where I have been employed by others.

That’s right I have struck out on my own. Thankfully, I have still got a good relationship with my former employer, so much so in fact that they remain a client of my new venture, which means I still get to work with my colleagues there. Brilliant.

It was hard to leave, as I think the company’s just entering a fascinating phase – becoming part of a major publisher is amazing, an apt illustration of the disruption and mixing up of the marketing industries that I wrote about for iCrossing in the Brands in Networks e-book.

However, there comes a time in your career when it feels like now or never for going on the adventure of starting your own company, and that time, for me, is now.

My new company – Brilliant Noise – is in its very early stages, so forgive the bare bones website and web presence for now.

I’m founding it based on two lessons I learned during the past half-decade at iCrossing:

1. I love starting things…

I read Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start before the iCrossing adventure began, and it served me well. Even though I was within a growing company – at the time, Spannerworks, which was soon acquired by iCrossing – starting the Content & Social Media team, felt like a start up. It was utterly new for me, the company and at the time, the market.

Actually back then – when we had to write What is Social Media? to explain what this new thing was,, we weren’t at all sure that “social media” was a term that would stick at all. But it did, and now it is just as popular, mis-used and simultaneously understood and misunderstood as “public relations” the discipline from which I had come.

Anyway, there was a thrill in having that blank sheet of paper, and the sure knowledge that although no one around me knew exactly what it was going to be, I had to do something pretty quickly to earn my keep. In starting afresh, I have that feeling once again – and I love it.

2. The most effective way to do it is to do it…*

Brilliant Noise is going to be a consultancy, but also a do-tank – it’s an idea I’d been mulling for a while. Not unique – others use the phrase in a variety of ways – but definitely different. I could have thought about Brilliant Noise as a kind of analyst house or think tank – but what the iCrossing experience taught me was that to create new things – even conceptual things like frameworks, models, strategies – you have to be in the game, getting your hands dirty, trying stuff out.

I’m thinking of Brilliant Noise then, as an exploration vehicle, a way of doing valuable work for sure, but wherever possible in areas of media and business that are uncertain, unchartered. Projects underway at the moment range from the expected – marketing strategy, training, etc. – to the fiendishly unexpected (I cant’ say otherwise you will be expecting it).

As well as client work, one of my first projects is to write my second book. This will look at applying the web and social networks in the workplace, where Me and My Web Shadow was mainly about our personal lives.

Anyway, that is where I’m at what I’m up to. 2011 begins with excitement and trepidation in equal measures, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you think there might be scope for us to work together get in touch and I’ll give you specifics of the kinds of services I’m offering. (Available, I’m also for weddings and barmitzvahs, insomuch as those occasions might require digital strategy and innovation expertise….)

* It’s one of my favourite quotes – from Amelia Earhart.