Agent 99 - Online story telling

I think that was about six weeks flat... And actually that was about five weeks too much as it happens. Last Friday I resigned and today (Monday) I am sitting at home waiting for them to ring me about how to play out my last week. Hopefully they will just leave me alone, but I suspect I will have to do a couple of days work from home to tidy up some loose ends.

I feel like I don't even need to write the rest of this post. After a roung two months I am just getting back to The Divine Comedy, my RomCom. I was hoping that some time off would help me sort it out and indeed it has, but it is still horrendously complicated: Love triangles are really hard!

A very surreal hour and half today in the Piccadilly office of the Bond producer (EON). I was there on a mission with Julian from Script Writer Magazone to enthuse them about our new website project.

I thought we were going in to talk about membership but we ended up brain-storming a (very good) idea for new content which I am sure we will get to in due course.

But it really was like pitching to a big producer - it didn’t matter that we were talking about writer development, it was still a pitch:

• Pitch idea

After just over three years as the web guy at the Medical Research Council I am moving on up... well actually my job title shounds less impressive as I am going to be a 'Junior Consustant'. But being a junior consultant at a young and happening eCommerce Consultancy in Covent Garden is quite a bit better paid than being a 'manager' in the public service.

Ok, part two - and glad to have you following along Simone...

One of the nice things that Godin gets to in his book is the difference between quitting and failing. In my own words I think of these as the difference between taking smaller tactical decisions on things that aren't working (quit) versus the act of giving up completely because you have run out of options (fail).

A book I picked up recently is Seth Godin's ‘The Dip’. If you don't know Godin he's a bit of a god in marketing circles (boom boom) and writes a lot of clever books that are getting shorter and shorter and better and better. His books are mostly about current marketing tropes, and it would be fair to say that he has invented a fair few of them. But 'The Dip' is a little different.

Is being made. Still slowly circling in NZ with 'An imaginary boy' - the new name for 'Boy on a bkie' - looking for a director. Because this film will be difficult to fund (ok, VERY difficult) it needs to attract 'heat' through director. Normally you could do this with stars but as the stars will be two boys, then it's the director who counts. Like getting Peter Jackson to take two unknowns (Kate Kinslett and Melanie Lynsky) and cast them in Daughters of Heaven: First, find your Peter Jackson - you have to find someone with the right kind of talent at the right time in their career.

So after an intense couple of months in horror land I am now back into RomCom's ville. It's a nicer place to be in many ways, but it is a lot harder than horror as there are much tougher demands:

Being so into horror lately I have taken the time to write up a decent analysis and notes on Eli Roths film ‘Hostel’, a recentish horror hit of the ‘torture horror’ sub-genre.

I’m sorry, what the hell does that mean?

This is a short-form recipe for developing and assessing business concepts from innovation maestro Curtis Carlson:

• Need: What customer need does this product or service meet?
• Approach: What approach are you going to take to deliver it?
• Benefits per cost: Where’s the value for the customer?
• Competition: What is it? How good are they? Why is this better?