Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

How can ants help us solve complex problems but, using the same technique, end up walking in an endless circle for the rest of their lives? Why can crowds be much smarter, and at the same time more stupid, than any individual? In Smart Swarm Peter Miller explains how lessons from the natural world have already changed [...]

A very good piece by David Schneiderman on the effect of the internet on journalism. I particularly like his 'Final Perspective', which I think applies to organisations acroos sectors: "Many of the fundamental, underlying principles of effective public relations remain unchanged by this emerging world without newspapers. "But make no mistake, the revolution is indeed [...]

A couple of times I have voiced on Twitter my frustration with the arm rests on Chiltern trains. It hadn’t occured to me that the company might be listening. Since nothing happened the first time I tweeted, I suspect that Chiltern were not using Twitter then. However, when I tweeted again recently… “I’ve asked before [...]

We often make the mistake of assuming that learning how to use a tool will somehow make us good at the job the tool was designed for. I believe our efforts are better spent on first learning the skills and then choosing the tools. Take Quark Xpress, an industrial-strength tool for graphic design professionals. Professionals. In [...]

Producing a consultation document that the average member of the public can understand is easy, if you really care. Birmingham itself has plenty of top class graphic communicators, journalists, copywriters and sub-editors. The Big City Plan is such a massive undertaking that there are, presumably, the financial resources to make sure the public is consulted properly. It seems that it’s just the will that isn’t there.

In a recent forum* post someone asked how to deliver online content to offline users. An understandable question maybe, but (I believe) a mistaken objective: communicating effectively should be more important than ensuring everyone has the same experience.

I’ve suffered plenty of headaches trying to create standards-compliant emails, and have given up in favour of bloated, cumbersome, outdated html (ie the stuff of nightmares where the design of each paragraph is dependent on its own font tags).