Acme Ideas

A quite intense week as I was home alone in charge of two surly children (lots of whisky was drunk and I only told them I hated them once - yay me!). Also the last weeknotes for a while since this time next week I will be here.

But that is not to say that the week just gone has been uneventful. The news of my departure from Penguin after 13 top years has spread internally and externally and the list of stuff I have to take care of before I move is developing scarily. There will be a post about Penguin, publishing and 'the change' nearer the hour of departure. I'm still getting my head round the fact that in a few weeks I'll be doing a different job in a different office in a whole different industry.

I'm hoping to leave Penguin and publishing by delivering something audacious and have been working hard with some smart and nice folk to ensure that it will get done in time. Not sure that I will have succeeded in reinventing the book before I head off for Ad-land, but hopefully over the last few years I'll have left behind some work that in the words of a literary agent I pitched to this week, is remembered as being 'a bit mad and a bit clever'. That's good enough, no?

I might come across as all about the ones and zeros but I'm still of a generation who have an emotional connection to print and paper. I own one or two books and spend a fair amount of time visiting stationery shops online and offline in search of interesting notebooks. And my new thirst for graph paper needs constant slating.

So it was great to discover Present & Correct - a delicious online stationery emporium. I could have bought everything but restricted myself to a modest first order of four notepads which arrived today. Lovely stuff.

Equally exciting was the arrival of Art Space Tokyo, the beautifully designed guide to the hidden galleries of Tokyo. I became aware of this book after reading Craig mod's provocations on books and reading in the digital age. Craig then used Kickstarter to fund a new print run of Art Space Tokyo and while I am delighted with the print edition I am really looking forward to getting hold of the ipad version and seeing Craig's ideas put into practice. Flicking through this book has done nothing to quash my desire to visit Tokyo. I need to make it so.

I haven't done one of these for a fortnight because there has been all sorts going on and I wasn't sure what I could or should say. Well now, progress has been made and big changes are in the offing and I'm still not sure what I can or should say. Something is ending and something new is starting and I'm excited and positive and welcome the newness.

Symbolically, there have been physical transformations as well;

8 July 13.428 July 14.15Apart from 'the stuff' there's been plenty of meetings, most of them pretty positive. There's been pizza and wine in the garden. There's been Hackney Highballs at Shoreditch House with @benterrett. There have been more bus rides, plenty of barbecue and lots and lots of sun.

Today I drove from London to the quaint village of Hurley in Buckinghamshire for lunch in a pub and a stroll on the river. Our route took us past Westfield Shopping centre at about 11.30am. At 3.10pm I received an email saying that Westfield shopping centre was now following me on twitter. 

In the past I have received @ replies or follows from places I have tweeted about - Hampstead Heath has, I believe an active account which monitors the tweetesphere as does 'Mallorca_hotels'. But I've never tweeted about Westfield - the closest I have been is driving past today - I got within about 100m of the place. I did use Foursquare when I got to Hurley, about 20 miles away from Westfield.

Now my phone does know where I am and I let Google latitude broadcast this, but can this have triggered Westfield's follow? I don't know, and I don't know whether to be scared or impressed or both, or neither

The longest week of the year, this one, thanks to the summer solstice and it felt like a lot was packed into the week. Lots of interesting plotting, literal and metaphoric, and an idea so good that I might have to patent it. Perhaps it's doing so much bus travel that has got the creative juices flowing. 

graphing idea

Some colleagues and I attended a workshop about digital reading with some smart people who asked us some smart questions. My colleagues and I argued about the smart questions and our (not so) smart answers for the cab ride back to the office and for 30minutes afterwards. We couldn't agree on the business we are in, which seems to be an interesting place to begin a new project from. As Frank Chimero says, quoted by Russell Davies, "We break stuff before we know what replaces it and we invent things before we know what they are for."

The idea-so-good-it-should-be-patented has been approved by everyone who matters apart from the one person who really matters which will or will not happen in the next couple of days and then, hopefully, it will have to be made, which is of course the good bit. After what feels like weeks of slog, immersed in the hard details of tough projects, it feels nice to have had a good, simple creative idea which has a good chance of actually happening.

Caledonian Road, before Ger 4 Eng 1

Other than that, it has been good and hot, the world cup has been on (but for you Fabio, the war is over), Adam and Joe are temporarily back on the radio and some running, swimming, barbecuing, drinking and playing has been done. A good week, with the hope of an even better one upcoming.