David Erasmus

I am in the middle of a couple of Startups at the moment and before Christmas I was feeling extremely stressed which is unlike me.

What I realised is that I had cut off my creative outlet through working too hard and letting the creative side of my brain die which put EVERYTHING out of kilter. I felt stressed and it was like I was dieing inside.

Through the encouragement of a select couple of friends I picked up my guitar and started expressing myself through music again and amazingly my balance began to be restored. The pressure is still with me but feels in balance as I am living more wholly.

The video below was taken last week courtesy of @SteveBooker.
I do not post it because it good, I post because it is me and that is enough.
(Also please forgive the thumbnail and embarrassing faces I pull)

The Peculiars – Why Can’t I Feel It from Steve Booker Photography on Vimeo.

If you are dieing inside or unbalanced try making the things that enable you to express yourself a priority and see if it changes stuff

We all love video, Its a great platform to communicate a great amount of emotion over a very short period of time.

Whenever someone says to me “You have to read this book” I always say can I find her on TED or you tube?”

My life long friend Oliver Hall MD’s a company called Liquid Productions and has been putting videos on people’s websites  to help them convey their messages for a number of years now and seen great uplift in ROI from his clients sites as a result.

The tension is that until the media is interactive you cannot truly track conversions.

The reason newspaper advertising does not compare to Google ads is because Google ads are completely trackable. With good analytics there is no guessing involved. All results are tracked

You Tube have begun to invest in interactive video and allowing payments near the video like this video which is distrubing so do not watch!,

When the “1 click payment infrastructure has matured in a couple of years conversions will be able to get completed by clicking on the actual video at the end of the message.

This is cool but more importantly seamlessly finishes the video feedback loop to show exactly how much money that video made up.

As mobile network infrastructure improves and moves to 4G, due to the lack of real estate on smart phone devices video will be the media of choice to convey big messages quickly and effectively.

Look out for video guys going mobile and hiking their prices when the value of their media is finally realised.

(Not for me please Oli)

When I was a kid my favourite books were the choose your own adventure books where you “turn to page 32 if Angela says yes and page 64 if she says no.

I found these books to be insanely captivating, much more so than other boring monologues it seems that interaction is back in a big way.

Tippex are doing a great viral at the moment.

I think we will only be seeing a heck of a lot more experiences that used to be monologues turning into interactive experiences.

How about Films in the Cinema where the audience votes on their iPhone at a few key points in the film about what should happen next so you end up going two or three times to the cinema to see all the endings?

Smells are strong and trigger all sorts of memories.

Whether it is the smell of the roast in the oven, the smell of baking cakes filling the house or that dirty smell of sheep poo when you enter Wales and the most immature person in the car points at someone else and says ” ARHH Did you fart!”

When you catch a good smell of something you don’t know much. You might not know what it is, where it is, how much of it there is, who owns it, whether you can have it or whether it actually will taste or look good but you damn well know you want to find out more!

Sometimes in life we get a whiff of something and we instinctively know it smells good or bad but we can’t necessarily qualify or quantify it.

What can you smell?

I was just sent this video by Chris Brogan I really love it, I probably only disagree with point 2 where Picasso says something about all that matters is you, I would tend think that all that matters is how you treat the people in your life. 

It reminded me of a "Thinking Cycle" I created during my first Business broadplace.com

I am convinced that we have to options for operation in life.. 

We can operate out of love, passion, fun or excitement

Or we can operate out of obligation, bondage, rules or fear. 

Many people in the world do not have a choice and that is wrong and something I am committed to see change but whilst I have the choice I want to operate out of FUN as much as possible 

The Circle moves clockwise. 

I believe the best thinking comes from Fun which leads to new ideas, which either fail or succeed but either way – you learn something new which leads to job, life or social satisfaction. 

I took a lot of my inspiration in the early days from the book "How to have kick ass Ideas" a Brainchild of the What IF guys, Buy it on amazon from your Amazon iPhone app and stick it on your coffee table. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Have-Kick-Ass-Ideas-Adventurous/dp/0007220944

If you have the choice which you probably do, don't settle for anything less than fun!