On Friday the books finally arrived at my and Lane4's door. Exciting times. The formal launch is on Tuesday night at the Lane4 Client Conference.
It's been a pretty wild ride so far, and when the dust settles I'll look to recount some of the highs, lows and amusing moments along the way. There have certainly been a few!
In the interim, you can click here to get a little more info on the book....
Britain and the Olympic Games
I am writing this blog on the way into London. I was lucky to get a seat on the train, whereas two weeks ago I could take my pick. Britain is very much back to work after the Summer Holidays!
The other thing that feels noticeable in my train carriage is how few newspapers and ipods are out on display. The people either side of me are both hammering away on their laptops, and for many the working day has started in earnest.
I do have a sense that working life in Britain is changing somewhat. We often hear how mobile technology is making our working world 24 hours a day rather than 9-5.30, and I certainly think there is truth in that. We are having some work done on our house at the moment, and our builder cheerfully announced as I was heading to the station that before getting to us at 7am that he had already bought all the materials he needed for job for the next week online while eating his breakfast.
The flipside, of course, is that none of us cannot work at that level of intensity without eventually breaking ourselves down both physically and mentally. My sense is that as a nation we are both working and recuperating more intensively. During August and December, London can feel like a ghost town. As I write today, it feels like a train full of people feverishly working away at 7-41am.
I imagine more regular readers of this blog, who might have noticed its non appearance for a month or so, will be thinking that I chose that as my own time to kick back and put the laptop away. Actually I have been putting the finishing touches to the book in time for launch in mid November. Things are now a little calmer on that front, and I hope now to be back in the swing of things.
This blog has taught me that writing can be a pleasure and a relaxation exercise, and the book has become a natural extension of that journey. Rightly or wrongly as I speed past Wembley Stadium, I do not feel like my own working day has yet begun.
It was interesting to hear David Cameron yesterday declaring the Government’s new commitment to tourism, in the light of the opportunities and challenges facing us as we progress towards 2012. Of course this is not surprising to hear as regards London 2012. Tourism South East expects that an additional £1bn or so of tourist money will be spent on the back of the Games.
While political capital will exist in the subject for months and even years to come, the truth is that much of the planning and decision making at a macro level has been completed long ago. This is just one good example of the kind of effort that is needed years in advance of generating any concrete return from the Olympic and Paralympic Games. At the Beijing Olympics, Tourism South East, SEEDA and other regional partners met with hundreds of tour operators, journalists and representatives from National Olympic Committees to pre-promote the region in advance of London 2012 and secure significant up-front reservations. Those organisations' plans are mostly now set in stone.
All is not completely lost, Mr Cameron. We might well still have the opportunity to change the perceptions of individual tourists as regards attending London, but the ease with which they will find flights, hotels, tickets and so on was decided long ago. Having been to Beijing and talked to many people there, much of this seems to involve persuading those Cameron might think of as floating voters to press 'Purchase' on those flight tickets.
I was a floating voter myself as Beijing drew near. From my perspective, the important message was 'Yes, there will be legitimate tickets available...and yes, your hotel will be ok for your family.' I didn't want pictures of the Great Wall and smiling Chinese cab drivers, I wanted facts.
I suspect we will hear an increasing number of big picture announcements made to large fanfares in the next few months - investment in athlete training programme X; commitments to grass roots sport Y; Inner City regeneration programme Z and the like. The truth is that most of these announcements are being made principally for political and corporate marketing ends.
Most of the big Olympic decisions were made years ago, it is just that only now are they becoming of interest. Baton down the hatches, here comes 2 years of media circus!
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