Brad Stone’s The Upstarts, which follows Uber and Airbnb from their formations, is a riveting read with a couple of problems. The first is that the book was published a year ago, just before Uber founder and chief executive Travis Kalanick committed a series of disasters that led to him being pushed out of the company. Stone, with Eric Newcomer, has told that story here, and perhaps the paperback edition due out in April will include Kalanick’s fall.
Continue reading “Tech is still not evil, despite Uber, tax avoidance and Techno Jesus”
Category: Media
Socitm In Our View magazine now available to all
I edit the Society of IT Management’s magazine In Our View, which has previously been available to members and conference attendees. Starting with the issue published today, it is available to everyone to download.
This issue includes features on smart places, focusing on Manchester, Bristol and Lancaster, and local government IT in Germany. As usual for Socitm there is a question and answer article with a senior member, in this case Sandra Taylor, head of ICT services at Dudley Council.
Continue reading “Socitm In Our View magazine now available to all”
First steps in freelancing training at the NUJ – now Friday 9 February
Update: the new date for this course is Friday 9 February.
I will be delivering First steps in freelancing, a new one-day training course, at the National Union of Journalists in London. It aims to provide those who are just about to or just have moved to freelance journalism with what they need to know to get started successfully. Continue reading “First steps in freelancing training at the NUJ – now Friday 9 February”
Could Amazon lose its flow?
Amazon has just reported sales of £36bn for July, August and September, more than a third higher than for those months in 2016. An article in The Times’ personal finance column on a tiny part of that amount may be interesting in assessing its future, however.
The writer had ordered a £550 mobile phone through a third-party seller on Amazon, and got a shampoo bottle in a box. Fraud can happen, but the expectation would be that the big company would sort it out fast. Not so; because she’d signed for its delivery, Amazon refused a refund until nagged by the paper. Continue reading “Could Amazon lose its flow?”
Data journalism training at the NUJ on 20 October
I’m running a one-day data journalism training course at the National Union of Journalists’ head office in London, organised with the NUJ’s London Freelance branch, on Friday 20 October. The day runs from 11am to 6pm. The price, which includes lunch, is £31 for NUJ members and £65 for non-members. Continue reading “Data journalism training at the NUJ on 20 October”