Ally Simpson

Best Practices are Crazy

Posted by Ally Simpson | Feb 6, 2019 |

Best practices are crazy. They point to one example, they don’t have any idea why the thing was actually successful but they go, “Well, they do it this way so we’re going to do it this way.” There’s this herd mentality and people are focusing on the wrong things and paying so much attention to what they call best practices. And I think oftentimes they’re really terrible practices. This idea that if you’re a small business, let’s say you’re starting out, you’ve got five people, six people, that you’re going to do what Apple does? No, Apple’s got, what,...

Who are our digital leaders

Posted by Ally Simpson | Nov 28, 2018 |

…our public, civic and business leaders need to become digital leaders — not just so that they can manage specifically digital programmes and projects, but so that they can make sure their entire organisations are relevant and effective in a digital age. What a challenge eh? How are we doing in Ballymena? Who are our digital leaders? To make this kind of transformation happen you need people at the top who understand that it’s not just about doing better digital projects, adopting the latest new technology, having a Twitter account or even automating your existing business processes or bringing in some...

Art doesn’t just happen in big glass buildings

Posted by Ally Simpson | Oct 31, 2018 |

The arts are a vital part of the human experience, and surely our success as a civilised society will be judged largely by the creative activities of our citizens in art, architecture, music and literature. Improving the condition of the performing and visual arts calls, in my judgment, for a massive cooperative effort in which businesses must assume a much larger role than they have in the past. H/T Whose responsibility is it to improve the condition of the creative, performing and visual arts in Ballymena? Answer: all of us. Local businesses? Where are you? Where’s your input? Creative,...

Ballymena, when your work is remarkable

Posted by Ally Simpson | Oct 23, 2018 |

When your ideas are spreading, when your work is remarkable, when your organization has built a social ratchet that works, one of the side effects will be a significant social media presence. People will talk about you in ways that they like to talk… online. H/T The above quote from Seth Godin got me thinking… Maybe we need to move away from ‘building a social media presence’ or trying to figure out how we can leverage the Internet for the benefit of our business, organisation or even for our town. Maybe we need to get back to a better...

Blog was word of the year in 2004

Posted by Ally Simpson | Jul 25, 2018 |

After everyone finally remembered that it was short for “web log,” Blog was crowned Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2004. The Blogosphere gave rise to new approaches to media, journalism, and websites in general. Through services like LiveJournal, Xanga, and Blogger We started archiving our lives online and basically never stopped. Basically, it was cool that we were all privately and publically recording ourselves, until government surveillance made it scary again. [source] I posted the above image & quote here last year. Blogging is now something we all know about but, do we all believe it is worth...

Author: Ally Simpson

Best Practices are Crazy

Who are our digital leaders

Art doesn’t just happen in big glass buildings

Blog was word of the year in 2004

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