The annual cycling extravaganza that is the Tour Down Under has just concluded in Adelaide with South Australia enjoying some excellent exposure on the world stage. Whilst the professional stages of the TDU are compelling viewing for even the most casual cycling enthusiast, more curious for me is the amateur cycling milieu that takes over…
Author: Clayton Wehner
Digital is dead, baby. Long live Digital.
I was lucky enough to get an invite yesterday to a great industry lunch put on by Sitecore here in Adelaide (thanks Tim and Nicole). Over a fantastic three course meal at Georges on Waymouth, we listened to a very insightful presentation by Trevor Clarke from Tech Research Asia about the direction that digital is heading in…
New Rundle Mall website live in time for Christmas
I’ve spent the last 5 weeks working feverishly on the new Rundle Mall website and it has now gone live just in time for Christmas. Take a look at http://rundlemall.com. Faced with the prospect of keeping the old site in place until mid-2016 (due to a variety of factors), I convinced the Rundle Mall Management Team that…
Send in the clowns
Tomorrow, I get to realise a life-long dream; to tick off a major item on my ‘bucket list’. Tomorrow, I make my debut as a ‘clown’ – at least, my formal debut as a clown. My wife would argue that I have been a clown for much of my life. Yes, tomorrow I will play the…
An Essay on Cognitive Dissonance and Organisational Culture
I thought I’d publish an amended version of a recent essay that I submitted for my MBA. This essay was written for ‘Managing Contemporary Organisations’ and covers two scholarly themes: Edgar Schein’s model of organisational culture; and Leon Festinger’s concept of ‘cognitive dissonance’, the troubled psychological state that a person finds themselves in when they…
The 25 success factors for doing social media well in organisations
Many organisations believe that ‘doing’ social media simply involves setting up a Twitter feed, Facebook Page or Instagram page and posting the odd piece of content. Such a strategy is not likely to bring any degree of success. Here are 25 success factors for implementing a successful organisational social media strategy – how does your organisation stack…
Wehnerbier is coming this Christmas
Since I am on this crazy diet and can’t drink any alcohol, I’ve decided to do the next best alcohol-related activity…homebrewing. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I’ve decided to produce two big batches of beers for consumption over the Christmas period once my diet is over. I will, of course, be drinking in moderation and will be careful…
What is RSS?
I mentioned the acronym ‘RSS’ to a client the other day and she stopped me mid-sentence and asked: what is RSS, what does it stand for and is it useful? Like many people, my client was aware that RSS exists, but doesn’t quite know what to make of it. As a diehard RSS fan, I…
The Fox, the Chicken and the Corn
This is a nice little icebreaker that can be used for small teams – you’ve probably encountered this problem before… You’ve stumbled across a river. In your possession is a hungry fox, a hungry chicken, and a sack of corn. There is a rowboat moored on the river bank, and it can only carry yourself and one…
Red point posts at the footy
On this grainy Youtube clip, the voiceover suggests that this is probably the most embarrassing moment of Malcolm Blight’s football career, as commentator Lou Richards incredulously exclaims ‘I think he may have put that through for a point, he’s run the wrong way…he thought that was the goals!’ There is of course a simple explanation for Blight’s error. At…
Use UTM tags to understand the quality of your website traffic sources
Ever heard of Urchin Tracking Module, or UTM, tags? It’s probably quite likely that you’ve come across them, but most people don’t really know what they’re for. They’re the funny little parameters that you sometimes see tacked on the end of website addresses. What do these tags do? Basically, these tags allow you isolate and analyse your…
Is the ‘goon bag’ South Australia’s finest invention?
South Australia is home to some of Australia’s (nay, the world’s) best-known inventions – the Hills Hoist clothes-line, the stump-jump plough and, yes, we’ll even lay claim to founding pharmacological penicillin (Howard Florey was a South Australian). It is a little known fact, but perhaps SA’s finest invention of all is the humble ‘goon bag’ – a…
An Apricot, Peach & Chocolate Sensation from SA
Is there any better Easter gift for a Canberra-based friend than a 6kg bag of SA’s favourite chocolate treat, Menz FruChocs? I think not. I personally would love to be on the receiving end of such chocolately, apricoty and peachy goodness. Yet my goodwill offering was received coolly – ‘they were OK, but nothing to write…
How to brief a digital agency – and why doing it properly is critical
I’ve worked at a couple of places where there has been ‘bad blood’ between the client organisation and their outsourced digital agency. These client-vendor disputes are costly, time-consuming, energy-sapping and just plain bad for business for both organisations involved. Having worked extensively on the client-side, I know that client organisations are inclined to lay the blame firmly at the…
Retractable Floodlight Towers
I have been revelling in frequent trips to the fantastic new Adelaide Oval to watch the cricket, AFL and soccer, much to the chagrin of my wife who bemoans having to stay home with the ‘clowns’ (our two children aged 4 and 6). The stadium is truly world-class and it has given the city of Adelaide…
Single-carriage passenger trains
The non-appearance of a booked taxi, and the resultant mercy dash to deposit my agitated Sydney-bound guest at the airport, recently highlighted for me a peculiarity with Adelaide passenger trains. Speeding down Park Terrace towards Port Road, what should befall this hurried duo but a pair of rapidly descending level-crossing gates and the ‘ding-ding’ of the…
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept
I first ‘met’ Lieutenant General David Morrison in Townsville in 1998. When I say ‘met’, it was more a case of ‘quivered in front of’. Morrison is one scary individual. I was a young Lieutenant working as the Assistant Adjutant at the 1st Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (or 1RAR, as it is known) and…
Pigs in a pedestrian thoroughfare
Strolling through Canberra’s City Walk, the city’s most popular pedestrian thoroughfare, one can’t help but be taken aback by the confronting pose adopted by one of the merino sheep sculptures. On its back with legs in the air, the sheep seems to be ‘presenting’ to its woolly companion a couple of metres away. Hardly an…
How about this for a hybrid product?
It was reported last week in The Advertiser that Cooper’s has teamed up with Haigh’s to develop a new hybrid product, Cooper’s Stout Ganache chocolates, to mark Haigh’s centenary. I understand that this is just one of numerous collaborations that Cooper’s is trialling with other iconic South Australian brands. To date, Cooper’s best known hybrid product has been Beerenberg’s Cooper’s Ale…
How Libraries of SA can become even more relevant in the digital age
Last week I wrote about how the SA Library Service has evolved and the great benefits that you can get by rediscovering your local library. In the second part of the series, I’ve got 10 ideas for Libraries of SA to become even more relevant in the digital age. Here we go… Libraries in the Digital Age…