On Thursday 26th August 2010, three intrepid cyclists from Goodman Nash will attempt the cycle of 1,000 miles from Land’s End to John O’Groats in only ten days!

Pictured above: Ian Henery (my Dad), Andrew Wheeler and Tom Kyte

Cycling for charities which are close to their hearts, the aim is to raise £10,000 (after some expenses) which will be pooled and then split equally amongst four charities (Multiple Sclerosis Society, Kidney Research UK, Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research and CALM).

After leaving Land’s End the schedule takes them to:

Launceston – Thursday 26th August
Weston-Super-Mare - Friday 27th August
Bridgnorth – Saturday 28th August
Preston – Sunday 29th August
Carlisle – Monday 30th August
Glasgow – Tuesday 31st August
Fort William – Wednesday 1st September
Bonar Bridge – Thursday 2nd September
John O’ Groats – Friday 3rd September

For more information e-mail the team at gn-lejog@hotmail.com or contact Goodman Nash on 01380 739 112

Please sponsor/donate at http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/gn-lejog

I spotted an interesting blog post about twitter lists from a site called Formulists a few weeks ago, so I started following them on twitter.

Last week all their followers received an invite to do a little Alpha testing with the tool.

As always with a new tool, I couldn’t resist seeing what it had to offer. I clicked on the link, signed up and started to play. I didn’t know that it would lead me somewhere so interesting.

Formulists builds Twitter list for you. For more about Twitter lists see this Twitter lists guide from Mashable.

Formulists doesn’t do a massive amount, and it doesn’t do a massive amount that is completely new. But it does what it does excellently. Its user interface is very good – at no point was it unclear how to use. Everything seems to do exactly what it says on the tin and to top it all off, it looks really pretty too.

It will create all sorts of lists for you. Like a “recent interactions” list, that one is similar to the conversationlist one that you might have seen some people using. It builds the list based upon who you have interacted with on Twitter in a given time period. To get on my “recent interactions” list we need to have had three interactions in the last 14 days. This seems to generate a list of between 20 and 30 of my closest twitter pals.

There are already lots of services that will tell you who out of your following doesn’t follow you back. Formulists will turn this into a list for you. This really interested me, not because I am particularly worried about whether or not people return my follow, but because I was intrigued to see how people would react to being put on a list like that. I hit the button to create the list and chose to make it public.

I half assumed it would be like all other lists – that no one would really notice, I’d delete it in a few weeks and forget all about it. The next morning though, at least 10 folks off the list had started following me. I shrugged – this wasn’t a negative response as I had worried.

A couple of days later a twitter user from the list sent me a Direct Message asking me about it. He didn’t understand why I thought he should follow me. I explained about the experiment, that I thought I probably wouldn’t keep the list and that I appreciated his comments. We had a nice exchange of DMs but he ultimately decided that he didn’t want to follow me long term.

I had five people tweet me openly about the list – some positive, some not sure how to react and some just interested.

All in all I can attribute 20 new followers to the creation of the list. I’m not all that worried about my follower count but it does make me realise that people do look at what lists they are added to and who has listed them.

I have been fairly blown away by this simple list – I’ve never had so much reaction to listing before – and I create my fair share of lists (not all of them public, of course)!

The question is: Do I keep the list, or do I chalk up the experiences and delete it? After all, I think it’s fairly confrontational and it gives the wrong impression - I think Twitter’s easy opt-in, opt-out, no pressure vibe is one of it’s biggest strengths… It has been a great conversation starter though…

Sorry this is a little late. June seemed to fall through the net… but here’s July, in juicy link format, just for you

The Social Web:

How to put your foursquare checkins on a google map
By Fred Wilson - This is super easy and creates a lovely visual - handy for presentations etc.

How I became a Foursquare cyberstalker
By Leo Hickman of The Guardian

Ferero Rocher neglect twitter and Facebook… (NSFW)
By Blaise Grimes-Viort

Recruitment and Sourcing:

TruManchester
Yes – Another recruiting unconference from the folks at Tru. I’m hoping to make it, diary permitting.

The Top 20 Recruitment Myths and why they are untrue
By Andy Headworth and featuring a myth suggested by me

Recruiter Magazine’s Smart Resourcing 2010 Conference
I’ll be speaking at the event and was featured in the July edition of the Magazine. All rather exciting, really!

Are the people you want to hire findable on the internet
A cool little video from Simply Zesty used here to demonstrate just how active the UK population is on the Internet.

Cooking:

You’d be amazed what you can do with a frozen banana
An experiment in healthy ice cream making from my good friend Amy (aka @amykate)

Beef and Ale Stew
A recipe by John Burton Race on the BBC Food website

St Augur
Not really cooking, just eating. I fell in love and started an affair with this cheese.

Other Fun Stuff:

Lay Off the Cake
My good friend Ben Nunny is trying to loose weight. As added incentive, he’s collecting sponsorship to aid the NSPCC – why not sponsor him – he’s doing REALLY well!

Silverstone – Britich F1 GP
Some pics on Flickr from my day at the races J

Star Trek episodes in 5 minutes
All of them!

I have a camera in my avatar and I like it
On a whim, I created a rather silly but rather impressive twitter list…

At the weekend I was having lunch with two of my oldest girlfriends that I have known since high school. I won’t mention names here for reasons that should become clear. Both of them use facebook, one much more avidly than the other, but neither engage much with other social platforms.

The avid Facebook user had recently been on a date. They had seen each other a few times as the guy worked in the same place as my friend’s mum. He’d taken a shine to her and asked her out. They went out for coffee and my friend was surprised to note that he already knew something about her. He had found a justgiving page belonging to my friend (she had done a night time walk through London for a breast cancer charity). She was surprised to find that he knew she had done this.

When I got home I did a little poking around and managed to find out considerably more about my friend than her date had. I found book reviews she had written on Amazon and the record of her household on the electoral register giving me the names of her parents and siblings.

She thought the fact that he had looked her up on the internet before their date was creepy and had decided not to see him again. My other friend agreed – this was clearly disturbing.

This was surprising to me. As someone that puts so much of their life out there online, I think I would be insulted if I went on a date like that and the guy hadn’t even bothered to google me first! I’d expect him to know that winning topics for conversation would be food & science fiction at the very least…

That was a bit of a wakeup call for me – not everyone is as comfortable as I am when they realise what information about them is out there on the web. Googling people has become second nature to me – meeting someone new, see what you can find out about them first, anything to gain an advantage in business or in a social context.

… And perhaps I shouldn’t expect everyone I meet to know I love cheese!

You can find a whole set of these heart shaped icons from Smashing Magazine.

I am very excited to announce a new partnership with Mike Notaro, on the project Stacktics. It’s all about helping you find what you’re looking for - sharp, shiny people in a dry stack of apparent internet irrelevance. Tune in if you would like to learn a few new tactics from the two Grandmaster sourcers.

Stacktics aims to cover some of the areas of sourcing that Mike and I are most passionate about.

I am likely to tell you all about using the web to take the offline online and back again, using the social tools that are springing up left right and centre.

Mike will talk tech, with tools and tricks to help automate your online life and make you much more efficient.

While Stacktics does include some basics, we are targetting those of you already doing great work – wanting to pick up a new tip or trick that you’ve not seen before.

Our experience is in recruitment, but Stacktics aims to help everyone acheive their goals when it comes to connecting people online.

So, if you’re web savvy and hungry for more, stay tuned for some research, some webinars and some fun

The UK seemed to go mad over iPads in May, but I am happy to report that remain to immune to their mysterious lure. Here is the month of May presented in links for you to explore. Hope you find something interesting.

Sourcing & Recruitment

UK Sourcers
This month I have given my UK Sourcers project a bit of a Re-vamp. I had never given the Ning network I created enough love to sustain a community, so Ning’s decision to charge for all social networks pushed me to make some changes. UK Sourcers now exists on Twitter and Posterous. You can also ask me questions about sourcing via Formspring. So go on - follow, write, subscribe or just ask!

The Social Web

Foursquare
I have continued my love affair with foursquare this month. If you’re interested in that too, you might like to check out…

• A Foursquare crime spree - Mayor of the North Pole - by @jbum
• The Foursquare plugin for chrome (allows you to use the mobile site from chrome)
• What is Foursquare? and why it matters to your business - by me on the Morgan PR blog

Working with the door open
A post about Formspring professionally by Ben Nunney

Local (Berkshire, UK)

Newbury Tweetup
Coming up again in June…

Reading Tweetup
Time for an AGM…

Just For Fun

I may have dipped chinese food in fondu to create Cheesenese… I blame Ben Nunney for this.

I also knitted some typing mittens - let me know if you’d like a pair!

Who you gonna call? A handy little diagram.

Here is the month of April presented in links for you to explore. Hope you find something interesting.

Sourcing & Recruitment

I attended the Social Media in Recruitment event on Thursday 22nd April at the British Library. The event was outstanding. Well done to @MikeETaylor and his team for putting on such a fantastic event. You can read lots of great write ups on it from the likes of Louise Triance and some feedback from the delegates (including me) over on the topbananas blog.

Remember to sign up for the UK Recruiter Networking Event on 10th June

The Social Web

April has been all about Foursquare for me - I posted my initial thoughts on it here. And here’s 5 suggestions on how to get the most out of it, without being annoying from LifeHacker. You might also want to check out this interesting Foursquare romp by Jim Bumgardner.

THT’s ‘welisten’ Campaign
I’ve been working with branding agency G2 as a community manager on the ‘welisten’ campaign for Terrence Higgins Trust. It’s an exciting concept that just keeps surprising me Oh - and there are posters about it on the London Underground!

10 Fresh Tips for Community Managers
Good things to remember from the folks at Mashable

Local (Berkshire, UK)

Help choose a date for the next Newbury Tweetup in June

Music

I keep an ever expanding playlist on Spotify of ‘Just Cool‘ songs, I add only the coolest of songs (in my opinion) as they occurr to me. I share some of this month’s highlights here;

Blur - Coffee and TV [Spotify link]

Katie Melua - If You Were A Sailboat [YouTube link]

Just For Fun

Heston’s Feasts
I’ve really been enjoying Heston Blumenthal’s magical feasts on a Tuesday night on channel 4. Is it cooking, art or science?

4 Reasons laundry leads to happiness
Well, it does…

Great Scifi Moments - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
HAS any science fiction fan not yelled KHAAANNN! with Kirk-like relish at some point in their lives? A great piece about my favourite Star Trek film by @xxnapoleonsolo

You are following @FoodPorn and @Big_Ben_Clock on Twitter, right?

This week I have been playing with Foursquare.

Initially i was very wary of this young social network, mainly because I thought the people I followed on twitter were using it to spam me. I mean, it’s of no relevance to me if someone just became mayor of their sock drawer, or checked into Starbucks for the 34th day in a row. *Yawn*

So, what changed?

The first thing to catch my eye was mention of a #squareup on twitter. That sounded like my sort of thing! Taking the online offline and vice versa is a passion. You all know I love a good tweetup, surely a squareup would just as interesting. How cool would it be to meet all the people that love your favourite bar or restaurant as much as you do? They must be great people if they like that place as much as you!

So I signed up for an account, baulked at the user interface and hesitated over checking in anywhere that looked a bit “sad”. Eventually, on Wednesday, I plucked up the courage to check in at Reading’s new Workhouse Coffee shop. I already knew the mayor and five out of the six other foursquare users to check in there from the Reading Twitter community. This place obviously wasn’t a bit “sad” at all.

But this isn’t helping me meet new people…

For the last few weeks I have been changing trains at Newbury station three or four mornings a week on my way into London. Every morning people get off one train and wait for their connection to arrive. They get coffee, they read books, they look at their phones, anything to avoid looking at each other. They’ve started to recognise their fellow regular travers, probably have little jokey names for some of them, but they have never spoken… This is a strange non-community. People all linked by something in common, all meeting at the same time and place, yet they never talk, never share the experience and never admit that they are a community. What if you were to put them all in the same place on the Internet though?

So, I now check in at Newbury Station when i pass through. So have 43 other people. 43 people that have passed through Newbury train Station are on Foursqare! Sleepy Newbury…

I now know that they mayor’s name is Lee and he’s also on Twitter. I wasn’t following him before, but I am now. I’m hoping that I can translate this into something… create a community or find a friend where once there was just awkwardness and a lack of eye-contact.

Then I start wondering how I can use it for evil!

And by evil, I mean business. Everyone’s talking about giving special offers to the Mayor of your establishment. That’s all very well of you’re a coffee shop or a gym. But what if you’re a recruiter or a sourcer?

Michael VanDervort pointed out an article by Daniel Schwarts “Who’s the Mayor of Your Company? What Employers Need to Know About Location-Based Networks Like Foursquare”. This got me thinking. People are checking in at their places of work. Then they are also using foursquare to tell you where they and their colleagues go for a drink after work… That’s very powerful information for a recruiter to have. Look up the office of a target company on Foursquare and voila - a list of names. Names that link to their twitter and facebook accounts, and display their friends.

After realising all these things, it’s looking a lot less boring, isn’t it?

Now, I have to go checkin to my kitchen for a cuppa… I’m mayor there, don’t you know?

Photo of Workhouse Coffee by Tom Lord on Flickr

I decided to drop my weekly links posts as they were simply taking over my blog! I still really like the idea though, so here is the month of March presented in links for you to explore. Hope you find something interesting.

Sourcing & Recruitment

Jim Stroud’s TruPoetry
A poem about sourcing performed at #TruLondon II by @jimstroud

SourceCon 2010
The original conference for sourcers. SourceCon 2010 took place on 14th & 15th March in San Diego, California. There was, of course, the Grandmaster Sourcing Challenge - that I won! I cannot express my excitement about that enough. See this video about the contest by @jimsoud. There are lots of photos from the conference to be found, some by me and some from ERE themselves. Also take a look at some of the write ups from Amybeth Hale, Glen Cathey, Jim Stroud & Mike Notaro

Social Media In Recruitment Conference
I am hoping to attend the second outing of #smir, taking place on 22nd April in London.

The Social Web

Tweetmeme
I’ve been giving the Tweetmeme button lots of love this month - if you don’t have it on your blog/website, why not? I’m 100 time more likely to tweet your content if I see the button. FACT.

Facebook to drop “Become a fan”
By @JohnCarnell

Mashable’s Twitter List Diretory launches
I particularly like the geographically specific categories, like this one of UK lists.

Local (Berkshire, UK)

Reading Twestival
What a great night it was! We raised over £1,500 for concern. Well done to the rest of the organising team @bennuk @amykate @deepwire @dtsn and @jamesbmarshall.
You can hear me giving advice on how to find sponsors in this phone interview by @abisignorelli. Take a look at these great pictures of the event by @benjaminellis.

Newbury Tweetup III
The third Newbury tweetup will be taking place on Friday 9th April - keep an eye on the website or follow @NBYTweetup for more details.

Music

I keep an ever expanding playlist on Spotify of ‘Just Cool‘ songs, I add only the coolest of songs (in my opinion) as they occurr to me. I share some of this month’s highlights here;

Semisonic - California [Spotify link]

Blondie - Dreaming [Spotify link]

Beyonce - Halo [Sotify link]

Just For Fun

What’s the worst thing you have ever used to stir a cup of tea?
By @mixmasterfestus

And look at these little guys that I twitpiced on my way to work - how cute?

A lot of folks have been asking me why I went to San Diego, what this sourcing melarky is and what it was that I won? I am going to do my best to answer those questions…

Well, it might not always be apparent, but by trade I am a sourcer.

What’s that then?

Sourcing is the very first part of the recruitment process. It’s the finding of candidates that might be suitable for a job role you need to fill. I do this using the internet, usually for 3rd party recruitment companies but sometimes for direct employers too.

I’ve never heard of that before!

That’s not surprising. Sourcing is very young as a profession in it’s own right. It’s more established in North America than anywhere else - they were the first to give it a name and start a conference just for us sourcers. It’s called SourceCon and the first one was in 2007.