Open Culture has just posted a brilliant interview with Stephen Fry (recorded in April 2010). Some really insightful thoughts there on social media, mentoring, kindness, critical thinking, learning, technology and life.

Few thoughts on what makes good content:

1. Good content is honest. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more or less than it really is.
2. Good content is supported. No content should be ever published without a maintenance plan.
3. Good content doesn’t waste words. Every paragraph, sentence or word should work hard for it’s living.
4. Good content cares about what readers think about themselves. Don’t focus on how smart you are, but help your readers become smarter instead.
5. Good content is well presented. It lets your readers know that you care.

This list is work in progress - let me know if you think I missed something out.

LinkedIn has just published an interesting study of the economic trends of various industries spanning across the last five years.

What’s interesting about this report and this picture in particular, is that the two sectors at both ends of the scale (Newspapers, and Online Publishing) are in fact in the same business, yet Online Publishing is blooming (+24.3% growth) and the Newspaper sector is shrinking badly (-28.4%).

Thorsten Heins, CEO of RIM:

We are undertaking a comprehensive review of strategic opportunities including partnerships and joint ventures, licensing, and other ways to leverage RIM’s assets and maximize value for our stakeholders.

Clueless about who the real stakeholders are.

Micromanagement in the presence of a good strategy, simply means great care for the execution of that strategy.

Micromanagement alongside some average strategy, is just micromanagement.

Micromanagement without a strategy is simply mismanagement.

If you define your problem as “we need more page impressions”, you most definitely put your focus in the wrong place. When that happens, short cut techniques that might actually hurt you suddenly become viable and what’s worse, are easily justified.

Thing is, if you turn your efforts into getting healthy, the weight problem will no longer be an issue. By getting healthy I mean fixing user experience, if you haven’t guessed.