29 April, 2008

Cry God for England, Harry & St George


Alphabet Media is a little bit rojak, and I like it that way. We've got people from all over - obviously a fair few Singaporeans, since this is where we're based, and from our near neighbours in Southeast Asia. We've also got people from mainland China (seeing that there's 1.3 billion of them, employing a couple of their best people was the least we could do). Then we've got a German and an American - which bearing in mind I'm English, just goes to demonstrate how politically correct I've become in my old age.

Well, almost.

Last Saturday I dusted off my bowler hat, ironed a copy of The Times of London, and celebrated England's national day with a St George's Day barbecue at my place. It's surely a testament to my powers of persuasion that I was able to cajole so many of my friends and members of the Alphabet family to dress in red and white. And in the spirit of hypocrisy for which the English were once famed, I managed to avoid dressing up in red/white completely... (though there was an England flag on my back).

Seeing as we have people from all over, with more joining every month, I expect to find many more 'cultural' excuses for a party or two in the months ahead!















[Above: Linda, Kelly, Alice, Dawn & Adele.]














[Above: Audrey, Yan and Anthea.]














[Above: Leon & Chris.]















[Above: German (no, that's actually his name), Rod, Jovita & Mel.]















[Above: Some dashing botak bloke and Jianggan's better half.]

24 April, 2008

Big Bird



Big Bird is dead.
Yesterday we found him on our return from a lunchtime curry. He was sitting there in the middle of Purvis Street, bruised and battered a long way beneath his nest in the eaves of one of the shophouses. The next day he was stiff and cold with his legs up in the air in Alphabet's office. Although we'd offered to take him to SPCA they'd shrugged off our offer to pay for the finest treatment known to veterinary science, and suggested that he'd be put down if we brought him in.
So we decided to buy him a cage, and give him some food and drink, and had hoped to be able to release him back to the wild when he got better. But he never did.
It was utterly inconsequential. Blink and you'd have missed the entire episode. It's almost too much trouble to blog about, you might think - and yet that's precisely why Big Bird is getting a mention.
Life is short, and full of nonsense. It is full of people talking bollocks, shuffling paper, discussing where to go for lunch, and searching for lost documents in the shared network. But one day it won't be us doing that, it will be someone else ... because we'll have taken the last taxi to whatever's next after this life.
If we're lucky, we'll make the world a fractionally better place for having been a part of the party. Recycling paper; getting merry at the Christmas disco; teaching government officials how to waste less money on IT schemes they don't need - or to minimise the cost and maximise the return on the IT schemes they do need; building friendships; passing time.
We're not going to win Nobel prizes. We're not going to win a Pulitzer. We're going to, slightly, outperform the wider market, and pass a lot of time together.
That's one of the reasons why Alphabet looks for Alphabet people. People who value their limited time, and try to make the most of it, try to make the world a little bit better. Even to the extent of attempting and failing to save the lives of random small animals that may come across their path.

22 April, 2008

Spiced ham

Is it just me, or is the quality of spam getting better?

I'm being inundated by ever greater volumes of the stuff - so I have to trawl through my spam folder daily in order to rescue wrongly allocated messages from friends and industry colleagues. But these days as I speed read the titles of the spam, I'm finding myself increasingly drawn into opening more of the little buggers.

Sometimes it's the arresting tone - sometimes it's a sophisticated verbal juxtaposition. But often, they're simply quite funny. At first I thought it was my own sick sense of humour - but then I realised that my colleagues had started collecting their own 'best of' Viagra spam too. Then I feared that this was attributable to the puerile humour of the guys in the office - but even the girls giggle at the stuff. Clearly there is a kind of warped intelligence at work in the writing of this spam - not too far removed from the kind of creativity we cherish here at Alphabet. So if there are any spammers out there reading this blog - I invite you to turn away from the dark side, and embrace a brighter literary future with the permission-based marketing kids at Alphabet.

For those non-spammers reading, I'm posting up a sample of the office favourites below. Because they largely address deep-seated male insecurities about the size of our crown jewels, the more squeamish / innocent among you may wish to turn away now ...

... but for the rest of us, enjoy!

Click here if you do not want to stay a loser!
Girls will hunt you in the streets
Your device is set to grow
Be ready for steamy spring nights of vehement passion
Upgrade it to a huge volume: wanna see your tool swelling with mighty flesh day by day?
Playboy bunnies in Cancun: upgrade your hardware by getting our supplements
Get a rod of colossal measurements!
3 tips to dirty dance into her pants
Sensational revolutionary upsizer

09 April, 2008

A leap into the light


We've just had our first strategy meeting at Alphabet, gathering together the management team to review where we are relative to our initial plans at the beginning of the year, where we think we're headed over the next 18 months, and what resources and processes we need to put in place in order for us to get there.
Held in the highly-recommended Changi Village Hotel, we spent a full day racing through a pretty optimistic agenda. We discussed new business units, new office locations, potential new hires, core values, organisational structure - honed our eye-hand coordination with the soft rugby ball, did a few star-jumps, broke some furniture (pictured).
The discussion was great, and I expect the outcomes to substantially improve the way we do business as a company. But taking a step back from the nitty-gritty of the agenda, the meeting itself was was actually a pretty important moment in the life of Alphabet.
Bearing in mind we double in size every year, and expect to triple this year, we're always pushed for time as we struggle to support our growth. Yet growth notwithstanding, thanks to the quality in depth throughout the company, our management team - the Strategy Team - had the ability to step away from our desks for a day to take stock and plan for the future in a systematic way.
There's no turning away from this collegiate management approach, which for someone with my authoritarian tendencies is a bit of a leap in the dark. But for the company as a whole, and all the people who call it home from Monday to Friday, this can be pinpointed as a moment when the company grew up.
Of course such was our excitement on concluding this marathon first meeting, we decamped afterwards to Charlie's Corner, drank rather a lot of expensive imported beers and ciders, and ended up leaving the extensive notes to our inaugural meeting behind as we later staggered off home*. It wouldn't have been Alphabet any other way!

*Leaving the strategy notes behind was techically my fault, though I blame the poor lighting at Charlie's, as well as the very tasty, and rather strong Herefordshire scrumpy they serve. We retrieved the meeting notes the next day, so there was a happy ending as usual.

















[Pictured above: J2, Dan & lucky English rugby ball, Patrick & lucky German beard, Dawn. Pictured below: A Cornishman, an Essex man, a Singaporean, a Yank, a German, and a beard. Not even the sub-prime crisis can stop us now!]