Positive thinking

Far too much negativity in the world at the moment

Speaking to various people at the CRN Business Club dinner last night - many of them agree that there is far too much bad news about.

When you switch on the evening news, all you hear about is death, destruction, murder and economic woes.

I know from many conversations with all my good contacts, that there is plenty of positive stuff going on - and at CRN we make a concerted effort to report all that as well - the IT sector is weathing the economic storm very well indeed.

As the media, I feel it is our responsibility to try and instill some kind of feel good factor, or we may as well go and jump off a cliff to be honest.

You only have to recall the feelings of euphoria generated by the Olympics to see that it does work. That feeling of doom and gloom certainly lifted for six weeks as we celebrated success at every level in the sporting world.

We have a lot to shout about in our industry and I personally want to highlight all the positives as well as the inevitable negatives (in the name of balance).

However the national media seem to have lost the art of balancing the bad with the good, focusing purely on the bad. It certainly makes depressing viewing/reading/listening.

And talking of success (with a shameless plug below), I'm happy to give the CRN Business Club the thumbs up based on the comments we had on the night and on Twitter.

Our guest speaker for the evening - Pearson VUE's managing director Matthew Poyiadgi - gave an insightful talk about how the future looks for social media and social interaction in general, with canny companies reaping the benefits of a clever social media marketing strategy.

He talked about the importance of BYOD and mobility, and how crucially important it is to structure business so it can deal with the next generation of employee - those that expect to use their own devices and social media to interact with their peers and colleagues. Treat your people right and your business will flourish, he advised.

One of the most interesting points he made was the importance of allowing your customers to use m-commerce to buy from you - this is the fastest growing area of business and will become commonplace in the not too distant future. You only have to look at Amazon and its amazing success to realise that he is absolutely spot on.

Thanks very much to Matthew for a great presentation and thanks to everyone for their continued support of Business Club.

On my way home, as I contemplated our successful evening, I was unfortunately brought back to earth with a bump as a delightful drunken lout proceeded to throw up copiously all over my carriage.

Life is full of highs and lows, eh?!