I found it really interesting to read the stories of Jay-Z, an artist who’s provided a lot of the soundtrack to my life over the last 10 years and Blair who was in power in the UK for a lot of my professional life. Decoded by Jay-Z, and A Journey – by Tony Blair, are probably the last biographies you’d expect to find similarities in but in fact there are a lot. Both talk about the failings of conservatism in the 80s, with Jigga discussing it from the perspective of Reaganomics and crack cocaine in the US and Blair looking at the promise and failings of Thatcher in the UK.

As well both books discuss Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and both are critiques and comparisons of society. Jay-Z talks about Bill Clinton’s charm and his impact on the black youth of America, but while Clinton might have played the Sax and appeared on Arsenio Hall, Obama actually had listened to Jay-Z and other musicians and tried to understand where he and other like him came from. Blair talks about Clinton and his ability to offer advice and know what someone is going through both from experience and insight. It was really interesting to hear the perspective of such different individuals on the same characters.

Both were also touched by deaths that impacted their professional careers, Notorious B.I.G’s death shaped a lot of Jay-Z’s career and similarly the death of Princess Diana was a major event in Blair’s first term. BIG’s death influenced Jay-Z to take his music career seriously and focus and move away from the streets entirely, while he still had brushes with the law, he was influenced by the death of one of his few friends in the music industry and he used it for inspiration. For Blair the death of Diana shaped his relationship with the British public and the Royal Family.

Both also discuss the importance of authenticity. Jay looks at how fake rappers are seen right through by music listeners, how it’s better to use your real stories and not pretend to be something your not to have a sustainable career because being authentic makes the music more real. Blair looks at how the public can see through a policy/decision that is genuinely believed and one that is being promoted for popularity reasons.

I’m not the most knowledgeable on either hip hop or politics – but I do like to think I can hold my own – however, it’s easy to see how some politicians / artists have followed the path set by these two and some haven’t. I definitely think some of the most successful hip-hop artists, like Drake and Kanye West, are being authentic and others aren’t. At the same time Gordon Brown could have taken more pages out of Blair’s philosophy, which seems to be the path both Nick Clegg and David Cameron seemed to have taken in order to succeed in British Politics. I also believe the lessons in both books can extend to life in business and in general.

The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

Interesting consider the period we’re in right now. Banks and the financial markets are all F*d. My personal belief is that a lot of it is due to cutting corners, not doing jobs properly and going for the easy buck. The problem with the easy buck is that it all comes unravelled pretty quickly.

I hope Obama can be an Ox. But more importantly I hope the financial markets can be Ox-like in their recovery.

I’m hoping entrepreneurs and investors can be Ox-like in their execution. And I’m hoping big business rediscover their inner Ox’s.

So welcome to the year of the Ox, bring it on.

We – the bee and me – moved to Switzerland, the world suffered through the worst economic crisis since the depression. That’s looking like a tie right now.

We got to visit Rome, Portugal, New York (over new years, pictures will be on Flickr soon). The US elected Obama. Think the US beat us on that one, just.

I did pretty good on my resolutions from last year. Read 37 books, so just short of my target but not bad. I’m ending the year not quite in my 1998 shape, but closer then I was at the beginning of the year. I blogged a fair amount – except when I went under the radar for the last three weeks – think 8 posts a month was met. .

But I sucked at staying in touch with friends, one friend – who I called one of my closest friends, didn’t even know we had moved to Switzerland! And as for multi tasking less, pffft not even close.

So for 2009, hopefully I’ll continue the good trends and right the ones that slipped away last year. I have a couple of new ones to add as well but to be honest their really personal and I can’t blog about them right now – but when I can I will. Let’s just say that there are three and one’s physical/emotional, one’s spiritual and one’s financial.

So instead let’s make some predictions for the world.

Good and Green get better – I think 2009 will be the year that Good businesses and Green businesses tip, just call it a hunch induced by all the Emergen-c I’ve been taking this year, being sick will do that too you. Also, I think the deep crisis financially that’s hit everything that walks will force people to invest in good businesses – and doing good leads to good business if you ask me.

Obama reality check – I love Barack, he is my homeboy most definitely. We have a lot of commonalities, and I really hope he kicks butt as President of the United States. But I have a hunch that this is the year we get past the colour issue and watch performance. The left leaning media will take the kid gloves off and he’s going to have some serious issues to resolve, I wish him luck, but I think he’ll have to work through a bit of a dip before he can really excel.

Small business boom – I think 2009 will be the year that a lot of people will go into business for themselves, sound businesses. I don’t think we’ll see too many crazy IPO’s – sorry f’book fans – but I bet in 2010/2015 we’ll be using a lot of businesses started over the next couple of years.

Overall I think, this year is going to be a cleansing year on micro and macro levels and after 2008 that’s what we all need.

I remember where I was when the US invaded Afghanistan.

I remember where I was when I found out that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States… bed. Switzerland’s 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard time so I slept not so well, waking up a couple of times wondering if it’s going to happen, and then when I woke up to the alarm the Bee came in and told me, “Obama won”. Phew.

Mr President, go change the world now, no pressure. Mind you compared to the last guy I’m sure you’ll do great. Congrats to everyone who voted and thank you.

But the one thing I can’t get over is the impact of the web on this year’s election. So far we’ve seen

• The “Yes We Can” video on YouTube months ago
• Signed onto the Facebook groups in favour of Obama
• Checked out Obama’s flickr
• Read Marc Andreessen and Fred Wilson’s blog posts (among others) on the candidates and the policies
• Checking out Yahoo’s Political Dashboard
• Watched the debates on CNN online the day after the debates – and fact checking what the candidates said
• following the twitter broadcasts for the election
• watching clips of Matt Damon rip the potential VP
• and Saturday Night Live – my God Tina Fey looks like a double, surely she’d make a better veep candidate?

The bottom line is this election has been heavily impacted by the web, the information that those of us who live outside of the US – and in fact people who live in red and blue states – have access to is phenomenal and is likely to only grow. Also the access to data and opinions has also grown exponentially through the internet.

Even this late in the day we’re able to see new online tools come across online to help citizens and users make their decision – Obama’s just launched a tax calculator to combat the remarks that people will face hire taxes under an Obama administration, unreal. Freedom and information are totally empowering, I don’t think Obama could have come this far without the internet, can’t wait to see how this thing finishes.

It’s been a long time pet peeve of mine, but it was highlighted today in an article on Vanity Fair around the media’s coverage of Obama. Dee Dee Myers wrote an interesting post which then had a number of comments within minutes. None of the comments were from Dee Dee. A lot of the comments bashed Dee Dee and called her out. As the number of comments increases the comments actually out weigh the post. It’s a shame Dee Dee’s not participating in the conversation around her article.

I try my best to address comments – even when they’re not on the topic I originally wrote about as tangents are sometimes good – as often and as quickly as I can. I started the conversation and the least I can do is participate in it.

Not respecting the comments can cause a real backlash as when one user disagrees, uses negative language or is abusive it can start a real tidal wave. As the writer there is a responsibility to facilitate the discussion. Why enable comments if you’re not going to stick around and see what people have to say about what you’ve said?

Pretty easy to draw some conclusions from this app. While Blacks hugely supported Obama, Whites support of Hilary was luke warm at best. And it was kind of cool to see as the segment gets younger and more educated the support for Obama grows. The educated future of America chose Obama, which makes me think even if he doesn’t win in the next election; the future looks pretty good for the country.

The simple visualisation from the NYT is a great example of providing data graphically in a way that enables people to make insights easily. Very cool.

Obama under fire after fundraiser remarks (Reuters)
Reuters – U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama came under fire on Friday for saying small-town Pennsylvania residents were “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion,” in comments his rivals said showed an elitist view of the middle class.

But then I went on twitter to see what Obama News had to say about it. And sure enough there’s a posting with the response from the senator in Indiana where he clarifies that:

“And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we’re going to make your community better. We’re going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement– so, here’s what rich. Senator Clinton says ‘No, I don’t think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he’s obviously out of touch with people.’

And a YouTube clip so you can see the full context.

This is what I mean by the web facilitating democracy, it’s the transparency in stories that wasn’t there before and is there now. Before you would have seen the story in print media and had nowhere to turn. But today you see the story, and through the power of the web you hear straight from the source and make up your own mind with more information.

“a collaborative blog written by Members of the House of Lords for the purposes of public engagement.”

Last year I discovered David Cameron’s blog, I was skeptical (sk or sc? Seems like it can be spelt both ways) and unsure as to whether or not we would see DC blogging and posting in a years time and although the blog is being updated everyday it’s still updated more then once a week. It could be better, but it’s better then I thought it would be.

Earlier this week, I started trying twittering again to see if I can find any value in the service. One of the reasons why was the fact that Downing Street was twittering and I would be damned if Downing Street was an earlier adopter of something then myself.

Sometime between the discovery of LordsoftheBlog.net and the Downing Street Twitter I watched an address by Obama at the Google offices – sorry to lazy to find it again and link/embed it – in California.

Today it downed on me, all of these things are signs that information is being spread to people on their terms. People can engage or chose to ignore the information, but governments and officials representing government are finally leveraging the ability of the web to truly empower people. At the same time people have more access to information and the thinking behind the decisions made by government then ever before.

With blogs people can comment on posts around decisions and government officials can reply. With Twitter people can follow activities closer and respond with questions and concerns and watch the reaction to feedback. This is a giant step and I think this brings us closer to truly having government for the people and by the people.

That’s been my whole argument around interaction and brand advertising. The candidates don’t need to spend money to get their messages online, but online is a powerful channel to make money.

Did a back of the envelope type analysis of the 3 main candidates still in the running and how they were doing on one of the most powerful channels online, YouTube. A search on “Barack Obama” brings up over 50,000 results. Just looking at the first five, there have been over a 1.2 million views, and they all average 4.5 stars. For Hilary Clinton, again over 50,000 views, the kicker here was there was one video with over 4.6 million views and nearly 25,000 comments, but the video was a mash up from the community taking the apple 1984 superbowl ad and using Clinton’s message as Big Brother, ending with a mashed up Apple logo for Barack Obama. The other four messages are fairly positive for Clinton though.

That’s the Democrats, the Republican candidate (or likely candidate, I still don’t get how this works fully) John McCain has over 11,000 videos. The first five videos all paint him in a pretty negative light.

What’s my point? It’s that you don’t need to spend online to have a huge presence online. The candidates have over 20,000 videos online, many of them put together by the community. Then there are the tens of millions of views of these videos, and hundreds of thousands of comments around these messages. Putting display ads on sites for this many views would have cost the candidates hundreds of thousands of dollars at moderate costs per thousand impressions, but they don’t have to spend this amount online. Because the message their pushing, because interaction with these brands, because the user base community driven campaigns online are much, much, much more powerful then a banner ad could ever be.

Now if only companies could focus on delivering engaging user focused interaction rather then trying to spend money on improving the brand maybe they could leverage or harness the real power of the internet.