From Acorns ...

Thanks to Meg for directing me to this book from Caspian Woods.

From Acorns gives you the low down on starting off in business - and whilst I've been at it for a while now, there are a number of things in here that you tend to forget about when are busy doing what you are doing.

Is the sort of text that will be worth revisiting at least once a year - just for a reminder.

The book includes Caspians top ten tips:

• Get selling
• Strive to be different
• Don't take rejection personally
• Cash is king - hire a dragon
• Cost you own time properly
• Raise you price
• Get out of the engine rool and on tothe bridge
• Get a mentor
• Bear in mind, sometimes customers don't want the best - they want the least worst
• Be persistent, and avoid isolation

A Braveheart Performance

This is perhaps the best way to describe Scotlands victory against England yesterday.

It certainly wasn't the most open flowing game of rugby you will see, but with the English pack being so much bigger, and looking for a grand slam, the pressure was on them to peform - which is something they singularly failed to do.

From Scotlands point of view, this is probably one of the greatest ever defensive performances any team has ever put in. There were a huge number of huge tackles, with relatively few penalties conceded in the process.

For a number of years, England have been devoid of any invention in attack, but the sheer brute strength of their pack has dominated teams. This game back to haunt them yesterday.

The English challenge is now what they do about the World Cup next year. Is this result just a hiccup, or does it demonstrate that there are some critical failings in their tactics which will require some major surgery to amend.

And for Scotland, well going from being a team that couldn't win anything six months ago, to convincingly beating two of the worlds best, things are certainly looking up. The defence is awesome, which is a very strong platform from which to build. Perhaps the World Cup next year may hold a little hope afterall.

Pitch Strategy

At a sparsely attended public meeting, North Lanarkshire Council announced the preliminary details of the research they have carried out with a view to establishing a ten year pitch strategy for the area.

It seems that for all the pitches there are within Motherwell, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld & Kilsyth, only three facilities fall within the excellent category.

The strategy itself will be published in about a month, and it will identify five priority areas which will be the focus for the next five years.

Tom Peters Master Slides

The updated version of Tom Peters master slides have been published to his blog.

This is fantastic stuff, and whilst there is some repetition in it, there are 1122 slides in the presentation.

e-Learning 2.0

Article in eLearn magazine written by Stephen Downes on e-Learning 2.0.

Derby Matches

A couple of decent rugby results at the weekend for Cumbernauld in their contests with Lenzie.

For the 2nd XV, it wasn't the best performance but after numerous strange refereeing decisions, Cumbie still won 19 - 12.

It was a poor display from Cumbie, but with two tries disallowed, plus another that should have been a penalty try, the margin of victory could have been substantially larger.

The 3rd XV also played Lenzie, and they won 24 - 12 with a bit of a makeshift team, where a few guys were trying out new positions.

Re-Launch

The e-Learning Scout blog has been through a couple of itterations using different blogging tools, but when it comes down to it, for me, Blogger is just the easiest tool to use to maintain the posts.

All I need to do now, is see if I can import the previous entries.