May 23, 2008

Good Business

For some years now I have been urging my friend, Karen Mahony to write something about the business she set up in Prague with her partner Alex.

Back in 2003 when we were in another gloomy economic period I wrote a piece pointing people to her blog. I concluded:

"Karen is a master at identifying, creating and navigating networks. If you are hoping to create a space to do good work and make a comfortable living in the new economy - and yes there is a new economy, despite the bubble and bust - this may be the place to learn how to do it."

A couple of years later I wrote another piece that included this bit about Karen:

"I have often urged her to keep a record of her activities, because she is one of the few people who really gets network thinking. The businesses she runs with Alex - Baba Studio, The Magic Realist Press and Baba Store are wonderful examples of 21st Century businesses and if she were ever able to find time to write a book about how they have managed to achieve so much in so little time, it would be a great text for people who would like to build 'good' businesses."

Now at last, I am please to say that she is finally getting some of her experience down in text. She has taken some of Hugh MacLeod's rules from his "How to be creative" and is giving her own take on them. When I last looked she had got up to number five. She is doing roughly one a day, so I guess the simplest thing to do is to link to her blog. You can find them there yourself. Or, if you instist, you can start here.

Posted by richard at May 23, 2008 02:04 PM
Comments

Oh - thanks Richard. Hmm, well, this was only supposed to be me sort of musing and muttering alone in the wilderness - nothing more serious than that. I suspect it only came about because this is (thank God) the first year for the last five that I haven't had to write a book - so maybe I felt the urge to write something a litte less formal instead. Of course Alex immediately told me to keep copies of the whole thing and plan to expand it into a book at some point (urk). Like many former Eastern Bloc residents, he hates waste!

By the way, they aren't MacLeod's rules (well, I don't think any of them are - I haven't really checked) - they were more just provoked by his rules. Which I think are interesting and very useful in their own right, but somehow differ from mine quite a lot.

Difficult economic times indeed - it'll be interesting, or terrifying, to see where we are in another five years.
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Oh, a postscript. We had a really good write-up in a Portuguese magazine "of urban culture" and it looks like we may be featured in a Taiwanese one next. Global networking indeed - but amusing that it's not (and perhaps never will be) articles in Czech or the UK!

Posted by: karen at May 23, 2008 09:26 PM

Well, Karen, they may just be 'musing and muttering from the wilderness', but they are pretty resonant musings and mutterings, which I suspect many people will find helpful. I look forward to the rest.

Posted by: richard at May 24, 2008 02:42 PM
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