“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Sun Tzu – The Art of War.
Last night’s Digital Citizens event certainly ignited a lot of discussion about what constitutes ‘strategy’.
Strobe lights and headaches don’t mix. Stomach bugs and beer don’t mix. But taking the night off and still receiving a pay packet don’t mix either. I don’t think I ever missed a night in all the years I DJed both in the UK and Australia. At certain periods I was DJing up to three nights a week and holding down a full time job, so there was very little time to be sick.
When we first started running The Pit out of DJs Nightspot in Gosford, it was free entry. Thursday nights had always been notoriously quiet in Gosford – crikey, even most weekends resembled a ghost town – so there were no high expectations and we were on a trial. The club was packed.
Throughout the ’90s, I worked as a nightclub DJ. No, it wasn’t all duff-duff and techno. My realm was underground and alternative rock, with plenty of black, studded leather. Beat mixing The Offspring into Joy Division isn’t easy, but it’s possible!
Have you ever known someone who gives a pet name to their car and talks about it as if it was a real person? If you’re like me, you think they’re slightly kooky for imbuing a pile of machinery with a personality and building an emotional attachment with it. But many businesses continue to expect all their customers to be equally illogical by expecting them to form relationships with a brand while only providing them with automated machinery in return.
Today, The Sydney Morning Herald ran an article discussing how some businesses are taking disciplinary action — including sackings — against employees for comments made on Facebook and Twitter. This hammered home the central points of yesterday’s post.