Fabulous story by Tony Ageh. Long read, but well worth it, and tells you a lot about innovation, serendipity and organisational politics. Also tells you what’s wrong with the iPlayer. Make some coffee, pull up a chair and savour…

So I take this guy out, and I say, ‘We have to go drinking tonight,’ and he says, ‘You’re going to sack me, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Not necessarily, but we are going to go drinking.’ We go down the stairs to the bar at Bush House, which stays open all night, because that’s where the World Service is, and I said, ‘We’re not leaving this bar until we’ve come up with such a great idea that I can’t sack you, because I’m going to have to tell her tomorrow that you can’t be sacked, because you’ve got the greatest idea the BBC has ever had.’

Read on

Interesting Forbes column by Lewis DVorkin:

It was my first day of class as a first-time Skype instructor, so I got right to it: “How many of you pay for content?” I asked a dozen or so University of Iowa journalism students as the fall semester got under way at my alma mater. Two, maybe three, gently raised an arm. Then came my follow-up question: “How many of you use ad blockers?” Nearly everyone put a hand straight up, proudly admitting to installing software that snuffs out display ads from their daily Web browsing experience. “That’s wonderful,” I said. “You don’t want to pay for content and you don’t want to see the ads that fund the content you don’t want to pay for. You might want to consider another profession.”

He goes on to describe how Forbes tackled the problem.

Since Dec. 17, 2015, a small percentage of those with ad blockers received this message:

Thanks for coming to Forbes. Please turn off your ad blocker in order to continue. To thank you for doing so, we’re happy to present you with an ad-light experience.

The remainder of visitors using ad blockers became the control group. They didn’t receive a message and continued to have full access to the site.

And the results?

1) From Dec. 17 to Jan. 3, 2.1 million visitors using ad blockers were asked turn them off in exchange for an ad-light experience.

2) 903,000, or 42.4%, of those visitors turned off the blockers and received a thank you message.

3) We monetized 15 million ad impressions that would otherwise have been blocked.

As important, the ad-light experience has focused our attention on faster delivery of our digital screens to consumers.

Interesting. And resourceful.

“Rather than casting our writing into the open maelstrom of the internet, Medium provides a sheltered space where writers don’t have to compete with other forms of content. Here, the written word rules, and everyone is an eager reader. If the internet is a city, Medium is a village.”

From an interesting essay by Marius Masalar reflecting on Medium as a publishing platform for writers and bloggers.

Nice pic, which makes a good point for those who complain about everyone looking at phones on contemporary trains). Provenance unknown. (via @webtechman on Twitter)