Unfinished Business

Icon designer Jon Hicks joins me this week on Unfinished Business to discuss our experiences of recent conferences including dConstruct (me) and An Event Apart (him.) We narrowly avoid talking about our predictions for the upcoming Apple event and instead discuss how to keep work and home life separate, whether it‘s right to be connected to work outside work hours and how having an office can help with work/life balance.

Of course, all of this is just a thinly disguised ruse for what we really want to talk about, Doctor Who. In the after-show section, we look back at Matt Smith’s final episode, talk about Peter Capaldi’s new Doctor so far and if Doctor Who needs longer than one hour per episode to tell a good story. Oh. And Clara bloody Oswald.

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by Cole Henley, technical director at Mud. We discuss his latest Freelance rates survey, how the results have changed over the last three years and what he’s learned from making the survey. I admire Cole’s Mud very much, so we talk about how to grow a business, when to hire new people and the importance of regular advice from someone on the outside. If you like the business side of Unfinished Business, you’ll love this episode.

What’s an episode of Unfinished Business without some talk of comics or films? In an after-show special, starting at 1:11:30, Cole and I talk about vintage 2000AD comics, Harlem Heroes, Flesh and of course, Judge Dredd. I want to know if Stallone’s Judge Dredd film a guilty pleasure and why, oh why, doesn’t Hollywood make films from classic 2000AD stories?

Laura Kalbag and Ashley Baxter did a wonderful job hosting Unfinished Business for the last three weeks and this week Laura hands it back to me.

We talk about how we interpret the ‘business’ theme of Unfinished Business differently and how that changes the focus of the podcast. As we’re both small business owners and we’ve both been on holiday recently, we discuss how we handle keeping on top of business while we’re away from it. How we handle email and client enquiries and even work that going on while we’re away. Finally we talk about “Smartphone stress: Are you a victim of ‘always on’ culture?” If smartphones have become “tyrants in our pockets” and how being connected affects how we relax when we’re not supposed to be working.

Ashley Baxter and Laura Kalbag are back for their final takeover episode of Unfinished Business. We talk about using social media for your business and whether writing and speaking are a scalable part of your business model. We had a couple of questions from Shane Hudson and Simon MacFadyen on forcing yourself out of your comfort zone and advice to a designer just starting out.

This episode is sponsored by Espresso and Native Summit. You can get a 10% discount on Espresso with the offer code unfinished. Native Summit are giving away 20 free tickers to the first 20 listeners who visit their site and use the offer code unfinished.

Ashley Baxter and Laura Kalbag are back again for this week’s episode of Unfinished Business. We talk about the common myths around working for yourself, particularly as a solo entity working from home. We have some great questions from Elliot Davis, Simon Cox, and Shane Prendergast, resulting in us talking about photo manipulation and what do we both want to achieve before we retire?

This episode is sponsored by GatherContent and SimplyFixIt. You can get 20% off your subscription to GatherContent forever with the offer code unfinished. You can get 10% off any iPhone or iPad repair with SimplyFixIt plus a free upgrade from the standard warranty to three-month’s accidental cover with the offer code unfinished.

While Andy’s on holiday, Ashley Baxter and Laura Kalbag take over this week’s episode of Unfinished Business. We talk about all things business insurance, including public liability, professional indemnity, business contents and copyright infringement. And it’s not boring, honest!

This episode is sponsored by Devicelab, Perch and dConstruct. Get your ticket to dConstruct for only £125+VAT (£150) when you use the offer code unfinished.

Before we go any further, I need to let people know that there is absolutely zero business content in the show this week. (Thousands of people are thinking now, “when is there ever?”) That‘s because this is a spoiler filled ‘Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes’ cinema special episode with my guests and film buff friends Brendan Dawes and Jeremy Keith.

It’s a wild show. We ask whether there should be a new Oscar category for performance capture and if Andy Serkis should win everything? We talk about the other seven Planet Of The Apes films, starting with the original five and if Tim Burton’s 2001 reimagining is a guilty pleasure. Then we get in deep with the new ‘Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes’ before asking ourselves the important questions; When will apes wear clothes? When and how will humans become mute, and why should you avoid watching an apes film in Rhyl?

Even if you’re not an Apes aficionado, I think you’ll enjoy listening to this episode of Unfinished Business as much as we enjoyed making it, which was a lot.

This special episode was made possible by two special sponsors, the ShropGeek Revolution Conference and BigBoard. Get 15% off your ticket to ShropGeek Revolution when you use the offer code unfinished.

I’ve been looking forward to speaking with Sara Soueidan on this week’s episode of Unfinished Business for a long while, not least because I’m a huge, huge, fan of her work. She’s been writing what I consider to be the best articles about CSS and SVG. We talk about those, yes, but we also talk about what it’s like for her, living and working as a web developer in her home country of Lebanon. We discuss the preconceptions and misconceptions that people in the West have about Lebanon, its people and its customs. I think you’ll find what she has to say fascinating. I know I did.

This episode is kindly sponsored by two UK conferences, Native Summit and dConstruct. Get your ticket to dConstruct for only £125+VAT (£150) when you use the offer code unfinished.

Ashley Baxter’s back on Unfinished Business this week. We talk about the reasons why she’s speaking in public more and how it may help her to promote her new business. Speaking of promotion, we discuss her $99 tweet sponsoring experiment, how buying tweets works and whether it worked for her. We also talk about how to move on when you feel like you’ve reached a plateau, in business as well as in the gym.

This week we’re sponsored by two very different, but both excellent companies, GatherContent and SimplyFixIt. Get 20% off your subscription to GatherContent forever when you use the offer code unfinished , then get 10% off a SimplyFixIt iPhone or iPad repair with the offer code unfinished.

This week on Unfinished Business, impresario, organiser of Flash On The Beach and more recently Reasons To Be Creative, John Davey offers me some fatherly advice on how to handle a personal dilemma and what not to wear at Alex’s upcoming graduation. We talk about the Reasons To Be Creative conference, how he finds and why he chooses so many new speakers and his unusual elevator pitch approach.

Swearing: I mostly bleep out swearing on Unfinished Business, but I think that this week’s episode is funnier with our cussing intact. I hope you won’t be offended by a couple of ‘f’ words, one ‘b’ word and a dozen jokes about Brighton.

I want to thank again our two terrific sponsors this week, Ghostlab and Perch. I also hope that you’ll support Aimie Lockwood’s Kickstarter project, Adventures of Alex, beautifully illustrated childrens’ books which break social norms.