Month: September 2003

New(ish) Weebl. Fabulous.

Blimey. There have been some big wordy posts here lately. You’d almost think that this was becoming a serious site!

Tom on weblogs and the mass amateurisation of nearly everything. Interesting.
The article set me thinking about the development of plant breeders’ rights, and whether that is also being amateurised. Ten years ago, European-wide plant breeders’ rights did not exist. Then the Community Plant Varieties Office was set up by the EU to offer a single European-wide rights system to supplement and, at times, replace, the individual national schemes that existed at the time (and largely still exist), and to support the international aims of the UPOV organisation to offer financial reward to those people that work hard to improve the quality and variety of plants available to us. Initially, all these schemes were intended to improve agricultural crops, and were supported by the breeders, from huge multinationals down to research labs in universities and private individuals.
Then, horticulturalists realised, in considerable numbers, that they could make mponey from their own breeding efforts. They weren’t the first, of course. Companies like Blooms of Bressingham had been using the plant variety rights system in the UK since the early 80s. Rose growers had been using it for even longer. But now there was a simple, enforcable and European-wide system that addressed the problem of needing to take out PVR protection in every country individually. Now, by taking EU PVRs, US Plant Patent and possibly Japanese PVRs, you could effectively wrap up the major markets.
Thankfuly, the system is still sufficiently complicated and expensive that nearly all breeders prefer to work through an agent to tackle the system. But agents need to provide add-on services in order to ensure that a new variety is promoted effectively and in a coordinated fashion throughout the world. Their market knowledge allows them to provide a management service that should be better than any individual (and most organisations) could hope to achieve. There has been a recent example with an organisation based in the US that has introduced a large range of Heuchera varieties. Certainly they have made a large amount of money from them, but they have also wrecked the future market for them by not managing their introduction, licensing and distribution correctly. If the entire introduction process had been managed by a dispassionate agent, I think the overall result would be more pleasing. interestingly, the breeder has asked me to represent his material informally, but not on an exclusive basis. Without the control that comes with exclusive management, I don’t really want to know.
Unfortunately, at the moment, most breeders’ agents are not offering as good a service as they could or should. Invariably, they are tied into a small system of relationships that have arisen through either formal or informal means. Consequently, the breeder does not always obtain the best deal for their plant, and royalty returns are not what they should be. This does nothing to encourage breeders to work with an agent, and ultimately, it is only lack of time and resources that drives some organisational breeders to work with agents rather than do it themselves.
This is where PFE’s independence comes into its own, as it allows me to act with whoever I feel will give the best deal for an individual variety. A marked contrast to the Blooms system. But it is up to me to convey that advantage to potential breeder clients, and persuade them that to work through PFE will be more effective than to try and work on their own. That’s the hard part.
Coupled to that is an increasing awareness of the PVR systems. There have been articles by several authors recently in magazines, journals and even on television. Small-scale breeders are becoming less frightened of the system and are beginning to feel that they may be able to tackle it on their own account. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! Our American friend with his Heucheras has demonstrated that – his lack of intimate knowledge of the European market is, ultimately, leading to disaster.
So what has this got to do with Tom’s piece about the amateurisation of weblogs? Well, I think that to counter the spread of weblogs, the traditional media and publishing systems must both provide additional expertise and services that the individual and small organisation can not possibly provide, and offer economies of time and scale that larger organisations would wish to buy in to. Not only for providers of content, but also for customers. Publishers must provide effective channels for distributing the output of authors to the best audience. Readers will need an effective information gathering service that is authoritative and independent, and sources of entertainment that fit well with increasingly time-poor lifestyles.
Of course, as this process continues, more companies and organisations will see an opportunity to provide these services, perhaps as an add-on to their existing business. The Sun has launched a blog. The Grauniad has done it for a while. AOL offers blogging systems to members. In the PVR industry, ten years ago there were two or three companies offering agency services. Now, I estimate that there are around 25 or 30, with several that have started in the last two years. I’m certain that there are others in early stages of development of which I am yet to become aware.
Is mass amateurisation a good thing? Well, I’m not sure that there is "good" or "bad" about it. It’s more just a process of change, something that has been going on for years. Personally, I suspect that time pressures will mean that whilst "amateurised" systems will become more widely available, both in terms of the number of people that can access them, and the number of services, products and skills that are covered by such systems, most people will not adopt them. The day simply isn’t long enough.

I am trying to deal with some negative emotions at the moment. I think they may be being exacerbated by tiredness. But I don’t know how to put them into words that effectively convey what I’m feeling, so I can’t share those feelings with friends or readers of this site. I could use a little help.
As usual, though, I’ll be ok.

Remember this post? I copied it as an email to the Chichester Observer, who have printed it on their letters page. You can call me Angry of Chichester.

Cyborg Heifers From Outer Space.

Pure class.

Film. Window Media. Big download. Worth it.

Beer tonight with Ian, Sacha, Paul F, Fi, Jools, Kearn, Matt, Hamish, DA, Sarah, Tam, Jeremy and countless others. Pooped.

Typed at the airport…

Back at Schiphol once again. Yesterday was a very long day again, with some meetings that were far more useful than I imagined they would be. I’d imagined that, on this trip, I’d be seeing potential propagator and marketer licensees, which I did, but I also seem to have found a new product source (yay!) and a route to the Japanese market (double yay!).
Hmm. There is an aircraft outside with "DutchBird" written down the side in large letters. Makes me think of Marcia.
Today, we travelled miles and miles to see a nursery, although it was well worth the trip and very good fun. Particularly entertaining was taking a detour due to a road closure, and assisting our Dutch host, Simon, with navigation on roads that none of us had ever travelled before, ignoring his rather vocal onboard satellite navigation system ("turn back now!&quot, but in Dutch) and working against a very tight time limit (although our flight is delayed by 45 minutes).
Last night we went for dinner with our host for the day, Henny, in Noordwijk. Before doing so, we went for a long a leisurely stroll along the beach. There were many other people enjoying a stroll and the view of the setting sun. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beach with so many striped shells. I took some photos, and I’ll post them here as soon as I can.
One thing is for sure – I’ve put on weight during this trip, and I think I’ll have to force myself to get back into the walking regime again. We’ve lived well here, and, coupled with my greasy diet whilst in Cheshire, I reckon I’ve added a fair few pounds that I could do well without.
Once again, my telephone has decided not to work correctly. I need to figure out why it isn’t working. I think it may be to do with having the "active diverts", whatever they are, switched on. This means that it works fine on O2 at home, O2 NL here, but not NL KPN. I need to find out why, and if I can fix it, as I don’t want the same problem on my upcoming trips to Germany and France.
Update: I’ve just forced my phone to use O2 NL instead of of KPN, so it now works. However, in the course of doing so, I seem to have switched off my answerphone service and can’t switch it on unless I know what number the incoming answering service calls should go to. Oh well, I can check the O2 website tomorrow and fix that.
Flight update: now delayed by an hour. This is traumatic, as it is eating into my beer time, which will probably be with Ian tonight now that he is back in the UK. I wonder how he is readjusting to life that doesn’t involve travelling. And, for that matter, getting used to life with his old friends. Times have changed, and things have moved on – it’s not the same place or same group of people as he left a year ago. But he’s a resourceful and adaptable person, so I’m sure that it will not be too much of a challenge.
Oh well, delay here means more Dutch beer. Although I’ve yet to find a Dutch beer that I really like.
What else have I seen over the last few days that was of note? Not a huge amount that would be interest of you, apart from the huge wooden eagle with spread wings in the hotel (all very reminiscent of Nazi Germany more than the Netherlands). There was the fleeting glimpse of Amsterdam from the train window (didn’t reveal much). There’s been Mike’s crash course in Dutch (I just plead ignorance and speak English – yeh, yeh, yeh, I know. So much for supporting less-widely spoken languages).
Last time I was in this airport, they played some Groove Armada and other bits and pieces that I recognised from my CD collection. I’ve just heard another song from my collection – took me a moment to figure it out over the ambient noise – Beverly Craven. Best not to say much more about that, I guess.
And indoor sparrows in the airport? I suppose that is the Dutch equivalent of Tube pigeons?
Right, not much more to say here, so I’m going to sit and read until the plane gets here (don’t think I said that I’d finished Haruki Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun and have now started on alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel – must update that sidebar!) and listen to some mp3s on the laptop.

For the second night in a row, I’ve hard a bizarre dream in which Sarah has featured prominently. In the first, she was expecting twins (that’ll terrify her!), and I had to help Paul get her to the hospital in a hurry. After various strange adventures, mainly involving stairwells, we got there and she became the mother of a boy and a girl. In the second dream, she and Paul (sans offspring this time) were seeking to buy a cottage in a small village in East Sussex, and I happened to live in the area. I was helping the villagers redesign the layout of the village car park, and also had a (slightly madcap) project to convert the village postbox into a shrine or tribute to Mick Jagger.
No, I don’t know either. It may be all the rich food, long hours and glasses of red wine.