SOLT launched their ‘blog’ The Alternate yesterday.

OK, I’m still trying to get my head round the strapline “An alternative view of Theatreland from http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk” I will give it some time to find it’s feet, but honestly what is alternative about this? What does the title mean?

I’d love to see some posts on what they are trying to do here (beyond the bland about us statement) and how they are going to be different from fan sites or the gossip columns of the freesheets.

I’d like to see something a bit edgier, a bit more backstage and with more imaginative use of media – we’ve been podcasting for 2 years now people – we don’t want (censored) transcriptions of interviews – let’s hear them, or even better, get your camcorder out and let’s see the luvvies! I’d also like to know that this is a community I can be part of, not just another part of the publicity/money extraction machine.

And a full text rss feed. Don’t make me click through, you’re making me work too hard to be your friend.

Most of all – get rid of the registration in order to comment. This says “you can only be my friend if you give me 5p”. This makes me nervous and not really want to play with you or recommend you to my friends.

I can help – you only have to ask.

tags: theatre & blogging & marketing & audience engagement & 2ndWave & post geek & london

Can’t be bothered to dig out an exact quote on the amount of cocaine that is alleged to be stuck to banknotes in the circulation, and I don’t know (naturally) how you would go about extracting it, but I think there’s at least a feasibility study to be done on how much you could make from washing out your ten pound notes and then exchanging them for others, then selling the coke.

Drugs and money-laundering (literally) – that’s the kind of stuff people have come to expect here (well at least it makes a change from semi-nudity and knob gags).

I’m sure that the young people who get involved in www.makeyourmarkwithatenner.org (which was launched yesterday by the totally brilliant Oli Barrett) will have more sense, moral fibre and honesty than to follow my hare-brained scheme (and of course kids, it harms other people and it’s illegal so is against the rules)

Oli’s premise, to encourage social entrepreneurship, is to give £10 each to 10,000 young people as a competition to see what good they can do with it, while they are also hopefully making a profit. You can see Oli and Andrew Reynolds (who’s putting up the dosh) in this clip from Working Lunch yesterday (though it will probably disappear from that location soon – grrrrrr! get it on youtube somebody!) [update:Adrian tells me it’s already disappeared, but I just heard from Oli that photos of the launch are on flickr]

The money is being distributed via schools and colleges, so if you’re in that world, go along and have a look. In the meantime, I’d love to hear how *you* would use your tenner for simultaneous good and profit.

tags: social enterprise & young entrepreneurs & Oli Barret & education