17 June 2015

Posted by Zahid Hussain | File under : , , ,



It's not every day that I get invited to speak to social entrepreneurs, but it happened, it really did and it was yesterday. 

You see, as well as gallivanting as a writery sorta person, I have been living a secret double life - hey, just kidding! Seriously, this is the work that I do on a day-to-day basis and have been doing since 2001. I am the creative director (lowercase please) of  a fledgling social enterprise entitled Script Social Media. My role is to develop "story strategies" (ahem!) for clients, stories which get told across social media platforms...

Anyway, the peeps from Unltd invited me to pop along and share my experience of living the social enterprise life. 

As these things usually go, I hadn't planned anything, I really hadn't. So, when Nick Buckley from The Mancunian Way stood up to speak I was filled with the sudden desire to...share a poem. Nick's charismatic and his presentation pinned people to their seats and he enjoyed a wild round of applause at its end. And then I got to share my poem. It's called The Mancunian Way too. I'm not going to share it in this post, but I promise, I will do so in the future. 

And after I'd shared the poem, which I read off my phone - it's unforgivable because I once knew if off by heart (*Sigh* Old age) - I told the audience how I'd stumbled (that's the word I stole from Nickala Torkington) into the heady world of social media. A series of fortunate accidents led me to orchestrate the social media for a charity dinner in the summer of 2014 and that event achieved a tweet reach of 12 million. I know that impresses some people and other people collapse like jelly when they hear the word tweet. I didn't do it on my own though. There were 9 of us. So, hats off to all of them. This experience ultimately propelled me to set up Script Social Media with two other like-minded people in October of 2014. 

Now, despite my work at Script Social Media, I'm really just doing what I've been doing for years. Telling stories. I guess I've found a new array of media to share stories on...

Anyway, you might be wondering what the image of a doorway has to do with anything. Perhaps it's a weak metaphor to where this is all leading, but I really don't know where that doorway leads into. I think it's filled with the imagination, or I'd like to think that, but you know, imagination is more important than knowledge and wild-haired Einstein said that (don't know in which language), so it simply has to be true. 








10 April 2015

Posted by Zahid Hussain | File under : , ,

For a while now, I've been intending to write something about a fab author who pens science fiction called Hugh Howey who wrote the Wool Trilogy.

So, you haven't heard of the Wool Trilogy? Oh boy. Where have you been?

Hugh Howey, appeared Deus Ex Machina in 2011 and rewrote science fiction and if that wasn't enough he also rewrote the book on self-publishing. Sure, others have emerged out of the silo of solitary writing too...but today I'm talking Hugh Howey stuff. And yes, he isn't self-published any more as he bagged a mainstream contract in publishing and that story is one which he tells very well himself on his web site, but I'll leave you to peruse through his blogs and find your own nuggets.

I could sift, particle by particle through each of the books which comprise the Wool Trilogy, namely: Wool, Shift and Dust and discuss the weakness and strength of each, where he KOs you and where the story strays a little...but you know, I'd rather focus on the one thing that I think sets Howey apart from many who dare wade into the shores of self-publishing-dom and drown.

He's the most courageous author I've encountered in a very long time.

Courageous? Yes. That's the word. He conjures up a world and breathes each characters full of ticks and flaws and each with a deep and abiding passion - that ache, that all good characters need - and then he flings them into a maelstrom and tests their mettle. And well, many of them don't make it. There's something so real about the way in which he writes that it actually hurts to experience each loss.

Sure, Howey has a way of putting his stylistic signature on the writing, so you know it's his, but is that a bad thing when we live in a world of samey blah blah blah? No, I would argue that it's a great thing.

And more so...there's something about the topic he's picked that mirrors our zeitgeist - it just fits with what's happening in the world right now and there's a part of you that wonders, just a little bit, if somebody somewhere isn't planning to build silos and force the remnants of humanity to live down there.

And perhaps it has already happened.

In the meantime, I'd suggest a torch, a blanket and reading in the dark when nobody's about to give you the unnerving feeling of living deep in the bowels of the earth and knowing you could be sent out cleaning at any moment...








7 April 2015

Posted by Zahid Hussain | File under :


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