Being located by Borough Market in SE1, the Bearing Partnership office is positioned between several cycle bays for the new London Cycle program. Many of our consultants have been considering taking up the scheme but have heard stories of not being able to return the cycles when the bays are full up, or not finding a bike to ride at all.

If, like us, you’re interested in the scheme, you’ve probably been wondering what happens on those occasions, well today we can put your mind at rest. Sort of.

There’s a team of cars with bike trailers who are informed (digitally) when a bike rack is full up and when some are empty, so they can take them to a bike bay that needs them.

You might be waiting around for a bit but we think once they’ve learnt which bays are getting the most use, we’re sure they will be more organised on the shuttle runs, making sure the bikes stay evenly distributed.

If you’re taking part in the scheme and have a meeting with us at our offices – here are the nearest bike bays [...]

At Bearing Partnership, we talk about Digital every day. With our clients, with our candidates, with people we buy coffee from, our families (even if they like it or not), and to each other. We even partake in a little Digital marketing ourselves, with a website we update quite regularly, a Twitter feed and some work in progress on the ‘app’ front. But one thing we didn’t really expect was to actually benefit from someone else’s social media campaign. And this is about how we feel about it.

It all started harmlessly enough – a tweet about how our sparkly new iPhone 4s didn’t work particularly well in the office. We’re not going to go on about the antenna situation or ‘antennagate’ – I dare say that subject has received more column inches than is warranted. For us, it was less about the dreaded ‘disappearing signal’, more about not getting any signal at all in the office.

“Our iPhone 4s don’t get reception in our office. Neither did the old HTCs but now we’re blaming the antennas, not Orange.”

As you can see – our comment wasn’t really aimed at Apple, it was squarely aimed at Orange – a company that we have had an account with since we started nearly 8 years ago. The fact is, that our old phones, HTCs HDs (or the ‘Argos version of the iPhone’ as some colleagues cruelly referred to them) didn’t get signal in our office either – however now the popular view is to blame the phone – not the network.[...]

Everything online is expanding at the moment and when something that is simplifying and condensing your online presence becomes available it is advisable to utilise it. The size of the average online profile is growing at an alarming rate and the need to reduce the wide variety of personal information online and segregate it from relevant professional information is paramount.

Magntize appear to have solved this problem with their site and have provided a way to post a ‘virtual business card’. The main advantage of this is aesthetic; everything is displayed on a very smooth and user-friendly interface, which is reminiscent of the Apple OSX, so it is a pleasure to use. Also, this online profile only shows basic personal information: when setting up an account you are asked to select from a list of keywords the ones that most accurately represent yourself, this then creates a simple, minimal and professional appearance.

The fact that this site is so new also provides it with an edge; profiles on Facebook and Twitter are still very useful but have lost their contemporary cache. Magntize is also capable of embedding RSS feeds, which means your virtual business card maintains freshness.

Furthermore, this product enables the customer to choose which of their other online profiles to display on the site. This allows the users to direct others to an entirely professional or entirely social view of themselves.

Whilst Digital media and Ecommerce companies continue to blaze a trail in their respective industries, we ask the question ‘who is looking after the people actually running these companies?’

Other than the continual learning curve that working in such a fast paced industry dictates, how else do the top level of management in this vanguard industry develop their careers? Traditionally, Executive Coaching would be the answer to this question – but is the Executive Coaching model appropriate for today’s entrepreneurial Digital Media and Ecommerce directors? To help answer that question, Bearing Partnership has called upon Stephanie Vora, a dyed in the wool Ecommerce and Digital Media veteran who now helps Executives get the very best out of their career – to contribute to this article on the challenges the modern day Digital Executive is facing and what, if anything, they can do to help maximise their career in this frenetic and pressured environment.

Arrested development

With an industry still in its infancy and its top level Executives averaging 10 years less experience than their board level counterparts in traditional businesses, Digital Media and Ecommerce companies will have to consider [...]