Mobile broadband – limited success

I thought I had finally made up my mind. Last weekend I ordered a pay-as-you-go dongle from BT. It had good speed for PAYG, up to 7.2Mbps, and good rates: £10 for 1GB, £15 for 3GB of data allowance. Price £40. It hasn’t arrived yet and already I want to return it.

I read the small print.

Top-ups have to be used within 30 days. Grrrr. I assumed it would be like pay-as-you-go phone credit and just sit in my account until I wanted it (quite reasonably I think).

The trouble is I don’t really need mobile broadband. I pay for broadband at home, I pay for internet on my phone, and I have internet at work of course. Mobile broadband is just to fill the gaps. One month I might use it one day at a conference, the next month maybe across a whole week away. Pay-as-you-go was supposed to help me escape the constraints of a regular contract, to fit my irregular usage. These time restrictions are blatantly money-grabbing, against the consumers’ interests, and frequently hidden in small print.

Today I had a quick browse around PC World and found a couple of alternative options.
* 3 Pay as you Go Plus is a pre-loaded dongle that costs £80 including 12GB of data allowance that lasts a year. Should cover my needs for a year I reckon, so it works out at a more reasonable £6.67 per month. However, it is slower – speeds up to 3.6Mps.
* O2 has a day option in Pay as You Go that cost £2 for 24 hours. Sounds good for irregular use, but then if I use the internet for four days, that costs me £8. For £10 I can have a month of access on my BT dongle. It also bars me from just dipping in one day, I have to commit to a good session to feel that £2 was worthwhile.

Maybe I need both?!

At this point it probably sounds silly that I am quibbling over a couple of pounds here and there, but ultimately it is because NONE of the companies are offering me what I want. The freedom to just pay for just the data I use. It is really frustrating because it feels like all the companies are offering basically the same plans with the same prices. Where is the competition?

If anyone has any suggestions or know of mobile broadband without 30-day or one-day time restrictions, please let me know!

(And while I am ranting – how come mobile phone company websites are so slow to load? Have they tried accessing their own sites on dodgy wifi or mobile internet? Impossible! )

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

I signed myself up to a 2-day ‘Proactive Project Management’ course, and I just wish I had done it sooner! I am trying to untangle both how I can manage my very varied workload, and how to make my part more time-effective in new projects like building the Reach website. Having a bit of theory and some space to reflect is proving very valuable and I have lots of notes of things to try for the next website project.

It has also got me thinking about the bigger picture and my work personality. The trouble is I quite like structure at work, but my role and workplace culture is much more fluid, messy, or maybe free, depending how you look at it. I do try to impose some order on my own time, but there is only so much I can do when I know meetings will suddenly pop up, urgent email requests come in, and rotas change. Of course it can be motivating when something new and more exciting drops out of the sky, but the drawback is completing the preceding projects can become a long drawn-out process (which is frustrating because I am a finisher), and it is easy to just go with the flow rather than plan because you never know what is around the next corner.

And here is where the proactive element comes in for me. If I just go with the flow, then all I end up doing is maintaining my current projects and contributing to other peoples’ new projects as they come in. The course today reminded me that I must keep an eye on my own portfolio to make sure I am balancing:

Progress — Maintenance

Proactive — Reactive

I have let myself become more reactive and I need to stop myself from slipping, but how?

Caution, here be BHAGs

As an exercise, we were encourage to list some BHAGs:

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

Try it! Regardless of feasibility, list what you would like to achieve in the next two years. How do you feel about the list? Inspired? Overwhelmed? Sceptical?

The next step is to discuss these with someone, discard the bad ideas, and assess the desirability of the remainder – asking the “so what” question against each one to find the true purpose and benefit. The key is to receive ideas positively and openly, and treat the implementations as a separate step, otherwise new ideas will never get off the ground.

This really struck a chord with me. I found I had plenty of big ideas once I put my mind to it, but in my day-to-day life I had already denied them as soon as they arose. I told myself – ‘I will never have time for that’, ‘there is no money for equipment’, ‘no one will want to help’ – which may be true, but I didn’t fight for them. I need to be more assertive and tenacious – make the flexibility and positive attitude to new ideas in my workplace work for me and my project.

Next step – list my ‘maintenance’ work, list some proposals for ‘progress’ projects, get ready to negotiate…

Response: 4 lies about social media

I am a follower of Penelope Trunk’s blog, Brazen Careerist, and when I saw this post – 4 lies about social media – it immediately got me thinking as to whether it tallied with my experiences. She presents these as the four lies (quotes are from the blog post):

* My ‘agrees’ and ‘disagrees’ relate to Penelope’s position (so ‘agree’ means I do think the statement in the heading is a lie… sorry only saw potential confusion after writing…):

Lie #1: LinkedIn is for networking

LinkedIn is great. I’m on LinkedIn. I have 650 connections. At first I wondered, why do I need this list of connections published on LinkedIn? What was the purpose of it? But now I get it. With LinkedIn, people can tell that I am a very connected person.

Penelope’s main point is that LinkedIn is not a place for conversation.

Agree

• Yes I tend to treat my profile as a fairly static CV/calling-card. I will connect with people I met at a work event, and store the contacts for later.
• Yes I will have more respect for someone who is an effective user of the site, with plenty of contacts and a rich profile – it is a sign of professional awareness, yet…

Disagree

• If all I see in my feed is John Smith connecting with dozens of new people all the time, I will regard him as just a ‘collector’, not interested in meaningful relationships, and probably with a strong agenda or product to push (which I would prefer to avoid).
• I do take part in some very interesting conversations in the Groups I have joined on LinkedIn. I enjoy receiving my round-up email and it regularly instigates me to participate. I don’t think I have actually made contacts through this, but some faces have become more familiar, and it definitely helps my wider professional development and awareness of broader issues.

Lie #2: Twitter is for conversation

The problem with using Twitter for conversation is that we need more than 140 characters to make a genuine connection with someone. So you’re not going to have a whole conversation there; Twitter is great for finding people who have similar ideas, and for keeping track of them in a superficial way.

Agree

• Absolutely, Twitter has been fantastic for helping me find people in libraries, marketing and technology work, that has all been very helpful when I need advice (or work-related entertainment).
• I suppose conversation doesn’t really happen there. Don’t tell, but the one web 2.0 tool I hate is instant messaging. For me, the benefit of Twitter is that I can exchange a couple of quality messages, then walk away without offending anyone. It is a degree more casual.

I’m not sure if this ranks as agree or disagree

• Penelope adds that you need to take a Twitter-generated relationship elsewhere to solidify it. I agree with this, but just wanted to add that Twitterers generate meet-ups and events purely based on Twitter acquaintance, and associated Twitter tools built on the free API do provide instant chat, extended messages, photo exchange and more, which helps develop a relationship. The ‘elsehwere’ you need to go to may be Twitter-generated.

Lie #3: Blogs are personal journals

Your blog is a record of what you’re thinking, and that record will represent you online, as a high-ranking search result when someone googles your name. So if you care about building a network, you’ll stop using your blog as a diary.

Agree

• Blogs are definitely not just diaries. There are wide possibilities for tone, topic and audience. They are indeed very public too, so you might as well consider the professional impact from the start and plan accordingly.

Lie #4: Social media is no place for business

Companies understand they need to participate in conversation, and they are looking a professional places to do it. If you want to be known to companies, you will use social media to allow them to get to know you.

Agree

• Social media is a great way to build SEO and professional presence. If you approach it professionally there is no reason it should be inappropriate. Business is already out there on the social web, manipulating it, monitoring it, and if you make contact with them – monitoring you on it. Embracing social media should show you to be image-savvy with an eye for opportunities whereever they may arise – great traits for business.

Disagree

Ok, so I don’t really disagree with Penelope at all, but I can understand reservations about using social media for business.

• When times are tight, the hard-to-measure ROI of social media can make it a soft-target to cut or avoid.  Coupled with the fact that social media eats time and always demands more, it can seem an unappealing proposition to invest in.
• For all the management effort you put in, you might still have a disaster event that means your own page or forum becomes the focus of a hammering. Trolls are given a space, publicly-available and searchable, to rant away. That is scary – it takes some progressive thinking and faith in your contacts and customers to trust that they will be reasonable and listen more to your responses and reassurances than the troll’s nonsense.

Loser-generated content

I have to admit that when I read Charlie Brooker’s article, I cheered “so true” at this description, before realising that I probably shouldn’t be…

TV advertising used to work like this: you sat on your sofa while creatives were paid to throw a bucket of shit in your face. Today you’re expected to sit on the bucket, fill it with your own shit, and tip it over your head while filming yourself on your mobile. Then you upload the video to the creatives. You do the work; they still get paid.

While looking for creative ways to promote our resources, websites and events, a suggestion which often comes up is to run a ‘competition’ for students to submit a video or image promo for us. It seems like fun, it seems like a great way to get students more involved. And yet I am not entirely comfortable with it.

Loser-generated content does not save time

Like herding cats

When looking at blogging, one proposal to save time writing is to get others to do the writing for you – to ask a team of students to contribute to a blog about their experiences job-hunting. I have come to the conclusion that creating the blog, chivvy-ing people to contribute more regularly, trying to gently suggest that some write shorter entries or stay on safer topics, while others should write more or stick to a sensible style, means that managing such an arrangement is more work than just writing the thing yourself.

Generating loser-generated content is actually quite a lot of work – the marketer still has to define the scheme, promote it, perhaps generate some initial content for mash-ups, then encourage, judge, promote the winner. And it can be a thankless task, with poor responses, unless you can generate a decent prize…

Loser-generated content is like an unfair, unpaid internship

Generally, we can’t offer cash-prizes or substantial rewards, we just can’t afford it. So instead it takes either more time to hustle up a ‘work-experience’ prize, or simply claim the ‘exposure’ is reward in itself, which starts to head toward murkier waters.

In the careers service we are very aware of the unfairness of unpaid internships, and the negative impact the internship culture has on diversity in certain career sectors. It is the last thing we want to promote, and we do try to vet all our job ads on minimum wage criteria. But if we offer a competition without a financial reward, are we ourselves committing this sin?

I do actually believe that making a video, poster or article can be a very good skills development opportunity. It is fun, and once you have invested the time to learn to do it once, it puts you a step ahead of many candidates in media and marketing. But it can be a lot of work to do for free – again it means only those students with the means to have a good computer with the right software and have that free time, can participate. And you perpetuate the myth that ‘exposure’ on the web is a great reward in itself. Many early-career web designers and freelance writers are led up the garden path on such promises, so why should we introduce students to this as if it is not problematic?

Solutions

I wouldn’t want to bin the idea of loser-generated content altogether, as I think it can still build a sense of community involvement. I am also a sucker for getting excited about how others get creative on a proposal. So as a work-around, how about low-effort competitions?

• Ask students to send in a photo ’summarising the event in an image’ from their phones.
• Caption competition
• Add a doodle-space on event feedback forms – suggest they draw their favourite bit or point from the event, for us to scan and put in a Flickr/Facebook gallery

Hopefully it would increase participation as well? Though you can’t beat a good prize really.

Getting Twitter followers – 5 tips

On a previous post, Colin from the University of Cumbria, asked how to promote their new Twitter account to students, well here are some suggestions:

1. Put a Twitter badge on your careers service homepage

It is really easy to find free badges and widgets to add to your website. The main choice you have to make is between ‘live’ widgets that update constantly to display your latest tweets and static image badges. The live badges have the benefit of drawing people in, they look attractive and make your webpage look dynamic, however they do take up more space, they use Flash and/or javascript which might not work on some sites/CMS editors, and they can make your page slower to load.

I do like this design from LimeShot - comes in a range of colours

• Twitter has some official live badges in its Goodies section and under Badges which you can customise to match your site
• Twitip has a list of free widgets and badges here including some static badges
• Mashable also has a list here
• Widgetbox has lots available, with plenty of customisation options

These are just some suggestions, you can easily find more by Googling ‘free Twitter widget’ or ‘Twitter badge’.

2. Put the URL in your email signatures

You could try putting it at the bottom of general careers service emails, or perhaps even the personal signature you use when emailing students.

3. Leaflets, posters, business cards, presentation slides…

Yes the old-fashioned approach – include it on all careers service materials just as you would your website address and contact details.

4. Follow your students

This one is further down the list because it is a bit more risky and I am not entirely certain on it myself. You could use Twitter search to find likely students (guessing likely words e.g. ‘uni’ ‘lecture’, location mentions), follow them and see if they choose to follow back. Sounds laborious and stalker-ish? Yes it is. There is another way…

Go to the Find People section of your Twitter account, and you will find an option to Invite by email. You can submit email addresses in bulk. The students receive an email inviting them to sign up to Twitter, and if they do use that email address and follow you, you will automatically follow them. We trialled this approach for one of our services, pulling out a list of comma-separated email addresses from the event database. It seems to have been successful – we gained a few hundred followers, all interested students, and no one complained. I think this is less intrusive than searching people out one by one, but it still results in us following students which isn’t really necessary and some may understandably dislike it.

5. Use Twitter actively and interactively

For more organic growth, there is a simple way – tweet regularly (but not too much), tweet consistently useful and/or entertaining content, and interact with others using lots of @ replies. Post pictures and personal touches to build a relationship. By being a good Twitterer people will find you. Using @ replies will help others spot you when their friends interact with you.You might even try prompting people to RT (re-tweet) particularly useful posts you make.

So hope that is useful! I would be interested to hear of any other approaches people have tried.

Facebook changes again – new feed views

I have given this one a bit of time, and I have to say this change has definitely not grown on me, in fact it is a growing irritation.

Whiiiine indeed

You may have noticed lately that your Facebook newsfeed (the first page you see when you login) has slowed. Have you suddenly become less popular? Has everyone ditched Facebook? No, Facebook has simply made another arbitrary change to the user experience without warning. Hooray!

Essentially, the default news feed now selects and displays posts from the last day by your friends that have mainly been commented on or liked. In theory this means you get a higher quality feed, bringing you the democratically elected best. It also encourages people to interact with posts, to highlight the best their friends produce. Your other main option is to switch to the ‘Live feed’ which constantly updates with the latest posts by friends.

(For more detail on the differences, see this blog post on the ‘Facebook on Higher Education‘ blog, as well as Facebook’s official explanation.)

So as I said, in theory this gives you a higher quality, meritocratic feed. But it doesn’t work for me. My news feed is now clogged with posts by a few very active users who happen to have very active commenting friends. I don’t want to remove them from the feed, I am interested in them, just not that interested. My closer friends are less avid Facebook users and as they all comment on each others’ posts less, they are now completely lost. As with real-world democracy, if the majority do not participate, the system fails.

In which case, I should just switch to the live feed right, what’s the problem? Well I do use the live feed online, but I can’t access that on my mobile browser. Also, I resent the slow, meritocratic feed being the default because it is going to impact on our careers service usage of Facebook.

Just when we gained the benefit of Page updates showing up in newsfeeds, this is likely to bury our posts. Until you have built up a couple of hundred followers, you don’t get a lot of comments and likes on posts. If your posts don’t receive comments, they won’t be highlighted to others, so users won’t see them to comment on them… It all becomes a bit chicken and egg. Unless of course you manipulate the system by getting staff and student reps to make lots of friends and then interact with your posts… Which seems a bit ridiculous.

I could be wrong here, but it sounds like this makes the newsfeed more open to manipulation and cynical campaigns, as well as being unrepresentative of the activity across my range of friends.

And perhaps Facebook could give us more warning/consultation/testing/opportunity for feedback? Maybe?

Students don’t just trust everything they find online

That shouldn’t exactly be a newsflash, but as an information professional I know we often worry about students’ online information skills, giving them basic advice on how to search and assess the authority of information. Perhaps we are focussing our efforts on the wrong skills? This New Media Age article reports a YouthNet survey result that:

Peer review is key. Photo from glion.edu

…58% of teenagers are wary of the information they find online and 71% cross-check online information with their peers.

They are checking the reliability of information, but not through making their own judgements, they are asking others for recommendations, and checking the effectiveness of information by comparing outcomes with each other.

Relating this to careers information, this cuts two ways. On the one hand it is reassuring to hear that young people do have safety mechanisms in place to protect themselves from poor online advice, and the popularity of careers-related forums to examine job offers and company cultures more closely is encouraging. However, since their trust comes from peers not necessarily the apparent authority of the site itself, it also means they might not take your service-provided guidance at face value either…

The New Media Age article relates to marketing messages, saying that the ‘broadcast’ model is over, that young people expect to be able to interact with your content and freely manipulate, examine, compare and discuss it with peers. Does your website offer the functionality to rate, comment and share content? If so, great! You are both going to get instant and specific feedback to improve your services, and at the same time you encourage this protective critical eye for online content – an essential lifelong careers skill.

Of course, even if you don’t facilitate this, there are plenty of other ways students can manipulate your content away from your view. Have you tried SideWiki yet? It is a new Google offering tied in with the Google toolbar, and it allows anyone to post comments about your website, to appear next to your web content, to anyone. If you don’t install Sidewiki, you won’t see it, but many others will… These kinds of services have a history of lukewarm adoption, but never have they had a name like Google attached to them. This has created a lot of nervousness as it seems an open invitation to trolls, and you can’t moderate it. Loss of control over brand reputation is always going to be frightening, but as Sidewiki contributes to the feeling of inevitability regarding this shift, the future must be to accept the change and work with it.

As I learnt at Fote09 from Will McInnes‘ engaging presentation – when Argos added the facility for users to rate and review their buys, the products with reviews had a 10% higher conversion rate (buy-to-view ratio). Web users really value transparency and it is definitely something you can turn to your advantage!

(For more on Sidewiki, here’s Google’s official introduction to the ideology and benefits:)

Reading habits (meme)

Fairy cakes! Sprinkles!

I saw this meme on Damyanti’s blog so I thought I’d join in as a bit of an ‘about me’.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack?

Probably not usually snack, but definitely drink many lots tea. Won’t say no to cake.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

My GCSE handiwork

Writing in books I own is acceptable, but I don’t usually do it. I think the only books I write in are philosophy books and language learning books. The idea of writing in library books horrifies me – I think it is really selfish. I know some people say they find it useful to see what others thought, but personally I find it distracting, especially if the scribbler is just dumb.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

I will use any old bit of paper to mark my place. On occasion have been known to use my credit card, but that tends to lead rapidly to credit card loss and distress. I don’t like laying the book down open unless it is well worn-in, but I can’t help worry about spine damage. I usually only dog-ear bits I like, rather than use it for keeping my place.

Fiction, Non-fiction or both?

Both. At the same time. I always have a mixed bunch on the go and pick up what suits my mood.

Hard copy or audiobooks?

Hard copy always. I only listened to audiobooks as a child, on long car journeys, feeling carsick. High point – Kenneth Williams doing the Wind in the Willows. Low point – the Famous Five.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

I prefer to stop at the end of the chapter but if the writer works too hard at leaving the reader hanging and pushing on into the next chapter I will give in and stop in the middle.

If you come across an unfamiliar work, do you stop to look it up right away?

No, why interrupt the flow?

What are you currently reading?

It is a holder. For things.

At the moment I have Dannie Abse “The presence”, Barack Obama “The audacity of hope” and Vann “Saint Thomas Aquinas” slowly on the go, but I am spending more time on crochet – my latest hobby.

What is the last book you bought?

“But is it art?” Cynthia Freeland

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?

Lots on the go.

Do you have a favourite time of day and/or place to read?

I like to read at lunchtimes in the park and at night in bed. Will also read on the train on my long weekend journeys.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?

Never thought about the distinction. If I read a stand alone book I like, I tend to read back over their other works, so that feels like a series too.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?

“Fup” by Jim Dodge is a big favourite of mine. Full of character and originality (and quite a quick read). I also often recommend “Feet in the clouds” by Richard Askwith, for anyone who has ever got into running. My current favourite recommendation is “Bad science” by Ben Goldacre – a real eye-opener and impeccably written.

How do you organise your books? (By genre, title, authors last name etc)?

Primarily I organise by genre, then I will organise within that genre usually by associations. So in the history section I will group books on the seventeenth century, then put one that spans a couple of centuries phasing into the next period. Or within fiction I might put the thrillers together, and the classics together, with a classic thriller between. It makes sense to me and just feels right. Fortunately I claimed sole organising rights quite early into moving in with my friend – she originally shelved the books by height and colour, ye gods!

Leagues and lists – careers services on Twitter

Well, where would our education system be without league tables?? Out of a mixture of curiosity, a desire to capitalise on my most popular blog post, and a blatant urge to copy Liz Azyan’s lists of universities on Twitter I have turned my list of careers services on Twitter – UK & Ireland HE into a Twitterleague (unfortunately I can’t display it here as it gives a javascript code to embed and I am still on WordPress.com so please follow the link to view).

I had put off doing this right away as many of the careers services are new to Twitter and have yet to establish a presence – I didn’t want people to feel put off. I also strongly believe counting followers is a clumsy measure – they could all be spammers, or dormant accounts, and the older the account simply the more spammers have accumulated. It is interaction that is really important but as we don’t have a convenient measure for that, followers it has to be for now. I hope it just gives people a different perspective on the list.

Personally, I hope more people use this other list I have generated on TweepML which allows you to follow all the careers services on the list in one go. I like seeing different services RT’ing careers-related links and opportunities other universities have posted (especially when they attribute) – it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that Twitter is helping services communicate and share great opportunities to students across the country. Though does anyone worry they should be trying to protect the best information for their own students to give them the advantage?

Facebook case study: from dispute to debate

Before it disappears off the page, here's a screenshot... click for full size version

At The Careers Group we have a number of pages on Facebook (quick check, I’m an admin on twenty…) and we like to keep things pretty open. It varies from page to page, but the usual set-up allows fans to post on the wall, post photos and videos, and of course comment on our posts. The only thing we tend to limit is posting links, I think because it is so easy for viruses to be spread and link content to be mis-represented that we don’t want that risk. The default landing page is this wall, showing fan posts as well as ours, so anything that they choose to put up goes straight into full view.

Perhaps we have been fortunate, but aside from deleting the odd spam and promotional post we haven’t had any major problems. We try to check every page at least once a day to monitor things. Where negative comments have been made we leave them up, and respond as soon as we can to explain or position or apologise as appropriate. If we act openly and honestly the students respond to that, and have even defended us if our explanations make sense to them. And as I said, negative comments from students are rare.

So it still got my heart going yesterday to see this comment on the Careers in Arts Administration page:

I want to make a formal complaint.

Minutes before I had posted up the offending library training scheme – what had gone wrong? Well, in posting the link I had emphasised the conditions of the scheme “Applications are accepted from people of the following descents: Asian Indian, Asian Pakistani, Asian Other Black African, Black Caribbean, Black other or Mixed Race.” The student felt this was racist, that discrimination of any form is wrong. It was a tricky one to address. I explained the legality of the scheme and tried to give a balanced view, but perhaps my reply was unsatisfying as I tried to hold back my own opinions and avoid an argument. So the comments continued to pile up… While I wanted to make more of a case for it, I was conscious that I needed to represent The Careers Group on this issue, so I did the natural thing, called for help! My colleagues felt my explanation was good and appropriate, and I needn’t get any further involved, other than to pass on the complaints procedure. An additional post from the Assistant Director backed me up on the legal position, and we left it there. Another student picked up the debate and it has run on to 19 comments without further action against us. The complaint opened up into a debate.

I regard this as a success. As a colleague from our Diversity and Equal Opportunities Group pointed out, one of the barriers to equal opportunities is in fact silence on contentious topics like this, that people cannot discuss and explore why we have positive action schemes, why politically correct terms change, how we practically can achieve the goal of equality. The page has given students a forum to engage rather than just turn away and moan to a couple of sympathetic friends.

I expect this example could be interpreted in different ways, did we say enough to explain the merits of schemes like this? Are all the participating students aware of how public the page and their posts are? An alternative course of action would have been to remove the comment and send a private message to the student, but wouldn’t that have felt like hushing it up and lost the wider benefits?

Additionally, I like this example because it demonstrates one of the key things that will provoke a student complaint – a feeling of injustice – not a bad thing to complain about, and the sort of issue any service wants to hear about and address. Injustice and spam, those are the top two student gripes I would say. While I know from experiences in previous work that students can cause nuisances in much more inconvenient, unjustified and offensive ways (hacking the catalogue to display explicit porn in the library, for instance), until they do abuse our pages, I am happy to keep them open and preserve this valuable opportunity for conversation.

I wouldn’t usually discuss students and disputes on here, but as this has all been posted publicly on Facebook for all to see, this one isn’t exactly confidential.