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Teacher Grants 2022
Nominate an Alumni
Alumni Contacts
GIVING BACK!
We are here to improve and enhance educational opportunities and resources for all children enrolled in the Affton School District, and for the teachers who support them.
Improve and Enhance Educational Opportunities
Established in 2005, the Affton Education Foundation was formed to raise funds for projects beyond the scope or capabilities of the district. Recognizing the national movement for excellence in education, we join foundations in other progressive communities in establishing a channel for private funds to enrich public educations.
After in-depth discussions with teachers, administrators, the Board of Education, and students, the Affton Education Foundation established two early priorities:
1. Teacher grants to support extraordinary efforts in the classroom
2. College scholarships, funded by an endowment, for Affton students
Our goal is to preserve the high educational standards of the district by providing additional classroom resources and to inspire and enable students to attend their first-choice colleges.
STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS & LOANS GIVEN
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TOTAL SCHOLARSHIP & LOAN DOLLARS AWARDED
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The mission of the Affton Education Foundation is to improve and enhance educational opportunities and resources for all children enrolled in the Affton School District, and for the teachers who support them.
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You're Invited!
2023 Hall of Fame Gala
Saturday, March 4th 2023
At Greenbriar Hills Country Club 12665 Big Bend Rd, Kirkwood, MO 63122
The evening will include the induction of a stellar class of distinguished alums in the Affton Alumni Hall of Fame.
Denis Knock – Class of 1965
Sue Hasselbring – Class of 1981
Mark O'Bryan – Class of 1981
Sheri Hogland-Brand – Class of 1985
Melissa Spellman Eckhart – Class of 1992


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Register now for Creative Opportunities Unlocked, a free online careers event for UAL students and graduates. Get career insights from industry experts, improve your employability skills, and uncover work opportunities. Hosted by UAL Careers and Employability, the 3-day programme will enable you to get advice directly from industry and careers experts. Tuesday 1 to Thursday 3 February 2022, 11am –3pm
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The somewhat reluctant hegemon
Germany has been slow to reassess its place in the world
Germany's traditional foreign-policy doctrines are coming under pressure
Special reportApr 14th 2018 edition
THERE IS A crack of howitzer fire and a plume of smoke from above the birch trees, then silence falls on the milky winter afternoon in Pabrade, close to Lithuania's border with Belarus. "There come the Marders!" cries Lieutenant-Colonel Bösker of the Mechanised Infantry Battalion 371 of Germany's Bundeswehr as four light tanks roll out of the forest. Their job is to lure the enemy into the line of fire of the Leopard heavy tanks, which issue a series of earth-shattering booms. All this action, the lieutenent-colonel explains, is purely defensive: "The point is to slow down the enemy and buy time for political talks."
The exercise, codenamed "Winter Wolf", is part of NATO's "enhanced forward presence" (EFP) in Poland and the Baltic states, a response to Russian aggression in the region. In each of these countries a "framework nation"—in Lithuania's case, Germany—leads a multinational battalion charged with deterring Russian interference. Until recently such a deployment close to the Russian border would have been unthinkable. The post-war German constitution ruled out any combat deployments of the armed forces, a prohibition that was lifted only in 1994. Between the end of the second world war and 2002, when Germany joined the war in Afghanistan, the number of Germans killed in combat was precisely two. Mr Trump complains that Europe's largest economy still falls well short of NATO's target for defence spending of 2% of GDP. But as the Lithuania mission shows, the country is now more engaged.
Across all aspects of Germany's foreign policy, the country is beginning to give up its cautious traditional doctrines, but much more slowly than many of its allies would like. The country's role in the world is inevitably coloured by recent history. At NATO's Lithuanian headquarters in Rukla, a former Soviet army base, Thorsten Gensler is reflecting on his childhood. The EFP battlegroup's commander grew up in Bavaria, just 4km from the border with East Germany, which he recalls was patrolled by American soldiers. Sometimes they would give out chocolates. "But the threat was there, it was visible," he says. "And then the Wall fell, and with the expansion of NATO we are surrounded by friends…Here in Lithuania I feel that Germany is now giving back something of what the alliance gave my country in the cold war." In the nearby mess tent—a little corner of Germany, complete with sausage stand and post office—postcards bearing messages from home are pinned on a board: "My papa, my soldier, my hero"; "Greetings from the Heimat".
Germany has stepped up its defence effort in recent years. In 2014 Joachim Gauck, then the country's president, gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference calling on his country to act "sooner, more decisively and more substantially" in the world. Since then Germany has expanded its role in Afghanistan, started arming Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq and increased its peacekeeping role alongside France in Mali. When MH17, a Malaysian airliner, was shot down by Russia-backed insurgents in Ukraine just months after Mr Gauck's speech, Mrs Merkel pushed her European partners to impose sanctions against Moscow. In Munich last May she said in a speech apparently aimed at America that "the times when we could rely entirely on others are to some extent over." Last July she hosted the G20 group of world leaders in Hamburg at a summit where she sought to encourage multilateralism, free trade and environmental protection.
One reason why Germany needed to think bigger was the refugee crisis. With its geopolitical wings clipped after the second world war, and without Britain's or France's imperial legacy, the country long did not engage much with the world beyond Europe and big partners like America and China. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of poor Arabs and Africans in recent years has broadened its strategic horizons. In April 2016 Mrs Merkel said she had requested a world map coloured in to show Europe's true borders: Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, the Sahara. Such thinking had just prompted a deal with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, exchanging German money and visas for Turkey's help with reducing the numbers of refugees entering Europe. Last year the German government proposed a "Marshall Plan" for Africa (recalling America's massive investment in Europe after the second world war) to help fight poverty in sub-Saharan countries like Nigeria. In August Germany signed a deal to reduce migrant flows from Egypt, based on the Turkish model.
The one exception to Germany's hands-off foreign policy has been its stance on the European economy. When the euro was created, the Germans insisted that it be modelled on the mighty Deutschmark and refused to entertain a "transfer union" channelling resources from Europe's austere north to its allegedly spendthrift south. Germany's politicians and central bankers stoutly defended the value of their country's money, putting pressure on weaker economies such as France and Italy. Dominique Moïsi, a French writer, urged Germans to "let the sound of Beethoven prevail over the sound of Wagner".
However, the election as France's president of the reform-minded and Germanophile Emmanuel Macron has created an opportunity for closer integration of the euro zone, which Germany has long resisted. Mrs Merkel has hinted that she may be willing to shift position, telling Mr Macron on his first visit to Berlin last May that "a little magic dwells in each beginning." Her new government is open to the idea of a future euro-zone budget and proposes to turn the European Stability Mechanism, currently a fail-safe device, into a "European Monetary Fund": music to Mr Macron's ears.
But even though Germany is prepared to take a more active role in the world, and show more emollience in Europe, it may find it hard to deliver on these good intentions. It is struggling, for example, to provide enough working Leopard tanks to meet its NATO commitments. In the days of the cold war it had over 2,000 tanks, but this has come down to about 250, and many of those do not work. Ursula von der Leyen, who has been defence minister since 2013, has battled to modernise the German armed forces, but they still suffer from problems with equipment and remain detached from the country's wider foreign, security and aid strategies. André Wüstner, chairman of the German Bundeswehr Association, has characterised the German engagement in Afghanistan as "random aid spending, little co-ordination between ministries, paired with illusions of feasibility and excessive expectations".
The new government, like its predecessor, is notionally committed to the 2% NATO spending target, but will probably end up closer to the current 1.2%. In other areas, too, Germany is underpowered. "It lacks the diplomats to take on several major diplomatic initiatives at once," notes Sarah Brockmeier of the Global Public Policy Institute, a foreign-policy think-tank in Berlin. In the Ukraine crisis Germany's assertiveness towards Russia is limited by its continued commitment to NordStream2, a new gas pipeline running direct from Russia to Germany, leaving the countries in between in the cold. The new "Marshall Plan" for Africa involves a puny €1.5bn of additional EU spending.
Europe writ small
Germany's new Europeanism may prove similarly disappointing. The effusive language of the coalition deal makes no mention of a banking union—the best way of heading off the next euro crisis—and comes with no numbers attached. At most Mr Macron can expect modest concessions from Germany, not the Beethovian transformation he hoped for.
Even as the world is asking Germany to ditch its traditional caution, the country still sees itself as closer to Switzerland than America in scale and thus responsibility. During the election campaign the SPD's Sigmar Gabriel, then the foreign minister, called the 2% NATO goal an "arms race". Many also scoff at Mr Macron; even Der Spiegel, a liberal weekly, snootily called the French president an "expensive friend".
The German public still shows limited interest in a reassessment of Germany's place in the world. In a study published in December by the Körber Foundation, a think-tank, 52% of respondents thought their country should hold back, against 43% who felt it should become more strongly involved. Ms Brockmeier thinks political leaders need to confront the voters with Germany's responsibilities. But will they?
Correction: MH17, the plane shot down over Ukraine, was a Malaysian airliner flying from the Netherlands, not a Dutch airliner as stated. This has been corrected.
Germany The new Germans
How Germany and the Germans have changed
German politics has become much more complicated
A land of multiple identities
Germany may be rich, but inequalities are widening
Germany's conservative economic model is being put to the test
German history takes to the small screen
Where does Germany go from here?
This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline "The somewhat reluctant hegemon"


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Why Tilray teamed with AB InBev, and why the stock market is unimpressed
December 21, 2018 December 27, 2018 by David Brown
Late Wednesday afternoon, Canadian cannabis company Tilray announced a joint venture initiative with beer giant AB InBev. The two companies have committed to spending $50 million each to explore the development of non-alcoholic cannabis drinks.
The entry of the world's biggest brewer into the fast-changing' rapidly expanding cannabis industry generated a lot of buzz, even though AB InBev is playing catch-up with Molson Coors and Constellation Brands. (Favourite mainstream media miss-take goes to the Financial Times: "The involvement of the drinks company behind Budweiser in recreational cannabis brings new legitimacy to an industry previously the domain of drugs cartels.")
For now it's a Canada-only research deal—figuring out ways to infuse drinks with tetrahydrocannabinol, (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) ahead of next October's legalization of edibles and beverages. "Decisions regarding commercialization will be made in the future," was the official line in the press release.
AB InBev's participation is through Labatt Breweries of Canada. "Labatt is committed to staying ahead of emerging consumer trends," said Kyle Norrington, president, Labatt Breweries of Canada. "As consumers in Canada explore THC and CBD-infused products… We intend to develop a deeper understanding of non-alcohol beverages containing THC and CBD that will guide future decisions about potential commercial opportunities."
In an on-air interview with Bloomberg Thursday, Tilray CEO Brendan Kennedy said they signed the deal with AB InBev in order to have products ready for when edibles and beverages become legal in Canada. Tilray has been working to resolve key challenges like solubility and time-to-onset and time-to-peak-effect.
"With AB InBev we will work on other problems, such as what is the right flavour, what is the right packaging, what is the right brand for these various products to launch in Canada," he said. "And we are excited to launch them in Canada sometime next October when the new regulations come into effect."
Some of the products will be similar to beer and wine. "They'll have a rapid time to onset—15 minutes—there will be no calories and they won't leave people with a hangover the next day," he said. The company is also working on drinks catering to exercise recovery and to help people sleep and relax.
While Tilray's stock enjoyed a brief spike after the news broke, it has since trended downward. At the Motley Fool on Friday, Keith Speights said the market was underwhelmed by the deal for three reasons: It's a joint venture only in Canada, and there's no direct cash infusion for Tilray. Speights also didn't like the statement about commercialization being a down-the-road thing. "That phrasing doesn't provide a warm-and-fuzzy feeling that Tilray has found itself a committed partner."
And finally, Speights pointed out that Altria, which owns 10% of AB InBev, likely plans to develop cannabis drinks of its own through its just-announced 45% stake in Cronos and probably won't feel great about AB InBev producing competitive products.
—Photo: My 420 Tours, Wikimedia Commons
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Sadly, our short trip to Maui and the weekend immediately following was the only time Curtis and I had together in the month of January. Over the weekend, we built a second raised bed garden and planted more squash, beans, and potatoes. We finally found a washing machine for $20 and had "loads of fun" catching up on laundry, and trying out our solar-powered dryer (also known as a clothes line). We made our favorite food and spent every minute together, and ended the weekend with a sunset trip to the beach. Then it was back to reality, with Curtis working 56 hours in 4 days before leaving for the rest of the month.
The event that affected me personally was the one where Charlotte rolled in a dead fish at the beach. I thought I was being a cool mom, letting her follow her nose and roll in the sand to her heart's content — something I let her do every time we go to the beach — but this time was the first that things went so terribly wrong. Even worse, because I drove home with the windows down and all the windows were open in the house, I didn't notice the smell until we were cuddling together in bed that night. It was SO BAD! But I was lazy, and decided to wait until morning to take care of her. The next day consisted of multiple baths and loads of laundry, and scrubbing her down with lemon juice as instructed by the internet. The scent lingered for a few days, but I think it's gone now!
Aside from all that, Charlie and I are doing all we can to make time go faster. Things are growing really well in the garden, it seems like things are popping up much faster than with our garden in SC. Even more exciting, we have a giant mango tree in our yard which is in full bloom, promising delicious mangos this summer! We've gone to the beach a few times, go for walks on easy trails about every other day, and hiked to the Makapu'u Lighthouse again. I've been trying lots of healthy recipes, working, doing some long-put off art projects, and working on a giant puzzle on those days where I just want time to go faster. January seemed like a long month, but now that it's over, the countdown is on for the arrival of some special guests this month. 🙂 Happy February, everyone!


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Johnson can't outrun Sandy Hook tragedy
Heat-Mavericks Preview
Pa. congressman unhappy with NCAA fine guidelines
A Pennsylvania congressman voiced displeasure Thursday with how the NCAA president responded to a request from the state's U.S. House delegation that all of the $60 million in Penn State fines in the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal be distributed to causes within the state.
Republican Rep. Charlie Dent said in a statement that Mark Emmert's response was ''unacceptable and unsatisfactory.''
The NCAA president said in a Dec. 12 letter to Dent that a task force charged with developing guidelines for an endowment and hiring a third-party administrator to distribute the funds is to allocate at least 25 percent of the fine money to programs in Pennsylvania.
''By outlining comprehensive plans to address child sexual abuse, of course, agencies within Pennsylvania have an opportunity to significantly increase the initial allocation to the Commonwealth,'' Emmert added.
An NCAA spokeswoman on Thursday said the organization stood by Emmert's correspondence.
The university met an NCAA deadline on Thursday by placing the first of five annual installments of $12 million into a money market account, while the task force works on recommendations due in early 2013. The transfer of the money to the endowment is expected to occur in the first half of next year.
The payment was made by Penn State's athletics department through an internal loan from university reserves and will be repaid with interest, the university said Thursday.
According to the university, in-state organizations also are slated to receive the first round of funding from the endowment. The university said it had heard from ''a number of organizations and survivors of sexual abuse'' with ideas of how funds could be used to benefit children in the state and across the country.
Emmert's reply didn't address the delegation's concerns, Dent said, but ''instead chose to hide behind the procedural mechanisms of the NCAA-created Task Force in order to deflect any sort of actual accountability for the disbursement of these funds.''
Of the 10 members on the task force, two are affiliated with Penn State: Nan Crouter, dean of the College of Health and Human Development; and Craig Hillemeier, vice dean for clinical affairs at the College of Medicine. The task force chairman is Timothy White, chancellor of the University of California-Riverside.
Dent said directing funds to entities outside Pennsylvania runs contrary to its taxpayers' interests.
''I am greatly disappointed by Dr. Emmert's response and will continue to press for greater accountability and oversight of the NCAA on this and other matters,'' he said.
Sandusky, a former assistant to longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, was convicted this summer of sexually abusing 10 boys, some on campus. He is serving a sentence of 30 to 60 years in prison but maintains his innocence.
Three former university administrators also face trial on charges of perjury, obstruction and other offenses. They deny the allegations.
The abuse scandal led to the dismissal of Paterno, who died soon after, and elicited landmark NCAA sanctions including a four-year postseason ban and significant scholarship cuts.
Delegation members, in their Nov. 30 letter, noted that Sandusky's accusers were all Pennsylvania residents and all the ''substantiated reports of abuse took place within the Commonwealth.'' They urged that all fine money be dedicated to prevention and assistance programs within the state.
The NCAA, the governing body for college athletics, issued the fine as part of sanctions over the school's handling of the Sandusky matter.
University President Rodney Erickson agreed to the penalties in July. He said it was a difficult process but the university was left with little choice if it wanted to avoid a shutdown of its football program, known as the death penalty.
It's one of several tough decisions Erickson has made since replacing Graham Spanier, who left under pressure days after Sandusky's November 2011 arrest. Trustees chairwoman Karen Peetz cited Erickson's ''tremendous job'' leading the university through the last year when it was announced this week he has received a raise of $85,000 to $600,000, or a 16 percent bump.
Gov. Tom Corbett, a trustee by virtue of political office, said he was a ''little surprised'' about Erickson's raise and thought the timing was ''inappropriate.''
Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg contributed to this report.


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John Petrie
Serle Court CEO John Petrie believes measurement of Return On Marketing Investment needs to be approached in a holistic way and over the long term.
I was talking to John over lunch at The Law Society's 113 restaurant (if you've never tried this establishment you really must!) for the first in a new series of investigations into how legal managers and marketing folk measure the success of their programmes. As a sequel to last year's joint study with New Law Journal on the impacts of the social media mix, this year we are working together again to explore the topic of ROI. As before, we are devoting the first few months of our study to a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews, some of which we will publish in this blog. From this we will draw out some common themes which we'll test at the end of the summer with a statistical survey of NLJ's readers. The final report will appear in the pages of the NLJ at the end of the year.
"When the barristers ask me 'what did we get from this or that event?" John says, "I'll politely respond that I don't think it is the right question. Yes, we have many circumstances where one of our barristers will get a new instruction on a big case just by sitting next to someone at an event dinner, but that's just a bonus and it doesn't mean anyone else will have the same luck. Far more important is the role that event plays in our growth of instructions across the board over a concerted period. At Serle Court, we have a number of long term initiatives aimed at developing instructions from new jurisdictions and increasing work in existing jurisdictions. So we need to look at all the marketing we do in the context of our broader brand building in that region, so how the combined effort of profile-raising and establishing a regular presence on the ground, through events, face-to-face meetings, PR, social, is effective in positioning our set for the right type and level of work.
"Success of a marketing programme needs to be judged by how the different elements all work together to build recognition in our name and increase opportunities for face-to-face conversations, to capitalise on that increased profile and turn interest in what we do into concrete instructions. So it follows that return on that marketing investment in a specific jurisdiction is not to be judged one event at a time, but rather seeing how the pattern of instructions in the region changes in the medium and then the longer term."
So holistic is the holy grail. Wise words. Thanks John.
If you have strong views on this subject or interesting insights to share, then do please volunteer to take part in this study. You can send me your contact details, with a brief note if you like, using the comment box below.
Did you get to see Anthony Gormley's "Lunatick" exhibition while it was still in town? I managed to snare a couple of the very last tickets so my good friend Helen Obi and I were able to go. I can honestly say it was out of this world. Literally! We donned our VR headsets and found ourselves on a beach modelled on a Pacific island before being lifted up into the sky past the clouds and into space, then landing on the surface of the moon. Gormley collaborated with space scientist Dr Priyamvada Natarajan to use actual NASA images from space and moon missions to create this amazing virtual space journey.
I'm starting to see VR tech popping up everywhere. It's definitely becoming mainstream. A new property makeover show recently started on BBC Two using VR to help homeowners choose which design to go for, and a new history programme on BBC One uses VR to uncover the hidden history of Italian city life. So how long before law firms and barristers start to use VR? One use could be to offer VR recordings of seminars and conferences for clients who miss out on the day.
If you haven't had a chance to try out this new medium, do find an opportunity as soon as you can. It's coming our way!
There's never been a more pointed lesson on the importance of preparing properly for media interviews than Ben Shapiro's disastrous-hilarious interview with Andrew Neil. The US conservative political commentator ended up storming off the set, the interview went so badly - and entirely the fault of Team Shapiro. He'd clearly been briefed to expect an easy ride, indeed even an opportunity for a PR moment. But his cry of "[this] is a way for you to make a quick buck on the BBC off the fact I'm popular and no one has ever heard of you" baffled viewers as for them, Mr Neil is one of the most recognisable faces in UK news. More puzzlement was to come when Shapiro accused the famously right wing journalist of having a left wing agenda. Oh dear. If you didn't catch the interview at the time you can watch it here. But it comes with a health warning: this clip may cause serious toe-curling.
Angela Holdsworth
Sitting at Spark21's 2018 conference celebrating the First100 Years of Women In Law, the phrase "Out of the Dolls House and Into the Fire" comes to mind. Partly because the conference is featuring a series of video histories of women in law produced by Angela Holdsworth, the documentary maker famous for her seminal 1980s mini-series "Out of the Doll's House"; partly because one of the main guest speakers is Dany Cotton, the first female commissioner of the London Fire Brigade; but mostly because so many stories I'm hearing at this conference have a common theme: women break through barriers to take on top jobs, to then find their challenge has only just begun.
I'm a big fan of this First 100 Years project and the way its organisers weave together varied and intricate layers of communication to get their message across. The video histories that Angela and her team are creating are a prime example: rather than polemic, these are highly personal, and therefore relatable, stories. These are a sure-fire way to engage audiences and a rich complement to the conferences, blogs, press pieces and social media activity Spark21 is famous for.
Another fresh approach they are taking to ensure everyone in the profession is aware 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the first women appointed as solicitors, (and those of you who know me well will clock straight away why I love this idea), is to run a series of 12 parties, one a month throughout the entirety of next year. Each party will celebrate one decade of achievements and milestones of women in law. Now that's what I call dedicated partying!
I was curious to know how Angela first became involved with Spark21 and the First 100 Years project. Catching up over coffee and cake at the Law Society she told me: "We found each other on Twitter, just because we were often sharing similar content. Isn't that great? To make a connection on the basis of the commonality of themes and topics and issues you're interested in? So we began our conversation on Twitter and then transitioned to the real world" and it wasn't long before Spark21 founder Dana Denis-Smith was asking Angela to take on the role of executive producer for a new stream of video content for the project.
"The plan is to capture stories of women's firsts in law, or of women who have succeeded against the odds, and women who have used law as a stepping stone into another Sphere, such as Major General Susan Ridge, the army's Director General of Legal Services. There's a Finders Committee who decide together who should be profiled. Some choices are obvious, such as Brenda Hale as the first woman President of the UK Supreme Court. Others less well known, such as Khatun Sapnara, the first woman of Bangladeshi origin to be a High Court Judge."
So who else can we look forward to learning about via these video stories?
-Dame Fiona Woolf, previously Law Society President 2006-2007 and Lord Mayer of London 2013-2014 (amongst other significant City of London positions she's held),
-Funke Abimole MBE, multi-award-winning lawyer and business leader who at the start of her legal career had to make 120 calls to secure a training contract (then "articles"). She talks of turning up to one of her first interviews for a legal job only to be told at the door "Sorry, we're not looking for secretaries",
-Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the first female Lord Justice of Appeal,
-Dorothy Livingston, first female partner at Herbert Smith Freehills,
-and of course celebrity barrister, broadcaster and Labour Peer, Baroness Helena Kennedy
...to name just a few.
As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my recurring themes is clever use of the visual media to tell a story. So face-to-face with Angela I had a golden opportunity to learn from one of broadcast's best. I wanted to know how she approaches a video story differently from one in print. "You're always looking for what I call the Telling Shot, the one visual that sums up the entire story." I was enthralled as she described a classic telling shot she set up in another of her seminal TV documentaries, "Now The War is Over", chronicling how life changed in Britain from 1945 to 1951. In close-up, her interview subject reminisced about the pre-fab she once loved, sat in her living room looking wistfully out of the window. Then the telling shot: with the audience assuming she was looking out onto a street, the camera pulled away from her and out of the building to reveal she was on the 40th floor of a high-rise. A brilliant encapsulation of how housing policy had changed, how this impacted people's lives and how they felt about it. All in one single, but cleverly conceived, camera shot.
Do make sure to catch Angela's video histories as they are released by Spark21. You can follow them on Twitter here to make sure you don't miss out.
The First 100 Years project aims to Celebrate, Inform and Inspire. The organisers are certainly ticking each of these boxes: we can celebrate at the monthly parties; inform and be informed at the conferences; and be inspired by the video histories. Roll on 2019!
All the work on the project relies on volunteers and donations. If you'd like to give your support, you can make a donation here, or contact the team here to offer your time.
Copies of BBC's Out of the Doll's House are hard to get hold of now but you can easily order the book linked to the series here.
Of the many stories that London Fire Chief Dany shared with us, the one that set the room alight, sparking a moment of levity, was the tale of her efforts to get the makers of Fireman Sam to change his job title. She told of the storm she created inadvertently last year, by calling for a change to "Firefighter Sam" as part of a campaign to encourage more women into the Fire Brigade. "For the past 30 years, no one's had the job title Fireman", she explained. Everyone's a firefighter. "There's only one Fireman in the country, and he's a cartoon called Sam!" The outdated language in the TV cartoon puts young girls and women off from considering firefighting as a career, she says, and they miss out on what could be a very rewarding profession for them.
Dany strongly believes in fighting for equality, allowing both boys and girls to follow whatever career path they want and not be restricted by gender archetypes and prejudices. She used the occasion of Fireman Sam's 30th birthday to call for the change, as it coincided with her thirtieth year as a firefighter and she thought it was about time. A cute move I thought, although she did experience a strong social media backlash (or should I say backdraft?) However it was worth it to make the point. Nicely (and bravely) done Dany. Thank you.
Last call to take part in our social media study. As you know, we are currently running a survey together with New Law Journal, exploring how social media is shaking up the legal marketing mix. The research period is about to close, so if you haven't had a chance yet to give us your thoughts on the matter, please click here to answer our 3-minute questionnaire. Your views will make our final study report all the richer and we are keen to capture them.
The results will be published in New Law Journal at the end of the year, together with a selection of in-depth one-to-one interviews exploring some of the recurring themes in a bit more depth.
Lydia Rochelle
Lydia Rochelle warns that social media is no "silver bullet" for law firm marketing. "But used the right way", she says, "in a well-considered mix of marketing activity, it can bring a whole new level of engagement, adding real value to how a firm communicates with the outside world".
I spoke to Lydia in the week Kysen launched its joint survey with New Law Journal, designed to explore how social media is shaking up the law firm and barristers chambers marketing mix. I was keen to collect her views as she is a highly experienced legal marketer and PR, having worked in consultancy as well as in-house in law firms.
"Neither is social media a one-trick pony", she insists. "Different social media tactics will be more appropriate for different lawyers depending on their specialism and their target markets. For example, its role in business-to-business communications [B2B] is very different compared to a business-to-consumer [B2C] campaign."
Lydia is passionate that legal marketeers need to think in a nuanced way about social media and its place in the mix, otherwise the potential benefits will be lost. "With traditional corporate clients, often there is a rigid new business routine around formal RFPs [Requests For Proposals]. I query the value of social media campaigns in this context. Also, a target client who's a General Counsel at a private equity firm is not going to hire us on the basis of a video we push out; they will be more impressed with long-form written content. However, with property clients I have found social media activity combined with thought leadership to be a very positive combination. And differently again, with personal injury and clinical negligence work, social media comes into its own, because the target audience isn't corporate; indeed the website and social media can be a direct means of actually reeling clients in. This is one of the biggest differences between B2C and B2B marketing.
"Yes, the rise of social media as a mainstream communication channel for professional firms means we have entered a brave new world, but all the usual marketing rules still apply: know your target audience and decide on the appropriate channel accordingly (social or otherwise) for communicating with them."
I was particularly keen to know whether Lydia thinks the rise of social has changed the role of traditional media relations. "Traditional media remains vitally important: that's where you get your valuable "third party endorsement", eg a respected newspaper or journal validating that your lawyer is the expert in the area in question. It stretches the reach for your communications as well. And once published, you can use that content elsewhere too, including on social media. I place so much importance on press activity that I personally always start with the press when planning a mixed media campaign. Typically I plan a cascade of activity in this order: press, client alert, website, then social media and others "liking" it."
Lydia also has strong views that one-way engagement on social is a mistake. Indeed this is as much a faux-pas as having conversations with clients and prospects in which you only talk at them and don't listen. But surely this begs the question whether a corporate Twitter account can or should engage in conversation? "It doesn't need to, but can instead listen and share, without getting in to individual conversations", she says. "Individual lawyers' Twitter accounts can pick up and continue conversations started on the corporate Twitter account if necessary."
And has she seen a change in how visual media is used in law firm communications over the years she's been marketing and promoting them? "Visual communication is becoming increasingly important as our target audiences' attention spans get ever shorter. Clients love visual media because of speed of download! One good infographic can explain 40 pages of technical information. The digital information space is very competitive for lawyers and brevity trumps everything!" [I spoke to Lydia about Julie Gingell's concept of creating "thumb-stopping moments", ie making sure it's your firm's explanation of a breaking news topic that captures people's attention first.] "More and more firms are getting good at it too", she says, "Even the most conservative firms are now embracing good graphics as the norm, whereas once they would have seen it as "dumbing down" their communication. Freshfields and Clyde & Co put out their financial results in the form of an infographic, which is a very interesting development.
"Do firms embrace visual media more than they used to? Yes. Do they do it better than they used to? Yes, with better finish, certainly. Have they learned how to tell a story better with these new media? Generally no. They are much better at producing beautiful graphics, but do they do any more than present prettily? The opportunity with graphics and other visual media is to help people understand better/quicker … and so far in many cases this opportunity is being missed."
I agree there is no doubt the legal sector has come a long way and law firms and barristers chambers are now much more creative in their approach to marketing. But there is still a lot for many firms and chambers to take on board. At least we have excellent marketing professionals such as Lydia, and others I have profiled in this blog, to help them on their way.
*Drum roll*… Kysen's joint survey with New Law Journal, exploring how social media is shaking up the mix, is now live. In a unique piece of research, the study investigates law firms' and chambers' use of different types of media for marketing purposes, how they see the different strands of marketing working together and how this has changed in the digital and social age.
If you would like to get involved and express your opinion, you can access the survey questionnaire here. It takes minutes only to complete and your answers will be anonymous. We want to hear from you, so please do take part! The results will be published in New Law Journal at the end of the year. As regular followers of this blog will know, Kysen has also been conducting a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews with lawyers and legal marketing/comms professionals on this topic, some of which, (as Lydia's above), have appeared here. More of these interviews will be included in the final report, accompanying the survey findings.
Kysen's famous Tonic event is coming to Bristol! In partnership with The Samphire Club, the South West's premier business networking group, on 18 October Kysen is hosting its first ever Tonic outside London. Because we like to mix things up, to keep them fresh.
Are you familiar with Kysen's Tonic Club? It's a social mixer, designed as a "tonic" for those working in PR, marketing or management roles, in law firms or barristers sets. It offers the opportunity to bond over gin & tonic, (or non-alcoholic equivalent!), with like-minded people working in a similar sphere.
If you'd like to know more about our Tonic Club, please explore our LinkedIn Group here.
Liz Whitaker
Legal marketing supremo Liz Whitaker thinks social media has completely changed the role of "traditional" PR.
A firm's relationships with the media used to be much more "intense" in the days when they were the only conduit for pushing the firm's stories." Liz has been marketing and promoting law firms as long as I have, and we both remember the days when (ahem, this really shows our age...) when lawyers didn't even have websites, let alone any social media channels. So at that time, apart from direct mail, press really was the only way to get their news out there. And that could be quite a challenge if the story just wasn't that interesting to journalists (but hey, that's where we honed our creative skills, finding interesting angles to turn boring news into something intriguing and publishable), or if the journalist allocated to cover your firm had a very different perspective on the story from you. In contrast, Liz says "Today, if I have an appointment story for a firm, I can get it out to more people and more quickly on social media than I ever could via a press release. And the timing and wording are both within my mine and the client's control: I could push a story out this afternoon if I wanted to and get it in front of 1000s of people."
I've had several chats with Liz about this recently, in the course of Kysen's joint study with the New Law Journal in how social media is impacting the legal marketing mix. (See more below.) Our conversation began at a PM Forum conference at which she was speaking on Return On Investment and talking about her forthcoming book "The Power of Personal: how to connect, convince and create exceptional client relationships". The book is a distillation of Liz's 25+ years in professional services marketing, (including four years in-house at KPMG and nine at Wragge & Co, now Gowling WLG) and, she says, "identifies 100 reasons why organisations spend time and money on marketing and communications activity but not achieving the ROI" and includes Liz's pearls of wisdom on how to make sure marketing spend does reap dividends. You'll have to wait until November to buy The Power of Personal from a bookshop, but you can pre-order your copy here.
The next chat we had was at a quaint tea shop in Ledbury, and the third over a beautiful dinner under the smile of the Malvern Hills. Liz's home is just a few miles from my Malvern cottage, which is a lovely coincidence. Malvern is one of England's hidden gems for sure: most people haven't heard of it, but anyone who's been there will wax lyrical about its magic. The hills and surrounding landscape were the inspiration for CS Lewis's Narnia after all.
Given her preference for the control that disseminating news on your own platform allows, I was curious to know if Liz thinks there is no longer any value in traditional media activity, or raising profile in the press. Certainly I would argue that stories placed through the press have more "influence", precisely because audiences know you don't have control. You appear solely on merit. The press act as "gatekeepers", only giving lawyers space if they're convinced they are expert and authoritative. Indeed this is precisely where the value of media profile is: the third party endorsement, so an independent party confirming your lawyers' expertise and authority on a subject. In other words, if the BBC or the FT choose one of your lawyers as the best person to be explaining to their viewers/readers what the implications of a major court decision is, then that's a brilliant endorsement of their market standing. But does Liz think has completely changed in the new social media environment?
"Traditional media still has its place. Absolutely. For example press coverage can create a great impression about a firm if a potential client is looking for information about it and googles the firm. Also thought leadership achieved by pushing expert comment out via the press is still a very important tool for professional services marketing, but the point is today it's no longer the only one. Previously when putting campaigns together, media coverage was the be-all and end-all, but that's no longer the case as there are so many other channels for pushing out content."
Liz also had some interesting things to say about how digitisation has changed law firms' attitude to visual communication: "Firms now have a far more sophisticated approach. For a long time clients were way ahead of firms on that one. Indeed professional
firms were significantly behind the curve. But they have now caught up. The Big 4 accountancy firms do it particularly well. Some law firms do it well too... and most make a good effort. Generation Y in particular has grown up with good visual communication as the norm, and now these are the people in decision-making positions in firms."
Liz also believes that the channels you choose for your marketing mix say a lot about you, even before you get to the content of what you're saying. "The main point of my book is that with all professional services marketing there is in reality only a small number of people you want to talk to. So why waste time talking to anyone else? Just talk to them! And why limit your communications to arms-length media like the press, instead of writing to them direct? At the very least you should be reaching out to them in person, before they see things in the press from you on the same subject. If you get this right, these people then tell others and your work is done. Word-of-mouth communication and recommendation are more powerful than ever. Both can be managed."
This echoes our experience at Kysen where over the last few years we've seen our work expand into multi-channel campaigns, where it's the "chiming together" of press with other profile-raising and business development activity that delivers results. We love this new way of working, not least because it means we work more closely with in-house BD managers as well the PRs. And of course the other plus of working in a digital environment is that results are far more transparent. And that's very satisfying for us as well as our clients.
Today ...*drum roll*... New Law Journal and Kysen announce the launch date of their joint "Social Impacts" survey of law firms and chambers - investigating how social media is shaking up the legal marketing mix. The survey will open this September, with the start of the new legal term.
Since the start of this year Kysen has been conducting a series of in-depth one-to-one interviews with lawyers and legal marketing professionals, asking how the rise of social media platforms as mainstream communications channels for lawyers had changed how firms/chambers are marketed. You will have read extracts from some of these interviews in this blog. Through these interviews, we have identified a number of common themes, which we are now preparing to test statistically with this quantitative survey launching after the Summer break.
Questions include: What social media sites does your firm/chambers use? Do your lawyers post on social media? What's your own first port of call for the day's legal news? Is social media changing the way firms / chambers use visual props in their marketing? Have you heard or seen new business leads come in directly from social media?
If you would like to take part in the survey, and you are a lawyer or communications professionals in a firm or chambers, you can register your interest here and we will send you a link to the survey questionnaire as soon as it's live. Otherwise you will be able to access the survey via the New Law Journal and Kysen websites after the Summer. The survey will remain open throughout the September and October, and the results will be published at the end of the year.... blogged about, tweeted and posted on LinkedIn of course!
We're over the moon to see our good friend Nicola Sawford listed in Cranfield Schoolof Management's 100 Women to Watch, just out. We worked closely with Nicola for many years when she was Chief Exec of Serle Court chambers, before she "retired". As you can see, she's arguably busier now than ever! We keep in regular touch and I hear about her various trustee and non-exec-director appointments. How wonderful that her post-career career has taken such a stellar turn.
Dana Denis-Smith
The world is catching up with Dana Denis-Smith. In conversation with her at last week's FT Innovative Lawyers Summit, I commented on how fantastically her First 100 Years of Women In Law project has caught the imagination of so many people in my world, and men and women alike. For any of you unfamiliar with its aims, the initiative is designed to showcase the contribution of women to the law and highlight female role models for young lawyers, by telling stories of the barriers and opportunities female lawyers have encountered since they were first allowed to become practising lawyers almost 100 years ago.
"I'm quite astonished that it's become so zeitgeisty. I'm far more used to being the squeaky wheel in the corner, the lone voice banging on about things I think are important but nobody else seems interested in" she tells me shyly. "I thought it would be the same with this initiative. But when I first conceived the First 100 Years of Women In Law project I had no idea what was around the corner: Trump, Harvey Weinstein, the whole #MeToo movement. Suddenly equality and dignity for women have become mainstream issues rather than specialist interest topics."
Dana invited me to her next event so we could talk more about her work and I couldn't believe my luck! Suddenly I had the hottest ticket in town: First Women of the Supreme Courts in Conversation, hosted by Gray's Inn and sponsored by Serjeants Inn Chambers (one of its joint CEOs is the effervescent Catherine Calder who is a trustee of Dana's project) Mischon de Reya, Clyde & Co and LexisNexis. So I was treated to a panel discussion on what it is to be a woman in law between Baroness Hale, the famed law reformed and the first woman to serve as President of the UK's Supreme Court; Susan Kiel, another law reformer and the first female Chief Justice of Australia; Beverly McLachlin Who was the first female Chief Justice of Canada and the longest serving of any Sec; and Georgina Wood, the first woman to service as Chief Justice of Ghana. Given a key aim of the First 100 Years project is to role model success for younger women, way to go!
These awesome women gave us gems, such as "Women are half the population so bringing your "womanhood" to your work is just as valid as men bringing "manhood" to theirs!"
More than one said "My life changed as a young woman after reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex", describing the dawn of their realisation that women are somehow secondary persons to men. [Note to self: order copy for daughter right away.] Whilst the first wave of feminism was focussed on legal rights for women, the next wave, these world-leading custodians of the law told us last night, must be to deal with the more insidious cultural issues that prevail to this day, which subtly, not directly, telling women over and over they are subsidiary to men.
Indeed the premise of the First 100 Years initiative is based on marking next year's centenary anniversary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, which ended the notion that women weren't 'persons' in the eyes of the law, which had prevented them from being able to practise law. But law reform only gets us so far. It's a cultural shift we need to achieve next, for everybody's benefit, men's and women's alike.
Last night Dana invited us to join her on a journey. "The First Women of the Supreme Courts event is just the first of a whole series of exciting and inspiring initiatives and events taking us up to the centenary moment next year, 23 December 2019. There will be storytelling, events and an amazing digital museum documenting the journey of women lawyers from 1919 to the current day. We will be promoting interviews and biographies of prominent women in law on our website and also asking about the pioneering women who inspired them."
Today, everyone wants a slice of Dana and her First 100 Years project. This is definitely an initiative of our time. As I say, everyone is finally catching up with her thinking.
The other hot ticket that landed in my lap unexpectedly was for the FT Innovative Lawyers Summit. A client over from New York asked at the last minute if I could meet him there and help with some introductions. What a privilege! I can't divulge any detail of what was discussed in the sessions, (Chatham House Rules, you understand), but I can tell you that my brain definitely expanded several inches hearing discussions about the role of humans v machines in the delivery of legal services today and into the future.
And I learned from a new friend at UnitedLex, Nancy Jessen, that the smart firms are thinking about this and using classic management consultancy concepts such as the "stratification of legal services". This is not a new concept they told me, but I have to say I'd never come across the terms before and I've been in conversation with law firm managers for some 30 years. I definitely think that that some management consultancy discipline could be very good news for law firms just now as they navigate through how technology an digitisation is transforming the business world. UnitedLex we need you!
We loved The Telegraph's story about the use of foreign words in advertising. Audi, for example, has relied on 'Vorsprung durch Technik' (advantage through technology) for over 30 years to bring to mind Germany's reputation for high quality craftsmanship and technical expertise.
The reason foreign words and phrases work is down to psychology apparently: they encourage people to embrace a fresh outlook. This is a subject close to our own hearts of course, our company name Kysen being a phonetic interpretation of the Japanese business term "Kaizen" which means "continual improvement". A concept we buy in to as we are all keen here to keep learning....
Jonathan Ames
There's no one I can think of who produces more legal news stories each day than The Times' Jonathan Ames. With an average of 12-15 stories per day, (ok he takes a break at weekends, but still...). To achieve this level of output, he currently does two shifts daily, starting at 7am and finishing at 7pm. Gruelling! But no wonder The Times' email bulletin The Brief has been such a huge success.
The words "brutal" and "relentless" are mentioned when I ask Jonathan about the pressure of filing so many stories every day. But he's clearly relishing the role and rightly proud of what he and his colleagues have achieved. "It's a lot of work, no doubt about it. But it's very satisfying to look back each day, week, month, and see how much we've produced. We aim for as wide a spectrum of legal stories as possible, combined with a bit of gossip and some opinion. And about 80% of our news stories are sourced by ourselves, rather than responding to press releases. The Brief is all about old school newspaper journalism, but in a digital context." [Great soundbite Jonathan!]
I spoke to Jonathan just days before The Brief is to be housed on the main Times Law website. At a time when newspapers and magazines are struggling to monetise content, given there's so much information available free online, and in an era when most newspapers have been reducing their legal coverage (The Telegraph dispensed with a full time legal correspondent, and The Guardian its legal editor role, as far back as 2009) I was keen to know how his paper has managed to make a success of bucking the trend and expanding legal content.
"The Brief was launched in October 2015 as an experiment, The Times wanting to see if they could take a specialist subject the paper was already well known for and create some added value", he tells me. The Times' legal editor is none other than Frances Gibb, the pre-eminent legal editor amongst all national newspaper editors, so The Brief is starting from a strong base in this regard. Frances oversees all legal content in the main paper as well as in the Law section, in hard copy and online. "The idea was that the new specialist email bulletin, free to anyone who signed up for it, would remind specialist audiences about The Times' excellent coverage of legal issues, and reel more subscribers in to the main paper." Three years on, it's been a huge success. Job done! Jonathan, all that hard work has been worth it!
It has to be said that The Times has form in this area: The Brief was based on the highly successful Red Box bulletin that worked the same way for its political coverage. As Jonathan put it, "The Times is famous for grabbing commercial enterprise on the web by the scruff of the neck". [Wow this man IS good for a soundbite! Made me wonder if he'd ever consider a job in PR. But knowing Jonathan as well as I do, I wouldn't dare ask for fear of the expletives!] "There was a lot of scepticism when we first installed the paywall. But now, arguably it's the healthiest Fleet Street paper online, along with the Mail and the FT."
"This next stage", he tells me, "Is about bringing The Brief closer in to the main Times brand. From Monday [2 July] The Brief will still be sent out as a daily email bulletin as usual, but the content will be housed on the main Times website, in the Law section."
So does this mean it will no longer be free to non-Times-subscribers? "Existing Brief subscribers will need to sign up and pay for a Times subscription if they don't already have one. But for a certain period we're offering a special deal for these readers, to reward them for their loyalty to The Brief."
Don't miss out! If you haven't done it already, sort out your Times subscription this weekend!
Next week sees one of the best women-in-law events yet: First Women of the Supreme Courts in Conversation. UK Supreme Court president Baroness Hale will be joined by former Chief Justice of Ghana Georgina Wood, Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin and Chief Justice of Australia Susan Kiefel, to talk about the experience of women in law. The event is hosted by Gray's Inn and sponsored by our friends at Serjeants' Inn Chambers (among others). It forms part of the First 100 Years of Women In Law project, in association with Spark 21, (the charity that celebrates, informs and inspires future generations of women in the professions).
I assume everyone is now aware that 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, which enabled the first women - initially four, each with a first class degree from Cambridge - to pass their law exams and be admitted as lawyers for the first time.
I'm planning to catch up with First 100 Years founder Dana Denis-Smith at next week's event and will be writing up our Conversation for this blog, so watch this space...
What an amazing coup for The Lawyer Awards: snaring star comedian David Mitchell as the evening's entertainment. Fantastic! He regaled the Grosvenor House Hotel audience of solicitors, barristers, legal marketers, PRs and journalists with a tale of a disastrous mini-pupillage he did as a youngster, when a client was refused the return of a driving licence after a ban because the judge mistook Mitchell for the driver and decided he didn't look trustworthy enough.
For me personally, as regular readers of this blog will know, it was particularly cool seeing Mr Mitchell as only a month ago I was lucky enough to catch his Peep Show partner Robert Webb at the Hay Festival, discussing his book How Not To Be A Boy. Now I have the set!
Fay Gillott
Fay Gillott believes internal marketing is as important as external marketing. Particularly so in the case of law firms and barristers chambers. In fact she goes so far as to say the success of your external marketing depends on getting the internal bit right.
I caught up with Fay during the Hay Festival so I had a good opportunity to quiz her about her 20 years' experience as head of operations and business development in legal businesses. (In her time she has covered a variety, including a silver circle law firm, a patent attorney and two sets of barristers chambers.) She is famous for leading successful revenue enhancement and change management programmes, so when she offers her pearls of wisdom on the practical and tactical points that really make a difference between "nice in theory" and "success in reality", you listen!
"The markets for legal services are more competitive than ever before. This means there is a need for a professional approach to marketing and more paid-for activity. But lawyers are "on a journey" to understand this." [Nice euphemism Fay]. "Those who "get it", use marketing effectively, but with others you need to work hard to bring them along with your thinking. Internally lawyers put the barriers up: advertising is tacky, they say, and social media is not just tacky but dangerous too! It takes quite some persuasion to show that if these communication channels are used the right way, they are completely capable of communicating messages about the business's expertise, imparting knowledge and offering something serious and valuable, in a way that is wholly consistent with a top law firm / chambers brand."
I was particularly keen to hear Fay's thoughts on how the rise of social media as a mainstream channel is shaking up the professional services marketing mix, given the study on this topic Kysen is currently working on with New Law Journal.
"Many lawyers don't yet accept social media as a fact of business life. Some still dismiss it as merely something that students do, not believing that it projects a professional image. And with some the resistance is not just to Twitter and Facebook, but LinkedIn too. More are comfortable with LinkedIn, it has to be said, and some get professional help with their profiles and use their LinkedIn accounts for creating a regular blog. But Twitter is seen by many as a scary frontier to be avoided altogether. So you can see how much work there is to do in a firm or a set, to convince lawyers that a properly managed social media stream is necessary for the business, before you even get on to what they might do as individuals to support the corporate channel, eg posting and tweeting themselves."
This social media example is just one illustration of how the success of internal marketing directly impacts the effectiveness of the external effort: with everyone engaged and working together with the central marketing team, the traction in the external marketplace is going to be so much more. You can extrapolate from the following and apply the same principles across all the other areas of the marketing mix…
"Time needs to be set aside and sessions arranged to present the planned approach for how the business is to engage with their audiences through social media, using reasoned arguments and lots of evidenced examples as to why it is important and why the particular approach has been chosen. It needs to be an interactive session, so people engage properly, as this encourages buy-in. These sessions also need to cover what the role of individuals and teams is within the programme, so everyone is clear not only what the business-wide plan is, but what their own role is within this. And of course, very importantly, support needs to be offered, to skill up and encourage those individuals and teams as they give to the programme what is being asked of them.
"Once you've cracked this internal challenge, the rest of the marketing effort becomes easier. Not only is everyone in the business clear about what they need to do, but also the more understanding they have of the rationale behind the strategy of the professionals they employ, the more lawyers will listen to them and let them get on with their job! The sum total of all of this is that the marketing actually happens, rather than being half-done. Lawyers are always keen to ask about Return On Investment in marketing. To my mind, the most important factor in maximising the ROI, is making sure that that the marketing activity prescribed in the strategic plan actually happens in real life!"
From my own experience working 12 years in-house in law firms, I have to say I completely agree: at the end of the day, strategy is delivered through people, and particularly so in a legal business. This is why investing time in making sure everyone is clear about the strategic plan for developing the business, and their role within it, will reap dividends.
A personal highlight at the Hay Festival was Peep Show's Robert Webb talking about "How not to be a boy", promoting his book of the same name. He challenged the audience with some very interesting thoughts on the unhelpfulness of gender assumptions and how 'The Patriarchy' is as bad news for men as it is for women. I was inspired to buy the book and I read it in just three days. Very entertaining. A definite recommend. Favourite bit: his little daughter talking over the family breakfast table about "the trick [she meant the patriarchy] that makes men sad and women get rubbish jobs." That about sums it up in my book!
You can buy "How not to be a boy" here.
Here's Adele's favourite story of the week: the racoon that scaled a skyscraper in Minnesota over a period of 20 hours."Just look at his little face", she says.
On a serious point, she went on to point out what it says about viral memes. This story was broken by a small local radio station and was soon livestreamed and was trending on Twitter (#mprraccoon) – all major news outlets covered it around the world (which is mad). It's interesting, she says, how the news agenda is set more than ever by what the people want, rather than what newspapers think people should know about.


If you are a fan of car racing, Formula One in particular, here's a game that should be included in your Android game collection. Its called Thumb Formula Racing and it lets you race around in some cool F1cars in portrait mode, with just a flick of your thumb.
You'll be competing with 9 opponents and you can proceed to the next level only if you finish in the first three places. There are 42 different cars you can buy from the money you earned from racing. The coins will also be handy to pick up a few boosters.
The game features 120 tracks that are beautifully laid out and you can drive in two view modes; from an overhead view or from the cockpit of the car.
Thumb Formula Racing looks quite easy to play, but it does take a bit of time to progress through as one small mistake at any of the sharp bends will easily throw you out of the top three and you'll finding yourself repeating the levels time and again.
Thumb Formula Racing is available on Google Play for free. Check it out if you have a need for speed.


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Free to Play MMOs
Fantasy MMOs
Action Combat MMOs
Browser MMOs
Anime MMOs
MMORTS and Strategy MMOs
PvP MMOs
Pay to Play MMOs
MMO Game Reviews
Comparing MMORPG Group Content
Tag Archives: Warhammer Online
MMOs are, at their heart, about playing with other people. Even as a mainly solo player, I acknowledge this. To this end, developers have come up with many forms of content designed specifically to be tackled by groups, but they're not all created equal. Each form of group content has its pros and cons.
Dungeons are the archetypical RPG experience: a party of adventures venturing into forgotten ruins in search of wealth and glory. In MMORPGs, dungeons are usually for groups of about four to six players, which makes them a happy balance between being social but not too crowded.
Dungeons tend to represent a stepping stone between the easy outdoor content and the more challenging raids. This is both one of their chief virtues, and their downfall.
The problem with dungeons is that they are, almost invariably, viewed only as that stepping stone. They are rarely granted the privilege of being an endgame unto themselves, instead being treated as little more than a funnel into raids. This makes it hard to achieve satisfying progression as a dungeon fan. You end up living as a second class citizen to the "real" players, who raid.
For better or for worse, raids have long been held up as the pinnacle of MMO group content. They feature the largest group sizes, the highest difficulty, and the best rewards.
For those who enjoy them, raids are as good as it gets. The MMO community is full of stories of fond memories, lifelong friendships, and even marriages that grew out of raid groups.
The downside is that while the raiding community is incredibly vocal and passionate, it's also incredibly small. Due to the high time and skill requirements of raiding, most players simply can't be bothered. Hard numbers for such things are always difficult to come by, but from the evidence I've seen it seems that raiders usually make up about 1-5% of a MMORPG's playerbase, at best.
The problem arises from the fact that raids are also very resource intensive, and by their nature as the intended pinnacle of endgame, they tend to offer the most desirable rewards and the highest production values. Thus, huge amounts of development resources are being devoted to a tiny minority of players.
It's not impossible for raiders and non-raiders to coexist, but it's a difficult tightrope for a developer to walk. You need to reward the raiders for their hard work without kneecapping everyone else. Raids are inherently disruptive to the balance of a game.
Small Group Content
By "small group content," I mean content that is designed for groups, but groups of a size less than the traditional dungeon group — two to three people.
The fact there's no commonly accepted term for content scaled to this size — the way there is for dungeons and raids — should tell you how common it is. World of Warcraft experimented with scenarios in its Mists of Pandaria expansion, which were catered to three player groups, and the upcoming Battle for Azeroth will add a similar feature in the form of Island Expeditions. Secret World Legends also has a feature called scenarios that can done by duos, but beyond those I struggle to think of many examples of dedicated small group content in MMOs (feel free to mention others in the comments).
People who prefer to play in twos or threes are therefore usually relegated to playing quest content that was designed for soloists, forcing them to endure phasing issues or difficulty that wasn't tuned for more than one person.
And I really don't understand why. Again, not being a developer or researcher, I don't have hard numbers, but anecdotally as a longtime MMO player, I've found that groups of two or three (often couples or close friend groups) are by far and away the most common form of social group in MMOs. The fact that most group content is built solely for larger groups baffles me.
PvP doesn't immediately come to mind for me when discussing group content, but duels and the occasional gank notwithstanding, player versus player gameplay is almost always group-based.
The trouble with PvP from a social perspective is that it necessitates losers as well as winners. For this reason, it has a higher potential for toxicity (not that PvE doesn't have its fair share, as well).
As a result, I think it's better to enter PvP with a group of people you already know and trust, rather than trying to form connections mid-match. The exception may be for slower paced, larger scale PvP such as Guild Wars 2's WvW or Cyrodiil in Elder Scrolls Online. The persistent nature of those contests gives time for meaningful social connections to flourish.
A world boss spawns, and the call goes out in general chat. In a matter of minutes, dozens or even hundreds of players descend upon the unsuspecting mob, full of fire, fury, and the lust for loot.
First introduced by the dearly departed Warhammer Online and made a major selling feature of both Rift and Guild Wars 2, public events are MMOs at their wildest and most chaotic. Whether this is a positive or a negative depends on personal perspective, but for my money, I feel public events are the purest expression of what MMORPGs should be, organic and epic in equal measure.
That said, there are other perspectives. Many argue — with more than a little justification — that public events are naught by mindless zergs. Even as a huge fan of the concept, I struggle to defend them from this criticism.
Others say that the lack of organization makes it difficult if not impossible to form meaningful social connections. If it's just a mindless swarm of people spamming abilities, where's the opportunity for friendships to form?
It's a worthy concern, but I must say that the one and only meaningful friendship I ever made via MMOs was with someone I met at a world boss fight in The Secret World…
This entry was posted in General MMOs, MMO Game Design, MMO Opinions, MMO Social Theory, Socializing Online and tagged Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, Rift, Secret World Legends, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft on August 21, 2018 by Tyler Bro.
Best MMORPG By Year: Part 2 (2006 – 2015)
Ten years down, ten to go. If you haven't read it yet, check out our Best MMORPG By Year: Part 1 (1996 – 2005).
MMORPGs have grown more numerous in their yearly releases at this point. But have they actually gotten better? Some would argue no as many simply tried to tweak World of Warcraft. Whatever you may think, at least these winners have proven themselves the best MMORPG by year for their respective time periods.
Best MMORPG of 2006 – Dungeons & Dragons Online
Runner-up: Wurm Online
I probably played more of 2005's Silkroad Online in 2006, but Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) was the better overall game even back then. It follows the heavily instanced nature of 2005's Guild Wars with instanced quests that players can form small groups to overcome. It uses a modified D&D 3.5 ruleset as the backbone for combat and advancement. Unlike tabletop D&D though, players fight in real-time. In fact, DDO employs a bit of twitch based combat where players must manually aim attacks. This was a first for a mainstream fantasy MMORPG and lent itself to creating a unique experience at launch.
Overall, Turbine did a great job of bringing Dungeons and Dragons to an MMO environment. Dungeon masters narrate quests, each with their own story for those who find themselves interested. Unfortunately, there isn't enough content to level up purely on unique quests. Players will need to repeat quests, some several times, in order to sufficiently advance to take on new quests. To make matters worse, some quests can be quite difficult without an adequate party composition that can take some time to fill. For these reasons, DDO can really grow tiresome but there is no denying its 2006 crown.
Best MMORPG of 2007 – Lord of the Rings Online
Runner-up: Elsword
Turbine found itself on a roll from 2006-2007. After handling one major fantasy IP more than competently, they were given the reigns to the vaunted world of Middle Earth. Lord of the Rings Online sought to create an immersive MMORPG steeped in the rich lore of Tolkein's masterpiece. For the most part, they succeeded. The entire game feels like a community struggle against evil. Even the PvP system disallows players fighting each others' characters, but instead allows one side of players to temporarily control the monsters.
The greatest strength of Lord of the Rings Online is its adherence to the lore. Even little things like calling achievements deeds and parties fellowships add to the ambience. Fellowships are required for challenging instances, rewarding coordinated players with group attacks called Fellowship Manoeuvres. The classes are fairly unique too. Wizards such as Gandalf are rare so magically inclined players instead take on the role of rune-keepers and lore-masters. Physical combat classes are similarly unique to LOTRO. Players can even play a variety of musical instruments, forming impromptu bands in town squares. The game simply comes to life and to this day continues to build on its iconic world.
Lord of the Rings Online combines a well told MMO story, compelling quests, and a rich world steeped in lore. It's an MMORPG with a strong draw for those who appreciate a little role-playing in their role-playing game.
Best MMORPG of 2008 – Age of Conan
Runner-up: Warhammer Online
Warhammer Online and Atlantica Online came close to winning this. After all, in 2008 Age of Conan was a mess. The game lacked in content, the combat felt clunky, endgame felt repetitive, and bugs ran rampant. The game entertained in Tortage, Age of Conan's solo tutorial area for the first twenty levels, and then promptly fell off a cliff. Funcom is just a terrible company when it comes to MMORPG launches, but they sure do know how to turn things around.
Age of Conan is now brimming with content, the unique combat system feels responsive, and the multitude of unique classes are a welcome change from typical fantasy MMORPGs. Players will find themselves with plenty to do as they progress their character to the maximum level of eighty. Typical endgame raids await to continue powering up, but honestly other games do those better. And for a mature setting, the PvP is sadly lacking with class balance issues and mediocre systems. Still, the combat system combined with a rich environment has provided a lasting legacy that tops 2008's other offerings.
Best MMORPG of 2009 – Champions Online
Runner-up: Runes of Magic
2008 didn't set any lasting trends in the MMORPG industry, but at least it didn't disappoint like 2009. Several titles flopped, building on 2008 to give further rise to the notion that MMORPG developers really suck at living up to their promises. Champions Online would be the second superhero themed MMORPG released by Cryptic Studios, having sold their first (City of Heroes) to NCSoft. It's also the obvious choice for 2009 as this year's only title to bring something unique to the genre. The current state of the game feels money grubbing, but there is a lot Champions Online offers to would be superheroes.
Champions Online's character customization might still be better than every competing MMORPG. Not only from the perspective of combining desired superpowers for a character, but appearance customization is worlds ahead of other games too. Speaking of appearances, the visual style lends itself to a fulfilling 3D comic book world that immerses players in the role of their characters. Combat, PvP, and crafting leave a lot to be desired in it's current state though and the free to play system is extremely stifling. 2009: the year of we do what we can with what we have.
Best MMORPG of 2010 – Final Fantasy XIV
Runner-up: Vindictus
Guess who's back? Back again. Final Fantasy's back. Tell a friend.
Good grief, 2010's MMORPGs in 2010 vs. 2010's MMORPGs in 2016 are a massive difference. Star Trek Online and Perpetuum are both in much better places than they were six years ago. Vindictus and Dragon Nest, still two of the best free targeting MMORPGs, have only added content to what were strong Korean releases. But nothing has changed as much as Final Fantasy XIV.
The game was such a train wreck on release that Square Enix stopped charging subscription fees for over a year while they revamped the game, ultimately culminating into "A Realm Reborn". Now, Final Fantasy XIV stands as a benchmark for traditional MMORPG play. Much like Final Fantasy XI, strong group coordination is required to overcome the game's most difficult challenges. However, solo play for the majority of progression is much more viable. The job system provides an incentive to revisit old areas and adds diversity to class builds. Perhaps the latest Final Fantasy MMO's most noteworthy feature though is its strong narrative. The game features characters you won't immediately forget with cut scenes reminiscent of its single player brethren. It's no surprise then that questing is a strength of this MMORPG.
As it stands, Final Fantasy XIV is a perfect title for those seeking a modern adaption of MMORPGs from the early 2000s. Subscription fee included.
Best MMORPG of 2011 – TERA
Runner-up: Rift
Far and away, 2011 gave me the longest pause to consider which title to choose. TERA, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Rift are the MMOs that most readily come to mind, but DC Universe and the now defunct Rusty Hearts are both underrated. Ultimately, I went with TERA primarily because its combat system offers the most unique gameplay.
TERA's combat really embraces the "new" style that eschews classic tab targeting for freeform player targeted skills. Players in TERA need to actually aim their abilities at the target to hit them. Additionally, the combat pacing is much faster than MMO competitors. These two design decisions lead to a combat system that rewards players not purely for equipment (although that's important too) but for their individual skill as well.
The downside is that TERA's enemies in the open world are beyond bland. Interesting dungeons aren't available for at least twenty levels and PvP doesn't really begin until max level. So although leveling is relatively fast, the combat is still a chore for a good while until adequate challenges present themselves. When those challenges do come around though, the game really shines. TERA also features a great free to play system that is, in our opinion, not pay to win.
Best MMORPG of 2012 – The Secret World
Runner-up: Guild Wars 2
This was a fun year. Blade & Soul, which came out in America in 2016, notably released in Korea this year. It offered some great combat, but in the end I really only considered two Western MMORPGs: The Secret World and Guild Wars 2. They both offered a compelling and unique sales pitch but couldn't be further apart at launch. As with every single Funcom MMORPG, The Secret World released in a half baked state. On the other hand, Guild Wars 2 felt rather complete. Naming The Secret World the winner would've certainly surprised my 2012 self. However, Guild Wars 2 has felt pretty stagnant despite their latest expansion while The Secret World has only grown stronger as a dark, atmospheric, story driven MMORPG.
The Secret World has built a rich environment for its player base to explore and currently offers the best MMO quests. There are no filler missions in The Secret World, with each tying into the main story arch. Many unique concepts abound during these integral quests. Players will need real world research to decipher clues, Metal Gear Solid skills to sneak through occult locations, deduction to solve coded puzzles, and fortitude to defeat rich Lovecraftian creatures. The Secret World advances MMO questing to the next generation and sits there squarely by itself.
Despite an excellent freeform character skill system, the combat does leave something to be desired. This certainly puts a damper on enjoying endgame dungeons, but shouldn't dissuade interest from The Secret World. It's not a game for tacticians or action junkies but for those seeking to be immersed in a deep, Lovecraftian-esque world. With a story that still sees regular updates and a buy to play option to get started, The Secret World is going strong.
Best MMORPG of 2013 – Warframe
Runner-up: Aura Kingdom
Might as well dub this the year of pay to win. All the larger populations MMOs like ArcheAge, Neverwinter, and Echo of Soul sooner or later fell into pay to win ways of varying degrees. I wanted to choose Wizardry Online here, but it never realized its potential prior shutting down. Aura Kingdom almost won due to a cute anime MMO styling that employs Aeria's most reasonable freemium system to date. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to overcome Warframe.
Like Guild Wars, one could argue Warframe isn't an MMORPG. There isn't anything massive about the game other than its player base, chat, and the marketplace. I'm generally inclusive when defining an MMO though, and Warframe is the best of the games I considered.
First, combat in Warframe resembles Devil May Cry with a combination of fast paced melee and ranged abilities. Cooperative missions are the the primary form of content and advancement and places players in a central position in an ever growing galactic conflict. To overcome these missions, players can purchase a multitude of unique Warframes to pilot. These are similar to League of Legends champions in terms of offering significantly different gameplay without necessarily being stronger than one another. The game is extremely grind heavy, but there are a lot of interesting warframes, weapons, modules to collect. Though progression is slow, it's extremely rewarding. A lot of the grind can be bypassed with cash, but ultimately everything can be acquired through in game play.
Warframe is a solid choice for the experiencing the life of a cyberninja, as long as repeating co-op missions (albeit of high quality) to acquire new equipment sounds fine.
Best MMORPG of 2014 – WildStar
Runner-up: Elder Scrolls Online
To give you an example of how difficult it was to choose between WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online, I think I swapped these five times before finally settling on Wildstar. I'm fairly confident Elder Scrolls Online will stand the test of time due to Tamriel's rich lore and the series' dedicated fan base. On the other hand, WildStar seems to constantly be on life support after a bad launch. For now, the population is revitalized thanks to the Steam launch, and there is just so much to love about WildStar.
The quirky universe, colorful palette, and HGTV quality house decorating give WildStar a lot of character. Yet it is the fast paced, action oriented combat system that truly gives WildStar a place in the crowded MMO market. The vast majority of moves telegraph their hit area, giving opponents a short time to dodge or counter. Despite this, the telegraphing doesn't tend to the clutter the screen and provides players clear information with which to react. PvP battlegrounds reward competent play, but PvE is where WildStar really shines.
Many consider WildStar's raids to be the best raids that any MMORPG has to offer (including those from you know who). Instanced dungeons and expeditions (group quests) offer challenging content that doesn't just give you a win because you're new. It's truly a rewarding experience. Theorycrafting is fun thanks to easy respecs and a slew of combo-laden options. While the game is reasonably solo friendly, WildStar really shines with group content. If Steam doesn't provide an adequate population boost this could be detrimental for what is a fantastically underrated free to play MMORPG.
Best MMORPG of 2015 – Skyforge
Runner-up: Trove
I'm not trying to knock Skyforge (OK, maybe I am a little bit) but proclaiming this the best MMORPG of 2015 caps off a weakened state of recent MMOs. Let's give Skyforge it's due though. It is the best MMORPG of 2015.
Skyforge's progression system is one of the more unique aspects about the game. Players will navigate something similar to a sphere grid in Final Fantasy X (or Path of Exile) to progress. All characters can eventually access all classes and change freely between them outside of missions. As you might notice, free targeted action combat has grown popular and Skyforge implements its own version. Enemies aren't as interesting as say, the aforementioned Wildstar, and are a bit too damage spongey. Still, the moves themselves look great and give motivation to level up. The active content revolves around missions but players can solo them when populations are low. The missions are fun the first time around, but even the random bonus objectives don't entice replay as much as say, Warframe.
Although it takes a while to get there, what truly sets Skyforge apart are the AFK activities. These are polarizing, but it's the main reason why you'd stick with Skyforge. As a god (eventually with a bad ass divine form), you'll slowly grow your followers to provide character boosts. This is represented through a Facebook-esque game called the order system. You'll recruit adepts, assign them to missions, build sanctuaries, they'll level up, you'll get bonuses and then repeat. The constant growth in Skyforge can be addicting. The appeal here is greatest for achievement/progression junkies or someone who just wants to play a god in an MMORPG.
Twenty Years of MMORPGs
That does it. Twenty years, twenty MMORPGs. Well, forty if you count runner-ups but second place is the first loser, right? We don't speak of them (much). And while we could look back on this in another decade with a very different 2012 – 2015. I don't see much changing with MMOs older than that.
I'd be flabbergasted to see people in 100% agreement with these so if there's anything to add, all human comments are welcome.
Missed the first ten years? Start over with the Best MMORPG by Year.
This entry was posted in MMO Opinions, Top X Lists and tagged Age of Conan, Aura Kingdom, Champions Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Elder Scrolls Online, Elsword, Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, Runes of Magic, Skyforge, TERA, The Secret World, Trove, Vindictus, Warframe, Warhammer Online, Wildstar, Wurm Online on June 27, 2016 by The Bro.
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