Since that post things have moved on considerably and I felt I’d revisit the concept and update regular readers on the progress of what I then thought would be a nice little initiative but has since turned into a slightly bigger one.

The first thing to mention is that off of the back of this post I began to run the Bradford Social Media Surgeries which have been a really interesting side project. We’ve done two so far, in July and September, and I have been lucky enough to meet some really interesting people along the way. Also, thank you to all of the people who gave their free time to come along and act as ‘surgeons’ on the day, not to mention those that were good enough to give me lots of good, not to mention free, PR for the event. Social media Surgeries are aimed specifically at Third Sector companies (Those in the Voluntary, Community, Charity and Social Enterprise sectors) and that in itself brings its own set of challenges. For instance, how do you help a women’s refuge enter into a conversation with potential service users when their whole business revolves around confidentiality? It’s certainly not a challenge you face every day in the more straightforward corporate world.

Probably the biggest project I’ve been involved with, both in terms of scale and time, has been Fire Walk With Me, a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the original – and still only – airing of Twin Peaks. Although largely inspired by the work of David Lynch the event, which took place on the 18th of September, became more of a Warholian affair, bursting at the seems with interesting films, people in costumes, live music performances. In short, it was a rather beautiful night and well worth investing some time in. It was all to raise funds for Temple Works in Leeds which is a lovely listed former mill building which is modelled on the Temple of Horus at Edfu in Egypt and has morphed, via a short period of virtual dereliction, into an arts venue like no other.

The first of the ideas is a bit of an abstract one but one I’m convinced will work. Those who know me will know that I’ve always been a bit of an amateur theologian, I like to read about the way religions work and the arbitrary rules they set themselves, as a committed atheist I find it fascinating.

One thing I have always liked was the concept of tithing. Put simply “The tithe is that tenth of our income that we give to God, which enables Him to move on our behalf in the area of blessings”. Now, I’m not advocating that I randomly bestow a tenth of my income on a random church, after all some of these organisations are some of the richest in the country, and anyway I’m an atheist. The idea that I had was that I should give ten percent of my time, ie. one afternoon or morning of the week, over to doing stuff for free. At the same time I happened upon Matthew Knight of yarned, and we hit up a discussion about it. After a brief chat I decided that if he could do it than so can I, so I will. Being a new business, I think 10% is logical as a start figure. I already do about that amount, if not more, of unpaid advisory work but formalising it somehow makes it more real.

From now on Totaal, as a company rule for anybody on the payroll, shall henceforth have one morning or afternoon of the working week as “Tithed Time” to do something good. That means something charitable, something that gives something back to a community or something that is downright cool.

Also, something else that has been troubling me is the lack of perceived ethics in what I do. Now, that’s not the same as a perceived lack of ethics, even if we are a Social Media company, we have so far – and always will have – 100% client satisfaction. I’m as strict a critic as an agent as I was when I was a client and that wont change. More specifically, what we do as a company needs to be framed by what we wont do and what we don’t do.

It’s probably too big an issue to tackle right now but over the next few months I’ll be blogging, and speaking to people I respect offline too, about the best way to develop this ethical policy in more detail. It’s a given that I wont work with, or work for anyone owned by, arms dealers, oil companies or any companies responsible for acts of mass pollution like Union Carbide. What’s really interesting though is can I refuse to work for tobacco companies? I smoke, would that not just be massively hypocritical? Do I try and remain apolitical? I certainly have failed at doing that in my personal life even if I’m avowedly unaffiliated to either of the major parties.

I know some pretty ace people read this blog so if any of you have any thoughts on either of these issues it would be great to hear them. I could really do with some help on the ethical stuff, I want to make an interesting and considered, thought-provoking ethical policy and not a polemic. How do I do my bit for the planet or at least not muddy my environmental karma? HELP!