Just so we’re clear, I’m this Mike Seery, not this one.

I’m going to take you on a journey of my use of computers…

The first computer that I worked on was a Research Machines Ltd 380Z (at school; skipping the punched cards submitted to UCL). The next was an ACT Sirius 1 (University; for my final year project - see below), followed by a Sperry 1100/62 (first job, at the Cabinet Office, where I ported the model used to doctor seasonally adjust economic data to a PC), then a DEC Vax using Mimer (at British Gas, now National Grid, to run modelling programs to make sure that there was enough gas to go round!).

Can you see the pattern, yet?

My next job was at Rudolf Wolff (I left just before it was sold to Enron, who, it turned out, didn’t have the money to buy it in the first place, but that’s another story) where I used DEC Alphas and installed a Bay Networks local area network (rather than using Cisco kit).

I’ll help you out. Most of the companies (save Research Machines and Mimer) or products no longer exist, though their legacies certainly do.

Since I joined The Economist, however, things have looked a bit better.
Sun Microsystems is just about still around as is Oracle and, indeed, the content management system that we developed for Economist.com (which incidentally meant that we developed Economist.com V3 from scratch for less than people were paying for Vignette at the time). The use of Oracle to power Economist.com could have been a close run thing with Sybase, but I learned from my Mimer days that in the hi-tech real world paper and scissors game, marketing beats technology. I also got married to Becky whilst at The Economist (and still am, of course) so the omens are looking good for Project Red Stripe to create a lasting legacy. Outside work, my passions are Becky (also at one time known as DataDiva - definitely not Blues Country or Folk), Jake and Arsenal.As for innovation, here’s my choice of the top three innovations of my lifetime (that I also own):

1. Domestic smoke alarm
2. Waterfield Designs Cargo bag with paragliding buckle
3. iPod (but only with iTunes and the Apple Music Store)

You can contact me via mike at projectredstripe.com.

What are they doing other than visiting watering holes on Fleet Street or putting themselves through emotionally draining team-building exercises? Readers of this blog may be excused for asking this question. After all, the postings here have been somewhat “navel gazing”, as Mike put it kindly.

But don’t worry, we’ve been working hard on other things as well. And we will now write more about them.

We are currently spending much of our time developing a process to gather ideas from the outside world. So expect to shortly see a “call for ideas” here. To cast our net widely, we’ll also e-mail it, for instance, to readers of The Economist, post it in the blogosphere and do some advertising. Why are we doing this? Because we think that we don’t have all the answers.

It is hard to predict how many ideas we’ll receive. So the other main item on our to-do list is to come up with a robust mechanism to sift and analyse the submissions.

We sure hope that such openness and our processes are innovative in themselves. But if you know of companies that have gone down a similar path to come up with something innovative on the web, please let us know.

Last week, Javier Bajer paid us a visit by phone from Argentina, where he is on a speaking tour. When not in his native country or talking to us, this well-known consultant helps the senior management teams of such global giants as HP and Shell to become more effective.

We might have waited for Javier to come back to London (and we will meet him there in person soon, to repeat the exercise). But given that we only have six months, we needed his help fast – to speed up the process of turning us into an efficient team (which, as the Lego exercise clearly showed, we are not yet).

Javier is not a fan of personality assessment tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). He doesn’t think that people are as set in their ways as these tests suggest, but that their belief systems, for instance, can – and should – change.

It is crucial for a team to avoid members’ beliefs becoming set in stone, he argues, particularly with respect to each other. “If beliefs such as ‘he is too technical’ or ‘he doesn’t know anything about marketing’ become a pattern, a team is bound to get stuck.”

Getting team members to talk openly about themselves, thus reaching a higher level of trust, is not just a way to avoid such blockage, but to help teams under high pressure to produce results. As a kind of catalyst for openness, his company, Possibilate, has come up with a tool called Leadership Alignment Tool (LAT), which looks rather like a child’s wooden toy.

Its purpose is to help team members find out whether they are out of whack, or “misaligned” in Javier’s words. First he made us jot down our “beliefs”, “intentions”, “promises” and “actions”. Then we had to move the four blocks of the LAT (each representing one of the above categories) in such a way as to show any perceived misalignments between them. Finally, we explained the blocks’ positions and come up with ways to get them better aligned.

Without going into details, the LAT is not easy to use, as Javier had warned us before. Some of us are still not sure whether we have actually understood what we are supposed to do. But by the time we finished running through everyone’s “misalignments”, we had definitely achieved, at times very emotionally, a heightened sense of understanding about ourselves, other team members and the project.

Exposing one’s soul is not something I would naturally choose to do, let alone in public. To share my deepest thoughts and concerns is a practice I would usually reserve for a select and intimate few. Yet the web in its current incarnation seems to challenge this notion head on.

Through blogs and social forums, not only does one expose oneself to an unknown audience. This exposure also invites both judgement and interaction. I am not comfortable with this exposure. As a result, I find blogging difficult.

I like to be able to define my audience and to manage both the output and likely level of interaction. It takes a newly sought boldness to relax these requirements, to just write and be open to whatever the web will offer up in response, if anything.

Perhaps this is not that different from what is happening in real life. In dealing with other people, using a product or service and consuming information we all naturally make assessments and form opinions. The interactivity of much of the web with its comment and ranking features makes it easier for all these thoughts to be fed back. This can be a positive thing, for this feedback could lead to ongoing improvement.

I approach this world with hesitation. I see that perhaps the potential costs to pride, control and privacy may be worth the possible benefits.

Sometimes, playing with Lego can help to build a team. A few days ago, Mike burst into the office, telling us to jointly re-construct a model out of Lego he had previously placed in another room. The rules were that we needed to do this in 20 minutes or less and that only one person was allowed in the other room at a time. To complicate things, he had asked me (Steve) beforehand to play the role of saboteur and to change the original model a little bit every time I went into the room.

Making our first mistake, the only thing the team agreed upfront was that we should each take a look at the model first. And just as soon as we agreed on this, each person went into the room, came out, and started building a piece of the model. Someone suggested that we each handle a specific area of the model, but this idea was only loosely followed. We spent most of our time queuing to get into the shower room and I spent most of my time moving the pieces around, trying hard not to make any clicking noises.

But we did even worse. Five minutes into the exercise, Mike told the team that one of us was sabotaging the project by moving pieces around. Accusations started to fly. I thought about how the team was going to root me out. Some of us continued to build, some decided to sit and some thought about trying to root me out. I just made sure that I timed my changes in such a way as not to arouse suspicion. The team continued to try to build and compensate for the changes the saboteur was making.

When the exercise had finished we were asked to guess who the saboteur was and to explain our rationale for choosing that person. Jo guessed first and had to explain her rationale for choosing Ludwig. Luckily I had to go second and also chose Ludwig, explaining that he had followed me into the room on one occasion and that I had gone in again after him and saw that he made a change - a great lie! Tom and Stew named Ludwig, too. Ludwig, to his credit, chose me, saying that I had been too quiet and was being rational throughout the exercise.

With or without a saboteur, we made a total mess of this exercise. We did not make a plan. We did not deal with adversity. We did not work as a team. We realized afterwards that one person could have recreated the model accurately within the time period given without any help from the others. Needless to say that we need to do better when we tackle the real model.

Laughter and wonderment, peering around the room in the half darkness, crawling under the table to follow the path to “the inferno”. Not in my wildest dreams did I think that this would be part of my work at Project Red Stripe. But it happened during one of our team-building exercises, for which Mike had asked us to make and present a map showing “where we’ve been last week”. Later, he added that we will get to vote to pick the best map — apparently to motivate us and to simulate decision making.

Three of our team (Mike, Stew and Steve) produced variations on the more traditional geographic solution, tracing on paper or digitally where we had been in London, for instance during our pub crawl. Steve showed to full effect the use of (this nifty piece of software which lets you surf high-resolution satellite images). He took us on a digital flight around the earth, for instance showing us Canada, where he was born, and his home in Beijing.

The others interpreted the task at hand more metaphorically. Ludwig provided a rather cerebral response. Using a mind-mapping program called The Brain, he showed the links between the various ideas and concepts discussed over the past week. Ludwig would like to use the software to keep track of our future discussions, thus developing the Red Stripe brain.

Mine was a more feely-touchy map (maybe it was the ‘F’ in my MBTI profile coming out). It detailed the emotional highs and lows over the past week, the trepidation, the excitement, the doubt and the effort. I see it as the landscape of the project thus far, which we have probably all traversed.

And finally, it was Tom who had us crawling under the table, stepping over a river of water glasses perilously balanced on the spiral staircase in our office, and marveling at his post-it note mobiles. Tom’s map was a 3D experience of our ideas, people, emotions and experiences so far.

So it was a very illustrative and fascinating exercise, demonstrating how differently people can both view the world and portray it. I hope we’ll be as creative when it comes to developing the real thing. By the way, the winner of our map competition was Steven.

I’m a Canadian, born and raised in Newfoundland (yes, a Newfie) and in Toronto. I’ve been living in Beijing since 1993 and have been working for the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) for the past three and a half years selling information about politics, economics and operating conditions in China to foreign multinationals. Previously, I helped a friend create China’s first recruitment web site - Zhaopin.com.

Yes! I’ve seen plenty of change in China in 13 years although I’ll often say that today’s Beijing doesn’t seem to change so much for me anymore. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t an interesting place to live and work.

Project Red Stripe is providing me with a rare opportunity. You can’t find a job on Zhaopin.com that says: “We’re a global, well-respected, media brand. We’re The Economist. Come along and help us figure out how we should innovate on the web, and feel free to use our content and brands in the process!”.

I’m a big ice hockey fan (Leafs) but (when in Rome) am eagerly anticipating gaining fluency in rugby, cricket and football. I love playing backgammon but probably showed my cards a little early as no one in the office wants to challenge me to a game now. Cooking is a passion but I can honestly say that I’ve been surprised about how good the food is in London! I do miss Sichuan food and salivate when I see the picture below.

If you’ve spoken with me in the last few weeks you’ll quickly discover that I miss my family greatly and count the days until they arrive in London.

You can contact me via steven at projectredstripe.com.

To track the locations we’ve been whilst to on Red Stripe business we’ve started a map which is, incidentally, stalker- friendly.

Marketing is not everyone’s cup of tea — but I love the challenges it provides. And Project Red Stripe combines all of them. It is also an opportunity to be part of a “big idea” and to work on something truly “new”, bringing all the various parts together to reality.

Before Red Stripe, I was Marketing Manager across all EMEA territories of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Prior to moving to London I worked for 6 years for an agent of The Economist Group marketing and selling EIU services across New Zealand and Australia (where I was born).

Outside of The Economist Group, mine is a career of varied sales and marketing experience. One of the highlights was being part of a team that came up with the winning bid for a major catering contract for the Sydney Olympics. I also helped to develop a website to service Australia’s leading CEOs (http://www.ceoforum.com.au) and its associated magazine, CEO Forum. I hope Red Stripe will be even more successful.

I can be contacted at .

This is what you find about me when you go to the “Media Directory” on Economist.com:

Ludwig Siegele started his journalistic career in 1990 as the Paris Business and Political Correspondent of Die Zeit. In 1995, he moved from France to California to write about the internet, first for Die Zeit and then for The Economist. In 1998 he became the US Technology Correspondent for The Economist, based near Silicon Valley. In 2003 Ludwig moved to Berlin as Germany correspondent.

Of course, there is more to the story. I’m married and have two great kids, Emma (10) and Milo (6), with whom I spend much of my free time (if I’m not out investigating the Berlin club scene with my equally great wife Alix, who is the first victim of Project Red Stripe: she will be a single parent in Berlin while I’m trying to be creative in London. Thank you so much, Ali!). I’ve studied economics and political science and went to journalism school in Cologne and Paris. I was born in Tübingen, a lovely town in southern Germany, 44 years ago (which makes me the team’s Methuselah).

And for those familiar with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, this questionable personality questionnaire, much liked by the Economist management, which all Red Stripes had to take as part of a team awareness exercise this week: I’m an INTJ. “May appear so unyielding that others are afraid to approach or challenge them”, it says in my MBTI interpretative report. Guess my team mates are in for a tough time…