About

This is me, Ben Bland. Unblanked is the blog and website for my business escapades. If it inspires you, for better or otherwise, please don’t be shy to add a comment.

Maybe we can Work Together.
If you, your organisation or project are not enjoying the full benefits of online communities, perhaps you should get in touch. It is communities that define your reputation, popularity or sales figures, not you. What’s more, your community is not just your end-users, it is everyone who might say or do something to benefit or harm you. I consult clients on how to find their audience, nurture them into a mutually beneficial community, and measure the results. It’s part marketing, part PR, part technology, part strategy, and part human nature.

My CV is available online here.

A short, frivolous note about Unblanked, the concept.
“Unblanked” is not in the dictionary, yet. I made it up on a warm day in Bloomsbury in 2008. In essence, the word reflects my desire never to let good thoughts drift away from memory, to write them down and therefore never to let the page of ideas be blank. I was also searching for a bit of wordplay, it’s a sad penchant of mine, and I have a particular fondness for privatives. Some privatives, such as “dark” or “cold” seem normal to us even though they have no physical presence in reality – us humans are weird like that and I find that interesting. “Blank” may not quite be a privative if you want to be difficult (it’s an adjective rather than a noun), but it’s close… and it sounds like my surname. So there.

Oh, and why orange? Because a man who knows about that kind of thing said it was a good colour …I didn’t think that I was then going to move to Northern Ireland!