I am sooooo not an early adopter. I have only just, this week, tried out a Lime bike for the first time – in fact twice in the past 2 days. I am an instant convert… until I get knocked off or have a horrific accident, obviously.
Lime bikes, for those living in cites which don’t have them, are electric bikes that you can hire on a pay-as-you-go basis, using your smartphone. They are run by Neutron Holdings, doing business under the name Lime, formerly LimeBike – a transport company based in San Francisco. They run electric scooters, electric bikes and electric mopeds in various cities around the world.
So, why did it take me so long to try one? We have had these electric bikes in London since 2010, starting with the ‘Boris bikes’ and now run by various companies including Santander, Tier, Human Forest etc. Many other cities in the UK have them too, eg Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, Bristol, Brighton, Exeter etc.
Well, I don’t really cycle on ordinary pushbikes, so I am not the typical demographic that would try an e-bike. But a colleague shared a link to LimeBikes last week and extolled their virtues, saying it was a game-changer for shortish journeys that would talke him, say, an hour to walk. By e-bike that would be 5-10 minutes and cost around £2-£3 (a flat fee of £1 + 15p per minute). It removed the barrier to making those journeys. In his case, he just wouldn’t go. In my case, I’d either have to free up an hour to walk, or drive.
In the last 2 days I have been out to do errands in my local area on an e-bike twice. I have quickly found an e-bike within 100 metres of where I am standing, and off we go! The QR code on the bike makes it super easy to start your ride, and finish it, and the map on the app makes it super-easy to find a bike AND SEE HOW CHARGED THE BATTERY IS. I think previously I thought they’d be hard to ride, heavy, and take a lot of effort. But it was my colleague saying they do maybe 80% of the work for you, even uphill, that clinched it for me. Actually, as I was riding today, waiting at traffic lights, someone leaned out of their car and asked me how the engine was. I said, “Super-powerful! There’s a real boost when it kicks in,” and he nodded in surprise, and looked like he might give it a try sometime.
Subliminally, maybe I was waiting for there to be sufficient roll-out that I wouldn’t have to walk miles to even find a bike. Lime currently has more than 2,000 e-bikes dotted across London. Surprisingly, I can see there are about 5 within 5 minutes’ walk of me now, and I am not in a particularly central London location (which is why often there aren’t many Ubers around here, if any). So, they’re no longer ‘niche’ and difficult to find.
I think for now I will limit them to local errands, and not travel on really busy A-roads, into central London, if I can help it.
My non-early-adoptership’ also applies to smartphones, mobile phones in general back in the 1990s, watching TV on a laptop (I still watch on a TV – what a loser!), and embracing TikTok, SnapChat etc. I wait until my daughters/younger colleagues show me, or explain why it’s useful, or walk me through how to use each of these things. I get there in the end, bypassing things that I decide aren’t very relevant to me (I haven’t ever got into TikTok or SnapChat actually). I have eventually, after my peers, managed to master video editing, audio recording and editing, greenscreen filming etc.
I don’t jump on the bandwagon with the latest face creams, moisturisers, hyaluronic acid, serums etc. I hang on till the brands I know make them. When Boots No.7 does it, it’s fine!
The upside is: I don’t get sucked into paying for things which are later proved to be no better than putting cooking oil on my face. I never got into Bitcoin, timeshares, other investments that some people thought were the best thing since sliced bread (but have now been proved to be far from it). I get there in the end with products that prove to be of benefit to me.
My point is:
There’s no harm in holding back from adopting things you don’t really understand, see the need for (yet) or if the providers are still working out the kinks/glitches/niggles/bugs and shortcomings.
#earlyadopter #presentationskills #presentation #communication #communicationskills #mediaskills #publicspeaking
*Sarah Lockett is a journalist, media trainer, communications skills coach and presenter*
