Audioboo Is Launching Streams!

I first got wind about the audio blogging platform in March 2009. Audioboo has steadily evolved ever since. I was excited then and it’s still my favorite way of sharing and absorbing content.

At the time I said..
“I have fallen back in love with audio. It makes you think more about how you describe your surroundings. It makes me want my surroundings to explain themselves. Either by getting close to a person and their opinion or close to environmental sounds. Combined with a photo attached to act as a catalyst for the imagination, the listener is not being force fed the story. they have to take a moment to let their imagination get involved in the media.”

Since then I have done my best to get involved with beta testing and suggesting new features. That said of all the ideas I throw at the Audioboo team, I would never have seen Streams coming. I’m not going to try to explain exactly how ‘Streams’ works. Not till I’ve had a proper play.  I have an idea how I would like to use it.

In Audioboo’s words..

“A stream is a channel that you can create and assign access privileges to. You can upload privately, allow a select group of people to upload or open it up to the whole audioboo community. They can even record to your stream directly from the webpage. The Pro version comes with a moderation interface, so you can choose which boos are published to your stream or just download the MP3 for use on radio shows, podcasts etc… In addition, you can brand the stream page with a banner, image, description etc…

As Audioboo moves forward, we believe streams will be a powerful way to both organise content and solicit audio from your audience. Pro users can embed the upload/record widget in their website to allow users to record to their stream. iPhone users can download a simple web app (with a branded icon) that allows a user to seamlessly record to a particular stream.

In time, the iPhone and Android app’s will be updated to include native Stream functionality.

Multiple streams, moderation, widget embed and more will be part of the Pro functionality we will officially launch in mid July.”

This is a massive step forward in audio blogging.  If the functionality is not totally clear, this is because it’s something totally new. If you haven’t recorded an Audioboo recently, get reacquainted and I’m sure it will make much more sense.

I’m also pretty sure this is not the only innovation Audioboo has up it’s sleeves. They have come a long way in this last year and I’m looking forward in seeing just where they take Social Audio in the coming year.

I’m @Documentally on twitter and you can find my Audioboos at http://audioboo.fm/Documentally

Social Media for Audience Development & Community Building

(This post can also be found on the GetAmbITion Ning pages. Any geeky jargon you may come across will be explained at the end of the document.)

“The show begins at the moment you first hear about it” @untheatre at Shift Happens June 29^th 2009

“It’s critical that artists are engaged with the digital world, not just for marketing, but to ask difficult, big questions of it” @wethink at Shift Happens June 30^th 2009

Audience Development

Why Social Media?

If you’re using social media properly your audience is your community, social media is about communication, and community building.

Community Building is developing your audience.

The moment you have a community, you have participants, not observers. People. Not Bums on Seats.

In the modern world of millions of people vying for your attention, it’s not your presentation; it’s your connection to your community that’s important. This is where social media comes in. Social media offers invaluable tools in accessing the hearts as well as the minds of your participants. To people bombarded every day with ‘brand’, it’s the human touch of organisations that gets your interest and loyalty. Put more simply, social media tools aren’t about you; they’re about the people you want to speak with.

Need more convincing? Here’s how social media can help you;

Complete the picture: By providing people with access to the personal and day-to-day side of your organisation, think of it as a backstage tour of your organisation.

Break down the barriers: Help to break down the perceived inaccessibility of the arts. Showing the process as well as the finished piece, means that your communities can get/feel involved in the whole artistic process. Social media allows an immediate and personal view into your company and it’s projects.

Collaborate: Social media can help you make connections to people and groups you might never have otherwise encountered, it can garner immediate responses to questions, act as an instant audience-survey, it helps you see into other people’s worlds in the same way they can access yours. It connects you to people all across the country.. all across the world.

It can help get your art ‘out there’: Social media is an active pastime, the people who get the most out of it listen as much as they speak – they participate. The personal nature of social media means that these people are more likely to actively support you and your work.

Types of social media:

So where to begin? A lot of social media can seem out of reach, confusing, or difficult at first glance. I will be offering you a basic toolkit here, of both physical kit, and social media tools, but much more important is to knock a couple of common misconceptions on the head:

1. There Are No Experts

There’s just us. All of us. Learning as we go. These tools are all so new, and there’s always something else on the horizon, because of this the only way to learn how to use them is to use them yourself, become your own expert, and connect to people who know what’s coming next. Know that everyone makes mistakes, just as everyone sometimes stumbles over their words. If you are not making mistakes you are not pushing hard enough.

1. This is Not a New Way of Communicating

This is just communication, through a different medium. It’s just talking. As you’d talk, laugh, and converse in real life, you do so online. Don’t try and view it as a different language, engage with it using your own. Be yourself.

There are three main types of content that you’re going to be producing in the online world:

• Front Facing
• Real-time
• Audio/video/images

Of course all of them will cross pollinate.

Front facing: Your website and your blog. Posterous, Wordpress, Blogger.

Your front-facing media is the main landing page when someone searches for you – this is where you will collate the best of your social media activities, and where you will publish the more traditional marketing, event and company information. It is essential that you keep this space active, and interactive, that’s where a blog comes in.

Wordpress and Blogger are popular and easy to edit blog hosts, allowing you to add widgets, post updates, allow people to subscribe to your RSS Feed and more.

Posterous is a super-simple blogging platform which allows you to post almost anything via email, meaning that they deal with all the media and other content that you want to attach.

Real-time Twitter, Facebook statuses, Twitvid, Twitpic, 12 seconds

Currently, almost all mainstream social media is geared to link up with twitter – the simple, short and easy way of sharing your real-time exploits online.

Twitter is your main tool with regards to immediacy, and behind the scenes access to your community. For an in depth guide to why you should be using twitter, along with a guide to the jargon, programs and different tones you can cultivate, have a look at Hannah Nicklin’s guide to Twitter for Arts Organisations, on the Get AmbITion website.

What can be a little more challenging as an organisation new to Twitter is cultivating your presence and community, before you have people to talk to you will be tweeting into what feels like the dark, and you need to make sure you don’t fall into the bad habit of only pushing front facing style communication. Keep talking to people, asking questions, and sharing other people’s information as much as possible.

Facebook statuses can be used in a similar way to twitter, although try not to replicate information, you want people to feel as though they’re discovering more about you as they explore your digital footprint, not digging up all of the same information.

TwitPic and Twitvid are very simple ways of uploading images and video and sharing them via twitter – you can access them online, or via mobile devices and twitter clients. Bringing a visual face to your real-time action is really important in how accessible you appear. It doesn’t always have to be about the art however, you can take pictures of the mountains of envelopes you have to seal, or a wonderful prop or piece of scenery that has showed up. Again, it’s all about the taste of your content, and the behind the scenes feel, to which these two tools can contribute (NB there are other platforms, but these are the most widely used)

12 Seconds will also auto-tweet, and in ways is a video version of Twitter, allowing you to send 12 second videos out to the world. This is great for snap shots into a working day or general process. You can post by email, online, or mobile applications.

Audio/video/images Flickr, Youtube, Audioboo.

Flickr and Youtube allow you to share images and videos; it lets you ‘tag’ media, meaning that it will be easily found in google searches, and offers the ability to embed elsewhere online.

Audioboo is an instant podcasting solution currently available to iPhones, iPod Touches and android devices. It will soon be browser based too. Posting to Audioboo you are able to add a location tag, picture, and immediately host a piece of audio. The audio will be auto-tweeted, and can be downloaded/subscribed to via iTunes from the Audioboo site. Audioboo is a brilliant way to keep people updates when you are short on time, and a less intrusive tool for interviewing people.

Other:

Eventbrite allows you to create ‘events’ and share them online – you can charge for tickets (thought you don’t have to), provide links, information and maps, as well as enabling people to instantly download the information to their chosen calendar (outlook or ical usually) This is a great way of disseminating event information far and wide. Also check out the more succinct Tweetvite which works in much the same way for smaller non-ticketed events.

BASIC KIT RECOMMENDATIONS:

There is much more on the market which will help you interact with your online community, but these are the basic physical tools which will enable you to do all of the above.

An iPod Touch, (plus mic) –roughly £140 this will open the door to true real-time interaction, allowing you access to Twitter clients, audioboo, mobile browsing, email-blog posting and more

A Canon Ixus 120 IS - roughly £180 this will do great HD video, and high quality images. The camera is compact, robust and easy to use.

A MiFi free on some contracts a personal wireless hotspot, utilising 3G networks, this allows you to turn the iPod Touch into an almost replicate of the iPhone, meaning you will be able to tweet, Audioboo, browse and email blog entries almost anywhere.

Case Study

This is a case study for a small company, with actions for an Artistic Director, and a General Manager/Administrator. The more people who are feeding content into your streams the better (though if more than 2 people tweet from an account, consider personal ones that are re-tweeted by a main one, or signing tweets with your initials)

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS – how and when to use

Most of these tools link to and auto-update a twitter account, if they don’t, always, always tweet about it. That is the feed that people are most likely to stumble upon and should be the backbone for your media.

Everyday use

Tools: Twitter, Wordpress, Twitpic, Flickr, Facebook, 12seconds, Audioboo

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

TWITTER: 3 x 15 mins interaction, a few tweets a week – general observations an RTs to start, replying to any @ replies, listening and building up.

WORDPRESS: one blog entry a month, a short Artistic Director update

12 SECONDS – Download the app to your iPhone for free – record any video and it will take the first 12 seconds and tweet it to your chosen twitter account. Quick snapshots of scenery, theatres, comment, sets, offices, weather, anything.

AUDIOBOO – try audioboo reviews of shows you see. Very simple program.

GENERAL MANAGER

TWITTER: cultivate personal account, and tweet at least once a day from the 7 categories, try one before lunch break, and then reply to any responses when you’re back, simple and allows for conversation.

WORDPRESS: two blog entries a month – and/or co-ordinating at least two guest blogs

FACEBOOK: when you put out an opportunities, also put the link on the Facebook page, and link people to it via twitter.

FLICKR: use for high quality, front-facing images.

When an event is upcoming

Tools: Posterous, Eventbrite, Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter, Youtube

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

WORDPRESS: More formal blog RE the artistic outlook of the event.

GENERAL MANAGER

POSTEROUS – Use for more immediate things in lead up, collections of photos, video, audio trails, push it to the Wordpress.

WORDPRESS: Get artists involved to guest blog about the process

YOUTUBE: Cut together a really simple video, just audio and photo stills if necc, post to Facebook, Posterous, Blog, Youtube. People are much more likely to watch something than read about it.

EVENTBRITE – Create an online event that you can link across all social media, tweet it.

TWITTER: Decide on a hashtag, the shorter the better. Offer discounts over Twitter. Link to every bit of buzz – this is your aggregator

FACEBOOK – Make an event, offer discounts, add videos and pictures.

When an event is happening

Tools: Twitpic, Twitvid, Audioboo, Twitter, Posterous, Flickr, 12Seconds, Wordpress

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR:

AUDIOBOO: Interview vox pops with participants and performers, record your own reactions, or take short clips of dialogue/monologue or sound/music.

TWITPIC/VID: Tweet pictures and videos of the event.

12SECONDS: 12 second snippets of the action, one word summing up of the event from people

GENERAL MANAGER:

POSTEROUS: Take all quick content and email it in as it comes- this is your substitute for twitpic/twitvid

FLICKR: Take as many photos as possible, the more you take the better the chance of some good ones. Be ruthless in the edit. Post the best.

TWITVID/YOUTUBE: Use a digital camera to take slightly longer interviews and post in the evening/day after. Keep it simple to avoid the need to edit.

WORDPRESS: Summing up blog with a choice picture and video/audio

TWITTER: Tweet everything!

And finally, a few last tips regarding social media:

• Be polite – say hello to new participants, or people you’re interested in, thank people for links and recommendations.
• Listen – Social media is all about being sociable. Listen to people, interact with them.
• Inform – link to useful and interesting information, be it software, articles or news items you come across.
• Credit, link and promote others - Never appropriate, always acknowledge people, it will make them more likely to disseminate your content too. Share the link-love.
• Don’t spam – By all means promote your art, but don’t spam – make it genuine, exciting and relevant and try not to repeat yourself.
• Be funny – Don’t try too hard but sometimes the best way to catch someone’s fleeting interest is to make them smile.
• Be human – Not always obvious but very important, being a “real” person, rather than a representative is important. Balance it. People talk to people..
• Have fun! It really is a wonderful world to be a part of, get involved.

Glossary:

Blog – originally known as a Web Log – it’s an online and public space for writing, thoughts and reflection, normally allowing comments from others.

Post / update – an entry on a blog, social media platform or website.

Micro-Blog/ging – micro-blogging describes the phenomenon of sites such as Twitter – blogging done on a micro, mobile scale. Originally based on the 160 characters allotted to a text message.

Twitter – a quick and easy way of sending ‘status updates’ – small pieces of text up to 140 characters long – about what you are thinking, doing, or a link to news and information.

Tweet – a single status update on twitter

HashTags (# + keyword ie #getambition) – are a community-driven method for adding metadata to tweets. When used, every hashtag (the hash symbol attached to the front of a keyword) becomes a click-able link enabling the user to create a real-time search of that keyword effectively creating groupings without changing the basic twitter service.

Re-Tweet/ed (RT) – when someone re-posts one of your tweets (linking to you in doing so) because they have appreciated what you’ve said enough to want to show their followers in their network.

Auto-Tweet – when an application or program automatically sends a tweet to your twitter account when you update said application or program. For example whenever you post to Posterous, you can set it to send a tweet with the title, and a link to the blog post.

RSS Feed – allow people to subscribe to the content posted on a social media platform or blog. (Really Simple Syndication (See Wikipedia))

Feed / Stream – colloquially (online) these both refer to a series of entries in an online space – i.e. a person’s twitter stream consists of their status updates, and a Flickr stream would consist of a person’s uploaded pictures.

Widget – a small add on to a web page or blog, most social media platforms provide you with widgets, showing your most recent updates.

Embed – to take a piece of media hosted elsewhere (youtube, flickr etc) and to share it on another web page or blog. Quite often a ‘share’ button will offer you embed code – this should be cut & pasted into the html edit section of a blog or website, or can be emailed directly in to Posterous.

Tag – Basic labels for your content (usually comma-separated)– you might shoot a video for youtube of a performance.. Tag it - ‘theatre, performance, YOUR THEATRE COMPANY, YOUR SHOW TITLE’

Podcast/ing – Subscribe-able audio broadcasts online.

Vodafone 360

The dust has just about settled after the Vodafone 360 launch and after having no clue at all as to what I was going to see, I now have much more of an idea and am genuinely excited about what is in the pipeline for mobile users.
I’ve never really subscribed to the platforms spawned by the mobile giants, either from the carriers or the handset makers. I made a point of avoiding Vodafone Live as when I was ready for mobile web I wanted it to be on my terms. I didn’t want to be spoon fed sport and weather on a naff mobile browser. Wap or no Wap.

Then there was Nokia’s Ovi.. Well, being a Mac user there seemed little point.

Vodafone 360 may well change the way we look at mobile forever. (Or at least the foreseeable future). If you ever dabbled in ZYB you will have a rough idea of what’s in store.

I guess cloud mobile hints towards it too but this is way more than what you get with your dot mac account.

This is not just syncing this is a suite of internet services morphing your contacts, status updates and messaging all in ‘the cloud’. This will integrate all your social networks with your address book and provide a two way editable pipeline between you and your contacts.

The flexibility and configuration options are mind boggling and I haven’t even gone into the realtime location integration.

Of course there will be some people (normally me) screaming “What about our privacy?!” From what I could see this has been taken way more seriously than any other platform developer has bothered in the past. After a few wines were had this conversation on audioboo ended up on Kathryn Corrick’s blog and Terence Eden’s comment on the bottom explains things better than I could.

I thought I was getting close to a cloud mobile experience with my Apple devices and some of the apps I use. But Apple is as Apple does and I’m fed up with the controls and restraints Apple put in place to guarantee ever increasing profits while it’s users are drip fed new tech. Always wanting and waiting for Apple to do the right thing. Jobs acting like a Wizard of Oz over his minions.

Vodafone is a massive faceless behemoth yes, but I’m thinking with this move so much is going to decide on the community making it happen. From macro to microcosm. From the coding community building the apps to the cross platform communities meeting in their hand held device.

360 is meant to work on all devices with all carriers. Obviously Vodafone are going to make sure they have the most suitable devices on offer and having got my hands on the Samsung H1 running the LiMo Platform, It’s feels like really decent handset.

Sturdy, well styled and feature packed. The camera really impressed me as did the fact that this wasn’t another phone trying to win the megapixel stakes. It’s not the number of pixels in a camera it’s how they are used and on a WVGA AMLED display it’s easy to see the quality of your image.

On first impressions low light images looked better than some of the compact cameras I use and the 720p video quality seemed good enough for me to leave my other devices at home.

The touch screen interface felt a little sluggish compared to the iPhone but I was assured this is still really early days and the interface with be honed and refined as the weeks go by.

With the €1,000,000 prize fund in place for coders to collect should they create new and innovative apps I feel we may see an app store that begins with quality over quantity and I really have to get my hands on the phone just to experiment with new apps as and when they begin appear.

The universal contact list called ‘Vodafone People’ clearly puts contacts and content at the forefront of the 360.com ethos a suite of services that apears to be dripping with social media potential.

If a beast like Vodafone has bitten the bullet and finally embraced social media this may be the confirmation all the early adopters have been waiting for. Why is it we have been hanging around this social media fad thing for so long.. Well maybe this is really it. With so much potential to expand and innovate with the mobile communication tools at our finger tips starting to do what we want them to do.. This is what we have been waiting for.

Of course in the not too distant future we will no doubt be excited about hardware breakthroughs as battery life, bandwidth and memory capacity going through the roof.. That doesn’t change what Vodafone may have done here right now for mobile communication. I would not have imagined them opening up elements of it’s network to third parties.. This is a different and hopefully leading a mindset. Once you let social networks and open source operating systems enhance your devices, you are placing an awful lot of power into the hands of the community. I am sure the control will stay with Vodafone. The lack of Google maps at this stage hints towards this and they seem to have invested a hell of a lot into this move to take too many risks.

Still, I am excited to see where this goes. And with this new level of connectivity bridging previously unconnected networks, I imagine it will be a magical mystery tour where everyone is on the bus.

For more interviews with the people in the know click on this atom feed

..Or here are some AudioBoo’s

Also you may want to listen to Nik Butler and Andy White’s thoughts on Vodafone 360 in the podcast Social Media White Noise (7 minutes into the podcast)

Longplayer Live at The Roundhouse

Longplayer Live is an incredible endeavor. I first blogged about it here.

A single composition playing for 1000 years. It started in 1999 and on the 12th of September I was invited by Artangel to blog about it live.
It was a great day. It was a long day. 1000 minutes of 1000 years.

You can find some Audioboo’s by myself and others tagged with Longplayer here and some of my Flickr images here.

Here is the Longplayer Posterous blog.

The Longplayer trust has been set up to keep it going. Click HERE if you feel you can help.

Thanks to @Encosion for letting me use the audio he captured on the day and for Artangel for helping the whole thing happen.

Video For The Web

Advertising revenue is down, newspapers are struggling and as the economy takes a downturn production costs are up, at the same time online readership and revenue continue to rise. So what’s the answer? Go where the eyes are. Whether you are writing, taking pictures, shooting video or recording audio you can build communities with your content. But only if you take it online.

Three years ago online video was something I mostly only viewed. I’d played around with recording and uploading video but this was a long winded haphazard affair involving hand coded xml files every time I wanted to add a video to my podcast. Then if I wanted to share it further afield I’d upload it to YouTube giving me the option to embed on a website or link to it in an email or forum.

Now it’s just as easy as sending an email. Many of the sites I visit today are either video conversational platforms or at the very least places where video is being shared and commented on. Video is now a medium of conversation.

Recently I have been asked more and more by companies “Do we really need to get involved in video?”

The short answer is “Yes.”

For me, engaging with online video is a no brainer.

The easiest way for me to explain why this shift from old analogue methods of communication to online ones is so important is to compare online video with TV. The buzzword for a while now has been Social Media, Social Media does exactly what it says on the tin, it allows people to have conversations on a new level of engagement, be it from an entertainment or marketing perspective.  TV could not be further away from this world. The most interactive thing TV can offer us is the red button. Nowadays people expect a conversation with their content.

TV advertising is also fleeting and expensive. After the cost of creating your media, you pay for your slot and when it’s gone it’s gone. Online video on the other hand, can be made at a fraction of the cost, and if you spread it intelligently it’s viewable forever. Not only that but the viewer can comment on, respond to, and share it for you. This conversation around your content keeps it alive, relevant, and in the public eye way beyond other forms of old analogue media.

Online video is also instantly global, searchable, on demand and with viewing stats that are easily measured.

It really is a no brainer.

Whether you want content for your website, to launch a brand or product, produce video news releases, or just show the human side of your organisation, you need to have a presence in the digital world, you need to be using online video. I can show you how to do produce content cheaply and effectively. I cover the kit, how-to shooting tips, file compression, uploading and aggregation, how to make your video visible, and loads more.  Whether you wish to use some of the free solutions out there like Twitvid, Tokbox or Qik, or shoot HD on a hand held device, I can be there to guide you through selecting suitable equipment to shoot, edit and distribute your video effectively.

For a little while now I’ve offered one to one consultation and informal training sessions on all aspects of social media and video making for the web. Now, for the first time, in conjunction with Econsultancy, I’m going to be able to offer a formal workshop (snappily titled) ‘Video For The Web‘.

4.7 billion videos are watched online in the UK every year. Make one of them yours.

http://econsultancy.com/training/courses/video-for-the-web

(Please check out the other home for this blogpost and it’s comments here.. Econsultancy.com)

David Cameron On Social Media

I guess I should not be surprised that the leader of a political party should contradict himself. It happens all the time. In the case of David Cameron and his twitter comment though..“Too many twits make a twat..” It doesn’t seem that long ago that Mr Cameron was extolling to me the virtues of social media.

I’m not sure how we can believe anything he said in the Audioboo interview when he is now so keen to slam tweeters.

Twitter at the moment is the mainstay of all the social media I’m involved in and I think others use it in a similar fashion. It’s the back bone, the spine of cross platform conversations. Interesting how Cameron says “Politicians do have to think about what we say..” Perhaps they should also think about what they have said..

Maybe he just wanted to reconnect with his ‘Base’.. Maybe he still just doesn’t understand social media at all.

UPDATE: The comments that follow this blog post have become way more important that any statement I made in my original hasty proclamation.. Please make sure you read them.

Happy Birthday George Orwell

Once again it’s June the 25th. I spent most of the day doing the same thing I did this time last year and this time the year before last..  I had a picnic at the Grave of Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell. Today is his birthday and for the last couple of years I’ve met with Dr John Perivolaris to pay our respects to the great writer and talk about the years events around surveillance and civil liberties.

We had a drink, munched on some food and made some media.

Last years post can be found at www.SocialMediaPicnic.com We hope to do the same thing next year so please put it in your diary and come along. There’s always some passers by who are also making a pilgrimage. This year it was some German folk, a lady on a bike and @Hedgewytch.

Throughout the year if you come across any relevant links or content around surveillance or civil liberties, please tag it with the #1984 hash tag.

Jeff Pulver – 140 Conference New York

Jeff Pulver, the chairman and founder of Pulver.com was the main man behind the 140 characters conference in New York that brought together Twitter users from all over the world.

New york was the first of the 140 Characters conference and others are planned in both London and Los Angeles. Originally the event was to explore the effects of twitter on: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising and Politics”. These topics were covered, as well as many more. As ever many of the conversations happened outside the main auditoriums..

I was asked by The Open University in England to grab some interviews with the assistance of Matt (@Barnstormed) and in the corridor we caught up with Jeff and asked how the conference had come about..

This interview is also on the Open University’s You Tube Channel.

Station X

StationX in its modern incarnation was born on the 16th of February 2009. The intention was to create a social media geek-meet, offering access to Bletchley Park for bloggers, tech lovers and social media types, in return for helping amplify Bletchley Park’s online campaign.

With this common cause in mind, approximately once a month a date is announced through the twitter account @StationX and the entry fee of £10 is wavered to those attending the geek meet.

StationX meet-ups are not restricted to only once a month, some meets happen under the radar. For example, we recently gave @StephenFry a tour that helped raise awareness of the park considerably.

If you find yourself at Bletchley Park with another person on twitter then feel free to announce that you are having a Station X meet up… we’ve had several bloggers of note and the BBC roll up so you never know who might attend.

If you have the tools in your pocket to blog about your experience please do. Every conversation helps to keep the Bletchley Park campaign in peoples minds. Using the twitter hash tag #bpark helps those interested to keep track of the conversation.

On a pre-planned day everyone meets in Hut 4 (the Cafe) at about 10am for coffee before taking the chance of a personal tour around the exhibits. Some StationX regulars hang back to network and catch up.

Because of Bletchley Park’s location you find yourself in the company of many new faces you would not normally see in the Manchester, Birmingham and London events.

The actual StationX takes it’s name from Bletchley Park’s wireless room manned by Mi6 in 1939. It was the 10th station of it’s kind to be opened hence the roman numeral in Station ‘X’.

The park is packed with history and attractions. To date, I have been on five tours of the park and on every occasion I have found something new and inspirational. Please make sure you click on the links embedded within this post for more history and information.

Besides being the birthplace of the computer, the critical importance of Bletchley Park in world history cannot be denied. More needs to be done to ensure future generations can visit, learn and understand.

Follow Kelsey Griffin @BletchleyPark and @Dr_Black to know more about the campaign @StationX for the geek meet and me, @Documentally just because..

More resources below:

Main Site: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

Sue Black’s site: http://www.savingbletchleypark.org/

National Museum Of Computing: http://www.tnmoc.org//

Lloyd Davis Blog: http://perfectpath.co.uk/2009/05/20/to-bletchley-park/

Photos from me: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christianpayne/sets/72157612582384354/

Photos from @Sizemore: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sizemore/sets/72157612568699509/

Rory Cellan-Jones http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/05/bletchley_park_the_fry_effect.html

Please feel free to comment below including links to your content..

Multi-Multimedia

The other week while on assignment at Reuters with @sizemore, I was talking to @ilicco about how the more kit i try to juggle the more diluted the content can become.

I was sat at the front of an almost exciting talk from the FSA with laptop, iPhone, N95, Kodak Zi6 and a pocket camera. Back in my bag was a pro Nikon SLR, an audio recorder and yet another laptop.

This is the burden of the blogger. We tend to move faster than the tech can keep up and the convergence of our various gadgets still only gives us one device that does lots of things in a mediocre fashion.. and then only for as long as it’s over stretched battery holds out.

I joked about buying Shiva Media. I thought a multi-armed kit wielding blogger would make a great logo. Apart from the fact this may be insulting the top Hindu God of Gods.. the name has already been taken anyway.

Then I saw @ilicco link to a blog post from Adam Westbrook

Here’s a guy who looks like he has found a happy medium. Adam is a radio journalist dabbling in video. Using a compact camera, a HD video camera and an audio recorder he may have to juggle a little but by not choosing to live update through twitter, ping gps, and live stream he still has time to script his interviews and get the job done.

Maybe Multi Media does not have to be Multi-multi-media..

In an ideal world, if I were going back into a warzone, or tackling something I only had one shot at, I’d want to work in a team. Much as I prefer traveling alone, I do find a more superior batch of content comes from using a team, who like super heroes, all have their own individual strengths.

Along with Stills, HD video and audio, I also like to (where possible) live stream, micro blog (Twitter, Audioboo) and gps tag as i go. I find so much more value in logging the live progress as ‘news’ which preempts the final edit. This not only raises awareness of the project as it is happening but opens up all sorts of real time resources & conversations, as connections are made as you document.

At the moment to do a multimedia job well you’d need a snapper and a videographer, perhaps an audio guy too but you may be able to manage this between two at a stretch. Both people must also be able to live blog, capture, edit, archive and back up their own content and on top of this, write and do stuff to camera.

When I mean ‘do it well’, I mean suck up and absorb as much of the surrounding content/story/information in high quality for the later edit and lo-fi for live blogging.

As I have never been embedded, a team also offers a certain amount of safety and security. Depending on where you are, sometimes it can just draw attention. Although mainly traveling alone for ease, I’ve often worked with a friend. Someone I would trust with my life.

In Iraq I didn’t really know what I was going to do. There was little planning. I just went to see for myself and apart from moving fast and laying low, I was just taking photos and logging my GPS position, either pinging it back via sat phone or texting when there was GSM. The photos I took went to accompany a couple of news stories my friend was writing and finally to make my first real video podcast.

Not long after my good friend was kidnapped and later released.

On assignment in Jordan for the UNHCR I had more experience but limited time. I decided against video and just worked with stills and audio. Much of what I was going to do was arranged in advance by a friend who knew the area well and acted as a fixer. With a simple hand held Zoom H2 on the floor i could record the stories of the refugees and use my Nikon D300 to take pictures in the pauses, editing out the shutter sound later. During the live video blogging of the project I was contacted by Bill Cammack who ended up editing the final stills and interviews into a film.
I guess when there is less at stake.. Back in the UK, either covering a geek conference or on a job for a corporate client, you can experiment and test new methods of data capture and transmission. This is when we can get silly with our tech. Finding out what works and what is a waste of time and resources. What medium has the greatest reach for the least amount of effort.

If I had a tech lab at my disposal, something similar to what Ironman or Batman had in their gargantuan basements.. I would not hesitate to create the ultimate journalists tool. Some single device that once and for all did everything a blogger/journalist needed.

It only exists in my head right now but would have the video capture qualities of RED.. A 15-200mm f1.4 lens with an integral Binaural auto zooming microphone. High definition stills could be extracted from the film and edited in camera. All the GPS and audio to text tagged footage could be separated into audio, video and stills onto solid state cards or streamed via wifi, wimax, or compressed for GSM, or satellite enabling it to be sent all over the world but also to a sister pod situated within the same city retrieving the footage and archiving live.

Oh.. and it tweets.

Failing that.. I’d be happy for the iPhone to have a decent battery, shoot 5 mega pixel photos even in low light and shoot reasonable video from two decent front and back cameras.

This I feel would be far easier to achieve and may even be with us next year. In the meantime I, along with many bloggers and tech lovers will be carting around small to medium backpacks clanking with lensed gadgets. Always on the look out for an unused plug socket so we can recharge and ultimately.. reconnect.

You can add me as a friend on twitter here.. Twitter.com/Documentally

Next Page »