Our Man Inside

This five part mini series of Audioboo’s were compiled, edited and enhanced with music by Mark Cotton aka @MCFontaine You can find out more about Mark here: http://about.me/mcfontaine

I blogged about the Do Lectures in detail after I attended in September 2011. You can get more detail here: ourmaninside/do-lectures

For a glimpse into some of the moments and conversations please take a few moments to listen below.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five
 

..and here are a few images from my Flickr stream

If you would like to subscribe to my Audioboo’s in iTunes please CLICK HERE

Thinking Digital does the conference model really well. It’s a humane accessible version of TED. Small enough to be friendly, big enough to attract the innovators looking for and sharing new ideas.

The Do Lectures do something amazing between a campfire chat and an intimate mini festival. It’s still the most amazing ticketed event I’ve been to and I feel would be extremely difficult to emulate if you were ‘in it for the money’.

SXSW Interactive calls itself a festival but feels to me like the bloated physical manifestation of Facebook. I love the festival model but when it grows for the sole intention to create more profit it becomes monstrously corporate at the expense of heart and soul. If it’s participants can’t see the added value because nothing stands out as amazing on a menu of mediocre. Then it’s just a shanty town of billboards, populated by the bewildered.

If I was going to create something right now, I’d do something similar to the Elevate festival. Set in Graz, Austria, events were ran in all kinds of places from community spaces to the caverns of a hollowed out mountain.

It would start after a lazy breakfast, late enough for conversations and epicurean enjoyment of a shared meal. With more panels than stand up speakers, the audience could see who could talk around their field and not just about their field. A hefty chunk of panel time was given to the floor with statements encouraged as much as questions. The audience switching effortlessly from voyeur to participant.

After the political, environmental & musical discourse came the DJ’s and bands filling laser lit carved rock walls inside the mountain. The music, conversations and partying continued till dawn.

Once again the spaces either side of the timetabled events held immense value. The panels and talks merely catalysing the social side.

We naturally connect with those around us. It doesn’t need to be timetabled in. In fact some people loath the pressured expectation that in between sips of coffee you will be reciting your LinkedIn profile to whomever you can corner or collar in those precious 15 minutes.

I’m not saying the conference model is dead, I just think there is room for more of the intimate festival feel. Less herding from room to room, more of a flow around the attractions.

If you’re looking at assembling a quick and easy gathering of people in order to impart information in a day, then maybe the standard conference model is still for you. Although longevity in the conversations and connections is where I feel value lies.

If you want the ideas planted in the panels and talks to germinate within in your participants minds, let them socialise organically. Take the time to make the space.

Why have a flash of inspiration when it can strobe.

 

During the 90′s I spent a lot of time ‘roughing it’ and wandering Europe. I’d walk between France, Switzerland and Germany sleeping under the stars and making money where I could. If you’ve ever read Narcissus and Goldmund  by Hesse you’ll get the idea.

I starting writing a book called the ‘Blaggers Guid To The World’. I never finished it. At the time I felt I could easily justify some of my money making and free travel methods I was exploring but now.. written down.. they don’t look entirely ethical, so the book sits half finished in a tatty notebook.

My social network at the time lived in the same leather bound notebook. The pages were split into countries and under each country heading were listed names, addresses and phone numbers. Most of the travellers I met on the road would exchange details with me. No emails or mobile numbers.  Just an address & home number that if you rang and someone answered, you could be sure of a bed for the night as you travelled through.

There was an unwritten code of mutual assistance for anyone wanting to follow a nomadic way of life. We were the voluntary homeless, the student tramps on a never ending year out, Backpackers without an itinerary.

The noticeboards at youth hostels would give you the latest local information. Even where you could eat, shower and sleep for free. I soon learn’t that marinas offered a comfortable night under an upturned boat and occasionally had unlocked warm showers for shivering windsurfers.. or me.

Markets and Hari Krishna temples always had free food and in Italy I could be sure to feast on salami, bread and cheese should I wander into a church looking hungry. Yes I’d have to listen to a religious sales pitch but that was a small price to pay for such luxurious tastes.

At one point on my travels I met a guy on the run form the French Foreign Legion. On a short overnight boat trip, I listened to his acquired wisdom and he gave me half the contents of my unfinished book. He scrawled out some symbols into my notebook and told me to keep an eye out for chalked of stone scratched graffiti.

Years later I found out this was an almost identical code to American Hobo signs.

I took to carrying a chalky stone in my pocket and adding the relevant marks where I could. I liked the idea that if spotted, the owner could remove it but also that with time it would fade. A fresh mark meant a recent update and fresh news.

Today, many people still don’t get location based social networking but we have very similar features to those above in apps like Foursquare and Gowalla.

If I had the time, energy and know-how I’d build an app based on the above system used in Hobo Graffiti. I’d also also include some of the more known Wardriving symbols that also used to be spotted on our streets in order to highlight open Wifi. I am not sure the newly digitally equipped Hobo would be ready for the WorkSnug kind of interface but something smart and simple.. Why not?

Of course there are more than a few location apps showing available hotspots, power points etc. But as more people travel with technology or shun our normal static lifestyles, how about an app aimed at the travellers, the voluntarily homeless?  One that does not necessarily conform to societies norms.

I can’t imagine how my 10 years exploring the world would have looked should I have had a smart phone in my pocket. As it stands I’m quite glad I trod the analogue path.

But should I ever do it again, these kinds of apps would certainly travel with me. Along with my digitised and leather bound social networks.

For me the Do Lectures hasn’t just broken the conference mould. It’s turned it outside in. Diverse, inclusive, unbranded, organic, fluid, honest.

Soon after my arrival I realised as a participant that this is not just a ride. It’s not something people are paying to see. This is an investment in yourself and others. A rollercoaster with a steering wheel everyone can get their hands on.

…………………………………..

I was invited to attend The Do Lectures. In a quiet corner of West Wales it’s a tiny event that’s not a conference, not a festival, more a meeting of minds where everyone is a speaker and listener combined. It’s inspiration has been emanating from it’s tented setting for the last four years and continuously from the minds of the attendees as they visit and return to their respective countries.

..and the original Storify is linked here: http://storify.com/documentally/the-do-lectures

For me a community is not tied to a geographical area. It’s more an area of common life. I live across a number of communities.  Family, friends, work, and a number of geeky tech loving groups who exist both on the web and in physical space.

Some hold a fellowship of solidarity and trust. Others merely contain a group of peope who share a common interest. Either way these communities are really important to me.

Anthony P. Cohen argues that communities are best approached as ‘communities of meaning’. In other words, ‘”community” plays a crucial symbolic role in generating people’s sense of belonging’.

I feel it’s this sense of belonging that’s missing from areas in society. And without this we are unable to build a feeling of self, of individuality.

Whether we like it or not capitalism permeates everything we do. Creativity is often styfled as production is privately owned and operated for profit. We are too far down that road to do anything about it. Still, there is no reason why we can’t create communities freely sharing our own thoughts, dreams and aspirations. A shield or filter as an antidote to the bombardment we are subjected to as the advertisers tell us how they think we should live.

The problem is, that most community spaces now cropping up have little to do with freedom of expression. They are controlled environments where the participants are leeched of all shared knowledge, where their interactions and connections are studied at a minute level.

If I arranged to meet with friends on my village green only to find that our every move was monitored and recorded, conversations archived and our home addresses logged.. I’d most certainly go and find somewhere a little more relaxed to chat. If in addition to this we were bombarded with suggestions of what someone thought we should spend our hard earned cash on… I’d probably leave never to return.

That is if there was somewhere to leave to.

We forget that Facebook and Google are advertising companies providing a communication infrastructure. Google plus is not a social network. We are the ones being sociable in the networks. It’s easy to forget this and our amnesia suits them just fine.

I’m aware of this. But only sometimes. It’s far too easy to get sucked in because that’s where my ‘friends’ are.

My networks exists cross platform. But for how much longer?

I won’t go into my gripes with Google+ following in the footsteps of Facebook and dictating how we should be conversing and what we should call ourselves. Making out they are doing us a favour by giving us four days grace to ‘fix’ our accounts should we rather use our nicknames in our posts. There are more than enough people making a noise around this to show it’s Google who are in fact broken.

I am now formulating a backup plan. An escape route. A quiet place where I can chat with friends in as close as I can find to privacy. Whatever that is.

This will probably sound terribly extreme to someone just floating along quite happily. I’d just like more options. I’m bored of the taste of ready meals and fancy something wholesome. Besides, I back up my data, why not back up my communication channels.

I’m not looking to create a secret society. I’m looking for an open system. Not owned or exclusive but shared worldwide. Perhaps a version of Status.net that in an emergency could work even if the internet is turned off. Yes you heard me. Perhaps a mesh-networked bluetooth affair or something using the D-star transmitters dotted around the world. There are options. It just has to be imagined.

And with this I’d like improved email to match.

I feel if i really want to regain control over the way I communicate online I need to ditch GMail. I’ll go for something with encryption. Something that gives me a red page when I am writing to someone not using encryption. It’s not because I have secrets. It’s because not everything I say in a personal email is for sale.

Decentralised, secure, mobile, social… What would you want?

I’m guessing what I want doesn’t exist yet. If not we should make it.

Who’s in?

I seemed to have spent a large proportion of my Internet ration on Google+ these last couple of days. Not in the negative time-suck kind of way.. In the WOW.. could this be the next big thing? kind of way.

I hope it is. It’s long overdue. Although I have a feeling it’s going to take a little time for people to see the potential. Perhaps a core community, the early adopters that love communication technology and understand the complexities of the social niches we make, perhaps these will blaze the trail. For the time being Google+ will not be a place for the masses to play. Soon though. And when they do the mass will be less massive, huddled in corners and finding new relevance in social interaction.

A couple of nights ago it cropped up in conversation again that Twitter had been stagnant for 18months. Although I’ve felt there to be a huge need for some inspirational new platform I didn’t respond as I was not sure I felt exactly the same way. Yes twitter as a platform hadn’t really moved on that much, but for me the value is in the feeds. It’s the conversation and content. There are times I forget about the platform and it’s simplicity. I also forget about it’s shortcomings. Without effective filtering, grouping, spam control and easy accessibility to the lists, Twitter can often feel half finished.

What Google+ has done is remind me of what is possible and that Twitter has even more shortcomings than I care to realise.  Twitter is my chosen platform when fishing for serendipity but Google has planted an awesome seed and many of the tech horticulturists can only imagine what it may bloom into. Of course if overlooked and not nurtured,it could wilt and die like Wave did. I liked Google Wave. Not enough people felt the same way though. I hope G+ is here to stay and enough users see the potential and make it their own.

Apart from the obvious, there are a few possibilities I’m quietly excited about. I’ve wanted to be able to send Geo-fenced updates to people within a particular location or distance from my current location. This could easily become a possibility within Google+ and it’s innovative use of your social graph.

Two days ago I was talking to a hall full of people wanting to learn more about twitter and the possibilities. I’ll certainly be changing my slides and adding G+ but I’m sure only a fraction of the people in that hall will check it out.

Why?

Firstly it’s new and the true value is still being defined by the early adopting users, experimenting, playing and creating the first case studies.

Secondly, the Sith marketers have not yet started talking about how much money you can make on it… Give them time.

So what exactly do I like?

My initial experience of it was on my iPhone and iPad and it appeared mobile straight out of the box. For all it’s functionality it appears clean and ad free. Ad free for now perhaps.

More than anything is I can see massive potential. I can’t wait to see how it’s used as an educational tool. Also having tried the pretty slick video conversation, I’m again wishing for more bandwidth as I can’t imagine what chatting with 10 people would look like. Especially with my current serving of internet access from British Telecom. It will probably allot one pixel per person who’s ‘Hanging out’ with me in video.

Then there is ‘Circles’ and the ease of grouping. This for me is where most of the potential is. This for me is the killer feature. My life is way more fragmented than it appears online. I have different friends into very different things. I like to keep my family stuff separate from my work stuff, my bushcraft talk separate from my motorbike chat and so on. This has not always been easy and although twitter has been the backbone to much of the media I have on multiple blogs, I think Google+ would make this segregation much easier as I can hold all these conversations off to the side, in separate rooms without the echo being overheard in the central hall.

This grouping seems to match what we do in real life. Google+ could stop all this talk off ‘offline’ and ‘online’.  Sociability spans offline/online. Forget about the tools. It’s the interaction within our relationships. Many have already felt this fusion as we interact with the world around us, not even aware of the mobile devices in hand.

Let’s make the most of it while we can and if it all turns out to be the beginnings of an evil plan… Lets hope some switched on open source coder rips off the good bits (like Facebook probably will) and let’s make this way of sharing and conversing our own.

Maybe it’s too good and too human to belong to a mega corp. Or perhaps google is infact not evil and this is their gift to prove it.

 

I’m @Documentally on twitter …and Google+

[CORRECTION - I, like many am now not allowed to play on Google+ Even though they know pretty much everything there is to know about me. they don't want me to post under the handle 'Documentally' and so have suspended my account. More info on Documental.ly]

 

There is software somewhere tracking all the IMEI’s on the phones that were momentarily clustered in the intimate auditorium of the Sage, Gateshead. A three day hotspot of creatives, thinkers, do’ers and disrupters.

The transmitted signatures have now spidered their way back across the country, across the water, across the world. And the digital echo of an amazing meeting of minds still hangs in the air.

It will be a little time till my synapses form the links I need to fully understand the connections made and the concepts and ideas discussed.

Since getting back a much needed sleep has ensured a full shutdown and re-boot with my new firmware now in place.

This was my second Thinking Digital Conference, another mental, social and physical growth spurt, not only survived, but that has invigorated me to exhaustion. I have more than a few plans forming from realisations I feel could only have happened at that geographical location. At that time.

There were times to focus, as we sat silently absorbing as the babble of speakers took turns to share. There were times to talk as huddled round in the breaks, paper was passed across conversations as personal details were exchanged.

You’ll certainly find more in-depth breakdowns discussing the highlights of Thinking Digital floating round the web. To avoid sounding sycophantic I’ll merely offer a window to some of the things I heard and explored.

For a conference that had a lot to live up to after the success of 2010, that had to do it on less cash, I’m more than a little impressed by Herb Kim’s ability to, in my opinion, ‘go one better’.

My role this year happened within the Thinking Digital University at Gateshead College

The panel entitled ‘The State of Social Media’ had to cater for a mixed audience from net novices to super users.

With everyone taking “social” a lot more seriously we were to ask What is this brave new world of the “third wave” going to look like? What problems will it solve? What problems will it create? Will the world really go “social” to the same level it has adopted PC’s & the Internet?

You really had to be there. No really, you did. As there was little to no wifi or 3G in what seemed to be a ‘Faraday cage’, there is little record of the conversation that was had. The side effect of this was an intense focus in the room. So much so that I overshot the finishing time by 20 mins.

The list of participants initially had me worried as they all seemed to be wearing some kind of marketing hat. I soon realized these people we much more than just selling. They had been chosen for a variety of reasons and I soon got to be enthralled and educated by the likes of the amazing Dr. Mariann Hardey, (@Mazrred), she lectures on social media and communications at the University of Durham Business School. She said she fell into the marketing side of things and following a conversation we had in a dark corridor she promises to write a paper citing our chat around ‘Sith Marketing’.. The only way I feel I can explain how ‘the dark side’ uses social media.

Sat alongside Dr Mariann Hardey on the panel was Wayne Gibbins (@WayneGibbins), the Global Communications Director for Viadeo who was really a coder in a suit and thus earned more and more respect from me as I got to know him over the next few days. Viadeo were one of the key sponsors of the conference and took it really well when I found a bug in their sign up process, responding to my concerns and promising a fix within moments of it’s discovery. I smiled to see them shocked that the massive amount of cash they placed behind the bar on the closing night got drunk after only a few hours. The array of Geeks at the closing party were obviously in a hurry to destroy the braincells they had just force fed over the previous days. I was one of then exercising my social glands.

Paul Fabretti (@PaulFabretti), Was also present. Digital Director for Origin Creative in Manchester with a string of successes too long to mention here.. Paul is no stranger to Thinking Digital and opened his mind letting ideas spill out into our musings.

Finally there was Rob Lawrence (@itwasmyidea), he was open about not being a massive fan of Twitter and it seemed that as a result he was involved in an inhuman number of projects with some world famous endeavours already under his belt.

It was these guys I spoke with for the next few hours as we tried to make sense of it all. There was no Netutopianism in the room. Just the good the bad and the ugly tales of our online adventures used as a datum in order to have a guess at the future.

We soon realized that it was the dreamers turned do’ers forging the way. Some of the conversations at the conference relevant to the audience were echos of old thoughts in the minds of a few of these unafraid to experiment.

The thinkers helped with navigation and direction but the do-ers would get there anyway. They are not afraid to try and fail repeatedly till they find their path. I tried to summarize in a tweet with “Keep an eye on the exits, Listen harder than everyone else and break it to make it better.”

I won’t attempt to review the entire Thinking Digital Conference in a single tweet. In these sci-fi days of augmented reality and pocket video conferencing, it’s the subtleties once again. The handshake with a stranger who turns out to be an old friend you have never shared meatspace with. The subtle combination of body language and expression that is still undigitizeable. The unplanned engagement that turns into a realisation which could only have happened in that corridor, at that time, with those two people.

This is why you had to be there. This is why the physical conference is not dead.

..And at the moment, this is something Thinking Digital does better than anyone else.

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

There’s more audio at Audioboo.net
..I’m @Documentally on twitter.

Firstly I have to thank the soundsmith @MCFontaine for sending me this mashup created from a few of my audio recordings on  Audioboo. I love what he has done and am inspired to one day.. perhaps.. trawl through the (aprox) 83 hours of Audioboo’s I’ve done in the last two years.

Prior to finding the Audioboo iPhone app I would edit my podcasts long hand. Sometimes I could spend up to 8 hours trying to get an edit ‘perfect’ before it would finally make it online. In 2 years I uploaded about 45 podcasts. I have uploaded a thousand Audioboo’s in the 2 years since they started.

There is certainly something to say for always having your recording device in your back pocket. Not to mention the  app’s ease of use.

From personal thoughts, soundscapes, to interviews, I find myself prefering the ease and simplicity of audio over the sometimes longwinded and hard to upload (on my bandwidth) video. There have been many times when an interview on video was either not allowed or asking for one made the subject uncomfortable. This is when Audio once again comes into it’s own.

I could go on about how I have all but cancelled my subscriptions to the 1hr ‘pro’ podcasts in favour of the shorter more engaging and personal soundbites.. And the value I have gained from investing my time in recording on the fly. But I have said it all before.. and no doubt it was in audio.

You can hear my Audioboo’s on http://Audioboo.net

And if you want to subscribe in iTunes please click this embedded link.

Seriously, I have no idea what my digital footprint would look like it there wasn’t easy audio blogging like this. Thanks to @MarkRock and the Audioboo team for creating such a great platform/app and for putting up with all my suggestions over the years.. (Please can I have the tweet on/off button.. the random boo button.. a streaming audioboo radio channel.. and so on..)

And I also need to thank @Sizemore who a little over 2 years ago sent me a link saying something like..”Check this out, I think you will like this… http://Audioboo.fm”

A Journalist friend is holed up in Syria. Yesterday he told me he needed more mobile web options and asked for advice.

As foreign nationals are being told to leave, he is staying put. As an experienced journalist he’s seen worse, but he has no idea how bad this is going to get. It’s getting harder and move around as recent reports talk of snipers on roofs.

Of the smart phones available on the Syrian streets, today my friend opted for the latest he could find, the HTC Wildfire running Android 2.1.

He is not a geek by any stretch of the imagination. He is not really a user of of any social media tools but he has recently realised the benefits of following twitter lists and the valuable realtime news updates they can give to a person in his position.

All he needs to do is keep an eye on the twitter list curated by @HalaGorani, yet from where he is it seems to be blocked. As is the Android app store. As are many web spaces in Syria.

He emailed me for help and I dropped out a tweet asking for help.

My friend was super frustrated and about to throw his $300 new phone out of the window. He hates how tech can sometimes eat into the time he should be writing stories.

There was a great response on twitter and we collected some options on Sync.in where @Edent reminded me of Dabr.co.uk.

Dabr was my main app when all I had as a smartphone was my Nokia N95. It always worked without a hitch and taught me alot about Twitter.

So.. After trying 5 or six options my friend finally got to trying Dabr.co.uk and 2 minutes later I get a one paragraph email straight back which i think says it all..

Hooray. That worked. That Dabr thing is great. So much nicer that all that fancy shit that doesn’t actually work; substance over style, for once.