Our Man Inside

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.

 

This post originally appears on the Open University’s website ‘Platform’ linked here

I didn’t just go to SXSW for the free cocktails, late night parties, and spontaneous meet ups.
 
No, I had work to do and a part of that was my own research. Simply put, I was really interested to know if anyone had any idea as to what ‘the next big thing’ might be.

The conference centre was where most people would gravitate towards, yet personally I found it repulsive. Not initially. I got to the conference centre before everybody other than security and it was a space full of potential. The corridors were wide and inviting. The barriers set up for registration zigzagged the great hall and everything seemed geared up for conversation.

As soon as the circus kicked off though the punters (of which I was very much one) were penned in and sold to: whether it be the constant bombarding with brands hanging in the air, brands in your food, brands asking you to scan a QR code so they could infiltrate your phone or brands on napkins you could wipe your disgust on. There was no escape.

Mainstream
For a large chunk of the festival I played the same game. After all, I owe much to my own accidental brand and the very fact I was walking the Austin streets was down to sponsorship from forward-thinking British brands.
 
I soon realised I was not alone in my discontent. Not just for the massively monetized conference but for the scene itself.

Perhaps now social media appeared mainstream (this was after all the first year SXSWinteractive had outsold the music festival).. perhaps now everyone was doing it.. those that really cared had lost their niche. The early adopters surfing on the edge of a wave were not prepared for it to crash on the beach.
I am not a regular but I still had 2008 to compare with and this year certainly seemed to be some kind of tipping point. Where were the breakthroughs? Where were the new memes that will carry us into and through the next innovation horizon?

All the panels I wanted to attend seemed to be on simultaneously. Then when there was 10 minutes between events there was 20 minutes of travel to get to a distant hotel conference room.  As a result I struggled to cover half of what I wanted to see. I took little comfort in the fact that in order to find out more, chasing people up who’d been to these panels returned the common response “meh”.

Soggy
With all the tech saturation everything felt… well, wet and soggy. I was proud to be asked to talk about location based app LoveFre.sh  as it’s based on discovering local produce and the people around it. Just using the app dropped me into peoples lives that were passionately going about their business because they cared.

It was this same theme of local that took me into the streets meeting  the local community and those living locally during the festival.

There was also great insight to be had from the SXSW old timers: they knew where to go to find the pockets of reality amongst the cash-encrusted carnival.  One of the high points of the week was being introduced to the Frey Cafe tucked away in the back of the Red Eye Fly bar. Ewan Spence led the way and the night was filled with magic. In it’s 11th year Frey cafe was unbranded & untouched since it’s origins. It was real life storytelling at it’s finest. But for how long? Just the presence of the festival in the city pushes the rents up on all spaces no matter how small and hidden away. These gems are being driven underground.

Also my conversation with Adriana Lukas on Self Hacking went a long way to restoring my faith in humanity…

At least the humanity that was in attendance. We need more disruption, more disrupters and do-ers.  If the masses are now going to be shovelling data into the web like everyone else.. Where are the artists,  the chefs who will make sense of it all and present us up beautiful bite-sized chunks that we can not only share with those around us… but that we can get excited about as we dwell upon relevance?

Empathy
All this relentless shovelling is just leaving a hole where meaning used to be. Show us how these technologies make life better. That is all. Because it can you know.

The free alcohol-induced hedonistic nights left a bitter taste in my mouth when I woke to hear the news in Japan. It was mobile tech and social platforms that were getting the news to me.

In talking to those around me on the streets of SXSW I found an empathy I felt was lacking in the halls and auditoriums. It wasn’t easy to reach out across the world to a nation in need other than to chuck money in their direction in the hope that would make their problems go away.
 
Offline
This is just the beginning. We have the users: let us hone the use. Buzzwords of Game Layers and the Gamification of education are just words without the social interaction these mechanisms seem to rely on. My offline interactions were way more rewarding than my online ones. The social tools I used enabled me to find the people I wanted to share physical space with.
 
I came away from SXSW 2011 with realisations very different to what I’d expected.
Our fate seems to be in the hands of the digital shepherds, the designer/developers who in my opinion need to display our time-based data intertwined with our geographic data. I think it’s been given a fancy name like Geotemporal Visualization.

Easily accessible time/space data sets done well are necessary if innovative collaborations are to create some kind of empathic strands that span out to link our online relationships.

The SXSW interactive festival made me want to unplug and turn everything off. Only for a moment though. I found that turning on just a few channels, a back channel, a transmission frequency and a slight turn of the ‘squelch’ dial to allow just enough background conversation in …and I was re-engaged.

I am still looking for the balance of on vs. off. I am still looking for the niche.

 

The Documentally podcast in it’s iTunes form started in 2006, i started video blogging and using twitter in 2007 but it was 2008 that felt like social media really took off for me.

Maybe because I felt like I was no longer just a photographer. My ability to take photos and document things was now just one shade on a growing multimedia palette of skills that had community in mind.

I guess things really took off with my trip into Jordan for the United Nations. This was a big job for me, the ground covered, audio interviews, photos and final editing into a podcast assembled with the assistance of people like Phil Sands and Bill Cammack. It was in Jordan I introduced an Iraqi Refugee to Seesmic. This blew his mind that he could reach out into the homes of the western world and report first hand what he was going through whilst escaping with only his life from the mess that was/is Iraq.

I felt this would be an incredibly important use for video conversation platforms. Today they seem to concentrate on conversations with celebrity and have not yet been adopted by areas of the worlds community in real need of talking about their plight. Hopefully myself and Mike Sizemore will be able to push the use of video conversational platforms in the political sphere. We have already had great success using Qik during talks with political party leaders with Thompson Reuters, thanks to people like @ilicco.

Shortly after Jordan was a meetup in Paris, then SXSW in Austin, Texas. This was made possible by more sponsorship. Jeff Pulver bought the tickets and myself and Phil Campbell’s socializing was more than covered by Seesmic. It was here that many online friendships were cemented and connections made. People who’s lives I still follow daily and think of as good friends. Some of these friendships were fortified more with my trip to New York for Podcamp NYC 2.0. Also made possible with sponsorship from Seesmic.

There are too many people to name with whom friendships were made and are still maintained. If you look at my Twitter friends and scroll back to the first 30 or so pages.. these are the people from this time. These are the people I would do most anything for. The web weaving warriors who have made sense of this digital wasteland.

After SXSW I was bridging out from mobile media making and into Consulting. Geert Van Kesteren commissioned me to fly out to Amsterdam and help him with his media mountain. Towers of hard drives containing incredible photo stories waiting to be reformatted into online portfolios, podcasts, films anything that gave them new life.

Las Vegas was another big event of the year made possible with the help of Steve Purkiss, @Kosso’s Phreadz and The Open University. In fact Phreadz and The OU have gone on to play a massive part in many more of this years adventures. Berlin Web 2.0 was made infinitely more interesting and Geeknbury really came together with the online participation from those that could not make it.

Work for me this year has been a pleasure. Which is just as well, if i’m not doing something for an assignment, I am doing more of the same for the love of it. It was great working with Carl (@FellowCreative) and the University of Creative Arts online projects. Speaking at places like the UCA and the MDDA really punctuate the year nicely and allow me to learn through talking more about what it is we do.

I finished this year by running video blogging courses. A full day of looking at kit, learning how to use it, filming editing uploading and dissemination.

If you had asked me at the beginning of 2008 what i would be doing throughout the year, I would have had no idea how fast and how far this social media wave would travel. Surf’s up and it’s 10 foot and tubing.

If you ask me now I’ll say I just want to stay on the surfboard, anything else is a bonus.

I look forward to doing more with these people in 2009. More projects with the likes of Dave @BuddhaMagnet. More experimental stuff with the OU, more teaching with the MDDA.. More with, Nick Butler, @sleepydog, Phil Campbell, Mike Sizemore.. Just more.

Of course I have the little matter of a baby arriving between March and April so my focus may alter somewhat in the first quarter of this year. If I thought 2008 was epic, 2009 it is bound to be more so.

This blog post accompanies a podcast I have rushed out in the last couple of hours of 2008. Not really a concise summery. Just a ramble whilst walking the dog on a cold December night. Trying to get my head around the year and at the same time trying not to freeze to death in the dark Northamptonshire countryside.

You can subscribe to my ever so neglected podcast in the iTunes store.

If you feel you can add to this please comment. It’s great to get feedback, thoughts and ideas.

Don’t forget you can support this blog here and a review on my podcast in Itunes may do more good than bad.

I won’t ask any more from you other than to stay in touch. Communication got us here.. Staying connected will carry us through. A journey with friends.

The first half of this podcast was recorded in the company of Philip Campbell in March 2008 on a flight to Newark airport before going on to SXSW in Austin Texas.

The second half was recorded on the flight back to London.

We talk about hacking, podcamp uk, Seesmic, Qik, Blip TV, Pulver TV, social media and how to make Sloe Gin.

I edited it one month later in April, on another flight to Newark this time on my own and heading to PodcampNYC 2.0.

The song entitled HTML in the middle was emailed to me by Erin of the band ‘The Hot Toddies‘. I highly reccommend checking them out HERE.

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

I’d love to have taken the time to have written my thanks to Bill Cammack regarding his job as editor on the recent UNHCR Podcast I have been working on but now I have seen his blogging skills in full swing..

I am glad i stuck with a brief video and didn’t embarrass myself.

When Bill talks about the connections made within social media I think he hits the nail on the head. So much so that you should just click this link and read his post. That way I can get on with my packing and preparations for my flight tomorrow to Austin, Texas and the massive festival that is SXSW.

Let me just say though.. All these places we spend time on allow us to converse with people in some ways on better terms that we could do in the flesh.

A couple of days ago I posted my 3000 video post on Seesmic and soon after was asked.. “Was it worth it?”.

I answered that I would have happily posted 5000 posts in exchange for the chance to have made contact with half of the amazing people I have met through the site. It has taken many of my previous ‘Twitter‘ connections to another dimension, as I choose what conversation I wish to get involved with, with whom and when.

How many conversations do you have in a day where you do not have the chance to choose those parameters?

I have been podcasting for a couple of years now and before that I was a heavy forum poster.. That said, I still feel I am very new to many of the intricacies of social media and with this in mind I am more than a little excited to what the future may hold.

Project Update:
Regarding the UNHCR project.. As I type this there are a few representatives in a small office in Amman, Jordan looking over it now. I hope to hear back soon and have a date where I can put it out there. Then, hopefully it will start a conversation and perhaps direct some help to some people that really need it.