Politics In The Social Media Playground
May 12, 2010
We may never know the Impact social media had in shaping our new rather bewildering government.
Maybe it reached a lethargic non-voting population and changed their minds. Perhaps it taught the party campaigners to engage with more mobile tools in order to rally their troops. Maybe all it did was introduce other channels of communication to the mix.
All I know is it certainly played a part.
@CraigElder sources David Cameron questions on Twitter to answer at The Open University
Perhaps now with new Natural Language Processing tools for measuring our online sentiment we will finally get an idea of how much of an impact these new media tools are having in the mindset of the general voting public. This is both amazing and scary to me. We seem so desperate to know yet many of us are just having fun. Playing with tech as tools.
It was @Ilicco and Reuters that though it was OK to let the geeks loose with tech in close proximity to the leaders of our parties. And as the security perimeters thinned with each encounter, Brown to Cameron to Clegg.. we would try out more tools and techniques experimenting ways to bring the outside conversations in and to share the conversations we had with everyone. There were times when Ilicco wondered how much trouble we may or may not get into. That said.. I don’t think he ever stopped having fun.
Some of these groundbreaking platforms championed by @Sleepydog lived only during this extreme period of change. His coders would use zero’s and one’s like lego. All the bits are now back in the box. Till next playtime.
We were not too hung up on the quality of anything, be it the video stream or the questions I would slip into whatever conversations we were having. I do remember feeling excited and sharing way too much coffee with friends who’d been given the opportunity to collaborate on projects that excited and inspired.
It was a social media playground like no other. Mobile phones verses the HD stream. Political pundits verses the twitter stream with in many ways the geeks given free rein.
I’m not sure if we will ever again see such a massive change in communication in such a short space of time. Not to the extent that Reuters championed. It was the beach on which the waves of old and new media crashed ..and we all got wet.
Now everyone and their dog is a ‘Social Media Expert’ the air is muggy with hot air and opinion claiming the right and wrong way to engage using real-time web tools.
In the words of Yoda, “Do or do not… There is no try.”
Participation is the key and feeling free enough to play allows you to subconsciously learn from your mistakes.
The people who were both in the rooms and working remotely in these projects are too many to mention. Perhaps they would like to link in or comment their experiences below.
Some names of note were: @Ilicco, @Sizemore, @Sleepydog, @Loudmouthman, @Kate_Day, @SolobassSteve, @benjaminellis, @MarkJones, @CliveFlint, @Sophiebr
The unquantifiable nature of all this will be just a memory next time round. The tools are coming and although I feel we are a long time away from totally understanding the impact from this kind of exchange, we are getting closer all the time.
If I’m honest it’s the metrics that excite me the least. Let the practitioners experiment, explore, dance around new ways. For every ten people willing to show the way, there will be ten thousand wanting to sell you the map.
“When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point.” ~ Alan Watts
I am @Documentally on Twitter and mostly blog on http://Documental.ly
P.S Lets remind these guys what they promised the people..
PPS, In this last coffee soaked audioboo I meant to say megabits not megabytes..
2008 a journey with friends
December 31, 2008
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.
Politics and Social Media.
December 14, 2008
Do politicians really understand how to use social media?
Those of us versed in these new ways of online communication know that any political figure who can truly and completely adopt social media methods would have a formidable secret weapon in their arsenal. A weapon that would have to be adopted across all the battling parties or they would quickly fall by the wayside.
Obama has come the closest at showing the world how to effectively use social and new media in a political campaign with great success.
With podcasts, viral videos, twitter streams and Flickr groups there seemed to be no corner of the Internet where Obama wasn’t being talked about. Who knows how much of this was actually orchestrated by Obama’s people themselves? Does it really matter? The conversations were happening and it seemed Obama’s supporters were the most clued up as to how to keep the ball rolling.
Here in the UK, David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party has been dabbling in social media too. You may have seen ‘Webcameron‘ and his Twitter feed.
He certainly has the people around him capable of pulling this off. Hell, he’s even young enough to make it look like his idea.
Take a look at both parties current web presence though and you will see their pages filled with MySpace style jibes. Social media should be used more for engaging rather than bickering.
I’m intrigued to see whether Reuters‘ forward thinking in getting us in to exercise our social media sinew allows some of our uses of this tech to rub off on others.
After myself and Sizemore documented Gordon Brown’s visit to the Reuters head office in London. Ilicco (Head of Reuters mobile) thought we should take it a step further for a visit by David Cameron.
So, come the morning of the 15th of December (Tomorrow) at 10 am, a team of UK social media practitioners shall be in position to document Cameron and the day in more channels than are usually exercised.
This time the team has grown. Behind the scenes we will now have the technical support of two very well known social media mavens, Nik Butler (@Loudmouthman) and Phil Campbell (@PhilCampbell). As Nik uses some code he has built to trawl the twittersphere for questions and comments relating to Cameron’s talk, Phil Campbell will be at the digital helm of his invention Rezpondr at http://Newsmaker.Rezpondr.com. On the Reuters side of things will be @Chris_Parker and @MarkJones manning @Reuters_co_uk
Myself and Mike we be on the ground as last time. Taking pix, shooting film, streaming live and using our Mac’s to live blog the mornings event.
If we can get enough coffee inside us prior to Cameron’s arrival, between the four of us we should be able to extract as much as possible from the 60 minutes at our disposal.
I shall have my N95 for Qiking, my iPhone for tweeting pix, my Kodak Zi6 for HD video blogging, my Nikon D3 for raw pix and new to the arsenal a Nikon D90 equipped with an Eye-Fi SD card streaming photo’s straight into my Eye-Fi flicker account. Obviously it may be a bit of a struggle using all these devices at once and some will argue that I could consolidate some of this kit as certain items are able to multi task. That may well be so, but this is a test. We are once again undertaking an experiment in extreme social media. We are here to make mistakes and to learn from them.
It could be that I concentrate on streaming video and photos and save the rest for either side of Cameron’s visit. Who know what will happen on the day.
All I know is we have an amazing array of technology at our disposal and some hugely capable minds to tie it all in. All this so as the people excluded from the opportunity to participate can truly be a part of the conversation.
In the future this will be the norm and we will wonder why it took so long for politics and journalism to catch on to this.
Oh.. and in answer to my initial question. I think not.. but some of their aides will no doubt do it for them.
The Manchester Digital Development Agency
October 31, 2008
This week I was asked to go along to the Manchester Digital Development Agency and talk at an event called AmbITion, an Arts Council project that’s helping arts organisations in the East and North West regions of England make better use of technology.
It was a quality day, well organised in a great venue. Whenever I make the journey up to Manchester I always end up returning inspired after mixing with the masses of creative minds involved in some great projects.
Here are a few moments from the day:
Big thanks go to the MDDA, in particular Phil Birchenall and Gerry Scappaticci.
If you get the chance, show your support for the first Manchester Social Media Cafe on the 11th November.
The music used in the video is entitled ‘Depeche’ by Moriarty
PICNIC’08 – A meeting of creative minds.
September 4, 2008
“From 24 to 26 September 2008, thousands of creative minds from all over the world will come together in Amsterdam for the third PICNIC. …”
So how does one particular creative mind get to this kind of event on a budget? It looks huge, expensive dripping with free bars and full colour laser projection backdrops.
Yes, I am talking about me… I am just putting my feelers out there at the moment but it looks like a fantastic event that I could get so much out of as well as (I hope) add something too.
Not Just PICNIC, I also plan to get over and talk at Podcamp Hawaii. This could all be pie in the sky as quite obviously all these events cost money. If I got to go to all of the worldwide social media events I have my eye on, I would never be home. More to the point I probably wouldn’t have a home as I’d have to sell it to fund all these social media miles.
It was the day after I got back from the New Media Expo in Las Vegas that I spotted Picnic08 online.. It talked about the worlds top creatives, networking, melding ideas and pushing the boundaries in all forms of media.
This was for me.. in fact, how could this go ahead without me? 
Ahh.. then i saw the costs involved.. (£1013 for a full conference ticket), Hmm it appears it is not just for creative minds.. It’s for rich creative minds. “OK..’ I thought. “Don’t let that dissuade you from going..”
It may not be the kind of event I am used to.. Free like a podcamp or a max of $400 for NME, but surely this event is not just limited to those who have already made their name in the business world, the established minds of the corporate elite who would not think twice at bunging 1000+ euros at a networking event in Amsterdam. What if i forked out the money and then, as with many other events, found the value in the corridors and hidden spaces. The places where the unconventional unconferences dwell?
Shortly after deciding to lay off the photography and venture into the social media mayhem, I manage to go to SXSW, Podcamp NYC and then recently the NME Las Vegas.. All with relative ease. In most cases I was asked to go and my costs covered by either sponsors, or clients. I would like to think some apps were well tested, some profiles raised and decent content made in the process. There were definately connections and contacts made.
But here we are, the most local of all the bigger, massivly funded events.. specialising in my main passion (creativity), just a mere hop across the water and it may as well be a million miles away.
I’d Love to get sponsored to attend Picnic08, there is little chance I could raise the funds in time otherwise.
Like many of my social media friends, I am a hand-to-mouth blogger, vlogger and multi media mongrel. Things continue improving the more projects I get my teeth into, but it’s looking like I would need in excess of 2000 euros to attend this event and I just don’t have the ready cash lying around. *checks the mattress*.
All these ideas and inspiration to share.. Just no piles of hard cash.
If this were an advertisement attempting to sell my services in exchange for passage over the water to Holland, I would ask anybody who does have the spare cash to contact me and find out what I can do for you in exchange for sponsorship. I would talk about the seemingly endless provision of creative content, coverage and exposure..
I would say get in touch through Twitter or through this website (top right envelope).
But this is just another blogger talking about being on the edge and in the middle of this strange warping world of social media..
If you have just arrived at this site and are not sure what I have been up to recently.. check out:
my blogging on http://www.Creative-Choices.co.uk
Some of my video content in other places..
I use Qik A podcast I did for the United Nations in Jordan.
..And here is a channel on Phreadz I contributed to for the New Media Expo.
In many ways you have to be a creative mind yourself to see the value of content creators working within social media networks. It is still a new field and the role is evolving all the time.
It would be bloody great to go to PICNIC’08 and I will keep my bag packed just in case I need to make a last minute hop across the water.
Still, I have a back up plan..
Another meeting of creative minds, an imagination collaberation in Birmingham on the 26th. Far closer to home and as cheap as a drive up the motorway,
These are the new generation of networking meets.. No stareing bleary eyed into a cold egg as a cushion cover embroider trys to sell to you over the dawn chorus. No costly subscriptions and suits are most certainly optional. This is truly a meeting of minds where creativity and inovation is quenched in coffee as the future of media is forged from white hot ideas.
These are exciting times. Lasers and robots, holograms and segways. Even with the big social media events grabbing the attention of the corporate world.. a pot of coffee is all you really need to attract a meeting of creative minds.
Less is more: The 12 second blog killer
August 26, 2008
I am finding it easier and easier to just click record and speak my thoughts into some form or video blogging application.
It all began with Seesmic and now in addition (especially when wanting to cross post and use multimedia) I also use Phreadz. For live streaming (in my opinion), there is still only Qik.
The more I used these places the more I noticed a dip in my frequency to blog and podcast. It’s just too easy. If I have a question, thought, idea or master plan I would like to bounce off someone, I just press a button, speak my mind and before I have time to log out, I have an inbox full of answers replies and comments.
Coupled with the bind it can sometimes be to actually write a blog post and I am amazed these pages ever change.
Don’t get me wrong.. I love this Wordpress template. It has enabled me to cram all kinds of content onto the front page of my blog. It’s well laid out and easy to use.
Many of the settings lie dormant beneath the surface as I don’t feel the need to use all the whistles and bells at my disposal.
I love the integration of the images to highlight the articles on the front page but if I originally thought I would take my time to grow into this blog template, I am now finding that I’m taking too much time to do each blog. As a result I write less as I can’t just ‘bang out’ an idea and make it live. Not like I can when posting a video.
Just as I have massively reduced the production time on my podcasts by keeping it simple, maybe I can do the same here? Instead of having to upload two new and unique graphics every time I do a new blog, I think if I already have a selection of stock avatar-type images to link to on my server I am more likely to want to drop little ditties, thoughts and ideas onto a web page.
Sometimes I feel you have to worry less about how it looks in order to get the content out there. I guess I realized this a while ago. Maybe I just didn’t want to let go of my initial way of doing things.
Our Man Inside on 12seconds.tv
Now with the emergence if 12 seconds all hell has broken loose in my video blogging world. I’m not sure what it is that I find compelling.. Perhaps it’s fitting stuff within the time constraints.. Maybe it’s the distillation of peoples humour and the visual snippets of their lives? It’s all so easy to digest in small bitesize chunks without feeling that you should be doing something else.
No one rambles. There is no feeling of time-suck, your life ebbing away as you wait for someone to make their point. I guess this sounds selfish but when you surround yourself with creative minds, absorbing their media all day, everyday, be it blogs, podcasts or videos, you sometimes just want a mini media snack, not a full blown mind meal. If you do not limit the time you put aside to take all of this media in.. before you know it, the day has gone and you are wishing you turned off hours ago.
I don’t get that with 12 seconds, at least not at the moment.. Who knows where it will go. I guess I kind of like it being a different beast to the other places I frequent. If I want threaded conversation (..and i do.. often) I have those places. If I want a 12 second stand alone snippit.. it’s perfect.
Maybe we will soon see replies and threading, perhaps it will become more of a video-Plurk rather than a video-Twitter.
Part of me hopes not. Comments are enough for me right now and I think I would like to see 12seconds evolve along it’s own pedigree, not cross breed into another social media mongrel.
Only time will tell.
Protect Your Content – Stream It Live!
July 8, 2008
After the UK Home Secretary’s recent statement green-lighting the harassment of photographers in public places, could it already be too late for us to reverse the attitudes of certain members of the law enforcement agencies and the general public?
At the bottom of this post are a few links to tales of photographic woe and more cases of people’s civil liberties being ignored as more often we are told “No Photos!”.
Should we continue to raise awareness with blogging, protesting and flash mobs?
Maybe we can do what this guy is doing..
Personally I think all of the above but also.. Prepare yourself for the worst. If the situation does start getting more and more difficult for photographers and video makers in public places, then at the very least I want to protect my media.
It used to be that I carried a crappy 16 meg memory card in my back pocket, just in case some over jealous policeman in a far off land tried to confiscate my data.
Now with some of the new technologies at our disposal we can safely stream our content either back to our laptops or straight to the web as we continue shooting.
I am not talking about the Pro range of Wifi kit available to sports photographers using top of the range Nikon and Canon cameras. I am talking about off the shelf consumer software and hardware like Qik.com for mobile streaming and the Eye-Fi card for rapid transmission of stills from almost any compact camera.
If these two methods of shifting data from your camera to the web are just the beginning, we are in for some exciting times.
I for one will continue to put both systems through their paces and do so while actively shooting footage and taking stills in any public place i find myself in.
If we don’t exercise our civil liberties, they will atrophy.
http://photorights.org/blog/42-days-and-hand-over-your-flash-card
http://maximumsorrow.com/writing/whyineverprintmyphotos.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/nyregion/29camera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://trinyprada.wordpress.com
Big thanks to Photo Mart for lending me the Eye Fi to test.
..and something a little different.. Strictly no photography.
A moment with Tony Benn
June 26, 2008
Today whilst passing through London and before descending into the tube, I just happened to pop outside Euston train station and spotted Tony Benn sat on a bench lighting his pipe.
I was on the way down to Southampton to pick up a car and although I have no idea what made me pop outside the station after getting off the train, I am glad i did.
I was not going pass up the opportunity to chat with a lifelong hero of mine so I wondered over and introduced myself.
We had a brief discussion about the National Union of Journalists before I suddenly remembered I had in my bag a pro stills camera, a web enabled mobile phone and a mini video camera.
Although Tony Benn only had about five minutes to catch his train to Preston he was kind enough to humour me as I conducted a short interview on video.. I then took a few stills and showed him how easy it was using Qik to stream from a mobile phone.
Tony is no stranger to being interviewed or filmed as he spends much of his life on the lecture circuit in the public eye. It was the quick demo of the technology around live streaming from a mobile device straight to the web that seemed to interest him the most.
In about three minutes we were done and a slightly amazed Tony Benn took my card and invited me to get in touch so I could introduce him to more of this technology.
It was a really great start to the day for me. Totally unexpected and I was glad I had my ‘geek’ bag at the ready.
I have been a fan of Tony Benn and his work for a while now and am so glad to have finally met him. Not only that, but as a great bonus I now have his home number and hope to do a more in depth interview in the future.
Here is the same video on YouTube
..and my thoughts on Qik straight afterwards.
Dogwalking
May 16, 2008
I do it every day. Come rain or shine. It is at the moment my only form of exercise.
My dog is a Coltriever and needs three good walks a day. She has a wee and a pooh on all occasions and I sometimes wish my metabolism was that fast.
I am lucky where I live to have loads of intersecting paths through the Northamptonshire countryside crisscrossing all around so there is always a choice of direction and area. Not to mention a forest only a ball throw away.
Occasionally I tweet while I walk and throw the ball, sometimes I stream it live. Well almost live. Vodafone has not yet seen the benefit of equipping my part of the Northamptonshire sky with 3G.
Here is a Qik clip from today…
Jeffrey Descovic at Podcamp NYC 2.0
May 6, 2008
Of all the memorable moments of Podcamp NYC 2.0 an impromptu meeting with Jeffrey Descovic touched me the most.
Jeffrey has an amazing story well documented HERE on his website and here on InnocenceProject.org In addition Jeffrey’s myspace page is HERE.
I was introduced to he by Rox from BeachWalks.tv and a few minutes later i was doing an interview using Seesmic.
At the same time as we Seesmic’ed and Qik’ed.. Phil Campbell recorded on HD.
The Innocence of Jeffrey Deskovic from Phil Campbell – England on Vimeo.
View the full interview on Seesmic with the thread here.. http://seesmic.com/v/OGHBz3SDbT
..and just as a footnote.. here is a photo of me and Phil on Chris Brogan’s blog and some more podcamp action from the podcast Push My Follow..
