Our Man Inside

Not sure if you have read this article in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/22/social-networking-cyber-scepticism-twitter

It’s a new article based on and old statement that’s been floating around for a while. I imagine it’s resurfaced due to the book ‘Alone Together’ hitting the UK shelves soon. Either that or there is little new comment to report on.

In some ways for those that use Facebook only, the general thrust of the article rings true. The social web has evolved way beyond what the mainstream public use though.  The potential is only limited by our imagination. If the person stood at the bus stop is forever head down checking their Facebook wall, then maybe they are only comfortable talking to people online and are not normally that sociable.  Or perhaps they are connected to thousands and just on the way to meet a chunk of them. Just because they are not talking to the person stood next to them doesn’t mean they are not being sociable. Social interaction online is still social interaction.

If you are not at all empathic then I can see how using technology to communicate with another human being may seem difficult and strange. This is not the fault of technology. It is down to us to listen more, to extract meaning from the information we are given. To become better readers of others. We have mastered very well indeed how to communicate by telephone. Even though we have no access to facial expression, eye accessing cues and body language. It’s still early days for all of these new tools and once the initial explosion is over and the dust settles, we will see new and amazing ways to connect.

Location based applications using geotagging, particularly those on Mobile devices are certainly bridging the gaps between the online spaces and what the non-users of these channels are calling ‘Real Life‘.

I can say from my own experience that my uses of these tools are often a talking point with those stood around me. It’s a fascinating new world. I enjoy sharing it with those that still think this is all digital witchcraft. You only have to show a couple of relevant uses for people to suddenly ‘get it’.

You can’t just dip into these channels and understand the interactions that are going on. You need to get involved or you risk sounding like every other lazy pundit that doesn’t ‘get it’ as they state.. “I don’t want to know what you are having for breakfast!”

Those regurgitating this particular meme are probably not that interested in humanity anyway. It’s like walking into a public gathering and shouting “What are you all talking about and how is this relevant to me?!!”

I certainly talk to and meet more people IRL (in real life) now that I’m using these tools because I’m a person that likes to create new interactions anyway. It may be that I leave my village desk for a conference, a ‘geek meet’, to grab a quick coffee with an new online connection, or some social experiment where I am purposely connecting with people in the real and virtual sense using these tools. i.e http://Freebees.me

Some individuals are sociable and some are not. I’d hazard a bet there are more people experiencing new interactions with the social web that there are sociable types becoming ‘isolated’ like the article suggests. Huge swathes of socially impoverished disconnected people now have a voice and it is down to us to listen and connect.

The call for some kind of ‘Netequette’ sounds suspiciously like someone asking for more ‘rules and regulation’. After new forms of back channel communication and information sharing have spurned organisations like Wikileaks, I don’t have to make too large a tin foil hat to see a social technology backlash would be nurtured by some other ‘well connected’ members of society. After all, the person on the street with a mobile device is now more connected than ever before. With more information at their fingertips than you average i.p blocked government office.

I totally agree with peoples growing inability to digest large complex amounts of information. Although can only really speak from my own experience. I seem to be buying more books but reading less larger works. On the whole I am reading more though. I use the Read Later bookmark tool to send articles I don’t feel I have time to read (mainly when I don’t feel like I want to sit at the computer) and that article gets synced to an app called Instapaper allowing me to read the article on my other more mobile devices like my phone, ipad etc. That person you see at the bus stop staring at his phone or iPad may be me reading the Guardian or some other online publication. Would I be less isolated hidden behind a broadsheet newspaper?

These new ways of communicating and sharing information are not going away. They will however become more refined as we also find new ways of managing our time. No doubt as we see greater adoption, those in the heart of this ‘backlash’ will quieten down as they begin to find these tools ‘more useful’.

i’m @Documentally on twitter

(This blog post also exists in shorter form on the Guardian’s website.)

2010 saw massive adoption of social media channels. Not all the right ones in my mind but nevertheless people were saturating themselves with the social web and it felt almost normal to be a geek.

We learnt that changing your avatar green just stopped your friends recognising you. Politicians are as engaging online as they need to be before they batten down the hatches and that the more effective the internet gets at what it does, the more of a threat ‘the powers that be’ think it is.

Some people are beginning to realise the power of information and now we can share it better than ever before, ‘they’ feel this currency needs to be regulated.

Looking back digitally this last year has freaked me out a little. I appear to have managed to squeeze all kinds of projects in. Pakistan, Hong Kong, Spain, Kenya and Ireland to name a few.

Being a life blogger helps you punctuate time. Episodes aren’t lived and forgotten. They are recorded and remembered. If I were to pinpoint a highlight and low light though i would probably be half personal and half work related. My Grandmother being diagnosed with Dementia is certainly a low http://audioboo.fm/boos/197291-the-inevitable

The highs are many.. Watching my Son (@Minimentally) grow. Hitching a ride in a light aircraft in Africa and having 3G all the way! Working with the British Council in Pakistan. My completion of a rapid adventure from Lands End to John O’Groats using social media.. http://audioboo.fm/boos/225192-end-to-end-freebees

And the year to come? I hope we will stop talking about social media and relax into letting these practices get absorbed into a new way of doing things as integration of these tools and methods become invisible. I’m hoping marketing speak becomes outlawed as we realise no special language is needed to measure the world of relationships. Although I’m pretty sure how we ‘feel’ about a company or organisation will be monitored and assigned ‘ROI’ units or some such device to keep the statisticians and bean counters happy. The other values I hope will start becoming more obvious as mass adoption takes hold. And as it does, the language has to be simplified and inclusive. Terminology that divides the community creates this elitist tier, this echo chamber we try so hard to break out of.

The tech conference will also evolve. it has too.

Looking forward.. Certainly Exciting times are ahead.

I have just installed my router to the TV. Programs are streamed and films are ‘on demand’. News and comics are delivered to my iPad, audioboos to my iPhone and I know I have at least two iTunes store cards coming to me for christmas. Yet I am so missing the physical objects connected to these different flavours of media that I specifically asked Santa for a record player.

In fact I managed to intercept the postman to have it early and although the retro looking black box will allow me to insert an mp3 laden memory card, I have left that feature untouched as I explore boxes of my old records. Each record box taking up potential hard drive space worth terabytes. And I sit wistfully nodding my head to scratchy tracks and enjoying the artwork on what feels like oversized sleeves.

I miss the physical objects even though we don’t really need them. It’s the nostalgia and the emotions and memories we tie to these objects. As our web communications become more personal our purchases become less physical. Maybe this will change as we begin to be able to look back on the data we are creating and nostalgia is nurtured. Perhaps a smarter approach to location based apps will help more users bridge the gap between our online worlds and what many still refer to as ‘Real Life’.

All of this is very real to me.

And what am I secretly looking forward to? The rise of the un moderated, uncontrolled, un stoppable ‘Dark Net’.. for when the original internet gets turned off for being a weapon of mass information dissemination.

There will be more activists as the noose is tightened around our digital vocal chords. After all… As the old school media has announced, we are entering the age of the first info war.

______________________________

I’m @Documentally on twitter

In late November 2010 I was challenged by Vodafone to travel from Lands End to John o’Groats with no money or food. I was given five  £10 pay-as-you-go FreeBees SIM cards to use as currency and I bartered my way for 900 miles using social media.

I took only my iPhone 4 for photos, video and audio and a macbook air 11″ to edit on the move.

Thanks to @RichardMackney and @Buddhamagnet there was a visual mashup of my trip linked off http://Freebees.me

I made a list here of some of the people who gave lifts and accommodation.

There were so many cool moments that were not captured in video or photos. Some were captured by others..(thanks @SimFin)  Some I will do my best to add to the Storify page here..

Thanks to @TristanPoyser for the image of me hitching and there is more info of the Vodafone FreeBees SIM on their site.

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..

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.

On the back of a bus in 1995 a guy called Jem Finer had an idea. Nearly five years later in 1999, on the verge of the third millennium that idea came to life as a thousand year long musical composition was set into motion.
Longplayer is a piece of music that’s been playing since 31 December 1999 and will keep playing until 31 December 2999. The composer Jem Finer created it in such a way that it will never, ever repeat itself and an organisation called The Longplayer Trust was created to ensure the music continued to play through the coming centuries.

For the last five years there have been a handful of dedicated listening posts around the world – but on 12 September 2009 they’re attempting something completely new: a 1000 minute section performed live by a relay team of musicians in the aptly circular setting of the Roundhouse in North London. It will run from 8.20am that morning until 1am the next.

At the same time, elsewhere in the building a historic relay conversation will be taking place between 24 leading writers, filmmakers, scientists, academics and technology activists, inspired by the philosophical implications of long time. Participants include Jeanette Winterson, Cory Doctrow, Rachel Armstrong and Andrew Kotting.

Artangel, who initially commissioned Longplayer almost ten years ago, have asked me to  use social media to document the day live. This to me is an amazing concept in itself. How will the 1000 minutes of the 1000 years be remembered. Assuming the data survives who will be around to review any captured content? What will they think of the technology involved? How could i say no?

I’ll be doing whatever I can to ensure plenty of live material is streamed on the day. Using Qik, Audioboo, 12Seconds, Twitter, Flickr and as many other platforms as I feel necessary to share the moments as they happen with those outside of the Roundhouse walls. I feel this will be one of the most extraordinary musical events I will ever get to see and am really excited about exploring some of the ideas, concepts and conversations that spring up around the day. This one day in 365,000.

Fancy coming along?  Artangel have also kindly allowed me to give 20 tickets away to others willing to tweet, blog or just share the moment so please drop me a comment/email/tweet or call if you’d like to come along as well.

See www.longplayer.org for the official project website, and if you miss out on the free tickets you can still book discounted tickets direct from this link http://bit.ly/2EJDzJ (use the promo code ’144′ to get a third off the face value).

Here is a full list of the speakers attending the Longplayer live event.

Hope to see you there.

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)

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.

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.