Our Man Inside

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.

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.

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.

When I told people I was to be sat on a panel with Paul Carr from the Guardian a couple responded.. “Paul Carr? He’s a bit of a dick.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“It says so on his twitter profile.”

Fair enough I thought, but when I met him he was just frank and very funny.

The video of the panel we did at the #140conf is floating around somewhere in the ether. I may even drop it in a blog soon.

What I have here in the mean time is a brief conversation with Paul at the end of the day. We were on the way out the door and both of us had cold beer on our minds. That’s probably why this is not so much an interview as a chat in a corridor over a conference when what we really wanted (and had later) was a chat over a beer.. well away from the conference.

There is more about Paul Carr on his Wikipedia page..

Linked Here is the article he wrote for the Guardian while at the 140conf

This video was filmed with the assistance of Matt (@barnstormed) and is also on the Open University You Tube channel so go view it there and show some love..

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

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

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

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

I’m writing this on my last few minutes of battery power, about 38,000ft above sea level, with six and a half hours left on my flight from London to Los Angles.

I am traveling in a group of thirteen after being asked by Digital Outlook, in association with Xbox, to blog the E3 Gaming Expo. Not only blog in the normal text based sense but to use some of the tools I normally use that feed into twitter.. AudioBoo, flickr, 12 seconds etc.

I guess they are after a non serious gamer with a different perspective to give their take on the event. And i shall. There’s loads of new tech and game releases for me to get my teeth into so there should me more than enough content to get me excited..

So why then am I writing a blog post before anything has happened?

Well thanks to @Loudmouthman and @Delboydare I’m feeling a little re-enthused with my blog.

I chose WordPress as a basis for my blog a while back and have been happy with it ever since. Me being me though means I have to try and be a little bit different.. a little css adjusted here an over sized graphic here.. As a result I have had to ask Derek (@Delboydare) to assist me in upgrading my wordpress version and he has done a great job. Tapping away behind the scenes, he has ensured my transition to the latest version of wordpress has happened without a hitch.

Then there’s Nik, @loudmouthman. It seems he has been hosting/managing a couple of well known blogs recently and as I’ve been wanting to make the switch from my former hosting company NXS.nl, I thought I’d take him up on his offer. I know that with Nik being on the other end of the tweet almost 24/7 i could not wish for better hosting support.

The changeover itself happened almost too fast for me to notice.. All I had to do my end was insert the new name servers and it was done. I had to check three or four times because I did not think it could really be that easy. But no.. it was done and i was up and running on my new server with no visible downtime.

The conversation with Nik that followed informed me that my security had increased substantially and some extra plug-ins had been installed into my wordpress blog that would on the whole make my life more easier when it came to posting anything on my blog.

I spend a good portion of my working life recommending tools sites and apps that i think worth using.. Derek has shown me how valuable our networks are when it comes to sourcing the skill sets outside of our own and Nik has shown me that I can love a platform without knowing it’s full potential and that there are some people out there that don’t just talk the talk and really know their game.

So.. here i am re-enthused, reinvigorated, reminded on how good a platform wordpress is and stuck in the air unable to post this to the web till I return to terra firma.

I should be in the hotel about 8 hours from this sentence. There are about 12 people in the team that headed out from the UK.. Many had come in from other cities in other countries.. Spain, France, Italy and Germany to name a few. Some host gaming forums/sites like www.XboxWay.com and www.Xboxdynasty.com Some are PR.. One guy Sean Geer calls him self ‘old media’ but i think he is much more than that.. Anyone that packs A Nikon D90, Lumix LX3 and an Eye-Fi card is ok in my book.. Especially as I have the same in my bag.

I also am packing two laptops.. two Kodak HD recorders, solar chargers with extra lithium-ion cels.. and so on.. My back is already having a go at me. I really need to make a point of using everything that I have brought just so as this pain isn’t in vain.

All going well and I can jump through the security hoops stateside, I’ll be tagging all of my content with the hashtag #E3. you can listen to my Audioboos on www.audioboo.net or through Buddhamagnet‘s BooBase.

If you want to see everything on one Page then Documentally.Rezpondr.com is the place to be (thanks to @Philcampbell for creating/setting that up) and no doubt everything will go through my Twitter account as normal… Documentally

If you start watching/engaging now you will hopefully see the transition from bumbling ignorance to slightly clued up. I will be filling in all the spaces in my gaming knowledge through regular contact with Nik Butler but please feel free to drop a comment on this blog if you would like me to cover anything in particular in the world of XBox..

Thanks for all the tips on what i should go to see out in LA but i feel i may be too busy channeling all of my Expo observations into www.xbox.com/e309

Still, i hope there will be a few hours off here and there so if you get the chance.. ping me on twitter and maybe we can grab a beer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More resources below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am not a Freemason but i have been asked more than once to don the apron and swear the oaths..

I have also been told that Freemasonry is not a secret society, It is a society with secrets.

Never-the-less, it was the thought of being admitted to a secret society that attracted me to the idea of joining the Freemasons. I have an unhealthy fascination with the unknown.

Freemasonry has a mysterious history going back hundreds of years and it’s symbolism and iconography is embedded within our language, architecture and history.

One thing I didn’t quite understand when visiting a Masonic Lodge during a recruitment meeting was the rule asking you not talk about work, politics or religion.

Now, arguments often accompany political and religious discussion, so i could understand why those topics may be frowned upon. But I thought this would be just the place for movers and shakers, the people in positions of power to ‘Get Things Done’.. Where deals were made and projects started. How can this happen if all you have is small talk?

Now I think I get it.

Perhaps In one way Freemasonry is one of the Wests first social networks. Albeit a little more exclusive than the ones we have today. The small talk like the kind we see in our online social media networks was and is vital to build trust.

I imagine the Lodge meetings to be formal in some ways. Packed with ceremony and learning and the bar/social time afterward, the place where I’ve been invited to sample the subsidised beer, is where you shoot the breeze and get a feel for those you are connecting with.

Some of us do the same online. Twitter is a good example of people getting involved in small talk before contacts and connections are formally cemented. It may be at a conference or a social media get together where things move on to the next level. A quiet corner is found and business is done.

Here is the five minute chat with A Knights Templar Priest that started me thinking about how we ultimately use small talk to feel around for those we feel we can trust. In business, in play, in life..

I am sure much of this is human nature, but there still seems to be practised rules of engagement and now, more than ever, we see a blurring of those lines of when we should and shouldn’t open up to strangers. How speaking your mind in a public place can get you noticed by many but only the few who share their thoughts, no matter how trivial, get to play the game.

We all may appear to be ‘open and transparent’ but I’ll wager many of us keep the finer details of our business transactions behind closed doors.