Definitely the busiest tuttle so far – we had nearly 70 people signed up on the wiki and although they didn’t all make it, the numbers were swelled by many more who hadn’t said they’d come.

For the first time, for those who still have no idea what happens at a tuttle, I did what I’ve meant to do for ages, I wandered around with my recorder and captured reactions from some of the folk. Mike doesn’t like it being called podcasting, as you’ll hear, so welcome to Tuttle Radio.

This is also for those lovely Lawsons who are clearly pining for something tuttlish.

Download (13MB)

Remember this?

Well now there’s this.

So I did this to see if it helps in any way.

Thinking that either slopping this in your iPod and listening to it might take your mind off a boring 10-minute walk or listening to me huffing and puffing in light drizzle might make you think “I can do better than that loser”.

I can’t find a copy of the very first one from 31/12/04 or the pre-podwalk podwalk so if you’ve got one lying around, please let me know.

Quite why I chose this pic to illustrate this post which is nothing more than a wrapper for another outing for my voice & ukulele (1min, 330k) is beyond my comprehension. This number’s called “I want a little girl” and has nothing to do (unless you have a bizarre imagination) with walking, boots, leather or Westminster.

Perhaps I need to increase my dosage.

Not directed at anyone in particular (no, I haven’t been making any girls cry) just the first thing that popped into my head when I picked up my ukulele for a late afternoon recording session and dedicated to anyone whose ever had tears in their eyes.

Cartoon sticker on my computer by Hugh Macleod

Btw, of course, if you’re interested in joining the network and thereby generating some more relevant advertising, please do get over there and sign up.

Tonight we had a 500% increase in the number of attendees and half of the people who came along can be heard in the podcast we made! I met up with Ronna Porter (who’s going to lead our discussion group meeting next week) in the foyer of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. To show her just how easy making a podcast could be, I set up my gear and she set up the gear that she’d borrowed for the night and off we went. We talked a lot about the use of sound and music in advertising and PR and my views on podcasting. A little way in, we were joined by Lars Plougmann, whose contribution, you’ll hear, was repeatedly interrupted by his three friends ringing him to find out where we were. Sadly there aren’t as many massage parlours in this centre of cultural excellence as Chris, Howard and Debbie found in Las Vegas earlier but then they didn’t have a tango band in the background.

I was the only one who’d any experience of podcasting so I showed everyone how simply the file was transferred to my laptop, edited and put through the compressor in Audacity and then exported to mp3. I wasn’t able to upload it to my podcast server while they watched as the large amounts of concrete in the National kept us disconnected from the ThamesOnline network. Ronna kept her recorder running while we did this latter part so there may be another podcast to follow! There was quite a bit of discussion about discoverability, tagging and allowing users to create the metadata they need, rather than trying to control it as a creator.

So next week we return to the 3rd Thursday discussion group indoors with beers and nibbles format but on 22nd we’ll be out and about again, this time with our video cameras teaching each other about video-blogging – watch the wiki page for details.

cross posted at the social media club blog

I’m suggesting meeting up in the foyer of the National Theatre on the South Bank – we should be able to find somewhere quiet enough to practice recording, but it’s not so quiet and intimate that we will disturb others. I will have my portable recording kit, feel free to bring your own.

Do let me know if you are intending to come, feel free to bring anyone along who might be interested or tell a friend (or indeed your worst enemy) to come along.

Also do let me know if you want me to shut up about bloody social media club.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, see the FAQ on the wiki: http://socialmediaclub.pbwiki.com/Podcasting

See you at six

A day of tying up loose ends before retreating for a few days of reflection and head-cleaning. Today I mention the portfolio blog which will hopefully get fatter today if I get around to it. The trouble with these wordpress.com blogs is they’re so easy to set up I keep starting new ones…

technorati tags:jvc, podcast, 4th July, wordpress, retreat, london, pimlico

Paul the Clanger comes out a bit nasal when he wears it like this, but I’m fortunate that I can clip it onto my shirt and only annoy you a little with the occasional wire knocking the mic or mobile phone going off.

Audioblog 060630

I’d like to reinstate this routine for myself, so if you like this stuff, subscribe to the feed with your favourite podcatcher.

Mentions today for policyunplugged, working2gether, gapingvoid, johnnie moore and stormhoek.

technorati tags:podcast, audioblog, 060630, lloyddavis, podcasting, richrecords, eventblogging, london, stereo

We made the first of a series of podcast interviews with industry people to support the consultation process being facilitated by Policy Unplugged on the proposed Creative & Media 14-19 Diploma.

As well as letting us know what he thinks the music business needs from young people, Tony also gave us an insight into how he got into the business himself. Though he didn’t go into this much detail.

[There will be pics and video from this meeting too, but sadly my laptop didn't make it all the way home with me last night. Lost or stolen is not quite clear yet, but either way it's put a slight delay on processing the video while I procure a 4-pin/6-pin firewire cable. grrr....]

If video doesn’t play please download it here

When I was sitting on the podcasting and videoblogging panel at B4B I just saw 3 or 4 suits animatedly jiggling and nodding and generally getting excited on the front row.

Then one of them piped up during questions and explained that he was the managing director of Prontaprint (a print and copy franchising business) and he’d done his own podcast for staff. Smacked was my gob – how fantabulous was this? So I snuck over after the panel was done and we had a chat.

Why don’t you leave your suggestions here for how Laird and his team can make their own podcast more “street” or just informal or whatever.

tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & Laird Mackay & video & rich records

If video doesn’t play please download it here

I’d had some contact with Joanna before because I did a slot on blogging for IDM at Internetworld last year. I’m hoping that her experience here will feed through into other events that IDM get involved in. Of course I’d love to help in any way I can! If you want to see more of this kind of stuff Joanna, do come along on May 17th

Bizarre synchronicity point: As I was about to cross the road to go into my flat yesterday afternoon, Joanna came jogging by with her sister Michelle. She wasn’t sure if I recognised her, but I assured her that I’d been looking at video of her a lot. I worry that this slightly freaked Michelle out. Just to put your mind at rest, Michelle, I’m not stalking your sister, I just made this video when we met at a conference

Next time you’re passing, ladies, do drop in for a cup of tea. [OK, I admit it, now I'm getting a bit stalky]

tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & Joanna King & video & rich records

If video doesn’t play please download it here

We met Ellee Seymour during one of the breaks. She has enormous energy and enthusiasm for blogging (as you can see) and I’m sure we could have filled a whole camcorder tape just by talking to her. Perhaps we will one day! Check out her post on Rhubarb Lasagne and encourage her to follow through on the Beetroot Trifle.

She’s been getting some mentoring from the East Anglian super-blogger Geoff Jones, so is clearly in good hands.

tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & ellee seymour & video & rich records

If video doesn’t play please download it here

Met up with Hugh again at Blogging 4 Business on Tuesday. I caught him saying this sensible stuff in the first session, but I do think lots of people in the hall weren’t quite ready for it then. I’m sure though that they’d have got it by the end of the day.

If you’re not aware of Hugh’s work, then you must be new around here. I first got wind of him when I saw his “How to be creative” around the time that I started Perfect Path, and then we met last year when I helped out on the first Scoble dinner by providing the wiki sign-up space. Hugh-newbies should also immerse themselves in the Hughtrain Manifesto.

Debbie and I chatted to Hugh later on too (off camera, sorry folks) about cartooning and blogging and global microbrands and blogging, but we also showed him the snowman movie from “All this…” as he’s a Cumbrian resident and was one of the kind and understanding people we rang while on the M6 to desparately trying to find out where there might be some snow. Debbie came away with a signed business card (with three xxx’s no less!) she was dead chuffed.

Lots more video from the conference coming soon, including what I think I said on the panel during the podcasting and videoblogging session.

tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & hugh macleod & video & rich records

Afterwards I spoke to Geoff Mulgan (pictured right) about what he’d heard Lord Browne say. Click on the picture to see the video.

The Perfect Path interest in this area is in putting together a project called The New Generation, which is a videoblog telling stories from active older people – focusing on their aspirations for the future rather than using simply them as a historical resource telling us about the past. If you’re interested in making a contribution to this project, do get in touch – we are very happy to accept help and support, financially and otherwise.

Lord Browne started by paying tribute to Michael Young. Though they’d never met, and if they had they might not have agreed on the subject of meritocracy, he was sure that they would have agreed on the need to help individuals to reach their full potential, no matter where they are starting from.

They would also have agreed on chronologism, a term that Young coined, to describe the tendency to judge people according to their physical age. Browne pointed out that we have created a bureacracy of age around the ticking of the clock whereas interest and abilities in relation to physical age are actually very diverse and people increasingly refuse to conform. He spoke of the need to break from the traditional concept of retirement which has become the end of usefulness and the beginning of death.

Approaching this from the perspective of a businessman employing 100,000 staff worldwide in the energy industry, he can see four key points:

1. We can’t sustain the idea that everyone retires at the same age – which first came about when men started work at 13 and living to the age of 70 was exceptional. We live in a different world and for much longer. The countries in which we work need people to work longer to ensure that the balance between those working and those not doesn’t shift to the point where paying for it is intolerable. By 2010 23 percent of the UK population will be over 60 as a result of declining birthrates and life expectancy extending beyond 80. At the same time, we are encouraging more and more young people into further and higher education, so the ratio of workers to non-workers is falling year by year. Pension systems may differ across the world, but all depend on continued creation of wealth.

2. The world economy is changing too. 70 per cent of the economy is now based on services rather than manufacturing. It’s a knowledge economy and this is true across industries. So we can’t neglect experience. We can’t say “You’re now too old to be useful.”

“How can we afford” Browne said, “to learn things again and again just because we’ve decided that people have to stop work at a certain age”. He also pointed out that in the US people are retiring later and later – and productivity has increased.

3. The basic demographics of the energy industry. More than half of his employees are over 45. BP still needs engineers. Fewer people are studying mathematics at a higher level, so they are less likely to become engineers, but those that do are in enormous demand. The number of registered engineers falling. So there is every incentive for a company like BP to encourage people to stay on as long as possible.

4. A civilised society needs to overcome prejudice. We’ve come a long way on gender, race and aspects of lifestyle. Most places select people on the basis of merit, but it seems OK to say “We don’t want you if you’ve over 60.” Youth is synonymous with vitality and success and the future. Old is only seed as good when applied to art, furniture or alcohol. The cult of youth is very strong.

Waste is shocking and prejudice is intolerable, people should be given the choice – because some want to stop, but many don’t.

Lord Browne praised signs of progress. There are changes coming in legislation to allow people to drawing down funds from pensions and to improve accrual rates for state pensions. Age discrimination legislation is coming in the UK later this year. The upper age limit for unfair dismissal will be removed and there will be a duty to consider an employee’s request to keep working. This is all good, but the issue is only partly one of process – it’s also culture.

There are good signs, the appointment of Richard Lambert at the CBI recognises the qualities of being older. We at BP can’t change attitudes on our own, but we can show what can be done. We can respond to changing times, giving people choice. We can provide flexibility – the chance to stay on full- or part-time, and live on a combination of paid income and pension. We can give people the option to phase themselves out of the work they do or to change their role – becoming advisors rather than managers. BP is employing older people now as coaches, as sources of wisdom and experience who don’t have to work full-time to make a great contribution.

The key, Browne says, is the principle of mutual advantage and working to find a way of matching both sets of aspirations matching. There are complex issues of motivation as well as economics. It’s not just about 70-year-olds – it’s about how needs get met with flexibility throughout your working life to give you genuine choices.

There were then questions from the floor which is where my note-taking fell apart. I include the following to give a flavour of the discussion, but apologise if I misrepresent anyone’s question or point of view. [As ever, many of the "questions" were actually opportunities to make statements of support or dissent.]

Geoff Mulgan kicked off with asking about the difference between different types of jobs, manual labour as opposed to brain work.

JB: It’s important to recognise that those who have done physically demanding work throughout their life have a great understanding about how the organisation should be run – it’s about transferring what is really important – advising on automatic control systms depends on knowing how things really get done

Q: age-related redundancy isn’t civilised, we have to change this now.
JB: things don’t change rapidly or overnight – but we are making progress.

Q: Your own org is exemplary – but I picked up on something you said, that in 2 years you would be retiring. Is there a rigid rule in force in BP?
JB: We never finish business on anything, everything is a work in progrees and there will always be things that are going wrong. As for me it’s different – it’s about choice and tenure and succession and motivation – anyway I prefer to see it as life after first retirement.

Q: What does BP do for older people who are stuck in their own home?
JB: There is a limit to what non-governmental orgs can do – there is a big role for government to intervene when other societal forces fail. So what we do is set examples and accept that by doing so we’re contributing to things getting better. He can remember a time when it was difficult to talk about employing women. We got better at that. Race and colour embarrassed people too. Lifestyle and sexual preference is becoming less of a taboo and now we’re dealing with age.

Q: How do we spread things across business?
JB: There are changes coming in today – A-day. A huge distance to travel for people elsewhere. How can we spread things around? not by lecturing people, you will be tested by the single failure and people don’t take kindly to being told what to do. The best solution is to raise awareness through networks and local organisations.

Q: Anti-business crowd – how are they reacting to your egalitarian business model.
JB: Business needs to keep thinking about itself – to think about how it can serve human needs. Success comes this way. This purpose is not always talked about – we’re usually focused on profit and return, but business organisations can’t exist unless these needs are thought about. I don’t see this as being purely philanthropic, that’s the role of foundations – for business it’s about looking at what you’re really doing here to satisfy human needs.

Q: Volunteering – is there any evidence of an increased desire to volunteer with age
JB: I don’t know, but it should be age independent it’s not voluntary if its the only thing left to do.

Q: How do you deal with the political points in organisations?
JB: Change takes time and creates anxiety – that fear can dissipate over time if we talk about it. People say to me if I’ve only got 3 employees what can i do. I sa, “Think about the value of having someone who can guide you through”. All business try to learn – and the best way is through people – not through information technology what still works best is passing knowledge on through the oral tradition.

Q: How do we challenge the prejudice the other way – prejudices older people have against younger people.
JB: I don’t have a clear view but i am thinking about it. It varies around the world but the bottom line is saying how can we get rid of prejudice

Q: On the use of networks and awareness raising, we’re getting a new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights – what do you think the balance of encouragement, influence and enforcement should be?
JB: Well you’re right that it’s not just one of those things, it’s a combination. As an analogy, there are groups that still have to keep making the point that women should be treated on the same basis of merit as men – they keep asking the difficult questions and providing possible answers. This is a counterpart to the rules, the boundaries, it’s the ways to make the internals work. We can’t assume things will happen automatically.

Q: I’d like to keep talking about death, gender, family in relation to age.
JB: I agree and I’d like to talk more. My experience is that it’s rare inside corporations to talk about these things, especially death except when people have direct personal experience.

Q: At age X you have to stop working – to what degree do you see bp pushing that logic, and what things are you personally interested in?
JB: Lots of different things and variety is key. Not enough people ask how is the company meeting your needs – how do you maintain a relationship of mutual advantage. If it goes slightly wrong then performance goes wrong because people are anxious because they don’t know where they stand how they’re thought of etc. so the answer is to talk to people about how things are going and you ask people what it means to them and how they’d like to go forward. It’s so important to keep managers in “a good place”. A lot happens when there is big change in the world – managers can underestimate the intelligence of people under them when change is happening.

The Policy Unplugged gang were invited to Parliament this week to meet politicians and policy makers at a Technology Demonstration Morning at Portcullis House and to talk about their radical brand of events – what Steve Moore is now calling “social conferences” (much more descriptive I think than ‘unconference’, though the concept is similar).

I’m doing more and more work with them, mostly of the social media reportage variety and this was no exception – I spent the morning running around the room either carrying my laptop, camcorder or minidisc player around and (gently of course) butting into people’s conversations in order to get them to talk about what they were getting out of the day. David Wilcox was there too, keeping it in the family by making the most of his son Daniel’s whizz multimedia skills: they’ve put together a Drupal community site for Policy Unplugged where you’ll find more stuff about the day from me, David and Dan.

This includes the quartet of politicians you see above (click on their sweet faces to see them in action). They are, clockwise from top left: Phil Willis MP for Harrogate & Knaresborough, Paul Clark MP for Gillingham & Rainham, Chris Mole MP for Ipswich, and John Warder, Deputy Leader of Chiltern District Council. 10 points for correctly identifying each of their political affiliations [hint - two of them come from the same party]. Bonus marks for spotting which of them might be considered most powerful and why.

Euan said, in response to the shampoo/shower extravaganza, “Lloyd Davis is either a genius or a nutter. I’m not sure myself which…” well my life is all about finding that out but I doubt I’ll reach any final conclusion (except the obvious final conclusion that comes to us all)

All this… is just a little bit more evidence to help you to make your own minds up. Genius or nutter??? You decide.

I’m joined in this new enterprise by Debbie Davies, multi-talented TV producer/actress/writer/interviewer/erstwhile international arms-dealer and all-round laugh-and-a-half.

Debbie’s working with me on the commercial video-based projects I’ve got cooking, but we decided that we needed to do something a bit lighter too (is this light enough for ya?!).

For regular subscribers to Perfect Path here’s the first episode for your podcatching delight. In future, please point your equipment in the direction of http://feeds.feedburner.com/Allthisandbrainstoo

Oh yeah – and there’s a Paypal tip jar button – please use it, however humbly you may appreciate our little offerings. No contribution too small (although having said that, as small as 37p might only just cover the Paypal fees!)

Tags: videoblog & vlog & london & snow & snowman & road movie & Debbie Davies & Lloyd Davis & Allthisandbrainstoo

In the Soho House bar beforehand, I chatted with people to see what they’d come expecting to put in and take away from the evening.

I think what drew everyone together was a shared frustration with how things are, that it’s just too difficult at the moment for those letting contracts and those bidding for them and a feeling that public service reform is being held back because too many change projects are seen by civil servants as IT projects and therefore risky and therefore not to be touched with a bargepole if you can help it.

The people behind the event are Creative London who are being helped out by Prospect, NMK and PolicyUnplugged – a Working Together site is going up right now and we’ll be making the most of collaboration software to keep this conversation going through the summer.

Photos from the evening are on flickr tagged working2gether

tags: working2gether & public policy & london & Web2.0 & events

Of course they probably still will all beat me up, just individually, which is worse.

Sorry Grrrls …. whimper…

And the first thing I did (after showering off the dead skin and brushing my teeth 65 times) was toddle off to the Texas Embassy for the third London Girl Geek Dinner organised by top hot totty Sarah Blow.

As usual, I slurped my supper down in record time and then went round recording people with their mouths full, before the open mic session which worked really well – Thanks to Rachel, Bill, Katy, Jen and Sarah for sharing your various views of geekdom with us. A recording of that session will be up next.

Lovely, as ever, to see Sarah, Adriana, and Rachel C, nice to meet Joy, Juliet, Jamie, Jen, Miranda, Sofia K and Rachel J, sorry I didn’t get to talk in depth to anyone else – and I’m not going to mention the boys by name as they really shouldn’t have been there – don’t they know there’s only room for one girl-geek-guy?

tags: girlgeekdinner & girlgeek & london

So now it’s competition time. I’m sure that those of you with hair can do better, so send me your photos or links to photos of yourself under the influence of a hair sculpting product. Doesn’t have to be wax, it could be mousse or gel just as easily. The only entry requirement is that you have more hair to play with than me – Sorry Neal, I don’t think you’re going to make it in unless you have something from the archive The prize…a barely unopened, hardly used pot of Hair Wax, product number 7 in the G-Room range.

And so farewell G-Room review videoblog, it’s been fun getting to know the products – really should have given me some eye-treatment stuff and a free razor and made your face wash smell less like fairy liquid, but I am still using the shaving cream every day and on the odd occasions that I allow women into my bathroom, they’re very impressed by my array of grooming products.

Your suggestions please dear readers for another product range on which I should be let loose.

technorati tags: g-room, videoblog, moisturizer, my hair, grooming

Listen out for the classic catch phrases: “It’s very fresh, that’s nice, I like that” , “Ow, don’t poke you’re eye out on the tap, Lloyd” and “Oooh, my face is lovely and soft” But you’ll have to wait till the very end to hear me slap my belly.

File under “shaving fetishes” or “Ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back”

tags: g-room & shaving cream & videoblog & london & blogvertising

tags: g-room & face+wash & videoblog & london & blogvertising

I thought long and hard while in the Perfect Path Editing Suite about whether to cut or censor the scenes of mild and accidental nudity that occur in this one. On balance I decided that it was funnier to keep them in, particularly in juxtaposition with the coyness of the Shower Gel episode and given the way that I really honestly had no idea what had happened until I watched it back just before uploading.

Eat your heart out Warren Beatty.

tags: g-room & shower gel & videoblog & london & blogvertising & my arse