Thanks to Abelone who pointed out that we should be doing more showing and less telling.

In that spirit, let me show you some of the things that I was talking about in my presentation at the Unicom conference this morning…

First off – objects of sociability. Here are some things that let you get to see me in a richer way and get to know me online. So OK, let’s get this one out of the way – g-room shampoo shower scene – nuff said.

Here’s my youtube channel you can see everything I produce in public coming through – subscribe if you like what you see.

Here’s my flickr photostream and here it is in RSS format

If you’re interested in what I read through RSS everyday, you can see my public subscription list for bloglines

And the photos from this geek dinner show you what a variety of views you can get to see through tags in flickr.

Here’s a public example of a conference I’ve participated in – it has pre-conference podcasts, pictures, posts and videos from the day – on this occasion we also provided podcasting services, but those were held back for participants only.

Less event focused but in a similar vein, we contributed a lot of content to the consultation site on the Government’s proposed Creative & Media Diploma for 14-19 year olds

Well the newly formed Pimlico Institute for Stormhoek Studies (PISS) is now open for business and we present our first video – Let’s Go Mento – amazing, but dangerous stuff.

Customer Safety Warning: This experiment combines ordinary products in an extraordinary way.

Do NOT try this at home, unless

a) you’re extremely rich and can afford to throw away $10 bottles of wine just like that
b) you *like* the taste of Shiraz with a hint of sugar, glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oil, etc…
b) you have a Stormhoek Security Licence (available for $500 from PISS) or
c) you’re stupid and you really really really want to.

Most mere mortals should stick to throwing their mentos into diet coke.

On my way to get some lunch today, I came past an office on the corner of Rochester Row and Emery Hill Street that was clearing stuff out, boxes, box files, lever arch files, bits of computer kit. A guy in front of me went in and asked if the pile of stuff on the pavement was alright to take away and he was told yes. I toddled off towards Sainsbury’s on Victoria Street.

On the way back, quite a crowd had gathered, it was like a rummage sale on the pavement. I half expected in this heat for a little fight to break out over who was going to get the banana yellow lever arch file – but that sort of thing only happens inside offices. People are much more polite in the street. I already had my hands full with my lunch. But I couldn’t walk past without having a quick look and settled on this square cut tile of some sort. The colours caught my eye more than anything. It’s much prettier in real life than it looks in the picture here.

lloydspam

Originally uploaded by Lloyd Davis.

So after much mithering and slothful procrastination, I got round to upgrading to MT 3.2 this weekend. The top motivation was to re-enable my lovely friends to comment easily as this has been increasingly difficult over the last few months. The spam was getting through, but friends were not – and this isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

Hopefully things can start buzzing again now – do let me know (as if you wouldn’t) if you get shut out by the spaminator.

So I’ve seen these new camcorders from JVC

Nice.

Of particular interest to me in the last few weeks as all I seem to have been doing is downloading video from tape which happens in real time, and then my PC takes as long again to process that into a file and again to take it into the editing package. So a twenty minutes of footage can take an hour from the time I plug in my camera to when I can actually get down to what I set out to do in the first place. An hour during which of course my PC is out of action for anything else and so I am out of action for all practical purposes too.

So, lovely. Here’s something that might help – a camcorder that records straight to a hard disk albeit in a less than superb format, but nonetheless, it must be worth having a look at. How can I get my hands on one?

Hey, perhaps they’d like a videoblogger to trial one for them – if he liked it a lot and then blogged about it, they’d get some good vibes in the blogosphere, which of course all press people know is “a good thing” – other videobloggers looking for a new toy might go out and buy one, etc.  Well I took a look at the JVC site and found the details of Niomi Jayasinghe in the press office and asked her by e-mail if I could borrow one for review purposes – isn’t that how it works?

Well yes, and no. After a little misunderstanding where she thought I was asking for a freebie to keep forever and ever, Niomi said  “The only way I can help you is by sending you a
review sample for two-three weeks.” Yes, that’s what I was after. “And usually I need to see a review before sending anything out” uh-huh.

Well that would be cool if I were from “What AmateurDigiCamCorder Monthly” but all I have is reviews of is men’s grooming products…ahem… So I tried again: “I do think this would be a great product for bloggers like us but
reviewing kit is just something we haven’t done before and we’re caught
in a bit of a Catch22 if we can’t start reviewing until we’ve done a
review.  If you could waive your usual rule on seeing prior reviews in
this case and let us borrow a camera for a couple of weeks we would be
able to turn something round very quickly and we’d be enormously
grateful.”

That was 2 weeks ago.

I just got mail from Niomi:

“I do
totally understand your predicament but I’m afraid until I see a review I am
unable to lend you any product.

technorati tags:jvc, camcorders, blogging, marketing, catch22, videoblogging, everio

So the Swan Youth Theatre of the eighties reunionised itself on Saturday night with fabulous help from Richard Jones, Clair Hector, Adrian Phillips and Kathy Jones. All of whom are pictured here together with Rufus Norris, Marc Dugmore, Ali Nott, Viv Norris and Richard Sockett (this was a recreation of a press photo of this lot dressed up as pearly kings and queens except with Richard Sockett taking the place of a sadly absent Gill Brewis).

As well as Gill, we (err… I) most missed seeing Rosie Blunn, John Doyle, Iain Hake, James Barriscale and those Eastwood siblings.

Helen has lots of pics and doubtless there’ll be plenty more.

Who else was there – my memory holds (excepting partners…in no significant order and with apologies for the use of maiden names and any obvious omissions I should be ashamed of) Sarah Kenny-Smith , Nick Blunn, Jane Kenny Smith, Simon Atkins, Tanya Davis, Graham Brown, Kevin Hector, Emma Griffiths, Rachel Houghton, Georgie Brewster, Caroline Derry, Sally Bowcott, Paul Hughes, older people were Chris Crosswell, Bob Peachey, Frank Wellbourne (thanks adrian), Renee Chester and a late entry by Paul Milton.

It was an extremely pleasant evening, what a lovely bunch of people to be part of and very nice to make contact with them all again (and give some of them google entries for the first time!)

This week, I have:

Moved Perfect Path Consulting Ltd into a new office in Chapter St, SW1, a couple of doors down from Stormhoek, so we’ll be seeing plenty of Hugh I expect.

Got closer to taking on Perfect Path’s full-time employee #2

Did some video reportage and podcasting at one event…and another.

Ran the open space session at Blogs & Social Media

Moved into my new flat in Dolphin Square, SW1 (so I’m now able to walk to work though I may find a more direct route than this one – yay!)

I’m knackered.

Yesterday, policyunplugged organised a lunch on behalf of Creative and Cultural Skills for a dozen or so people from the creative industries to come together in preparation for a series of consultation events in early June. The consultation is on the 14-19 Creative & Media diploma, one of the new specialised diplomas being developed as part of the Government’s curriculum reforms.

The hope is that the diploma will blend together classroom based education and applied learning in project-based, realistic situations providing a more relevant qualification for students of all abilities.

We’re helping with the consultation process to try to bring young people, educators, industry representatives and parents together in conversation. Having done my share of consultation response analysis, I think this is a great opportunity to do something different, richer and probably more meaningful than just asking people for written submissions.

To support this, policyunplugged are providing a group blog (to which I’ll be contributing – will link here once it’s up) to get started and then some social conferences in early June to see what a broader range of people think.

policyunplugged & events & london & CCSkills & videoblog & creative & social conferences

On 24th April the London Girl Geeks got together in the Pitcher and Piano, Broadgate. Usual rules, no boys allowed without an invite from a girl geek. Helen Duguid spoke about Women in Technology – I didn’t get to hear any of it because of the packedness of the room and the poor acoustic. Free entry, free drinks.

On May 1st, Marc Canter regaled a Geek Dinner downstairs at the Polar Bear in Lisle Street with his vision for digital lifestyle aggregators, interconnected social networks and microformats. I did get to hear what Marc said and I heartily applaud his initiative. £5 entry, cash bar.

I shot video at both gigs. Looking back at them I was struck by the contrast and so instead of boring you with separate efforts I mashed them together.

See what you think the similarities and differences are.

Btw, using YouTube to host this one – let me know if you like it better this way (mac users might even be able to see this one!)

tags: marc canter & london & LGGD5 & geekdinner & girlgeek

I saw people say “I’m too busy to blog” in the past and scoffed.

How can you be too busy to blog?!?! Well I have been – even too busy to answer my e-mail properly or even respond to text messages from dear friends. So what’s going on?

Well, it started at Les Blogs II. In a low-blood sugar stupor something clicked inside me and I thought “Why are we spending so much time, talking about sooooooo little?” Sadly I didn’t get much further than this and spent most of December not blogging or doing much at all – hibernating while it all got sorted out in my head. And then I went to the Girl Geek Dinner and got my podcasting trousers on again and something started to shift.

I can only articulate this now in retrospect, but what I think I realised was that I was spending way too much energy talking about what we have done with social media and what we might be able to do with it and not nearly enough time really developing those ideas and actually doing it.

What I remembered from the great podcast explosion back in ‘ought-five is that this stuff is fun to give and fun to receive. People like what I do – so I’m going to do more. Ironically of course, because I’ve been doing so much chatting, plotting and scribbling in notebooks that I’ve neglected the writing here on Perfect Path.

Well it’s the path that’s perfect, not the baldy git who’s walking it.

So I started talking to other people about the projects that have been formulating in my imagination over the last little while. Projects that have made me giggle with anticipation when I think about them just before going off to sleep. I’m going to be revealing more about these projects over the next days and weeks but I can assure regular readers/listeners/viewers that if you liked the podwalks, conference blogging and the G-room videoblog from last year, you’re going to love what’s coming up…

Hasta la vista, babies!