Category Archives: What I’ve Been Doing

What I've Been Doing

Travel day

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I’m in the USA for the first time – just had my first american breakfast (burp) which also included sightings of Linda Gray and Larry Hagman – you know that you’re in Texas when…

Before yesterday, I hadn’t been on a plane for more than 4 hours and never been on anything bigger than an airbus. So being on a 777 with individual movie screens made it not as awful as I’d imagined a 10 hour flight to be.

I watched Kung-Fu Panda which reminded me that there is no special ingredient. Then I listened for some random reason to one of Dave Winer’s earliest podcasts which reminded me that you don’t find out what your business model is by thinking and watching other people, you find it by doing what you love doing. And then I watched the new version of The Day The Earth Stood Still which reminded me that shit movies do still get made.

I don’t know how much blogging I’m going to do before SXSWi kicks off on Friday, right now, I’m enjoying being on holiday – we’re just going out now to explore.

london, What I've Been Doing

Free wifi in London

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Between them, Pret a Manger and McDonalds provide pretty good coverage for the urban digital nomad. Both provide free wifi access via The Cloud – pret asks for an e-mail address and your birthday, but underneath the arches, you can surf away by just clicking a button.

OK, so it’s not really free if you are obliged to buy something in order to secure a table, but Black coffee in pret is £1.50-something and in McDonalds £1.29 – in the former you may have to put up with loud middle class people, in the latter, the bawling of chavvy kids is drowned out by the boombox – take some noise-cancelling headphones.

Neither, however, seem to provide power sockets, so I recommend an hour or so in Starbucks now and then to recharge your flagging batteries. And don’t forget to swap water for caffeinated beverages occasionally to minimise the risk of over-stimulation.

Of course the ICA is top-hole for wifi, power, coffee, yummy food and PLU(!) but loses points by not being open (except on Fridays, you lucky people) until midday.

What I've Been Doing

La Clique

11022009951It was like a two-hour roller coaster ride. I ZOMG-d out loud nearly all the way. Way more intimate than I’d expected, and I’m not talking about the lady with the handkerchief. Hard to describe without spoilers – you need to go, it’s only booking til April 19th and go for tickets in the “floor” area near the “stage” (or the posh seats if you can stretch to that) for the full wind in your hair feeling.

Also, please can we not turn the Hippodrome into a casino? – it’s a great venue for this kind of theatre. I only wish we could still see elephants, horses, polar bears and a 100,000 gallon water tank!

What I've Been Doing

Future of Online Video

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21012009837FOOV (can’t wait for future of online media – FOOM! True Believers!) was yet another kudos-tastic production – top marks.

When talking about the future of online video, there’s a not very interesting conversation about what sorts of whizz-bang & weird innovations we might be able to make up. There’s another, more frequent but equally uninteresting chat which is how we can turn the visual media of the past into something that might just work in the hypernetworked, digital world. What is fascinating is looking at how the things that people are already doing now which work well in a networked digital world, can be applied to areas that haven’t seen them yet – ie how can we more evenly distribute the future, which is already here.

So interesting was this cafe-style set of conversations that I only managed to take part in two: firstly, can “Big Brother” survive in the Qik-enabled panopticon, which was most amusing because it does work for the Nineteen-Eighty-Four version as well as the Endemol production.

I then went on to talk about the implications of conversational media (especially things like phreadz) on Higher Education especially on the teaching side, though we rambled all over formal vs informal, online vs offline relationships etc etc.

As always, you kinda had to be there. Tweets were tagged with #amp09 and Phil provided a rezpondr page. Penny Jackson was collecting audio impressions. Stuff will probably bleed out of my ears sometime later.

Podcasts, What I've Been Doing

Standing room only…

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09012009818

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)

What I've Been Doing

We Die

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Nipped into Woolworths in Epsom today. This corner was part of my Saturday morning ritual for quite a while. Every week, the small Davises and I would go to McDonalds for lunch and then into Woolies to spend their pocket money. This corner was the Barbie corner – every week, we’d decide whether R wanted to save her money for something bigger next week, or have another Barbie. Pretty much all of the time it was another Barbie, but it took a lot of thinking and a lot of walking around that corner, looking at everything that was on offer. Now it’s gone.

Worth re-reading the first bit of Cluetrain. The first words (the title of this post) were ringing in my ears while I walked around.

As a bonus, my feed reader had this christmas cracker from Nick Booth. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes! (and like all the best posts it’s gotten richer with the range of comments – read ’em all)

What I've Been Doing

Yet Another Year

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Lloyd DavisOh blimey, I seem to have turned fourty-four. It just makes me laugh again. My practice today is to see deeply that the numbers mean nothing – not that I’m unaffected by it, but that it carries no meaning, no weight.

I had fun today. I tried to keep up with all the Happy Birthdays that came my way by mail, twitter, facebook, plaxo (!) but was unable to say thank you directly. So thank you all again, indirectly for making the effort to say hello, it means a lot to me. I had a slow-starting day, then lunch with Katherine in Soho, then I went and took part in #twitpanto – so much to be written about that, it was an anthropological treasure trove. Then I went shopping and came home with enough wii-related goodies (yes inc. wii-fit) to keep me chortling over the next few days. Spent the evening with the kids – ribs and chops (no wings today) telly and present wrapping stuff.

I have a wonderful life. I’ve found something to enjoy in every day this year and I have so many lovely people to be grateful for.

So thank(s for) you.

Photo: cc-by Annie Mole on Flickr

What I've Been Doing

BCFC

I did some work today with some people who make football kit. I haven’t worn any football kit since 1981 when my Games lessons stopped being compulsory. But when I went into their archive room and saw some of the stuff they had there, I was transported back to the mid-seventies. In 1975, Birmingham City Football Club celebrated its centenary and a year later they replaced the early-seventies penguin strip with a plain royal blue jersey with white collar adding a two-globe centenary badge – I can still see Trevor Francis in that kit, before he betrayed us all to become the first million-pound footballer for that bugger Brian Clough.

Why did I support the Blues? You had to. No, really at the junior school I went to, you really had to. A teacher was spat at once for coming to school wearing a Villa scarf. A teacher. In 1975. Y’know, before Grange Hill, in the days when teachers commanded respect and could give you a good hiding if you didn’t buckle down. You can imagine what would have happened to any mere boy who dared even consider anything claret and sky blue.

Football shirts – social objects, pulling a trivial little story out of me, reminding us how we felt, creating the opportunity for connection. And that’s just for me, I don’t even care very much for football any more, what about the real fans? And then there’s the programmes and the magazines, and the boots and the letters and the photographs. These people have a delicious slice of our popular culture in their care, I hope they get to start blogging about it soon.