For those of you who like your marketing mobile, check out Perfect Path Podcast favourite Helen Keegan‘s new blog Musings of a Mobile Marketer – latest news? Orgasmatones – yes, I spelt that right – ooer missus, get over there and check it out.

Mild-mannered Stuart Reid does his best to improve public services by day, but he also has a passion for short films and film-making which he shares with us on UK Shorts.

Meanwhile, in the flickrsphere:

Ashley Sickler is one of my favourite new finds on flickr after I used her television picture to illustrate a post the other day. Good, clean, wholesome American teen-life. Subscribe to her feed to enjoy from the comfort of your aggregator.

Not quite new, but a kid at heart and worth a mention anytime, Neal the Podchef takes a break from photographing mouthwatering food to bring us some great pictures of 4th of July fireworks over the water from Lopez Island on his flickr photostream (RSS feed)

Alex Bellinger (he of the excellent SmallBizPod – small business podcast, inventor of simultaneous podcasting and owner of a hairy wotsit) has a new personal blog called Verbalism.

I think it’s personal in the sense that it’s not the smallbizpod business blog as I haven’t seen anything (yet) about Alex’s cat, crushes on his English teacher nor the size of his hairy wotsit, but it’s still early days.

Alex is a little worried that in the age of ubiquitous RSS you might not get to see verbalism in all it’s shiny clean newness, so I encourage you to go over there and prove him wrong by trampling all over his comments.

The Royal Television Society holds its biennial convention in Cambridge this September.

Charles Allen, CBE, Chair of the 2005 Convention says this in the invitation blurb:

“All of us in the TV industry, producers, broadcasters, are facing what has been described, rather painfully, as ‘Burning Platforms’. Add to that the very real threat of mass piracy about to hit us as it did the music industry and the challenge of delivering to advertisers the attention, rather than just the eyeballs, of a multi-tasking generation, and the issues of the future becomes frighteningly stark. Oh… and we’ve also got an irritating blue frog with airbrushed genitals to contend with!”

So they are coming together to answer these questions:

“How should we rise to the threats and the challenges of a world which is ‘Always On’? How do we ensure that we continue to enjoy in the next 10 years the wealth and depth, the quality and the invention of television that we have enjoyed in the last? And, as this is an issue that we all face, it’s vital that you are there to contribute to the discussion.”

Mmm… I think Charles may be thinking of a different ‘we’ than I am, but may I humbly offer some suggestions?

• I sense that your chirpy tone is like a small boy, whistling in the dark – that’s OK, this world can seem scary, but it needn’t be, if you approach us in a non-confrontational way, you will find us to be friendly and helpful. If you can’t do that, some of us will find it hard to resist biting you on the arse, the others will just leave you to wither. (Hint 1: start off by giving up the name-calling – don’t label anyone a pirate unless they choose to do so themselves. Hint 2: ‘Mass piracy’ implies everyone’s doing it – that’s the same ‘everyone’ that you usually call your ‘audience’ or the people who pay your wages.)
• Loosen up, open up and accept that you’re no longer alone in this room. Adopt these new tools and ways of working – they can benefit you too!
• TV is dead, because broadcasting is dead. Not broadcasting as an industry (yet) but broadcasting as an organising principle for communication and for wider society. Get Dave Winer to speak on this and the death of monoculture. For a taster, listen to Morning Coffee Notes for May 12th especially the last 7 minutes.
• Get Paula Le Dieu to speak on the Creative Archive and Creative Commons and how they can be your friends.
• Blog, Vlog and Podcast this as if your life depended upon it – start immediately and you could generate enormous buzz about this.
• Start a wiki to help get other people working on this with you and to create a record of the event.
• Hire at least two vloggers and podcasters to cover the convention week (ie last-minute preparation through to closing) and produce a take-away DVD.
• Create a video of the opening session/dinner, post it, blog about it, get others to do so too. Use flickr, technorati and del.icio.us to pull everything together using tags. (hey I made one up for you below!)
• Encourage, sponsor, do (whatever!) the organisation of two alternative conferences, one elsewhere in Cambridge and one on-line at the same time – get a video-link between the two physical spaces and have a session where people from each can ask questions of the others.

Finally get someone ultra-cool, switched-on, and plugged-in to help you with all this and to dream even bigger dreams. Oh wait, you already did!

tags: television & broadcasting & events & RTS2005

Having read Neal’s post today and having had something of a blog binge earlier, I thought I’d catch up with the rest of the world and have a look at Itunes 4.9

Perhaps I wanted to wind myself up as an antidote to all the unravelling of ideas that I’ve been doing, I don’t know, but I wish I’d chosen something gentle like self-administered trepanning instead.

I’ve now walked away. I am calm. I have forgiven Steve Jobs, for now.

I cannot be arsed to add their elements to my feed. I cannot be arsed to join up and give them my credit card details so that I can put them straight on my podcasts metadata. I cannot be arsed to dig around to find out how to correct what’s already (half) there.

When at least three people approach me independently of each other and say, “I’ve been looking for your podcast on Itunes, but I can’t find it anywhere” then I shall contemplate doing something about it.

I’m glad my best podcast buddies are similarly cool.

Muchos gracias to James for pointing me to Frank Kane’s piece in the Observer today about the Cass Creatives debate earlier this week.

Mr Kane chaired the debate ably, but in his piece he focuses way too much on the EPIC2014 animation that we were shown at the top of the debate. (I’d recommend watching the updated EPIC2015 too Frank, you might find a little hope at the end, or maybe not – btw, I think Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson would call themselves journalists, because that’s what they are, as well as bloggers and futurologists) And rather than listening to what was actually said from the floor (mostly facts), he gets depressed by what he saw in the film (mostly fiction). I disagree with James a little on this point (though it’s probably pedantry). In my view EPIC is most Orwellian in that just as 1984 satirised post-war Britian in 1948, EPIC satirises today’s technological developments rather than presenting a prediction of tomorrow.

What it says to me is, the problem with all of this new stuff is that it’s entirely technology driven – if we carry on like this (unlikely) we’ll end up with computers writing our news for us – it’s the same wake up call about artificial intelligence as HAL in 2001 and I, Robot. Humanity is the hope here. If we start doing something about it now, if we engage with the technology, we humanise it. If we use it for human tasks (talking to each other, building friendships and alliances, showing our souls, creating beauty) then the robots don’t get to win.

EPIC2015 (OK SPOILER ALERT… oops too late) finishes with a vision of citizen-created media made ubiquitously available as an antidote to the Googlezon machine. The joke is, this is what we’re trying to do right now.

My interpretation of the animation is “Don’t give up hope, don’t run away just because this stuff looks frightening. Go up to it and say ‘Hello’. You’re human and it’s not. You have intelligence, emotion and compassion on your side. Work out how it could help you express yourself as you really are to a global group of people. Team up with your friends to see how you could use it to build on your existing relationships. Don’t be afraid.”

The issue in the debate that he picks up on was James’s intervention when he called them ‘arrogant’ and ‘self-appointed arbiters of editorial truth’ (heh! ever thought of a spell in the Diplomatic Service James?) Frank sez: “Yet I cannot help thinking that a daily news feed that gives you only the things you want, the nice comforting familiarities, is counterproductive. If the new media-consumers limit their input like this, aren’t they the ‘arrogant’ ones?”

Doh! No (and I said this in the session, I really did) Having a news feed that gives you what you want doesn’t equate to only having the nice comforting familiarities. Blogs are written by people. Some days they’re clever, some days they’re not. Some days they’re dull and inarticulate and then there’s a nugget of gorgeous rich prose. Some days I sit and nod my head vigorously at the screen. Other days I scream at them, and then get on and respond. Is it arrogant to have an opinion? Is it arrogant to make informed choices about what you read and what you ignore? Am I being arrogant if I choose not to read Heat magazine, ‘cos I’ve seen enough ‘celebrity’ cellulite accidentally flashed for this lifetime?

How sad that Mr Kane couldn’t do a little bit of research to find out that it was James Cherkoff who made that contribution. I’m assuming that the same person who e-mailed him about my piece on the evening (I heart my server logs), had also seen James’s blog. What a shame that online readers of Mr Kane’s article have to work hard to find out his e-mail address in order to let him know what they think of what he’s written and that he really should look at the updated version rather than printing a transcript of something out of date. What a shame too that neither he, nor his readers will know without some serious digging, that there are alternative points of view and people discussing what he’s said online right now. And how lucky do you feel, lovely readers, that you have such privileges, in spades, as esteemed consumers of my organ?

tags: Cass Creatives & Frank Kane & The Observer & EPIC 2015 & blogging & journalism & personal media

Max Niederhofer (in charge of operations for 20six, the blogging company) has posted an initial manifesto and created an associated wiki where people are already starting to stand up and say “Hi! What a good idea…mmmmm…. what could we do?”

As Max says on the “soon-to-be homepage” of the EIP site,

“The EIP wants to connect Europeans working and playing on and with the internet by providing information on who is doing what in Europe, providing a basis for young European internet startups to launch from and eventually organizing some big conference bash. While we’re focused on Europe as a region, we’re open for Americans interested in Europe as well. It’s about pro-Europe, not anti-America.”

Go there and see what you can offer.

Thanks to Nicole for the link

Just saw this ascii-movie pointed to by Piers in Euan‘s comments. It made my heart sing.

The first piece of ascii art I ever saw was in the early 70s – a picture of Racquel Welch that my father and his colleagues had printed – dunno who did the ‘digitising’.

I seem to remember it spread over more than one page of that green striped teleprinter paper that used to fill our house. Apart from a brief love affair with ascii art on usenet while avoiding writing term papers I’ve managed to keep away from it’s distractions pretty much, but now I’m on a hunt for more like this. Uh-oh.

It’s funny because it’s true.

I’m looking forward to seeing enraged Liverpudlians burning Radio Userland boxes and ageing copies of Wired Magazine outside the Cavern and beating their kids if they catch them reading Scripting News.

I’m also looking forward to the day that Mr Winer makes a stand for world peace by staying all day in bed with…

sorry, I can’t think of any woman blogger who won’t flame me to hell for completing that sentence with her name.

rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s Weblog

Wa-hey – top of Rex Hammock’s list of podcasts he’d pay for is:

“1. City tours (really, any kind of tours, including museums, historic battlefields, national parks, etc.) : I would purchase downloads of MP3s I could listen to in a rental car, driving into a downtown from an airport. Not like GPS directions, but fun, helpful information that tells me what I’m seeing as I drive in and gives me ideas of what to do while in town. Or, produce a series of “jogging from your hotel” directions that tells a jogger what he or she is running by.”

Rex, have you heard a Perfect Path podwalk? Or Sushiradio? Is this the sort of thing you’re thinking of or this? If not, what would be different that would get you to open up your sporran? How big can I expect the cheque to be? How else can I be of service? ;-D

Media Week – Podcasting takes hold

Media Week: “As media owners and advertisers prepare to go to try harder and get involved with the iPod revolution, Sean Hargrave finds out how the “play now, listen to it later” craze could be about to take the industry by storm.”

A long article that only looks at podcasting as an extension or evolution of radio… or else a major advertising opportunity. The closing paragraph just about sums it up:

“This opens up a new channel for radio stations as well as smart brands. The latter now have the opportunity of sponsoring shows or “podvertising” during them as well as producing their own audio content, so long as it is compelling enough for consumers to download.”

Thanks to the eagle-eyed Helen for the link.