Category Archives: words

words

When domain names expire

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This has been annoying me for a little while, but just below the level of making me do something about it.

Sometime in 2010 I subscribed to e-mail notifications from the Transmedia Artists Guild blog – it looked interesting, it probably helped me to hook up with Transmedia-interested people at SXSWi 2011 while I was #plate11-ing.

I remember at some point seeing a notification that said something like “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”  So it was over, forget about it.

And then.

Then notifications started popping back up in my e-mail, but with titles like “Limiting sofa time adds years to your life”.  Hmmm…. it turns out transmediaguild.com has now home to a poorly-written blog about how fabulous exercise is with links out mostly to a certain startup gym company – I’m assuming that they’re doing this to generate some “natural” search engine optimisation, by um… writing about themselves on a domain name that has nothing to do with the parent company.   Which is why I’m deliberately not linking to any of this stuff.

Thankfully, I’m only aware of it because I left a feedburner e-mail subscription running, so I can turn it off.

But with a little searching, I can see though that at least serve2011.org, nationalnano.org, bluedogdemocrats.com and tellmeaboutyourselfanswer.com are being used in the same way by the same people…

Can someone who knows more about SEO shenanigans explain what’s going on?

UPDATE: A little bird suggests that googling “Dropped domains SEO” might be useful.  Yes it is, it points me to this – it’s a thing, a ridiculous (to me) thing, but using expired domains for SEO is a well-known thing.  Still don’t know whether this is a well-executed example or not.

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You go yoga, I no go

On emerging from our meditation this morning…

She: “I think you should come with me to yoga now”

I: “For the sake of the group’s serenity, I don’t think I should attend until I am able to bend more than 30 degrees at the waist without shrieking “I’m going to die! I’m going to die”

She: “Perhaps the natural inhibition of being in a room with 30 others (mostly fit young women) would  prevent you from shrieking.”

I: “That’s not ‘natural inhibition’, that’s FASCISM!”

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5 ways we give power to people outside the room #commscamp13 #ukgc13

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One of Harrison Owen’s principles for Open Space (on which most unconferences are based) is “Whoever comes is the right people”.  It’s there to remind us that we don’t need the boss or experts to have a useful conversation, we just need people who care enough to show up.

I’ve found that one of my jobs as a facilitator is to remind people that the event is about the people in the room, not those who couldn’t or wouldn’t make it.  The draw to give power away to people outside the room is strong, it’s expected in lots of meetings  where we’re essentially delegates for the rest of our team or organisation.

Here are 5 ways in which I’ve seen us (me included) do that:

1. Working on the agenda beforehand

Open Space and unconferences start with no initial agenda, just a purpose, a common interest that we want to talk about and a bunch of people who have something to contribute.  It’s tempting to make the day “more efficient” by having lots of conversations online setting out your stall for what you want to talk about, getting feedback, but it inadvertently gives power to people who aren’t in the room.  It sets an expectation, at least for those who have a look at this “prep work” that these are the things we’ll talk about.  It leaves the door open to people who want to influence the agenda without committing to a day in the room, because we tend to fall in with what’s already there.  If I come late to the online conversation, especially if I’m not terribly au fait with the subject area, I will look to see what norms have been established about subjects so that I can fit in well.  I don’t want to propose something that has people looking at me in a funny way.

It also gives disproportionate power to those who have, for whatever reason, more time to spend on preparation in the run up to the event than others do.  I think it probably also affects the number of people who show up ready to be “spectators”.  I can see that there are plenty of clever people with a much stronger grasp of the subject than I so I think I’ll just keep my silly little idea to myself.

2. Trying to represent your team’s wishes

They’re not here.  You are.  You’re one of the right people to be here.  They’re not (because they’re not here!) Stop worrying about what so-and-so would say if they were here and say what you want to say.  This goes too for paying too much attention to people who manage large departments or organisations.  The fact that they lead programmes employing hundreds of people costing millions of pounds doesn’t mean that they know any more about the problem in hand than you do.  They may well know less.

3. Going to sessions because “you should”

I know.   It’s really hard.  There are 10 sessions all going on at once and you want to go to three of them but you ought to go to one of the others and stay there because it’s directly related to your job – what will your manager say if she sees that this was on the agenda and you didn’t go?  I think the best way to deal with this is to remember, for today, that your job is to learn and to contribute.  Pop into the “should” session to see whether you missed anything but otherwise, keep using the law of two feet to find the places where you can best learn and/or contribute.

4. Letting technology get in the way

It’s great to have an audio or video record of a session.  It’s really cool to have a live-stream so that people who couldn’t make it can watch along in real-time.  It’s really useful to the whole community if people can live-tweet and live-blog sessions.  But.  All of these things have the possibility of becoming more important than the conversation we’re actually having.  Common adverse effects are people unconsciously censoring what they say because they know they’re being reported or recorded or people saying things deliberately to make sure that they are on record.  The other difficulty arises when the interactivity of twitter and live-streaming take over.  This can take the form of trolling from outside or something as apparently benign as people outside asking that people speak more clearly for them to hear on the stream.

5. Thinking too much about the future

In this case, the “people not in the room” are “future me” and/or “future other people”. I worry about what future me will think of what I’m saying.  I worry that future me will be somehow disadvantaged because I say something stupid.  And then I worry about what future other people will think when they get home and they reflect on the day and “oh my god what was that dickhead, Lloyd, saying???”  They’re not here, they’re not real, they don’t get to decide what gets said in the room.

PS I generally don’t like writing list-based posts but today I’ve done two – my thinking may be becoming dangerously structured! 🙂

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Some things from my head following #commscamp13

View from the front #commscamp13I’m grateful to have been asked to facilitate CommsCamp13 which was organised by @annkempster @danslee and @darrencaveney in Birmingham the other day.

These are some the things that are rolling round in my head as a result. Not all of them come directly from experiences at CommsCamp13, they may be things I’ve wanted to rant about for some time, and now seems to be as good a time as any. Some of these may turn into longer pieces, although it’s more likely that they’ll just sit here taunting me, saying “Why don’t you explain what you really mean there Lloyd?”

0. People are amazing. Groups of people are amazinger.  Groups of people allowed and encouraged to talk about the things that they really care about are the amazingest.

1. Lloyd! Stop trying to be right.  I find it really hard, but I try to keep following the golden rule: “Be prepared to be wrong, even when you’re right”.  Having said that, many of the following points read as pompous declarations of my unshakable will.  Prepare your pinch of salt.

2. If you don’t like this thing, start your own thing.  Nobody is gripping onto this “brand identity” nearly as hard as you imagine.  If you don’t like the fact that there’s only one UKGovCamp a year and the same 200 people always seem to go, set up your own (you might even get a grant to help). If you want a #jelly or some tweetup in your town or region, do your own. Use #wewillgather for smaller things if it helps.

3.  Run sessions your way.  This is a development of the previous point – nobody has decreed, nor do they have the right to decree, that all sessions at a camp have to be sitting round in a circle having a therapy session.  We can do whatever we like – some of the best sessions I’ve been to at other camps have been “I know nothing about X, please come and enlighten me” or “Let’s make a Y in 45 minutes”.

4. No spectators.  I felt that we’d lost this a bit – it’s much harder in a one-day event and using traditional conference venues but we had 25-35 potential sessions and 140 people attending, so even with every session leader doubling up we’d only have half of the group able to lead even if they wanted to.  The no spectator rule is there, imho, to ensure that we don’t get into an us and them situation – encouraging everyone to have something even in their back pocket is an important part of pre-camp that we forget.  We saw a special case of this on Tuesday which was a lack of women pitching for sessions in the first round, fortunately there were some brave enough to point it out and I think we fixed it, but still, I think it would  help to make it clearer that there’s an expectation that you bring something to talk about, that it’s just part of the process.

5.  We’re all just folk here.  This is hard at UKGovCamp, but it was even harder this week – leave the corporate ego at the door – remember that everyone else is in the same boat as you, no-one has all the answers, we all have an equal responsibility for the success of the event.  Some people are effectively paying to be there, not everyone has a job that either treats this as part of your development or paid leave.

6. I love “Fuck it” moments.  One of the best stories I heard was from Rae Watson talking about her experience of doing the right thing once she’d heard she was being made redundant.  Lovely, nothing to lose attitude which inspired me to call for a rolling programme of redundancies across the public sector 🙂

7. “The future is …not very evenly distributed.” You think?  This may come under the heading of “stop trying to be right” but really, the world *has* changed, hyperlinks really do subvert hierarchies, this is what is going on here, the institutions we work in are struggling and collapsing because the network crosses their boundaries without permission and with great ease.  I heard way more people than I expected to still talking about messaging and selling social media to senior execs.  Keep the focus off technologies and put it on power and service structures.

8. A camp is not about information dissemination.  It probably will happen as a by-product, but the purpose of the day is to encourage conversation and the resultant building of relationships. These are vital elements of the networked world – the ability to have good conversation and the richness of relationship that emerges therefrom.  This is where the value is, both to us as participants and to the organisations we’re part of.

9.  It’s your process. I know I’ve got it right when you don’t credit me and you say “we did this”.  It’s one of my favourite bits of the Tao Te Ching – Chapter 17

“The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.
When his task is accomplished and things have been completed,
All the people say, ‘We ourselves have achieved it!'”

10.  It’s a 3-day commitment for me.  There’s very little traditional prep and follow-up but I need a good half-day before to warm-up and clear out the rest of the world and then a full day afterwards to recover.  I need to reflect this in my diary-planning and in my fees.

11. We *will* break your wifi.  John Popham has already summed up the connectivity issue for most conference venues. Related: spambots may break your hashtag…

12. The view from the front.  That’s the title I gave the picture above.  It shouldn’t be like this.  There’s no reason to put everyone else face-front: we embrace circles when we go into sessions, we should do the same in plenary.  I think it would do a lot to reduce the sense of us-and-them.

13.  Stop trying to please everyone.  Media folk in public service have to juggle the goodwill of elected representatives, organisational managers, journalists and the public.  You can’t please all of these groups all of the time.  If you have to pick one, pick the public.

Turns out there’s thirteen, which is good since I’ve noticed many events this year have 13 in the title for some reason…

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I’ve started watching “House of Cards” on Netflix #houseofcards

I had a long period of TV abstinence beginning in about 2004 (I guess it was about when I started writing here – something had to go to make time for it).  But Netflix has drawn me back into fairly regular TV watching because it’s totally under my control and it makes a decent fist most of the time of alerting me to things I’d like to see.

Lots has been written about the new House of Cards which is not being shown on regular TV.  It’s on Netflix-only, and the 13 episodes were released all in one go last week.  Mostly though people are focusing their attention on the novelty of the release rather than the programme itself.

Which is a shame, because it’s very good.  I haven’t gone full throttle into TV addiction yet so I haven’t succumbed to the temptation of just watching the whole thing in a 13-hour marathon, but I’ve managed the first three episodes and we’re getting used to the characters and seeing some of the storylines start to firm up.

I was initially disappointed to realise (it came in the first few shots when Kevin Spacey turned and started talking to camera) that it’s the Michael Dobbs/Andrew Davies House of Cards remade in today’s US political scene.  Disappointed only because the original was *so* good, so captivating, so of the time and shockingly near to what we suspected the inside of party politics was like, long before The Thick of It.  And because Ian Richardson was so compelling: simultaneously adorable and despicable.  And because I’m rarely won over by American remakes of British TV.  Where I am at the end of episode 3, Spacey hasn’t quite reached Richard III levels of despicability but he’s getting there and I fully believe that he pulls it off by Episode 13 and Robin Wright is an able Lady Macbeth.   Part of the draw for me is seeing how the other recognisable characters might turn out – although it’s pretty much a question of how they will meet their various sticky ends rather that whether they do (I hope).

I like the graphic overlays that denote when people are texting each other.  It lets the acting continue without cutting away to a close-up of the phone screen.  I haven’t seen it done as authentically before.

It’s very interesting to see it transplanted into American politics and the DC village rather than the Westminster one.  Though I am wondering why it took 23 years for this story to be acceptable to a US audience.  Is American politics in a similar place now to where we were at the end of the Thatcher era?  I guess there are similar levels of disillusionment with the system, but has that come about recently? Is it a new thing?  If we got any faith in the system back in 1997 we’ve lost it again since.

One thing that does crop up with the all-in-one release thing is that it makes it hard to have an online social experience around it and so it’s hard to write about without some spoilers – it’s neither like a movie (which you’ve either seen or you haven’t) nor like a standard TV series (where you might allow people to be a few episodes behind, but pretty much you expect everyone to be up to date or avoiding any reviews).  And of course it’s also a remake.

But do I hate spoilers so I shall wait until a significantly larger number of my friends are admitting to having seen it.

 

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Pick-up lines

Karin sat in Caffe Nero and waited for her soup.

When it came she heard a laugh, well, more of a snigger, but not a cruel one.

“Your soup matches your dress!”  The guy sitting at the next table was grinning and looking at her.  She tried to work out whether he was being an idiot or just inappropriately friendly for this part of south London.  She saw a heavy, large-print Bible, it’s pages covered in annotations and faded highlighter, lying open in his lap.  She smiled, but decided against further engagement.

She stirred her soup and looked at it intently.  So did he.

He sniggered again, “I saw a movie yesterday where something just like this happened.”

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St Mary Street

My glamorous life #ourdigitalplanet[Written in a notebook while I was in Cardiff in October 2012]

“A quiet morning on the street, the rain hasn’t yet kicked in but the cold wind tells you that it isn’t far off. It’s time for the town’s drunks to converge on the Spar to buy their first tins of the day.

Not their first beers, mind, they needed a beer at home to get out and about but this will be the first they part with cash for.

Ten minutes later “Babyface” appears. He hasn’t saved enough from last night to go in the shop, so he hangs in front of the Spar asking for change until someone buys him a single can of Tennants which he downs almost in one.

A dark haired man in a track-suit walks slowly up from the Morgan Arcade. “Listen to me good. No, you listen to me ya fat c**t I’m calling you now, so just listen…”

A fat bald man, in a grey hoodie and white shorts with black slippers on his feet, goes to the cashpoint. His head is so fat he has to move the phone from his ear to his mouth when he speaks.

Babyface bumps fists with a straggly bearded dwarf and they walk off together.”

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Today’s thought

It doesn’t matter how many times you write it out or make a list, do it.  There’s a voice that says it’s avoidance of really doing something, but it’s not.  It’s progress.  It’s getting today’s thought out on the page.  Today’s thought leads to today’s action.

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I’m always saying “Screw it!” #LLBS

I’ve been asked to speak at the Late Late Breakfast Show this Wednesday on an occasion in my career when I’ve just said “Screw it!” and how it’s helped.

I think this is the foundation of just about every success I’ve ever had.  Very little has worked for me by trying to follow “business as usual” but it still sings a tempting siren song on every project I start.

Register to hear me pull out some of the more entertaining times I’ve said “Screw it!” as well as some even more interesting people riffing on this subject.

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[bds]Last few hours, what happens next?

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I started writing something about what happens if I don’t hit the target or what happens if I exceed the target and it just felt all wrong.

The first one particularly felt like:

  • introducing some sort of fake jeopardy to induce people to part with cash;
  • writing a risk register (*shudder*);
  • just a lie really because I know and you know (if you know me well enough) that I only ever do things that I’d do even if it didn’t raise any money at all and that half the fun is making do with what you’ve got instead of throwing money at problems to make them go away.

So it’s going to happen whatever, but I will be able to spend more time on this project if the pot is fatter and less time if it’s slimmer – simples.

So go ahead, make it fatter

The one thing I do want to avoid is having a conversation with someone that goes “Oh what a shame you didn’t come last month, I had a load of old film that I didn’t know what to do with, so I chucked it out.”  So I’m going to get on with this thing as quickly as I can with whatever resources I have.

Today I’ve purchased digitalshoebox.org.uk it points to the campaign page for now, tomorrow it will become the real home of the project!