I could only make half an hour at Saul Klein’s Open Coffee yesterday but managed to talk to John Hornbaker, Nic Brisbourne, a guy looking for investors for his food social network and Euan before striding off north-eastwards to see a prospect. It was a really buzzing affair – I’m definitely going again next week with more time to spare – it still is bizarre to walk through the practically empty shop up to the Starbucks upstairs which was packed full of blue jeans & blazers and a smattering of black t-shirts. A great example of the power of face to face that Kathy Sierra’s talking about today.
May Day for Nurses
Steve Moore passed this on from Jonathan Simmons at PublicZone:
“Public Zone have become involved in a wonderful campaign called May Day For Nurses, which aims to highlight the plight of nurses as the lowest paid public sector professionals, by asking every premiership footballer to donate their wages from the last day of the season to a hardship fund.
We don’t want your money (that will come from the players), we just want your support. We have built a fan table on-line www.maydayfornurses.com (it even has space for non football fans!), please go and register your support, it will really help us get press, and convince the players.”
I have, why haven’t you?
SMC London – Talking Audio with Ronna Porter
Get along to Fleishmann Hillard at 6pm this Thursday for the discussion group session for Social Media Club.
This month, the discussion will be led by Ronna Porter, who wrote this at the SMC Blog last week and took part in our podcasting session.
SMC London Making Media
OK, so my bright idea was a little under-attended last week (yes, I was the only one to turn up) but nevertheless I did one of the things I set out to do which was to make some media.
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
Social Media Club London Tonight
Tonight, 8th March, we will be getting together for our 2nd Thursday weekly meetup at 6pm to talk and share practice around podcasting & audioblogging.
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 🙂
4 groups, types or characteristics at Uploading
I was going to go into big detail on the four types or groups of people – or perhaps they are characteristics found within individuals that I noticed at the Uploading Innovation unconference on Tuesday, but I think I’ll just present them for now and maybe fill in the detail later.
The four elements I saw coming together more than I have done at other events are People People, Geeks, Capitalists and Philosophers.
People People – who focus on the social nature of collaboration, what it means to us as individuals and as groups of people
Geeks – who focus on technological facilitation of collaboration, what machines can do for us
Capitalists – who focus on making new businesses, how to make more money out of collaboration
Philosophers – who focus on the ideas and constructing theories about what this all means for the human race
Having contributions from all of these, rather than just one dominant group was one of the things that made the conversations on the day all the more interesting and productive. Thankfully most of those who came were aware of their shortcomings and there weren’t too many know-it-alls (my prejudice is that this is a geek trait – people people, capitalists and philosophers are willing to admit that they could know more about the tech, but some geeks insist that they also know everything about people, money and ideas) [ducks for cover]
Public Policy 2.0
David points to the RSA/Policy Unplugged Conference that’s taking place on Thursday morning. I’m going to be there too, doubtless with recording equipment again – though I share David’s scepticism about how easy it will be to get a word in edgeways with the impressive list of people who are coming to speak about the heady mix of democracy, politics, policy and web-enabled mass collaboration.
It’s free, and it seems there are places left, but you need to register
Billy No-Mates
So, the first weekly Social Media Club meetup – Thursday Night is Social Media Night – was obviously too soon for many people. In fact everyone except me 🙂 I waited for about 45 minutes and then walked on my own from the John Snow down to Green Park to get on the tube home, taking pictures on the way which are now in the Social Media Club London Group Pool.
I know I’ve taken to calling myself a Social Media Tart, but I didn’t expect that to extend to me standing alone on a street corner outside a pub in Soho, trying to catch the eye of young-ish men who looked like they might have an interest in photo-sharing…
I’m all ready to do it again though. This week we’re going to do some podcasting, somewhere in Central London. Suggestions welcome on the wiki for a venue or location that’s quiet enough to gather and record audio, but not somewhere where we’ll get shhhhed.
Social Media Tart for Hire
At the uploading conference today I was with Oli Barrett when he got described as a “Media Tart”. On Twitter, I have as my description “Social Media Tart”. I like that this means I don’t take what I do too seriously. I’m also remind myself that Tart is a contraction of Sweetheart. There are of course less salubrious connotations, but let’s not linger on what they mean in this context.
Yes, I already have a bunch of lovely clients. No, I’ve never had so much on that I couldn’t squeeze another piece of work in somewhere. So YES, I’m for hire, folks! To move to a more tasteful metaphor than tartery, let’s see if there are any tasty morsels on this platter that you’d like to nibble on, or you’d recommend to friends.
Richer Records
I get hired by conference organisers to write a blog with audio, video and still photography for a one-day or two-day event. This includes live-blogging sessions and interviews with participants and speakers throughout the day. We also do pre-conference podcasts to help build interest and buzz before the event.
Blogging for Theatres
I’ve recently taken on my first theatre client to help them with their strategy for engaging with the community online. There are so many stories to be told about what’s going on in any theatre day-to-day and so many people who are passionately interested in hearing about it, but the bulk of theatrical marketing is still about print-based advertising.
Blogging in Blue Chips
At the end of last year I helped out on a global knowledge management exercise within a huge international company. I wrote a blog about a range of marketing initiatives and illustrated it with podcasts of phone conversations with project teams and videos of senior managers, talking about why this sort of sharing was of paramount strategic importance.
Social Media Club
I’m getting Social Media Club up and running in London. This is a global loosely-joined confederation of like-minded people. In London so far, we’ve had monthly round-table chats, but this month we’re branching out into weekly meetups with the motto “Thursday Night is Social Media Night”
Making daft videos
Peruse my YouTube stream for examples of my work. Firm favourites are “Let’s go Mento”, and the All This… And Brains Too! series but steer clear of certain elements of the G-Room Review Videoblog unless you are actively seeking accidental nudity.
Facilitation
Yeah, I still like to pull my faciliation trousers on from time to time. I prefer to work in an open space or cafe style, but can do more structured sessions as required. Hey! How long is it since you had a good old PinPoint session?
Blog Coaching & Seminars
I do one-to-one coaching on how to improve your blog (both in terms of using the software more effectively and by improving your writing). I’m also working with Suw Charman on some small-ish (8-10 people) seminars on “What is Social Software?”, “Moderation and Nurturing Community”, and “Encouraging Adoption of Social Tools”. We’re planning on doing public versions of these as well as in-house for individual organisations.
I’d like to carry on doing any and all of these so give me a call if you want to talk about how I can help you +44(0)7919182825 or e-mail lloyd dot davis at gmail dot com
unblogging
Today I’m at NESTA in the City doing some unreporting for the Uploading Innovation unconference ‘unorganised’ by policyunplugged.
Perfect Path 