What I've Been Doing

Big Knob, Little Knob

4 Comments

little knobbig knobThis lunchtime I had to be home to greet some very nice eastern european workmen who were coming to fix up my letterbox (we’re having a whole revamp of the common areas in Dolphin Sq)

What I didn’t realise was that they were also removing the catch on my cubby-hole (where I put my rubbish to be collected, nightly) and replacing it with a little knob to match the big shiny knob on my front door. I did polish my knob a few weeks ago and it came up spiffingly (though I didn’t get any admiring comments from the neighbours) but now it looks really lacklustre compared to it’s little brother.

So which do you prefer – my big shiny knob or my little shiny knob?

What I think

Ars & Elbow

Rosie drew this comment out of me last night on the previous post and even in the cold light of day I thought it worth promoting to the front page:

I think it comes down to a simple premise – that good, lasting, profitable business arises out of good relationships. How do you improve any relationship? You give more and that’s how you get more. As you sow, so shall you reap, if you like (omigod, i can’t believe i’m quoting scripture… on my blog!)

So what I’m saying is that by giving more to the online relationship (making content, telling stories, providing a homely comfortable space, encouraging creativity among the audience, breaking down the barriers between artists and audience) rather than spending their energy on finding more efficient ways to extract money out of people, everybody ends up winning.

Theatres spend an awful lot of money trying to do those things above, but only in a physical space – and the crazy thing is, that it doesn’t cost a huge amount in order to do this stuff online.

What I've Seen

Ars gratia populi

5 Comments

larkrise01Last summer I wrote this and it set me on a slow plod to try to get theatres and arts organisations into the blogging and social media space. I pitched to a couple of theatres and sent material to lots more, but It’s never really got enough momentum behind it and there seemed to be a lot of resistance too – not least, worries about interference with the creative process and lack of cash, or more accurately other priorities for the relatively small amount of cash available.

Yesterday, the very lovely Katherine Wood at the Society of London Theatre pointed me in the direction of this report from London Calling. It’s the findings of a survey carried out among a range of arts organisations across the country in June 2006 (actually the same time that Debbie was melting the phones in the Pimlico branch, trying to get us in to speak to theatre comms people).

In addition to the no cash problem (more than two-thirds of respondents have a budget for web development of less than £10k) the survey identifies “no clear grasp of the benefits/opportunities” and the fear that “digital solutions only add to workloads” as lines of resistance to embracing these technologies.

I read the following general strategy into the answers given about the rate at which different technologies are being understood and adopted: “We’ve got to have a website, this is primarily for online ticketing, though we can do some other merchandising and marketing with it too. Then we game the search engines to make sure people come to us. Get their e-mail addresses and spam them” As usual I exaggerate for effect, but it all feels a bit 1997. Thank God most of them haven’t heard of Bluetooth…

The section Engaging with Audiences reveals more about what “engagement” seems to mean in this context. To focus on which technology to use gets it the wrong way round (it’s about people, people!) – but all of the technologies presented are best suited to a mindset of one-way communication – what I see as a narcissistic approach to engagement – see how beautiful and clever I am and you will want to be my friend and then buy my products – rather than saying “I, like you, am a human being, I love making and enjoying art and I see that you do too, let’s talk about how we can work together for mutual benefit – how I can help you and you can help me” That’s what I consider engagement.

There’s lots of work to be done here – it’s part of Web 2.2, of what Nancy has termed “the second wave” and Debbie keeps calling “the post-geek phase”. I’m interested in doing education and experimentation in this area, but most of all shifting the mindset from one-way to two-way – how do you do that? One mind at a time, baby, one mind at a time.

These lastminuteliving diaries for Cabaret and Wicked (there are others too) are a start and so is this rat blog from Soho Theatre but I can’t help feeling they could be so much more engaging (and more easy to find!) and I worry that without the mindset shift, they will be seen to not have worked and therefore be abandoned.

If you’re like those in the survey, 64% of whom said they face no internal resistance and 76% of whom said “No” to the question “Would you say that your website meets all the needs of your audiences at present?” or if you’re working on sites already and want to bounce ideas around about making them better, give me a ring and let’s have a chat about it.

[btw yeah, that’s me at the back of the picture on stage at the Swan Theatre, Worcester in the 1982 production of Lark Rise, directed by John Doyle, and including Adrian Phillips and Rufus Norris in the cast – I have no pictures of Rufus, but there’s one of Adrian on my flickr stream – heh!]

tags: & & & & & &

Uncategorized

Dalek tea party

5 Comments



dalek tea party

Originally uploaded by Lloyd Davis.

A trip for tea to Elys in Wimbledon (much more exciting that Starbucks or Coffee Republic and with water, unlike all of Wimbledon Village) yielded a bit of a surprise and a disappointment for anyone who’d been pinning their hopes on getting into what is clearly an exclusive bash. Tea parties when I was a kid were teddy bears (cuddly) or chimps (funny – at least as long as they’re kept at a distance). I think I would have had trouble keeping my tea and buns down if a Dalek had turned up.

I mean, I once saw Tom Baker at a book-signing in the 70s and a toddler had hysterics because there was Dr Who – he was real and not a puppet who lived in the telly. I just hope they have paramedics on call and have made sure the emergency exits are fully operational.

I also wondered how big the Dalek actually was, because the aisles were a bit of a squeeze as it was.

The Christmas trees throughout Elys are the same colour as the title on that notice (only sparkly) all I can tell you is that wherever Vera got them, they don’t seem to have come from Argos – and while on that subject. If you choose to have this in your home this Christmas, please don’t invite me round for mince pies. (note the url’s for the argos site will doubtless degrade over time, I wish I could give you permalinks, but they are just too tight-arsed about their intellectual property – just believe me when I tell you that the one I’ve pointed to is vile and actually looks quite like a Dalek who got carried away at Mardi Gras)

What I've Seen

Bits and bobs, mostly bobs

13 Comments

lloyd, charles & dianeOK, so no sign of action on Helen’s Blog yet this morning, but the pictures are on flickr and I had a text from her last night to reveal her experience of Celebrity Scissorhands – she was Rowetta‘d and you can see that her hair is very different, but in a “looking good mama” way! Give money to Children in Need now.

And talking of bobs, look at this poseur in the making – I think that’s my ninth birthday party, so probably 1973. Joining in the celebrations are Charles Istead and Diane Rixom. Where are they now? Do I want to know, or have I dug up enough old friends recently? (with apologies to those who read this blog and who might not like to be referred to as “dug up”)

Grumblings and disruption in the music biz are getting my attention, mostly due to my association with Mr Phillips at TunA . This one uses the ‘C’ word – consumer, there I said it, sorry folks – far too often. I’m looking forward to next Monday’s ORG event on copyright extension – NOT

What I'm doing

The One-Man Social Media Empire

7 Comments

Social Media Empire BagI was always told “You don’t go looking in ladies’ handbags, you never know what you might find” which seemed more of a temptation to me than a discouragement. And in that spirit, today I’m going to open up my one-man social media empire bag and let you know exactly what’s in it.

First an explanation for those who haven’t been following. I’ve been talking about having a one-man social media empire for some time now. I often stand up at events, lift up my green canvas bag and show off about how it contains a newspaper, radio station, tv station and film production company. I don’t understand why more people aren’t doing it – or maybe they are and I’m too busy bragging about my own stuff that I fail to notice everyone else smirking and tittering behind my back – it has been known. Anyway a large proportion of my time is now taken up creating what I call “Rich Records”

I’m tempted to make a video of me emptying the bag, but I’ve decided against it as it wouldn’t actually tell you a great deal more than the following, other than to give you a realistic view of what a ridiculous proportion of cable to kit there really is.

I have to admit that I’ve never been one for splashing out on kit. Ever since I started podcasting I’ve only used what came to hand, stuff that I’d already got – and while I’ve had to replace some items, I’m much more interested in what I can do with them, rather than how much they cost or how funky the spec-sheet is. But this might be useful to those sad souls out there who would like to emulate my empire. Calculating the cost of replicating the kit here is left as an exercise for the reader.

So then, the contents of my bag:

Laptop

OK, so you need something that can connect to the interwebnets, preferably wirelessly and with a battery that holds a charge for a long time. I had to get a cheap and heavier than I’d like Toshiba after my lovely (but stupidly uninsured) Acer Tablet got nicked. Obviously the lighter the better – needs a sizeable HDD to cope with the amount of video and audio that ends up getting stored and plenty of USB ports. I couldn’t find one at the time that fit my budget and came with a built-in firewire port (for transferring video), so I had to get one on a PCMCIA card – fiddly but workable. Some people will tell you that you really need a Mac in order to do podcasting and videoblogging well. In my experience they are the same people who will always tell you that you really need a Mac. I haven’t used a Mac in anger since 1996 so I don’t really know.

Audio recording

For podcasting and recording an audio track for the more formal (snicker) video stuff I do, I use a Sony Minidisc because that’s what I had lying around in 2004 when I met Adam Curry and saw the podcasting light shining from his podfatherly halo. I have improved on the original (which would only transfer audio to a PC in real time down an audio line) by splashing out on a Sony Hi-MD model MZ-NH700. The Hi-MD disks hold 1GB or “quite a long recording time” Note that they don’t talk to Macs at all.

I have no “cans”. I prefer to look stupid for only having little earbuds rather than looking stupid for looking like Phones out of Stingray.

I have two microphones, both cheap and from Maplin I think, but both do the job.

My stick mic is an SBC MD650 from Phillips – came with it’s own cable and I have a phono to mini-jack converter to plug it into the minidisc. I then have a stereo clip on mic for wandering around stuff. This is a Yoga (I consider myself more of an intermediate 😮 ) EM-8 which has far too much cable but does give a really cool stereo vibe, especially weird when listening to me walking in traffic.

Video recording

I have a JVC GR D200 which I picked up in Dixons a couple of years ago for domestic use. I chose it because it was cheap and it fits nicely in my hand and those are the technical criteria I would recommend :-). It records on MiniDV and transfers to PC via a Firewire cable. When I need to buy another one, I’d like quicker transfer to PC and an external mic input. I don’t have a functioning stills camera at the moment but will get a digital SLR when funds allow – I grab stills from video I’ve shot or use my cameraphone.

Tripods

I have two, one is a mini one that sits on a table top and has a mic clip too. I usually use this as a mic stand but have to be wary when interviewing thrusting corporate execs who like to punctuate their speech with thumps on the table. The other is a bit of a cheat as as it doesn’t actually fit into the bag. But especially when I’m doing one-man stuff, it’s good to be able to the put the camera down and walk into the shot or just hold it still for a while several feet above the ground. Not essential, but useful.

Software

Partly a function of the hardware I use but I stick with freebie stuff wherever possible.

I have to use SonicStage to transfer audio from the minidisc – it does however now automatically create .wav files for me so that’s a lot less of a hassle than it used to be. I use Audacity to then edit the audio and produce mp3’s.

For video I just use Windows Movie Maker – it’s fine, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles but they usually confuse me anyway and it does what I need it to do. If I need to convert to Quicktime I use the AVS video conversion suite which set me back something like 15 quid – a useful feature of this is that it will also strip a wav audio file from a video soundtrack for manipulation in Audacity.

Hosting

Obviously this doesn’t fit in my bag…. but it popped into my head that this might be useful information too. I put my videos on YouTube now – may switch if they start to get evil. I also have a couple of libsyn accounts which are useful because they have unlimited download bandwidth but they’re used primarily for podcasts and audio files. I blog here using MovableType but use wordpress.com for freebie blogs.

Cables

Don’t get me started. Separate power cables (with transformers) for each bit of hardware (laptop, minidisc, camera); mic cables; firewire cable from camera to laptop; USB cable from minidisc to laptop; stereo audio line for carrying an audio signal from minidisk to laptop when doing Skype recording (whole other post)

The bag itself came from a very excellent NMK event at the ICA last year – funkiest conference bag ever.

What I think

Social Reporting and Rich Records

4 Comments

I&DeA Rural Excellence ConferenceDavid Wilcox writes about the role of Social Reporter.

“Online forums need hosts and moderators, workshops need facilitators, networks require some weaving to develop links. But how, for example, do you do that fast around an event, capture content, and follow through afterwards? I’m pondering the possible role of the social reporter. ”

My experience is that it’s a big job, and we haven’t quite worked out whether, or how it’s worth the effort yet. Luckily there are people like us who don’t mind having a go without a stong prior proof that it will work and deliver benefit 🙂

I’m taking a softly, softly, catchee monkey approach. I think (and my order book shows) that we have agreement that it’s a “good thing” or at least a “nice thing” to have a richer record of a days proceedings and that blogs and wikis are a good way of producing that. What I agree we haven’t done yet is get to the point where we’re able to weave everything together to make it useful enough to participants that they want to do more than view the record.

But maybe that’s not our responsibility…yet. I see a risk that we’re pushing people too fast along a learning curve that we’ve taken a while to go along ourselves. I found last week that It is enough novelty for the average conference participant to deal with the fact that we’ve taken pictures, done some vox-pops with people and live blogged a keynote and they are up on the internet at the end of day 1! Maybe we should just let this aspect sink in for a little bit – if they want to interact as well, then that’s fantastic and we should be ready for it when it happens, but in the meantime, perhaps we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment.

Especially if we are also introducing more social aspects to the event, breaking down the distinction between presenter and audience – novelty fatigue might set in – I have to remember that not everyone gets bored as easily as I do!

[Bonus Link: Tara Hunt opens up an interesting conversation about measuring the health of communities – graphic equalizers are a little cybernetic for me, but rtwt]

I'm the founder of the Tuttle Club and fascinated by organisation. I enjoy making social art and building communities.