No. 2 Bus leaving Victoria Station
Trocadero
Up, Up and Away!
Sunday morning in Berlin
found this in my phone having forgotten that it was there at the time, and thought it would make a bit of a change to have me speaking after all these glimpses of London.
Wearing my social objects on my chest
My most popular social objects at the moment are the badges on the lapel of my overcoat. Most of them were around last winter when I was wearing the coat, so I don’t know whether it’s the fact that I’ve added a couple more or something else that makes all sorts of people stop and smile and comment and ask questions.
Only today, for example, I happened to be riding in a lift with the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, as you do, and he (for they are one person) said “Oh what are those for?” and I said, “Oh they’re just things I’ve been to” and he said “Mmm… just brightening up your overcoat” “Yes” and so it was that my relationship with Jack Straw MP was everso slightly enriched.
I’ve put some notes on the photo on flickr to help people who want to know what each is about. I might as well spell out the detail here too. So from the top, the targetty looking one is from Platform for Art, the programme for putting art on the underground. The one next to it featuring Domo is a new one from my friend Claire who gave it to me to extend my collection. This exchange also gave us the opportunity to share this with one of our friends who’d never seen it before – yes there are such people! Below Domo is my flickr badge – I’m always surprised by the people who have been on flickr for ages, but who need to have that explained to them. Isn’t it obvious? And yes, I know it’s upside-down.
To the left in the picture but to my right is my Breakfast Club badge from the cafe in D’Arblay St of the same name, not because I belong to a club that involves eating sausage and bacon or because I carried a torch for Molly Ringwald (though the latter is true and if the former exists, I’d like to know about it) They have them in a basket on the counter, so they’re not as exclusive as you might think. Next down and not very clear is one that Katherine gave me. It depicts creature that is half whale and half training shoe. I have no idea what the picture means, if it means anything at all. Below that, the black one is from likemind. I can’t remember whether it was the lovely Amanda or the lovely Jamie who gave it to me (now that’s going to start a fight) and the one at the bottom is from the goodie bag at Interesting 2007. It says “Interesting 2007” So that’s the only one that wasn’t given to me by a girl then.
Each of them is a conversation starter, each has a little story attached, a little story that tells you a little bit more about me. And together, the fact that I wear them says something about me. Perhaps that I’m a nutter and to be avoided, but judging by experience, also that it’s OK to stare and OK to come up and ask me what they’re about. I don’t have to do anything more than wear them to get into interesting conversations with people.
If you haven’t a clue why I’m even talking about “social objects” go and read Hugh on the subject.
The long-tail of face-to-face
I don’t know where I’m going with this one, but I’m musing about some attitudes that I see popping up around face-to-face events.
One seems to be: Big is beautiful (or at least successful) ie in order for an event to be considered a success, you have to have loads of people there. I disagree. I look at Tuttle and shudder at the idea of there regularly being 100 people there. I find it’s pushing the format to have more than 50. New people seem to expect me to be disappointed if there are fewer people this week than last week. I keep telling them that it’s OK, I’ve experienced nobody turning up to something I’ve arranged, and it didn’t kill me. I think that I’m going to always represent an extreme of Tuttle attendee, if anyone’s going to make sure they meet everyone in the room then it’s going to be me. And meeting 40 people in 3 hours is a lot, fairly comfortable, but nearing the maximum.
Now that’s not to say that I don’t think big events are any good. I enjoyed Web2.0 and I’m sure I’ll enjoy LeWeb08 which is going to be huge. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think size is a sign of success, it’s just a sign of, well, how big something is…
Another side of this is the feeling that everyone’s got to go to everything. OK, so it’s not that bad, but I do see people feeling like they are seriously missing out by not getting to go to things. And I know that’s how I’ve felt as well. We tell ourselves that we know that no-one can go to everything and surely no-one can be that interested in everything, and if you spent all your time going to things, you wouldn’t get anything done. But still, it would be just my luck that it will be this event that I’m not going to where something brilliant and amazing and paradigm-shifting will happen, something that the attendees will remember for ever and tell their grandchildren about, and level of awesome that will never be repeated in our lifetimes.
I think we’re going to be doing more and more of these meetups, scaling from 4 or 5 right up to the thousands and recognising that we don’t need to go to everything just because it’s there, any more than we can buy, listen to and enjoy every CD available on Amazon.
In fact I’m personally going to be choosing to attend things that are the 4 or 5 right people to talk about a very niche, specific subject – I still love 40 people on a Friday, but next I want to add in some smaller, more focused things. Note, that the “right” people doesn’t necessarily imply the best, brightest, coolest, sexiest, funniest or any of those things. It just means, if anything at all, the most appropriate.
Remembering
Steam
Interesting that a third of the way through the month, I seem to be finding it more difficult to write something every day than find a piece of video to post.
It’s great exercise though, and it feels kind of like a promise to go to the gym every day for a month. Much easier than you thought at the beginning, and then… 10 days in…
I have no more to say than that. Well I have some big things to say, on the dangers of us lacking consciousness… and the long tail of face-to-face events… and about the stuff I’m doing in the daytime, but can’t quite blog about just yet…oh yes and I’d really like to do something retrospective on how the way we talk about this stuff has changed since the summer of 2005 when we suddenly seemed to get a bit of confidence… and there’s a little movie I’m putting together telling my version of the genesis of tuttle… Maybe if I started it a bit earlier than 10pm every night I might find it easier.
Perfect Path 
