events, london

Passing notes in school

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Ugh I’ve had a kind of emotional hangover since about lunchtime yesterday. I feel rotten about getting stuck in a cynical snarky frame of mind. To blame twitter would be like blaming my exercise books for having blank sheets at the back that were perfect for writing notes to pass in class. To blame anyone at NESTA would be like blaming Mr Liberal for not being able to control his pupils. And to blame any of my fellow participants would be saying “they made me do it, sir”. Oh bugger, now I’ve got the Grange Hill theme running round in my head.

But anyway that’s what I did yesterday, I regressed into can’t-be-bothered schoolboy (the one who ended up with average O-levels and piss-poor A-levels), a role I reprised at university as smart-arse know-it-all (who had to pull far too many all-nighters to get a 2:1). People found some of my twittering amusing but it wasn’t really a productive use of my time to sit there snarking, steadily becoming more frustrated and in the end getting, well, a bit depressed really. In fact I felt just the same as when we had that backchannel hoo-ha at LesBlogs2.0. Stuck in a room with far too many smart people not able to say anything while some other smart people sat on the stage and weren’t able to say enough. But I have to recognise that that’s just how I see it, it doesn’t mean that everyone else had the same reaction.

The thing I can take responsibility for is that I went into it entirely unconsciously – I didn’t really look at the programme, as was evidenced by my shock on arrival at the scale of the whole thing. If I had thought about it, I would have known that I was likely to rebel against the keynoting and panelling and would have planned to do something entirely different and positive with the opportunity instead of sitting there and trying to disrupt it. The only bit I behaved in was Bob Geldof’s bit – he’s a great performer and I’ve loved him ever since he tore up that picture of John Travolta on Top of the Pops.

So I’m sorry NESTA for poking you with a stick. I’m sorry Jonathan Freedland for calling you names on twitter. And I’m sorry to myself for using up a valuable day so miserably.

Ho hum. On to better things. I’ve sat in similar events and said “We can do better than this” I don’t think that’s true – it was a great event, but the programmed content was not for me. What I will say is “We can do something other than this – in fact we already are” That’s where my effort’s going today rather than in trying to pull somebody else down.

Bonus Link: The bit that Geldof quoted from WH Murray

events, london

Cognitive Surplus at Conferences

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It struck me that Clay Shirky’s lovely notion of cognitive surplus has another expression in these panel and single speaker conferences. Where sitcoms mask cognitive surplus, occasions like this NESTA Innovation conference amplify and magnify it. We have 3,000 smart people (ok not smart enough to not come, but pretty smart nonetheless) sitting in a room listening to 4 other smart people on stage. The weight of ideas, thoughts, inspiration and excitement is enormous, and for me anyway painful – we all rush out to grab food and talk rapidly before coming back in to listen to the prime minister. Gaaaah! Cue Desperate Housewives.

events, london, What I've Been Doing

Tim Berners-Lee on web science.

Just a snippet. Cross not to have power supply.

Sir Tim says something to the effect of:

People doing interesting things fall between stools. The web has to be thought of as humanity connected, rather than an interconnection of computer systems. And you have to remember it’s big, very big and it’s complex. It’s not apparent yet what all of its characteristics are. We don’t know yet for example what the blogosphere is and how it will behave. We just don’t know – we can’t show that it’s stable. So we have to study it, we have to understand it better so that we can take care of it.

events, london

The Innovation Edge

Live blogging a bit from the Royal Festival Hall as and when today. No power in the hall at all, so currently on 53 minutes 😛

We’ve got a whole bunch of big names talking to us this morning, TB-L & Bob Geldof with a rumoured appearance by the PM. First impression – it’s bloody huge! We’ve heard talk of 3-4,000 people. The hall is full and I think we’re just about to be moved out of the front-row seats we’d grabbed by being the first in. It was too good to be true.

Or maybe not. No, we’re sitting still Ha Ha!

events, london, video, What I've Been Doing

What’s the web for?

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A slow project this one. Ask as many people as I can remember to do when I’ve got my camera with me to answer a “simple” question – “What is the web for?”

I tried it out at the Tuttle Club a few weeks ago. This is what came out of the mouths of some of the Smartest People in Social Media (TM)





So there are two ways I want to take this forward. I want to do it with a more diverse group of people, and I want to edit a bunch of them together in a watchable way. Your thoughts on how to do this are welcome.

I have more. I will release them. Soon.

music

Crazy mixed up kid

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Finally got round to uploading my muxtape. All are taken either from vinyl or from tape. None have been digitally remastered or messed about with in any way.

You won’t like it. I’ve spent my whole life thinking that sooner or later I’ll get into whatever music everyone else is into. Just realising though that it ain’t going to happen. This is the stuff that’s usually going round in my head when I’m talking to you, just so as you know….

Here’s some hand scrawled sleeve notes:

Temperance Seven – Chili Bom Bom
Must get a cardboard megaphone for busking with, although I suppose I’d have to attach it with elastic around the back of my head or something. Sometimes when I’m feeling very sick, my singing along to this morphs into a Jake Thackray impersonation. Wrong, but strangely right.

Benny Goodman – Ain’tcha Glad
I don’t know what it is about this one, I think it’s the corny lyric – “life is just a melody, in perfect harmony…” and singing style. Plus some hot Goodman hickory stick.

Ella Fitzgerald – Lady Be Good
Bang, into the fifties for the most modern sounding one on the tape! This is from a whole album of Ella doing be-bop scat numbers, some are a bit weird, but I like the bounce in this one.

Ray Foxley – Fudge No Rice
I miss Raymond a lot and this is my favourite of his compositions. He gave me enormous encouragement when I was a kid to get into the music. The last time I saw him before he died was at The 100 Club in about 2001 and he asked me if I was still singing. I said no, I wasn’t and he looked so disappointed and said “What a bloody waste.” I’m trying to make it up to him now.

Billie Holiday – Dream of Life
Life *is* sublime.

Bing Crosby – You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby
This is more polished than his earliest Rhythm Boys crooning, but swings along beautifully and I love the verse.

Bessie Smith – After You’ve Gone
Knockout raw blues power in a Tin Pan Alley song (another lovely verse).

Zenith Hot Stompers – Someday Sweetheart
This is the band my dad played with for many years, but this was recorded many years before he joined them. 1966 to be precise – Tony Pipkin’s on trumpet with some belting tuba from Phil Matthews.

Me with Michael Law – When Somebody Thinks You’re Wonderful
The last time I was in a recording studio, probably 1988, which makes me feel ancient – one of the tracks on a demo tape. Really should do some more, I’m glad I’m singing again, but when I busk I do have to sing loudly – it’s much nicer when you can get right up close and whisper.

What I'm doing

Halp. I needz it.

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My personal heady mix of pride, stubbornness and avoidance combine to make this a difficult thing to write, but I need some pretty specific help over the next week.

I have to move out of my flat by next Sunday 18th May. I have a couple of options on where I can stay after that but none of them are ideal or sustainable for longer than a couple of weeks tops. I also have very little in liquid assets, which is why I’m not able to just walk into an estate agents and plop 10 weeks rent on the table for anywhere I like. Another bit of background is that I also don’t drive and don’t own a car.

So. In the coming week:

I need someone with a van to help take my bed from Pimlico to Wimbledon for storage. The double mattress of course is the largest part, but apart from that the headboard is 1.4m x 1.4m so I’m guessing most people carriers won’t be up to it, but am willing to be proved wrong.

More manageably, I need help getting all my worldly goods (in boxes) from Pimlico to my ex-wife’s place in Epsom where I can store stuff in the attic.

And I need somewhere to live for little or no rent while I get back on my feet financially.

People are kindly helping with getting work and cash flowing, but I expect it to take quite a bit more than a couple of weeks.

e-mail, phone & twitter are all great ways of getting hold of me.

btw – my chin is up, I am still breathing, and smiling, just in need of practical assistance 🙂

Update: Thanks for all the messages of love & support. You all rock. Am piecing together a plan from the various bits of help offered. I’ve had two people offer cars & driving, someone who’ll hire a van if I can find a driver and two offers of places to stay through the last week in May. Very grateful…

Oh yes and some careers advice from Adrian Phillips… thanks Ade 🙂

events, london, What I've Been Doing

Dynamic Compartmentalisation

Breakfast and conversation again yesterday, courtesy of OneAlfredPlace and Steve Moore I love the way that Steve keeps playing with different formats. This one involved three cool people (coincidentally all members of my twitterstream) Jeremy, Kevin & Matt from Penguin, The Guardian and Channel 4 respectively, all talking about what happens next in their worlds, ably steered by Rebecca Caroe. As Matt disarmingly pointed out, when you ask people in the vanguard of change what the future will be like, it’s not surprising that they describe a scenario in which there are really cool jobs for people like them. But as I feel part of the same vanguard, I’m not going to disagree with what they were saying. The common thread for me was that they all see their jobs as doing away with technology dependent descriptions of what they do (sell books, paper, TV programmes) towards being in the market for ideas and stories. I wanted to ask to what extent they saw themselves as competition for each other, or more properly for our attention.

Mark has captured the nugget in what Matt said about some current C4 research on teenage net use.

“Seems one girl the researchers were following was hanging out online doing amongst other things a spot of the hi-speed Instant Messaging that only the young can really manage for any length of time.

She had sorted all her contacts into 6-7 or seven groups – schoolfriends, family etc but also “bitches” “wankers” and so on. What was striking though was the way in which she switched contacts between the groups in real time. Even if the members of her different social networks remained mostly consistent over the short term, their roles were in constant flux. And those are just the small set of folk she is in regular contact with regularly…”

Read the whole thing for Mark’s point on this (as well as some bonus Tommy Cooper) but what struck me was how it fits with what I’ve been saying about compartmentalisation – that the way we dealt with having larger numbers of acquaintances than 150 was to split them up (at least in our heads) and make sure they never came into contact with each other (except when we wanted them all to share something with us – weddings – or where we were no longer in control – funerals – both of which, especially with the addition of alcohol can become explosive situations). I see a lot of people struggling with the problem that online social networks make compartmentalism more difficult. It seems to me that the solution here though is a creative third way – keep the idea of compartments, but treat them much more dynamically.

As usual, I feel I’ve taken hundreds of words to say something very simple and obvious. Sorry.

social media, What I've Been Doing

About.me 2008 version

There’s nothing like an extended period of underemployment to get you thinking about who you are, what you’ve done and what you want to do. I also recognise that I’ve met an awful lot of new (to me) people in the last year or so, many of whom aren’t intimately acquainted with what I’ve done. Many of these people have come to me via the Tuttle Club/Social Media Café and I know they’d love to help me get more work, so especially for them, this is the story so far.

I started out in the theatre, training at the Guildford School of Acting and spending the next couple of years in traditional actors’ roles – behind bars, on building sites and temping – oh and an audition and show here and there 🙂

The lure of tech called me aside and I got into databases, data analysis and what we then called “programming” – what’s a developer? This led me back into education and a degree in Computing & IT at Surrey University.

My industrial placement was at the Audit Commission, which I joined after graduation working in research, information and, latterly, knowledge management. By the end I was responsible for the redesign and rebuild of the intranet and internet sites, focusing on a common information architecture between the two and working with people to set up offline Knowledge Networks across organisational boundaries.

Since then I’m been working as an independent consultant specialising in how people in organisations communicate with each other and with their stakeholders, particularly how the might do that using internet technologies. Around the same time I was introduced to blogging and which extended for me over the years into photo-sharing, audio and video work – check through the archives here to see some of the high- and low-lights.

In the last few years my focus and interest has become refined in the use of social media and I’m now mostly interested in how online interaction can help build offline relationships and vice versa. I’ve done this in a range of assignments as consultant, trainer, facilitator, mentor and content producer.

I’ve become adept at helping people understand how social media and online social networking can be used in their personal and organisational context. As a near obsessive early adopter (I was one of London’s first podcasters in 2004), I have a strong understanding of how social technology and the network effect come together as a powerful tool for organisation and productivity. What I have that is unusual is an ability to translate what I and my friends have been doing for years into something that makes sense in your world/

So I’m now looking for more opportunities, specifically in training, mentoring and consulting for individuals and small teams, preferably within medium to large organisations (500+ employees) especially those interested in using a combination of social media to achieve a specific business benefit.

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