Tag Archives: london

G20: Tom Watson MP

April 5, 2009 Lloyd Davis 1 Comment

I also asked Tom why people should care about what goes on at the summit and he explains the importance of what the bloggers were doing to help us all make sense of the high-level economic stuff from our own perspectives.

Tom is one of the earliest adopters of online social tools among national politicians and he uses them to complement the doorstep manner that makes him a popular local MP. I remember hearing about his early blogging through Tim Ireland in 2004. He’s matured well with the rest of us – he’s a top choice to follow on twitter, skillfully navigating the line between speaking as just another tweeter and speaking as an MP and Government Minister.

Tom sat with us on the G20 Voice desk all day, even when he was in danger of being crushed by the hack-pack when Bob Geldof passed by.

What I'm doing

G20 Voice starting

April 1, 2009 Lloyd Davis 3 Comments

Still not entirely sure what to do with this opportunity. My instinct is to look for the stuff that other people aren’t covering or noticing. So I included in my intro tags #hiddenstories.

So I expect mainstream media to lead on soap opera stuff between Brown, Obama and Sarkozy.

I expect many people to lead on the sorts of things being talked about here by Oxfam – a rescue & financial stimulus package for poorer countries.

I’m interested in how social media is actually being used to open up the conversation – you may have seen a reference to me in Rory Cellan-Jones’s post yesterday and it’s the middle bit that is interesting, how “ordinary people” who aren’t directly involved in the summit and who aren’t interested in throwing bricks at bankers can take part in the important decisions that are being made at the moment. I’m not suggesting that we can be a direct line between you and the Prime Minister or Mr President but can we be more of a two-way medium? Can we, should we, how should we be doing more than either being a reporter or being a lobbyist?

Keeping thinking and talking and listening here.

What I'm doing

Tuttle We-20

March 29, 2009 Lloyd Davis 2 Comments

Ahead of the G20 summit I want to run a we20 session with tuttlers on Tuesday. We’ll meet on Tuesday morning at the ICA. There is another related event going on there and I’m not sure how much I can say about that, but it’s exciting and I will let you know as soon as I know that I can.

UPDATE: Thanks to Toby Moores, I can confirm that this session will include, at some point during the morning, a live video link-up with Bob Zoellick, President of the World Bank.

So this is how it will go. There will be a maximum of 20 people. We will have a very structured conversation about what we can do to use social media and online social networking to boost the London economy, resulting in a set of personal and group commitments to action. The exact form will depend on how many people are there. The conversation will be recorded and published on the web.

If you don’t like the idea and want to do something different then feel free to set up your own conversation or attend one of the other conversations that are going on next week.

The session at the ICA will run from 9.30 and close before 12 noon when the public come in, but as always you’re welcome to stick around and chat. Please sign up here to get a place.

What I think

VRM => we all have our own loyalty card

March 25, 2009 Lloyd Davis 2 Comments

I was just reading David Weinberger’s excellent notes of Doc Searls’s Berkman lunch and realised what I was talking about at the VRM thing last November I’m sorry it’s taken so long.

What happened was I went through my wallet looking at all the different loyalty cards and coffee shop stamp cards I have and I said I want to be able to manage all of this better and from my own perspective. Maybe the people listening understood better than I did.

What I realised this implies is that we all have our own loyalty card (which somehow gets automagically updated from the cloud) which is accepted by and useful to every “vendor” that we choose to allow access, no matter what the service.

And, most importantly, I can also view, aggregate and filter all my data on there in various visualisations whether it’s how much I spent on coffee altogether this month or which coffee shops I frequented most or maybe it’s my medical record and the prescriptions I’ve had filled recently.

I was at Demos today listening to Richard Thaler talk about his book Nudge and he used just the same thing as an example – full disclosure of information from credit card companies about the penalties and extra costs on your bill which you could then feed into some analytic site on the web to understand better how to cut your costs.

I don’t know if I’ve said anything new here but it feels like *I* understand myself a little better…

There’s another opportunity to join in the fun and games defining and evolving VRM at the Open Space that I’m facilitating for VRMHub on Monday. Come & play.

What I've Been Doing

La Clique

February 12, 2009 Lloyd Davis

It was like a two-hour roller coaster ride. I ZOMG-d out loud nearly all the way. Way more intimate than I’d expected, and I’m not talking about the lady with the handkerchief. Hard to describe without spoilers – you need to go, it’s only booking til April 19th and go for tickets in the “floor” area near the “stage” (or the posh seats if you can stretch to that) for the full wind in your hair feeling.

Also, please can we not turn the Hippodrome into a casino? – it’s a great venue for this kind of theatre. I only wish we could still see elephants, horses, polar bears and a 100,000 gallon water tank!

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Why are these places empty?

January 31, 2009 Lloyd Davis

What I'm doing

audioblogging again

January 3, 2009 Lloyd Davis 1 Comment

Realising that it’s 4 years since I first bumbled into podcasting, I’m overcome with a zealous need to return to the form.

So I got myself a new recorder (minidisk and linux no play nicely) and went for a walk.

Everything is easier these days except, well, y’know, finding something interesting to say.

I see, for example, that wordpress.com now provides a handy shortcode that displays a player:

but here’s a link to download if that’s the bag you’re into. And it should turn up in the RSS giving a surprise to those still subscribed through iTunes or some other podcatching mechanism….

What I'm doing