Tag Archives: london
Unlocking the see-saw
That was the title of the VRM shindig today. It was fun and interesting and stimulating.
I left ready to do something. I don’t think my coding teeth are strong enough to join in with that bit, but some more co-ordinated and detailed requirements analysis or user testing would suit me fine.
I did a bit where I pulled out my wallet and went through some of its contents. The loyalty cards and what not. Needs a bit more time to go through that in detail. I’d like to, because I think it’s got some legs. For example, the difference between the relationship implied by Caffe Nero’s bit of cardboard as opposed to Starbucks’s pre-payment card. But not tonight.
My main point there was not well developed either, because it only really came to me as I was doing it – it was the empirical evidence of how engaged I am in managing my own personal data – I may say that I’m up for it, but my wallet actually tells a slightly different story.
Thanks to Adriana and Alec for their sterling organisational efforts and to my collaborators for lots of good thinking.
Poverty. Best not to think about it.
This morning in London.
Extraordinary? No.
Sad? Only if you think about it. About who she is, what she’s dreaming of, how she got there.
So, probably best not to think about it.
Who? Why?
Walking past Elle on Wigmore Street, I actually looked in the window for once. Smack! went my gob. The turquoise crocodile skin shoes with matching belt combo hit me first, but I was equally shocked by the crazy bow ties and paisley silk jacket. Or how about that rainbow shirt?
Well Kat seems to like it. But don’t expect to see me strolling through Soho in clobber like this any time soon.
Glimpsing Obama
On Saturday, I was at Victoria station on my way to somewhere else and I saw on Twitter that Barack Obama was just about to arrive at Downing Street to meet Gordon Brown. I decided to take a detour on the no. 24 to check it out – having seen the pictures in Berlin, I assumed that Whitehall would be closed off and we’d be diverted around throngs of the placard-waving Obarmy-army – but actually it was all very quiet.
The pavement is being dug up all along in front of the Treasury and FCO buildings as well as in front of the entrance to Downing Street itself. So although there were the usual tourists milling around there was certainly nothing like a crowd but the prospect of catching a glimpse through the gates was very slim indeed. I walked back towards Westminster and saw that a bunch of people were gathering in King Charles Street, so I wandered down to have a look. It turned out that this included some hardcore supporters including the organisers of the local meetup group formed to focus Londoners (and US expats) on supporting the senator from Illinois. The thinking was that the Obama party would come from Downing Street through the FCO courtyard and along King Charles Street to go to the Palace of Westminster to meet the Tory high command. The hope was that BO himself would go walkabout and stroll down Whitehall.
I settled in to wait and wait. I passed the time on Twitter and Qik – getting the first updates and pictures from @DowningStreet and getting help from @jkerrstevens while spotting the security services talking to their cufflinks. George Osbourne seemed to come out of the Treasury (?) in a Google t-shirt and on his bicycle.
A BBC TV crew said they didn’t know if the party was coming this way either but took their position in front of the crash barrier – when asked, they explained that otherwise they’d only be able to see as much as we could see. We knew that the press conference was due for 11am and so were ready for action when we saw the journo’s come strolling out. The crowd, including some delightful little children, started chanting “Yes! We Can!” and got ready with their cameras and phones for the moment when the man himself would surely follow them and walk towards us. But then suddenly a motorcycle escort and convoy of 4 people carriers zoomed out of the gateway, past us and through the gates onto Whitehall.
Momentarily I looked up from my phone which was *not* taking pictures on burst mode as it was supposed to be and saw the familiar, smiling senatorial face as he gave a little wave to the excited but slightly disappointed crowd. I went over to Parliament but again everything was happening too far away and through grills and railings so left him to meet with a man who can’t look after his own bicycle but may be running the country before too long.
Despite the small turnout I can’t imagine that any presidential candidates in previous election years can have generated such excitement on the streets of London. The papers said that they were keeping the visit low key to avoid Obamamania – I’m sure that if he returns here victorious next year, we’ll settle for nothing less than a decent walkabout. My worry continues to be though that the task of getting him elected and keeping him alive for four years in the face of America’s underlying racism seems to be quite a toughie.
Another fine mezze you’ve gotten me into
I’m going to be playing at Darbucka again with the lovely Lawsons next Tuesday. If it runs the same way as last time, I’ll be on near the beginning with a short set of 3 or 4 numbers. Even though we’ll probably start later than advertised it would be good to get there earlier rather than later to ensure you get full ukulele exposure.
I haven’t finalised my playlist yet but I’m intending to do stuff I didn’t do at the first one (or at Interesting08 ) unless there are any special requests.
Here are the facts, ma’am:
When: Tue Jul 29 2008 07:00 PM
Where: Darbucka World Music Bar, 182 St John’s Street, Clerkenwell, London, LONDON, EC1 4JZ
Not clear about whether there’s an entrance fee but you’re welcome to throw money at my feet as usual.
Pic by Benjamin Ellis on Flickr
cc nc-by-nd
Clay Shirky at Demos
Thanks to France being all quatorze juillet yesterday, we got the benefit of Clay Shirky’s wit and wisdom over lunchtime at Demos. Although the first few minutes were “Previously on ‘Here Comes Every Body'”, as you’d expect in a session chaired by Paul Miller at the lefty think-tank there was much focus on the use of social software in public policy and political organisation. Yay! I hope you don’t expect me to weave what was said into a structured narrative. Here are the brain globs that formed for me.
The Obama campaign has focused on strategic use of the tools learning the lessons from the Dean campaign’s tactical experimentation.
Of course he wants Obama to win, but Clay has laid a $50 bet on President McCain – simply because people lie to pollsters – they *say* they’ll vote for a black president but…
The use of social software in the Obama campaign has been focused on marketing efforts and not policy development. The hope is that the people can be let back in more once the presidency is won.
If making a TV documentary about the future of the web (As Charlie Leadbeater seems to be doing – hatchet buried btw, he’s coming to Tuttle in September) it would be cool to allow remixing to create versions focused on narrower industries or themes.
You can’t extrapolate from Linux and Wikipedia in order to tell you what to do now – Wikipedia is under constant “attack” – the page for Galileo is protected because it’s a focus for the “500-year flame war” over his persecution by the Catholic Church but that doesn’t mean that your 5-person wiki needs the same level of defences.
Something clicked with me about the Open Source thing – where most Sourceforge projects go nowhere and the potential coming out of 2gether08 – most of the conversations we had will go nowhere, but one or two will be amazing – we just don’t know which one or two.
And as my blood sugar levels plummeted, I heard that Etienne Wenger is doing something interesting where CoPs meet tech but I was already seduced by the fruit basket and didn’t really hear what.
Glad to see that the podcast is already up – well done Demos!
It was again – Interesting ’08
Tired and very happy after a lovely day at Interesting ’08 – thought I’d try blogging it quickly this time – it’s that kind of a day.
As I spent much of the day helping Russell to be slightly less worried, finding things for all the helpful people to do, filling up the water boiler and wondering about including audience participation in my slot I’m afraid I missed some of the startling, stimulating and assorted wonderful displays of interestingness. But…
Roo kicked off beautifully with some great historical images from that geek classic – Lego
Something about Horses and their blind spots. (Dave funkypancake picked up on “horse” later too while struggling against dead air)
I next tuned in to Collyn saying how she was bored with reality and expected more ferns and snails.
Not sure what happened then but next thing I knew, Dan Raven-Ellison was bigging up Geography and kicking History in the balls and then Michael Johnson was segueing from Django to Freddie Green to Eric Clapton to Jimi Hendrix to Jimmy Page and so on and so on with much pedalling and magical slide changing.
so Azeroth is about 16 12km in diameter and very, very dense according to James Wallis’s endearingly obsessive calculations – also something about chucking some bird off a tower and seeing how long it took for her to fall.
Phil Gyford reminded me of what fun mask work was, but also how difficult it is.
I think I caught some bits of Matt Dent’s lovely work on coin designs – I’m glad I met him at the sign-up table and got to tell him personally anyway.
Matt Webb told a lovely story about a South American mirror telegraph that might have been an hallucination, I really wished it hadn’t been, I like the idea of local physics.
Andrew Webb must have been next thanks to the matt-matt-webb-walkingshaw doo-dah. Oh yes – food – it’s all over the country, allegedly, and farmers are saying get *on* moi land!
Andrew Walkingshaw talked about having lots of names (like cats do) and uniqueness and ambiguity
Andrew Dick finally found how to get to sleep after years of insomnia – audio books of bad thrillers – not too exciting or interesting but also not too dull – also apparently the effect doesn’t properly kick in until you’re listening for the 2nd or 3rd time.
I bet Jenny Owen’s Churchill impression is even better when she has a cigar in her mouth – she gave us a bundle of interesting titbits about the great man though my blood sugar was plummeting as we got close to lunchtime.
To close the morning, Matt Irvine Brown displayed excellent headmaster skills getting 35 people to play the recorder – I qik’d it but it’s probably even more painful to watch on a mobile phone video than it was to witness in the flesh.
Then after lunch that fat baldy bloke from last year made us listen to him sing to a (very) small guitar and then made a mountain out of some molehills – other people will cover this slot better than me.
Simon & Curtis James & Ken Hollings did some weird thing about suburbia set to a radiophonics jam session.
Anna Pickard on why biscuits, flanges and gussets are funny.
Younghee Jung talked toilets – unfortunately this is when I managed to get to the toilet for the first time myself, so I had empirical experience, but I missed out on her theory.
James Bridle got me thinking about wine and evolution and talking about booze without talking about drunkenness.
Kim Plowright- oh god, Kim, I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention.
James Houston showed us why he just got a first class degree.
Jim Le Fevre wowed the hall with his live zoetrope demo – at the start Jim asked if he could bring his equipment in which included a turntable, so naturally I was expecting something audio but it was decidedly more visual – Jim, I’d love you to meet Steve Lawson – @solobasssteve – you could make great stuff together
Gavin Starks – all I remember is dodecahedrons and something about music from n-dimensional hypercubes
Joel Gethin Lewis tries to get people in the moment, talking about something untranslateable into English from Welsh
Was George Oats talking about flickr or was that Kim? I think that’s when I popped out to get some more milk.
Lea Becker I’d have like to see and hear more about drawing from her. I’m not sure about the taxonomy of drawing approaches…
Leisa Riechelt is clearly a lovely mummy and reminded me of how interesting your first small person can be. The young man in question had a domain named after him before his name was on a birth certificate. Excellent.
I agree with Max Gadney that we will see some serious re-appraisal of the second world war the further we get from it.
Lots of lovely lovely lovely people in the audience – Tuttlers, Headshifters, Interesting07’ers to many to mention individually but lots are mentioned here.
So yeah, it was, again and I’m sure it ever will be.
Perfect Path 