Social web & social media, consultancy, training and advice from a flâneur of the internets. Blogger, writer, broadcaster and runner of Birmingham: It's Not Shit. I also do the odd bit of art.
May 25th, 2010

Globalisation? Hmm

This Thursday (27/5) at 7:45pm at the wondrously refurbished Midlands Arts Centre, I’m taking part in a debate on — breath — social media and globalisation.

It’s billed as:

“Expert Jon Hickman (Birmingham City University) chairs a lively debate with guests including Pete Ashton… assessing lifestyle changes implied by new technological tools in the new wave of social media.”

an interesting, if potentially unwieldy, topic. Chair (and ‘expert’, he’ll hate that) was worried that Pete, him and I would ‘agree violently’ on most aspects. I’ve not written by talk, or really fully considered my position, yet but I think I may be able to get away without agreeing with either of them.

Current thoughts is that I might deny globalisation exists at all.

Come along and see.

May 25th, 2010

New York, New Politics

I’m off to the city that never sleeps next week for the PdF (Personal Democracy Forum) Conference — a conference on how social technology changes how politics operates. Very much looking forward to seeing Clay Shirky, Jimmy Wales et al speak and also to giving the Civico platform it’s first major test.

Civico is an offshoot of Rhubarb Radio, which I’ve been a member of for about 14 months. Rhubarb is an online community radio station, and Civico is an extension of that platform to cover democracy and events. Last year we covered the PdfEU conference in Barcelona, with what was little more than the streaming audio and a whole lot of hard work.

For this conference we hope to be able to use the newly developed Civico player. This has two great developments, one is that it integrates with the Twitter API to capture tweets alongside the audio or video. The second is much more exciting (and proud to say, developed from my original concept).

Once the audio, video, tweets (and more in development) are captured then users can share any fraction (or all) of the coverage — highlighting the best line, the biggest laugh or the most damming miss-speak. In other words it makes it easy to share the bits that you want to share. And share them by link or by embedding wherever they like.

Here’s an example from a recent conference in London, by link and by embed (this is still a beta, excuse any foibles or downtime as the player is worked on):

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January 26th, 2010

Know your place

I’m speaking at this next Wednesday, although how much freelancers have to learn from the way I work I’m not sure (maybe it’ll be what not to do).

Know Your Place (which sounds a bit Frost Report to me)
“Find out first-hand how freelancers in the world of illustration, photography, writing, design, PR, Publishing and web make a living. We’ll share some practical hints and tips about how to market and promote yourself to gain attention, generate new leads and stand out from the crowd. “

by Jon Bounds | Posted in Conferences & Talks |
November 4th, 2009

Make things

I’ve recently worked on the social media coverage, on the day but also a few “wrap up” pieces, of the Hello Digital Festival in Birmingham. There were interesting talks, I found those outside my areas of expertise and interest (the Innovation in Gaming panel especially). Sion Simon’s address, which I didn’t have time to concentrate on live, but have just listened to again) mentioned that it was my “destiny” (using me as a name to represent talent in the local social media scene, I think) to have a statue much like the ‘carpet salesmen‘ (Brum’s industrial fathers) have in the city centre.

The Carpet Salesmen by M R Fletcher

The Carpet Salesmen by M R Fletcher

I’m not sure what it means, The Lunar Society is an oft used reference whenever it comes to thinking coming out of Birmingham — but those thinkers thought of science and industry and “made things”. I’m wondering if I need to “make things” too, or is “helping others make things” (a way to think about consultancy work) enough?

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– Sion Simon MP at Hello Digital

October 29th, 2009

C&binet on the future of local news

I spent a fascinating couple of days down in that London at an gathering of those interested in the future of local news — organised by Sion Simon (Minister for Creative Industries) at the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, who are hoping to have got some useful ideas for future legislation (the Digital Economy Bill)  It was brilliant to have a range of people from different backgrounds and interest groups to talk to and learn from — too many events are focused around one industry or interest group and end up being (to be clichéd) an echo chamber — with it being particularly good to hear about how things are shaping up in the States. Hannah over at Podnosh gives a good overview of the whats and the whos.

But first the “bad news”, see the decline in regional newspaper circulation from 1993 (as shown in a very impressive set of slides from Douglas McCabe of Enders Analysis)
Fullscreen

What strikes me is that, while the decline starts to happen consistently with widespread internet adoption, there are huge drops in years before that, including 1993; before the world wide web. Something was up with what the regional press was offering long before people started getting news online —  and local news online provision lagged behind that of national (certainly in Birmingham where it’s only been about a year since the local papers started to publish properly on the web).

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by Jon Bounds | Posted in Conferences & Talks, future web | Tags: , , ,
September 7th, 2009

Greenbelt Talks mp3s

For your downloading pleasure:

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    Birmingham

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    11-11-11

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    Memes

by Jon Bounds | Posted in Conferences & Talks | Tags: , ,
September 1st, 2009

Greenbelt 09 – Memes

This is my third talk, it’s an amalgam of this talk on memes from WxWM and this one on internet culture.

I can’t get the videos to embed, but think you can probably guess what’s happening anyway:

The festival may have better quality mp3s available (recorded from the mixing desk) I’ll post links when/if they become available.

by Jon Bounds | Posted in Conferences & Talks | Tags: , ,
September 1st, 2009

Greenbelt 09 – Birmingham: It’s Not Shit

I was asked to talk about Birmingham, and so I did:

Here are the slides and my recording of the audio for the I gave on Friday at Greenbelt.

The festival may have better quality mp3s available (recorded from the mixing desk) I’ll post links when/if they become available.

by Jon Bounds | Posted in Conferences & Talks | Tags:
September 1st, 2009

Greenbelt 09 – 11-11-11

Does a festival want to hear about my theories of  conversational pyschogeography and how I coerced people into spending eleven hours on a bus that stops where it starts? Quite a few people did, and even stopped to ask questions at the end.

Here are the slides and my recording of the audio for the I gave on Saturday at Greenbelt.

The festival may have better quality mp3s available (recorded from the mixing desk) I’ll post links when/if they become available.

by Jon Bounds | Posted in Conferences & Talks, my projects | Tags: , , ,
July 5th, 2009

Blogging and Pyschogeography

My talk at Moseley Barcamp, based on this post about Conversational Psychogeography.

Moseley BarCamp – Blogging & Psychogeography from bounder on Vimeo.

Audio by the award winning Rhubarb Radio & also available here.

Listen to all the other talks here. A wonderful day, thanks to everyone who either came, spoke or organised (Shona and the lovely guys from Aquila TV especially).














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