June, 2009
WxWM2 Audio
POSTED IN Conferences & Talks, my projects | TAGS : audio, Birmingham It's Not Shit, community, history, internet, jon bounds, Rhubarb Radio, talk, web 10 June 2009
Thanks to the wonderful guys at Rhubarb Radio (where I also do the Saturday breakfast show, plug plug) the improvised talk on my personal journey towards communities online from WxWM2 is now available as audio. Not only is it the full talk, and good quality, but you don’t have to look at me waving my arms about — and since there were no slides that’s got to be a good deal.
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WxWM2
POSTED IN Conferences & Talks, social media | TAGS : birminghamuk, history, hyperlocal, internet, jon bounds, local blogging, wxwm2 8 June 2009
A week or so ago I did an impromptu talk at WxWM2 (a gathering of the social media interested) in Brum — it was very much an unconference format so I wasn’t sure I was going to say anything at all. However a slot arose and I talked for about 20 minutes about how I came to be running a “community” website — almost by accident — and how it’s important to understand the responsibilities that people who (voluntarily almost always) end up providing useful online services are taking on. Often, if there isn’t a lot of support, it can end up feeling a burden, however much the people care:
Jon Bounds at WxWM2 from Nicky Getgood on Vimeo.
Thanks very much to Nicky Getgood for capturing as much of it as she did.
Richard Herring bypasses “broadcast” with new show
POSTED IN found stuff | TAGS : richardherring broadcasting 4 June 2009
“a new sketch/stand up show that I am going to be doing on Monday nights in the autumn at the Leicester Sq theatre and which will be released on iTunes. It’s called, “As It Occurs To me” and it’s going to made up of things I have thought about that week and reconstructions of stuff that has happened to me. I’ve been trying to get a show like this on the radio for ages, but it’s so difficult to get through the commissioning process and it’s so annoying to have to deal with compliance censoring anything that is remotely amusing, so I thought I’d just make it myself and stick it out as a podcast. Costs will be covered (and with luck a little money might be made) by people buying tickets to come and see it live. I don’t know if tickets are on sale yet, but stick it in your diary. It’s every Monday night from 12th October to 14th December (not sure of the time of performance). I am delighted to say that TV’s Emma Kennedy and Dan Tetsell will be performing alongside me. So it should be a lot of fun. And improvised and uncensored. It will be available, for free on iTunes soon after recording.”
Warming Up | Richard Herring.com
Is this ‘unique’ or are the media keeping people dumb?
POSTED IN birminghamuk, misc | TAGS : Birmingham Mail, Pete Ashton, reverse graffitti 4 June 2009
The Birmingham Mail covered this exchange on Pete Ashton’s blog, which is good — it’s a story. To sum up, an advertising company working on behalf of the Rep Theatre were using reverse graffiti, they — mistakenly one would assume — used it on a monument (that it’s a monument isn’t immediately obvious, if you don’t know Brum), Pete pointed it out, they apologised.
What annoyed me was the way that the Mail’s report worked — it is so dumbed down as to be wildly wrong in a couple of places:
“A BIRMINGHAM theatre’s unique way of advertising with jet aqua sprays to create ‘reverse graffiti’ has left them in trouble.”
Unique? Let’s see what ‘unique’ means :”existing as the only one or as the sole example” — while reverse graffiti might be still thought of as fairly new, it’s not unique, not even for Brum – here’s an example from 2007 of BRMB using it:
Later on in the article they tell us that Pete “writes a blog on Birmingham” — he doesn’t, he writes a blog on whatever stuff he wants to, including publishing pictures of himself dressed as a cloud. Maybe that’s why they don’t link to the blog, give the URL, or mention that the whole incident played out on the blog (instead they imply he’s talked to them - he hasn’t).
All media outlets have a style, but lowering the standard of discourse so far that it becomes factually inaccurate? Yes it happens all the time. Everything has to be “new” and “difficult to understand”, and “frightening” — so people never think that they should go off and find something out about things, never think that maybe there’s stuff they’ve missed, never think that they can go off an have their own thoughts.
Is it because they still blindly assume they’re the only place people get information from? Or do they really want to keep people stupid?
[EDIT: I'd just like to point out that this post isn't about not linking or crediting internet sources (gwad knows we've all been over that one), but about the terrible tendency to simplifly things to the point of incorrect. Whatever the process, reverse graffiti isn't unique, Pete doesn't write a blog about Birmingham — leave these two bits out the story is better.]
[EDIT the 2th: My point is that I know what's correct here, because I know of Pete's blog, and have seen the development of the reverse graffitti thing and — while neither are important in themselves — it begs the question, what else do the media get wrong that I don't know about? Maybe some really important big things. I worry.]
BrumEmoMap
POSTED IN future web, geodata, social media, twitter | TAGS : conversational psychogeography, emotion, geodata, map, mashup, twitter 1 June 2009
A wonderful and quick mash-up of Twitter and Flickr data, mapped with Yahoo, BrumEmoMap is a great example of the first thread of my Conversational Psychogeography idea. It allows people to tag place with emotion by using tweets or Flickr photos:
While it isn’t doing anything with the data — yet — the power comes from the way a folksonomy of location can evolve even on services (like Twitter) that don’t offer it directly. The deliberate placement and collaborative ethos may open the path to really usable data being collected. Very interesting.
