Entries Tagged 'Articles' ↓

1988:

• Meet someone new.
• Get a business card, write a bit of info on the back of it.
• Put it in the Rolodex.

2008:

• Meet someone new.
• Get a business card, write a bit of info on the back of it.
• Add to Google Mail Contacts.
• Add to various groups in Google Mail Contacts.
• Email them saying "hello" and with the 28 links I promised to send them.
• Connect them up with the 28 people I promised to introduce them to.
• Find them on Twitter. Add them.
• Find them on Linked In. Add them.
• Find them on Facebook. Add them. (Actually, don’t bother, I never check it anymore)
• Find their blog. If it looks interesting, add it to my RSS reader.
• Check out the blog roll and see if any of their friends look interesting.
• Rinse and repeat.

It took me an hour to add 5 contacts on Saturday.

Sorry - very late with this (deadline is on Thursday)!

There’s a fascinating sounding project up for grabs at our local West Midlands screen agency.

The strategy will include clear objectives for Screen WM to:

• Profile the region as a UK centre of digital screen media activity

• Deliver integrated business development support in partnership with Business Link WM and AWM

• Create relevant and integrated skills development programmes linking to national and regional skills development activity

• Promote and support innovation

• Establish new markets.

   

More info in the full tender document

This looks interesting..

"What happens when you get a bunch of hackers and social innovators together, give them a set of social problems and only 48 hours to solve them?

In London between 4th-6th April 2008, the Social Innovation Camp will bring together some of the best of the UK and Europe’s web developers and designers with people at the sharp end of social problems.

Our aim is to find ways that easy-to-build web 2.0 tools can be used to develop solutions to social challenges."

I love this sort of rapid development thing. I may try to head down if work permits.

More info on the SIC website.

I had the pleasure of attending the mighty Future of Web Apps late last year on behalf of 4Talent.

The article’s now online (finally!).

Really looking forward to the next one (and hoping I can stay longer next time).

Last week I caught the last afternoon of the Serious Virtual Worlds conference in Coventry.

Here’s a short piece I wrote on the conference for 4Talent.

As you may know I’m currently producing a five-month series of podcasts for 4Talent (previously known as Channel4 Ideasfactory).

The show is looking at how the internet and new online communities can be used by creative individuals and small companies.

We’ve just finished the second show and I thought I’d post a preview up here so anyone that’s interested can have a listen and give me back some feedback.

Let me know what you think.

New Media 4Casts: Episode 2 - Get Yourself a Great Website

If it doesn’t work, use, this link

This article will appear on the Channel4 Ideasfactory website later on in November.

In the wake of Google’s acquisition of web wunderkind YouTube, everyone’s looking for the next big Internet phenomenon to push things forward again. And once we have the technology to make it available to all, argues Antonio Gould, live webcasting could be a front-runner.

In a nutshell, webcasting is the process of sending audio and video live over the Internet. Key word: live. The difference between a webcast and a piece of archived video (on YouTube, for example) is similar to that between a live TV show and a recorded one broadcast a month later.

People watch as the content is produced – it’s linear broadcasting, online. But it can afford to cater to a far more niche audience than television can.

According to AOL, 2005’s Live8 concert was watched by 170,000 people over the web in addition to those who watched it on TV. But it’s not all about the big boys – the smaller scale projects are where things will get interesting.
So why watch a webcast? Surely it’s easier to wait till the recording of the show has been put online, so you can watch it whenever you want rather than sitting at your computer while it’s happening?

It’s all about interactivity. Viewers can effectively direct the content. Webcasts normally have a text-based chatroom attached, through which you can ask questions or make suggestions as the show unfolds. 

All the advantages of user generated media also apply to webcasting. Ideally, it can make live delivery of content possible for anyone. Until recently, the best way to do this with video was to get on to a cable or digital channel – which in this country is usually far too expensive for individuals to consider.

Webcasting means that content which is much more tailored to specific interests will start to be produced. If it’s much easier to do, then you need far fewer people watching to make it worthwhile.

C21Vox specialise in webcasting for the arts and education, and recently worked with the British Association of Youth Clubs to showcase a Europe-wide drama project. Many of the participants couldn’t make it to the UK, so the event was webcast live so that countries could see each other’s performances live. A chatroom was provided, and viewers pitched questions to be fielded by the audience at the event.

Videoconferencing was used to unite four of the participants from other countries on a big screen for a Q&A session. The event was a huge success, achieving a level of international communication that could never have been achieved without webcasting.

As you can imagine, the possibilities are huge – and as usual creatives can push the boundaries. Currently most webcasts are fairly straightforward, but we’re going to see a lot of interesting stuff happening over the next few years.

How do you go about doing it?

As things stand, unless you’re very technically minded with plenty of time and money, you‘ll need to hire in a company to do it – but it’s worth explaining a bit about how it works. There are a number of distinct parts to the setup. The first difficulty is generating the video and audio in the first place – this could be anything from one person sitting in front of a camera (like a simple video blog) to a full multi-camera and sound set up.

This requires video and audio mixers, monitoring and a number of people running the show all with the ability to communicate with each other. This is not easy or cheap at the moment – most of the kit designed for doing this is built for professional TV studios and as such costs a fortune. There is cheaper kit available, but you’ll need to know what you’re doing before you start buying anything.

Once you’re up and running, you need to put out that signal onto the web so people can watch it. You need an extremely high-powered internet connection (which as of writing is not available as standard in UK homes, although some providers should start offering it soon) and an account with a provider who can take your signal and ‘multicast’ it.

Multicasting effectively allows a large number of people to watch it at the same time. The more that are watching, the more you have to pay – and at the moment it’s not cheap. At the time of writing a one-hour show watched by five hundred users will cost you hundreds of pounds in bandwidth alone.

Audio webcasting is easier. You don’t need such a high-speed internet connection (good quality broadband will do) and obviously no cameras or video mixers. If you’re doing a music show, you just need some decks or CD players, a DJ mixer and a mic. But you’ll still have to stump up for the bandwidth.

The future

Of course, just a few years ago the process of putting archived video on the web seemed out of the reach of most. Now everyone from school kids to Tory leaders is doing it. At some point the world’s first free webcasting service will be born.

It’ll enable you to plug your camera into your computer, click a few buttons and start streaming out your own show. This will lead to an explosion of individuals and companies starting up their own webcasts, covering anything and everything.

Of course this won’t all be positive. As with other forms of user generated media, some of the first to take up the power of democratic webcasting will be those who can’t find an outlet through traditional media for very good reasons – because their material is illegal, immoral or distasteful.

But complete interactivity at every stage of a show that covers any conceivable topic is the next step for the YouTube generation. And not for the first time this century, conventional broadcasting might well get a good shake.

This article will be published in the forthcoming edition of TEN4 magazine.

One of the Internet’s biggest success stories in recent years has been the rise and rise of online communities – sites that allow anyone, technically able or not, to communicate with each other and publish their own content.

Many of these websites centre on people expressing their creativity through photography, art, writing, or anything that can be represented in digital form. As well as helping people market their work, it’s also helping them improve their skills by giving them an opportunity to exhibit, showcase and discuss their work with a community of peers.

Online communities are becoming increasingly valuable across the creative spectrum. Stories of musicians achieving fame through MySpace have already become journalistic clichés – but in the last six months a similar phenomenon has begun in other disciplines.

Just over a year ago, Rebekka Guoleifsdottir was teaching herself how to use her first camera. She started posting on the photographic community site Flickr.com, and within a year her photostream had attracted 1.5 million visitors, making it the most viewed of all 4 million members.

Over in film and TV, the gigantic response to David Lehre’s web film MySpace: The Movie provoked a frenzy of Hollywood agents clamouring to represent the amateur filmmaker.

And slightly closer to home, writer Zoe Margolis was recently outed as the true identity of Abby Lee, who shot to fame after extracts from a blog detailing her true-life sexual adventures were published as a bestselling book.

We’re going to start hearing stories like this more and more often. However, you don’t have to become world famous to find success with online communities. They’re all about allowing people to publish content they’ve made, discuss and connect with other people.

Most communities are tailored to a particular type of content. For example, YouTube.com is currently the most popular video sharing site. At a basic level it allows members to upload their own videos, which are then accessible by anyone who visits the site. Videos can be discussed and rated, so that over time the best content floats to the top.

If the producer finds other people doing similar work, he or she can start a ‘group’ where fellow filmmakers can post related work and discuss style, content and inspiration. And ‘tags’ or keywords can be added to videos to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

Most other communities work in a similar way to YouTube, but use other types of content as their main focus. Flickr is the community of choice for photographers, and is one of the most developed creative communities around at the moment.

Animation sites are a little less developed (partly because so much is posted on YouTube) but NewGrounds.com and AlbinoBlacksheep.com are good places to start. A handful of visual art communities also exist – such as DeviantArt.com and GFXArtist.com – but style and quality can vary so it’s worth scouting the site before you join. 

Then of course there’s the ubiquitous MySpace.com which lets you do pretty much anything, but until now has been the most popular site for building communities around music. MySpace is probably worth joining just because of the sheer number of people signed up to it – but it’s a badly built system, and is beginning to slip out of fashion.

On a slightly different tack, the site LinkedIn.com is a great tool purely for connecting with new people, while the more business-oriented Ecademy.com is helpful for forging professional connections – although it does charge for membership.

It’s also worth ditching your browser’s bookmarking system and using the site deli.cio.us – that’s actually the web address – to store all your useful links. Whenever you bookmark an interesting page, it can tell you who else has added the same page, useful for finding new sites as well as meeting like-minded people.

A local case-study: Emily Quinton is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham. Her specialism is biodiversity and the illegal trade in wild flowers. But after tapping an unexpected reservoir of interest in her work through Flickr, she’s now also working as a photographer.

“Photography has been a hobby of mine for a few years, but I’d never taken photos in any serious capacity,” she admits. “A year ago I signed up to Flickr so I could upload some pictures of a friend’s wedding, and as an experiment added a few botanical photos I’d taken as part of my research.“

“The feedback was good, so I started to take more photos and upload them,” she goes on. “I couldn’t believe how quick the process was – I could have an idea, take the photo, process and exhibit it all within an hour or two. It got a bit addictive, and before long I was producing and uploading new work almost every day.”

Skip forward three months, and Emily’s photostream had become a success. It had been visited over 13,000 times, and she was getting a lot of good feedback. What’s more, people were starting to ask if they could buy her work.

Spurred on by the success of her Flickr stream, Emily set up a company which she now runs part-time alongside her academic work. As well as photographic commissions she makes products from her work which she sells both locally and internationally through her website. At least half of the website traffic comes through Flickr.

Emily is adamant that she would never have become a photographer if it wasn’t for Flickr. “What’s amazing about the system is that it gives anyone a permanent exhibition space, where they can perpetually showcase new work,” she enthuses. “The better your work, the more people visit that space. Then if you need advice on how to improve your technique there are always other members who are willing to help.”

Obviously allowing other people to comment on your work can have its downsides. Negative feedback can be hard to take, and it definitely pays to be thick skinned. Even worse is content which is plain offensive or the unwanted interest of murkier members of the community, especially for female members who’ve posted self portraits. Fortunately it’s easy to delete messages that are inappropriate. Most communities are also pretty strict about banning those who act out of line.

Another core feature of most online communities is the ability to assign other members as your friends or contacts – leading to invaluable smaller networks within the larger umbrella. “When you find someone you like and want to see more good work, you should be guaranteed to find it in that member’s contacts,” reasons Emily. “This very quickly creates a web of high quality content, which is great for getting inspired.”

It also partly addresses the problem of the sheer amount of content on any community. Flickr has over 4 million users – more than the population of Wales. Most of them aren’t great photographers, so it’s important to be able to sift through the amateurs and find the high quality work.

Going down the online route means a fundamental change in the way career development pans out. Until now, most disciplines have had at least roughly established entry routes – nowadays these rules are gradually being thrown out the window. A new set of rules will be undoubtedly be established over time, but at the moment everything’s in a state of flux.

In the past, getting into TV or film inevitably meant starting off making the tea and working your way up. In the future, if you make a film which generates a big enough buzz on the web, you’ll get picked up by someone who wants to harness that talent. If that many people are into what you do they’d be crazy not to.

Of course over time competition will increase too, and you’ll be rubbing shoulders with other talent worldwide. Things aren’t necessarily going to get easier. But online communities are guaranteed to level the playing field – both for those living in geographically isolated places and for those keen to stay small and independent, and not sell out to the media moguls.

Online communities are not a fad: the principles that are slowly being developed now will form the basis of how creative people will work for years to come. As well as commissioners using the web to find new talent, we’ll also see more local, national and international collaboration. And without big companies guessing what we’re going to like next, niche, inventive and experimental work looks set to become more popular the world over.

Some new project news:

Electronic Education Exchange: Romania

After an incredible (impromptu) workshop in a gypsy school in Romania, music photographer Luke Danniels and I are putting together a project which will connect groups of young people in the UK with the young people we met. We will be using a framework called EEX which we developed in Japan in 2004.

More information and film from the Electronic Education Exchange pilot.

Bam Bam goes to the Summer Festivals

We’re extremely proud to announce that Bam Bam will be running stages at both Bestival and the Metro Weekender this year in conjunction with 3 Mobile Phones. Bam Bam started out as a tiny gig in a pub playing to about three people but we stuck with it and it’s great to now be getting some national attention.

First Light: Lightbox

First Light are a national agency who inspire the making of short films by young people in the UK. 3form are currently developing a new cutting edge tool for the facilitation of film workshops called the Lightbox. I will (probably) be heading this project up.

Microgeneration Social Enterprise

Although at very early stages, Richard Whittingham (from Different Drummer), Fiona Dowson, Martin Buttle and I are working on a potential business plan for a social enterprise around home-based micropower. Watch this space.

And finally…

The article “Plyometrics through Paypal” was recently published in Channel 4 IdeasFactory’s TEN4 magazine. I’ve been asked to do some more writing for the magazine so again, watch this space.

I have quite a few exciting new projects on the go at the moment:

Digital Central Interactive Media
As an industry representative, I’m working with Dave Harte to brainstorm ideas around and put together a network (as yet undefined in structure) which will help to deliver the Interactive Media arm of this new project. I’ll write more about this as the ideas develop.

Concepting & Development for Wilderness Festival
A new festival for 2006 curated by amongst others Lovebox (Groove Armada) and Lost Vagueness. I’m involved from the beginning developing the concept and delivering the online side of the event.

TEN4 Article
I’m currently writing a 3-4 page article on direct-to-user production and sale of creative digital content for Channel 4’s TEN4 magazine. You can read the draft here.

The work just seems to be getting more and more interesting at the moment. However I’m still stuck in front of my computer for far too much of the time, any ideas on how I can get away from this? Garden design?