Friends at Podcamp NYC
Looking through the feedreader today I spotted two friends, Phil Campell and Chrisian Payne here
Maybe in a year or two I can travel to a number of these events and enjoy a little more travel once again.
fun | London | observation | seesmic | social media | social networking | twitter
The Seesmeetup
It’s taken no more than a few days from the time I first saw Fred2baro on seesmic to our first meeting with Deek in London for the first Seesmeetup… so called. In fact it was both Sizemore that had the first meeting although more private in nature.
One of the questions that one of Fred2baro’s relatives asked was why would you want to be part of Seesmic? Aren’t people pretend and fake? Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?
My answer was the following: When you go to a bar or you meet people face to face rather than via twitter or Seesmic you’re quite often in a bar under the influence of a drink or two. As a result you’re not as genuine as you’d be if you met in another place. In other words Seesmic and twitter are a way of getting to know people before you meet them in the physical world.
What this means is that you can generate some great friendships, some strong ones. It’s also a new contemporary method of networking than the bar. We’ve got too many distractions at home. Whether it’s from the computer, the phone or the television to feel the absolute need to go out to bars where we’d sit and be bored anyway.
The point is the following. To me the social media, especially twitter and seesmic are a great way of creating new friendships in the physical world where limitations of time and travel distances are cancelled out. If’ we’re part of an international society why not meet people online and bring it to the physical world rather than the other way around. How many times have you been sad to see a friendship disintegrate because of distance?
I have, many times. Time to enjoy these new toys.
Posting about friends
When people write about friends should they post their twitter profile page or the websites their friends are working on. I’m asking this question because whilst reading a post today I was interested in the ability to follow these friends and see what they’re up to rather than read the website.
Reading a twitterstream is quick. 140 Characters are read almost instantly and adding someone that sounds interesting is instantaneous. As a result I’m far more likely to follow and read a person’s blog if there’s a consistant reminder both of what they’re doing and who they are as a person.
It’s about time. I’m a scanner. I scan through content rather than trudge through it. If you’re linking to twenty people and you link to twenty blogs then there’s no way I’m going to have the time to read all this content. I’d saturate extraordinarily quickly. Following another person on twitter takes seconds to do and I’ll track these people. Point me to a blog and there’s a chance I won’t take the time to look.
Has anyone had a similar reaction to twitter vs. blogs? Do you write about a group of friends, all of whom have twitter accounts? If so have you linked to their blogs or to their twitter profiles?
fun | tech related | travel
Map Your Friends – Facebook Api
As I was looking through the applications I found an application that helps to map your friends according to the geolocation details they added to their profile. As your social network is more global so you will find that your friends are more spread around the world. As you’ll see for me there’s a lot of clustering around London where most of the people I know on Facebook are living.
There is a nice spread in other parts of the world. Some of them are in Australia, various parts of Asia, Africa, and the US. As you zoom in you can see a nice amount of detail as to where they live. With high-resolution satellite images you can see the street they live on. They can see the street where I live as well.
This is one of the Facebook applications which I feel is not there to fill your profile with junk but rather to provide an interesting insight as to the global spread of friends you’ve met over the years.
Slightly Ahead Of Their Comfort Zone
Today I went to film some friends playing a gig by the lakeside in Nyon and it was a great occasion. The sun was shining, the air temperature was good and many people that I had not seen in many years were present.
The shoot involved two cameras. One was at the back as a safety shot whilst I got the fun camera at the front. There was one electric guitar, one acoustic, and one bass. There was also a drum kit and a synthesizer. The music was good but I forgot my hearing protection so I had a slight ringing by the end of the event… all in a day’s work.
I managed to get the whole concert filmed without getting tired which is great. I’ve been using the camera I used for the past 7 years so it’s normal I’m so comfortable with it. I watched the footage and I’m happy with it. It’s good, a nice variety of shots, switches at the right moment from the key instrument to the next.
Bart Simpson was sitting on the drum kit and then got to dance with a girl who was meant to sing, the only problem is the sound engineer didn’t make her mic loud enough. It’s normal since they didn’t take enough time to prepare everything before having the gig go live.
I’ve captured all the video footage and it’s ready to be compressed and uploaded to Facebook. I’ve actually annoyed them and got a “You recently uploaded a video to Facebook, and it could not be processed because it was too long.” message. hehe, that’s normal for me.
I’m uploading those videos to the video section of my website and they’ll be available on the RSS feed within the next few days. I need to count about two hours of processing per video clip unfortunately. With the Macbookpro I’m waiting for it should be faster.
Today was in some respects a perfect day and I’d like more of them to be like this.
Enjoy the stairs
Myspace was used to advertise a pyjama house party and I went for a number of hours. It’s amusing when you’re at a party in your pyjamas. It makes a change from all those fancy dress and I began wondering about the walk of shame and whether wearing pyjamas on the way home constitutes the walk of shame.
The party was good although it did not really begin till later on when everyone arrived. There were lots of people I’ve known for two to three years by now. The stories were good and the conversations too. Some were interesting whilst were some left you a little confused.
I went to central London with one friend and we stayed in a night club till the first tube in the morning. The club was quite full of people because the top musical act of the week had played there an hour or two before we arrived. I don’t know the group so I’m left indifferent.
This part of the night continued till the early hours of the morning. We caught the first tube home. I gathered my stuff from the friend’s place. Two people were sitting in the stairwell chatting, saying that they had not gone to sleep but that everyone else was trying to sleep. I encouraged them to enjoy their stairwell before continuing on my way.
Back to halls where I encountered some french-speaking friends. Conversations and random activities continued until around 7 in the morning.
It had been an 11hr night/party for me and I’m surprised at how quiet everything is today. It must be the calm after the chaos of a good night out.