Tech Related

Last night I went to the Kendra event not knowing what to expect from the event. It started at 6pm and ended by 9pm and i had the opportunity to meet with a few people of which Brendon Kenny of VK media and the Jummp project.

A large amount of metadata is currently being discarded without understanding its value! JuMMp aims to promote interoperability for metadata and signalling information exchange. This will enable contextual navigation within live and recorded content for users of digital devices such as PVRs, games consoles, mobile phones and computers – providing value to end users and to all stakeholders in the content chain.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be asked what the remote on the new MacBook and MacBook pros were for. I went to the owner of the Macbook’s room and picked up the remote. Both my machine and hers were side by side and I started to play. I was controlling both computers at once. It’s not the type of thing I usually do but it’s amusing. You could control quite a few more machines if you like.

Apple Phone Show no. 22 is a particularly good episode. Andy Ihnatko and Scott Bourne discuss how to use the iPhone in real-life situations. It’s a precursor of things to come in the near future. I’ve decided to try Twitter tracking which works by you selecting which words you want to follow. The messages are then sent straight to your phone and you follow any conversations on the topic.

Having a website is essential in today’s media landscape for one simple reason. You don’t exist until I can hyperlink to a website containing examples of your work and describing what you do. This is particularly true in today’s new media landscape. For the minimalist among you a facebook or myspace page is the bare minimum. For those of you that take your work seriously though a website is more efficient. There are a number of reasons for which having a website is essential. The first of these is visibility. If you’re going to an event and you take hundreds of pictures then no one will notice them unless you share them publicly. You don’t need to be published to get your big break. That’s the point of viral marketing. Produce some content. Make it public and then mention it in a few places. If it’s good then others will advertise that work to friends from now on. You are now visible. That’s in an ideal situation. Yesterday when I went to the protest (which event? Describe it in a few words and link to it) I met two friends, one is a well established photographer whilst the other, is, as yet a relatively anonymous face in the crowd. With the established friend it was easy for me to link to his work because he has a high quality site. It’s something concrete, easy to see and assess. For the second person there is not much I can do to demonstrate their worth except mention their name but is of limited value, without a link. Why? Because there is no action to follow a “plug”. The plug is a term used to describe how one person promotes their work through another person’s content, whether it be in website form, podcast or other. As you are talked about more frequently, your visibility increases and, with it, people’s interest in what you do. John C Dvorak of Dvorak.org/blog is the best example. Anytime he can, he will mention his website and, although for the first ten times you may not react, you will go to the website, eventually. He’s got another reader. Whilst you’re surrounded by new media people everyone has a blog, a website, possibly a podcast and more. Leave this group, though, and most people are “invisible”, except, for young people, facebook. Most of them are shown in their bikini, at drunken parties or in other situations that would not reflect well within more traditional work environments. That’s why facebook should be kept private and personal, confined to a group of friends. When you apply for a job online, you’ are one of a thousand applicants. It must be a nightmare reading all those applications. I am taking as an example the work I did for blogwise, a human moderated database of websites. Each day several hundred people would apply for their blog to get through. As you look at the first ten your mind is clear and you’re interested. After several dozen you’re tired and by the time you reach several hundred you skim through. The same happens when you’re applying for work - boredom sets in. When you think about how much time people spend looking for content and entertainment on the web you begin to understand why and how important it is to have something to show. When I worked on my dissertation I looked online and found an interview of Jacques Yves Cousteau a matter of minutes after he won his Oscar for Le Monde Du silence. I needed, for a documentary, a soundbyte of Rupert Murdoch speaking about Myspace - and after several months of searching we found the key clip. That’s also how a documentary maker found my content for use in a documentary that will be on ARTE television in Spring 2008. The point is simple. In the past when you created content and you wanted people to notice you the best method for visibility was to be mentioned in physical examples, whether magazines, DVD or on the air. Today we’re all part of the same media landscape. What this means is that there is unlimited time for content to be shown. But how do you stand out, to get noticed? If there’s an event taking place and you have the time to cover it, then do it - and find where people are actively talking about it. That’s a great way to promote your work. If people see your latest video and want to find out more about you, they can go to your website, if you have one, to see further examples of your work. They read your blog to see your thoughts, they follow your twitter stream to see whether you’re a party animal, they check your linkedin profile to see who you know that they may know and, as a result, they get a better idea of what kind of person you are. You’ve just increased your chances of being noticed - and hired.

There was a time when you would wake up and it’s only half an hour later that the world around you would be clearly visible. In today’s web 2.0 world you wake up and twenty other people are wishing each other good morning. Many are celebrating that it’ Friday and others have pathetic status messages about 40 days of celibacy, about being overworked and all those other messages. Of course everyone has the right to their feelings and to their own experiences but as certain individuals spend more and more time online they notice these status messages and trends and get really tired. Look at the level of media saturation about the McCann story. I muted a podcast for mentioning the story. Careless parents lost their daughter, end of story. It’s not worth as much airtime as it’s been given. Then there’s the “back from the dead media coverage” that gets just as tiring. If a royal driving a car doesn’t wear her seat belt and dies as a result of a crash then she should not be idolised in the way people have done. It should have been an opportunity to promote the use of seatbelts to avoid repeat deaths in such a manner. Then there’s the enthusiast’s oversaturation of the media. In particular I’m thinking of the Iphone. Of course it’s a beautiful new interface, of course it’s ushered in the fully screen tactile device but for anyone outside the US the media saturation has become too much. If you’re an active consumer of new media news then there’s a good chance you would have read several thousand articles boasting about how great it was. As a result a lot of people got media burn out from the story. It’s only as a result of getting an ipod touch that I can tolerate those stories once more. The 30 minute news round up in the evening preceeded by the daily newspaper has been followed by an era of instant access to news stories once they have been written. What this means is that for ardent consumers of new media it is easy to reach a burn out/saturation point. we, as new media consumers must be careful not to read about single topics so much that we are unable to hear about specific topics anymore.

Whilst listening to Macbreak weekly I heard about Editgrid, a web based spreadsheet that resembles many others with a difference. It’s optimised for the Iphone if you go to iphone.editgrid.com. It’s an interesting implementation which can as easily be edited online as offline. This is great for those that may need quick access to a spreadsheet without the weight of a laptop at the same time. It’s a simple to use application which doesn’t take a long time to sign up to and gives you flexibility. There is one major disadvantage. It’s hard to select a cell to add data and inputing date by hunt and peck is very slow. I’d therefore recommend using it as a tool for referencing rather than data entry. See if your views differ from mine.

In today’s Twittervox episode we had Nik Butler talking about his idea of the flatlister. The concept is based around the idea that when someone is promoting themselves and building their own persona they are a flat lister. In other words they are in charge of their own persona and their own reputation. This carries on from a topic that was discussed by Jeff Pulver when he asked whether we prefer to use our real name or a nickname. There is one school of thought that believes that you should turn yourself into a brand whilst another school of thought believes that you should create a nickname as your brand can be sold off should it become successful enough. That’s just scraping the surface though and here is a short description of how others and I are attempting to use new media and social networking to promote our skills. A few months ago I got a message from a documentary producer asking whether I had more footage of an event they were interested in. They had seen a short edit either on youtube or my site and thought that this would be of value to their project. I said that I had more footage and so over a period of time I sent over the material which they looked through. They decided to use my footage and as a result their documentary will be broadcast sometime in Springtime of 2008 on Arte. That’s great news for me and I’m really happy. There’s going to be a screening of the documentaries and I’m going to do my best to get there to meet these people in person. Any opportunity should be taken to meet new people. In today’s media and cultural landscape any job that’s advertised is seen by thousands of eyes. What that means is that you’ve got a lot of competition and sending your CV is not enough. One job I recently applied to had over a thousand people apply to it. With such great numbers of people applying there’s little chance of finding work through as passive a method as sending an e-mail and electronic cv to find work. One person in Geneva said that you’ve got to stand out, after all those sorting through applications have a pile of several hundred cv on their desks to sort through. I’ve been using Linkedin recently, adding all those people whom I have had contact with to see whether there are any of their contacts that could help me find people whom have a need for my expertise. Jemima Kiss recently made a comment about Linkedin asking why people don’t put their full CV on the website. As a result of that comment I added a few of the more interesting experiences I have had. When you’re at Podcamp every single person has a website. Everyone is their own brand. If you listen to them introduce themselves they will all say who they are and what their website is. Some will even wear the T-shirts that promote either their site or that of the software they use as work tools. They also have twitter accounts. Twitter is one of those tools that’s great for entrepreneur and freelancers because it makes it so much easier to judge the quality of character of those you are working with. You get an idea of their lifestyle, of their work ethic and more. if you’re awake by 7 or 8am then that shows through. If they’re working on one large project or several smallers ones you see it as well. In brief you know when is the best time to contact them for working on current or new projects. We are now living in an era where everyone has access to the same information around the globe and as a result we have a great deal of competition. It is up to us, as individuals, with the tools we have available to demonstrate that we have the required know how. How do you use the tools currently available to us and do other people in your circle of friends also use them? Has it changed your way of working? I’m looking forward to Nik Bulter’s Flatlister article and your feedback.

Since I had some free time I went over to the Old Theatre of the London school of economics and what we found out from that conversation is that people don’t trust television. According to one of the chairs this was at a ratio of 4:3. This is an interesting situation since the question of trust is one that as academics we all worry about. Any student, whether a primary school child, an undergrad or a grad knows one thing. Get as many sources as you can and from the information you find work out what the reality of the situation is. If you’re starting a research project then find out who’s written about it and compile this information. This is important whether it’s from books, magazine articles or documentaries. That’s the purpose of academic writing; to become an expert in a specific field. Now I want to ask why it is that people don’t trust television. There have been a spate of fake phone ins, some miss-information and more but what does this really mean. Does this mean that program makers are untrustworthy? In reality most of these problems had two things in common. The first of these is that they’re phone in’s for the most part. In other words their aim is to generate some form of income and to promote audience participation. The second is ratings. With the Queengate, as some call it, the problem was a little error in editing which meant that they woul have to apologise for the editing. At the same time it’s attracted a lot of media interest therefore the promoters may have acheived their aim. Part of the discussion also focused around the idea of training. If everyone is allowed to apply for media jobs yet none of them need to display their credentials vis-a-vis the ability to research and document their programmes properly  then there is a disparity between the standards that are expected between broadcaster and audience.  This aspect of the conversation was interesting because there are so many runner jobs where the aim is to prepare coffee, tea, get tapes and more yet how many of these running jobs promote the academic riguour you’d expect from university students within the realm of programme making? As someone who is currently looking for opportunities to work within certain production companies I liked the comment that people should be taking into internships and properly trained to be good researchers and accurate content creators. It seems logical that for those who want to create quality factual programming they should be trained more about accuracy. Maybe there are certain fields of study that take this far more seriously than others. It was interesting to listen to Roger Graef at this event. I had heard and read about him for so many years that when I saw he was one of the guests it was a great moment to see in person one of these personalities of documentary history. He was asked about noddygate among other things. When asked his opinions on noddies he did say that they’re part of the conventions but that when  noddy is used to fake one person being in location when they are not that is misleading to the audience. One speaker later on commented, quite rightly that the noddy is lazy programme making since there are a number of other ways of transitioning from one topic to another. MTV have their own style, they take two video cameras, one is a random shot of the room and the other is framed on the interviewee that way there are constant cut aways. That’s a luxury (although mediocre in itself) for the aquiring and use of cut aways. In thinking about this topic I’m wondering what people mean when they say that television can’t be trusted. Do they mean that it’s a more devious medium than other mediums? If so then why is this. Should television, like the printed press show it’s bias. We know Fox News’s bias but with a body such as the BBC we expect it to be neutral, a great feat in itself. Impartiality is hard to come by and there are documentaries that are so well researched it’s amazing. In some cases I have watched documentaries that may easily have had more than thirty to fourty interviews with well known and respected views on the topics they are discussing and as such provide a great insight into the topic. If you’re watching Panorama do you trust what you see after they have worked on each programme for extended periods of time. Do you trust programs like Hard Talk or Meet the Press. There are a lot of programmes that have high production value but most people do not have the time or inclination to watch the well researched sources of programmes because they are “long and boring” yet they complain because something is over simplified and innacurate. The audience needs to think about how it consumes the media before it complains about issues of fairness and accuracy. If you can’t sit through heavily fact driven documentaries because you prefer a one minute summary every hour then the complaint is void. In the same way you don’t read the Sun for an informed view of the world so you should not tune into a sensationalist tabloid news source. My final point takes a look at accuracy on television in contrast to that of bloggers and user generated content. As more and more people may produce and distribute content so some of them will have high production values, making sure to get many points of view across and get an accurate and complete image of what is taking place whilst others will take whatever view is most comfortable and speak about that. There is a great deal of accountability on the web and one of the great things about research on the web is the hyperlink. With every statement you make you may take the time to source that comment and so the audience will understand what bias is relevant to that quote. In so doing there is a great, and practical, method by which to assess how accurate the content you are viewing is. Over the next few months and years we shall see many more arguments of accuracy and as the audience becomes more media literate so the debate may finally slow down  and a new media landscape will be the norm once again.

There are two key events I have been to since the beginning of summer. These are PodcampUK and the Twitter Meetup. Both of these events have been followed up by a continuing collaboration between participants. The first event was the London twitter meetup. I went there knowing just two participants, Sizemore and Jess. Over the night I would end up with interviews with quite a few members of the London twitter community but nothing much would be done with this footage as a result of not having known that I would be doing these interviews. It meant collaborating with Jess and getting an edit ready in the hope that GETV would use it. They didn’t so that was slightly dissapointing. I met another individual. Nik Butler of Loudmouthman.com. Following on from a good conversation on the twitter meetup night we decided that we would collaborate on other projects. One of these is ongoing, Twittervox. Twittervox is a weekly roundup of the week’s twitter news in review. It’s had over 2600 views over that time with up to four live participants at once around the world ranging from the US to different parts of Europe. That project has been featured by Operator 11 on a number of occasions which I would like to believe is testament to it’s good content. Twittervox is also of note because it introduced me to Phil Campbell and his work. Since this was a few weeks before Podcamp UK it meant that I would know at least two members of the conference. At Podcamp UK I got to meet quite a few of those who are part of the British podcasting landscape, from teachers to academics, broadcast professionals and hobbyists. This broad range of people would lead on to more projects. There were some interesting conversations and presentations which brought me some new ways of seeing certain aspects of the podcasting stream of content creation. It would make me think of podcasting as the equivalent of Amateur sports in relation to it’s “threat to broadcasting.” Within a week I was sitting at the Frontline Club listening to Andrew Keen but that was written abo I’m glad I met Documentally whilst at Podcamp because of possible future collaborations we may work on in the near future. As of yet nothing is set in stone but already I’ve met him a few times to work on three or four projects which you can find on his website and on a number of video sharing websites already. From what I’ve described above what I’ve found is that the conversations from events are leading onto some interesting projects and that it’s been a good transition from the student life into the professional one. It’s been a great opportunity to meet some interesting people and through blogs, twitter and meetings in the real world the conversation is as healthy as ever. I feel I’ve gained from these events and their aftermath and look forward to participating to many more in the weeks and months to come.

Twitter is one of those things that’s really hard to explain due to it’s sheer simplicity. It’s a website that allows you to answer the “what are you doing question”. That is the initial phase. When you’re new to twitter you’ll be confused because you know no one therefore the codes and conventions are blurred. You may tweet once or twice a day and that’s enough. Over time you will look at what other people are doing and that’s when you move to phase two of twitter use. When I first started using twitter I had no idea how to use it. i thought that it was a storm of 140 character postings that are completely unrelated. Some refer to it as microblogging but it’s not a blog. instead it’s a great tool for entrepreneur for two key reasons. The first is brevity. Anything you say must be summarised to 140 characters. As a result you’re efficient. The second factor is the interaction between twitter users. If you take a look at my profile and my twitter block then you’ll see the ten most recent tweets in my public feed and what everyone within my circle are talking about. As a result of this you’re entering a communal environment. Out of those I’m following on twitter I know from ten to twenty of them, occasionaly meeting a few of them two or more times. As a result I know what they’re doing and they know what I’m doing as well. Each one of us is in charge of a number of projects we find of interest. I’m a recent graduate therefore I tweet about one set of things. Loudmouthman and Documentally both tweet about other things that are related to their activities. Links help to get all of this information and work distributed to the right people. Most of those on twitter have at least one website and quite a few profiles on a variety of other websites. We’re embracing what’s called web 2.0 by many people. It seems to be the tool of choice for entrepreneur to keep up to date with what everyone else is doing at the time. Just take a look and you’ll see this for yourself. Twitter is a great tool for it’s brevity and it brings together a great number of content creators who are having a conversation across borders and timezones. It’s boundless in that it can be viewed from the mobile phone to the Itouch to the computer. It’s versatile and quick and I’m going to continue using it for many months to come.