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Social conversations and the social media

Byrichard

If you read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” you see how important it is to take notice of other people, to be positive and to be interested in what they are doing. That can be a challenge for everyone. We all have different priorities so putting other people first is a challenge.

The World Wide Web is a place where we can listen and talk at the same time. We listen to a conversation and then we comment. We can start our own conversation and wait for others to see it and respond. As a result we are both engaging with others and letting others engage with us. There is a bilateral trade which leaves both parties feeling good.

Social media, today a misnomer, was a conversation place. Everyone talked with everyone and everyone became familiar with everyone else. The Global Village that Marshall McLuhan wrote about looked like it would become a reality.

At the time when this reality looked the most feasible was the time before mobile phones and proper data plans. At this time we used computers from a fixed location, either at home, an office, university or other places. With Wifi we had some freedom but nowhere the freedom that smart phones and data plans have provided us with.

That’s why people’s feeling that mobile phones are disconnecting people is such a ridiculous notion. In my vision of the world, in the adoption cycle that I observe the mobile phone is the great connector. We meet people online, we appreciate them, we meet them in person. Seesmic and the early days of twitter were very good tools for this lifestyle.

As data plans included more and more data so it would follow that social media websites would be about individual to individual conversation. It would logically follow that people would feel more at ease conversing online as their friends adopt the technology and have chats. Facebook, twitter and Google Plus should be social web forums where people are interested in the people they follow.

What I see, as data plans and smartphone adoption rises is the opposite. People share links and promote rather than converse. Social media should be rebranded as Ego Media, brand media or advertising media. The platforms that should have made us conversational have been overtaken by advertising.

It’s a good time to continue blogging. It’s a monologue until you contribute a comment. The World Wide Web is a de-centralised conversation tool and we move from platform to platform looking for the places where the personal connections are strongest. As the social media days fade in to history now is the time for each of us to blog, to write about what we feel passionate about.

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Village Photography

Byrichard

On Google Plus, one of my muses, I saw that instead of Street photography someone suggested Village photography. I like the idea because villages are such an integral part of my life.

Life in villages is a privileged one. Every time we go for a walk we cross people we do not know and say hello. We walk from field to field and along paths. We see which crops have been planted and which ones are being harvested. We see frequent horses and dog walkers. We also see families. We hear the sound of rifle practices at the local gun range. The practice is for military service most of the time.

We also have fountains and old buildings. We hear the church bell every half hour and hour. We see the fountains with wooden chalet to protect from the cold in winter.

Villages are seasonal. In summer the sounds of children playing, of fireworks and of barbecues can be heard. In Autumn the sound of wind blowers can be heard. In Winter we see lights on as the neighbours prepare their evening meal.

In the mornings we see parents bring their children to school before the bell rings and they head in to their classes to sit and wait impatiently for the school day to be over so that they may go out on adventures.

That’s why village photography captivates my imagination. I know villages well. I appreciate them. I look forward to looking at images from the past, and preserving today for future generations.

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Two via ferrata later in Leysin

Byrichard

Running down a ski slope in hiking shoes is fun. You’re jumping, bounding and landing back down. The snow is slush and you sink, you rise up and fall on the second thought. Continue for a few hundred meters and you get to the bottom. You can also sledge down and get soaked without worrying about it. The truth is that was the easiest part. You still have a 30 minute walk straight up a hill to the base of the cliff. From here you walk across and to the right until the beginning of the via ferrata. As a distraction you may spot the occasional marmot at this time of year.

The via ferrata itself starts vertically and then goes by two chimneys before flattening out. By the time you’re to the top the vista is nice.

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157629918614486″]

If you’re not tired by the first via ferrata there is a second one lower down the valley. This is an adventure one with quite a few bits of overhanging rocks a dozen or so meters off the ground with a short patch over two bridges and through the trees. It is divided into three sections. The first one is the hardest for the arms and particularly for the hands. The second part is quite easy but if you are slightly shorter be methodical about your actions. You might get stuck. For the third part you have two ladders going out from the rock and outwards. There is a squeeze between the bag on your back and the ladder. The way down is more comfortable.

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Ridley Scott is exploring an idea discussed by Dziga Vertov several decades ago

Byrichard

Disclaimer: These are thoughts, rather than a well structured post.

Ridley Scott wants your user generated videos for a film “A Day on Earth” and whilst people are hyping this idea as something new the concept is an old one. Dziga Vertov had an idea that he would capture Life Unawares. Eventually he would end up with an experiment in six reels called “The Man with the Movie camera”. It’s aim was to show Soviet Russia as it was. It was an experiment in editing and in story telling.

Skipping ahead you also have the Cinéma Verité movement, where the camera and micro trottoir would go out into the street to interview people and find out their opinions on a variety of topics. I would be more specific but I haven’t watched the film in a long time. What I do remember is the Eclair camera with “crystal” sync sound. Technological innovation freed the camera operator and sound man to continue experimenting.

Today everyone has a video camera. Everyone has one on their phone as well as their photo camera. Life is constantly being documented in video form. 24hrs of video are uploaded a minute to youtube. video recording is an everyday part of life. I’m sure we will see a great diversity of moments, some births, some sailing, some rock climbing, some sporting event and more.I haven’t taken a look at how long they want the finished result to be.

Seesmicers have had fun with this idea already. We had hat days, we had other events, we would go out with the cameras and film. With Qik too we did this. There is nothing new about the process. There is only a far greater ease to share the material internationally and collaborate.

As a side note we still remember Pangea day, another event with the same line of thought, but where people presented finished products rather than moments.

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Geneva Lake Parade – McDonald’s FIFA theme.

Byrichard

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157624344703307″]

Every year I go to the lake parade and this year I tried something different. I decided to take photographs rather than video.

By the same opportunity I am testing Flickr gallery, a plugin that makes including your flickr images into wordpress a two step process.

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The new facebook and lifestreaming

Byrichard

Lifestreaming is not something the mainstream understand yet. they’re still getting to grips with the idea of lost anonimity on a place like facebook. This is visible through the creation of the facebook group to cry about the new facebook.

I’m an early adopter and I love new ways of connecting with people and that’s why I’m sitting in an appartment in Paris after spending a fun night with 20 friends from seesmic (or so). They’re all friends I met through social media. In particular I met them through Seesmic. Imagine posting a video that anyone and everyone can see. I like to describe it as video instant messaging. Record a video of yourself talking about something and wait for your friends to answer in video form

There area number of features on the new facebook that are similar to those of jaiku. These are rss integration, status updates (as in twitter) and commenting. They’re all things that I’ve been playing with for months now. It’s part of my daily life. I understand and embrace this change.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for those I met in the physical world to start tweeting and seesmicing or using jaiku. Will it be a year or two? They did take a year to finally get to facebook after all.