Eclau in Lausanne

Byrichard

The Co working space in Lausanne (ECLAU/FB) is an interesting idea for freelancers and those who have some work to do but do not want to work from home or a cafe. There are desks and couches, a meeting space and more from which individual work and team work can be done. I was there for an Apero last night and got to meet a few of the people.

At the moment there are four people there using the space full time and another who go there occasionally. For those like me who go there very occasionaly we can drop by and work there if we so desire. It’s easy to get to from the motorway and apparently not too hard from the center of Lausanne.

One of the members is a cat, apparently he loves to come in through one window, sleep on the couches and distract certain people before walking out through a window at the other side of the space. What’s interesting is that the participants of L’Eclau think of him as a sort of alarm clock. He’s there to remind them that they should take a little break from the work they were doing.

I know quite a few people in Lausanne now so it might be an interesting place to meet some people when there are some collaborative efforts to be done.

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The Social Media Lifestyle

Byrichard

I believe I’m living the social media lifestyle, that is that wherever I go I have both my mobile phone and my ipod touch. As a result I am never more than a hotspot away from the world wide web and it’s content. In Switzerland I’m online as I hike through the mountains taking pictures which I can then upload to flickr for you to enjoy.

That’s also the reason I decided to start a new blog called The Social Media Lifestyle. The purpose of the new blog will be to explore the thoughts and conversations I have with non social media nuts and why they are not interested in being as active as we are. I have based my first serious post around a conversation in the TGV from Paris to Geneva and some overheard comments at a cinema in Switzerland.

What I hope to achieve through this blog is to shift the conversation away from how advertisers can promote brands and products and instead promote the adoption of new social tools such as Facebook, twitter, seesmic, flickr and plurk to name but a few. We’ve got to find the best way to explain to our audience why and how the social media will improve, rather than degrade their lifestyle.

The Social Media Autumn

Byrichard

Liz Strauss wrote about the leaves and the trees and that got me thinking of the Social Media autumn. It’s the time of the year when everyone gets back to work after summer and they no longer have as much time to be sociable, whether online or offline and as the trees remains so the leaves are gone.

Of course in this context the trees are the social networks and the leaves are the users. How many of these trees are deserted? Kosso was wondering whether people will keep using phreadz in the same way. Loic Lemeur was questioning how people would keep using Seesmic. At the same time we’re going into what will probably turn out to be a recession and we get repetitive news.

One of those stories is about how Yahoo is getting rid of ten percent of it’s work force. That’s hardly new. They’ve had a few purges recently. That’s what you get for being one of the top three companies in search (or has it changed since then?).

One person recently wrote that the advantage of the recession is that it gives you an opportunity to get rid of those that are not as productive as they should be. It’s an opportunity to streamline the company and find new ways of being more productive. You see that’s the advantage of silence, of time apart, of a little time to think.

It’s the time when those in the social media, but it applies everywhere. How long will the recession last. Which networks will remain and who will stay. Why will they stay and what collaborations will thrive. Now is the time to see which ideas have the most potential. How will the social media look covered in snow?

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The Francofous like to migrate

Byrichard

The Francofous are part of the seesmic community and can be differentiated by their ability to speak french and their avatars. Originally formed around Seesmic and twitter they are now migrating to both plurk and phreadz, two services I have talked about in the past.

What is nice about this community is that it’s a core of 20-30 early adopters who move and try new communities as a group rather than individuals. What this means is that whereas in previous years we would jump from one community to another, start without knowing anyone and over weeks and months get to know people here we have a core of people moving with the times.

Of course I speak about the Francofous this way but they’re not the only ones. Many of my English and international social media friends are doing the same thing, moving from one fesh community to another to see what the strengths and weaknesses are. They’re also testing out the sites, seeing what works and what doesn’t. They’re illustrating how many of you will use these sites once the barriers to entry have come down.

There’s another factor that’s important to take into consideration. Those who are early adopters are used to using twenty to thirty sites several times a day from google reader to plurk, to seesmic, to phreadz to gmail to flickr, youtube, dailymotion, vimeo and many more. At the same time most of my university friends are happy with facebook and gmail. They’re lucky, everything they want can be found in one place ;-).

How far are these communities from the mass of mid to late adopters? Quite a few months to a year ahead of the pack.

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replaced mother boards, the n95, press accreditations and qik

Byrichard

Because every day is not the same this one has been quite normal. At eleven in the morning I found out that the motherboard for the macbook pro needed replacing and this should be accomplished by Tuesday. In second the day of work was a good one so I was energetic enough to drop by the caribana for a second night, meeting a few friends.

It was also an opportunity to do some live streaming of concerts by Alanis Morisette, Stereophonics and last but not least (so far at the festival) Manic Street preachers.

Here is a collection of the streams.

If you tolerate this your children will be next

Something to do with Autumn

You all know this one: Your love is not enough.

Stereophonics, Dakota

Stereophonics, crowd having fun.

Alanis Morisette, broke but happy

Shifting away from early adoption

Byrichard

There’s no one in Europe using brightkite yet but I’m there and I see that no one is in the vicinity. That’s because there’s a huge amount of attention on what the US is doing and not much left on what Europe is doing. It’s a simple website to tell people where you are at all times.

Of course there are a few projects like that in various countries and whilst it’s great for some people others feel uncomfortable. Personally I’m indifferent, since there’s no one in the vicinity that I could take the time to meet via that method. Of course there are others

What I’m looking for are European social platforms that would create a similar environment to the one I would find in London when I lived there.

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Twitter as a way of life

Byrichard

Twitter is not a social network, rather it’s a way of life. The more you use Twitter the further it gets into your way of life. It allows you to follow current affairs, geek out about social media and keep in touch with friends that uses the social network. What’s more it’s a network that does not require any specific device.

At first it’s a confusing place. Look at the public timeline and it’s a torrent of junk and sifting through it will take hours a day. As you spend more time on twitter though you find people of interest to follow. In some cases it’s friends from the physical world, in other cases friends from other websites on the web and then more.

In reality what makes twitter interesting, and part of what makes people use it is how efficient it is at getting a message across. You’ve got 140 characters to express yourself. In Paris I was told I speak in 140 characters or less. That’s not a bad thing. In fact it’s good. It’s about the continual flow of information.

Imagine you’re swimming down a river but everytime you move to stay afloat you have to close your eyes. That’s what article and blog reading is. As you focus on one task so your ability to focus on anything else dissapears. That’s fine in the old media where pages are static and where airwaves are limited.

In the modern world though it is necessary to absorb many sources of information at once. How many of you have your ipod, laptop and mobile phone with you at the time you’re reading this post? I’m sure most. How many of you have more podcasts than you can view or listen to? How many of you have more programs recorded on PVR than you can watch?

That’s why twitter is a lifestyle. It’s about constantly looking for information and building an understanding of current affairs through constantly taking in little bits of information. Stop talking about the social media on twitter, rather start talking about the good old fashioned time efficient soundbyte. Want to be heard. Don’t take people’s time. Encourage interest instead.

Many people are complaining about the decentralised conversation, the notion that blogs are no longer the center of attention, that twitter, friendfeed, facebook and others are killing the conversation. In fact quite the opposite is true. If you’re in New York you’ve got one set of people, if you’re in London you’ve got another. if you’re in Geneva you don’t have much… To have a decentralised conversation means that many ideas can be explored at once and as pillars of the online community meet at various events so the conversations can once more converge.

Don’t worry about comments on a blog, think about the conversations and the people you’re having them with. That’s where the fun is to be had.

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Videocamp, Paris

Byrichard

A few days ago I was in Paris to meet the Francofous and in the process I passed by La Cantine where they were holding a Videocamp. It’s like a barcamp but rather than talking about radio and podcastng people talked about peer to peer video sharing, citizen journalism and other topics.

I filmed a few people presenting what their seminars had been about and finally they’re available via my website.

Please note that the videos are in French.

Video 1

Video 2

And yes it is very lazy of me to distribute the videos like this but I don’t have time to edit the content at the moment. If anyone wants to offer a transcript of what’s said I’ll credit you for the work.