Month: November 2012

Over drinking and dating don’t mix

Thanks Tim for sharing this on Facebook… Reminds me of this date I had one time, maybe the worst date I’ve ever had.

We met in a bar in deansgate locks (yeah classy I know but I was new to Manchester). I was 5mins late at the very most. When I spotted her, she was sitting at a table alone with 4 pint glasses in front of her. Only one was full and I thought well maybe she was with friends before. It became clear that was the wrong assumption very quickly. Me being me, I couldn’t help but ask about the pint glasses after ordering a drink. She said she was nervous and it helps calm her nerves while starting to slur her words. About 5 more minutes and it was clear she was clear starting to become very drunk.

I did something which I’m not proud of. Went into the toilet called up a friend and got him to call me soon after. Yes just like the movies… (I didn’t know what else to do, and because it was one of my earlier dates, not so long after getting divorced. I wasn’t so outspoken as I have become). The call came through and I must have won an award for that performance. However I do think she would have noticed as she was getting more hammered by the moment.

A few days later, she did text me and I did tell her, I don’t think it was going to work mainly because I’m after someone confident but I wished her luck. I did also say my friend was feeling much better after his accident and he was glad he could rely on me (therefore continuing the lie).

From my experience drinking and dating only works to a certain extent. Once you over step the mark, things can go wrong very quickly. Knowing your limits and sticking to them is essential unless you want to sleep around (and frankly a lot of people do… join pof.com) Beer googles applies to wine and cocktails as much as beer. And think about how your coming across to the other person… Who wants a leechy leery drunk as a partner?

The making of Perceptive Media’s Breaking Out

I have been talking about Perceptive Media to many many people. Some get it some don’t… Everytime I try and explain it I use my perception to work out what method would work for them to understand it. When I did the talk at Canvas Conf way back in September I wanted to go into real depth about what we had done, but I had to explain the concept which takes a long while.

However now we got enough feedback, its time to reveal what we done to make it work. Theres a blog post coming soon on the BBC R&D blog but till then… Happyworm have done a excellent blog post explaining the whole thing down to some serious detail, including how to reveal the secret easter egg/control panel!

How to open the easter egg

To open the Easter Egg, Breaking Out must have finished loading and then click under the last 2 of the copyright 2012 on the bottom right. You’ll then have access to the Control Panel.

The easter egg, really unlocks the power of Perceptive Media like never before.

Everything is controllable and the amount of options is insane but all possible with the power of object based audio (the driving force behind perceptive media).

Breaking Out Control Panel

Practically just changing the fade between foreground and background objects can be a massive accessibility aid for those hard of hearing or in a noisy environment like driving a car? Tony Churnside is working on the advantages of object based audio so i won’t even try coming with conclusions on whats possible but lets say, the whole turning your sound system up and down to hear the dialogue could be removed with Perceptive media. Because of course perceptive media isn’t just the objects and delivering the objects, its also the feedback and sensor mechanisms.

Mark Panaghiston writes in conclusion…

The Web Audio API satisfied the goals of the project very well, allowing the entire production to be assembled in the client browser. This enabled control over the track timing, volume and environment acoustics by the client. From an editing point of view, this allowed the default values to be chosen easily by the editor and have them apply seamlessly to the entire production, similar to when working in the studio.

Web Audio API was amazing… and we timed it just about right. At the start of the year, it would not have worked in any other browser except Chrome. But every few months we saw other browsers catch up in the WebAudioAPI front and I’m happy to say the experiment kinda of works on Firefox and Opera.

One of the most complicated parts of the the project was arranging the asset timelines into their absolute timings. We wanted the input system to be relative since that is a natural way to do things, “Play B after A”, rather than, “Play A at 15.2 seconds and B at 21.4 seconds.” However, once the numbers were crunched, the noteOn method would easy queue up the sounds in the future.

The main deficiency we found with the Web Audio API was that there were no events that we could use to know when, for example, a sound started playing. We believe this is in part due to it being known when that event would occur, since we did tell it to noteOn in 180 seconds time, but it would be nice to have an event occur when it started and maybe when its buffer emptied too. Since we wanted some artwork to display relative to the storyline, we had to use timeouts to generate these events. They did seem to work fine for the most part, but having hundreds of timeouts waiting to happen is generally not a good thing.

Yes ideally we would want to be able to turn a written script into a Javascript file complete with timings. Its something which would make perceptive media a lot more accessible to narrative writers.

And finally, the geo-location information was somewhat limited. We had to make it specific to the UK simply because online services were either expensive or heavily biased towards sponsored companies. For example, ask for the local attractions and get back a bunch of fast food restaurants. But in practice though, you’d need to pay for a service such as this and this project did not have the budget.

Yes that was one of the limiting factors which we had to do for cost. And because of that we couldn’t shout about it from the roof tops to the world. However the next experiment/prototype will be usable worldwide, just so we can talk about perceptive media on a global stage if needed

As Harriet said, “OK, I can do this.” And we did!

Yes we did! and we proved Perceptive Media can work and what a fine achievement it is! This is why I can’t shut up about Perceptive Media. When ever we talk about the clash of interactivity and narrative I can’t help but pipe up about Perceptive Media, and why not? It could be the next big thing and I have to thanks James Barrett for coming up with the name after I had originally called it the less friendly Intrusive Media.

Not only did we prove that but it also proved that things off the work plan in R&D can be as valid as things on it. And finally that the ideology of looking at whats happening on the darknet, understanding it and thinking about how it can scale has also been proven…

I love my job and love what I do…

Happyworm were a joy to work with and the final prototype was not only amazing but they also believed into the ideals of open sourcing the code so others can learn, understand and improve on it. You should Download Perceptive Media at GitHub and have a play if you’ve not done so yet… what you waiting for?

Pacemaker mixes are ago go?

The Pacemaker in use

For a long while now I’ve had a problem with my pacemaker… The problem is I can’t reliable use the internal mix recorder. It records like midi by recording the actions and tunes then when you export from the editor it flattens the whole thing into a flatten Ogg Vorbis file.

Problem is it seems to screw up the mixes even though I know the mix was correct. I posted details on the unofficial pacemaker forum but people were blaming Linux, 64bit, Wine or Firmware problem.

Well I’m happy to say since I upgraded the Pacemaker with the new official beta it seems to be better (not perfect). I’m going to give it a proper test soon… If its correct, then it was the firmware all that time, and I should be able to rescue the old mixes, which would be fun. Because the Pacemaker is just a linux device, I’ve also backed it up a few times to my server and then to the cloud.

Expect more travels with pacemaker soon including my airplane mixes…

UK Pirates Are Big Box Office Spenders

Been a bit of noise about the UK darknet from a survey OFCOM did recently, a lot of the findings Musicmatch already highlighted in their study previously…

Pirates Are Big Box Office Spenders

the comprehensive study suggests that many pirates spend as much as 300 per cent more on media than a person that doesn’t download.

The information was retrieved as part of a survey of just under 4,500 internet users, aged 12 and older. In conclusion, the researchers found that of the 16 per cent that said they downloaded, the majority were termed, “hybrids,” because they also paid for movies, music, concerts and such like. Ultimately it was found that these hybrids, could spend much, much more than those that didn’t pirate at all. In a three month test period, 100 per cent legal movie fans spend around £35. Comparatively, the hybrid pirates – which are sounding more and more like something out of Davy Jones fish-head crew – spent almost £60 in the same period.

Torrent Freak goes into much more detail, even the RIAA agrees with some of the higher level results.

What I want to know is, will this change the TV ecosystem in anyway? I unfortunately don’t think so…

Another head in the sand moment…?

Creative people are the whores of capitalism?

POT POTW Challenge 20080202 - 20080208 (Creative) - #1

Herb tweeted this and I thought it was going to be a story like mine, but what I was surprised to find a critical look at the creative economy…

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

The scam works like this:

1. The creative industry operates largely by holding ‘creative’ people ransom to their own self-image, precarious sense of self-worth, and fragile – if occasionally out of control ego. We tend to set ourselves impossibly high standards, and are invariably our own toughest critics. Satisfying our own lofty demands is usually a lot harder than appeasing any client, who in my experience tend to have disappointingly low expectations. Most artists and designers I know would rather work all night than turn in a sub-standard job. It is a universal truth that all artists think they a frauds and charlatans, and live in constant fear of being exposed. We believe by working harder than anyone else we can evaded detection. The bean-counters rumbled this centuries ago and have been profitably exploiting this weakness ever since. You don’t have to drive creative folk like most workers. They drive themselves. Just wind ‘em up and let ‘em go.

2. Truly creative people tend not to be motivated by money. That’s why so few of us have any. The riches we crave are acknowledgment and appreciation of the ideas that we have and the things that we make. A simple but sincere “That’s quite good.” from someone who’s opinion we respect (usually a fellow artisan) is worth infinitely more than any pay-rise or bonus. Again, our industry masters cleverly exploit this insecurity and vanity by offering glamorous but worthless trinkets and elaborately staged award schemes to keep the artists focused and motivated. Like so many demented magpies we flock around the shiny things and would peck each others eyes out to have more than anyone else. Handing out the odd gold statuette is a whole lot cheaper than dishing out stock certificates or board seats.

3. The compulsion to create is unstoppable. It’s a need that has to be filled. I’ve barely ‘worked’ in any meaningful way for half a year, but every day I find myself driven to ‘make’ something. Take photographs. Draw. Write. Make bad music. It’s just an itch than needs to be scratched. Apart from the occasional severed ear or descent into fecal-eating dementia the creative impulse is mostly little more than a quaint eccentricity. But introduce this mostly benign neurosis into a commercial context.. well that way, my friends lies misery and madness.

It turned out to fit with my ex-boss’s idea of creative people being the whore’s of capitalism… (sure he came up with that). Its harsh and something I’d considered a while ago and I justify it by working for the BBC rather than some faceless entity…

Are ARG’s dead?

The 3rd Olympic Ring description

Arg’s or Alternative Reality Games, are really interesting and form a very tight and rich experience for thsoe who play them. But the mass adoption has stalled and tailed off as creators go for something more simple and easier to craft aka Transmedia.

So what happened? Is the genre dead before it really got going?

Well I saw a really interesting post on ARGN (alternative reality gaming network) written by friend Adrian Hon of SixtoStart. When ever I see him (usually at conferences) he likes to quiz me about what the BBC is doing regarding taking storytelling forward. And I like to question him about moving away from ARGs.

My feeling is there is much more potential/fuel and in the ARG genre and it will come back in another form. But I do share a lot of the points Adrian identifies in the post…

Most companies in the business now disavow the term ‘ARG’, preferring the trendier but frequently reviled and frustratingly vague term ‘transmedia’. In that context, it’s not surprising that people are happy to say “ARGs are dead” because it helps distinguish themselves from the old-and-busted crowd.

I can agree with that… I mentioned ARG at the recent Transmedia London festival and it was really interesting to see peoples faces from a panel member. Some were confused and some were shaking their heads disproving. When I was asked what transmedia is to me, I said something about it not being about screens but surrounding the person(s) with an immersive story. Like a ARG I would argue…

But for everything I like about ARG’s there is some serious problems and things which need to be ironed out. Adrian does a really good job covering the main ones…

1) Increase accessibility. People remain genuinely intrigued by ARGs, but they’re put off by the comparatively massive level of time commitment required to get involved. Yes, people will happily spend dozens of hours watching TV or playing video games, but those require less attention and crucially, they have a much quicker payoff. A good game or TV show will have me hooked in the first five seconds, and I know that I’ll have fun even if I just stay for 30 minutes. ARGs need to be more transparent and more accessible. If that means the end of ‘TINAG’, so be it.

Yes the best ones are when you can dip back in and help out, then take a less detailed role. I cant stand the chase element of ARGs. This is something I expressed with Larkin-about‘s ARG when I first met them. The best ARG’s have many layers just like great films. For example Donnie Darko you can watch and just enjoy the 80’s style highschool fun but theres a layer underneath which is about something much darker. Too many ARGs are like a Micheal Bay film or even something too deep and meaningful.

2) Make money. No-one is going to take ARGs seriously as a creative or commercial venture if they can’t get players to cough up cash. There’s absolutely a place for ad-funded or sponsored content, but good quality movies and TV shows still find millions of happy viewers willing to buy tickets and DVDs. Why not ARGs? Focus on the platforms where people have demonstrated a willingness to pay, like on iOS, Android, and Facebook, and learn from the successes of other apps. There isn’t much separating The Room – an incredible blockbuster iPad puzzle game – from being a full-blown ARG (the same applies for Zombies, Run!).

Although I don’t know too much about this side, he’s right. They need to be sustainable, be that with funding, adverting or paid for by the audience. Too many are made to flip and sell or made to be a one off. This leads to scummy people entering trying to cash in on the genre, like SEO and social media. All these one off’s pollute the work of others and make it even more difficult to be taken seriously.

3) Take the best and discard the rest. How can you replicate the immersive sensation of a good ARG at a low cost? Do you really need to have video, or can you just use audio? Do most people really enjoy decrypting hexadecimal strings, or are there more compelling challenges you can provide? Can you fake the experience of calling up real phone numbers or writing to real email addresses?

Absolutely too many copy cats… Another phone drop, another treasure hunt, yawn… seriously. Its lazy and boring. Innovate and push away from whats known. Its like when Perplexcity’s purple treasure hunt ended in a character from the group jumping into a helicopter. Mind blowing but how can you better that? Think! Creativity and think about the audience/participations not your own ego.

4) Think about scale. Almost all ARGs are live and cannot be easily replayed after the fact. That makes it difficult to make money, especially if you don’t have a big following. Imagine if Angry Birds or Farmville were only playable from April to June 2010; that’s what ARGs are like, and it’s mad. If you are going to run a live ARG, be sure to keep your costs down and charge players an appropriate amount for the privilege of getting personal interaction – no-one bats an eyelid at paying $25 or $50 for a theatre ticket, and the same should be true for a live ARG.

This is one of the most destructive thing I’ve known in ARG’s and one of the points I keep banging on to Adrian… Scale, repeatability and sustainability. No company is going to take this seriously if the resources are peed up a wall never to be seen again! How do you replay it and improve on it each time.

I have suggested an ARG framework before and somewhere along the line it fits with the notion of Decentralized systems. Stroytellers want to tell there story and don’t want to reinvent the book everytime.

Even the games I’ve played like the rings one (picture above) I was lucky enough to be in Manchester where the ring was found. For everyone else it was far less interesting. Plus the cost of creating and putting those rings in art gallerys around the world. Its not scalable and if you go about it that way, it never will be.

Total respect to everyone involved in the genre but its going to die before its gotten a chance to develop and spread its wings…

The things Hugh Garry says

Recently Hugh Garry has been writing in his blog more often than usual. Not sure what has prompted him but he’s writing some amazing stuff. Everytime I read something I want to comment or blog it straight away, but I’ve decided to take a few bits and comment on them here.

From Rules of watching a movie

Switching ‘on’ your phone during a movie is something that the film industry is going to have to get used to. It’s a new rule of cinema – people like to share their lives and that includes capturing screen shots of the film they are watching – it’s happening and it’s creating spreadable media.

I hate it when people turn on there phone so you can see the glow of their screens in the darken cinema but love it or hate it, its not going away. Its actually spreading.

I watched Argo yesterday as part of the salford cinema club. In the darken cinema, you could see people sharing thoughts and the like. Ok no one was pointing the phone at the screen but they might as well have. I really wanted to capture the new anti-piracy advert because I kid you not most of the cinema was laughing out loud when it came on the screen. At that moment I had to resist the instant temptation to tweet it.

Capturing the anti-piracy advert surely can’t be bad? Its not like I paid to watch this propaganda. In fact it leads nicely on to Hugh’s next blog…

From Banksy on Advertising

On Friday night I stumbled upon this great quote from Banksy on advertising via the excellent The Fox is Black. Wish I’d had it in time for the lecture.

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs. Banksy”

Hugh and ultimately Bankey is right. F them. I’m sure I mentioned somewhere how growing up in Bristol. Clever defacements of public advertising was a everyday thing. It wasn’t just Banksy doing it, everyone was doing it. It was just a way of life. It wasn’t till I moved to London, that I noticed it was a uniquely Bristol thing.

Bristol has always been a counter-cultural city and the counter advertising has always had a big role. They are less a cheap shot and more a highly educated shot at some entities which need cutting down to size.

These entities are not above the law and specially above the law of common sense. No one is… The moment they think they are, things start to break down and get really ugly. I won’t mention the serious stuff which is happening about now.

Hugh’s Popup ideas shop concept is really interesting… and the weird thing is, I think I’ve been doing it without noticing.

I’m running a series of pop-up idea shops in Manchester and London. It’s not really a shop – more like me at a table in a cafe with an empty chair waiting to be filled. It’s free ideas for anyone who needs them. I’ve never done it before, and I don’t know if anyone else does them, but I’m giving it a go to see what happens.

So here’s the idea…

This Friday (November 16th) between 1pm and 4pm I’ll be sat at a table in Fyg on Tibb Street in the Northern Quarter, Manchester. If you need ideas, a new perspective or a fresh set of ears for whatever you’re working on then do drop in. You might be taking your first steps in digital or social media and don’t know where to start. You may need help shaping the story of your brand – come say hello. There’s no charge for this. I may be able to help you or I may not. Either way I’m happy to have a brew with someone new if you are.

I tend to push all my adhoc meetings to Fridays in the northern quarter. Some of the discussions are very relevant to my work in the BBC and sometimes its less so.

Of course FYG deli is a great place to do it and I’ll be there enjoying a deli platter and meeting with a few people while I sort out a few things to do with Perceptive Media.

Maybe I’ll sit next to Hugh to keep him company in between the quiet times.

#What is a Cubicgarden?

Recently there has been a little bit of a hunt to find the answer to what a cubicgarden is on twitter using #whatisacubicgarden

Some people found this while digging around the web… I forgot I wrote it while at BarCampLiverpool…

Cubic Garden by Ian Forrester (105 words)

A cubic object is a mathematical thing while a garden is a natural thing which strikes as organic opposed to the sterile mathematical nature of cubic.

You can get cubic gardens but when saying “cubicgarden” it doesn’t strike up visions of a sweet garden. Even if you did, it wouldn’t be a cubic garden.

References to cubicgarden online point to a guy called Ian Forrester. What caused him to choose cubicgarden, a lot of people ask? Why not Qubic garden or even square garden?

In Donnie Darko one character says the most beautiful word in the dictionary is “Cellar door.” I would contest it’s “Cubicgarden”

Challenge is on…

 

When Paul Rogers sucked the air out of the room

Been wondering what happened to the video of Paul Rogers at TedXBradford.

Well no need to wonder any more, Imran just posted it on the site and listening to it again its pretty sobering but theres a light at the end.

I originally said this…

This talk was like no other. Most of the talks were pretty neutral about the web. However Paul literally sucked the air out of the room with his talk about the political mess and security woes the internet has accelerated. Afterwards there was a level of what just happened in the cinema.

Now you can hear/watch and judge for yourselves… but bear in mind this was the last talk after a number of very positive talks about life online

Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University. He worked originally in the biological and environmental sciences, including lecturing at Imperial College, London, but has worked for the past 30 years on international security. He is a consultant to Oxford Research Group, an independent UK think tank, and also writes a weekly analysis of international security issues for www.opendemocracy.net

Supporting the causes…

Me and a lady were a while ago talking about my celebrity style status (best word I can think of for it) and how we have become brands in ourselves (good or bad its hard to tell)

Anyway I received this over Facebook from someone I know but not seen in a while.

Hey Iain
I have been following your exploits on Ted and cubic and hope life is now good.
I need a quick favour

I have produced a CD, with 17 tracks donated by artists such as Seasick Steve and Athlete to help Angie, a little girl with Autism.

Any chance you can tweet of blog something for me to your many millions of followers. I now have 2000 to sell. Thxx **********
All money raised goes to support her autism awareness treatment.

Website here:
www.angiesmiracles.co.uk

I replied with…

Looks good but I tend not to do sponsored tweets or promotions for stuff I don’t personally care* so much about. Aka unless the CD (why CD and not download?) is really good and something I’d enjoy, no matter the cause I won’t really blog about it. Sorry… hope you understand?

*When I say “don’t personally care so much about” I don’t mean I don’t care about the charity, as said good cause but not something I do.

It might come across as quite negative or cold but in my mind its my blog and I call the shots. That means I decide what goes on there and although I think its a good cause, I don’t want my blog to turn into a place for good causes. Its important to me, as thats my space.

They seemed to take it well… I did say afterwards I would blog about this, and the url would be there at least…

To be honest others who have requested stuff like this have not taken it so well, and one or two got really angry.

Rules of watching a movie

Another thing I saw from Hugh Garry which got me thinking…

Switching ‘on’ your phone during a movie is something that the film industry is going to have to get used to. It’s a new rule of cinema – people like to share their lives and that includes capturing screen shots of the film they are watching – it’s happening and it’s creating spreadable media.

I use to be a usher at a couple of cinemas in the past including the Odeon chain.

As a usher, your meant to make sure everything is ok in the screens. Things like people talking too loud and people talking on their phones is a reject-able offense in a cinema (although its worth noting they can pretty much throw you out for anything). Of course its quite sometime since I’ve done ushering in a cinema and are shocked by how slack some ushers have got with there duties… However things have changed, rather than people talking on the phone, there texting, tweeting and generally doing stuff on the phone.

This doesn’t cause such a distraction but most smartphones have a crazy backlights which can literally light up a small cinema. So when your tweeting in the dark, everything is lit up for a short while. This is painful…

However saying all this… I’m seriously wondering how much better the experience of the cinema would be if you could pull your phone our and tweet for example. I generally tweet at the end while the credits are rolling up and the house lights have dimmed up.

Yes I understand the fear of people recording parts with there phones and the like but seriously? I wonder about the actual damage of people sharing photos of parts of the film with there friends. As someone once said all publicity is good publicity… If someones tweeting to their friends, there doing because they feel the need to share with friends or the world. Pay attention, the intent is critical… Go with it!

Is death the only way to change perspective?

Recently I’ve been pretty busy and again explain who am I and what makes me tick to new people. A part of the story is my brush with death which people still can’t believe when I tell them.

There is nothing like a life and death thing to bring your life into pin sharp perception.

2 things I saw which are related…

The story of Jonathan Schwartz on Triangulation and Derren Brown’s Apocalypse.

That change of perceptive I can certainly relate to… Just wondering if there is a way to shake people without the actual life and death part?

EPIC Werewolf time!!!

My parents were deeply worried that I was doing too much again. Specially after what happened to me with mybrushwithdeath almost two and half years ago. I can tell you and them that my blood pressure is normal…

So what have I been up to…? Because my blog has also suffered due to the hectic schedule.

On Tuesday 30th Connected Social and 31st EpicWerewolf…!

EPIC Werewolf

Epicwerewolf

The concept of Epic Werewolf was to run werewolf in two rooms.

One room would be kitted out with cameras and a normal game of werewolf would be going on. In the second room would be an audience watching live and some physiologists, behaviour scientists, experts watching along live and giving a running commentary on top of the live video. The people in the first room (the players) wouldn’t be able to hear the second room (the audience) but the second room would see and hear almost everything. All those little comments, subconscious ticks and obvious body actions would be exposed to an audience in a way which has only been seen in TV poker.

Great concept I thought and the Manchester science festival were interested too. However not interested enough to put any serious money behind it for a number of reasons. Because of this the idea had to scale down quickly. The interesting part is the game was originally going to be quite small to allow everyone a chance to have a go but we had to change that due to the amount of people who signed up and wanted to be players not the audience.

Epicwerewolf

We switched venues quite a bit and thought about a place with internet connectivity so we could broadcast it live to the internet. In the end we settled on Islington Mill in Salford because of the great spaces they have and how creepy it would be to go to deep dark Salford on Halloween.

Anyway the challenge which was worrying me was how to setup the cameras and computers. I had imagined using something like Ingex but we didn’t have resources or cameras. I came up with a number of solutions including using Skype, Hangouts, Bambuser, etc… but in the end I settled on the much easier streaming multiple Videolan’s VLC on my quad core i7 laptop to the weaker dual core Dell xps machine I still have. Everything was fine except I couldn’t get any of my decent cameras (Sanyo Xacti’s) to show up correctly. Meaning I only had 3 webcams including the build in one. I swear I had 2 at home but couldn’t find them even when searching the whole flat.

Epicwerewolf

On the day I setup 3 VLC services streaming and Vee from Larkin About used her macbook’s built in camera with Bambuser. On my Dell, I took advantage of the overview mode in Ubuntu 12.04 to show all cameras views and one of them being a browser window with Bambuser running from the Mac. However the problem seemed to be the mac would drop the wifi signal every 20mins or so. This was a pain but to add even more pain to the setup, my Dell laptop would get upset with the Flash plugin and throttle the CPU to death.

We pushed ahead anyway and by 6:30pm we had our first players. By about 7pm we had quite a few but no bar… We delayed while we tried to find out what happened to the barman and it turned out the barman was booked for 7:30pm not 7pm. So we started a 25 person game in the bar room and the another one next to it 10mins later to catch people who were running late. It was noisy and hard to hear people talking but it kind of worked out ok.

Those games came to a end about 8:30pm where we revealed what was so Epic about the night. Everyone was given a raffle ticket at the start of the night and between Larkin about and myself we pulled 12 numbers out of a cup and announced them over the pa system to the 50+ strong crowd.

The lucky 12 were lead to the 2nd room which was cold and slightly unnerving to play out a game of werewolf in front of the cameras. Our experts watched from the room and then came into the main room to talk through some of the things which were happening in the game. The problem we had was for the audience the cameras were not exciting enough in part because the of technical difficulties but also there just wasn’t enough to view. So instead we quickly had the experts give a quick overview of what they had seen and then a small Q&A about what not to do when playing werewolf. This was fascinating and made it clear there was more than just luck going on in a game of werewolf.

Massive thanks to Ben, Penny and Liz for being our experts for the night and giving us great insight into the silly things we all do without even noticing. Thanks also to Martin Rue, Mark Kirschstein and Larkin About for support through the night.

Epicwerewolf

After the Q&A we kicked off a series of werewolf games right through till the witching hour of midnight. We even had the barman involved in the last game.

It was a excellent night and I was amazed with the turn out of people. So many people and such a great vibe throughout. I only wished we could have got the epic part working smoothly. Well theres always next Halloween I guess?

Epicwerewolf

A bit of funding and who knows what we could great? Multiple rooms many cameras and many more types of sensors? Possibilities are endless! This is certainly not the end of #EpicWerewolf…

Connected Social: Design based thinking

My parents were deeply worried that I was doing too much again. Specially after what happened to me with mybrushwithdeath almost two and half years ago. I can tell you and them that my blood pressure is normal…

So what have I been up to…? Because my blog has also suffered due to the hectic schedule.

On Tuesday 30th Connected Social and 31st EpicWerewolf…

BBC Connected Social

BBC Connected Social

I stopped arranging events because frankly my skill isn’t in arranging or managing them. Something Matt Cashmore was much better at than myself. However I’m good at being the spark and inspiration for the event in the first point.

After watching a few Connected Studios it become clear something was need to make it a more complete experience for people involved. Hence I convinced my manager of this need and we tried out Connected Social in July. That went well and after a bit of a break it made sense to bring it back.

The evening was all ignite style talks around the theme of design based thinking.

BBC Connected Social

It was a good night of talks and further concentrated the need for a social event following the connected studio events in my mind. Maybe a little shorter and around one set of talks instead but everyone still enjoyed it.

Of course by the end of the night I was glad it went well and I was able to create a good informative event for people, however I was already thinking about Epic Werewolf…

My perceptive tracks end in Istanbul

My parents were deeply worried that I was doing too much again. Specially after what happened to me with mybrushwithdeath almost two and half years ago. I can tell you and them that my blood pressure is normal…

So what have I been up to…? Because my blog has also suffered due to the hectic schedule.

Generally I’ve been up and down the country and beyond telling people about Perceptive Media. The later part of that schedule is coming to a close but I went to Oreilly’s Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt and Nemsummit in Istanbul. Istanbul wasn’t what I was expecting in anyway. Although it marks the furthest I have been east in the world, before that it was Sweden.

Istanbul

Along with being chased by a big wild dog, hating the food, avoid nuts/fish and not really feeling very comfortable with the conference, I just didn’t get a sense of wow I’m out of Europe and in the middle east. Which was a shame and I’m sure if I went back it would be different. To be honest I didn’t get out of the tourist part and check out the old town part of Istanbul.

Istanbul

What shocked me was the food. I was expecting lots of lovely meats with lots of seasoning and the like. What I experienced was a diced chicken which was boiled and had never seen any kind of seasoning, at one part of my trip. This won’t have been so bad if I wasn’t so bloody hungry after suffering the nut filled flight from Zurich to Istanbul for 2hours.

Istanbul

I was expecting something like you get in Turkish restaurants but got something boring and plain everytime. Someone did say I was in wrong part of Turkey for good meats and the like. Instead this part was best known for sea food (which I can’t eat either). Breakfast was also very tricky because a massive part of the food had nuts involved in someway, so I kept to breads, cheeses and plastic looking meats.

Even at the conference there was lunches with cheeses and the like but with nuts thrown over the top. Nightmare!

Although I’m grateful to go to Istanbul for work, I just wasn’t feeling it at all. It might be down to the conference rather than the country. NemSummit was nothing like Tools of Change or anything that level. It makes you realise what a hard job it is getting the small things right…

I think to be honest if I’m going east again, I’d rather skip over the middle east and head to Asia. Japan, Korea and even China…