Month: March 2014

Return of the jfdi…

During TedXManchester3 while Pam Warhurst’s talked, I was blown away once again by the simple story and all the things she did. Just like when I heard her at thinking digital 2012. Seriously I was going to stand up and start a standing ovation.

She kept referring back to that elegant of terms…

JFDI (Just Fucking Do It!) Something we can all stand behind…

I started to think about all the other people who Just Fucking Did It.

Alan O’Donohoe the Computing Teacher who JFDI and spoofed us all at BarCampMediaCity. Which turned into a momentous ride to the Raspberry Jam via Hack To The Future. Worth pointing out that the title came from Alan’s suggestion on twitter.

James Headifen who runs the Ancoats Canal Cleanup project. Decided he loved to live by water and wanted to help do something to make it beautiful and worth living next to. Now once a month he and a bunch of people JFDI. I’ve not had a chance to join them in a while because of Volleyball practice but its great stuff they do.

These guys are the tip of the iceberg… There’s many people I could mention…

My highlights of TedXManchester3

I wish I brought my Nikon D40, because the pictures I have are pretty bad with the dark light of the room.

A while ago I talked about TedxSalford and said some slightly negative things about the overall event. No disrespect to the organisers, I just felt it lacked a soul.

I just think I prefer TedxManchester personally. There is something about genuine and authenticity which seems to be missing. I felt like we went from here’s a massive speaker to here’s another big speaker to yes you guessed it another massive speaker…

Later, I talk about the programming of the speaker line up. For many people this might not matter too much, but to me it makes all the difference.

TedXManchester/TedXUniversityofManchester had a line up of not many big name. To be honest you would be hard pushed to spot anyone as such famous. But that didn’t matter at all, actually it added to its overall charm.

Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t all smiles. Still there were issues which made a very good event not an excellent event.

Manchester Academy is a venue for concerts, raves and performances. Because of that the venue was extremely cold. I actually went home at lunch and got my jumper and another coat. There was also no public wifi. However there was Eduroam, and I guess because 40% of the people in the room were students, they were catered for. But the rest of us were struggling without. Luckily getting a solid 3G signal wasn’t too bad.

On the plus side having banquet tables made the whole thing feel much more relaxed. Which is quite amazing for a dark rave hall. But enough about the event logistics, lets talk the line up.

The line up was diverse and vast… but I would say everyone was good even Alessio Rastani who drive me nuts with his call outs and general love of the ugly side of capitalism. However here is the ones which really got me writing notes.

Anthony Lishak
Your voice on paper can be impressive was the rallying call from Anthony. He hammer home the point that when your young people encourage you to do creative writing but as you get older the creativity is lost in favor of structure. This really hit home for me because when I started my blog, lots of people said it was a total mess (maybe still is) 10 years later, I’m still writing and I largely ignored the spelling and grammar pokes from people.

I loved the example he used around Adjectives + Verbs + Connectives = ? I assume the higher the number the better? What is a Connective? (please don’t answer because I don’t really care)

I grabbed some time with him in the break and talked about the fact writing shouldn’t be my natural outlet. Great talk and really makes me wonder how pushing a structure on writing is another way to restrict people from free thinking?

Hannah Mosley
Started her talk about tattoos and body modifications. I personally never really cared too much about tattoos and not really a fan of them, so kinda switched off at the start. But Hannah’s point wasn’t about the tattoos, instead it was about the manipulation of mainstream media. Something I certainly can get behind with my experiences in TV and TV people. Hannah had ended up with her online profile damaged by the mirror in this entry.

I feel for Hannah but never got a chance to talk to her. Over dinner later with friends I talked about some of my experiences and seeing snog marry avoid being filmed in the northern quarter. Shocking stuff, I asserted. Something we shouldn’t stand for…

It was a stroke of great programming to have Jon Sopel from BBC News follow her… He turned it around by focusing on very worth while subject of journalism at the edges.

Carrie Green
You all know how much of a suck I am for peoples shifts or change in perspectives. It all stems back to my brush with death and I’ve been wondering ever since, what it may take to wake up other people? So when I heard Carrie talk, it really hit home with me.

Carrie started her talk with a simple request. She asked for someone to join her on stage. As I was sitting at the front, I put my hand up but in the dark depths of the Manchester Academy, my hand then arm waving was lost. Another request and still no one, so I stood up and shouted yes I’ll do it. Finally she heard me and called me up on stage. As you can imagine, the stage at the Manchester Academy who only a week ago played host to Prince/Symbol/whatever. Isn’t really made for the audience to get up on. So I had to climb on a chair, pull myself up and then walk across the stage. Luckily I had dumped my motorcycle coat by that point. In my head I was convinced she was going to perform some hypnosis on me. But I was driven by what I’ve read and experienced in the past including the richness of life and how to be interesting?

Health and Safety would have had kittens but I walked across the stage at Carrie. In my mind I thought she might pull a Derren Brown grabbing my hand arm in the shoulder and saying calmly “Sleep…” I was nervous but also excited, what did she have in store for me? I reached her and she moved like she was going to shake my hand? She did and asked my name. To be honest by that point I was quickly analysing her and she seemed as nervous as I did. She reached in her left pocket and instantly thought, uh oh… She pulled out a twenty pound note and handed it to me.

I so wasn’t expected this and it took a while to sink in. I’m sure my posture must have looked a little goofy. Carrie, announced to the audience that if they had come forward, they would be walking away with £20 too. I think I said wow thanks, and shook her hand again before exiting the stage. On the way off the stage the scope of the whole thing came to me and I did a little throw of the hands in the air with the money (slightly crass but I’m sure Alessio Rastani would be proud).

She talked a lot about visualising where she wanted to be and that helping her through. Once again something I can relate to, as the hypontheraphy I had for my fear of needles (Trypanophobia) is all about visualising. Its what I use a lot of when stuck in a ruck.

I was able to grab Carrie afterwards and on twitter. So much I wanted to say to her and find out from her. It was a excellent talk and reinforced the idea that you don’t need to experience near death to refocus your life. The world can be what you want it to be, you just need to think it.

Caleb Meakins
This guy totally stole the show. On a similar theme to Carrie Green and Doug Ward, Caleb asked the audience, “What would do if you couldn’t fail?” (seems the best talks start with a question?)

Caleb’s talk was all about the fear of rejection and getting out of your comfort zone. He setup my40days.co.uk.

Suggest a challenge on Facebook or Twitter. By taking on these challenges that are deemed entirely unachievable and socially awkward, I will learn to come out of my comfort zone, think outside the box, and take risks as I attempt to successfully achieve each day’s challenge.

As you follow me on this journey, I hope to inspire you to chase your dreams and not let the fear of failure stop you from reaching and exceeding your potential.

We then had fun watching some of the videos from the youtube channel. Then talked about the serious side of what he’s doing. He talked about social stereotypes,  stepping out side your comfort zone and life beginning at the edge of the comfort zone. Sounds very clique but it came across well along with fear is the sign your alive and without failure there is no success. I’ve been known to say something similar taken from Vanilla Sky.

Just remember, the sweet is never as sweet without the sour, and I know the sour

I expect Caleb will be seen again soon…

Other notice ables were Pam Warhurst (almost given a standing ovation, but don’t worry there will be more about her soon) was amazing as usual. Doug Ward was great of course but I’ve heard his story quite a few times, Waleed Lakhani left some interesting thoughts, Laune Penny was great and ever so passionate but her work for the SKA project was slightly lost in her accent.

I have to say the event was very good and I’m glad TedXManchester was able to balance going big with cleverly theming and fascinating speakers. Good job done and I’m very glad to have gone and spent my Sunday at TedXMancheter… Looking forward to the next one…

What if people came with care labels? Quantified emotions

It started off as a discussion on Twitter and ended up as a blog post on Zoe’s blog.

Sometimes it’s not always easy to describe how you’re feeling. You may feel over-whelmed, worried that you might make others feel over-whelmed, just not have the words or want to avoid thinking about what it is that is really occupying your mind…

…That’s what got me started thinking about “what if people had care labels like clothes?”.

The concept of people with care labels is a fun and intriguing one. What would your care label say? But it goes deep into the quantified universe.

Are there somethings which can not be quantified? You can go down to the chemical functions, maybe even the watch the neutrons firing away but does that give you enough scope over emotion?  Zoe talks about some apps which allow you to self track mood but as someone who assigns a mood to my self reported dreams with Dreamboard. Its sometimes difficult quantifying it down to a single emotion.

I feel it would work better like a colour picker. I feel a little bit of this and a little bit of that but also a dash of the other.

So less set labels but more mixable pallets. But of course the idea of them being visible still stands. And of course the question of what other people will do once they know how you feel? This certainly would make playing hard to get… a whole different game.

Intriguing and collides right into the work Rain’s been working on, with wearables.

Health/care.data

NHS care.data

The state of care.data is a unbelievable and sorry tale. The more you look into it the more you think something is seriously missing. Its almost like the UK government want to sell off the NHS in return for an American style health care system (tin foil hats at the ready). I would suggest thats not the extreme view it sounds like, going by the mess which is on the table.

Following getting the NHS leaflet telling me I have a choice about where my medical records exist and the stellar work the likes of the Open Rights Group and others have done. I decided to look a little deeper into what is care data? I went to Threats to your medical confidentiality as I wanted to understand the other side which seemed to be hidden from public view.

What I found was something almost acute to the practice of health care.

The NHS will be legally barred from selling personal medical records for insurance and commercial purposes in a new drive to protect patient privacy, the Health Secretary will announce next week. Jeremy Hunt will unveil new laws to ensure that medical records can only be released when there is a “clear health benefit” rather than for “purely commercial” use by insurers and other companies.

Its important to note these facts…

  1. Care.data has nothing to do with medical care, you will get the same care regardless
  2. This is all about extracting confidential medical information from the GP-held records. Once they have it will never be deleted
  3. Identifiable data can/will be sold to almost any company. Medical research will get another slice regardless
  4. There is no medical lost from opt-ing out, this is all about access to data
  5. You can opt-out using a form or using the new FaxyourGP service but you can also opt-out people you look after/care for or are dependent on you (like your children for example)

To make things worst if you did decide to opt-out (remember its your lawful right to do so) the NHS made it extremely tricky to do so, they finally gave us 6 months more to decide.

Awwww what nice people… Nothing to do with ill thought-out communication or patient data going to insurance companies. No of course not… Whats also shocking is the lack of mass publicity this is not getting.

Me personally, once fax your GP is back will be using that service to make sure I’m opt-ed out, unless something dramatic happens. Even got a google task to remind me to opt-out…

Why internet dating makes me angry

Rosie shared with me a post from Girl on the Net, titled The ‘science of dating’ and why it should make you angry…

When Rosie shared it on Twitter, I did what I usually do. Add it to Instapaper for a more relaxed time and so I can read it on my Kindle. Days later, I found some time during a lunch break, while eating my soup and started reading. I was unprepared for how much I wanted to scream “YES!”

I’m aware of Girl on the Net, but there’s so much great points in the post I can’t help but say “I knew I wasn’t crazy!”

Here’s a few of the points which had me shouting yes inside!

Relationship advice, on the other hand, screams absolutes no matter how little data the authors have. I recently received an email advertising a site that claimed to give me the “science” behind dating – by “science” it looked like they meant a survey they did of 100 single women. From this tiny sample not only did they draw conclusions like “all women want you to text back within 48 hours” but also that they could tell which of the survey respondents was a “hot babe”.

If only people would see relationship advice as just that… Advice! You can take it or leave it, but its certainly not something you can quote and put money on. The advice is also Anecdotal, which leads on to…

Anecdotal evidence is always popular – whether it’s Peter, who managed to overcome his fears about talking to women after reading The Game, or a few quotes on a forum for pick-up artists assuring us that this magic method helped our hero get laid three nights in a row, honest. The anecdotal evidence of dating advice is rarely challenged in the same way as we’d challenge it elsewhere

Anecdotal at best. But the problem is people treat it like fact. The fact is my advice is as good as their’s. They will never admit it but it is full of holes and bias, just like mine.

This is why, when Northern Lass 32, said in the Guardian… I was the human dating Wikipedia. I quite liked it.

Wikipedia isn’t always correct and is very human with its mistakes, lack of citations and verification. While this is fine for me, not claiming to be a expert. Its not so good for those who claim to be experts and know exactly what you’re doing wrong.

I’ve found things which work for me, but I can only suggest they may work for others. I try and caution the advice I give. But ultimately I could also be seen as adding to the dubious information state. Never meant to, I always felt I was just opening peoples eyes to the possibilities which they never took.

…this onslaught of dubious info will prevent us from doing what’s natural – meeting people and having relationships with them – but it certainly hurls a few obstacles in the way of people who might be struggling. What’s more, it matters because all such misinformation matters: it demonstrates to people that you can package waffle as wisdom and make money from it. It teaches us that anecdotal evidence, vague appeals to authority and ad hominem are perfectly valid ways to win an argument.

I feel the difference here is, I am always welcomed to be challenged and I am by friends and strangers. Like testing a new formula or concept, I welcome push back. Oh and get it from those who say I’m too picky, too data centric and trying to quantify the unquantifiable.

Ultimately there is simply not enough clearly non-bias open data to give sound advice about online dating. Unfortunately in the void of this, the dating company’s get away with making insane statements and the dating experts go unchallenged. And as Girl on the net makes very clear…

…above all it matters because it paints a skewed and inaccurate picture of reality: in which women want nothing more than a free lunch and an open door, and men must jump through hoops and clap their flippers like performing seals in order to secure a gesture of love.

Sobering words for us all to think about…