Category: design-and-ideas

The global connected village at Mozfest

Mozfest 2014

In two weeks time (November 7-8th) I’ll be spacewrangling once again in for Mozfest 2015.

Sometimes I think I must be crazy but its always amazing how everything comes together on the weekend. You are literately fielding the water with your hands into channels, but far down the river, it all collects into a massive lake of tranquillity and calm.

This year, we are not just running an area, like last year. Oh no that was too easy (I of course joke) nope this year its the global (connected) village which is about 5-6 connected spaces.

What is the Global Village? A collection of self-contained but interconnected places from around the world where participants at Mozfest meet, learn and tinker with tomorrow’s places. The Global Village cultivates leading practitioners to build, teach and advocate for an Internet of things that empowers its users.

Turn off your screen. Close your book. End that meeting. Pick up a sketchpad, a pair of scissors, a hot-glue gun, some parcel tape and come cry “If We Build It They Will Come.” This is a springboard for tomorrow and welcoming place for those inclusive citizens and communities.

The spaces each take a part of the home (note I say home not house) and are then run by friends of  For example our big space which connects to all the others is a library (or even study if you restrict it down to a house). Each unique space will explore the future of that space and challenge the typical notions which make up the future home. The spaces will be littered with provocations and there will be themes around narrative, diversity, inclusion, connection,  wellness and humanity.

If you don’t have a ticket for Mozfest 2015 yet, its time to get one before they sell out.

Graceful degradation of apps via permissions under android 6.0

Android 6.0 Marshmallow has a very nice feature, something I have been wanting to see more across all services and applications. Granular permissions, which can be applied and revoked by the user at anytime.

It was obvious that iOS had it right as far as transparent, granular app permissions were concerned, and Android Marshmallow admits as much, because it now has a very similar system. Permissions are asked for as and when they’re needed, rather than all at once during installation.

That gives you a better idea of what’s going on and also let’s you, for example, give Facebook access to your camera but not your contacts. If you want to check which apps have what permissions (and edit them), go to Settings: tap Apps then the cog icon, then choose App permissions.

Android 6.0 permission system
Why does BBC iPlayer Radio need access to my phone?

Since android 6.0 marshmallow, i’ve wanted to try out the app permission tweaker. I’m interested to see what happens when I block certain apps from key permissions. Will they explode will they gracefully handle it and still operate without it?
For example could I run facebook app and deny access to the internet, or local storage? OK that might be a little too far but what about facebook without access to the mic and camera? Surely that would work right?

So I tried it with the Amazon kindle app, which I always thought had too many permissions anyway. I mean why does the kindle app need access to my contacts and my telephone?!

Android 6.0 permission system

Haven turned them off, I thought I’d better see if the app still actually worked?

Android 6.0 permission system

It did! So I started revoking permissions from apps which I felt didn’t need the permissions. For example Fitbit, which I refused to upgrade in the past due to the permissions.

Android 6.0 permission system

Why does Fitbit need so many permissions anyway!

Android 6.0 permission system

Andorid warms me the app may break as its not written for Android 6.0. But it still works as I want it to., so this has to be a case of them over reaching with the data they want to consume?
Say hello to your new permissions Fitbit, and it works fine when syncing data from the Fitbit.

Android 6.0 permission system

Fitbit better get use to the sandbox I put it in, and they are not the only one!

Android 6.0 permission system
Android 6.0 permission system

This for me is a key part of the VRM infrastructure as Adriana said…

If you cannot reject them, if you cannot actually say well, I’m fine with that but not with that, what’s the point?

Great to see it working as expected, graceful degradation of applications based on permissions. I might be able to install Facebook again.

Update

I installed Facebook messenger again with the permissions I felt comfortable with.

Then decided actually I want to break FB messenger as its meant to be written for Android 6.0, so denied it access to my location too.

Installing Facebook messenger under Android 6.0

I can say everything  works, and I haven’t seen any problems so far with my permissions. I did notice you can start to mess with the data usage too, which maybe a way to restrict network usage.?

Is it really wasted human effort?

Si Lumb once said something like

“We could be on Mars by now but instead we’re wasting effort stopping people stealing Coldplay records!”

Theres been a lot of focus on VR recently and I found Philip Rosedale’s Ted talk interesting in relation to si’s thoughts above, especially since Si is a fan of VR.

ROSEDALE: Why build a virtual world at all? For me, I know that when the Internet came around and I was doing computer programming and generally trying to run my own little company and figure out what to do with the Internet and with computers, I was just immediately struck by how the ultimate thing that you would really want to do with the Internet and with computers would be to use the Internet and connected computers to simulate a world to sort of recreate the laws of physics and how to make things, and do that inside a computer so that we could all get in there and make stuff.

The next frontier may not be space (no Mars or interstellar space trips yet sorry si) but instead the inner space of the virtual reality or rather a space we create and imagine for ourselves and others. Can be equally interesting?

Programmatic media sounds a bit like Perceptive Media?

Kill Bill Advertising

I swear Tony sent me a tweet with a pointer to this piece titled Programmatic Beyond Advertising: A Not-So-Distant Future in CMF trends.

Its mainly about advertising including a bit about the just in time advertising space which is coming about because of the lightening speed of data and the ability to replace advertising/content on the fly.

Heard it all before but then there was this part…

…what if programmatic could be used for content other than advertising?

If we extend this thinking (and our imagination) a little further to consider the possible emergence of a new distribution method for cultural or editorial content based on programmatic logic and methods, we could ask whether these new “programmatic” models could be applied to the automated distribution of film and television content based on audiences and their data.

Based on this logic, “programmatic content distribution” could be imagined as a flow in which the data collected from users would trigger an automated rights transaction and content delivery process between right-holders and broadcasters. The final result would be the broadcasting of content corresponding to the preferences of the targeted user.

Yes indeed, this is the start of Perceptive Media, if you haven’t already guessed. Its always good to hear others make the same leaps in thinking of course…

Perceptive media in wired magazine

Programmatic media?  Don’t think that will fly as a term, I’m sorry to say. Although I have to say, this description would be more like responsive media than perceptive media.

It was in make do share warsaw that I first heard Lance Weiler talk about them in quite different contexts and it did make sense. Phil has been grouping them together as contextual media which works as a superset of both, although I worry about the previous examples of contextual media clouding things.

The next part of the article I’m less interested in but something I have thought about a tiny bit…

Moreover, it would be possible to monetize this video content by attaching superimposed or pre-roll ads to it, as commonly seen on video aggregation platforms.

This valuable collection of user data and preferences for viewing a movie or television show could be done on a voluntary basis; for example, users would simply answer a few questions on their mood, the type of movie or series, and the desired language and duration so that the platform can preselect and “program” content that meets their criteria.

But we know that the Web, which is very advanced in big data collection, is already capable of gathering this data using algorithms. Users’ actions on a given site—the keywords they search for, the links they click on, their daily search history—can indicate to the platforms what type of content they are likely to be interested in.

The problem they will get is the explicit nature of the input, I feel. Yes its easier on the web but the person is leaning forward interacting most of the time anyway. When you get into the living room it gets a little more tricky, and a implicit approach is better in my mind. Yes it can get creepy but it doesn’t break the immersion and in my mind thats very key.

The essence of the programmatic distribution mechanism would therefore be as a recommendation super-engine, more sophisticated than that currently found on various platforms.

Why is it everybody thinks fancy recommendation engines? If this is the ambition of the industry, I feel we should be breaking into another dimension. Hopefully some of the things I’m responsible for will match that ambition/moon shot.

The best parts of BarCampManchester6

BarCampManchester6

I had a blast at BarCampManchester6 last weekend. Thanks to Claire Dodd for putting on a good BarCamp, and what a great venue. The Autotrader office in First street,

It reminded me of the BarCampLondon’s where the venues were purpose build with actual meeting rooms, etc. BarCampManchester5 for example, although in a lovely venue (SpaceportX) lacked the polish of a purpose build office, so we needed to hire chairs and make spaces.

IMG_1741

However that BarCamp will go down in history for starting a number of things. Autotrader was a sponsor and I’m sure that contributed to the discussion about BarCampManchester6?

The other big one is Claire Dodd, who I will freely admit did a lot of the work on BarCampManchester5. Enough to decide to go for it herself – which to be fair is always my plan, hand it off to somebody who makes it their own. This came up in a session later, which I did with Claire about how to run a barcamp. Encouraging others to maybe consider it but also learn from two people who have some experience of doing so.

The BarCampManchester6 went smoothly and although it wasn’t a overnight barcamp, we played Werewolf till 2:30am. You can’t have a barcamp in the UK without Werewolf (I blame Simon Willson for importing werewolf into BarCampLondon1 9 years ago! Maybe I should add it to his wikipedia page?) There were 2 parallel games next to a showing of that cult classic film Hackers (1995! Yes 20years ago!)

I am gutted I didn’t have the guts to follow though on the last game. As the seer but also a lover, I should have gone for the win with my cupid lover but my lover was also the last werewolf. Somehow I convinced myself, the lover connection was too obvious and led the village to kill the werewolf.

Afterwards I skateboarded home kicking myself for not doing it (ok a little drink and skating might have been involved, but I took it carefully, avoiding the clubbers and students going to the warehouse project on store street)

BarCampManchester6

Some of the highlights for me included a few of my own talks.

After looking at the grid for a while, I decided I wanted to do a talk about a few thing, which other talks had touched on.  I came with the idea of doing a talk about neurodiversity but felt it wasn’t the right time or place, so substituted it for a talk about the richness of life, getting over rejection and how to be lucky.. Lifting out my own thoughts from blog posts I written a while ago. It was well attended and glad I picked a larger room rather than a small one. A few people commented they enjoyed it quite a bit as it was quite different from the other talks.

Over the first day quite a few people asked what happened to the diversity talk and I said it got rolled into my 2nd talk about being neurodiverse and living with dyslexia. This was much lower attended but there was a guy there who was also dyslexic and explained the coping mechanisms he uses along side my own.  It was heart felt, with me admitting maybe too much, except not the stuff I will one day talk about.

I followed up the day afterwards with a talk titled How to be interesting… Not many people came but those who did, were touched by the blogging one.

Start a blog and update it regularly!
blogging or sharing your thoughts are still very important and really helps when referring to points in arguments. Its still what I recommend to many people who ask me where to start. Like above, the interchange of ideas with other peoples thoughts will make you a more interesting person. Also make sure its regular, otherwise you will loose the momentum or build it up too big in your mind.

Katrina Patel, wrote about her view of my talk. Specially about the same point.

One of Ian’s points focused on a blog of his in particular ‘How to be Interesting.’ Now let’s focus on point 2. Start a blog and update it regularly!

I’ve dipped in an out of blogging in the past, but it seems that things didn’t work out. I asked Ian this, and it seems that it’s okay to blog about anything and everything.

Yes indeed, this blog is a mash of my own thoughts and ideas, if you can’t write what you really think about, it will always seem like a chore. Hopefully this will aid in Katrina’s personal brand by making her much more interesting. Good luck Katrina and thanks for the post, let many more flow soon.

BarCampManchester6

At some point of Sunday morning, a few of us got wrapped up in a discussion, while waiting for the BarCamp to start its 2nd day about Startup Culture (real unconference/lobbycon stuff). There was a frustration with the emphases on startup culture and its affect on Manchester’s digital scene.

I took this up into a discussion which pulled in my thoughts about needing more social and community focused startups. I felt the debate was quite balanced about the need for profit making startups but deadly against the silicon valley culture of endless profit and continuous growth. I quoted something from Paul Graham about needing to startup in Silicon Valley.

We decided at the end of the session that we should do something about it all. I remembered the Geeks of London when they wrote the hackday manifesto. Its caused a stir but the best thing was, when people got upset they said fork it if you care so much.

20150926_BarcampMcr_12

I have to give credit to Teknoteacher (Alan O’Donohoe) who did a nice little session about podcasting  in a podcast.  He encouraged all of us to record the podcast. So Teknoteacher recorded it on his phone and others like myself recorded it on our devices.

One of my favourite talk of the barcamp was Vimla‘s diversity talk (she had done what I backed out of doing). So good, I convinced Vimla to put in a session at Mozilla Festival along the same lines. Vimla’s rage for diversity was infectious and the people who asked me about my diversity session were all there with lots to say. Vimla’s main point is something I keep banging on about but few people seems to understand.

The movement of women in technology is great and has a long long way to go, but thats only a small part of the diversity problem. Or Diversity is much greater than just male and female. It sounds so obvious but I can’t tell you how many times I have met and talked to people about diversity and they instantly fall back to the women in technology movement.

BarCampManchester6

No! Diversity isn’t simply that!

I even say it myself, what a poor victory it is, if we just add to while middle class women to the existing workforce of white middle class men. Our aim should be the moon not the lower stratosphere. Yes we work backwards but the aim should always be world changing, otherwise what’s the point?

There was quite discussion in the room and some slightly heated things were said (some people should know better, trying to put a hierarchy in place for diversity!), but Vimla kept some pretty dicey discussion on the level. Great work Vimla, look forward to Mozfest.

There were other good talks by many other people including the Happiness talk, Rosie’s Pareidolia and machine learning talk and many more. But Vimla’s talk really took the top spot for me.

BarCampManchester6

The wrap of BarCampManchester6 was full of prizes, which seems to be a tradition coming from BarCampBlackpool. I won something this time instead of being a prize myself (last time a date with me was a prize!). Claire and the team around her did a great job and they got me thinking about doing another BarCamp soon????

Will it happen…? Who knows… but lets say I have retired from running BarCamps 3 times now. Maybe its just time to stay in retirement.

As Claire said in the talk about running your own Barcamp, you can’t help but look at venues and think… This would be a great venue for a BarCamp…

Dyslexic minds in conversation at the #listeningproject

https://twitter.com/cubicgarden/status/647372334052077568

We did it… Myself and Kate!

On Friday  25th October 2015, myself and Kate met in the Media City Piazza where the Listening project booth was located for the day.

The BBC Radio 4 Listening project

After a chat with the lovely producers and some signing of paperwork, we paused for thought while the Director General (Tony Hall) was meant to visit and have a look around before we recorded. However Tony took too long and we pressed ahead regardless.

The BBC Radio 4 Listening project

Once in the booth we made ourselves comfortable, one of the producers explained she would only make hand gestures if things were not clear or the conversation dried up. Of course the only gesture me and Kate got was at the end, telling us it was done.

https://twitter.com/sarahkatenorman/status/647344266113630209/

Its hard to explain what happened in the conversation and I had hoped to linked to the audio files from the blog post (promise to do this once its live). The conversation was fun, interesting and bouncy (my word for dancing from subject to subject in a flow way). As I thought, Kate was a excellent partner in crime and to be honest we could have rolled on for another few hours I reckon.

Talking about time, I was very surprised when we were told to stop, as it only felt like 30mins had gone by in my head. This is certainly something I talked about in this blog entry about dyslexia, flow and time management. We slipped into a mild flow state of some kind.

And somewhere near the end, we both agreed to be taken out of our comfort zones for a weekend/few days.

The gravitas of this decision only hit me after the end of the recording when I thought…

“Oh this has been recorded and archived for the world… whoops!”

The BBC Radio 4 Listening project

It was fun and really enjoyable, I can’t recommend it enough to other people. But honestly it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun unless Kate.

Such a great friend! I can’t wait to listen back to the whole conversation and share with the world. This for me is an example of what I was talking about at BarCampManchester6 which I just came back from.

The secret of luck or the richness of life… We took the opportunity and are richer because of this experience. Plus it makes ourselves much more interesting, as it adds to our character and experience.

The BBC Radio 4 Listening project

Djing with insights

Speech bubbles at Erg

Si Lumb came up with the interesting term yesterday.

Djing with insights

Presenting strings of ideas/concepts in a non-linear method like a dj?

We had a brief chat about it today and concluded the software was the thing holding back the concept. I did suggest mindmaps but I agree its more like a making music with by live coding.

Interestingly I think the DJing with insights concept will be tested by myself during my online dating talk in November. No laptop, no slides, just me thoughts and a geeky passion for online dating.

It also reminds me of Jason Silva’s shots of awe, which is a kind of existential jazz. Not that un-similar from djing with insights or even mixing with concepts?

Jason Silva every week as he freestyles his way into the complex systems of society, technology and human existence and discusses the truth and beauty of science in a form of existential jazz

Lets talk about dating in the 21st century – Sunday 1st November

I have the absolute pleasure of sharing my knowledge, experiences and thoughts about online dating (or as I prefer dating generally) as a ragged university talk at one of my favourite venues, the royal exchange in central Manchester.

It on Sunday 1st November from 2pm – 5pm and its free to attend, so there is no excuse for not coming out to listen and take part in the discussion! I won’t even be using slides this time, it will be just me talking and throwing some thought out for people to discuss and fire back at me. Its going to be pretty raw or even ragged… (pun!)

I’m going to refer to quite a bit of stuff Aziz talks about in modern romance and heck might even use some of his open data source.

It won’t just be me, there will be Amber from Bristol University talking about the Mafia if you are less interested in the ways people meet and date in the 21 century.

I was introduced to Ragged talks when I attended one a while ago in the Castle Hotel. I liked the idea and instantly signed up to give a talk about something , of course I was pleased when I was given the green light to talk about dating and how much its changed from previous years gone by.

So what you waiting for…? Sign up now and I’ll see you at the Royal Exchange for a good discussion about dating. In the meanwhile, here’s my surface level talk about the same subject at the royal institution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyJ8gpgyD0

Is the future of user interface design actually, perceptive?

Jason Silva in his latest shot of awe, talks about the paradox of choice we all face with the advances in technology and increase choice. He also mentioned the fast company piece about the trend towards less choice, especially in user interface design.

Companies are catching on quickly. With the realization that data is much more valuable when used with other information, protocol is increasingly being adopted to ensure that data sharing is seamless. With the explosion of both data collection and unification, we’re creating an environment that, while not fully exposed, is at least open enough for information to be meaningfully aggregated.

Taken together in four steps—collection, unification, analysis, and implementation—we have an environment where information is working for you behind the scenes to do things automatically, all in the service of letting you focus on what’s most important to you in work and life.

I have concerns about this along with my thoughts about who/whom is writing the software and what is their opinion?

What Jason and others are talking about is contextual design or as I prefer perceptive design (along with perceptive media). As context only explains half of the solution and frankly anticipatory design sounds like when I first talked about intrusive media.  It will never find the mindshare with a name like that!

I think of Apple products as anticipatory and antihacker. I remember the blog I wrote when I saw Aral talk about user experience at Thinking Digital in 2013.

Perceptive design needs to empower people with  chances and experiences for mastery, not enslave them and ultimately make them feel trapped, lost and cut off from others.

Get involved in Mozfest 2015!

Mozfest 2014

Mozfest, oh Mozilla…!

Get involved in Mozfest 2015 – Proposals!

Last year we put out a call for participation but this year we have been so distracted with the changes, summer and other stuff, that we haven’t blogged or tweeted about the call for 2015’s mozfest! (our bad)

Our focus this year is around civic, community and social sustainable practice. We will explore the tension between the public and private in our creation the connected library. Its going to be quite different from last years focus on data ethics, but don’t worry its there in part.

In addition Mozilla are keen to see sessions that explore: 
  • Privacy and the web
  • Ethics of the web
  • Web literacy
  • Economy of the web
  • Inclusion and the web
  • Environment and the web
  • Future web now
  • Place and the web

So if you can please please read this blog post and then fill in the call for participation before it closes on Monday 31st August (I know I know! at least its BST+8) If you need more time, please please get in touch with me on twitter or email,ASAP…

This year things have changed, quite a bit. This year we are much more deeply involved and actually took part in a mozretreat in deepest darkest Fife, Scotland.

In the little Scottish fishing village of Anstruther, at the edge of nowhere, 40 community facilitators met to think about the future of Mozfest.

The upshot is a slightly changed Mozfest, which is no bad thing after 5 years of doing what it does well. Many people thoughts and ideas were squeezed into the retreat and the result was a slightly changed programme thoughts for the future.

Mozfest has always had a participatory community focus but there was a feeling things had gotten a little fragmented with people going to one track and not really checking out other things going on the floor above and beyond. Is there a way to have both the community participatory focus and something which encourages people to explore? So things have changed,  what exactly is complex  but luckly I don’t need to because Michelle has done this in her blog post.

Mozfest is a collection of participatory experiences.

As organizers, we set a framework for others to design and host these experiences. This builds on a set of learning principles as well as elements that can be combined to make the overall Mozfest program.

The main program elements are:

  • Session (an experience or activity)

  • Pathway (a series of sessions)

  • Space (a series of pathways)

So last year we were space wranglers and build a couple of spaces for people to experience and learn in (the framework). We also pulled together sessions and thought about how they connect and build on each other (aka we were doing the pathway role without realising it)

What are pathways, besides a series of sessions strung together? Well Michelle outlines the idea fully in another blog post. Basically pathways are like the lines on a train maps with interchanges to take a different route to the same goal.

Its going to be one heck of mission working this all out but frankly BarCamp and Mozfest shouldn’t really work but they do, extremely well!

 

Marching to the beat of my own drum

Time To Walk Like A Rebel

I had a read of Thought Catalog over breakfast in Vivid Lounge and came across this post which I certainly could identify with.

10 Signs You March To The Beat Of Your Own Drum

  1. You have a strong distaste for the status quo.
    Its less of a distaste, more a lack of interest in a system which rejects and marginalizes people because they are different.
  2. You lack respect for authority figures.
    I’m more skeptical and wary of authority. Partly down to previous experience but it can also be an advantage in compliance and social engineering scams.
  3. You can objectively look at both sides of an issue.
    Yep its a bit strange, as I can always play the devils advocate. It tends to frustrate.
  4. You’re passionate about learning
    I’m all about life long learning and admitting I quite enjoy learning.
  5. You’re always up for a good debate.
    This plays right back at the devils advocate things, I won’t lie a good debate is how you learn and refine.
  6. Sometimes people think you’re crazy.
    Indeed…
  7. You’re always refining your ideas.
    Through debate, discussion and collaboration.
  8. You limit the amount of media you consume.
    This one is something I find interesting. People always wonder why I haven’t heard about this and that. I mean how could I not know about this and that? Interestingly the Freakonomics covered something similar a few weeks ago in a podcast.I do limit how media I consume, by limiting the number of time I spend looking at Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’m also a chooser, so I don’t just put the Radio/TV on and watch whats on. Likewise I’m choosy on what and where I spend my attention.
  9. You fear being average.
    Doesn’t everybody? I do wonder if most people think about this?
  10. You’re never bored.
    Indeed, theres so much that can and should be done. Be it physically, mentally or elsewhere. Life’s too exciting to be bored…!

Great stuff… and I leave you with this… Thanks Chris

https://twitter.com/chrismessina/status/614201228952797184

Mindmapping the VR space

Chris McCann started mapping  out the VR ecosystem on his medium blog. I found it interesting but noticed a few missing things. I was going to craft a tweet to him but decided actually this might make better sense in a mindmap, because the stated aim is…

I wanted to get a better understanding of all of the different players and how the whole ecosystem fits together.

So I created a mindmap using the excellent mindmup and I got a chance to try out their new atlas service to show and share. I’m already thinking about collaborating with people I know and connecting some of the items together. I also wouldn’t mind doing the same on the AR side of things.

Think like a child?

Many people have said and commented I think like a child or that I am childlike…?

On the face of it, it can be seen as a negative thing, I mean who wants to be compared to a child? Heck theres even game shows asking if you are smarter than a child. But I don’t see it that way.

This is a side effect of my dyslexia in daily life, and has a interesting affect on relationships. However I and the freakonomics think this is a good way of going about life…

It may be that we embrace the idea in this book of thinking like children because we’re kind of, you know, childlike. We have kind of obvious observations sometimes. There’s observations that strike people as obvious. We ask a lot of questions that are not considered, you know, the kind of questions that people ask in good company or smart company. But one of the most powerful pieces of thinking like a child that we argue is thinking small.

Thinking like a child is a gift and a advantage I would argue.

…what I find is that kids are better at paying attention to more than one thing. Their attention is more diffuse. Adults are really good at focusing on one thing and ignoring peripheral distractions, whereas kids are really good at sort of shotgunning their attention all over the place. Which is a good way to learn. It’s good when you’re first learning how things work, when you’re first exploring the world. But in magic, you want the person to focus on one thing. You want to direct their attention to one particular thing so that they won’t see what’s going on in the shadows…

Ah attention… They tell us that multi-tasking is a bad thing but regardless I feel better when multitasking. Unless I’m delving into the flow state with others, but I’m still wondering elsewhere.

…I think it’s also that they’re approaching it with this curiosity and it’s this sponge-like desire, and that they’re always making theories. That’s the other thing. I don’t feel like adults are like that. I sort of feel like they watch it and they’re waiting for the punchline, and then they sort of see it, and then they maybe go back and think about it. With kids, you get this sense that at every step of the way they’re trying to understand it. From the second they see it, they’re always coming up with theories

I think the general picture, when you talk about risks as adults, when we’re trying to decide on a course of action, we’re always balancing the risks and utilities. Whether that’s a risk to my reputation or my ego or my future interactions with other people or just a risk to my profit margin. And kids aren’t in that world of—or at least, if they’re being taken care of properly—they’re not in that world of risk and utility calculations. That liberates then, that frees them to, as we say, play.

Curiosity and play, something which we as adults seem to lose for many reason. Risk of being wrong in front of peers is a big one. This seems linked to the fear of rejection in my mind. But I guess risk is a better word for it in general.

The point I’m making is, a child like outlook isn’t a bad thing and actually we might be better off with child like thinking.

There is something about being a child, about having that particular childlike mind and brain, that is the thing that’s letting you explore more and, in some sense, be more creative. And that there are things that we could do even as adults that put us back into that kind of state.

Variations not versions

https://twitter.com/martynkelly/status/624266599000838150

It was Si Lumb who tweeted me about Pixar’s Inside Out contextual visuals.

Now I know this isn’t anything new, I mean films have had region differences for a long while but its good to see it discussed openly and I was interesting to read about how (we think) they do it.

It’s interesting to note that the bottom five entries of the list, starting with “Thai Food,” remain consistent throughout (maybe Disney/Marvel Studios’ digital wizards couldn’t replace the stuff that Chris Evans’ hand passed over), but the top items change a lot.

Which leads me to think its all done in post production using things like impossible software?

Post producing this stuff is a mistake in my mind, but then again I’m working on the future of this kind of thing with Perceptive Media. I also imagine the writer and director had no time to think about variations for different countries, or wasn’t paid enough?

Rather than write up my thoughts of how to do this with digital cinema (isn’t this part of the promise of digital cinema?) plus I’m writing a paper with Anna frew about this. I thought it was about time I wrote something about the project I’m currently working on.

Visual Perceptive Media

Visual perceptive media is a short film which changes based on the person who is watching the video. It uses profiled data from a phone application to build a profile of the user via their music collection and some basic questions. The data then is used to inform what variations it should apply to the media when watched.

The variations are applied in real time and include different music, different colour grading, different video assets effects and much more. Were using the WebAudioAPI, WebGL and other open web technologies.

What makes this different or unique…?

  • We had buy in with the script writer and director (Julius Amedume was both and amazing) right from the very start which makes a massive difference. The scripts were written with all this in mind.
  • It was shot and edited with its intended purpose of making real-time variations.
  • Most things we (BBC R&D) have done in the responsive/perceptive area has been audio based and this I would say is a bit of moonshot moment like Breaking Out 3 years ago! Just what I feel the BBC should be doing.
  • Keeping with the core principle of Perceptive media, the app which Manchester based startup Percepiv (was moment.us, wondered if working with us had a hand in the name change?) created using there own very related technology. Is mainly using implicit data to build the profile. You can check out music+personality on your own android and iphone now.

Its going to be very cool and I believe we the  technology has gotten to the point where it makes sense that we can do this so seamlessly that people won’t even know or realise (this is something we will be testing in our lab). As Brian McHarg says, theres going to be some interesting water cooler conversations, but the slight variations are going to be even more subtle and interesting.

This is no branching narrative

I have been using the word variations throughout this post because I really want us to get away from the notion of edits or versions. I recently had the joy of going Learn Do, Share Warsaw. I was thinking about how to explain what our thinking was with the Visual Perceptive Media project. How do you explain which has 2 films genres with 6 established endings with 20+ types music genres and a endless number of lengths and effects?

This certainly isn’t a branching narrative and the idea of branching narrative is certainly not apt here. If this was a branching narrative, it would have upwards of 240 versions not including any of the more subtle effects to increase your viewing enjoyment. I considered them as variations and the language works, when you consider the photoshop variation tool. This was very handy when talking to others not so familiar with perceptive media.  But its only a step and makes you consider there might be editions…

I was talking to my manager Phil about it before heading to Warsaw and came up with something closer to the tesseract/hypercube in interstellar (if you not seen it/spoiler alert!)

Unlimited Variations

Unlimited isn’t quite right but the notion of time and variations which intersect is much closer to the idea. I say to Si Lumb maybe the way to show this would be in VR, as I certainly can’t visualise it easily.

When its up and running I’d love people to have a go and get some serious feedback.

On a loosely related subject, Tony Churnside also tweeted me about Perceptive Media breaking into the advertising industry.