Category: socialware-offline

Thinking digital have recently decided to branch out and provide some of the big thinking of the full conference to teenagers in the north west in a unique collaboration with Gateshead council. When Herb filled me on on the idea, there was no way I was going to say no.

My talk was a bit about who I am, what I do and what the BBC is doing up in the north. Then the bulk of it was about Tweetfoxxy which I've been very quiet about recently. It was good to talk to people aged 16-21, but boy are they a hard audience too. Anyway, it was a good experience and I had quite a few people coming up afterwards asking questions about me and the BBC, so although I was talking maybe a tad quickly, most of it got across. If I was to do it again I would do a talk about why some of us think broadcasting is dead. Obviously this wouldn't be a official BBC presentation but maybe more a thoughtful presentation which I have done elsewhere before.

The whole conference was pretty uplifting in nature and it seems to had the crowd buzzing afterwards which was good. It was a shame one of the colleges yanked all there students out halfway through the day and that the last 3 talks about games were more about what you can go and build now in your bedroom rather that how to join a traditional games studio. There was lots of talk about fitting into the studio and was dying to ask a question about not fitting in. But today was for the teenagers not for old farts like me to ask the difficult questions.

The presentation and almost performance of the day almost went to Paul Callaghan who ended his talk with a sing along, Tom Scott did another excellent job of showing how fun graphs can be if your slightly geeky. but the best has to be the FT guy (Mike Southon) who demostrated how collaboration, team work, being positive and being smart all lead to the successful Beatles strategy. Put it this way, I didn't even know most of the things he was talking about and I was totally convinced after hearing the whole presentation. Man I really need to learn how to do presentations like that.

Most things in the conference clicked including the inclusion of a young band (The Ruskins) to play us out before lunch and before going home. They played 4 songs in total and kept everyone entertained along with the talks. The venue of the sage 2 is simply amazing in all aspects except the lack of power to anywhere in the room. If I could choose anywhere to put on a conference, this would be high in my recommendation. Talking about venues, I've been in talks with the Baltic again about using it for a BarCamp in the North West, so hopefully that will go somewhere before the next thinking digital conference because I know there were plans to have another one straight after the conference.

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So the last month I've been working my butt off on a load of things, but its all coming together (crosses his fingers) but enough about that for now. I'm also off to a few places in the near future.

First up I'm talking at Thinking Digital: The next generation which is this Friday in the Sage, Gateshead. Its aimed at university students, graduates and young professionals in the North East. Its already sold out I'm sorry to say, but its going to be a good day for everyone involved.

Directly afterwards is the Oreilly Maker Faire which is the first one in the UK and looks like a weekend of hacker joy. I'm working in a small team from the BBC so hopefully we're create something pretty impressive together. I'm hoping to just learn a bit of processing or solider my old bluetooth headset into something interesting.

I have never been to South by South West (SXSW) as I can never really justify it. Instead I'm going to Microsoft's Mix 2009 which is in Las Vegas. Thanks to Eileen Brown me and Rainycat to talk and discuss BBC Backstage at this great event. I'm hoping some of the other work we've been working on involving video will also be ready to announce in Las Vegas too. Good things tend to come out of Mix 09 including the RSS stuff from Microsoft so who knows whats in the pipeline for this year. I won't lie but I can't wait to get back on Speed the ride. Last time I did 8 in a row and could easily do more this time.

Coming back from Mix 09, the weekend after is BarCampLondon6 and BarCampBournemouth the weekend after that. Depending on how things go I might have to drop out of one of them. We'll see how much work I got on and whats also going in the North around those times.

Its then not long till my 30th birthday. I'm still working out the plans but it looks like the Friday night I'll go out in either Manchester/London/Bristol, then on the Saturday another city then Sunday its Alton Towers for a day of riding as many Rollercoasters as possible.

As Rain pointed out, I might be getting a little too excited as I uploaded HD versions of my last rollercoster trip to Blackpool pleasure beach to Flickr (who now support HD videos under 90s). But I can honestly say I was just testing the HD support and had nothing under 90secs except this clips. I'm actually wondering about the quality of Flickr vs BlipTV vs Vimeo. I hear Vimeo have the best compressions of all but I'm sure Flickr have worked hard on this problem too.

Its going be a hectic month but for good reasons…time to quickly update my dopplr which looks crazy.

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Thousand Portraits from Carlo Nicora on Vimeo.

Our project is a true portrait of Britain created by photographing 1,000 people.
We stopped everyone who crossed our path on the streets of London, excluding nobody, asking the same question more than fifteen hundred times.
In a moment where recession is the main subject of every discussion, it was striking to come across such positive attitude.

I love the idea but one thing pain's me about this project. All the shots were taken in London but this is meant to be the portrait of Britain? Thats simply not right and a real let down for such a nice project.

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Yes believe it or not the BBC is also involved in the BarCamp movement but currently only through its own internal BarCamp titled BeebCamp. For those who don't know sometimes the BBC is called Antie Beeb, I don't quite know why either it seems to be a legacy thing. Anyhow this is the 2nd Beebcamp, I had missed the first one due to it being not as widely advertised. The main guy behind it Philip Trippenback did a good job bring together a diverse group of people from around the BBC to the event which was held in the White City main building. It felt more like a external BarCamp because of some of the regular characters being at the event. We invited about 10-15 non-BBC people to join us and stop the usual internal chatter which you usually get with internal events.

Shooting on small cameras
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This was the first session and I got to say a really good one. I didn't say anything till much later in the session because it was a joy to finally hear someone saying what I've been saying all along. The premise was that we (the BBC) should be able to shoot on small cameras including Flip Cameras and even Mobile phones. Reasons? Many, including purpose, cost, reaction to the camera, conversational media and what is broadcast quality? The last three were very fitting with some problems we've been having recently.

There was a really good talk about the reaction people have to the camera and how we move to a more conversational media of the internet, rocking up with a complete camera crew even a person with a camera and boom mic causes people to act and can disrupt the environment. Huey from Radio one talked about a example when Jo Whiley was filming backstage and some rock star asked her if she was broadcasting? She replied nope its just for my blog and he then said ok and threw up.

The debate then turned around to what is broadcast quality and this is one of biggest bug bears. The BBC does have a standard for broadcast quality but what it doesn't have is a standard for internet video. This could be partly because there assuming you will shoot for television then convert it to the internet. Well thankfully not everyone is thinking that way. Although I do remember having a conversation with a work friend about PAL and NTSC recently. She said we should shoot in PAL because we live in the UK and I said yes maybe but what I was actually wondering was when you encode the final video file does 30fps instead of 25fps work better in the video codec we choose?

I'm a pirate and what you going to do about it?
I decided to run this one myself again off the success of the conversation at Amplified08. Once again this one always brings out the pirates in everyone and frank conversation about the state of on-line media. I wish I'd recorded this one as it was that good. Anyway I can't remember much of the details because we covered a lot of things including the pirate bay case which Rachel Clarke pointed out Sofia Metcalfe is covering it via Twitter, which is handy because its all in Swedish. The notion of how scared the BBC is of being associated with BitTorrent came out too, which was very interesting, even with stories like LegalTorrents and LinuxTorrents.

The general consensus around the table was that BitTorrent is a neutral technology and the BBC should be using it when possible rather avoiding it, its almost unstoppable. I say unstoppable because there was discussion about streaming and how the ability to upload videos to youtube, viddler, vimeo, blip, etc, etc. Has grown very fast and the audience for that kind of watching is maybe more that the bittorrent users. Even Boxee came up in the 20min discussion, which is currently having to remove Hulu from Boxee because rights holds just keep on moaning.

Actually I think thats where we ended. Maybe the BBC has a vital role in educating and advising the rights holders about Free culture. Interestingly Jason was thinking about the future of the Licence Fee. I certainly like the idea of our audience (people formally known as our audience) being participations but I think we need both processes to work hand in hand otherwise yes you will get something which is more like Epic 2014/5.

What should the BBC do with twitter.com/bbc? [video]
Another good session this time from Jem Stone and Arron. I twittered this one on the day. So the question has been asked and my answer is “do nothing for now.” I can't imagine what BBC would twitter. Jem makes the point CNN has a person whos the voice of CNN but the BBC is a really diverse beast and I don't believe anyone person even Mark Thompson (the director general) could be the person behind twitter.com/bbc. I'm totally open to change my mind if someone comes up with a good idea but right now the best we could come up with is for the account to follow all other BBC people. But then someone did rightly ask, would they follow people working for the BBC such as myself or just personalties like Stephen Fry??

There was so much more including an attempt to build the BBC's organisational using grassroots methods,

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The Werewolves are currently up three to the villagers single win.

But its all to play for….

come join the party and help stop the Werewolves killing everyone in the Manchester village. Monday 2nd March at 6:30pm till late, sign up at the yahoo upcoming page.

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Taken from Cory's BoingBoing post.

Wikipedia's list of confidence tricks is a globe-spanning journey through con-jobs ancient and modern. Required and fascinating reading:

A clip joint or fleshpot is an establishment, usually a strip club or entertainment bar, typically one claiming to offer adult entertainment or bottle service, in which customers are tricked into paying money and receive poor, or no, goods or services in return. Typically, clip joints suggest the possibility of sex, charge excessively high prices for watered-down drinks, then eject customers when they become unwilling or unable to spend more money. The product or service may be illicit, offering the victim no recourse through official or legal channels.

The Melon Drop is a scam in which the scammer will intentionally bump into the mark and drop a package containing (already broken) glass. He will blame the damage on the clumsiness of the mark, and demand money in compensation. This con arose when artists discovered that the Japanese paid large sums of money for watermelons. The scammer would go to a supermarket to buy a cheap watermelon, then bump into a Japanese tourist and set a high price.

List of confidence tricks

As most of you already know I'm a big fan of the public being totally aware of these type of tricks or scams. Its self protection from the elements who will take anything from you if let them.

It would be good to actually link some of these with the Real Hustle episodes which are mainly online now. We also need something like this for the electronic world. I don't just mean how to identify scam email but also more advanced stuff like checking certs, setting up vpns and checking for leaking for information. And of course we need a ton around simply language multiplation (social engineering). Too many people fall for these scams/tricks.

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Its really good to see a bunch of BarCamp Participations taking the future realms of BarCamp. Simon Wilison must have had a hand in the Guardian hosting the event at there new swanky offices near Kings Cross. Other people involve include Emma Persky, Caz Mockett, Tom Morris, Dirk Ginader, Leeky and others.

The London BarCamp is over the weekend of 28th and 29th March which is yes a overnight BarCamp (good to see because the temptation is to go with the easier route of split 2 days). BBC Backstage is one of the sponsors along with some company called Yahoo. The tickets are due to arrive mid month and be given out in waves to ensure they are given to many new people. From my understanding were talking about somewhere between 100-150 tickets, so its going to be a very hot ticket. There is a mailing list for people who want to know when the next lot of tickets will be, so sign up now if you don't want to miss out.

I love the new logo by the way… really well thought out…

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Not a great turn out for the first Manchester chapter of Werewolf, lots of people cancelled and the Gaza protest almost made the whole night a fruitless experience. However by 7:30pm (hour later that planned) we had enough people to play and we were off. Here's some pictures from the last game which also happen to be the only game the villagers won out of the four played. And only think that happened because we introduced the healer to give the werewolves more to worry about. I'm planning the next one for about 3 weeks time now, if your interested look out for announcements on twitter and upcoming. I also expect we may try setting up a game using multiple cameras, as all the video footage I've found for werewolf has been shaky hand stuff. I'm sure with a fish eye lens in the middle of the circle we could recording some amazing footage.

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So I'm officially starting up the Manchester Chapter of the Werewolf gamers fans. Not much more to say except all the details are on Upcoming.org.

If you don't know what Werewolf the game is… Think of it as a Social Game of Deception, Paranoia, and Mob Rule.

Its a social mind game for 8-25 players, in which a vengeful group of villagers must figure out who among them is secretly a werewolf (before it’s too late…) Each “night” the werewolves eat a villager, and each “day” the surviving villagers attempt to rid the town of werewolves by lynching one of their own.

Werewolf is a game that takes place in a small village which is haunted by werewolves. Each player is secretly assigned a role – Werewolf, Villager, or Seer (a special Villager). There is also a Moderator player who controls the flow of the game. The game alternates between night and day phases. At night, the Werewolves secretly choose a Villager to kill. Also, the Seer (if still alive) asks whether another player is a Werewolf or not. During the day, the Villager who was killed is revealed and is out of the game. The remaining Villagers then vote on the player they suspect is a Werewolf. That player reveals his/her role and is out of the game. Werewolves win when there are an equal number of Villagers and Werewolves. Villagers win when they have killed all Werewolves.

If you want to know more check out these rules here.

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Well I like to think I have. As you can see I've done a lot of trips every month this year but its Manchester to London and back again, which I'm doing frequently. The most costly on Carbon was my trip to Berlin, even more so that my crazy trip to Paris via Amsterdam. I wonder how this stacks up against other community managers/evangelistsTechnorati Tags: green, carbon, footprint, dopplr, ianforrester:dopplr=2008 from companys like Yahoo and Microsoft? Think of the BBC Backstage as your green friendly developer network.

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Huge thanks to everyone who came to BBC Backstage first's North West Networking Bash. We partied right through from 7pm to 3am, and loved every moment of it. I spent most of the night socialising and making sure everything was swinging in the right direction. We did start a little later that expected due to a BBC Taxi which took longer that it should have to get everything moved across. Thankfully I had help from Leanne, so before long the wii was in place (thanks the hodge, which I learned was also Dominic) and there was a crowd of people watching Mario Kart 4 player. While downstairs was filling up quickly, I setup the Skype link on the mezzannie level. As usual I had problems with Ubuntu's multiple display support but it was solved with a restart. Actually the biggest problem of the night was the plasma screens. They were old and only supported Svideo and VGA in, which meant we played Mario Kart in black and white too.

The food paid for by BBC Backstage was top notch and there was plenty to go around, The drink which was sponsored by Adaptivitist and although a small amount, it lasted right through to after midnight. Everyone was being very sensible only drinking singles and bottles, no crazy necking of drinks, just everyone having a good time. Talking about having a good time, the live link up with London via Skype was perfectly placed next to the bar, meaning people could play while waiting for drinks at our own private bar. I seen everything from messages back and forth to Hangman. All good fun, unfortually the London end seemed to cut off about 12:30am and so the fun only lasted so long. According to some people I had some stalker in London who kept asking for me, oh well.

All in all, we had just over 200 people attend the bash which is fantastic, it was a real cross section of the communities across the North too. Thanks to Adrian for stepping in for Kevin at the last minute to speak to everyone about the BBC's role in the north now and in future. Thanks to Dan from adaptivist for drinks again, thanks to Leanne and Micheal sparks for helping and thanks to everyone who came along and enjoyed the night.

There's pictures of not only the Manchester event but also the London one on Flickr. I expect to put the videos up a bit later and it will be linked to from backstage directly. So look out for those.

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Hemmysphere wrote in a twitter Single male friends, take heed and lie. Oh, and good luck http://tinyurl.com/6ztpfz. So I checked out the link and its a guardian article about how woman are impressed with a man who reads. Wow, really? I would never have guessed…. So yes the secret is out, woman find men who read impressive. yes todays ground breaking news fresh from the Guardian. Sometimes the obvious is interesting, sometimes not so much… However I do like the idea of brains over looks.

A survey commissioned by the National Year of Reading has found the top 10 reads to impress a woman. Top of the list is Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. If you also drop in that you adore Shakespeare, poetry, and cookery books; are never off current affairs websites; and – sorry readers – that you take the Financial Times, then there may be queues. The poll also delves into dating deceit. Lying about something you've read to impress someone you're taken with comes second after telling untruths about sexual conquests, but ahead of lying about your age or job.

The National Year of Reading is spending 2008 trying to get more people reading, in any form, whether it is books, magazines or websites. It said the poll was an attempt to explore the importance of reading in all aspects of people's lives. The campaign's director, Honor Wilson-Fletcher, said: “I love the fact that every generation seems to know that reading can help us all increase our potential appeal in the search for love and romance. For all the talk of our superficial obsession with beauty, it looks like underneath it all we know that brains contribute to sex appeal too.

So just remember this all you lovely woman when you see me reading my ebook off my new ipod touch. Hummmm, I wonder if that has the same appeal?

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So on the way back from Liverpool on the train. BarCampLiverpool was a blast, I believe a good time was had by all. The turn out wasn't quite the BarCamp busting 200, but it didn't matter, the 100 people that did turn up on Saturday really enjoyed themselves and made the whole event go without a problem. Thanks to Katie Lips and the rest of the crew for finding a nice venue and setting up the first Liverpool BarCamp. It was also covered in the local media, which makes a really nice change, although it would have been good if they had come down and did interviews with the BarCampers themselves.

The sessions were interesting and varied, just like the people. I think there was about 35/65 split for new barcamp virgins vs seasoned barcampers. Everything from how to put OpenID in your WordPress to Sex (yes more about that later). Its certainly a trend which many of spotted recently, talks are suprisingly engaging and are gaining bigger audiences that presentations.

BarCampLiverpool was a two day event but with no sleepover element. Its a shame because I think the huge drop of numbers (100 down to about 40) on Sunday might not have been so deep if people didn't have to go home. Katie and team did offer barcampers a party at a great little private bar only 2mins walk around the corner instead which did go on till 2am. The drinks all night were sponsored by Microsoft and we actually didn't end up drinking it all because it was meant to be 200 people not 100+. Thanks Microsoft and Steve Clayton for supporting the grassroots. Of course BBC Backstage was also a sponsor of the events food and the food was well recieved through-out the whole event. Actually the balance of sponsorship through out the event was about right, in the past I've seen BarCamps where they have been too sponsorship driven and not enough. A couple of signs here and there and it would have been perfect. This is certainly something other BarCamp's should pay attention of.

I spent time at many sessions but the ones which stick out in my mind are Phil's how to present better which got a lot of people talking about presentation fu. The Hodge's SEO talk, where we finally got down to the core of the seo which is just plain old good customer service. There were plenty more, but I can't remember them at this present moment due to the lack of sleep.

BarCamp is famous for the small talks you have in between other sessions and a short talk I had with Jon the health care professional about the effects of Vodka, Redbull and Tabsco hot sauce on the body and mind, was insightful. It came after the night of drinking when I turned up at BarCamp on Sunday a complete hour early because I thought we kick off again at 10am. I was cursing the extra hour I could have had, but after a quick blast on the pacemaker with the loud speakers and the chat with Jon Spriggs and the other Jon, I think it was worth the rush to get there for 10am.

At 11am on Sunday I chaired a talk about Sex. The session was attended by about 20+ people and as someone else called it the best session they have ever been to at any BarCamp. It started off with me talking about the fact we never talk about the sleezey side of the internet and life. Not only that but two films YPF and my complete history of sexual failures had got me thinking more about that Wired article about Geeks making better lovers. The parts of interest include.

Geeks don't shock easily

Geeks have seen all the porn you can imagine and then some, priming them to be open to your sexual peccadilloes. They are not only less likely to be shocked by your exotic requests — they might not even realize that other people think your turn-ons are exotic.

Conversely, your geek lover might be relieved that your wildest fantasy involves only two other people, five utensils and a trapeze.

Geeks know kinky people

Geeks haven't just seen a variety of positions, kinks and fetishes in blue movies. They know (or are) people who enjoy those things, so they don't dismiss entire categories of sexual interests as the sole province of a bunch of weirdos in San Francisco.

It's hard to sustain prejudice and bias against an abstract group when you develop relationships with individuals and discover they're just like you. It doesn't matter if they dress up like ponies, or refuse to conform to a societal idea of gender norms, or eat pancakes for dinner. Geek lovers know better than to try to impose their sexual preferences or standards on others — including your friends — and are more likely to love and let love.

Geeks aren't threatened by new tech or “the future of sex”

Geeks have read the science fiction. They know the dire predictions of a world in which the sticky press of flesh is replaced by neural nets and sex robots that also do housework (or is that house robots that also do sex work?).

Geeks have imagined more sexual dystopias than the average person and are the first to see the technological developments that could lead us down dark paths. Which only makes sense, considering who develops those technologies in the first place.

At the same time, geeks know better than anyone that something always goes wrong when you lean on machines for your social fulfillment. A geek doesn't mind if you bring home the iiErotoTrix 5000 v3 — as long as you share it.

Literacy and the printing press did not replace sex; neither did photography, automobiles, video, online porn or 3-D escort services. Geek lovers spend enough time with technology to appreciate the unique wondrousness of human touch.

The adult discussion on the subject turned out totally differently that I'd expected. There was lots of jokes and nervious humour from people around the circle but they helped loosen peoples toungue. Obviously I'm not going to share exact details of what was said but it started at Bedposted and Facebook statuses and ended up somewhere much deeper and darker that I can really talk about on a public blog. It was something else

The only negative thing I have to say, is druing the party after the pitching event. I was pitched at with some  force and to be honest this really got my back up and bugged me. BarCamp works becuase of the spirit of openness of the whole thing but we must remind people to take that on-board when joining or taking part. This isn't simple a place to pitch your wares, yourself or some new product your working on. If you do, people will leave your session and you won't get anything positive out of BarCamp.

Great BarCamp, glad I went. Whens the next one Katie?

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I picked this up via a twitter from Nicole Simon and had a quick read while getting ready to go out for a lunch meeting. Emma's at tons of BarCamp including the tiny ones. I'm actually surprised she's not put one on yet.

A couple of comments however. I love step one and that step four cancels it out if needed. Its very frustrating to hear people say, I've got nothing to talk about when your suggesting they fill the board with talks. Sometimes I feel like saying, what the bloody hell are you doing here if your not going to participate. The small group thing is a good idea, or try and go to sessions not run by your friends just because there your friend. Don't get me wrong its nice to support friends but sometimes, they need to get jump in the deepend.

Getting up early (step 3) is painful specially after a conference party the previous day. But Emmas right, from the orgainser's point of view there's nothing worst than people new turning up late who don't know what to do. Us rehular barcampers should also make a effort, to remind orgainsers of certain things they forget.

Step 5 about hijacking or leaving a session is so important and most organisers don't mention it which is a problem. In BarCampBerlin3 I turned up to a session about CSS frameworks and it turned out to be a big plug for a framework the guys was working on. Nothing wrong with that if it was advertised that way but it wasn't and although me and Nicole were the only english speakers and had asked for the session to be in english at the start. We still left because it was putting us (or rather me) to sleep.

Keeping in touch and having no plans is essential. But having fun is so forgotten. Sometimes I look around and think to myself, wow BarCamp is like geek paradise – where else would you want to be? I guess this is why the idea of Geekcamp or Geekholidays is coming back into focus within my mind.

And finally, yes please spend sometime and think about running your own BarCamp. Some people still ask me why I stopped running them in London. Well its because its something I believe other people should experience for themselves. When Ben Metcalfe asked me to be his partner in crime for BarCampLondon1 I wasn't sure what to expect (hell I don't think any of us were) but it worked out really well (some still say it was the best barcamp). But there's new areas and places to try BarCamps in. I'm already getting involved in a possible BarCampManchester2 which might be Backstage funded and a possible BarCampHuddersfield which came about through a discussion with Lisa from Futuresonic. There's also more concerete plans for BarCampNorthEast2 which to date has been the only overnight BarCamp in the north of england! Shame on the north of england… Someone should do something about that. Well if I get either Manchester2 or Huddersfield going, fear not – they will be overnighters….

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