Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Urban artistry is putting on a series of Street art documentaries every month at Cultplex.
The Streetart / Graffiti documentaries starts on Thursday the 4th of July.
Tickets are £5.50 and all screenings are 18+ Cinema doors will open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. Food and drink are available from 6pm – 10pm.
The first one starts with Martha: A picture Story Year: 2019
If you are in Manchester and into street culture, this has to be a must!
I have just spent 15 days in the Netherlands, on the whole it was great but after 5 hotels and a generous friend it was hard work. A bunch of things happened which are hard to explain without a lot of detail, which I can’t go into. However…
There was a bunch of problems with my flights which had a knock on effect.
Sunday 18th June, I was booked, packed and had my boarding pass ready to get on my evening Easyjet flight to Amsterdam from Manchester. I just got back from the Northern Quarter after having brunch with a friend. Funny enough she asked me when my flight is and I joked it was 90mins from that moment.
On the walk back from brunch, I received a text message fr0m Easyjet.
We’re really sorry that your easyJet flight 2167 from MAN to AMS on 18-06-2023 has been cancelled due to poor weather. We understand that this will be disappointing news and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to make new plans.
What the hell I thought then when I got home I saw the email. 3 options were available.
I picked option 1 but there were no flights available to Amsterdam till late the next day. Meaning I would miss a lot of the first day of Mozilla House. With some authorisation and time running short, I triple checked KLM were still flying and booked that one for about a hour or so later than the original Easyjet one. I can’t even explain how stressful this was because I couldn’t leave till I had the boarding pass on my phone & gdrive. With a small amount of time I could only get a Uber to the airport check in with my cabin luggage (I can’t do 2 weeks with a small amount of luggage), get through security and board the plane.
When I finally got to Amsterdam, the hotel was completely automated by email, which I never answered due to the change of flights. Luckily one of the team saw my signal messages after midnight and let me in so I could actually check in.
2 hotels later and a great Mozilla House event in Amsterdam (more on this in another blog post). My plan to visit a friend in Rotterdam was thrown into chaos with Rotterdam upgrading its railways. This meant booking another hotel very last minute but I did end up going to Walibi Holland still.
Goliath x8 (not steel dragon 2000, but similar in construction)
Untamed x10 (first time I been on a RMC steel converted woodie and it was brutal)
Speed of sound x3
Loss of gravity x15 (not the smiler, but same maker and track style, not enough inversions)
Xpress platform 13 – x1
As I wasn’t spending 4 hours getting back to Rotterdam, I got to do a bunch of other stuff including watching the Flash with Dutch subtitles.
Anyway back to flights and travel. On my return to Manchester on Easyjet, I got to the Airport with plenty of time. My partner had joined me after the Publicspaces conference in hotel number 5 and we had booked flights a long time ago just incase. I spent a long time (30+ mins with the messaging system) cancelling my part of that flight and then moving my new flight seat next to my partner on the return. Worth noting Easyjet wouldn’t cancel my extra luggage, although I wouldn’t be on that booking any-more.
I get to the Amsterdam airport and try to check in to find my boarding pass isn’t valid. We try different ways to check if I’m on the flight but none of them work. I call Easyjet and the company who booked the flight. Its a long story but by the time I understand what happened, my options to leave were fading away to zero. I even considered the Eurostar and almost booked one of the last business class seats on KLM but they couldn’t guarantee I would make it to the plane in time.
Luckily my good friend Si had offered following me a room after having to book a hotel due to Rotterdam.
Finally after 15 days, 5 different hotels and 2 conferences; I was back in Manchester again.
The thing I learned is Easyjet cancels both flights even if you request to cancel only the outgoing flight.I gather this isn’t true for every airline but I don’t think they are the only one. Easyjet insists they sent emails to me but as I wasn’t the booker, it didn’t get to me. Although they did have my mobile number and email address. Right now we are going through this all to see what went wrong.
Dont get me wrong I had a amazing time in Amsterdam, worked really hard throughout but got the right blend of work and pleasure. However my credit card looks pretty damaged although I will get back the flights, some hotels are on me.
I had most of my windows done in my apartment this week. There is a long story involving one of my glass panels being smashed in the middle of the night (from memory of when I heard one hell of a crack)
When I woke up in the morning, I walked into the living room and shouted something pretty rude and got on the phone to our residents liaison (that is a whole different story). Didn’t get through so sent emails but the builders were already ripping out the shatter glass. I talked with them through my restricted window. Long story short, they were able to get the panel of glass to installed the next day (Thursday 6th). In actual fact they put in the panel next to it too. Nice present for my birthday weekend, but friends couldn’t believe the pictures when I showed them in the party.
I was asked if I could allow access to my whole flat for a complete glass refit on Tuesday 11th. I agreed as I was going to be away and after coming back from a spa weekend. After coming back on Tuesday evening I found the new windows except in the second bedroom. I expect that will take another 5-6 weeks.
There is a lot more to this all including moving everything away from the windows, the endless back and forth getting a date and being let down. Will it make a difference to the heat? Its hard to tell because the original designs have changed and the windows are clearly less able to open as wide. There was always plans for two open windows to provide a in and out draft but in the Living room there is one. Plus its actually smaller than the original one and can’t open so wide.
One thing I do have is the temperature sensors in the living room and bedroom which I’m planning to map alongside the historical temperature over the last year (which I also have), to really understand the difference the new windows are making.
I have the absolute pleasure of hosting the incredible Cory Doctorow in Waterstones Manchester on Wednesday 31st May at 1830.
Cory I have known for a long while through many different events and through friend. His books are simply another level, from the fictional works to the deeply powerful non-fiction ones.
There is so much to be said starting with the book of course. Now to be honest, I heard most of Cory’s books via audiobooks. However my ever so sweet partner has offered to read me red team blues, which is great because its a really good opportunity to talk about the tech/rights/data side of things which we have only touched a couple of times.
You can sign up to the conversation with myself and Cory on the waterside site. Expect a real fascinating evening of wonder and conversation covering a lot of what makes Cory … Cory.
Cory will be signing books too, so bring your questions and books.
Little update…
Of course Cory has other upcoming appearances in the UK, not just Manchester
Red Team Blues event with Tim Harford in Oxford, Monday May 29th
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-red-team-blues-with-tim-harford-tickets-574673793787
If you are in London UCL have Peter Kirstein on Thursday June 1st
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirst
For a long while I have been thinking about the incredible role of public service in the fabric of modern society. Not only because I have worked for a public service company for almost 19 years. There is so much happening in the public space but its never really talked about or even celebrated? This is all right at a time when there is so many strikes in public services.
With all this in mind and the pandemic a lot more clear, I thought its time for a new type of meetup. Something I have been thinking about since the end of Manchester Futurists.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
One which is focused around the future of public service, ideally hosted in public services/spaces. Spaces like public libraries, health centres, national trusts spaces, etc. Its a challenge but could be great.
Since the days of London Geekdinners, I have greatly enjoyed running meetups and bringing people together. Its hard work but with a good group of like minded people it can work nicely.
Just recently I took part as remote guest in the think & drink.
It worked well with everyone in the room but me remotely connecting via zoom. They had a camera which would rotate to who is speaking. Not a huge number of people which made it a much easier to manage event it seemed.Nice hybrid event which worked.
If you are interested in the concept or/and possibility of being involved in one in Manchester, get in touch… Equally if you know a great guest which could fit the bill talking about the future of public service in the age of the internet, get in touch.
Following the talk I did at the Bright Ideas recently.
I also recently spoke with the Responsible Tech Collective, which is mainly out of Manchester.
The collective is a community of cross-sector organisations and community representatives, working to (first) establish Greater Manchester as an equitable, inclusive and sustainable examplar for responsible tech, through putting people first in its creation.
The collective has been one of those interesting groups which has been doing a lot around what I’m calling the public service internet ecosystem. Another group out of Manchester is Open Data Manchester.
You can read the whole piece on Medium below.
Its a good read and I especially like how it links different pieces of work together. Mainly the Adaptive podcasting, Personal Data Stores and Living room of the future in with the ethos of a Public Service Internet. The list of podcasts was a surprise question and hopefully will be of interest to others.
This all reminds me clearly why I moved to Manchester.
During the pandemic, I picked up the Diabolo and did a lot of practicing. First in the community garden during the lockdown and then when things opened up again out and about.
I have a ton of videos with my go pro 5 session camera but every once in a while I found a certain shot which looked quite impressive. Especially during dusk with the camera pointing into the last of the sunlight.
Although I uploaded a few to Youtube, I really found the single shots worthy of saving alone. Especially when setting the GoPro to 90fps to get even less blur. In the past I likely would have used flickr but with my interest in the fediverse, it made sense to sign up to pixelfed, which I may self host in the near future.
I decided to use the biggest instance of pixelfed for now, as moving shouldn’t be a problem and of course I have the originals and they make export and nice and easy.
I’ll be posting more there now summer is on its way.
The Ethical Dilemma Cafe Manchester happened last week on Tuesday 26-Wednesday 27th April. It was quite something to build, prepare and experience.
Building on the ethical dilemma cafe in Mozfest 2014, we took the idea into a real working cafe complete with the public coming and going, but experiencing the dilemma.
When I say the dilemma, what do I mean? In 2014…
The café offered popcorn, juice, and smoothies not found anywhere else at the festival, but to enter the café, you had to cross a boundary that required a ridiculous data user agreement. As part of this agreement, your personal information would be plastered through the festival’s halls hours later. This experience was about getting out of a chair and experiencing the dilemma in a real, tangible way. Would you read the agreement in order to obtain a glass of juice? Ignore the agreement and quench your thirst in ignorant bliss? Or read the agreement and walk away, and try to find snacks elsewhere because the agreement was unacceptable?
While in 2022 with the changes in how mobile phones are less leaky about data and a ton of frankly new challenges (some are explored in our virtual mozfest 2022 session), we decided to explore both the QR code and personal data sharing problems.
People scanned a QR code, signed up to a fake cafe ordering system with their email or social media login. After that, they are forced to answer a question before being presented with a QR code which can be scanned for a hot drink (or looking at the very very long receipt, cold drinks). If you went for a second, third, etc drink you will get more and much more personal questions. We had 5 levels of questions and the single 5th question was deeply personal. Is the coffee really worth it
The Digital Skills Education did a very nice video explaining the concept in a short video.
Sometimes almost by random, the QR code would switch to a public rick roll (making clear you should be careful what you scan) but most of the time you get the webapp which will use any data used.
The biggest output being the questions and answers on a screen right on the cafe bar. Of course there were some intriguing answers to our questions.
I’m still wondering who wrote the answer with my name in it?
The Dilemma is just the start, as there was a whole number of talks, workshops and exhibits/interventions.
On the exhibits end we had everything from the human values postcards by BBC R&D and is everybody happy by Open Data Manchester to Presence robots (reverse metaverse) to the Caravan of the future.
Talks included Designing the Internet for Children with the ICO, Keeping Trusted News Safe Online with BBC R&D, Trustworthy AI – what do we mean when we say with Mozilla.
Talks were kept to 15mins as it went out to the whole cafe and people were encouraged to take a table to keep the conversation going afterwards. In typical Mozfest style.
Finally the workshops included Materialising the Immaterial with Northumbria University, Designing the Internet for Children with the ICO, Why might you personalise your news with BBC R&D, Common Voice / Contribute-a-ton with Mozilla.
On the first day we went long with our partners Open Data Manchester as we hosted their first meetup since the start of the pandemic. Mozilla’s VP Bob added a excellent talk to the meetup which was very well received.
In the usual Mozfest style there was plenty of great moments for example when the traffic warden came to check out the Caravan of the Future.
There was plenty of interest in the reverse metaverse (presence bots), which was one of the projects which run through out the 2 days. Like the original ethical dilemma cafe, we wanted to expose people to work in progress rather than a museum, where everything is perfectly working. When they worked it really worked well.
To get a real sense of the reverse metaverse / presence bot, I recorded Jasmine for a short while with a remote person.
The number of algorithm bias projects was also of much interest including The Shape of Trust, The Entoptic field camera and Does it really understand me?
Does it understand me, is a speech to text system trained using the similar/same algorithms as the Amazon Alexa. It was so weird to see how when it got the wrong word, it guessed with something so strange. Like Deliveroo and Kindle?
Having the public come into the space was a positive, as many of the regulars popped in and end up going to a workshop or checking out a few of the interventions. Even better was having the staff of the feel good cafe joining in and enjoying the event. There’s a few times, when I overheard people asking what was going on and then the staff suggesting checking out the loom, human values postcards, etc.
The concept really came together well over the two days. Its something which will come back in other forms. Keep an eye out for future iterations of the ethical dilemma cafe soon.
Massive thanks to everyone involved in the Ethical Dilemma Cafe, so many people from the Mozilla Foundation, who took over a hotel in the northern quarter (it was so strange seeing people I usually see on Zoom or in London only 10mins away from my home), all the partners who took a leap of faith with the concept bringing their research and passion to the cafe. The cafe and the amazing woman (can’t remember her name) who really went with the concept. All the people who helped promote it and encourage others to join us over the 2 days. My colleagues who pulled out a number of stops to make things like the coffee with strings, reverse metaverse bots, etc. All amazing along with the talks and workshops, which nicely fitted with our partners. Thanks to the security guard who worked 2 full days and his presence was just right. Finally thank you to all the people who traveled sometimes from quite far to make the event, because without you there would be no ethical dilemma cafe.
There is likely people I have forgotten and I have deliberately not named anyone in-case I miss anyone by name. But I thank everybody especially Sarah, Lucie, Jasmine, Marc, Henry, Iain, Julian, Sam, Laura, Paul, Jesse, Bob, Steph, Lianne, Jimmy, Bill, Zach, Michael, Juliet, Georgina, Todd, Charlie, etc.
Seen completely out of the blue while in the Mozilla/BBC Ethical Dilemma Cafe last week. I had to do a double take when I saw my name.
Question: What do you value most in a friendship?
Answer: When Ian Forrester gives chocolate 😉
The screen was part the ethical dilemma, where people use a QR code to register for free hot drinks but in return they need to answer personal questions getting more and more personal/intrusive the more hot drinks you have.
Do I know who wrote the answer?
Actually I do not, but I have a small number of people who I do think it could be…
Look out for a full blog post in the next few weeks.
We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed seeing Apple’s lack of regard for the Dutch ACM, understanding the motivations of young people hacking now and people being reminded about cafe working etiquette
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
You are seeing aspects of this with people dumping their smartphones along Cloudflare providing a free webservice firewall and Twitter joining TOR
Ian thinks: Understanding the ethical dilemmas we face every day online has always been difficult to explain the harm. Putting them into physical spaces really brings home the dilemma. If you are in Manchester in late April, grab a free ticket and join us.
Ian thinks: Reading this piece, I couldn’t help but think about the digital realm with the ever growing divide between rich/poor. Not only with money but time and knowledge The digital divide is live and sadly growing..
Ian thinks: I was able to watch the whole documentary at Mozfest this year and was impressed with the different methods used by parents and young people working with the current internet.
Ian thinks: Found via this years Mozfest while talking about the metaverse vs the public service internet. The folks at Matrix, are building a truly interoperable infrastructure for a real metaverse.
Ian thinks: This good interview with Matt Mullenweg, WordPress founder and so much more. Really makes clear how wordpress is not only greatly estimated but also its positive impact on the web.
Ian thinks: People turning towards the deep learning from indigenous people is a good thing. I would like to see much more of this sooner rather than later,
Ian thinks: I first heard about Scenius at Mozfest this year, Brian Eno coined the term to summarize how communities not individuals are responsible for innovation.
Ian thinks: The EU’s Digital Markets Act is a very bold legal policy which could have the similar impact to GDPR? Although people can’t stop talking about opening Apple’s iMessage, its worth remembering the DMA hasn’t been fully drafted yet!
Ian thinks: A lot is covered in a short amount of time. However they both settle on the practical problems of the current and future internet. The legal battles, societal frameworks and the web3 bubble is used to chill what the future internet could be.
Ian thinks: The mission to harden and keep Ukraine as secure as possible earlier, has played a big role in stopping the cyber invasion of Russia and maintaining a functioning country.
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