A few months back I won a photoshoot with the estimable Lee Allen of Lee Allen Photography. I first met Lee a while back at a lacklustre gig at the Barfly – I was reviewing, he was photographing. Since then we’ve covered a fair few gigs together so, uncomfortable as I usually am having my pic taken, it wasn’t quite so bad when we spent a morning gadding round Digbeth and Fazeley Studios.
Lee’s a talented guy and he’s turned out some snaps i’m dead pleased with and it’s good to have a stash of profile pics for next time I need one. Anyway, here’s the slideshow:
I was expecting these to be rich pickings for some LOLs but I’ve been spared that, save for this one by Pete Ashton (and that was gentle).
Or maybe not lessons but inspiration. Or something. I’m not sure yet.
I stumbled across Club Mumble yesterday. I’m not quite sure how/why but I’ve been looking at doing a new project and have been finding all sorts of interestingness. Mumble’s fantastic – a rambling great big group blog with contributors chipping in posts around the themes of contemporary art, skateboarding and street culture. Apparently it wasn’t always thus.
I was looking for an ‘About’ page, probably to see how the site self-identified or some such. The closest match was the Masthead/Mission link so I followed that.
I’ll liberally quote what Bob Kronbauer, the founder of the site, has written there because I find it just so fascinating:
Originally dedicated to bringing what I perceived to be “real” content back to the internet following “the stranglehold that blogs [had] taken on it”, I produced two actual features every week for a year and a half on my own, and over this year and a half I slowly came to the realization that those blogs that have taken a stranglehold… well… they’ve done so with good reason. They’ve taken over because blogs are awesome, and it’s the community and the sharing of ideas and information that makes them so awesome. The idea of a lone dude sitting in front of his computer filtering all of the information that he receives and then feeding you his singular opinion on what’s cool and why it’s cool got tired after a minute, and the idea of “real” content changed in my mind from magazine-quality articles into just real stories about real things by real people. So I switched it up, re-launching Mumble as a contradiction of itself, bringing along 99 people who “really” inspire not only myself but our culture as a whole.
It was a while ago now, but I’ve got a few notes left over from a couple of panels I went to and I may as well dump them here in a single post – you never know what someone else will find useful, so here they are:
Regional Whuffie – Attracting Innovation
Or ‘the co-working panel’. Truth be told, ‘awesome fatigue’ had taken hold around this point and so, although the panelists were all interesting people doing interesting things, the excessive chuminess and back-slapping was a little hard to stomach.
It’s a problem that marred many of the panels – a lack of incisive questioning which glossed over the troubles, mistakes and difficulties to allow much less useful evangelism/self-promotion.
To spin the self-promotion more positively, this panel saw some interesting case-studies including The Runway Project and ArtCamp.
On the question of how to fund a coworking space, the advice was to not think of it as a business but to do the minimum necessary at any time. Focus on improving community and the city as a whole. The space will follow.
The other piece of advice was to adopt successful international projects such as Pecha Kucha nights, Ignite or 20×2.
How LA Built a Successful Tech Community
The worst panel I attended but the fascinating awfulness of it all left me rooted to my chair. Apparently LA’s scene is a humble one, living in the shadow of LA’s entertainment industry and the San Francisco scene. I didn’t see a lot of humility though.
Half the room were LA residents and things never really lifted above being an insular love-in/bitching session.
The lessons, such as there were any, were to self-promote and to promote others around you. Actually, this is probably worth bearing in mind – there’s been plenty of good stuff happening in Birmingham but information about this rarely gets outside the bubble. The social media surgeries, for example, tend to generate a few blog posts where people say what a good thing they are and those posts are read by others who attended. What about writing a press release and sending it to a newspaper/some council officers/charity workers instead?
I keep hearing Sam’s name around at the moment. I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve got my ear that close to the ground so I’m guessing he’s doing some impressive stuff. This is a dead nice eclectic party mix. Really like the Dizzee/Dance of the Knights bit.
My most-listened to mix in a while and proof (cos it’s needed) that there’s some quality indie bands around Birmingham who are capable of shifting hips.
Rafftertie makes big, ravey, bassy trouser-worrying tunes and plays all over. He turned in a set at Bigger Than Barry the other day and also knocked together a
Just as an afterthought, is anyone collecting together, writing about, linking to and covering all the stuff that the city’s promoters are doing? Even sporadically? There’s the Night Times in print but I can’t find anything useful online.
Website visitor figures are one of those things in life that you tend to assume are slightly exaggerated (I’m not naming the others, this is a family blog).
In March 08-March 09, there were 8,500 visitors to biz-tv.net, 6,800 absolute unique visitors and 20,000 page views. Top visiting countries outside the UK include France (600) and USA (500). Others include Germany, Poland, Ireland and the Ukraine
They’re not the sort of figures I’d want to shout about. Pete Ashton did the maths for me – 8500 visitors in a year. 700 a month. 23 a day. As he put it, that’s either incredibly good niche marketing or just not very good at all.
Jerry Blackett, Chief Executive of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, would apparently have us believe it’s the former, saying:
We at the Chamber know from first-hand experience that it works. We are able to literally speak to our target audience as well as the broader business community through Biztv
Which doesn’t say much for the size of the Chamber’s audience or the broadness of the region’s business community.
If the figures quoted are accurate then, given the remit of BizTV, the fact it has been going for five years and the funding from AWM (more figures I’d be interested in seeing), an average of 23 people a day is awful – West Midlands Dance is at around that point having been soft-launched on a new domain only a week ago.
As a little light relief from the semi-coherent notes from SXSW that I’ve been posting, here’s something a little different.
On the last night in Austin we were at the Brit Bash, having a merry old time and looking forward to seeing the headliners when a wall of posters caught my eye. This one, in fact:
All the posters were advertising the efforts of various UK regions to promote their musical talent – in this pic you can see the North West, Belfast, Yorkshire and Scotland (twice) all represented.
Steven Alvarez – Dir of Programs & Media, Alaska Native Heritage Center
Museums can be conversational – you can go with friends and chat about the exhibits. Museums have not generally translated this online. The idea is to get visitors to help museums to collect and share.
The object on display is the point of conversation.
Each item in the museum’s collection will be on there eventually.
The site has a digital uploading tool similar to Flickr or YouTube. The site also plugs in to Flickr and YouTube’s APIs.
It also has a touch of wikipedia about it. Users can grab museum resources, add their own and tell a story.
Why did they do this?
Not bandwagon jumping.
It’s a very diverse organisation with locations all over. They are used to using tech just to operate.
They take a lot of viewpoints – academic, tribal, and cultural values and mash them together. Media has been very useful to find commonalities.
New Trade Winds (2002) – project was to use web 2.0 tools to bring together stories.
Artscape – personal collaborative bookmarking tool
Hawaii Alive – traditional navigation/database model did not suit the best way to represent Hawaiian culture and values. Divided by realms of gods, man and ocean.
Teachers Domain – a crucial step on the way to Echospace. Filtering the best from worst practices but tricky to do so – delicate matters not wanting to insult a tribe
Realise that they’re being very open and that won’t go down well with some. Also accept that they don’t know everything and others can be brought in to give their view. Dark side of that conversation might come out but that’s needed.
Steven Alvarez
They’re not stuck in a pre-contact ‘leathers and feathers’ state. They use tech.
However, there’s a tension when doing traditional stuff with new methods. for example, new media allows shift from telling a story to a few people in a room to being able to amplify that voice immediately and, potentially, globally.
They’re targetting a narrower audience with Echospace – that’s a good thing.
All user uploads via the site go to a single YouTube account. A video that breaches YouTube’s T&Cs could be enough to have the account closed – a problem they’re still working on (although they keep back-ups of all videos).
Fears
Joy of oral history is that it changes with the telling – recording in this way captures and freezes those stories.
Also, the tribes have been burned before – people have taken stories, got rich off them and not paid promised royalties.
What happens if no-one uses this resource?
That’s fine. It’s a modular site so if some areas are not used they can dump it.
Is there moderation?
Yes, there is a moderator – a non-native anthropologist who will have her set of biases. Already found snags.
BlogHer started from a flame war about where all the female bloggers are.
(Liked the line “We decided to do something instead of blogging about it”)
How do you talk to your community?
F – have to take stuff with a grain of salt. Decide if their views are representative of all users.
R – give users the tools and let them do their thing. There are areas they have little/no knowledge of. Found a use for Twitter – can do a search so if someone’s ranting about Reddit he can see and get a conversation going.
A – Twitter useful for engaging people who are on the fringes of participation. Created a forum for complaining about Ars Technica. They don’t have to answer everything as other users may not agree. Doing this publicly can be tricky – give people a chance to slate you in public but transparency is appreciated and if there’s a problem that many complain about you should probably fix it.
How is the community policed?
B – strict community guidelines. Provide safety from trolling/hate speech. Set that standard very early and now the site polices itself quite well.
F – Their rule is don’t be too much of an asshole. They have ‘Nark’ button for reporting users but sometimes see people using this to report comments just to get people in trouble.
R – they set up a wiki for guidelines. Became a list of dos and don’ts. Now they let people set up their own Reddits and let them moderate them themselves.
What do you do with problem bits of content?
B – pulled immediately and email sent to originator to explain why. Anything borderline gets you yanked.
F – similar but philosophy is it’s not capital punishment, it’s just deleting comments on a web page. Can always revisit/reconsider.
R – ditto
A – they leave stuff up unless it’s spam. Worry about silencing people as it’s seen as censorship in the AT culture.
DON’T:
Tell rather than ask
Change things without telling community in advance
Not involve the community
Troll your own readers
Listen to readers too much (tyranny of the minority)
Also need to pay attention to the silent majority who don’t login, contribute, etc but make up most of traffic. Stats will tell you what they’re looking at, what they like and don’t like.
Common problem – forums with loads of topics. Starts off emptier and makes it hard for people to get to content.
Expectations online are very low. Engaging people in real life (or just via email) can be very powerful. Do this with the most engaged participants.
Is it worth educating users about being good net citizens?
B – yes. New people are always coming in so it’s good to restate things occasionally.
If you’re going to copy something successful make sure you’re copying the right parts of it. Not just the outside bits but the attitude, etc. May have been the unique circumstances surrounding something that made it a success.
Lawyer – a person who knows which forms to fill out to ruin you.
Getting paid – you get paid in attention. You can’t buy stuff with that but it’s amazing what you can do with that when it builds up.
When there’s news you want to know what happened, what it means and what that person thinks of it. Not many people will do that. Loads of people will just tell you that something happened.
Top tips:
Give away stuff. Make it easy to get and give away more than you think you should.
Have diverse revenue streams and keep looking for others
Don’t do stuff that seems profitable but interferes with why people liked you in the first place
Curation – taking suggestions from your audience. In the echo-chamber though. Making the popular even more popular. Doesn’t help with reaching beyond that audience.
There is value in changing perceptions.
Is presence of a curator a recognition of failure of the crowd?
No. Useful to inspire the crowd (cf V&A’s approach re setting a standard for other users to follow)
On too high a level (ie with a very large crowd) there’s a signal:noise problem.
Fwiw, my notes on this panel are sparse because (without wanting to sound big-headed) I found it was pitched a bit too far below my level. The panelists are all engaged in interesting projects but some of them seemed unable to step back from their practice and articulate what it is they do and how.
