I’m being all crap at my blogging again, or at least crap at recording what I’m up to and given how my life is moving rather quickly I’d like to record it, memory being crap and all that. Thankfully I stick everything in my diary these days so let’s have a quick look at what I did over the last fortnight and ramble about it a bit.
Last Monday 9th saw The Big Debate where chum Jo was talking along with other luminaries of this brave new digital age. The topic was on whether digital was a good or bad thing and I blogged my concerns about that beforehand. But my job there, as a favour to Jo, was to liveblog the thing, bashing away at my laptop for a couple of hours. You can read my transcript here.
Lessons were learned from the exercise. Firstly, if you’re planning on transcribing the event for an online audience and hoping to involve them in the debate you’re gonna need more than one person. Transcribing, especially if you’re not trained in that department, is pretty intense as you try and rephrase interesting comments on the fly. In fact the more interesting the harder it becomes. To then try and parse all the comments coming in through various channels is a chore indeed. So at least two people would be ideal - one for the output, one for the input.
Secondly, if you’re displaying the liveblog behind the panelists on a big screen, increase the size of the font. I didn’t do a test run and it was barely legible from the front row. Thirdly, make sure the chair of the panel is in on the game and ideally has a monitor in front of him. There’s probably a best practice for involving external comments into a live panel, letting the backchannel inform the flow of the debate without dominating it, and I’d like to see any work that’s been done on that.
The online community following the debate did feel like a novelty add-on at times, especially during the Q&A, but that’s probably because it is a novelty and the only real analogy is from broadcast television and radio so we think of it within that disempowering paradigm. I’d like to think a better balance can be found.
Still, it was well worth doing if only to learn lessons. As for the content of the debate itself I really can’t comment. I was so involved in transcribing it that nothing stayed in my head for more than a second so I wasn’t able to develop any thoughts. Considering I probably could have constructed some rather awkward questions I’m forced to conclude this was why Jo put me on transcribing duties, not to mention Mark on the video: to keep us out of trouble.
Tuesday was the 8th birthday of this blog, something I normally note but neglected to this year. I guess I’m over that these days though I do intend to make a bit of a fuss in 2010 (once everyone else who started a few months before me makes a bit of a fuss themselves. Bitter? Me? Nah.)
Thursday saw a meeting at the Moseley Community Development Trust about their plans to turn their building into a coworking space. I thought this was a big public meeting thing but it turned out to be a smaller affair bringing together a few interested parties to discuss how they might go forward. There’s a whole massive post I need to write about this but suffice to say I’m really enthusiastic about the project as it ties in with everything I’ve been thinking about coworking in Birmingham since coming back from SXSW, specifically about the community driving how the space is used. The CDT have got significant funds (£300k) to renovate and equip the space but do not want to dictate its use. If I do get involved with this, and it’ll be in a voluntary capacity, my task will be to develop the tools to get the home workers, creatives, freelancers and laptop monkeys to com together online and develop a community that can take over the place in one fell swoop come January when the building is complete. Inspiration comes from Alex Hillman’s work on Indy Hall in Philadelphia who I talked to at SXSW.
The main touchstones for the Moseley thing to work are the community making it an interesting place to be and the cost being worth investing in but not a waste if you don’t use it for a week. The very rough ballpark for fair to heavy use is currently £50 a month, which seems reasonable to me. I suspect this could become one of my major projects over the next year so you’ll no doubt hear more about it.
Friday and the Weekend saw me working through the night and barely leaving the house as I set up a the Universitas 21 Summer School blog, the first of hopefully many projects with Birmingham University. I was approached a few weeks back to see how they could use blogging instead of the more traditional “journaling” that students do on these intensive two week courses and whether this could add anything useful to the process. The big deal here is the commenting that students and staff can do on each others posts, creating an additional environment for discussion and sharing of ideas. Given the intensive nature of the course and that fact that the blog will only live for a fortnight it didn’t seem worth opening commenting to the wider internet but it will be public and archived there for at least a couple of years.
What’s been interesting for me has been writing quite specific documentation for 50-odd students from all over the world who will have wildly varying online experience and English skills. I’ll also be doing a session with them on their first day to back all this up and hope they’ll play about with the system in the week before the school starts but it’s slightly nerve-wracking. I think I’ve covered most of the bases but won’t know if it’s actually worked until it’s all over. All in all it’s an interesting experiment in using social internet tools in the opposite way they’re really intended - short term, closed off and inward looking. Should be fun.
A bit of much needed socialising occurred at the beginning of this week followed by one of the more surreal days I’ve had in a while, and that’s saying something.
Wednesday saw me on the judging panel of the Birmingham Post’s Power50. This involved sitting in a room with 10 or so other people working through a longlist of 200 and deciding which of them were the most powerful people in the city and in what order they should be put in. I had huge reservations about doing this, partly because it goes against all sorts of things I believe in but also because I really didn’t know what I could contribute to the process. I’m still not sure what I did contribute other than getting a couple of “wildcards” in there and since I’m sworn to secrecy under the Chatham House Rule there’s not much I can say about the process. As I Twittered it wasn’t as wank as I’d feared but certainly came out of a social environment I’m really not part of. But I guess that’s why I was there, to try and shake things up a bit.
As for what the Power50 is actually good for I’m not sure. It’s an easy one to dismiss as pointless noisemaking to sell papers but, while I was in the eye of the storm at least, it did dawn on me that at least one of the people I’d gotten in there could benefit significantly from being drawn to the city’s establishment eyes, just as I was put on their radar by that Guardian award. At the end of the day, though, I dislike the notion of power being celebrated. I’m all about the dissolution of power bases and the spawning of randomly morphing autonomous groups which cannot be subsumed into existing power bases. So there.
That’s not to say I won’t put “Judge of the Birmingham Post’s Power50 2008″ on the about page of ASH-10 though.
Thursday saw Jez and myself take a day trip to The North. Wakefield, specifically, to see John Welding’s Drawing The City exhibition in the art gallery there. Rich Bruton has already blogged about it at length so I don’t need to say much more other than to express how impressed I was with the work.
I’ve known John’s diary comics since I sold his Goathland series back in the late 90s and have always admired the calm and reflective way he records the mundane, making it universal and extraordinary. He also has an uncanny ability to communicate a sense of place and this really came out in the Drawing The City piece. The work was done on huge sheets of paper about 1.5m tall that covered the walls of the gallery like that big tapestry comic in France and told stories from John’s travels along a specific route from the art gallery to the new Hepworth.
Click for teh huge
Having been used to seeing John’s work all small in A5 booklets it was fascinating to see these at times life-sized drawings from him, especially when you realise it’s all original art and not scaled up. There was an amazing sense of space to his work and there was a danger he could have produced static illustrations were it not for his skill in turning it into a narrative.
Click for teh huge
I don’t like to say things like “it’s great to see comics in this sort of environment” as it evokes all manner of awful “Team Comix!” wank that I’ve left behind, but it really was good to see this sort of work on display in a public art space, not so much because it was comics but because of the way John uses the medium to really connect with people through his own personal experiences, something I’ve always loved in good autobio comics since I noticed it (iirc with Jez’s help) in Eddie Campbell’s work and something I don’t think you can do in that manner with other mediums. Upstairs there was a piece of sculpture which was pretty impressive, collecting peoples thoughts about the area and sewing them into a huge conical harp. It was good and certainly reflected the community but it didn’t resonate as effectively as the calm observations of one guy meandering around the city with his sketchpad taking the time to really see what’s there.
On the downside I don’t thing the Art Gallery was the right space to show this. It was spread over two rooms and into a third with the final panorama wrapped around a doorway. It’d be great to see it in a bigger space where you could take in the whole thing from a distance. I wonder if when the Hepworth opens for business they’ll be able to display it again. Hope so.
We then met up with John and, briefly, Helen for a few drinks and a meal before heading back to Brum slightly pissed and rather refreshed. I’d recommend a day trip to The North, especially if you’re meeting a lovely cartoonist. (John blogs about our visit here, Jez hasn’t done so yet.)
And that brings this blogging splurge to a close. Assuming I manage to make it out of bed Saturday is looking to be fairly busy with friends around doing stuff and Sunday sees Melt Banana in the Hare and Hounds for what promises to be one of the best gigs of the year and no mistake. There’s an informal bloggers meet on Monday evening at the Flapper and on Thursday I’m doing my pleasingly booked out Community Blogging workshops. Other than that it’s the usual mash of random things that make up my life these days and which I really should write about more often and not just blurt onto Twitter (which is always the best way to find out where I am and what I’m up to).
