As I mentioned at the time, the shift in culture on the last evening of Interactive and the eve of Music was quite dramatic. I’m not sure I could have dealt conceptually with doing the whole festival.

via Jo

One of the things I have to think about is how people or organisations who either can’t blog or don’t want to blog can engage with the blogging world. Say, for example, your company just can’t do the human voice thing without sounding really fake but people are talking about what you do online. Or say you’re dyslexic or just not very good with words.

I can’t pin down where this came from – it might have been an aside at SXSW or it might just be really obvious and just bubbling to the surface of my brain – but it strikes me that while people need stuff to talk about they also need stuff to talk around.

Ah yes, that was it. Hugh MacLeod talking about working with Stormhoek Wine on the Self Replicating Awesomeness panel. Amongst many other things he got them to send bottles to bloggers who were having parties, not with the intention that they then blog about the wonderful wine – that would be naive – but that the wine becomes part of the experience. Or something.

Now this seems blindingly obvious to me and I’m sure there’s more to Hugh’s strategy there, but the notion of throwing things into spaces where social activity is interesting, especially when it’s done in a passive way. I’m not talking about advertising or anything that shouts in an aggressive, attention getting way. In fact I’m not really talking about marketing strategies at all. It’s more like putting a surprising “thing” in the way of people that makes them think about their environment in different ways. That could be a piece of public art, a new idea, some constraint on their usual patterns of behaviour, anything really.

I’m sure this has been thought about before. Something related to Alt Reality Games?

One to ponder more on. (And, again, feel free to use this a jumping off point for your own musings should you have the desire.)

Continued on the Birmingham Post blog. Warning, It’s a long bastard…

Wish I’d seen this before writing a mildly sarcastic post about Thought Leaders. One cannot compete with The Mann.

via sMoRTy71

But it did get me thinking a little bit, especially as I started looking for new Twitter streams to follow. Without going through the long process of checking links and judging blogs, how could I tell if these people were worth checking out? I found myself gravitating towards the stats box on the sidebar. As an example, here’s mine:

Here you can see I’ve got a Twitter ratio of 53:91 which could be represented thus:

Now, my thinking is that one can only deal with following a certain number of people before it gets unmanageable which keeps the pointless collecting of “friends” which plagues the likes of MySpace at bay. I peg this at around 50, because that’s where I’m at, but let’s have a look at someone I learned stuff from who is probably leading my thoughts. Alex Hillman has a ratio of 325:922 which looks like this:

This implies he’s more of a thought leader than me but is still within my realm and thus someone I can talk to as a peer. Which is about right.

How about old school a-list blogger Anil Dash with 232:2599?

Certainly someone I can learn from but not necessarily a peer. Which, when I met him, was sort of how it played out. He was lovely and gave me some handy tips but, for whatever reason, we didn’t exactly bond. (And that’s not a problem in the slightest, I hasten to add!)

Of course none of this means anything at all – I’m just playing around. But when we look at these stats boxes we do use them to make lazy if useful judgements. A band on MySpace will be measured by how many “friends” they have, for example, and as I’m getting more people following me who I don’t know and, on checking them out, feel no need to follow, it does strike me as a way to measure my “success”.

But yeah, this is really as useful as quoting visitor stats for websites. Sure, you’ve got 100,000 uniques a day but who are they? What value to they bring? And what are they visiting you for? That’s the stuff that really matters.

Thanks to Chris for salvaging something out of my nonsense!

Where Facebook holds a mirror up to my life and reflects all the relationships that are and once were through the simple binary of ‘friendship’, almost everybody I know on Twitter I know through Twitter, and each brings something different to the table. Twitter germinates, where Facebook merely incubates.

via @aeioux

Post-SXSWi we now have at least six people in the region who have brains full of useful stuff, not to mention those like Phil Campbell and Paul Robert Lloyd and some other people called Paul. And, of course, those big brains who didn’t get to SXSW this year such as Dubber and Nick Podnosh and I’m starting to realise there’s loads of them and I’m going to risk offending those I miss out if I try and list them all so I’ll stop now. You know who you are.

These people will be busy, but not always, and they’ve proven themselves to be willing and able to help others. What we need is some way to help put people’s questions and problems in front of them but in a manner where there’s no obligation to help. In other words something less blunt that email.

I’m guessing the model I’m thinking of is Ask Metafilter where people can post questions about stuff and the community answers them. So let’s try and bash out some details.

• It’s sort of like a brains trust. A club consisting of people in the West Mids who are thinking about the future of social media and digital nonsense.
• It’s incredibly informal. There’s no pressure to actually do anything unless you want to. The idea is we scan the questions during moments of down-time and answer them.
• It’s based around a blog-style website which requires little to no investment.
• Membership of the club is by invite only. Requirements are that someone in the club thinks you’ll be a worthy member and that you’re based or working in the West Midlands.
• The West Midlands angle helps us to build local events out of this (BarCamps, etc) and to influence local policy. Not to mention the prospect of funding monies for trips to SXSW 09.
• Benefits of membership are the raising of personal profile by effort you put into the site and by association.

And probably some more stuff. The main thing is it’s incredibly informal.

Later

Some thoughts on the architecture of the site, to be no doubt improved on by others:

• Users submit their questions in a form. These go into a big list with the most recent at the top. This is not on the front page but is public.
• Members scan the list and, if they decide to address one of them, flag it as “in progress”. This stops others from duplicating the work.
• Once the question is answered it goes to the front page and the user is notified. The user can mark how useful the answer has been to them personally and others can rank it. There’d then be a Digg-style page with the best answers on the site and on each member profile, showcasing our genius skillz. ;)
• A comments thread allows others to add to it, be they members or not. The former are highlighted.
• Most importantly, the answer doesn’t have to live on the site. It can be on the member’s blog and linked through. In fact I see this as being the normal way of working.

Now, somebody go build it.

Graphiquilan: design education: tradition and the new open source

So, ‘what’s this got to do with making design expertise open source?’, you may be wondering. It’s all in what they’re blogging and how they’re making it freely accessible to the likes of you and me, whether it‘s what they‘ve picked up from SXSW or information sharing in their own blogs. Allow me to share with a few quick things I found to be of particular interest:

Nick Booth Did a linkdump of Monday that included a bunch of our stuff along with other related things.

Tom Scotney‘s post, Why I don’t like (most) video journalism, has sparked a really useful debate.

I’ve been following Stef Lewandowski’s coverage of the SXSW event with interest, and he’s obviously done some great work out there. But to be honest my heart sinks to open up Google Reader and be faced with a bank of audio interviews waiting to be played.

Charlotte Carey: Creative Enterprise and SXSW

Yeah and Dave? SXSW09? Room for any lecturers? ;-)

Okay, here’s one of my favourite stories of how Twitter (or any related social media tool thingy) can work when a critical mass is reached.

At SXSWi Twitter just rules. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is using it to a degree where you can’t really imagine the conference without it.

At 10pm on Monday night, that’s 10pm, Alex, our hero from the last post, is walking down E 6th Street and notices that the Mooseknuckle bar is empty. He pops in and makes a deal with the owner to put some cash behind the bar. He then Twitters this message at 11.22pm.

Indyhall party at mooseknuckle if we get 100 people I’ll open a tab.

Stef noticed the Tweet and we headed down there to be greeted by about 50-odd people. By the time we left this had trippled at least. I found out later that the bar had filled to capacity and, though it pains me to use this metric as it’s kinda tired, Scoble turned up.

Which is not bad. But was it just Twitter doing this? Oh no. Imagine if I’d sent out a Tweet saying I was running a party in Austin. I might have gotten a few people coming along out of curiosity or politeness but nothing on this scale. It worked because Alex has a good reputation and reputation is all in this game. Not only does he have a good collection of people following his Twitter stream but they all know what he’s done for the community and feel part of that and so on.

The technology enables this to happen but it needs to be fueled by something more important – who it’s enabling. Or something like that.

Definition of Mooseknuckle

Some notes from talking to to Alex Hillman about the co-working spaces he’s set up in Philadelphia this last year – Independents Hall.

Set up community before leasing space. Learn from them as to what they want and need.

Start with things like getting a bar to provide wifi and space when closed, then when they open at 5pm they have customers ready and waiting.

Don’t tell people to do stuff. Give them tools to do things on their own.

Couple of books to read: Small Pieces Loosely Joined and The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.

Also check Cathy Sierra’s talk from SXSW. Will look up later.

Social problems are difficult to solve.
Technical problems are easy to solve.
Geeks reverse engineer social problems into technical problems and come up with technical solutions.
[Need to think this one through a lot more. I think I get what he's saying but can't quite articulate it now.]

In short, take what works about online social environments and try to apply them to physical environments. His co-working spaces are like chilling in a forum where things like lurking, going off topic, starting new threads, etc are encouraged.

Plus the usual stuff of creating a sense of emotional ownership of the project where people are annoyed if they can’t help. (This happened!)

What can I do? Well, Created in Birmingham is a technical solution to a social problem. How about taking the systems in place there and applying them to something in the real world that attempts to solve those problems.

I’m suddenly aware that I don’t know exactly what the problems are. They do exist but I’ve never had to explicitly articulate them before. One for later!

I might pop my head into How To Rawk After SXSW in half an hour to see if they have any tips on keeping in touch with the community here, but suspect I may well walk if it’s not what I’m wanting.

The other West Midlanders who have been shipped over here – the Serious Games types – have their sponsored talk at 5 in room 5 – Serious About Games Dot Com. Might stick my head in but I suspect it’s an investment reachout thing.

Other than that I’m probably going to hang on the tables outside the Bloghaus room, partly because it’s too crazy in there and partly because there was a significant amount of B.O. in the air yesterday. But mainly because I had two really interesting chats with people who happened to be working next to me there and that’s what I’m here for. Meeting the random and seeing what ideas their perspectives spark.

Not sure what the party scene is tonight but we have to be leaving the motel at 9.00am tomorrow so it won’t be a late one. Meeting for food / drinkies after 6 would be good though. Twitter me.

photo by Aeioux

He also knows Birmingham because, as a total Dr Who nerd, he’s traveled around all the shooting locations and apparently most of the quarry’s are in the Midlands. And he has an obsession with the anus of Matt Damon.

I suppose an example would the Flickrmeets I started a couple of years back, only rather than seeing that as an endgame looking at how to empower the people on there to take the basic premise to other areas. Which we kinda did a bit but not with much force. Why not monthly videomeets? Monthly music jam sessions where most of the prep happens online?

He then said something rather crazy. Apparently Birmingham UK is in the top ten cities with the most Facebook penetration. I’m trying to find the proof so if you find it let me know. It would explain why 600+ people have the Created in Birmingham Facebook app on their profiles, more than subscribe to the RSS feed, and how we got 20+ people to the last Blogmeet. If true, this would give publicizing events an incredible head start.

Where’s my brain going with this? I think it’s a mashup between the online world and the physical world, using the former to facilitate stuff in the latter. Flickrmeet saw 20-30 people who didn’t know each other at all come together and form a community and friendships (I’ve got two wedding coming up that I wouldn’t be attending without the Flickrmeets). Once you take away the photos the basic structure of Flickr – talking about stuff – isn’t unique. You just need to put the stuff first and foremost and let people talk about it. Finding the common ground. Then spin off real world events from that.

So, who are our loudmouths?

Feedhaus. A thing for tagging feeds and then putting them into “clouds” which I see as tagging tags. Still in early stages (no RSS feeds yet) but the concept is intriguing. I thought the cloiuds might be like OPML files but that’s apparently not strictly true. One cool thing is that you can move back in time with a slider at the bottom of the screen and the tag clouds will take you to results form that day. Uses technology called Comet which is like Ajax (they’re both cleaning products here). Unfortuantely the wifi is slow here (too many bloggers) so if you fancy having a play leave a comment on what you think please.

Chap I was talking to is Chris Bucchere who blogs here

I’ve noticed a lot of people shouting about how “social” their product or job is, without actually seeming to have any social skills themselves. It’s like the loud guy who walks into the bar telling everyone how fun and popular he is but, after about five minutes, you realise he’s just a bit dull.

Sounds similar to the themes of the Self Replicating Awesomeness panel.

How to market without being scheming bastard?
How do you build a community?

Making a place where you want to be.
Companies saying “build me a community” is wrong. Can build a Ning site in 5 mins but can’t create a community like that.

Changes customer to company relationship, including competition, local communities, suppliers, future employees.

Stop trying to sell me, start trying to help me buy.

Company created virtual embassy – let passionate people into privileged community site. Then sat back and let the advocates do the work.

“Marketing is price paid for creating mediocre products.”

Tara Hunt: Gave away expertise, get attention, got headhunted. “This giving away stuff seems to really work”. Barcamp, co-working. More gave away, more she got back in business.

Social Capital. Value of relationships and reputation.

Wuffie – future of capital. Cory’s Down and Out book. “Everything is free” Karma.

Best way to build your own wuffie is to help others build theirs.

How much can you give away without going broke.

Need way to monetise this stuff. Some kind of corporate investment in ideas?

Web 2.0 tools democratizing stuff. Giving tools away creates capital. WordPress?

Hugh – sent out few dozen bottles of Stormhook (?) wine. Supplying wine for geek dinners with few conditions as possible (photos for Flickr). 2,000 – 250,000 cases in one year. Rippling effect through Karma. Community of cool people who would still be cool without the wine.

Geeks socialise around objects. Started making social gestures which beget social objects, which beget social markers. Phone examples: iPhone, N95, not somecrappy Samsung
Community meaningless word. Companies think of communities as lever they can pull. They are not your community. You don’t own them.

Free scares companies.

New skill set. Art more than a science right now.

Advice from Schultz: Get out of the ivory tower of pushing stuff at people. “network weaving” – Cool stuff happens where communities overlap. Listen to people who love you, not the complainers. Don’t put names on it like “viral”. Don’t teach new behaviours. If you’re small you shouldn’t need a FAQ.

Give out 90%, sell 10%, as can only work on 10%.

Doc Searls: The Because Effect.

Key question: “Will it Blend”

Don’t say “Here’s why you should buy the wine”
Shift to social gesture. What it represents.

Book: Blue Ocean Strategies recommended by Hunt.

Find brand advocates easily as they’re already talking about it online. Start with them.

Hugh: No new Kula (?) Exchanging seashells. Shells aren’t important, conversation is. Human beings need other people, groom each other. Right now iPhone, 80s Atari, 300 years ago knitting circle. Tech only interesting in how it affects human interaction but it’s always been like this.

Schultz: Allow you to be out there amongst your people. Don’t do the big stuff “superbowl, flowers for mothers day” – be more granular. Much bigger thing than marketing.

How to deal with really big stuff. Audi are giving away services related to their cars.

Russle Davis gets a namecheck. Not big ideas, lots of little small ideas. Apple not just about big computer, it’s about earplugs, tables, etc. Little things. Help customers learn and communicate with each other. Facilitate interpersonal communications.

Brands with best storytellers win.

You don’t go viral, product goes viral. No such thing as viral marketing.

Nuance of free. Sometimes you shouldn’t give product away. Give away experience of product.

Nuanced! That’s the word.

Embrace the chaos.

Don’t get list in the shiny. Nothing replaces listening.

Not just giving a message, giving something more than that.

(The is related to my “why should I” thing?)

Hugh: You plant some apple seeds and two weeks later client says “where are my fucking apples?”

Not campaigns, it’s programs. Take a long time to cultivate. Get qualitative results.

Marketing has become associated with sales rather than original purpose of communciations.

“Customer Advoate” rather than marketer.

It’s about DNA of company and product.

One question: What’s your intention?

Hugh: “A story without love is not worth telling”

And we’re done! Tidy up to follow.