Printer Jam now on YouTube! Finally…Thanks to my manager, speed up video, reverb, spectral NR, phaser, invert, swap channels…

But I’m now finding other Printer Jam videos using some of the same YT footage (that cat, the office rage) on here – weird when I did my trawl (and I mean trawl – was looking at every printer related video on YouTube, downloaded 50+ of them) a few weeks ago I didn’t find them. Oh well not as original as I thought! Certainly when I made this I’d only seen the official video and the one with the still of a cat on here.

So sorry if anyone thinks I ripped them off, I’ve not seen most of them til now.

I think this is because there was a competition to create the video? None of them have Office Space in them though

Here’s one by Terpsichord (NSFW):

And RemixClubXX with that damned cat:

Damn I should be more original next time

A little voice inside my head said: “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”. Well actually it was Don Henley but in the case of The Asylum, home of the legendary Bastard, one the world’s first ever mashup nights (well that was King of the Boots, also run by Cartel Mike and Johnny, and might have been there too) in London back in 2001 or 2002 until 2006, it’s very true.

This was the club that was so underground (it wasn’t properly licensed!), grungey and accidentally hip, that not only did Chris Morris base the pisstake of the club in Nathan Barley on it, the owners went onto run the Macbeth in Hoxton, where one of them or their staff got into that whole Blake/Amy debacle.

It seems that The Asylum has been kidnapped by Laura Ashley, and forced to wear floral wallpaper, union jack underpants and Ye Olde tourist-trap trinkets. So sad.

History – right there. Or was…

(not pictured behind them is the Ye Olde fireplace, the patio chav-style windows at the end, the union jack chairs, the WI tea cups used as ice holders and the tablecloths. I shit you not. Go look at the pictures from upto 3 years ago and compare!)

OK this post has been brewing for a long while – so it’ll be a long one. Deal.

About a month ago I joined Twitter – people were quite surprised, 2 years ago I’d expressed my hatred of Twitter at Podcamp 06 (the audio is floating around somewhere) so me eventually joining Twitter was a surprise.

Why the turnaround? Well one of two things; I feel as part of my job I need to keep abreast of these technologies, and the other that I’d missed hearing about whole conferences because the podcasting community had pretty much decamped wholesale to Twitter, and thus most of the conversations don’t happen outside, or unless you are subscribed to 100s of shifting blogs. Unlike previous times, the only central point was…you guessed it – the ubiquitous Twitter.

So has my attitude changed? Yes and no.

Back in 2006 I decried the fact that Twitter and social media were sucking the life out of real life friendship – there wasn’t really a point to going to see mates to find out how they are when you can read it on a Facebook or Twitter update. I think the social effects of sites like Facebook since 2006 has partly proven me correct, people seem to be using technology to offset traditional contact with friends, and there seems to be a wider base of shallower friends, what I call acquaintances, but under an umbrella of frequent updates so connected as if they are close friends. It’s a sham; a bad reflection of a true friendship. Obviously it’s also a good, keeping people in touch who are the other side of the world and bringing people together, so it’s not all bad. But I find it ironic that through technology I’m more likely to see someone 100s or 1,000s of miles away, but then never see friends down the road in the flesh.

Crazy Half Life

Robert Scoble talked about half-life of a conversation recently; I think in James Gleick fashion it’s useful to try and measure the speed at which these conversations are moving, the stress vectors. It’s obvious that Twitter is a very different animal to Livejournal, despite not that different technology and only about 7 years difference in launchdate, but really in speed they are worlds apart.

Part of the attraction of Twitter is it’s Google-like simplicity, it does one thing, and does it well. Compared to blogging or email, the conversations seem fairly one-sided, like a blog (really most people there are talking about themselves, the amount of PR/marketing and new media evangelists is horrific); but without the depth you can maintain in a blog. The conversations are quicker – gone in 15 minutes or quicker, and very volatile – no not that people get angry but the posts disappear off-screen quickly, and are gone.

So like a more acceptable version of those kids on the bus txting continually, it’s blogging with hyper A.D.D. But this seems to be the way social media is moving – into the realm of fast immediate mobile-friendly short conversations, throwaway, shallow.

And with video – like 12seconds I can see it becoming wham-bam-thank-you-Mr because the time constraints of following 100 or 1,000+ people and the flood of audio and video media means the message has to survive the tl;dw or tl:dl (too long; didn’t watch or too long; didn’t listen) of mobile phones, iPods and online media. Will this affect the message? Of course it will. Or there will be two streams, one of the refuseniks producing niche longer programs, and a massive pool of really short shows with no content.

Living with Numbers

‘Social Gaming’ as I call it, attaining friends for sheer number volume and grooming/attracting/whoring yourself to get people to click that ‘Add friend’ or ‘Follow’ button is not new – Myspace and millions of teenagers have been playing that game for years. But the simplicity of the user interface coupled with the prominence of the Following / Follower stats (thank GODDESS they didn’t make the mistake of calling it “friend’ like Myspace and LJ, what a psychological drama minefield that has been) has led to an almost messianic obsession with collecting followers. It makes the obsessive ‘I wanna be your friend’ popularism from when you were in school seem somehow quaint. At least those teens weren’t pushing a ‘brand’ and a hidden business/marketing plan.

Also interesting is a new breed of people who seem to be trying to create a career being a Social Media Whore – consultants or new media professionals, it’s like the professional bloggers of yore (who interestingly have stormed this Social Media space in the same way traditional broadcasters invaded podcasting, using their ‘name’ status and existing readership and other channels to promote their Twitter/Friendfeed to trounce any ‘competition’) except with one difference – blending the prosaic and mundane with the insights and links of old, all in 140 characters, leading to a sort of silent film / talkie divide between those using all media – video, microblogs, maps, moblog photos, work AND play, and those just pinging their Twitter from their blog when they post.

But is it possible to eat off linklove? Can online respect alone pay the bills? Is it a new way of working (I know of people who have gotten work via Twitter and other social media), or just TwitFactor? Your 15 seconds are up, Mr McLuhan43553.

Top of the Class

Something that has always bothered me about social media – and new / rich media (interesting term there) as a whole is that it’s nerdy. white, usually male and most definitely middle class. I’m sure loads of people will now point to exceptions, but it bothers me that diversity isn’t there – when 2nd and some of the 3rd world can now have access to at least mobile networks there isn’t a desire or a knowledge to blog, vlog, podcast, communicate? Is this a purely leisure class pursuit? Is it because the barriers to entry are too high, these shiny toys are way too expensive, from computers to bandwidth to servers? I do feel personally there aren’t enough different voices, and a lot of existing voices ‘retweeting’ or reposting the same old.

Talking class, it’s interesting that sociologists are studying the online habits of teenagers of differing class strata and/or money / social groups. Danah Boyd is doing some interesting work in this area – Facebook vs Myspace was a contentious one from 2007, I can see similar tribal loyalties affecting who signs up for Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. I wonder if Twitter classes as mid-30s male IT geek in it’s demographic? Certainly to progress past the posts about software ‘mashups’ (grr) and Rails coding it needs to widen it’s appeal – the one sided nature of most conversations and marketing spiel as well will put people off – the ability to track conversations is hard, which as Mr Scoble would say at this point, is why Friendfeed wins in that regard.

Hierarchies in the Clouds

I find it interesting that there is already what is called a Twitterati. but no Facebookati or Bebo Mafia, and it’s already acquired a (jokingly?) negative connoitation. Every bunch of people online creates a clique, but not many have such a visible metric to affirm their status. So you get usually the same old names, with 1,000s of friends, beseiged by their success, so they talk to each other and themselves. Reciprocity failure, the gift that keeps on giving.

Rustle the Brand / Public good?

So the new model that people are building is one of branding yourself (I did say they were in marketing) – but corporate bloggers could tell you tales of drunkeness and cruelty and the problem of openness vs public image. Now multiply this to a whole life, where the personal, prosaic and professional are blended together, where people share drunken tagged photos and videos on YouTube and Facebook (better change your Privacy settings!) with a profile linked to your LinkedIn CV. Now you can develop nicknames and personas, but it does raise interesting issues on what employers expect to know and what employees share (or more interestingly get shared about them), and how those feeds interact and cross-relate. And how it could all go very, very wrong (see the whole Russell Brand debacle for a broadcast version of this).

Is there a public good in social media? Is the act of sharing seen as a public good, or is it just an act of vanity or self promotion? Will people share if it endangers their brand? Or just self-censor so the conversations and connections become banal?

Web 2.0 – Where’s My Money?

Free content isn’t free; someone has to spend time making it, someone has to spend money storing it; someone at YouTube or Twitter has to spend expensive nights awake trying to work out how to make money from it. People have made money from other people’s ‘free’ content though.

I’ll quote Bicyclemark and Richard Bluestein from a Citizen Reporter podcast:

“BicycleMark: But then again sometimes I look at conferences and I think ‘What have we done?’. I’ve seen some very expensive conferences taking place…but you look around and you go ‘Wow look all this money that’s been spent so these people can talk to each other’ and I guess make business deals.

Richard: You know what bothers me…It’s interesting though that the business people that schmoozed and squeezed the money out of VC’s – they are not having any sort of problems paying for their health insurance, they’re still flying first class, you know what I mean..That’s the case pretty much anywhere in Silicon Valley…the people that Twitter everything and talk about the trends and eat constantly…just constantly! They just fucking always have plenty of money…they’re relying, they’re sucking off people like us that produce content…If you have a business based on podcasting or video…or streaming, there wouldn’t be any website if there wasn’t people makiing stuff. Most of the time they aren’t paying anything for that content.”

What the quote displays is the widening digital and social divides is also reflected online – the differences between rich and poor, free creators and paid producers, those with VC money and those with not and different classes. The internet has been seen as the great Communicator, crossing boundaries of race, class and gender, yet people are getting rich reinforcing those differences. Rich media indeed.

And the book publishers (Mr O’Reilly invented the term to sell books remember) and people who created startups and got the sponsorships and VC funds (and even refuse offers from Facebook) are the ones who got rich off the podcast (failed) boom, or the recent online video goldrush. Only the fail whale of the economy will put a pinprick into this small bubble. Maybe Baron von Blubber should sue.

But the ethics of making money off someone else’s content – which might not be owned by them, well I think it’s dubious at best. Funny to hear people moan about 99% of the videos on YouTube not being ‘monetizable’ – what you want people to post videos for free that conveniently fit into your business model and sponsorship deals? Do you want gold-plated hundreds and thousands on that cake or are you gonna eat it as is? No I’m surprised the companies have been very lax in revenue sharing, apart from some laughable contracts – it’s the media that brings people in, support it. Or it dies…oops too late.

Summary

Maybe the economy will change all this – unemployed people become social media professionals, selling their network as much as their skills (why does that sound like some 21st century cyber Austen novel?) and have time to create amazing videos on YouTube. With no house, rent or need for food. And pigs tweet.

I think it’s more likely the freebie time other than kids at school or retired people is over; companies are going to have to attract people to create media for them, especially if it has to be short snappy and sweet. Yeah the conversational tweet/video microblogging will stay; but podcasting and online video are going to have a tougher time. When people are stressed about their rent, they aren’t going to make loads of Mentos videos…unless it’s of protests. Maybe like with the Obama campaign we’ll see a start of mass use of social media as a political tool, if so that does give me hope.

I went to a lecture and discussion called ‘The Digital Seduction‘ at Royal Society of Arts last night. Speaking was Andrew Keen, author of ‘The Cult of the Amateur’ and Tim Montgomery, editor of ConservativeHome.com (I am SO not linking that), and humorously chaired by Matthew Taylor, RSA Chief Executive.

There’s been a lot of bandwidth especially amongst the professional media hand-wringers about The Cult of the Amateur (it’s interesting that Matthew opened up the introduction with this previous bout from the Guardian site) and obviously as a podcaster and blogger, I disagree with most of what Andrew is saying, that’s not really news. I went along to see what his arguments were and what he had to say for himself.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time adding to the shitstorm, especially as wannabe John-Perry Barlow style techno-priest I suspect he wants such controversy to sell his book – or speaking gigs like this one – in fact when the podcast of the lecture comes online you’ll hear me saying just that during the questions, I’ll just concentrate on my impressions and some of the ideas that struck me in the session.

Andrew came across as very arrogant and rude (in fact he received a stripping down from Tim Montgomery, a classic tory wet, for his response to the MD of Encyclopaedia Britannica as being ‘immature’) but his ideas were that Web 2.0 was destroying culture, that the gatekeepers (editors, experts and the like) are needed and must be respected. Stop me when you can see the obvious protection of interest going on, and politics (the least is that Web 2.0 is a publishing invention from O’Reilly, of course his publishers are Doubleday).

He pointed out that YouTube and the like are ripping off their users for free content, and making money off them, with no quality control or royalties paid (obviously conveniently forgetting the new YouTube deal to record companies) and getting rich off advertising, which the content is either becoming veiled advertising or around the content.

I think he had a point here, in this new era of Infonomics where people pay for ideas, and not formats, unless you are one of the Big 4 you can’t negotiate a deal like that one, and these companies via Creative Commons and licensing are leeching off all this free content. What I don’t agree with his sneering about citizen journalism (‘you don’t get citizen doctors do you?’) as if the mainstream was and is catering for everyone. It plaintantly is not, hence the desire for grassroots media – as I asked in my question to him – it’s a chicken and the egg situation, wasn’t the void in journalism already there, and Web 2.0 and citizen media just filling that void?

Also journalism is one of those areas where training has some benefit but it’s obvious that the old-media is just as full of bias and badly done journalism (see any article on mashups for example) that unlike a doctor or architect, a citizen journalist CAN do a better job, and I think books like this one (and the created PR storm around it as old-media journalists fall on it as their new bible) reflect the pinch and dilemma at the heart of media. When podcasters and vlogger show you up, for the staid old media hack that you are, how do you respond? Contrasting this with Chris Vallance’s response about learning from podcasters at PodCamp and I know who I’d put my money on surviving as the landscape changes in the next 5-10 years.

Also covered in the Wikipedia vs Encyclopaedia Britannica debate (ironic as Wikipedia is based on the 1911 version of EB) was that it’s interesting what is left out of encyclopaedias and what is in Wikipedia – Andrew used this to sneer at Wikipedia’s pop culture entries such as about Pamela Anderson, but to my mind this is the very strength of Wikipedia, it covers the areas that paper media cannot keep up with, or won’t cover. Of course for the less ‘sexy’ classic subjects you might want to refer to paper media, but the total inclusion of Wikipedia is not it’s weakness it’s also it’s strength.

Matthew pointed out the age mix, and stratification of views around this – it was nice to see 20s – 70s debating such a thing, from established media (BBC) to new media (Yahoo) and non-media (me, grassroots media creators, and one avowed Facebook addict) .

The other interesting point was from a teacher and was about teaching media literacy, that these technologies and their public doubts around them lend themselves as examples of questioning sources, biases etc. I think this is more the issue, rather than requesting we artifically enforce a set of gatekeepers, (as an early question pointed out, not necessarily from Eton or Oxbridge, but still part of an privleged elite) isn’t it better to teach children how to question ALL sources, and see the value in all media? Ie. We partly become the gatekeepers, rather than trusting a set of sanctioned gatekeepers with their known and unknown biases and unknown background dealing?

As pointed out at the end, this is partly a false discussion, old media and new media are really the same; both bow down to the advertiser dollar. I think the real issue is about content creation, especially in the CC field, who pays for it if at all, and who makes money off it, and whether money should be mixed up in this at all? Books and lectures like this are a symptom of the changing infonomics, changing structures within media to a model where musicians and artists are part-time, where journalists or experts (even those on book tours) can be a dirty word, where bloggers fact-check the old media, and podcasters wonder where the hell to go next.

I’ll link to the RSA podcast when it’s up.

You want the thrills, the spills, the goss, the moss (?) not loads of boring words.

So here are my pictures of PodCamp with sporadic commentary!

Me and John went up on the Friday night to have a meal and get settled in for the early start the next day…wandered into the Fountain Inn and fairly quickly wandered out. So Saturday…

Arrive and who do I see almost immediately? Scott from the Night Nurse Show! Linda amd myself had worked on him, Linda with the offer of pop tarts and myself with my wondrous (err) upcoming DJ set and a tip about accommodation.

Dean was surprised to see me also:

I avoided the session full of Thatcher’s Children trying to mormontize or appletize their podcasts or whatever they call it. So first session for me I went into was the Social networking one about Twatter, sorry Twitter and deFaceBooks. There was a man with ‘Loudmouthman’ on his t-shirt.

“I wonder why” thought me, about 5 seconds later and for the next hour, I found out why. I think he was being the honorary Ewan (sorry Ewan .

I chatted more with Glyn of Open Rights Group and Dean Whitbread about copyright and music industry and how it related to podcasters, and thought ‘we should be having this in THERE’ so I hosted a session called ‘Music Rights and Podcasting’ which was very cool and very ad-hoc and probably was crap, but hey-ho I was entering into the unconference side of things.

I was actually secretly trying to start an anarchist Podcast Copyright Rebel Alliance like the TolPuddle Martyrs or proper ninja podcasters that actually know and carry out the first secret of Fight Club, or something.

Alas, the revolution was postponed for coffee and more gossiping, I mean networking…err…and free pens and tshirts. SWAG!

Oh no damn those sneaky capitalists…aargh…gimme! gimme! No!NO! Must resist!

Do you like the hi-tech way of updating the plasma screen? I was so disappointed the Wiki couldn’t update through osmosis via post-it notes.

Met Paul Knight, and he got on very well with Scott as you can see here . And he likes the metal and does great crazy videos as PJK Productions including the PodCamp promo which is very funny. Very recommended. Said he had a big gay following, well he does now, well 2

What you all want to know is about the piss up later, really? Well there was a band called Esteban (we like the MCOG reference):

There was drinking.

There was dancing.

And some DJing from me, which hopefully you’ll hear in a podcast soon as well as the Music Rights session if the libel laws get changed (ears burning already!). Sadly Rob from Top of the Pods and Claire had to go before my set, which was a shame. But I had fun playing some very silly tunes, and about 5 of mine.

Sunday was a bit bleary, got down there about 11ish and several sessions were in full swing. Glyn from Open Rights Group did a interesting session about what they do especially relating to podcasting, parody, mashups and some frightening info about e-voting in the UK. I did an interview for the podcast after his talk which will be on the next podcast.

My most favouritest session was the one at the end with Chris Vallance who works for 5 Live and also podcasts but also uses citizen media, Youtube and podcasters in his shows, and gets inspiration from podcasting shows and techniques. What was refreshing is a lot of established meeja people speaking at these things seem a bit condescending or trying to cash in on the novelty factor to me; Chris was the opposite, very open to learning from other people, amateur or professional. We talked about tips and techniques in interviewing and creating shows. I took an awful picture of him in response. C’est la vie.

I did find it interesting that a certain company wasn’t even mentioned in all but 1 of the sessions I was in, and it was I that mentioned them ? Not intentionally, I think they never came up as the likes of Twitter, Facebook and vloggy stuff seemed to be the love/hate buzzwords this year. Maybe their time has passed?

So it was time to go after that, well after a few hours wait in a chavvy pub with Scott and a horrible train journey with a screaming kid whose parents didn’t seem to give a shit, that is, and then home to London.

But otherwise a great PodCamp, my first and much more of a community effort than PodCastCon2006 I think (Stealth Disco excepted), I like the fluid nature more. It fits far better with the DIY nature of podcasting, if you don’t like a session then do one yourself – there’s the room, GO!

In fact I was thinking it was like the Second Life of Conferences, like SL there isn’t a rule or games, you either wander around thinking ‘what do I do now?’, hang out or go and create something yourself for others to share.

I wish it had been more dynamic and fluid, but it’s early days and people are getting used to the format. Like podcasting, people have been forcefed passive entertainment and learning and ‘discussion panels’ than do anything but, so it’ll take time to get people used to that loose format. I like the format though, and think there is a lot of scope and interesting times ahead – here’s to the next one (I hope)!