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Had it not been for the ipod touch I would still care about the Iphone and I’d be down at regent street now with the geeks waiting for the device to be released into the wild. As things are not only can I not afford the device but more than anything else I found it large, clunky and uncomfortable in contrast to the touch. Would you really want to get a phone you can’t use for typing notes in conferences or lectures? Do you want to have your mp3 player and phone to die at the same time? I don’t think that’s a good option. I’m happy with my phone contract. Having 3200 minutes is more than enough for a person like me. The Iphone contract has just 200. Nothing worth getting excited about. When you consider the 18 month contract this seems a little stupid because free wifi is currently increasing across the country and with an 02 bolt on for £7 a month you get unlimited data (withn limits) whilst keeping the minutes you have at the moment. I’m looking forward to the next generation of iphones but at the moment I’m left cold. I’m sorry not to get excited about the iphone. Apple will just have to try harder to get me to want one.

After just one day of use of Seemsic use…

tedc - Nov 5, 2007

Great to see you on Seesmic.

Big Red Nose Just one of many seesmic videos to come.

Poppy Dinsey - Sep 1, 2008

Lovely post Richard, I love what Seesmic has done for the art of conversation. And you yourself bring a very special something to Seesmic, I love your videos….and your accent! ;-)

How many of you have a wifi enabled laptop. How many of you have a wap enabled phone. How many of you have msn messenger. The reason I’m asking you this question is the following. I’ve been using twitter for several months now and it’s whilst working on my dissertation that I wrote the most. Now I’m trying Loic Lemeur’s new video website, Seesmic. It’s based off the twitter principle, that you leave a short video clip, no more than a minute in length about anything, or at least that’s my impression. You can add content in one of three ways. Record it straight from the laptop, link to it from youtube or upload a pre-recorded segment. The two latter options aren’t that interesting but the first one is for one simple reason.  It’s about snippets. When you talk to someone you usually say a sentence or two and then the conversation switches back to you and there’s that back and forth of a lively conversation. In so doing there’s little or no chance of you switching off and going to find something else of interest. It’s also a dialogue between people in different countries and timezones, reflective of the new media landscape as seen by those on the cutting edge of social interaction. What’s so special about this site is that it’s visual and auditory. With twitter you can read twenty tweets in twenty seconds whereas with seesmic you’re condemned to listen to a person go at their own speed. That’s why less than a minute is more than enough for most conversations. Everyone that’s a member participates and in so doing creates their own social group with a difference. Mainly you can see and hear whether they’re happy, lonely, tired or bored. It mans that you can see that little twinkle in their eye, that relaxed stance or their accent. It’s personal. It’s most of what you get from meeting someone in person in other words and that’s what makes it great. I’m looking forward to all the conversations I’m going to have with the people I’m meeting at the moment, whether exclusively online or living in a mixture of both as I am. I’m enjoying this.

Teamwork is a pain because it requires the collaboration of others. As Social Media people this may not sound like a challenge to you since you love having un-conferences and such but to others it’s a real challenge. Someone currently living in my home was telling me about how she would have to do the work of two people because the person whom she was meant to do teamwork with did not understand the question. That’s where doing my university course has it’s merits. Whilst it’s called a Mickey Mouse course by those that choose to do more scientifically based studies there is great value in this area of studies. One of those is the ability to lead a team, to be no more than a cog and more. Over a period of weeks I was producer on three out of four multicamera programs we did during the second year. The team was comprised of about 20 people. Three crews of three for getting stories, three camera operators for the show, one vision mixer, one PA, one AP. one director and so on. You get the picture. Add to the size of this team that they’re students and you see where the problems will occur. The first one is motivation. You need to find the people that agree to work with each other, check that they have the cameras and that everything is in working order. You need to make sure that what they are gathering will fit into the subject of the program. That’s another phase. Script writing. On two out of three programs everything went well. The person that was asked to write the script did so and we had the presenters to deliver the dialogue. The problem occured one day when I had depended on a person to write the script but nothing had been done. It meant that the show would be less organized. Our guest also cancelled on us 30 minutes before the show so phone calls had to be made to know what the key points were. The other two shows went well due to the amount of work that went in. I’m naturally lazy which means I’m great at deleguating certan jobs. I enjoyed handing out the filming assignments, making sure that all the footage was shot, that the material was ready and that everything would go well during the show. I also liked that I could really depend on my PA for the paperwork side of things. Through professional placements I have had before doing this university course I was experienced enough with the technical side to resolve most problems without too much trouble. Through that experience what I learned is the importance of understanding what your role is and knowing how to react immediatly in case of problems. If there’s no script find someone that you know can write to prepare the script. If there’s no presenter select the same person rather than do it yourself. As producer your role is to oversee the whole project. You’ve got to be strong charactered and confident. You also have to be patient. That can be quite a challenge. When you work with people who know little or nothing about computing you need a lot of patience. “Do I look worried?” is a question I love to ask people I’m helping with their editing problems, “no”, that’s when I answer “Only worry if I look worried because that’s when something bad has happened”. As a result I hope it helps to put them at ease. I remember working with one person who knew absolutely nothing about computers and she’s about my age. She was so nervous and so worried that it took all my self control to remain calm. I did remain calm. It’s a high pressure environment (especially in the real world) and it is essential for everyone to be calm and pull their own weight. Through a variety of experiences in television work and student work I have learned about teamwork and what works best. As a result I feel that I have an advantage over people have never had the opportunity to have such big groups to work with. I enjoy teamwork and I’m looking forward to many more assignments in the near future. I’m impatient to get back into a professional television working environment where everyone knows their role and works well as a team. Hopefully with my efforts that will be soon.

If I came from a prestigious university like Cambridge, Oxford or many others were the university is steeped in century old traditions then I would feel a great inclination to go to my graduation. As things stand I don’t feel any need. Everyone else would go to lectures and leave as soon as they could, same with practical work. As a result there was never that great university feeling from those on my course. Also it’s a polytechnic. If at least six students in my graduating class had bothered to come then I would have been inclined to go to the graduation. As things stand I’m going to think of my personal student graduation into the professional world as the documentary screening at the Pompidou centre where my name appeared on screen for the first time in front of professionals as my real graduation. In a parallel thread going to the SU was great. It was nice to meet so many friends from the past who were happy to see and chat with me. That’s what university was about for me. Going to the bar ad having fifteen people with whom to chat, and to meet new people. I’ve always enjoyed the social side of being a student and that’s probably what I miss most. It took a lot of time to generate that level of familiarity and there is a good chance that I will get that many friends in one place very often.

The tweekend is a weekend spent reading twitter posts by all those you are following. I found out about this word earlier today because i am following twitionary, an amusing dictionary that takes twitter terminology and brings it into every day parlance. No self respecting twitterholic should live without it. Kidding aside another twittervox took place with Loudmouthman, Documentally and the ever present PhilCampbell. We discussed why it is that whilst in America everyone Loudmouthman met had twitter at podcamp whilst n the UK the opposite was true. We also took a look at why Documentally created twitterposer, a spoof of twitterposter. If you’d like to view the show then drop by the Tweekend episode now.

Loudmouthman, amongst others was expressing his desire for a means by which to aggregate all our online data through one central account. I though of Freebase and Openid and how they could work. Google though had other thoughts. Whilst Facebook behaves like a portal opensocial helps agggregate content. Facebook assumes thatyou come to their website, spen an hour there and then disconnect. Opensocial assumes that you are an active participant of the new socialmedia landscape on several websites at a time. We currently have a growing number of people that spend more and more time using new technologies to communicate with others. Most of us have flickr accounts, joost accounts youtube and more but for our friends to keep up is a challenge. Getting them to sign on to any social network is particularly hard. Myspace was the key website for a while before facebook overtook. In the past two days I’ve joined Lijit and Open Social. Both work the same way. They take your user id. in my case warzabidul and you tell them which networks you’re part of. The content is then aggregated to a central pag. As more and more friends join open social and lijit so you should get a greater sense of what they are up to. It’s a convenient way to keep up to date with what friends around the world are doing. Look at the sidebar to get an idea of how Plaxo Pulse is using the opensocial idea. Florian Seroussi also pointed me to this article that should help you understand what it’s about. I’m looking forward to more people using it and I love the great flexibility that it will give it’s users. If you’re using it them write a comment and I’ll visit your site to see your social media presence.