I love it when little bits of ‘human’ appear in the midst of all the 1’s and 0’s of the web. For the second time now I just spotted the tiny ‘Get some sleep’ message from Google and it made me smile. It’s so small it looks a bit funny (I put the red thing on), but those little touches are great and more and more ‘human’ is beginning to break out of the sign up pages and 404 messages and into bigger things on the web these days. More to come on this and for now, I’m going to listen to Google and ZZZZ.
Uh oh. So awesome, I just reached for my credit card of the future. Waiting for iPhones to be used as turntables at some point this Summer and loads more impossibly cool stuff like this. Bring. It. On.
Hammer, meet nail. Just watched this and had one of those spine tingly moments. A short video on the We Think proposition from Charles Leadbetter A great little piece of video based communication about an amazing take on how the web has changed the world. Wow. Big stuff.
Last Saturday in London saw lots of people (including me) head down to Interesting 2008, a truly unique conference (I think just in its second year) ran by Russell Davies.
People like Ged, Roo and Annie Mole have already done some good write-up of the event so as something slightly different, I’ve given each (well nearly, I actually missed loads in my excitement) presentation down to a single word, added a few sneaky ones and ran that through Wordle to create a visual summary of Interesting 2008.
1 - It all just felt right. Everyone was nice. Nothing was nasty. It was great to have some kids there. Some rough edges. All very real.
2 - Lloyd can really sing. I even saw him run past with a freshly boiled kettle (no lid mind!).
3 - People are up for getting involved in things. People leapt at the chance to play the recorder on stage. At the end everyone packed up rubbish into bin liners, put all the chairs and tables away. Co-created content and all that.
4 - Most conferences are shit. The last one I went to was Internet World. There’s so much that needs to be changed with the old-school conference format.
5 - It was nice not to hear the words “social media’ mentioned all day. The only appearance of Twitter was on someone’s screen as they were setting up. I didn’t Tweet once during the day. (OK I did, before and after, but you know what I mean).
6 - Meeting people offline (or achieving “fleshpoint” as Ian refers to it as) is just the best, especially when you’ve known them for a while online.
7 - Russell Davies is very funny. He tickled me by ending an announcement with ‘now go back to your business’.
8 - Music pretty much rules the whole Earth. It is GLUE.
9 - There’s so much interesting, genuine stuff out there, so why on Earth do some brands insist on creating their own synthetic stuff instead of getting involved with genuinely interesting things that come from somewhere a lot better than a brainstorm.
10 - It’s a bit rubbish when you’re sat at a conference (or in a meeting for that matter) and everyone’s just on their laptops doing something else. There was a noticeable lack of laptops there and instead much more scribbling in notebooks, analogue style.
“To Thine Own Self Be True”
That’s what was written above the stage at the Conway Hall venue and I think that said it all for me. Interesting was basically a coming-out session for geeks and interesting people. That’s why it’s so frickin’ cool and every single person did such a great job. Quite a number of people introduced themselves as geeks and thoughout the day there was a mixture of both proudness and shyness when it came to people opening up and revealing their inner-geekiness. But I think everyone had that in common - be it food, hoovers, music and graphic design, lego or toilets - sharing something you’re so passionate about is always interesting and the best way of connecting with hundreds of other human beings in a room
And finally - here’s an image which I think captures the whole day nicely.
Why? Because someone sitting near me offered me a pack which I though was a really, really nice touch. The whole day was about sharing stuff and it felt so apt that it should be an old school box of Sunmaid Raisins. Something so familiar and nice. Amazing packaging. Free from crap. An icon. Something that evoked so many memories of school lunch boxes and being a kid. Something that I hadn’t had for ages but still love. So thank you Sunmaid Raisin provider. Your little gesture of kindness left me feeling satisfied that Interesting 2008 really was all I hoped it would be and a little bit more.
Bonus video: Just for the fun of it. Here’s 30 odd people trying to playing recorders (thanks to the Guardian), including Ben who I spent the day with too along with Ged, Will and lots of other people. (captured by Ged on a Flip video recorder thingy)
Technology moves super quick and over the past few decades we’ve come on leaps and bounds and pretty much take it for granted that we can broadcast live from our mobile phones. Every so often it’s nice to be reminded of that and I had one of those moments this morning.
Here is a link to what’s thought to be the oldest known recordings of computer generated music - in this case “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “In the Mood” - released ahead of the 60th anniversary of ‘Baby” - the forerunner of all modern computers. (Shame on you BBC for not allowing me to embed the player!) And here is a link to a great video explaining more about more the Manchester-based magical computer behind the music.
And, carrying on with the anniversary theme, here’s a guy retracing the very room in which the internet was born at UCLA (more details here on the forthcoming 40th anniversary of the birth of the internet).
And to finish thing’s off - blending music and computers and the web - here’s a cracking rendition of Radiohead’s Nude, with the following band members (!):
Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums
HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX
Up watching Current (193 on Sky) - the best channel to watch whilst on the web I reckon. There’s a pod about the Techtonik phenomenon on and can’t decide if it’s silly or very cool. Thoughts?
See that down there. No, down there in the bottom right hand corner. Yes, the orange thing. That means that middledigit.net is taking part in ‘the world’s first internet balloon race’ - Balloonacy - a spectacular idea from Poke (yes them again, promise I’m not being bribed to write about them) for Orange which definitely needs a look in. Basically you create and name your very own balloon which then takes part in a race on June 23rd at midday. All the balloons taking part will fly across the interwebz, across sites taking part (including this one) using a bit of Javascript and a dose of Flash 9 movie goodness . Don’t really know what to expect, but given my experience of the site so far, I’m excited and fairly certain it will be super slick.
I named my balloon digit and for some reason decided to talk about pies in the blurb about him/her - first word that popped in my head that rhymed with skies blatantly. Here he/she is in all his/her orange glory, along with his/her tag:
More here from Iain (who explains the whole thing better). The only thing I’d maybe like is a little balloon based countdown timer to whack up on the blog to remind me (and people) when the big day is - as it’s a fairly long way off. There’s a nice one on the main site . . . though I guess it’s nice to ‘discover’ the little bobbing balloon and find out for yourself on the main site. Guess I could try to knock one up if I was really that bothered and do some of that co-created advertising stuff they talk about? Hmm.
So, wish digit all the best and prey for good weather on the interwebz on June 23rd, 2 days after Interesting 2008 BTW.
Saw this before watching Indy 4 (OK film, but felt slightly ‘empty’ afterwards) the other day. A short animation incorporated into a Mini ad as part of the Mini Shorts/Future Shorts campaign.
(Mini opinion - The ad felt a bit patched together around this piece of creative content rather than blended nicely with it and also, where’s the SEO/keyword bit of the campaign?)
The animation was by a guy called Lev Yilmaz and his home on the web is here. I’ve just spent half an hour or so (procrastinating) checking out loads of his other work at his YouTube Channel. What strikes me is how very human it all is. How just like all the best art, it connects with you as a human being because it is so real and obviously comes from his heart.
Here’s some more of these little movies which touch on loads of things in life like depression, breaking up with girlfirends, seeing your mates succeed in a band that you could have been in and the random conversations you have with your mum.
“The cool guys”
“A typical conversation with my mom”
‘I’m not going to think about her”
There’s also a touch of Lev in the Common Craft videos and the latest Social media one was released last week.
Spot the Bull is back. And it’s better. This time it’s not Derek, it’s Winston (Son of Derek). There’s more features and it’s still a great idea incredibly well executed where you bet on the location of a cow (calculated via GPS and plotted live on a grid overlay on a webcam feed) in a field in Glastonbury to win tickets. Since blogged about it last year it’s won awards. Come on Winston . . . number 67 tomorrow at 3pm son. Nicely done people of Poke and Orange.
