meish dot org: life, unfolding

Tomorrow night (Thursday 10 May), I’m participating in a panel (and audience!) discussion entitled Soapboxes in cyberspace: how can the media facilitate debate online? The focus of the event will be to consider some of the challenges and (sometimes missed) opportunities for mainstream media in making (or letting?) online debate and Weblog-based commentary happen around politics and current affairs.

This is another in the series of Innovation Forum discussions initiated by Nico Macdonald, aimed at bringing together people from different disciplines to share knowledge, and I’m chuffed to be appearing alongside such an interesting bunch of people, including Lee Bryant from Headshift, Andrew Calcutt from the School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies (University of East London), Daniel Mermelstein from BBC News and Olivier Creiche from Six Apart.

As many of you will know, I recently joined Guardian Unlimited as Head of Communities and User Experience, and it’s been fascinating to start understanding the many issues and opportunities that community presents to a major media organisation, as well as beginning to help others understand and make change. But it’s been equally exciting to explore how a successful online media organisation can learn from its user community.
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If you haven’t already seen it, there’s a great opportunity to catch An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s double-Oscar winning film about our environmental crisis, this Sunday afternoon, 29th April. In fact, if you haven’t already seen it, then this might be your last chance to do so on the big screen, as it’s no longer available on general release.

There’s a special charity screening at The Tricycle Theatre, which is a great little independent place, on Kilburn High Road in NW6. It’s handy for the tube/north london line train and loads of buses go up there. Here’s a map.

The screening starts at 12.30pm (lunchtime) and costs £12.50 including some nibbles. All proceeds go to charity, too, which is cool. There are more details about both film and charity here.

Basically, if you’re in two minds about whether to attend, do: It could be the most informative and stimulating Sunday lunchtime you’ve had in ages – and it certainly beats the pants of the Eastenders omnibus…

Anyway, to book your seat, call 020 7328 1000. I’ll see you there.

Went to the middle of London yesterday to take photos of the St Patrick’s Day parade and celebrations. The weather was bitterly cold, but I’m pleased with the shots I came away with…

(in this mosaic, the following pictures: 1. Ice cool, 2. Celebrate, 3. Eddy, 4. Taking a moment, 5. Colmcille, 6. Toast, 7. Smile, 8. Amused, 9. Lined up)

More photos (as ever) on Flickr.

I’m sorry not to be writing more at the moment – there’s a lot going on. Hopefully I’ll be able to be more erudite soon!

In 1989, I made a birthday card for the second red nose day, and ran around collecting signatures and money for it, with visions of being able to present the card live on air – you know, like they do with those big charity cheques.

(In this archive photo, above, you can see me aged 15 – I think Red Nose Day was actually on my birthday that year, which is why the birthday card seemed appropriate), my friend Melissa holding the card, and my sister Anna (who would have been 12), raising money by being sponsored to wear her uniform backwards for the day. As you do…)

After school, a couple of friends and I tramped down to BBC television centre in White City (about 5 minutes away from school) where we hung around the front gate, trying to blag our way in to the telethon/live show/star-studded extravaganza.

It didn’t work, and a chauffeur-driven car containing Rik Mayall nearly ran over my foot.

Eventually, we despondently sloped off home, and I had to persuade my mum to write a cheque for the charity, in exchange for a carrier bag jangling with pound coins and other loose change.

Happily, since then it’s become much easier to give money to Comic Relief – and this year, you can do it from the comfort of your keyboard, and get a funny book into the bargain.

Pop on over to shaggyblogstories.co.uk and order a special edition book, compiled of 100 funny bits by british bloggers including the great, the good and the gigglesome -people you’ve heard of, people whose blogs you read all the time (including, er, me) and people you haven’t yet met. Compiled in just a week, all profits after Lulu takes its cut go to Comic Relief.

Go on. Do it.

So I’m at FoWA London 2007, and so far…meh.

Bearing in mind that there’s still a chunk of the afternoon and the whole of tomorrow to go, I’m willing to give the Carson folks a bit of a chance to pull it back, but so far, I’m a bit underwhelmed.

So first up, the positives: there are more women here this year. Last year there were about 600 men typing away furiously on laptops to the sound of millions of sperm dying from radiation exposure. This year, more women…and less macs. I don’t know if these things are related. Probably not.

Also, there have been some really good speakers on the stage today, giving engaging, comprehensible presentations about things they’re clearly passionate about. Werner Vogels from Amazon was probably the head of this pack. The boys from last.fm and Tara from Citizen Agency also gave good talks, but inevitably for people who do the conference circuit a bit, there’s a sort of a feeling that they’re going over ground they’ve covered before, elsewhere, using the same presentations.

And, inevitably, there’s probably an overlap in the audience, too. This probably says more about my recent conferencewhoredom than anything else – perhaps I am where the conference overlap occurs?

This leads me to wondering who this conference is actually for. Is it for people who – like me – were here last year, or is it really intended for people who weren’t? Last year, it was very much pitched as a developer conference, a bit of a geek fest, which was reflected in the mix of speakers and content covered. It seemd to be targetted to small startups and developers, and you know, that’s a good niche audience.

This year, it’s a bit different. Everyone’s got colour-coded badges on, denoting their function (picked from a horrible range of options, especially for someone like me who doesn’t tend to fit in any particular shape hole (except a Meg-shaped one) – I’m a “manager” though I should be quick to point out that I don’t have a pointy head.) So as well as managers, we’ve got developers, founders, media, academics, designers, investors, marketing, sponsors and speakers. Oh my!

The idea is that you can, at a glance, get an indication of who’s at the event, and whether they matter to you. This is reinforced by something involving stickers saying “I’ve got money that I want to give away” or “I need a job” – I’m wondering if there’s a market for creating stickers that say “I’m quite happy with both my financial and professional circumstances, thanks for asking” possibly with a little box into which you can write your dayrate ;)

The thing is, you get a real sense that the conference is aimed at all of these categories of people – those with startups, those with ideas but no starup, those with development skills but no ideas and those looking to fund startup development, as well as those attached to bigger organisations.

That means that so far, it’s failed to hit its stride a bit, I think. There’s some reproduction of content from last year’s event – or, more accurately, reproduction of the conclusions from the event. How to make a good startup. How to scale. How to make (or keep making) profit.

That’s what makes me wonder about the intended audience – like, if they were here last year, then I think a lot of people will know this stuff already. Anyway, I hope it becomes clearer as the event rolls on.

And speaking of rolls (well, sort of), there’s a couple of things worth saying about the facilities in Kensington Town Hall.

First off, in the programme there was a promise a catered lunch. Er, sandwiches and a queue of 600 people does not a catered lunch make.

Secondly, and more irritating, the brochure talks about there being ample wifi? Um, it’s actually been woefully inadequate (and paid) BTOpenzone nodes which have conspired to only let me get onto for a handful of minutes (countable on a single hand) during the whole day so far, and even then it keeps dropping out more often than a rebellious teenager. Diabolical!

To be fair, Ryan Carson did say that they were hoping things would get better tomorrow, and I believe him…but in the meantime, I’m suffering from serious wifi rage.

This image shows the manifestation of the connection fallacy (the wi-lie?): it alleges that the connection exists and that it’s good. But I can assure you it isn’t.

Update, just before the end of the day:
The wifi improved and the latter speakers – Bradley Horowitz on social software, deriving meaning from metadata, MyBlogLog and Pipes, followed by Kevin Rose from Digg on their approach to analysing user attention data, with a well-executed appearance by a guy from Soocial as well – picked the pace up and set a good standard for tomorrow. Nicely saved.

So, I’ve just come back from speaking at NMK’s Social By Design event, where I was on a panel and speaking briefly about the different and emergent kinds of social media.

Some brief thoughts about the event, in no particular order:

• It was good to bump into various people I haven’t seen for years (dare I say it, since the last bubble burst the heady networking days of 2001 or so)
• Very good to finally meet Neil McIntosh who did an excellent job of chairing the event and keeping the crowd’s conversation with the panel flowing. We’ve been orbiting each other in blog world for years, so it was good to finally hook up.
• Tom was there, and it was great to see him in impassioned mode, getting riled up and animated about the questions from his place in the middle of the audience, as well as making faces at me during my talk. It’s weird to think that our friendship predates a lot of the debates that are currently being had about social software, but that it was social software that actually brought us to meet in the first place in 2000. So there you go: living proof that social web experiences can deliver rich, interesting and rewarding real-life benefits – like friendship.
• I actually enjoyed giving my talk – I like giving talks and presentations, especially when, like this, it’s about something I am genuinely passionate about. In this event, I felt like I got my point across well and in a mostly coherent way. Also, I liked making people laugh a bit. These events can be dreadfully staid.
• Chatting with people after the event, it was interesting to see a range of reactions and responses to the panel talks and subsequent discussion. Some got a lot out of it. Others were frustrated that the discussion didn’t go far enough. My take is that it’s good to stimulate discussion, and I would hope it will server as an impetus for more debate on this topic in future – perhaps in another forum?
• The panel discussion after the talks was varied and lively. I hope I managed to hold my own – felt like it, at least, though by that point of the night I was absolutely gasping for a glass of water or something.
• There were questions about the “design” aspect of SBD, which I thought was a red herring – I’d never considered the word design in this context to be about gloss. Rather, I thought it was about proposition, architecture and the way that socialness is woven into experiences.
• There were also questions about the potential power of social networks, and how they can be used to mobilise people for good. I gave an example of my mum who, living on the Isle of Mull, participated in the Digital Islands project of a few years ago, in which each islander was given a free computer and dial-up connection, to ensure that although they were geographically remote, they could still participate and interact with government on the mainland. One of the oversights in my view was that there was no attempt to enable the newly-connected islanders to engage with each other – think of how powerful that could have been, to have a physically remote community linked up via the internet and able to organise and make change collectively as well as individually.
• There was also a very inevitable dig at the big media/portals that Tom and myself work for (via us, which is always nice – thanks!), which (when you got past the bit about how we’re dooooomed, doooooomed etc) took the line of “isn’t it all about generating advertising eyeballs at the end of the day?” Well, no, actually, it’s not.
• It seemed like I was coming from quite a different place from the other speakers, who had spoken at length and in detail about their companies’ products, whereas I approached the topic from a more trend/sociological perspective
• I could definitely have done without people smoking, though – it was a basement bar, so no fresh air, roasting, and I’m coming down with a cold. Combine that with nothing to drink for the speakers and a smoky haze in the air…my throat’s raw right now.
• It also sounded from a lot of the questions that were coming out in the Q&A, and the subsequent discussions, like there’s going to be quite an interest in the next NMK B&I event, in January: Do Agencies Innovate?. Having worked for several years in the field of devising bespoke creative digital content solutions for brands and advertisers, I know what my answer to this would be….but I look forward to participating in the (probably heated) debate at the event in the new year!

Anyway, now that’s over I can get on with DOING some practising of what I’ve been preaching. I can also look forward to doing some sleeping and seeing if I can get rid of this damn cold!

If you saw me at the event, and have wandered over – say hello. You can also find me at various other socially-focused sites around the internet – there’s a list of a few of my footprints here.

At least, according to the world of advertising and commerce.

This weekend, I

• …heard my first (and second) Christmas songs used in TV adverts
• …saw an ad in which a small boy bedecked in a scarf and bobble-hat screeched “It’s Chriiiiiistmaaaaaas” (to which P and I responded “nooooooo, it’s nooooooot!”)
• …saw a woman buying a roll of wrapping paper in M&S, and it was definitely christmas giftwrap, rather than birthday or tasteful or similar
• …was offered a “gift receipt” when I bought a top in M&S. No thanks, a normal receipt will do fine…
• …saw a family in Sainsbury’s buying mince pies. Loads of them.
• …suddenly became aware that all the shops are FULL of festive-season-related items and decorations and so on. They must have snuck in and applied the Christmas Blunderbus overnight

I know we say it every year, but it really does seem to be getting earlier than ever. What, did someone make a rule that as soon as the last firework has died away, it’s open season on holly, conspicuous consumption and glitter?

(for International Women’s Day, and every day)

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Read the rest.

This is what the first day at war looks like:

A beautiful spring Thursday, with a clear blue sky. Blossom tumbles from the trees and eddies on the pavement.

A busy Thursday of meetings and deadlines, without time to think.

A man in the passenger seat of a red Golf, clasping a blue china mug as the vehicle speeds along the road.

A long queue at the post office, and a clerk that smells like stale beer.

Suffice to say, there’s a lot going on at the moment.

Walking home this evening, in a perfect spring sunset, I caught myself thinking about waiting. I’ve never been good at waiting. I can’t begin to imagine what it feels like to wait for an attack to come.

In lieu of patience, we turn to information – and opinion. The web is a blessing and a curse. So much information. But on the other hand, so much information.

For highlights, I recommend Channel 4 news (including Lindsey Hilsum’s evocative eyewitness reports), and especially, the always-excellent, insightful Snowmail. If you don’t already get it, do.

Or… social gathering of online personal publishers, if you can’t stomach the dreaded B-word.

Where: The Green Man, opposite Great Portland St. tube [map]

When: Friday 7 February 2003

7pm – late

Are you planning to attend?

Post a reply below with a link to your site (and, if possible, a picture), so we all know who to look out for!

Thanks.