Category: Work

Talk about ‘Six Spaces of Social Media’ at Thinking Digital

ITConversations has posted the audio from a talk I gave at this year’s Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead earlier this year. The talk expands on the themes in my ‘Six Spaces of Social Media‘ post, and starts to open this up into an argument about how the public realm doesn’t exist as a single space anymore, and we need to rethink our political and social language about private and public space, particularly when we are designing policy or projects for these spaces.

I’ve given variants of this talk a few times this year, and feel that there’s something missing in the argument that I can’t quite put my finger on yet. I think the end of the 20th century concept of the public realm is something that we need to address more directly at the level of policy – at the moment, its mainly being discussed in terms of technology or secondary social effects. I’m more interested in interrogating how we use the word ‘public’ in political and social contexts, and suggesting that it no longer means what it did to many people who are the subjects of policy.

As we live in a world currently having to re-engineer its core economic and political philosophies after boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’ were catastrophically obscured, I think we need a more nuanced vocabulary to replace the traditional private/public binary opposition, as this has elided into series of nuanced, dynamic spaces along a line from personal to social. I’m not politically well-read enough to articulate this in terms of hard politics, but I’m trying to take the issues that broadcasters are facing in redefining ‘public value’ media in a digital world as an analogy for broader issues we will have around redefining the ‘public’

Also, listening to this again, the joke I make about being ‘unfortunately’ a Spurs fan has, sadly, only got funnier…

Mashed 08 Pictures

Ant MIller
Ant Miller with Rocket

I took my Mamiya C330 medium-format camera to Mashed08 earlier this summer (as I did last year), and have only just got around to getting the films developed. I didn’t take a lot, but got some nice pictures of people there, and also a sequence of Ant Miller with the rocket they let off on the Sunday afternoon.

The full set is on Flickr. Here’s a couple of favourites

Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace

Bobbie Johnson
Bobbie Johnson

Adrian Woolard
Adrian Woolard

Seedcamp

I’m at Seedcamp this wednesday, helping out as a mentor for the 22 very interesting start-ups that Saul Klein and his team have assembled for the week-long workshop. I couldn’t attend Seedcamp last year, but I’m really excited about the event, and getting to meet the companies involved.

There’s something about events like this, and social innovation camp, and the Innovation Labs at the BBC, that gets me buzzing with ideas again. Its the creative energy given off by teams of focused, driven people who are offered a small window in which to forget everything else and just worry away at an idea until it works. Or doesn’t. In which case, better to spend a week finding that out than months or years.

Despite the latent competition in these events, the sense of collaboration is always stronger, as the the focus of the camp/lab format makes everyone feel like they’re sharing the experience together. As a commissioner, they’re incredible opportunities to have a long dialogue with potential suppliers about ideas, rather than just an hour-long pressured pitch meeting in a stuffy office room. Whether you’re a commissioner at a broadcaster, or a VC looking to invest, the intimacy of an extended camp/lab helps you build a relationship with a potential project team, and tells you more than any slide deck or investors pack could. Not least whether the team actually gets on – we had a couple of teams at the BBC Labs fall-out spectacularly during the week, which is very handy to know *before* you give them the money.

I worked out that in 2007, with the Innovation Labs and getting the slate together for the C4 Education projects, I must have seen over 1,200 ideas or pitches. Without Labs, Hackday, Social Innovation Camp and Seedcamp, it would be a lot harder to get to see the best ideas across the many different pools of digital talent in the UK. If it wasn’t for last year’s Seedcamp (and a fortuitous meeting with Paul Miller at No 10) i wouldn’t have seen, and invested in, School Of Everything, for example. Hopefully, 4IP can support and extend this informal network of events, and come up with some new events to fill the gaps.

Battlefront in the Telegraph today

Alexander Rose - one of the campaigners at battlefront.co.uk
Alexander Rose – one of the campaigners at battlefront.co.uk

I’ve written an article for the Telegraph’s Digital Life today about Battlefront, one of the many cross platform projects we’re doing at Channel 4. Here’s the article text:

Earlier this year, Clay Shirky, the renowned social media commentator and author, was interviewed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts by Brian Eno. The discussion was followed by a question and answer session. One teenage blogger asked how the digital age had changed the way we lived. She was a child of the digital revolution, she explained, and could barely recall the world without the internet.

Shirky’s reponse was telling. He said that the biggest shift in the past five to 10 years was not the explosion of choice – the mushrooming of TV channels, online content and mobile services. Instead, the most radical change was the democratisation of discourse. Before social media, if you wanted to speak in public, you needed permission. If you were a musician, you needed the resources of a record label to promote and distribute your music; if you were a film-maker, you needed a Hollywood studio or TV channel to take a risk on your artistic vision; even if you just had an opinion you wanted to share, you had to get the attention of a newspaper, magazine or book publisher to make that opinion public.

Nowadays, he noted, anyone with a laptop and broadband connection can share their opinions, rants, private thoughts and creative work with a global public audience. This doesn’t mean that all this new content gets equal attention – most is viewed by a few people and ignored by millions – but it’s still a radical shift.

Of course, this change raises new problems and questions – when anyone can voice their opinions, how do you get noticed? If you’re passionate about your message and want to change the world, how can you use the web to reach others who are as passionate as you?

That’s what Channel 4 is exploring. This week, the education team launched a new project, Battlefront, to find out how 20 teenagers in the UK are using the web to campaign about issues affecting their lives. The project works on many levels – there is a main website that aggregates all the campaigns and their progress; a site on Bebo that lets the audience become part of the campaigns and connect with the campaigners; and two five-part TV series that will run on Channel 4 in autumn 2008 and at the end of the project in 2009.

The project demonstrates how social media technologies can be used for good – connecting people who want to share information and change their lives. Social networks offer incredible opportunities for teenagers to share their experiences, talk to peers, and learn from others who have faced the same problems.

This is the single most valuable thing about the web – it connects people who need information with others who already have it. In the case of Battlefront, our campaigners will be part of a large community who are already commenting on their campaigns, offering advice and getting involved. We’ve also recruited a community of mentors, from leading lawyers, designers and social entrepreneurs to experienced campaigners, viral marketers and professional trouble-makers.

Over the next nine months, we’ll follow the teenagers as they develop their campaigns on the web, finding out how to get attention, how to build a community, and how to turn that community into real change. Will Manpreet Darroch succeed in helping to reduce the number of young people killed in road accidents? How quickly can Alexander Rose’s campaign to stop gun and knife crime gather momentum? Can Rachey Betty persuade the Government to increase the minimum wage for under-18s, and raise awareness of how much young people contribute to the workforce? Will James Mummery succeed in his quest to reduce the waste generated by the careless disposal of free newspapers? Can Aimee Nathan encourage us all to start drinking from reusable coffee cups and maybe get a cheaper cup of coffee into the bargain, and how many of us will Tom Robbins encourage to do thoughtful things for other people, by carrying out random acts of kindness?

The legacy of Battlefront will not only be the outcomes of the individual campaigns – it will also be an online database of tips, hints and tricks for future campaigners. This is the other great thing about the web – it creates a permanent record of shared experience, from the conversations of many, not the opinions of a few.

Perhaps, as Clay Shirky suggested, we should rethink our assumption that social media is a threat, and recognise it as a truly liberating opportunity for the next generation to find their own voice, in their own space, and on their own terms.

Silicon Swings and Silicon Roundabouts

Mike Butcher of Techcrunch has posted a rallying cry to create a ‘TechHub’ in London, based on the model of the Dublin Digital Hub. He’s looking for the same kind of serendipty and collegiate collaboration that you see in clusters like Silicon Valley. But in comments, there is a debate about whether these clusters are the result of physical proximity, or something more cultural and complex.

I have some personal experience of this, as I inadvertently ended up running a media centre in Yorkshire for a few years in the late 90s. We provided many of the services that Mike is asking for – a mixed ecology of entrepreneurs, artists, etc; discounted serviced office space; even a cafe. Obviously Huddersfield isn’t Shoreditch, but I think there’s some things we learnt that might be useful to Mike’s campaign.

My first instinct would be to say that the idea of tech-hubs and media centres has been around for at least 15 years in the UK’s creative industry sector, and almost every region (except, strangely, London) has their own version. Secondly, I’d question whether something as complex as establishing and running a physical office complex can be crowdsourced as easily as a logo or barcamp event, but actually, Tara Hunt’s Citizen Space seems to be doing well, and might be a good model. But rather than point out that the idea is not a new one, or shoot it down in flames, I thought I’d look at the idea from three perspectives – the people who might need a Tech-Hub, the people who might run it, and the people who might fund it. In my experience, its the overlaps and (more importantly) the differences between the needs of these three groups that most schemes like this don’t plan for, and find difficult to accommodate.

People who might use a Tech-Hub…
Want cheap office space that’s also cool and funky
Start ups, obviously want the cheapest place to park themselves. We used to subsidise the first 6 months rental, and offer schemes for recent graduates starting their first company. But sometimes even this isn’t cheap enough, so they also…
Want flexibility
Start-ups want to cut deals to share space with friends, or visiting geeks, or anyone in fact who might give them money. Then if they get funding, they want to grow, fast, and start making the space look like a proper office. They also want to be able to grow or quit at very short notice.
Want to roll their own IT solutions
They want to choose their own ISP, hosting, comms solutions, etc. They want to be in total control, as this is their business, and the flexibility to bring whatever services they need into the building.
Want a cool, social environment
They want to meet other people like them in the shared spaces, and a cafe or bar that is relaxed enough to hang out in, but smart enough to host meetings with potential clients
Want 24 hour access, and good transport links
They want the place to be 100% secure, but also to be able to come and go when they please. They also want the local transport connections to be good, or to be able to reserve parking on site.

People running a Tech Hub…
To minimise capital investment
Kitting out a building is *expensive*. Even if you do it on the cheap, building regulations still count, and it costs a lot to bring the space up to regs in order to lease it to clients.
To maximise occupancy
Empty offices cost money, so at some point you’ll have to weight up whether to preserve the eclectic startup culture, or let any old company in. Would an accountancy fit with the Tech Hub culture? Or a solicitors? Or do you only want cool web 2.0 startups?
To minimise risk
Long leases and tied-in contracts will secure you the core funding you need to run the building every financial year, which is essential when you’re fixed costs (rates, interest, staff wages, etc) are constant and mostly in year-long cycles. Unfortunately, most businesses want to negotiate the shortest possible notice period…
To consolidate and resell services
Outside of office rentals, most workspaces make their main profit on buying in core services (comms, etc) in bulk and reselling to their clients. In fact, its preferable to have a lock-in, so that clients can only use your comms solutions in their offices. This tends to be fine for clerical and general business companies, but causes no end of problems with tech/media companies.
To outsource risky ventures like cafes and cultural events
Running a cafe or restaurant is a completely different business, so its preferable to outsource it rather than run it yourself. And finding somebody who is willing to do this, experienced, and suits your culture is bloody impossible, trust me. As for making the space vibrant and full of events – this is not impossible, especially if you’ve got creative businesses in the building, but don’t under-estimate the amount of work and money it takes to co-ordinate.

People who might want to fund Tech Hubs…
Want a clear business plan
Even RDAs and other public funders need to know that the investment is sustainable. This will be high-risk venture, as its based on high-risk clients.
Want to see an experienced management team
Just like VCs, public funders want a team who have done this kind of thing before, and know about regulations, Health and Safety, etc as well as the experience to know what works and what doesn’t. Most people with experience in this sector now work in the commercial office sector (REGUS, etc) which is very different from the kind of culture/commerce mix that Mike is proposing with Tech Hub.
Want to guarantee certain outputs every year
Public funding is output-driven – its created to achieve pre-agreed goals and targets, such as new business creation, jobs created, GDP increase, etc. The Tech Hub will have to understand how these are measured, and make sure that the business plan can reach these targets, or risk having funding pulled before the project is established.
Want ownership, credit or even representation
Depending on the amount of public sector funding, the funders will require equity stakes, branding opportunities, or even board membership. The last can be very problematic, depending on how good the funder’s suggested board members are. At the Media Centre, it took us years to clear out the Council-Elected board and replace them with people who actually knew how to run a business.

So – these are kind of things that aren’t immediately obvious when you go and visit a Tech-Hub, but these issues, and the conflicts between them, will inevitably be the key factors in it being successful. And these are just the most immediate loigistical issues that come to mind, and most of them are actually pretty easy to solve if you have an experienced team, some understanding and helpful funders, and the time to plan well.

The harder thing to plan for is that elusive spark that turns an ordinary building or location into a hub of activity, innovation, collaboration and economic productivity. This has been a hot topic in cultural policy circles for the last 2/3 decades. The policy makers in Huddersfield were very influenced by Charles Landry’s work, in particular his book The Creative City. More recently, Richard Halkett’s , research and policy team at NESTA have been producing some fantastic reports, including studies of historical trends in regional innovation and creativity in the UK, and Innovation and Cities.

But of course, reading all of these doesn’t actually help you achieve the alchemical mix of people, money and innovation that makes places like Silicon Valley hum. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge, build it, and hope they will come.

I hope Mike’s idea gets more support, and even better if something concrete happens as a result. I’d be happy to lend any spare brain-cycles I could to the cause. But the most important thing to remember is this – in an age of virtual companies and networked innovation, working in the real world is still as complicated, frustrating and inefficient as ever. And it takes more than a logo and funky cafe to solve these problems.

2Gether and Yeardot

Very excited about 2 things this week. First up is the 2Gether08 event, organised by Steve Moore and funded by C4. The event is aiming to linkup many of the social and digital innovation community in the UK, including AMEE, Interesting; and Social Innovation Camp.

There’s a fantastic line-up of speakers over the 2 days, including Umair Haque, Julian Baggini, Martha Lane-Fox, Matthew Taylor, Jane Jacobs, Euan Semple, and my favourite – Russell Davies, talking about ‘Interesting for Change’. Should be a really fun and mind-expanding 2 days. See you there?

Also this week, our YearDot project has properly launched. This is an ambitious online and TV project where we’ll be following 15 teens as they live ‘the first year of the rest of their lives’. Its aiming to see how living on the web is changing the way that teens make choices in their lives, and how networking, collaboration and search are affecting the difficult transitions that most teens as they leave home, school or college and have to make their own way in the big, wide world. Its been a fascinating process working with So Television and Holler as we’ve discussed how to get the approach and tone of this project right for the different spaces it will exist in. I think we’ve got it right for the launch, but one of the good things about the project is that we can be flexible throughout the year. I’d be very surprised if the project didn’t look vastly different by the end of the year. To find out and participate, here’s the main hub site, and our Myspace page.

The Geek Season

Nearly through a rash of conferences, amidst a rash of toddler birthday parties. This has meant that around 50% of my diet in the last 2 months has been either danish pastries or fairy cakes. I’ll leave you to work which is responsible for which.

Working backwards, Mashed08 was at the weekend. Just like last year, it seems there’s something magical about getting a few hundred geeks together to hack over a weekend. And just like last year, Alexandra Palace’s roof opened, although this time it was the (planned) pyrotechnics inside the venue, rather than the (unplanned) lightning outside that was responsible. Or rather, Ewan Spence’s socialflightsim crashing on to the stage.

BTween transplanted itself from Yorkshire across the Pennines to Manchester, and the Museum of Science and Industry. The event expanded to fill the space, and was much better to boot. Highlights for me were Kaiser Kuo puncturing some Western assumptions about China, the Chinese and their Internet use; and Bill Tidy’s live-drawn insights into the lives of the over-60’s. More stand-up cartooning at tech conferences, please!

Bill Tidy’s session would have fitted in nicely at Interesting08, which I missed for the second year running, as I did MediaFutures. What is it about geeks that, as soon as the sun starts to make an appearance, we organise loads of indoor conferences? Can we co-ordinate ourselves to make them *not* clash next year? Or perhaps hold one outdoors?

Before all of these, I was at Thinking Digital in Newcastle, which had an eclectic lineup including Greg Dyke, Ray Kurzweil, Tara Hunt, Aubrey DeGrey and Fake Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, due to another clash with the Big Chip Awards dinner, I had to leave after the first morning, so didn’t get to see much of the conference. But I did get to attend the fantastic Speakers Slow Dinner at Secco in Newcastle, with a very inspiring talk on all things Slow from Carl Honore. Although he broke his own Slow philosophy by herding a group of us into a cab to the Baltic for the second half of the Champions League final before they’d even served dessert.

Next up is the Hide and Seek Festival at the Royal Festival Hall, and then next week the last of this burst of events – 2Gether08 – which will try and round up lots of the other events into one geeky social innovation bundle.

The Geek Season is well and truly established. We just need a bit of co-ordination, and a good drinks sponsor for the whole damn shooting match…

Sanger Institute

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Sanger Institute data centre, originally uploaded by matlock.

We’re working on a really exciting project (an ARG) involving history, cartography and genome research, and the Wellcome Trust are working with us so that we can base it on the bleeding edge of scientific research. So today, I was lucky enough to get to look around the Sanger Institute, where much of the DNA mapping for the Human Genome Project happened.

It was a fascinating afternoon, with conversations ranging fluidly between robotics, bio-tech, history, culture and ethics. Tom, the writer on the project, was feasting hungrily on such stimulating source material, and hopefully we’ll be able to send him up for a residency so that he can work closely with the Institue on the ARG’s story.

The announcement that they’d mapped the human genome was hailed as the beginning of an era of genome-related cures for many illnesses. But in reality we still know next to nothing for certain about how our genes interact to make proteins. Its very much like exploring a new country – the map is still full of blank spaces. I’m hoping that our project will inspire a new generation of explorers to rise to this challenge…