Getgood Guide

On the evening of 11th November I joined Jon Bounds with a sizable gang to take part in the after -dark round of his ‘psychogeographical epic’ 11 Bus Project.  The idea is that everyone has ‘a window of eleven hours to complete a circuit of  Birmingham’s number eleven bus’, recording their observations and findings as they trundle along in whatever way they see fit.

It was the first time I’d ever traveled on the 11 Bus, and I stupidly misread the timetable and thought a full circuit took about an hour, so thought my Flip’s memory of 60 minutes would pretty much cover it.  Therefore my initial means of recording the experience was my Flip, some gaffa tape and a handy pole at the back of the top deck to film the bus’ interior as we sat on it:

This resulted in the rather surreal and badly edited film above – most of it is speeded up to the iMovie max with the first and last few seconds at normal speed (I wanted to keep the explanation we gave to a stranger who asked us what we were doing, and everyone waving goodbye at the end).

Of course I was completely wrong about the timings. As Jon said, “Birmingham’s a big place, you know,” and it took us almost two and a half hours to get around.  So once my Flip ran out of juice I got out my camera and started taking pictures of people on the bus.  Those within our happy 11 Bus crew were aware of me doing this but strangers on the bus, whose backs I snapped, weren’t.

What I found most interesting about the doing the circuit was how our large group changed the normal seating patterns on the bus.  Younger, cooler kids kept walking onto the top deck and looking longingly at the back seats we occupied before settling for the seats at the front end.  We seemed to upset the usual social order of 11 Bus riding and turfed the kids out of their comfort zone.  Me and Ben Whitehouse chatted about this and more on this audioboo he took during our journey.

All in all it was a really fun thing to do – I got to meet and share sweets with new people, see a bit more of Birmingham (including Perry Barr, where you can be a star) and enjoy some post bus-ride drinks at the Hare and Hounds with friends.  I think next year I’ll definitely go in the daytime, so I can see and record more of what’s outside the top deck of the bus.

Chris Unitt » Blog Archive » The Page 56 Meme – I like books, so was attracted to this meme when I came across it on Chris Unitt’s blog. Chris got it from Russ L’s blog. Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open it to page 56
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions
5. Don’t dig for your favourite book, the coolest book, or the most intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

The closest to me is Will Buckingham’s Cargo Fever, which I read ages ago so I’m not sure why it’s on my coffee table. Maybe I was thinking about lending it to someone. It’s a great novel about a highly sexed yeti-type creature romping his way through Kenukecil. Anyway, fifth sentence on page 56 is:

NOTHING. Page 56 is blank. I swear I’m not making this up. I stuck strictly to the rules of the meme and this is what happens.

It’s a well good book though.  The pages with typing on are great.

Proof that even when getting down to sirius conferuns bizniz, people still have that natural inclination to play and turn the whole thing into one big game.  At the Hello Digital 2009 conference everyone settled down in the main hall for the opening speeches…and a game of battleships ensued on Twitter.

It started with people stating their locations (‘one row behind and 6 seats to the right of @paulbradshaw’) and others present trying to trace them.  It then progressed to launches of torpedos and the like – the audience were trying to take each other down.  So next time you’re at a conference and find yourself a little distracted, don’t drift off – connect to those around you via Twitter and have a little fun.

I’m not going to be here for Halloween (rather annoyingly, seeing as BARG are playing hard that weekend).  I’m going to be in Portugal, taking a summer holiday so late it is, in fact, winter sun.  But I did manage to get a taste of Halloween with Carl last Friday, when we spent an enjoyable evening carving pumpkins.

“It’s like shelling out brains,” said Carl rather worryingly.  But once we’d gotten past the mucky stage it was lots of fun.  Carl went for the logo of cult videogame Left4Dead, whilst I went for the more traditional scary face design.

Then we ate pizza and watched the Black Books boxset, making it a truly perfect evening.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Because I’ve been so busy, I haven’t taken a full-on summer holiday this year, just had a few nice long weekends away.  One of them was spent with my Dad in Caerphilly, where I grew up.  Me and my older brother were pretty feral as children – we used to spend all our time playing outside in a big pack, coming home like cats when we were hungry.  Our favorite haunting ground was Twyn School Field, which has scrubland around the playing field that felt like a dense forest as a child.

Whilst I was back in Caerphilly I literally took a trip down memory lane (which is no longer littered with white dog poo) – past the railings I used to somersault over, down the path along The Brook into The Field.  It was great having my memory jolted by a tree where I once disturbed a wasps’ nest, a shed where we all found a stash of illicit porn mags and the bushes where I had a rather clumsy first kiss.

Even better was seeing that a new generation of players are using the space for much the same thing.  They weren’t there but telltale signs of them were – a tree used as a bridge over a ditch, graffiti tags on a garage door, an empty bottle of cheap white cider and the throne of the new King of the Castle – a sopping wet blue playchair on top of a tree stump.

Well, it’s been a good long, while, hasn’t it?  I’m not going to do the cliched apologising for the prolonged silence, most people know I’ve been a busy bee.  In early August I left my job with ACE dance and music to join Will Perrin’s talk about local team and spread the hyperlocal love.  And things have been a wonderful whirlwind since then.

But all work and no play makes me really rather dull.  So that’s probably what this blog will start to become – more of a personal place of play.

And I’m going to start off with a game played with Nikki Pugh on her birthday recently.  Nikki decided she wanted to play the game rather than make it for her special day, and who were we to argue?  So after Libby Heighway and Michael Grimes had finished with Nikki in the Nature Centre, they packed her off to me at the graveyard in St Mary’s Church, Moseley.

She found me there waiting with a piece of cake.  It was only after she’d eaten it I told her it wasn’t her cake, but that of the cake-loving ghosts.  So poor Nikki had to find said ghosts going by the clues below and play them a message from their mean Cake Angel.

Can you spot the gravestones of the ghosts in the slideshow?

1. I rode into heaven on my trusty steed.
2. Too young to lay anchor, I swam aweigh to sleep with the fishes.
3. I survived my sister to die on Turkish soil, caught up in the Drama of Dardanelles
4. John and Jane have flown into heaven, their family’s legacy is yellow and sweet.
5. So many of us, we caught Bounder’s bus to heaven.

Luckily, Nikki managed to find them all in time to get to The Fighting Cocks and enjoy a cake that did belong to her, a grand Michael Grimes creation of chocolate, jelly babies and liquorish all-sorts.

I got all the gravestone-name gathering with Ben Whitehouse, when we were thinking about a possible Moseley Barcamp thing that didn’t happen.  But it was a great day, mulling over the encryptions and thinking about the stories behind them, and it gave me some inspiration eventually!

Nicky Getgood and Will Perrin – David Wilcox on blip.tv – Here’s me an Will Perrin answering David Wilcox’s question:

Suppose you’ve got a Council or public body wanting to support social media and you’ve got some activists there: what would you say to them…?

Will puts things best when he simply says, “there are risks in not doing it.” Talk About Local gets spoken about, as does Nick Booth’s Social Media Surgeries as an perfect example of what can be achieved. I declared that, “I’m not a Brain Scientist,” managing to mix ‘rocket scientist’ and ‘brain surgeon’.  Proof if any be needed, that you don’t have to be a genius to learn how to use social media tools to talk about things that matter to you.

David Wilcox, total gentlemen that he is, has since managed to find out that there is such a thing.

Last week was one of a few milestones for me.  Here they are then:

• We Share Stuff became a limited company.  Congratulations!
• Digbeth is Good turned 1 year old – Pete Ashton’s response when I told him this was, “Christ, has it only been a year?”  Oh yes.  And what a year!  I celebrated with drinks in The Spotted Dog, which drew a smiling ‘where the hell else?!’ from many.
• Moseley Barcamp happened, and was brilliant with, many a debate and great idea springing forth from it.
• On Wednesday I started my once-a-week stint at Meshed Media, where I’ll be helping out for 7 weeks.  I had a lovely first day, spent mostly writing blog posts for West Midlands Dance.  My working flow kept getting interrupted by me realising I was getting paid for blogging, and getting an immense kick out of it.  But I managed to get through my task list all the same. (Always so very satisfying, ticking off the items, isn’t it?) So it was a small but very significant milestone for me, and means I can add West Midlands Dance to the ‘Other places to find me list’.

A while back Julia Higginbottom asked on Twitter who we thought might be deserving of the hash tag #socialsaturday after their name, i.e. who uses Twitter and online networks to create and arrange very real live social situations from drinks down the pub to more formal gatherings.  These are people I’ve come across (in no particular order) who thoroughly deserve it and why:

Ben Whitehouse (@benjibrum)

As well as always being up for meeting for a pint and/or piece of cake, Ben organises the Birmingham Film Group.  He’s also a regular volunteer at the Social Media Surgeries and joined me and the We Share Stuff crew for a very sociable couple of days at the Digital Inclusion Conference, peaking with his fantastic interview of a protester in Parliament Square, That London.  He’s currently working on an emotional tour of Birmingham and, because he’s so sharing and caring, has asked for our input.  Please give him the back the love he so freely gives out with your suggestions!

Michael Grimes (@citizensheep)

He’s just utterly lovely.  So lovely, in fact, that Pete Ashton saw fit to create We Love Michael Grimes, which the Birmingham crew have been only too happy to contribute to.  Michael sees Twitter as a great social tool that can create and reinforce friendships in the real world, and wrote this incredibly touching post explaining how that’s helped him personally.  He’ll be mortified I’ve written this, just as he is when anyone sings his praises.  It’s one of the things that makes him so utterly lovely.

Shona McQuillan (@graphiquillan)

Shona can’t just organise a piss-up in a brewery, she can organise it at the drop of a hat.  A Stetson hat, that is.  First came WxWM for us Brummies not in the exodus to SXSWi, then came its bouncing baby Moseley Barcamp.  But in between the two, because Shona decided she didn’t have quite enough on her plate organising barcamps and creating beautiful art, is WxWM2: Sue Ellen’s Almighty Hangover.  It will be an almighty hangover if tonight’s tweets are anything to go by.  It’s ten hours away yet but she’s already started on the cider. Go on.

Nikki Pugh (@genzaichi) and Charlie Pinder (@pindec)

Sorry to lump these two together, as I’m sure they do amazing things separately, but they’re here for the fun and games that are BARG and the Birmingham Hack Space (along with Antonio Roberts and Midge).  Come and play!

Nick Booth (@podnosh)

A lovely, sociable guy who shares the love and knowledge with Social Media Surgeries for Birmingham charities and voluntary groups, organising the Brumbloggers into passing on their knowledge on a monthly basis.

Karen Strunks (@karenstrunks)

Getting social on global scale with her magical 4am Project, which had photographers up at that ungodly hour snapping away before, in Birmingham’s case, eating gargantuan breakfasts.  Also responsible for a Twitter Flashmob.  Karen always seems to be thinking up imaginative ideas to get people connecting online together in the real world.

I’m sure I’ve missed people out, please feel free to comment any omissions.  In fact, I’ve just thought of another one:

Me (@getgood)

Being a pale imitation of those above and jumping on the bandwagon by organising an outing to Friction Arts’ Echoes From The Edge this Saturday 31st May at 2pm, which I’ve been to before but am going back for more because I loved it so much.  Please let me know if you’d like to come!

Will Perrin’s Kings Cross tour – Here’s a Flickr set of photos I took whilst being given a tour of Kings Cross by the lovely Will Perrin. My favourite is the above picture of Crumbles Castle, which put the bricks of local demolition to great use by creating a children’s playground with them. It really illustrated how Will has come to social media from a community activism perspective, using it and other means to make very real, physical changes to the local neighbourhood.