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.

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!

Well, it’s time for my overdue retrospective on the National Digital Inclusion Conference 27-28 April.  I was invited to join the We Share Stuff crew in delivering Social Media Surgeries in the exhibition space.  So I spent most of Monday talking to people from local authorities, charities and organisations such as The University Of The Third Age about how to use tools like blogging, Facebook and Twitter and how they could benefit their companies.

Monday evening was We Share Stuff’s Fringe event in Westminster Student Union Bar.  It was pretty much a social thing, which gave everyone a chance to meet and catch up with each other.  I got chatting to the lovely David Wilcox and we had an interesting chat about how local blogs such as Digbeth is Good can sometimes have too much of an author’s personal stamp on them for others to feel comfortable writing within them.  A kind of ‘you can live in my house but not move any of my stuff or have add ornaments of your own’ type thing.  Which gave me some food for thought.

As the drinks were downed, someone (I unsurprisingly forget who – comment if you remember) came up with the idea that we should take the conference outside of the QE2 Conference Centre and ask people on the London streets what they understood, thought and felt about digital inclusion.  I had a whale of a time Flip-filming people’s take on Digital Inclusion with Ben Whitehouse and Stuart Parker.  Chatting up strangers in the street is a great hangover cure.

My very favorite was Ben with the protester, who spoke about how online relationships are only truly productive when they’re extensions of real ones.  We could have kissed her.

I loved talking to this contractor just outside the QE2 Centre, who had never been on the internet in his life.  Despite wanting to and having access to a PC in his home, he just didn’t see the relevance of it in his working or home life to make the time to do it.  Whilst his daughter speaks to extended family over Facebook, he prefers to stick to using the phone.  Which is totally fair enough – use what you’re comfortable with.  But very interesting.

And my third favorite was Gerry the pub landlord, digitally engaged through online gambling.  Purely because he was so utterly charming and made some good points about the need to teach people skills in a way they will understand and not get fazed by the jargon and technology.

What was most interesting about the whole exercise was when I asked people what digital inclusion was, they usually didn’t know.  But when you asked them if and how they used the internet, a lot of them actually were digitally included to some extent.  Which means we are using a term that is not widely understood at the moment.  Something that needs fixing, I think.

Nicky Getgood on Digbeth and local blogging at WxWM from Jon Bounds on Vimeo.

It’s time for my very long overdue post about WxWM, brainchild Shona McQuillan’s local alternative to SxSWi. What was most amazing about it was that, within the space of about a week, a BarCamp-style event with back-to-back interesting panels had been organised.  My very favourites were:

Nick Booth: Me and My Troll

A necessary reminder that the internet isn’t Narnia and, just like in life, there are mad and bad people out there who may want to do you down.  There was an interesting discussion around how some environments (such as YouTube) are more tolerant of this behaviour than others (like Flickr).

I feel that I don’t really make an effort to conceal much about myself or my life when writing on the internet, figuring no-one will be nasty or bothered enough to use the details I give out in a negative way.  Some of the stories that came out of this panel were therefore quite frightening – not only how malevolent people can be, but also how ineffective some online communities and the police can be at dealing with it.

Jon Bounds: Internet Memes

The funniest of the panels, not least because of the last-minute editing Jon had to do to protect young, innocent minds. The theory behind the meme is that if you pop something on the internet, people will want to make it have one or all of the essential meme components:

• The rude
• The weird
• The cute

The time this takes to happen – the ‘time to penis’ – is becoming shorter and shorter.

Jon’s parting note was truly inspirational – that we, as the type of people who do Meaning of Briff, are guardians of the rude, odd and weird.  We should let memes evolve without fear of our bosses or parents and, above all, BE WEIRD. Oh, alright then, since you insist.

Ben Whitehouse: Once Upon a Time

An absolutely lovely talk on how we can tell stories and tall tales online.  This has been quite recently demonstrated by Dull Accountant on Twitter, who for a few days had us believing he’d nicked the company credit card for a G20 summit protest bender before admitting it was a well thought out April Fool’s prank.  Ben was most interesting when he was talking about Twitter, and how the people we follow and interact with is us reading the stories of each others’ lives.  I was horrified when he asked the question: ‘What happens when one of us dies and that character is gone forever?’ A sobering thought.

A local blog for local people

Not a favourite (because that would be horribly big-headed), but my panel talk about the local blogging journey I’ve been on with Digbeth is Good (film narcissistically inserted at the top).  The discussion afterwards was interesting, especially when it got around to where things should go next.  Peoples’ (very welcome) suggestions prompted John Hickman to ask Whose Blog is it Anyway?

It made me realise that, thus far, Digbeth is Good has had the freedom to grow quite organically.  But now there sometimes seems to be an expectation to follow certain types of models, be it a Created in Birmingham style handover or Kings Cross Environment style team building (which I’ve actually come round to and am working on).  I suppose John’s post reminded me that, although I can take advice and look at others’ best practice, there is no law that says I have to go down a set path.  In fact, Digbeth is Good got interesting for me when I stopped following the hymn sheet and made the blog more of my personal take on the area.  So perhaps straying from path is no bad thing, even if I do sometimes get a little lost.

Other interesting points raised were:

• Monetising the blog – If anyone has any further advice on this I’d be grateful.  One of the biggest obstacles I’ve hit with Digbeth is Good is finding the time to commit to its development.  Finding a way of being paid for the time and resources I’m currently giving to it for nothing, without detrimentally affecting the editorial freedom, would be brilliant.
• Quality not quantity – Andy Mabbett really struck a chord when he told me he’d rather read one or two good posts a week rather than a daily stream of them.  This made me realise I should slow down and concentrate on creating posts with insightful content rather than trying to keep up with everything, which is just impossible.

Phew.  It seems that no sooner do I have time to stop and take stock of the first WxWM than the next one is being organised – Moseley Barcamp, part of Mozfest, is on 29th June.  There’s also a BrumBarCamp on the cards.