russell davies

a funding model for newspapers must be found

somehow related

Apparently so.

compare and contrast

Not many people would argue that creating something useful, distinctive and successful requires hard work. Though I might argue with this particular definition of working hard. I would definitely take issue with the idea that constantly hanging out with people from your industry is a good idea, but I don't have to because Anil Dash has already done that.

in praise of fragments

Something Tom Coates entweetened about blogging the other day has stuck with me.

The urge to write longer things makes blogging more considered and therefore harder. Some would say that's a good thing. Filtering out the chaff. I'm not sure. For me, blogging is about momentum and 'more considered' makes momentum harder. Interesting things emerged from the less filtered rush of words. I enjoyed blogging because there was room for fragments of thought as well as something polished and finalised.

But we were seduced by the speed and reach of twitter and started putting our fragments there instead. But bits of thought on twitter are ephemeral, they slip away from us. Whereas on a blog a fragment of thought is pinned down, tagged, permanent and can become part of a larger body of accreted thinking. On a blog the fragments can become part of something larger and slower, on twitter they get swallowed up by something bigger and faster.

Or something. Anyway. Back to more fragments on here from me.

(He's right about Facebook too)

cult of sap

I wasn't entirely convinced I'd explained our Augmented Aural Reality app idea properly the other day at Playful and was thinking about writing it up again. But, fortunately, Giles has done a much better job than I could over at Cult of Mac. I'm glad it made sense to someone.

I've finallly worked out what I was trying to say at playful

bad at blurb

A friend pointed out that I'm quoted on the back of the UK edition of The Invention of Air. I assume this is the result of a canny publisher thinking that using a "Russell Davies" quote stands some chance of positive confusion with Russell T Davies, and the Radio 2 Russell Davies. It's like three endorsements in one.

I'm just disappointed that they've selected such a banal quote. Right there, for all to see, is my worst stylistic habit - overuse of stuff - one I thought I'd manage to shed. In fact, for a moment, I was convinced it wasn't me because I couldn't find it in here. But then I tracked it down.

I'm such a huge fan of Steven Johnson's work that it's a tremendous honour to be stuck on the back, I just wish I'd had the opportunity to come up with something a little less generic.

Ah well. You should read it though. It's packed with excellent stuff.

light works

I worked with Alex decades ago, then we reconnected over flickr. He takes lovely pictures. And he's got a show in Brighton at the beginning of December. I can't go, but you might want to, I bet it'll be good.

my first taxonomy

One of the things I didn't figure out for playful was how to talk properly about collecting in play. Which I think is at least as important as pretending and equally neglected.

I still haven't figured it out, really, but there's one phenomenon I want to note: Junior Taxonomy. Arthur got massive satisfaction from sorting and resorting his Pokemon cards in new ways, new arrangements, new structures. Sometimes based on an overt taxonomy baked in by the card designers, sometimes in a scheme of his own devising. He's now doing the same with Match Attax. I remember doing this too. I think it's a basic impulse; we're practising ordering the world.

So, I bet designing for varied taxonomies would be as potent as designing for pretending. Even just putting random numbers on the back of things. You don't have to put the meaning in, leave it to be constructed/pretended.

true stories told live

I was lucky enough to go along to this last night. What a tremendous evening. I felt a bit of a spare part. Didn't know anyone there. But as soon as the stories started everyone just became audience so that was OK. Some were funny, some moving, some funny and moving. It was a brilliant way to spend an evening.

It's a simple premise, inspired by The Moth; people tell stories about their lives. Four were simple stories, one was a musician who talked about the song-writing process and sang a couple of songs.

I couldn't help thinking about it all the way home, some things occurred to me:

Malcolm Gladwell, (in this word backstage podcast) suggests that the people with the best stories are those whose jobs involve lots of sitting around with their colleagues; cricketers, for instance, or pilots. I'd suggest it's not just the sitting around, it's sitting around while half paying attention to something else (the match, the automatic pilot). This leaves enough room for proper story-telling, for holding court, not interrupted by sniping, conversation or one-up-person-ship. I don't seem to have that kind of life. The world I move in hasn't carved out that space. People would be embarrassed to be that central to everyone's attention, and it probably wouldn't be allowed by the group, we're all too competitive. That seems a shame to me. I might try listening for longer, encouraging people to luxuriate in their stories a bit more, not trying to top them all the time.

Musicians are much better at eliciting applause than story-tellers. The clapping for each of the Pugwash songs was way more enthusiastic than for anyone's stories, not, I suspect because they were naturally more applause-worthy (though they were great) but because musicians have naturally learned how to get people to clap. They put more energy into the room, they have really obvious endings, they raise their eyebrows and their arms. You almost can't help but clap. People telling stories haven't discovered the equivalent cues.

And I'm still not sure that story is that important to stories. You know, all that beginning, middle, end stuff, narrative arc blah, blah, blah. Games people go on about it all the time, and ad people are convinced they're masters of story miniatures. I think, very often, story is just something to hang all the important bits on. And not in a significant, meaningful way, like a backbone or a scaffold. It's more of a coat-hanger. The actual stuff that connects isn't about plot or narrative; it's texture, observations, images, jokes, juxtapositions, felicitous phrases and little moments of aha. That seemed true last night, all the stories were about something that had happened, but that wasn't the important bit. What sticks in the head is how the story was told, not what the story was.

That's what I'm telling myself anyway. Because I'd love to have a go at this and nothing like a proper story has ever happened to me.