Russell Davies

there's something in the air

When I started thinking about Interesting2007 Dan Hill was one of the first people I asked to speak. He said no, which made me sad, but he has good reasons; he's got a whole lot of life going on and he's one of the four bloggers behind Postopolis, happening in New York right now. Looking at Dan's live blogging it looks brilliant and I love the look of the place, very sweaty and architectural. Plus from the look of it they've all printed off their blogs and stuck them on the wall which is surprisingly effective. As the mysterious 'we' of Influx Insights points out this kind of smallish, loose, enthusiast-generated event looks like a much better way of doing things than the big, top-down conference. And you can just tell there's going to be much more of this kind of thing. I guess it's mostly just the rest of the world learning from reboot, barcamps, open spaces, unconferences etc but they're good lessons to learn.

(picture from City Of Sound, hope that's OK)

captain jack and the large hadron collider

I wasn't sure about this when I started listening - Captain Jack (ie John Barrowman) goes for a look round CERN. But it works really well. He's able to ask the dumb questions, so things get explained, and he says the stuff that you and I would, like 'look at that cool crane'. And you really get a feel for the place as a workplace, the behind the scenesiness of it, the banter in the canteen. A good listen.

why take pictures?

A friend poses this question:

I've got to answer the question “why do we take photographs?” for a project, so I was wondering if any of your blog readers has any thoughts.

Good question, too philosophical for y'all, or just philosophical enough? Answers below if you have any, please.

tweetvolume

tweetVOLUME is another great little twitter tool that you can imagine using for, er, something. via Data Mining.

well?

Is blogging about journalists blogging about blogging killing blogging about journalism about blogging?

interesting printing

There's clearly something in the air about printing and the post and stuff. Tim Milne is going to be talking about printing at Interesting2007 and he's going to make some nice surprises for us. As part of his talk he'd like to get some people to help out with something, his request is here:

"Ahead of my 'Interesting' talk about printing, I'd like a few people to join in testing how well viral works in an undigital space. To anyone who's interested, I'll send a thing in the mail which will pose a thought "I like printing..." they'd add something (write, draw, print whathaveyou) and send it onto someone else they know (and I don't–and no, they don't all have to be coming to the event) for them to do the same and so on. After half a dozen or so goes around, it'll come back to me in time for the Interesting event on Jun 16th. Full instructions will be on the piece itself and the postage will be paid for."

If you're up for helping out can you please comment below or email me (russell at russelldavies.com) and I'll put you in touch with Tim.

little audio marvels

Two splendid audio moments arrived today. This rendition of Interesting2007 via Curtis. And SpamRadio via Iain. (I know these have both been around a while, but so have lots of good things.)

interesting craft

James 'Lemons' Boardwell is one of the most interesting people I've had the privilege to meet in the last year. He's one of those strategy people who's not content with thinking, he seems to be constantly doing. And one of the things he's doing is creating folksy. You should sign up, I think it's going to be rather special. And you're going to hear more about folksy at Interesting2007.

But, the reason for me telling you all of this is that James is going to be taking charge of a craft stall at Interesting, selling all sorts of marvelous and miscellaneous stuff. And if you're going to come, you can sell your stuff there too. As long as it's stuff you've made yourself and not something you got off the back of a lorry. Anyway, James is in charge so get in touch with him if you've got something you'd like to offer on the craft stall. His email is get at folksy.co.uk.

dawdlr - a twitter for the long now

Inspired by this, this, this, this, this and of course this, I thought it was time we had a really slow twitter. Something less rushed and immediate but still brilliantly rich and daft. So I've set up dawdlr.com. (I say 'set-up', I've registered a domain name, created a tumblr blog, rented a mailbox and written this post, and that's it. But you know.)

I've tried to make dawdlr way slower than twitter. I reckon most people I know twitter about twice a day, so dawdlr is going to update twice a year. To try and get people to say what they're doing, you know, more generally.

To submit a dawdl send a postcard to this address:

dawdlr
77 Beak Street
London
W1F 9DB

I'll scan them in and upload and update them every 6 months. Regular as clockwork. I'm curious to see if something that slow can be 'viral' or will it just dwindle to nothing as everyone forgets last time around. Or if it's not an immediate enough call to action to get people to participate, or if actually getting a postcard and writing on it is too much work. Or whether, maybe, it'll all work and be rather nice.

Dawdlr is a tiny community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing, you know, more generally? Answers on a postcard please.

twitter question (technical)

Since we're going wifi-free for interesting I thought I'd create a twitter account for the thing so we can have some digital back channel for those that want it. (Though we're also working on some less digital back channels which might be more fun.)

Anyway, I can see how we can all add interesting as a friend and get updates that way, but how do we do that thing they did at macworld where anyone could precede their tweet with 'macworld' and everyone subscribed would get that? Is that something twitter need to set up or am I just being dense? That's more than possible. I just spent an hour installing new printer drivers when the damn thing just wasn't plugged in.