Submitted by Roland on Mon, 2011-03-28 20:36
Now running Drupal 7 courtesy of Richard (thanks!), who I had the privilege to work with at Bryght and Raincity Studios. Richard, like myself, has been working with Drupal since 2004 (wow, has it been that long?) and he has a deep technical knowledge of both working with, and administering Drupal sites as well as debugging and writing Drupal code and modules. And Richard is a gifted trainer & educator as I've experienced first hand watching him working with social media newbies at Northern Voice and at Drupal events helping out Drupal novices.
Submitted by Roland on Wed, 2011-03-09 19:34
tl;dr:Hindsight is 2020 :-) Funding + bandwidth + curation + live streaming with anchors & field correspondents using mobile streaming = a true dynamic people's network which goes beyond merely static text, photo & video blogging that we had in 2004 and 2006
I loved the grassroots coverage of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics from the folks at the True North Media House. But as always :-) I wanted more. If I had the time, energy, and budget (I am looking at you CBC, UBC, and the educational institutions and organizations with money and staff !) here's what I would have done:
- Found the funds to provide massive bandwidth to True North Media House to truly make it a place for the rest of us to get our stories out on the Internet
- We are the network; we don't need to kowtow or reference the official VANOC sanctioned networks.
- With adequate massive bandwidth the people can provide their own network. By network, I don't mean some text blogs with some photos and videos posted hours or minutes later. I mean, wouldn't it have been excellent to have:
- Implemented a real live video network up 4-24 hours a day with rotating anchors from all the communities of the host cities (e.g. GBLTQ, Filipinos :-), East Van, South Van, every group in Metro Vancouver who has a voice!) merged (e.g. using CamTwist like software) with live mobile streaming video from mobile phones using Qik to get the local stories live as they happen on the ground) i.e. we don't need CNN, CBC etc.! With a studio with massive bandwidth and a few mobile phones with data plans and live streaming we can make a better grassroots, organic network !
- Implemented some modern aggregation technology like Managing News to aggregate social media and then getting local folks to curate and surface the local stories that others were missing or don't care about.
Submitted by Roland on Thu, 2010-05-06 22:14
As Paul Weller sings, "Time Passes". I feel like yesterday was 1999 December and I had just started my Manila Blog, dreadnet.editthispage.com. I feel like it's yesterday that I first met the Northern Voice Organizers but that was back in 2004. 6 years! Incredible. Thanks for the great memories to each and every Northern Voice participant and organizer past present and future!
I was right about flickr (80000 photos in 2 flickr accounts and growing!) and blogging (Countless folks told me as late as 2003 that blogging would die and they couldn't see the ROI :-) )
I did not foresee micro-blogging and twitter and the rise of the 21st century walled gardens like Facebook. I figured that we had learned our walled garden lesson with RSS and blogging and had left walled gardens behind with AOL and Geocities!
I thought we'd have usable video calling and multi-party video conferencing and ubiquitous 10MB/s bidirectional access Canada-wide. Wrong.
I didn't foresee Apple's iPhone. I thought and I still think that Nokia could and would get software. Unfortunately it looks like the big N is pulling an IBM instead of an Apple but I remain hopeful :-) !
See you tomorrow at Northern Voice 2010!
Submitted by Roland on Sun, 2010-01-03 20:14
I have been blogging for 10 years, started Dec 1999 (dreadnet.editthispage.com which sadly died a few years back due to my own negligence) so some 2010 social media long term predictions and gratuitous advice which again is worth what you paid for it
Social Media 2010 predictions and gratuitous advice:
- Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Tumblr and other walled gardens are over in the long term; an open solution will replace them in 5 years or less.
- Don't be afraid to use and experiment with the walled gardens but recognize that your stuff can be deleted at any time and unless you have backed it up to an open format like HTML, it won't last forever (most likely scenarios: service goes out of business or your account is deleted for an arbitrary reason). I wouldn't shed a tear if all my tweets were deleted, YMMV. If you have fun with the walled gardens, get your domain and start a blog, videoblog,podcast, etc., you won't regret having an online presence you own and control
- If you care about your closed garden stuff, back it up to an open format. If you aren't geeky enough to figure this out, ask a geek, there's lots of them, just don't ask me :-)
- Have a "hook" and nurture and grow it. Not good enough in 2010 to be a jack of all trades social media whatevah :-) You actually need to *know* something. Most people do (they just don't realize it!) so that's not a problem.
- Don't know why I have to write this in 2010 department: Don't trust reviews or content on Urban Spoon, Yelp (i like the idea of yelp & other aggregators but in practise most of the reviews are shall we say not helpful), Gowalla, Facebook etc unless you know the person in real life or have read their stuff over a period of time. Most restaurant reviews like most content on the Internet are wildly biased but that's a good thing because objectivity in food reviews is ridiculous.
- Get your most valued content out of the walled gardens and your email (email rocks but it's not a place for long term knowledge storage and retrieval) and back it up. The best way to back up is to put the content in an open format like HTML on your own domain and backup all the stuff on your domain. Again, ask a geek. And really most people's stuff that is truly valuable is not a lot, myself included :-) e.g. I bet my best emails, best photos, videos and blog posts for the last 5 years could fit on 1 DVD!
Submitted by Roland on Wed, 2007-11-21 08:34
Submitted by Roland on Fri, 2007-11-09 22:38
Really looking forward to our 4th annual Northern Voice! And to some great ideas and speaker submissions!
From Northern Voice 2008:
QUOTE
The Moose is Loose in 2008!
Want to speak or lead a discussion? Then fill out the speaker submission form (speaker submissions close Monday December 10).
Got an idea for a topic or discussion but don't feel like speaking on it or leading a discussion? Then check out our Call for Ideas (we've seeded the list with two initial ideas: microblogging and mobile blogging but these are just examples!) and add your own idea and rate others' ideas!
END QUOTE
Submitted by Roland on Tue, 2007-05-08 02:46
Submitted by Roland on Sat, 2006-12-09 07:27
[Cross posted from my Bryght blog]
Here's the video (35 minutes 36 seconds shot on an Nokia N93 phone) where everybody but myself introduced themselves from last night's Social Media Vancouver launch. I came away energized by the energy and passion in the room but also aware of how far we have to go to make this Social Media aka Read Write Web aka Web 2.0 a meaningful force in everybody's lives like email is today! Also, please check out Mark Schneider's awesome coverage on Now Public.
