The Digital Britain Unconference final, collated report is up and can be read, signed, linked to, blogged and otherwise enjoyed here.
If you approve of the report’s recommendations (collated from over a hundred people’s suggestions), please do consider signing (by leaving your name in the comments).
See previous post or the dbuc09 site for background!
Digital Britain Unconferences - Final report
Over the last couple of months I’ve had the pleasure of helping to create a dialogue around the UK government’s Digital Britain report. The story has been better told elsewhere, but essentially, during a meeting of some of the bigger and more established players in the UK media, Bill Thompson tweeted with the idea of having an unconference and quickly, Kathryn Corrick, Dan Hon and I (amongst others) concurred.
I suggested a simple tag to keep the discussion unified, set up a Twitter account and blog to co-ordinate information, and Kathryn, who has really driven the whole process, set up a Yahoo! Group to start getting events off the ground.
A few weeks later and we’ve seen twelve events in towns and cities around the country, including a virtual discussion of rural issues, a family unconference, hundreds of tweets tagged with #dbuc09 - a real public consultation about the future of Britain in a digital world. At one point during the Birmingham event, we were victims of our own success, when #dbuc09 started trending on Twitter and thus garnered unwanted attention.
It’s been great working with Kathryn, Bill and Alastair Duncan (who’s made an invaluable contribution to the editing stage of the process) amongst many, many others. It feels like a fascinating example of how collaboration around a common purpose can work using free web tools - something future government consultations could take from. I’ve been enormously impressed and heartened by the ideas and spirit shown by all who have participated, and encouraged that the good folk behind the report are listening. I look forward to reading the final report!
I took on the task of collating the reports from the London event, which have been published in this PDF. The idea was to embed a slideshow and audio on the blog, but as it wasn’t possible (for technical reasons), I thought I would post them here.
Everybody wants to be the good guys! No surprises there..
Negotiations on a new deal for YouTube UK to continue to show certain music videos have broken down with the Performing Rights Society, who collect license fees for public ‘performances’ of music (including radio, TV etc) and dish them out to musicians.
Interesting to compare the PRS statement and YouTube blog post on why this has happened.
PRS:
PRS for Music is outraged on behalf of consumers and songwriters that Google has chosen to close down access to music videos on YouTube in the UK.
Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing.
…
Google had revenues of $5.7bn in the last quarter of 2008.
Google sorry, YouTube:
Our previous licence from PRS for Music has expired, and we’ve been unable so far to come to an agreement to renew it on terms that are economically sustainable for us.
There are two obstacles in these negotiations: prohibitive licensing fees and lack of transparency.
We value the creativity of musicians and songwriters and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright. But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our licence than before.
So which is it - are PRS charging more, or Google/ YouTube trying to pay less? This is starting to look like the kind of divisive positioning which music fans - and musicians - have been suffering for so long. Each party claiming to be on the side of music lovers and casting the other as the bad guys.
Fans have become accustomed to Music Industry mistrust of New Media, and cast the PRS in the ‘Man’ role (see the comments in the YouTube post). Meanwhile like a couple of others I can’t help wondering who is really the David, and who the Goliath here.
What do you think?
The other day I went to Kew Gardens, courtesy of my sister Natasha. It was a cold, wet, rainy day and unusually there were few colourful flowers around - but we had a lovely walk, and came into the Palm House, a beautiful example of pavilion architecture from 1848.
Whilst really no expert on them, I have a soft spot for Arcadian interventions. Whilst I revere truly wild, unromanticised wildernesses, I love the way that the Victorians turned their creativity to framing nature, such that nature and culture work together to create poetry. In wilderness no civilisation; in Arcadia civility and nature collide.
The Palm House represents this beautifully: the plants, which in the 18th century were curios, have become the foundation of one of the most important conservation collections in the world
I’m seriously considering joining Kew soon.. Maybe we’ll meet there!
OK, so I realise that I may be a bit behind the herd here, but I just wanted to share a couple of the tools I’ve been exploring recently that help me get work done at the moment. They’re predominantly Mac based, but please feel free to leave a comment if you have found similar tools for Linux or Windows etc.
Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ (normally written Quicksilver) is the big find. The simplest way of using it is as an application launcher, but it can do a lot more than that. Install all the plug-ins and it essentially becomes a way of performing actions in any programme. For example, type a piece of text and link it into an email. Search for a contact. Tweet. You can even send command line pronts with it. The main limit seems to be your imagination. Admittedly, it takes a little effort to get set up, but that effort is rewarded in spades.
There’s a great video of Quicksilver’s creator (mysteriously named A1c0r) here , talking to Google about the philosophy and workings of the programme (via Merlin Mann).
Here’s a good guide to some of the things you can do with it.
Lastly here’s a new project from the same guy, now working at Google (I suspect he got the job just after the talk linked above. They clearly see the strategic benefits of ubiquitous, easy seamless desktop/ web search). (Via Rory Cellan-Jones).
Lastly, in order to meet my pledge to keep my inbox empty through 2009, I needed a tool to help me file emails in volume. Mail act on may be just that tool. Install and set up a couple of rules, and you’re away. (I will pay for it at the end of the trial if I don’t work out how to do the same in QS!). Essential for my emerging GTD regime.
Following on from Sunday’s announcement in the Times about Isis’ film on the First Lady of France, Carla Bruni, there has been a fair amount of press in the UK and Ireland (I work for Isis).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pieces have largely been concerned with Carla’s discussion of her private life, although it might be more interesting if they had focused on her music… The Daily Telegraph, The Irish Independent , The Sun, Hello! Magazine and Marie Claire are all in on the action.
The Telegraph focus on Carla's private life
And today, The Times (again), The People, and New York Magazine have joined in the fun. Watch this space!
Just a quick post to mention a new EP which I had a small hand (actually voice) in creating.
Performed by Arctic Circle Ensemble with the Puffin Voices,
That Fuzzy Feeling is a gentle and knowing nod to Christmas records from the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Low, sprinkled with snow globe scenes and antlers aplenty. It’s Christmas (And I Hate You) is a Fairytale of New York for the toytronica generation; a Yuletide barney re-imagined as a brassy, offbeat carol, and one which references Greek mythology and human rights activists. Mistletoe & Wine this certainly isn’t.
The remaining four tracks range from ethereal delights to near-baroque arrangements, underpinned by gently swelling horns and slow-building harmonies, while the chiming strains of Unreasonable Dream, Christmas Night is a breezy closer, gradually escalating towards a stomping crescendo – an effect which is no doubt bolstered by performance-enhancing mulled wine and mince pies.
Have a listen on the Arctic Circle MySpace streaming page,
download from eMusic, Boomkat or iTunes,
and there’s more information at the Static Caravan label’s page and on Facebook
Does it - or does it not - give you ‘that fuzzy feeling’?
Anthony Rose of BBC iPlayer has outlined his plans for “Broadcast 2.0” in an interview with the Guardian (anyone other than me tiring of the “2.0″ thing yet? Yes, thought so..)
Lots of interesting developments in there (particularly in terms of DRM and the migration to an AIR based platform) but one that caught my eye was about the social aspects of viewing:
Rating works really well in YouTube where you’ve got a million videos. In iPlayer, if you rate Parliament channel as zero stars, are you saying that Parliament is rubbish, or that you just don’t want to watch Parliament? Rating in the context of the BBC is very useful, but only when you’ve got a friends network.
It’ll be interesting to see whether small networks of friends will take to what amounts to yet another social network, albeit based around a huge brand like iPlayer.
My feeling is that the conversation will take place better on other platforms that are set up for peer-to-peer communication as they do at the moment: down the pub and on Twitter.
I’m sitting in Spitalfields drinking coffee and getting used to writing on the iPhone’s touch interface. I’m keeping it short as there’s no copy and paste, and there’s little that’s not been written already about this particular toy, sorry, piece of high consumer technology.
Suffice to say I’m loving the cocktail of connectivity and syncronisation, ease of use and rich media experience. I like the way it has got software developers excited and brought a unity to the mobile platform which has been sadly lacking in all my previous smart phones.
It is not without its flaws - again, well documented elsewhere, but perhaps most significantly the charge that it is a closed and tethered device that could threaten creativity and/ or go towards creating a new Market monopoly. But I sincerely hope that it acts as a catalyst to other makers of mobile devices creating truly usable interface. The iPhone has moved the goalposts, now it just needs worthy opponents on the field.
On a more personal note, this is actually my first iPod and I haven’t enjoyed listening to music so much since I stopped buying vinyl. I think this is because it brings a sense of intimacy with the record back into the experience, where other players have made a music collection feel like a set of data files - still possible to enjoy as music, but despite the interface rather than because of it.
Last year one of the first films I worked on from start to finish at Isis was our Classic Albums film on Jay-Z’s 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt.
I’m pleased to say that the long awaited UK Premiere is tomorrow, on BBC Two, Friday 4th July at 23.35hrs.
As far as I’m aware I’m credited as Production Assistant, which entailed helping to get all the parties together. This year my work has started to develop - I’ve been developing my own ideas for shows, starting to pitch them to broadcasters and developing partnerships with other organisations.
And of course one of the exciting areas I’m working in is where collaboration and the culture of the web can meet and cross-fertilise with some of the qualities that long-form film and broadcast bring to the table. Qualities which I hope are evident in our film on Jay-Z.. Let me know in the comments box!
I’ll update this post when I know its URL Sorry to say, this won’t be on BBC’s iPlayer but is available on DVD if you would like to see it.
Tags: Jay-Z, Hip-Hop, Lyrics, Beats, TV, Classic Albums
Life, Multimedia, Music, TV
