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On Tuesday (24/02/09) I headed down to Tiger Tiger on Haymarket or the Amplified 09 event, The “Network Of Networks”. For those in attendance and for those that weren’t I thought I’d put down a few bullet points of what I picked up from the sessions and a bit of feedback about the event that hopefully will prove useful.

From session #01 – The Future of Online Video

• Budgets are smaller than people imagine for short form content but expect broadcast quality
• Whilst equipment costs are down for the general public it’s still early adopters that are making use of higher quality equipment, this will change
• There will be further increase in UGC in News and events which Broadcasters need to embrace more. Video equivalent of Twitpic?
• Content appears in different silos dependent on what audience the producer wants to attract, there is no site for everything and that should continue. Whilst it would be nice for a centralised point of video (Kangaroo?) there are far too many rights/companies/producers etc involved
• Producers need to be made aware of curators of content to help push use on niche sites rather than just upload content to YouTube
• Studios/Broadcasters/Producers need to loosen rights restrictions to enable everyone to see content. We are becoming more unified as people regardless of geography.
• Monetizing amateur video is difficult and needs to be adressed

From #37 – Socialising Media – A spinoff from the Future of the Book and Online Video topics – how can we read/watch/listen together, even if we’re not necessarily in the same place or at the same time?

• Potential for Online video services to offer Premieres of content with chat services (like used in Blu-Ray Live) to feature Q&A’s with cast/directors etc.
• Virtual Book Groups – Based on Locations in books (possibly using something like Get London Reading, book groups without having to physically be there.
• Commenting/Chat on E-Readers (deals with providers?)

Other points that came up in discussions

• News Vs UGC – Users always go back  to Trusted sources, UGC helps get information out from an individuals POV
• Technology isn’t there yet for the masses to fully embrace and understand Social Media, we need to educate and show how it can benefit small businesses.

Thoughts on the event itself:

• Venue was too dark in places
• An hour was about right for each session
• Topics should have been set to pre-assigned tables as it was difficult to find appropriate sessions
• Should have allowed more time for more sessions, a whole day rather than an afternoon start
• A non-bar venue would be better, people seemed distracted by the time the third session was on and a separate after event drinks venue.
• More virtual tables

I want to say thanks to everyone who set up the event, overall I think it was great

I’ve never really been great at networking, I’ve not purposely avoided it but it in the digital Industry I work in it is essential for bouncing ideas, getting inspiration and learning more about what can be done. I’ve attended a couple of small pub based events where I can grab a pint and settle my nerves but having a lack of belief in what I can do, my skills, and general self confidence a daytime event could prove to be difficult for me. I’ve come to Amplified 09 to overcome these nerves and apprehensions.

Amplified runs as a “Network of Networks” bringing a variety of people from different meetups like Creative Coffee Club and Social Media Cafe as well as lots of other interested parties together to discuss important issues in social media. THe usefulness of networking with like minded, industry related people and people from within other industries that can help increase innovation seemed to me like a great idea. Connecting people is important.

Connections are important, incredibly useful things. They stop us drifting, provide anchors, but also form new points for us to push off from

http://www.amplified09.com/about/

I’ve chatted via email and twitter, via messageboards and IM to plenty of people in the past, it’s the face to face element of events like these that worry me. On friday I made my way to the Friday Social Media Cafe Event, aka Tuttle [http://londonsocialmediacafe.pbwiki.com/] for the first time on my own. Having only been once before with @jemimah_knight and only there for an hour or so listening in to conversations it was hopefully going to be a toes in the water session for me before coming to Amplified 09.

I did what I always do when meeting new people, stand quietly at the back with a drink until an appropriate moment, at Tuttle that moment was after being there after about an hour and 2 cups of tea. It wasn’t me who made the approach to chat, a lovely American woman, new to Tuttle as well, came over and we had a chat, discussing sharing mechanics for digital media. After that I took a break and  I settled back into my reclusive self hiding by the stairs.

Thats when I took the decision to speak to someone, after spotting someone I recognized from a brief chat In a pub at a small Social Media event before christmas I went over to say Hello and became involved in a discussion on Wedding Photographers and the digital enthusiast photographer.  My nerves were still a bit shakey but it felt good to talk to someone about somethig I had an interest in.

So now it’s tuesday afternoon and It’s 2:30, I’m sat here at Tiger Tiger in Haymarket and people are starting to fill the place up for Amplified 09. It’s time to overcome the nerves and get off the laptop and start speaking to people as small groups are already forming of people who have clearly met each other several times before.

Straight from closing the laptop lid I break for fresh air outside for 5 minutes then come back inside and head to the bar to order a coke. Clearly avoidance on talking to people by my brain. I go to stand by a pillar and within a couple of minutes I’m approached by a young woman from a publishers introducing herself to me and another guy stood by me. At least I think she was and I may have just butted into her introduction to this other guy. My nerves are stil a bit flakey and I start talking, it’s all a bit of a blur and fairly soon we are called into the downstairs bar for the opening introduction.

Once the introduction is over I make my way back upstairs to find the talk on the future on online video and find myself at a table with about 6 or seven strangers. My intention was to listen in and take notes but I found my nerves started to make me spout words and I was feeling the nerves showed and made me come across as not showing any knowledge in the area but soon I settled into the conversations.

For the second session and the on my nerves disappeared slightly and I began to talk to more and more people. my fears and nerves faded as I realised these are all people who I shouldn’t be afraid of for having greater knowledge than me, they are there to share and to help people learn as well as learn themselves. I learnt, I shared and overcame some small fears.

From the back of this I will be off to Tuttle again this friday and hopefully several more similar events in the future and that can only be good for my career progression and self confidence.

I paid a visit with some friends to the Imperial War Museum this weekend. I’ve not been since a child, it’s one of the many places in London that whilst its so close to home that I forget it’s there. Luckily for me a friend needed to visit for a University project so a few of us got together and went along. As with most of my trips these days I took my camera and my camera bag.

After taking a couple of shots of the big guns outside we made our way into the building. As with a lot of museums there are bag checks. As I already had my camera out I placed my bag and the camera on the table and opened the top zip pocket to reveal my personal bits and pieces, keys and the like, and then the camera section which had my additional lens and other related items in it.

Imperial War Museum - Guests

On spotting my camera the security guard, without hesitation, piped up saying that photography was fine in the museum. Having been to museums and galleries before that haven’t allowed photography it was really nice that they made it clear that it was ok. Whilst I wasn’t trying to push my luck or anything and because I wanted clarification I said to the guard that I presumed that it didn’t include flash photography which I thought would have been fair, but no he said it was OK around most of the museum. Whilst I didn’t see any “no flash photography” signs in the areas I saw, the fact that a lot of the exhibits were in glass cabinets in dark areas which would have been difficult to shoot without a flash because of low light and with a flash because of reflections made me think this is what he was referring to. The same guard also mentioned that photography was fine to a friend in the group when his bag was checked as well.

It’s nice to see a museum being photographer friendly and their staff clued up on it all.

There is something magical about Kew Gardens for me, everytime I’ve been over the last couple of years I’ve visited with different people and at different times of the year so have had lots of different experiences there. Everything changes each time you visit, some work is always being done to improve the views, the plants, the information everything.

On this visit the new thing for me was the tree-top walkway After a first failed attempt to take a 3 year old round, he wanted to go up but didn’t like it when we got up there, I went back up and wandered around. The view was good but not amazing, mainly due to the cloudy weather. It was nice to get up close to the trees and see things from their point of view. I reccomened a trip to Kew for anyone living in or visiting London and you should make a point of getting up the tree-top walkway if you don’t mind heights, just don’t forget the green houses, other buldings in the grounds and the large pond.

Silhouette view from the Tree-Top walkway

Flickr Set – Photos from February trip to Kew Gardens

I’ve decided to keep track of the amount i’m eating. I know I eat a fair amount of food and the majority of it not particularly healthy. I’m hoping that by tracking what I’m eating I’ll get a good idea of the amoutn of rubbish I’m sticking in my and can hopefully cut down.

I’m using the Calourie Count site at about .com – http://caloriecount.about.com to track what I’m eating, hopefully over the course of the next two weeks i’ll get an idea about how much I should be eatign and what I can do to help lose a bit of weight and curb my bad eating. Wether or not I have the will power is another thing!

Whilst browsing the About.com site I took at diet peronality type test, i’ve copied in the result below and basically the only thing to say is it accurately describes my eating habits.

“Excessive Eater

You tend to overeat, which is very common in our society. As published in the Journal of Nutrition, Education, and Behavior, the amount of food we consume is proportional to the amount of food we get served. Unfortunately, the portions in restaurants and the size of products in supermarkets have both grown tremendously over the years. Super size, anyone?

Your Eating Habits

Despite the amount of food that you consume, your diet is most likely not nutritionally balanced and does not meet your daily values of essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals. There is commonly a link between satiety and health – foods rich in fiber and that tend to fill you up quickly are usually better than foods that you can eat a lot of.

The Solution
Calorie counting and food journals are an effective method against overeating. They help you understand where your calories come from, and which foods you should be careful with. To find out how many calories you should be eating, try our Expenditure Calculator. Also, it’s a good idea to add some exercise to your daily routine. This will not only increase your calorie allowance, but it will improve your health and make you feel great!”

My response to reading that was simply, No shit sherlock!

January is a tough month for a lot of people, budgets have to stretch further for several reasons, the money has to last that little bit longer as people get paid earlier and they forget that with the traditional over indulgence at this time of year that they end up spending more on food, drink and presents for the friends and family you haven’t seen in a while.

Without proper care people find themselves on a very tight budget once the New Year’s celebrations have died down. This is the situation I find myself in.

Photo By Jeff Keen - http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiderpop/

I’ve got a very tight budget for food and travel this month. So I’m trying a few things to make a boring and tight budget more interesting. To start with, I have my own adjustments:

• I’m eschewing drink completely so there’s a considerable cost cut back.
• I’ve switched to smoking roll-ups rather than my normal brand of cigarette. Yes I know I should give up, but I fear that won’t help my appetite or the money situation. I’ve tried going cold turkey before and the cost of nicotine replacements is expensive.
• I’m avoiding as many temptations as possible to stop me spending which essentially means apart from work and home I’m not going anywhere this month.

I was chatting to a @Jemimah_Knight yesterday about the situation I’m in. As well as a kind offer of cooking me dinner she also bought about an idea that I know has been done before but I thought I’d give a try. It’s based a simple premise – “Will Work For Food”. This time though I will swap and trade food for favours, and you can stop sniggering at the back I don’t mean those kind of favours!

Kudos, praise, whatever you want to call it, can be more valuable than cold hard cash to people. In the modern free work environment where movie reviews, news images and various other media are created by an ever expanding social media base, a small thank you, some recognition, can mean even more. This could mean all sorts of things that can be exchanged instead of money online.

Recently, through a work offer, I helped friends get half price Sky+ for a year. I got a note through the message board we frequent that it was all installed and running and they were pleased. I got a thank you for something I had done that whilst It wasn’t a lot of effort to arrange for me, meant a large saving for them.

It was the thank you that made me happy, something that in these days when I get a glare at holding open a door or sidestepping away from the tube doors to allow people off, that really meant something. The bonus was when they extended that thank you to a great gift of some photography books the next time I saw them. The thank you meant a hell of a lot and the books were the cherry on top.

With that in mind I’m experimenting this month to see if I can make the days go by using my skills and friendliness. Simply put – ask me for what you need, knowledge, skills whatever I can do and in return maybe I can get a nice email or better – a nice slap up meal to talk terms and say thanks.

So – what can I offer? You may well ask.

I’m not a master of any particular trade and I’m not a jack of all, just some.

I’ve got some areas of knowledge that might be useful to people, I can code HTML, and order a server and domain name, and install WordPress (well that’s what I did here!), I know my way around the web and I am used to researching and shopping for people online.  I can stitch video together and have published pod casts. I’m also fairly handy with a camera and a little digital processing. So there are some web skills for start.

There not the only things I can do though, whilst I don’t have a car at the moment I do have a clean driving license so maybe you need someone to drive a van with your belongings in it if you are having a reshuffle or moving house and I can help move things around. If you just fancy someone to chat with in the pub with or need a partner for a class to learn with then maybe I can help.

Basicaly, if there is small job you need doing that you think I might be able to help with, advice on online shops or how to find things, if you need some things photographing or just want to ask me some questions and get some advice, then I might be able to help. You never know until you ask and you know what? Neither do I!

In return all I need is a thank you and permission to write it all up here as I go along. It might be quite a journey, depending on what you all think you need.

Hell, if you fancy taking me out for dinner for no reason at all then I probably wouldn’t say no! But no kissing on the first date – i’m not that sort of guy.

I’m writing this as the left side of my jaw is finally getting it’s feeling back after having a tooth removed this afternoon. I’l spare you the gory details of the procedure and how they had to pull the tooth out in bits. but I just want to remind people that yes there are needles involved, yes there can be drilling and all sorts of tools to pull your teeth out. HOWEVER. Thats will only be the case if, like me, you haven’t really looked after your teeth.

I’ve had a phobia/fear about going to the dentist and there was a 10 year period where I didn’t go, mainly due to a bad experience at a previous Dentist. However I was lucky enough to find a good surgery and the two Dentists I’ve had there have been amazing at re-assuring me and keeping me sane whilst I’ve had work done, including root canal work and now an extraction.

Whilst I know i’m to blame for the damage i’ve done so far to my teeth and that they will never be perfect, basically what I’m saying is, Dentists aren’t all that bad, get yourself a bit of trust in a professional and get regular appointments other wise you’ll end up with a big hole in you gum and a list of things you can’t do for ages:

No Alcohol
No Smoking
No really hot food or drinks
No really cold food or drinks
No hard food etc etc

As prevously mentined I took part in the photography project Someone Once Told Me which I think is a great idea, whilst at the party where I had my photo taken several of my friends also agreed to take part including my old university friend and former flatmate Al. I’m pleased to say I think the photo of him came out well which you can see here

Al on Someone Once Told Me

I also had the pleasure of meeting Mario again last night as folloing on from my picture another friend signed up to take part and had his picture taken, being a notably shy person when it comes to haveing his photo taken he was quite leased with the results which should hopefully be up on the site in the next few weeks

Has someone once told you something that has stuck with you for a very long time, something of importance that has reflected the way you’ve lived your life, or something simple and fun that it just hangs around in your head. Getting these words out is the premise behind the wonderful photography project Someone Once Told Me.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet Mario who runs the site and had my picture taken for the project whilst out on a mutual friends birthday celebrations, I was more than happy to take part and I wasn’t the first to indulge in the project that evening and helped Mario rope in a few more participants.

The basis of the site is very simple:

“Black and white photographs
A new one every day
Each person writes a message
Of something that someone once told them”

For mine I used a quote from a friend that I had received a couple of months earlier in a birthday card from them. The quote just stuck in my head when I read it and when I found out about this project I knew exactly from the start what I wanted to write. It was also timed nicely as the birthday celebrations I was at when the photograph was taken was for the person who wrote me the quote in the first place.

You can see my quote and my slightly dramatic pose over at the Someone Once Told Me websites archive

My quote on Someone Once Told Me

I think this is great project and as well as an interesting photography project I think it is a great insight into peoples minds and how things people say can influence us.

Last week I had the lucky pleasure of being able to work on a music video. I got a call from a friend who would be directing the video and asked if I could come along and shoot stills, this was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to work on anything like this and I jumped at the chance.

Exit Calm video shoot

After meeting the other people on the shoot en-route to the location we arrived and began setting up. I duly helped out where I could, moving furniture and holding things whilst the Director and irector of Photography sorted out finer details and the lighting. Part of the setup including mounting a dvd player, projector and speakers onto the camera rig, after a bit of tooing and froing we were ready to go.

Camera rig at the Exit Calm video shoot

The band arrived and we made our introductions before lunch arrived and we all took a break. Once the food was wolfed down Annette got to grips with the make-up for the band. I would like to point out for fear of a beating from the band that they didn’t have much make-up.

And so the real work began, working to a recording of the upcoming single and pre recorded visuals we began the shoot, projecting film across the band and capturing their performance. Things went pretty smootly and the takes went quickly, I snuck round the camera and crawled across the floor, i knelt, I ducked, I got pulled out of the way and by the end of the shoot my legs were aching. I had taken over a thousand photos in that time.

For the few hours we worked together I felt drawn to the band, they had a brotherly spirit between them, they were a family. During the post shoot drinks this tie between them was evident in the recalling of stories from the road and how they met. When I met up with them at their gig at the Barfly in Camden this weekend I saw this bond on stage.

I’ve managed to get the number of shots down to around 300 however I’ve uploaded a few already as a sneak peak for any Exit Calm fans that might stumble across this blog

Exit Calm - Video shoot for next single

The rest of the photos can be found here:

Exit Calm – We’re On Our Own – Behind the scenes on the video shoot

I’ll be updating the set with more photos as I process them.