Conversational Technologies: Tag Cloud Hats

Helping you network, by making you look ridiculous.

Last year at Barcamp Sheffield 2.1, I undertook an experiment in icebreaking. The idea was inspired by tag stickers I saw at an SI camp meetup in London. Essentially the idea was to see whether if we could view peoples interests as tags taking shape as thoughts or speech bubbles, would it stimulate conversation and help break the ice and identify common interests.

The idea was seeded at last minute, recruiting volunteers, and extroverts like @thehodge to wear some cloud hats, and start mingling. I also announced what I was doing and where people could get them.

Turns out I could’ve done with a better production line as people embraced the concept. Whilst not everybody opted for the hats, enough were seeded to give a comic like appearance to the scene in the room. People adapted the clouds to their personalitys, some even creating beautiful illustrations.  It personally led me to discover some hidden  I did interests that I might not have touched upon in the conversation, but I can’t speak for how it affected everybody. I did however note 2 delegates at Unsheffield who had brought their own ready made tag cloud hats made from attaching speech bubbles to sticks this year.

If you want to do your own test, details on how you can make tag cloud hats can be found below. If you try it out, please keep me posted on how it worked for you.

Permissive Conversation Spaces

Is it possible to create zones and areas in public, where we feel comfortable talking to strangers?

Post BarCamp Sheffield 2.1 I was mulling over the impact of the event and some of the technologies we implemented. On analysis I realised that a lot of the success of the event arose from the fantastic conversations that occured there.

Most of the people having these great conversations with one another were perfect strangers on arrival. Yet in addition to the scheduled conversations, there were side conversations running on everything from the joy of pure nonsense to religious theology. I began to muse that we had created a “permissive space” for these conversations to happen. That when people feel comfortable about talking about their passions thoughts and interest they will do so.

Building on this thinking, I realised that there are other permissive conversational and behavioural technologies within society (ie. things that grant us permission to behave as we’d wish). For example drugs and alcohol grant permision for deeper or more ridiculous conversation depending on your mood. Yes there is a degree of “effects”, but I believe that some of these effects are more psychological – if we believe it is socially excusable to behave in a certain way because we have been drinking, then we are more likely to do so.

The tag cloud experiment, granted permission to be ridiculous, and set a certain tone. As well as providing easy simple ice breakers for conversation.

Getting to the point.

I believe that it is possible to introduce social permissions into public spaces to encourage conversations between strangers and build communities as a result. These technologies may be simpler than we think, experimentation is required.

I propose that we create “Conversational Spaces” in public places. See below for two examples.

Text for bench reads. “Conversation space” and “by sitting here, you are happy to have a chat with a stranger”, text for bus stop is the same, but replaces sitting with standing. If people want to have a conversation then they just follow the rule, if someone else comes along, they both recognise that it is acceptable to chat there.

This assumes that the reason we dont talk to each other is we think that strangers may see us as threatening, or with an agenda, or think we’re mad and therefore rarely breach this unspoken social contract. The causes of this go deeper, by I haven’t the inclination to describe them here. If we grant permission to talk to us, by being in such as space, then we can remove this percieved social obstacle.

Yes we may need more rules, we may need less, we may need prompts. But why not start the experiment. It’s cheap, possibly doable without permission (but better still if publically endorsed) as a form of Guerilla Community Action.

The issue of perverts, weirdos and nutcases: firstly we need to start recognising that most “strangers” are not weirdo’s, perverts or nutcases, secondly these people are in the public domain anyway (and rarely concerned whether you want to talk to them or not). We need to steer away from paranoia paralysis if we are to achieve anything socially beneficial, lets introduce the rules if we need them, and if your scared – just don’t sit on the bench.

This idea is not disimilar from the Buddy Bench concept, which enjoys success in playgrounds. http://www.pendlewood.com/early-years-play-equipment/early-years-seating/buddy-bench_184.html

Also it should be noted “the democracy bench” concept arose out of a “Who want’s to be?” event run by The People Speak.

Augmented Content Update

Some time ago I wrote a post on Augmenting content, and elaborated on how it could potentialy change the way we interact with video content, and how it could be used as a means of monetisation for sites such as youtube,through Augmented content use.

Firefox 3.5 video augmentation tools make this feasible and doable. I’m incredibly excited about this technology and it’s potential to make free video content distribution a viable model. I thoroughly recommend watching this video it’s shit hot.

Aside from the monetisation elements, the potential of this technology to change the way we interact with our media is huge, databases of interconnected media could change the entire web communication and knowledge interchange format from a text based system to a more human interface. Mozilla you rock.

Open Calendar Systems: Sharing time

Open calendar systems, seem to me to be a massively underexploited gap in the Web 2.0 marketplace.

I have yet to find anything that is remotely good enough, and that fully exploits the opportunities that shared time presents.

Sharing time based information creates numerous opportunities and an open calendar with an intuitive UI represents an incredibly useful tool (google calendar doesn’t even do basic stuff like let you mark entire blocks of days with drag and drop).

What would a good open calendar enable?

Sharing of events you are attending with freinds (whilst facebook does this already it only does so for events on facebook, also there is no calendar format (which is frickin ridiculous).

Alerting you of relevant events in area you are in, or are going to be in (info relevant to your future time and space).

Time based contact management – Manage who can contact you and when, create black out zones so you can get work done, coordinate with devices.

Communication syncing – see when best to organise a chat or a meet up without constantly firing off multiple date/time scenarios

Time sharing – prearrange times to spend time with people, before you even know what you’ll be doing. These spaces could be open to suggestions (ie. people could pitch for ways you could spend that time (within predetermined budgets), the lazy way to organise a holiday or meetup).

Flexible work and volunteering management. By showing what you have free and when you can make your self available for work as a freelancer, or for volunteering within the community.

These are just a few things that I would envisage as benefits from sharing time information within a simple open system, I believe as an open source format it would represent numerous opportunities. With respect to a user interface, i’m personally inspired by the idea of an annual calender as a circle (taking influence from Eastern calendars) which would make it easy to drag repeat events such as birthdays into future years.

Thoughts greatfully recieved.

Thanks to James Methley at Technophobia for encouraging me to write this out

A better Twitter Client – Using augmented metadata streams to add value and information

I’ve been pondering twitter for a while and how i’d like to use it better (probably like a number of users), being the permanent heretic that I am, never satisfied with the world around me or the tools provided.

I’d like to posit an idea on how I believe some of these problems could be solved using a simple twitter hack, which could then be openly adopted by a range of clients.

Whilst reading @stoweboyds request to start using / as a location identifier, and also pondering the ubiquitous use of #tags, it occured to me that a lot of the additional user hacks that twitterers employ greatly reduces the already meager number of characters available to tweet. My solution to this is as follows.

A client twitter solution that posts an augmented stream with additional information selected by the user, which would be matched by other client solutions with timestamping and username or @reply selection. This would make it easier to track twitter conversations, but furthermore it would allow for #tag, location, userthread information, and other data I haven’t yet considered to be transfered adding value without cannabalising the existing twitter feed.

For an example of use see below.

I recieve a tweet of interest to a specific field of interest, I want to retweet but also add a #tag for archiving purposes (obviously first we need a client good at archiving). My client allows me to add #tag information in a completely seperate tweet (lets say a direct tweet to prevent stream pollution) which can be accessed by twitter client and added as extra information at the other end.

Thoughts greatly appreciated.

Redemption vs Punishment

As a society is it not time we began to re-evaluate our treatment of those who perpetrate crimes within the context of the effect upon society.

Whilst the notion of punishment serves as a deterent, the actual act of punishment has a detrimental effect on society. It costs society money to punish, and attaches a strong and often permanent stigma to the offender that classes them as bad.

It does not recognise the fluidity of personality, the opportunity for transformation and it certainly doesn’t seek to change it.

Even community service is billed as a form of punishment. Isn’t it time we transcended such feudal perceptions.

The opportunity for redemption, represents the opportunity for personal growth. It also offers society compensation for the crime rather than a cost to punish.

So rather than simply excluding wrong doers from society, is it not possible to create a system of redemption and return. Perhaps with harder paths leading to a quicker return. Such paths provide a process of personal and public redemption, benefiting both society and criminal, and with it social and personal reform as opposed to stagnation, regret and a negative loop from which it is difficult to return.

Obviously such reform would still have to be done within an environment that serves to protect the masses and ensure safety and security, but at the end of a period of redemption I suspect that the criminal would be better placed to reintegrate with society.

Random acts of kindness on Twitter

Most of you will already be familiar with the random acts of kindness principle – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_acts_of_kindness, a meme which has been in existence since the 1980’s (I remember my mum telling me about it in the car on the way to school one morning).

There’s something beautiful about the simplicity of this meme.

I was thinking after an old woman let me in front of her in the supermarket queue, and I gave a chocolate trifle to a veteran selling poppies (I had a poppy already). Both experiences brought such joy. Such simple compassion. I wanted to share them.

This is where twitter enters.

I have set up actsofkindness as a twitter group, you can follow  it, and by direct messaging you can share any kindness you experience.

I hope it brings you a small dose of joy and beauty, to balance your day. Also hopefully by virtue of it’s existence and use perhaps we will commit more acts.

UK Banks Shareholders Meeting

Since we’re now all major shareholders in UK banks, can we hold a shareholders meeting?

Thing’s I’d like to put to the table chiefly surround the banks investment strategy.

I have but 2 requests, one do and one don’t.

Do. Develop a strategy whereby a good portion of our funds are invested in areas local to the account holder, with a further % invested at regional and national levels. If we want our economy to thrive, directly connecting our investment in the banks with our economy will surely encourage the funding and development of local and national businesses, and incentivise us to keep our collective spending closer to home. Furthermore we should be connected to these investments (we’re more likely to promote local businesses if we know how well our fates are intertwined).

Don’t. Invest our money in businesses that deal in arms and abuse human rights.

That’s it for now. Show of hands please.

Capitalism is Anti Social

An obvious statement perhaps, given the opposing views of capitalism and socialism. But we must keep this in mind when assessing the present state of society and how we can affect social change. eg. What good are laws and campaigns when we reward those whose interests it is to circumvent them?

The majority of what we do to make society a better to live, runs against the direction of capitalism.

Some simple examples.

Alcohol. Drinks companies are legally required to make more money for their shareholders, this in turn requires them to sell more booze.  Yet a well functioning healthy (both physically and emotionally) society requires us to drink less, not more, and drink responsibly.

Sustainable Growth. One of the biggest oxymorons of the present day. Common Sustainable themes are reduce, reuse, and recycle, all of which are economically reducing functions. Growth runs in the opposite direction by it’s very nature. You may be able to fool yourself into thinking that your new hybrid car is sustainable, but a fool you will be as the carbon used in creating it will never be offset against it’s lifecycle. Buying green products to replace your “bad ungreen products” isn’t neccessarily a good thing.

Sustainable lifestyles require us to consume less. NB. there are means of economic growth that do not strictly rely upon products and material wealth, for example an activities based economy is one alternative I like the sound of, this is by no means a completed theory.

As long as the system that we live in places capital gain above social gain, this silent war against society will continue. First we are isolated (mentally, through the rise of individualism), then we are undermined (since desires are emotional (there are needs in the system, but they are negligible), new insecurities must be created to create new markets (the unattainability of perpetual youth being a firm favourite)), then sold to.

The most successful marketeers shape society, not our governments, with emotional defecit being a systemic requirement.

Anyway rant over, I’m off into town to get shitfaced and by some manscara

Popping my Bar Camp cherry

The notion of losing my virginity of anything to a bunch of self professed geeks is pretty horrifying, but terminology aside I just wanted to try and articulate a brief explaination of what a Barcamp is and why anyone should want to attend.

I didn’t know what to expect from BarCamp London 5, but given that i’d agreed to help out with BarCamp Sheffield 2, I thought it my duty to go and find out.

After signing in, we go through the introductions, each taking turns to describe ourselves in 3 tags. This public shaming exercise acts as a great icebreaker.

We will be plotting a number of embarrassing means of breaking the ice at BarCamp Sheffield.

After a discussion with the guys at ebay I decided from the many things I wanted to talk about, to do a talk on demand = supply, which I haven’t even blogged about yet (more on this to follow later).

I approached “the scheduling board” with trepidation at first – It was a grid with times on one side and rooms on the other. I wasn’t immediately sure what to do, although write your talk on a post it and stick it where and when you want to speak appeared to be the order of the day, I noticed that Moo were the only people speaking at 1.00 (the first slot).  After checking that I wouldn’t be making a faux pas, I decided to go head to head with the well known firm.

I found the system easy to use, and the distributed nature of choosing a speaking slot made it easy to post.

My talk on supply = demand went well, with a room fit to bursting and I didn’t see anyone sneaking out, which I held to be a good sign. People counld interject and ask questions mid flow, which made it feel informal and free, and enabled me to elabourate where neccessary.

The rest of the weekend was rich in conversation and discussion, highlights included:

How Architects use buildings to control us – A look at Las Vegas is especially terrifying

• How to make your own touch screen for £10 (which led into a how to make your own projector, amoungst other DIY projects)
• An explaination of the Credit Crunch (and how the economy works) – Terrifying knowledge that makes you go What The Fuck
• An assessment of virtual media centres – Boxee looking sweet
• Some interesting discussions on economics of morality and facilitating change through social enterprise with EcoCamp and UK carrot mob founders.

So all in all a great time was had by all. I didn’t play werewolf role play (from what I could gather a more complex version of Wink Murder), into the evening, I had to draw the line somewhere. It looked like fun, but I just wasn’t willing to embrace my inner geek to that degree.

Many thanks to the guys at Ebay (i hope you weather the storm), and all the attendees who made the event such fun.

This is to get the conversation going, both here and there (at BarCamp Sheffield), so join in and join us. Oh and help us design the logo.