Laptop Bubbles

Based on a previous conversation with Peter Bihr and being in a space for 6 weeks where I can do pretty much anything . I decided to play with some basic technology for a change.

The supposition is simple. Express what you want to talk about on your laptop. Grant permission for people to talk to you, give them a starting point and see what happens. Use it in your workspace, your coworking space, your public life, wherever and however you please. To do this follow these simple steps:

1. Download the file below.

2. Printout on sticky backed paper (or normal paper and then tape to your laptop)

3. Cutout

4. Write your personal interest tags

5. Stick to the back of your laptop, above your workspace, on your forehead, wherever

6. Be creative.

7. If you fancy posting photo’s to flickr, recording conversations started and using the tag #lbubbles I’d really appreciate it, as it will allow us to track the success of the technology.

Click to download PDF

Building business environments

Etsy/Folksy/Dawanda meets Instructables

Open and distributed models of product development create an environment in which products can evolve, advance, and be produced as needed, where needed. However designers and innovators attitudes repeatedly return to “yes very nice, how am I going to get paid?”

Financial reward does not flow from the idea, it flows from the market. Therefore a system which allows for both innovators, and producers to profit should be market focused. If the innovator owns the market, then they can allow anyone to create the goods and charge for them, but take a slice of the proceeds by managing the marketplace, and making it easier for producers to access the market through them, than it is to undertake the exercise themselves.

If someone wants to replicate the product it makes more sense to service the market, than it does to establish their own market. If a larger company wants to circumvent the system (indeed this is possible even with patents) then they could, however the products they would supply would be vastly different from those supplied by the marketplace (with the marketplace being able to offer a higher speed of innovation, diversity of product, service offering, and localised support). A clever company should recognise that by working with the market they can get the best of both worlds, combining skills to offer rapidly evolving products which benefit from scale of production. See diagram below for an explanation of how such a marketplace might function.

By “owning” the marketplace, the innovator creates a focal point for their innovation, around which interested customers can gather. Producers can service the customers needs in a way that benefits them, with the innovator taking a slice for providing the virtual space in which this happens. Innovators can also derive profits from suppliers looking to serve both the “Producers market” and the “DIY customers market”. The innovator provides know-how to all parties, and also is responsible for creating the space and ensuring market growth.

I believe it’s likely that for such a system to work, further elaboration will be required to include further actors – such as marketeers and evangelists. Also requiring exploration is what happens when someone builds upon an innovation, how is a fair system of reward maintained?

atoms&bits festival

I’m really excited about the atoms&bits festival. I’ve volunteered to help with it, having got the taste for Barcamp/Unconference organising with Barcamp Sheffield 2.1 and Unsheffield.

atoms&bits is an un-event, where barcamp and unconference principles are extrapolated across Berlin and beyond. It’s scope continually expanding – as any one can run their own micro event as part of the festival. It is a banner for action, under which individuals, collectives and groups from all backgrounds can gather to create something far larger and more exciting than the sum of it’s parts.

Covering the themes and behaviors that are emerging on the margins (and increasingly in the mainstream) of our culture. atoms&bits explores the new zietgiests of sharing, collaboration, and solving problems collectively or individually. A celebration of  the rediscovery of community, participation and activity. In contrast to the culture of apathy, individualism and dependence that is still prevalent within our society.

For my part, I am posing a challenge: is it possible to take every part of a washing machine, and upcycle it? Reinterpreting, redefining, and recontextualising it’s various bits to create tangible, valuable, and functional products that don’t just sell on their recycled credentials. We are calling on designers, makers, craftsmen, hackers, electronics enthusiasts, jewelers, and anyone interested to come together to meet this challenge. Details to follow on the blog, or dm me for info.

The translation that I helped out with can be found below. Excuse the duplication of information, I think this will be broken down for different sections of the site. www.atomsandbits.net for the German info. The translation below still needs some work, but is hopefully getting clearer about the nature of the event.

What is atoms&bits Festival?

atoms&bits (a&b) are the smallest elements in our modern society. This is what the atoms&bits Festival is all about: how we change society bit by bit, atom by atom – organized through the Internet with real world results. a&b is a meet up for visionaries, tinkerers, activists, geeks, and artists – in short, everyone that celebrates a new culture of collective endeavor.

The five themes that everything revolves around are:

(1) new forms of work (Coworking)

(2) a fresh desire to tinker and make (DIY)

(3) a new culture of openness (OpenEverything)

(4) politics

(5) arts & culture (Art of Production of Art)

as well as internet culture, the catalyst for changing attitudes and behaviours.

a&b Festival is a decentralized event that stretches over 10 days (September 18-27th).

Individual events are taking place in different locations from Berlin to Brooklyn, from Munich to Montreal. The festival will reach beyond the physical boundaries of the event, allowing participation throughout the world. Globally more than a thousand participants are expected. In order to foster sustainable networks and collaboration, we’re creating connections to other events that complement the idea of the a&b Festival: all2gethernow (Topic: music; Location: Berlin), Breakout (Topic: coworking; Location: global); OpenEverything (Topic: open source principles; Location: global); Transmediale (Topic: art & digital culture; Location: Berlin).

a&b Camp is one of the central points of the a&b Festival. On the weekend of the German federal elections (September 26-27th) around 400 participants will meet at a&b Camp to discuss, plan projects, and to network. Borrowing from the Barcamp format, all participants will actively engage in the event; the presentations (“sessions”) are interactive and created by the participants themselves.

In the open “Barcamp” area, participants will organize completely free sessions. Central themes of the a&b Festival will be addressed and discussed in several designated and curated rooms: Coworking, DIY, and OpenEverything. Spatial proximity and thematic ties will ensure intensive crossover among these topics.

The highlight of the worldwide festival and the kick-off for atoms&bits affiliated projects will be the atoms&bits weekend on September 25-27th. In Berlin the a&b Camp on Moritzplatz with several additional events happening nearby. The program includes exhibitions, live screenings, the a&b party, tinkering workshops, live coverage of the elections online, as well as an election party and more.

The atoms&bits festival
_________________________________

Atoms and bits – the smallest elements in our modern society.

From these tiny elements our daily lives are composed, we can use these to build new ways to improve our lives.

This realization is the first step towards change and also the basis of a new movement.

What do self-printed T-shirts, open source principles, workspaces for freelancers and online political activism have in common? They are all part of a new culture of the maker – people finding and creating their own solutions. Often unnoticed by the mainstream, yet sometimes directly under the noses of the public, people are developing new forms of working and living. Whether the people behind the phenomenon are urban laptop workers or full-time in an office, they both agree they are no longer satisfied with the status quo. They’d rather their environment should meet their own needs, and they slowly create the societal change they wish to see. They organize themselves frequently online, but the results of their activities are real and offline.

The  atoms&bits festival brings these people together, shows trends and exciting developments, an offers a view into the world of these new makers. In an unconventional and informal framework, people meet who would not otherwise encounter one another, although they have a lot to discuss. Here everyone can contribute and learn. Together they will plan, make, organize, and think.

The goals are as diverse as the participants – often ambitious, sometimes visionary – and always have something in common. It’s about collaboration, discussion and doing-it-yourself, positive change instead of passivity, atoms and bits – the smallest elements of our modern society, and how we can change our lives for the better.

The atoms&bits festival is a snapshot of actual social trends, a festival for people who are ready to shape and influence their environment and society – actively and positively.

The atoms&bits festival is:

·    A place for productive debate with conventional and new forms of working, thinking, and action.
·    A platform to discuss new trends and developments and to find new approaches to problem solving.
·    A catalyst for innovative projects, cooperations, and initiatives.

In order to retain the ideas and projects that emerge from the festival, we will continue to accompany and support these activities after the event.

————

The idea behind the Atoms and Bits Festival

___________________________________

The Atoms and Bits Festival is a great example of the new “culture of doing”. In July 2009, a series of independently planned of events began to cluster around a larger event concept, very quickly the idea evolved into a festival. Both the festival and the process of it’s creation are open and distributed, all contributions are of equal value. Everyone can play a part to help themselves and help shape the character and outcome of the atom Bits & Festival.

The planning and creation process of the festival can be found on Flickr, Twitter, blog posts of the creators and other online media, and can be tracked in real time through the #atomsandbits tag.

___________________________________

The key themes of Atoms and Bits

___________________________________

“DO IT YOURSELF” (DIY) / BAUSTELN:

An exploration of the emerging Maker movement, whereby people are rediscovering old skills and inventing new ones, to create products that they can’t buy or can’t afford. Creating for the pleasure of the craft and the joy of making. The DIY track will encourage participants to experience the joys of making first hand, and to share and learn new skills. Philip is this OK? do you want me to add more?

# CO-WORKING / NEW FORMS OF WORK:

# OPEN EVERYTHING / CREATIVE COMMONS

Open everything is a global conversation about art, science and the spirit of “openess”. It brings together those people who are embracing and practicing this new philosophy in the fields of software, education, media, philanthropy, community, workplaces and the society we live in (everything). It’s about thinking, doing and being open. At atoms&bits we’ll explore how open principles can be applied in creative and technical fields. Join our session track to connect with like minded people discussing and developing projects in Berlin and beyond.

http://openeverything.mixxt.de

POLICY #

-> DEF?

# Art of Production of Art

The track Art of Production of Art will explore and present  open, new and more participatory forms of arts and culture. It will bring together artists and creative people working both physically, virtually and philosophically. Culture professionals will exchange ideas, talk about their process of creation, self exploration and the relationships between art and commerce. The track offers the opportunity to bring creatives from all disciplines together for collaboration, and a united network to emerge around a shared sense of community, political and social identity.

_______________________________________

The 5 elements of the atoms&bits festival

————————————————– —————

# BARCAMP

The main focal point of the atoms&bits festival will be run according to the general principles of Barcamps:

“open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants..”

Source: Wikipedia

Every attendee of the festival is encouraged to contribute to the event, through active participation. Attendees aren’t invited just to participate in presentations, discussions, workshops and other “sessions”, but also to host and run their own sessions inspired by the themes of the festival and the key tracks. After suggesting sessions a show of hands is taken, and the days line up will be created

We are presently looking to arrange accomodation for those stopping over at the festival.

In addition to the core Barcamp/Unconference principles, atoms&bits thematic tracks (“Do It Yourself (DIY) / Bausteln, co-working / New forms of work, Open Everything / Creative Commons) will be supplemented by sessions presented or moderated by experts in these areas. The tracks will form the theoretical background to the workshops and activities that will take place over the 10 days up to and including the main event.

For organizational reasons the number of participants for the 2-day “camp” – atoms&bits 2009 is limited to 350 people. A reservation is therefore required. Satellite events are open to all.

# EXPLORATION

The core tracks, explore what we believe are the central theme’s of the emerging zietgiest, these are designed to spark ideas and encourage conversations. We encourage participants to present their ideas and projects within the context of the core tracks in order to compliment the wider discussion. However we are open to separate sessions designed to spark debate.

# MAKING

As part of the festival, we will offer participants the opportunity to make and create tangible products, and artwork. Through various workshops and activities, they will have the chance to share and learn skills and collaborate to build, invent and produce new innovations, new solutions to old problems, or give new life to old objects.

# NETWORKING

As well as the sessions we will provide space for emerging conversations, discussions and projects to flourish, giving participants the opportunity to exchange, develop and implement new ideas, and form new bonds and relationships.

# RELAXING

After the days discussions and excitement, a diverse program of evening events will help you unwind – Pecha Kucha, festival party, elections to the German Bundestag for public viewing on Sunday evening, an exhibition and many other, smaller activities that give the participants opportunity to relax and get to know each other.

Add a tweet

I’ve seen a few in browser comments systems in my time, however I’ve never really taken to using them. Until now…

What makes http://www.addatweet.com/ different is that it actually fits with my existing practices and behaviours.

Normally when I see a page I like or something that interests me, I want to comment on it and share it, so I tweet about it.

Addatweet allows me to comment on the page itself, but also converts the text and adds the page url automatically (something I often forget to do). This process therefore fits and helps with my normal online behaviours, meaning it’s actually easy for me to adopt.

Additionally my normal tweets are then lost in time and more importantly virtual space (yes they can be retrieved, but not easily). I’ve often wondered who else has linked to the things I have read, who shares the same interests as me, and who has gone before. Potentially addatweet adds a serendipity opportunity to my browsing.

It also allows me to filter conversations by page (and hence discover new conversations, and view existing followers within a better conversational context). Creating a space online dedicated to a specific conversation.

So I regard this as exciting stuff.

There are a few improvements I’d like to see, and also queries raised on the addatweet site.

@reply twitter integration – when I reply on page, i’d like it to automatically add the @reply when it show’s in twitter – this will ensure that I don’t have to return to the page to know that the conversation is being continued.

option on the addatweet hash tag – I appreciate they want it to go viral, however this eats into my already limited character limit

Need for a character count (so I will see where the twitter cut off is), however I like the fact that we can put longer comments here, so maybe just a colour change or showing what would appear in twitter stream. Raised by @simplygrey

Glitch in the threaded replies – i can’t reply to someone who’s replied to me in thread

Additional functional add ons

One of the problems addatweet will have is making people who are unaware of this augmented comment stream is taking place. An add a tweet comments button that displays the number of additional addatweet comments on your blog could help make this transition.

I’m sure there are other issues to be discussed here. Why not add addatweet and leave your comments on this page (or use the comments section if your prefer).

Legal Paralysis

Do too many laws, prevent us from actually doing anything good?

George Monbiot highlights, present alarming police activity and our ever steady progress towards a police state in the name of freedom. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jun/22/kingsnorth-fit-police-surveillance

However this question isn’t just about the laws and how their being applied, which is indeed of grave concern. But also of how our perception of the many laws of this country can create a pyschological social paralysis that prevents citizens from being citizens and keeps society passive.

There are too many laws in this country, for us to keep track of, yet if we break them ignorance is no excuse. What follows from this, is that people make assumptions about laws and regulations to the point that they feel that they can’t do anything outside of the social norms.

This runs contrary to the governments attempts to give power back to the people. We need to be free to build community, to take positive action.

In this climate where we have to be regulated to do anything, we have become increasingly dependant on the state, and corporate culture to do anything. Given all the talk of citizenship, we need to remove the percieved and real obstacles that prevent positive action and allow people to create a better environment for themselves.

If you make it illegal to do good, by attempting to prevent the bad, isn’t this worse all round? Do we need a law of intent?

By way of example – this would be vandalism, if done without council permission, however it should be done never the less (especially as no council is ever likely to make it happen).

Yesterday on the news there was a piece about a dangerous stretch of road, where many had died. The locals were in uproar for signage, and for prevention measures. Why not allow and encourage them (perhaps even reward them) to sort it out themselves (at least in the short term).

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.