The reason I keep reading blogs at a time when so many people are abandoning them (reading or writing them - take your pick) is because of posts like this one. Coincidentally the reasons I love working in the field I do, the reasons I used to work in wonderful book shops and most certainly the reasons my most cherished possessions are still literature despite all the gadgets I’m surrounded with can also be found in this post.
my desire to see publishing move with technology and survive as the guardian and helpmate of literature. But it’s also another product of my own ongoing, irresponsible, ever-growing and never-sated love affair with books. I can’t stop reading them, cherishing them, and trying to work with them, and I hope you’ll continue with me on this journey
I’m known James Bridle for a while now. Back when I was with Londonist he’d send me unique books to play with and since then we’ve become real friends thanks to platforms like Twitter, a shared interest in scribbling on paper as well as the Internets and the occasional alcoholic beverage. He’s constantly surprising me, but this project, this Bookkake, takes the soggy biscuit.
It’s brilliant stuff like this and the amazingly talented people behind them that keeps me actively interested in all the great ways the world is changing around us. Where others see doom and gloom the brighter people amongst us see opportunity. And not just for themselves. Individuals finally have the tools to match their skill sets and the passion to make new things happen for all of us.
Bookkake and Someone Once Told Me are the kinds of projects that give me an extra thrill when it comes to working with the ICA. I’ve already been talking to them about putting five or so projects like this up on a stage. Brief presentations, brief Q&A sessions, live streamed and archived in front of a physical and virtual audience that is capable of helping the projects along. Then we hit the bar. Even simply in terms of raising awareness the potential is huge. This is the kind of thing I love discussing both at the Tuttle and Creative Coffee. It’s the reason I’m so interested in a Network of Networks and the reason I’ll always fly the flag for the people around me - these motherfuckers are talented and more people should know about it.
I muddied the waters a little this week by suggesting that the regular London Creative Coffee Club follow the Tuttle and move to the ICA for its regular meetings. While the Tuttle now has a real partnership with the ICA this wasn’t what I was suggesting for the CCC. At least not at this stage.
As with the Tuttle I can’t think of a better place to host this regular event, but it does make more sense to discuss the possible move of venue as a group. We’ll be doing just that this Wednesday alongside the usual subjects. If you fancy popping along full details are here.
As there’s such a large overlap between CCC and the Tuttle this should be an easy decision to make. Let’s see how the Social Media Cafe slots into its new home on the 10th and talk about moving the CCC in its wake on the 15th. I’m sure that if we do make the move that the ICA will be very accommodating, but as a smaller group I wouldn’t expect an early opening. This would then mean moving the CCC back an hour, but does open up the possibility of extra people joining us for lunch?
As I mentioned previously I’m doing a pile of micro-reviews over on 12 Seconds (which they kindly mentioned on their blog - thanks guys!) while I’m at the London Film Festival press screenings. The plan didn’t quite go according to plan as the wi-fi at the National Film Theatre turns out to be too weak for video. Not a big deal as I can simply post the vids in the evening as I did tonight, but it means I can’t do the more fly on the wall stuff I was planning.
What I have learned already is that this is a tough assignment. Fun, but a little more taxing than I’d considered. While I think I’m doing OK and will hopefully get better I’m not really doing justice to some incredible films. So seeing as I had three very good pieces of cinema to watch today it only seems fair for me to embed the tiny reviews here and then expand on them a little.
First up was Paul Koutecky and Miroslav Janek’s CITIZEN HAVEL:
Knowing a little about the Velvet Revolution, but hardly anything about what followed in the Czech Republic this documentary was a real eye opener. I admit to dragging my heels a little towards the South Bank this morning. The sun was out and it seemed crazy to spend two hours in a dark room with revolutionary types. Thankfully from the very outset Citizen Havel is so warm an illustration of one man that you are immediately drawn into the heady days of 1992 and follow very closely this former political dissident as he becomes the first president of a very new country. As political documentaries go I’ve never seen anything quite like this film as the people behind the camera are given unprecedented access to a series of unprecedented events.
Other key figures of the period pass through (Blair, Bush and even a saxophone tooting Clinton), but Vaclav Havel remains front and centre and always an intellectual first, a state leader second. It’s an often hilarious look at a normal man standing up for what he believes in suddenly thrust into an international spotlight, holding the country together as others try and bring him down.
A treat of a movie and highly recommended, it plays on the 22nd and 26th of October. Full details here.
Lloyd has slapped the official post up on the Tuttle blog so now I can talk a little more about moving the Social Media Cafe (aka The Tuttle* Club) from it’s current home at the Coach and Horses on Greek Street to that other London institution, the ICA.
This is a big deal.
First though a reminder that we’re not leaving the Coach & Horses behind entirely. I found it via Hugh and Lee and then almost a year ago with Dean threw the first London Seesmic party there with Loic, Vinvin and co. I have every intention to continue my patronage and am happy to see other geeks use it on a semi-regular basis outside of the Tuttle for mini meet-ups. Alastair and his staff offer a very unique atmosphere and it’s quite simply one of my favourite venues in London. We’re not finished with it yet.
But the Tuttle club has also grown in that time. I put the success down not only to Lloyd’s hard work and the brilliant people who make up the regulars, but also the fact that we never imposed any rules on the beast. In a very similar way that Twitter has succeeded by asking one simple question that invites a multitude of different replies, the Tuttle succeeds through simplicity: come along and talk about whatever you like.
I think this is why far more than any other event that I attend it’s the Tuttle that has the widest cross-section of attendees. Just last Friday I started the day talking to an artist about the possibility of embedding RFID tags into clay, moved over to a TV presenter who wanted the creative freedom offered by new media and finished as usual watching Whatley perform mobile-surgery on someone’s N95. Each and every Friday morning I never know who I’m going to meet or what I’m going to end up talking about, but I always come away with a sense that I learned something and helped other people out.
So in less than a year we’ve garnered a great reputation and Tuttle has become an accidental brand and a verb. There are Tuttles now in Birmimngham and Brighton with others planned and Social Media Cafes running in the States. People come to us from far and wide and we have yet to have the exact same group turn up twice. There’s always someone new.
Which brings us to the ICA. We’re honoured that it was the Institute of Contemporary Arts that reached out to us. As Lloyd points out, this was all down to Tuttle regular Whatley and Spinvox’s James Scroggs who was kind enough to do the introductions for us after running a great bolt-on at the Tuttle earlier in the year. We had a meeting last week just prior to the Twestival and confirmed the move with Nicole Elias, the Biz Dev Director at the Institute.
That meeting went better than we could have possibly hoped for. Because the ICA only opens its doors to the public at 11am, we’re being allowed earlier access than normal. The cafe will be up and running with coffee, tea and breakfast nibbles. The knock on from all this hospitality is that we can now start talking about working in conjunction with the ICA to utilise not only their facilities, but also to mix with their members and the intensely creative people passing through their doors each day. We’ve already begun to talk about possible projects, but I feel the best way to proceed is get settled in with business as usual and then hold a bolt-on where Tuttlers and the ICA can swap ideas and discuss how we move things forward.
When I first came to London the ICA was one of the places that I was instinctively drawn to. Aside from my own interest in film and the wider arts, they’ve always been keen to host technological events and it’s a dream come true to be a part of the ICA’s future as they continue to celebrate 60 years of activity.
Of course, this will be a change for the Tuttle, but now that we can begin taking the stuff we talk about each week and give it a stage (quite literally in some cases) the scope for the next year is pretty incredible. I’m hoping the transition will be as painless as possible, but if there are any fears that need addressing or questions to raise then please have-to in the comments or come along to our final Tuttle at the C&H on the morning of the 3rd of October and bend my ear accordingly.
And most important of all, please come along to the launch proper of Phase II on Friday October 10th at 10am.
The London Film Festival press screenings start on Monday. I got my press pass yesterday and because I’m incredibly busy at the moment (genre-crossing sci fi tv doesn’t just write itself you know) I was looking for a slightly different way of covering the films this year.
After a quick conversation with Christian and Sol I decided to do a series of pithy film reviews on 12 Seconds. I have no idea yet how I’ll boil down some of the best cinema in the world to only 12 seconds, but I’m looking forward to kicking this off. I will of course be doing more traditional text reviews to accompany the best (and maybe worst) of the festival this year, but with 3 films a day starting next week the short video content should soon add up…
I’ll be embedding the vids here of course, but you can always jump into 12 Seconds and record your own mini reviews. Can you sum up The Breakfast Club, Star Wars or Night of the Living Dead in so short a video? I’d love to find out…
After hosting some smaller scale Tweetups myself I was very interested to see how last night’s Twestival was going to go. These things can get worryingly complicated, but I’m happy to say that despite an initial bout of confusion (over whether the venue was going to enforce its ridiculous dress code) the whole thing seemed to go off without a hitch.
I’m a little hoarse this morning from having one too many conversations over the ‘music’, but the free beer, wine and grub made up for that. Hell, I even won a raffle prize and did a little jig with a cute girl to Ben’s crowd rousingTwitter song.
As with all social media events though, the emphasis for me was the people - catching up with a few familiar faces and finally meeting some fine Twitter folk for the first time. In that respect the event worked really well and I had a much better time than at the Moo bash a few months back. There was a real sense of moving out of the echo chamber and it was a relief to see and meet so many people that I’ve never crossed paths with before. I had a lot of conversations that I’ll follow up on this week so some interesting stuff should come out of the evening.
I also got the occasional nod about some of the cool stuff I’ve been involved with over the last 12 months - and each time it was my great pleasure to remind everyone that everything from the film screenings to hanging with Han Solo started at events just like this one and through working with people that I’ve met almost exclusively through social media.
Amanda and the Twestival team did some sterling work last night and I’d certainly love to see the Twestival become an annual fixture on the London events calendar.
Speaking of events… I’m off to the Tuttle soon. We’re announcing some big news there this morning, but I’ll be writing about that later…
Last Wednesday was what felt like the beginning of a new season of Creative Coffee Club. While the Leicester branch closed over the summer, our regular London meet-up has kept ticking over, but with a skeleton crew. I didn’t make them all myself and on a couple of occasions we were down to just two or three attendees, but that hardly mattered as the quality of conversation was always top notch. Everything from artificial intelligence to insider’s views on the film and music industry, more often than not with a social media application or solution.
Two weeks ago we tried something a little different by offering up a theme in advance. Normally a couple of topics naturally surface and we chew them over, but having a little more direction helped to get us under steam a little earlier. I really enjoyed that discussion (despite arriving late) as The Future of Television is something I’m particularly interested in right now. The nice thing about the people who are drawn to both the CCC and SMC are that they are not merely commentators - more than once a laptop is pulled out and we get to see how people are doing their bit to shape the future of something.
This week the numbers swelled back to their pre summer heights (no pun intended) and the proposed topic went out the window as the large group splintered off. I maybe got to speak to half the people present which is a good sign. At the Tuttle on Fridays I speak to a lot less than that - the busier the better in my book. Both the Social Media Cafe and the Creative Coffee Club are the healthiest regular events that I attend. By healthy I don’t mean that they’re just well attended, notably they also attract new blood so are never in danger of getting stale. Fresh views and opinions also help prevent an echo chamber from forming, while constantly explaining to new faces why it is we gather and what we do there helps to keep these events in focus.
New to the group last week was Mario Cacciottolo from Someone Once Told Me. Make with the clicky on that link today and you’ll see my ugly mug. Don’t panic though, there’s a new photo every day so I’ll soon get shuffled backwards. Mario also snapped off a few more Creative Coffee types including Lloyd and Steve and as Mario is very keen to see the project thrive independently of him, I’m hoping to rope in a few more Tuttlers to take part too. All you need is a camera and a sentence…
Tomorrow sees CCC Leicester waking up so I’m getting an early train to take part in that too. With new Social Media Cafes popping up in the UK and the US it looks like the next few months are going to be a lot of fun. It’d be nice to keep an eye on all these seperate events because despite the division geographically I’m pretty confident that some of the topics, and perhaps members, will overlap.
I’m thinking a lot right now about how we can move the conversations to another level. I love the coffee and the chat, but it’d be nice to see if we can make a few things happen. Be a shame to waste the ideas that flow across the venues as the people that gather in them are way smarter than me. I think we are making small steps in that direction already and I have just one more meeting with Lloyd to confirm that the Tuttle will enter stage 2 on October 10th. Not a massive transition, but something akin to having the stabilisers removed from the social media bicycle.
This is a great time to dip your toes into this particular pool if you haven’t already. Come along to a Creative Coffee or Tuttle meeting - if we’re too far afield from you or the weekday early mornings or a stretch then start your own. On Thursday evening I’ll be at the Twestival (great idea, horrible name) so feel free to bend my ear on some of this or if the music is too loud we can just make frantic hand gestures at each other across the room…
Had no idea what to call this post and then iTunes coughed up Turn The Page by Bob Seger. Great song - Metallica covered it on Garage, Inc but with a lot less saxamaphone.
Wandering around town after the Wordia press launch last week with Christian I was encouraged to pick up a an iPhone. Already had some well deserved grief over this one, but Jess came to my rescue (as usual) and co-opted the shiny little bastard as a belated birthday present. Now I can whip it out in public and deflect the “I thought you said the iPhone was a piece of crap?” comments with the my girlfriend bought it for me clause.
Less than a week old, but yeah it’s crappy in all the areas I expected:
battery life is terrible, most of the applications come from the same fuckwit funnel as the crap on Facebook, the camera is so-so and it cries out for a second camera and video capibility, then fails as an iPod replacement too due to the meager 8 or 16GB capacity.
Pushing all that aside and treating it as an extra gadget to throw in my bag it’s a lot of fun. Some of the apps are great, the screen is shockingly bright compared to my Archos and because this is the PAYG version I’m not tied to anyone for 18months. Having 3g means I can find more than enough uses for it to start bitching about the lack of a decent battery at least once a day.
I hear a rumour there’s a 32GB version on the way, which would at least bring it into line with the iPod Touch (we also have one of those in the house now - thin little fucks), but the 16GB one I have should do fine as I’m not really using it as an Archos replacement. I’ll probably hang on to my Viewty for the 120fps recording facility alone so I’m now one of those idiots with two phones.
I’m beta testing the new upgrade to LifeCast too so I will be using it as a blogging tool from time to time. As a pocket version of Twitter it’s exceptional (I use a Twinkle, Twittervision and Twitterific combo). I’ve also downloaded a handful of Japanese comic apps that are utilising the interface in an interesting way.
More on all this once I’ve got used to the thing, dropped it or thrown it against the wall…
