weconverse

A week ago at TEDxStockholm I met Fredrik Härén, from Interesting.org, and author of a range of books focused on creativity and ideas. One of his latest is The Idea Book. I asked Fredrik if he could give me some copies of it, which I in turn could handle over to people from the British Council during my my key note today for the eTwinning National Conference. Fredrik said yes, and in the video below you can see how I fulfilled my promise. Last night, before the gig, I gave the fifth copy to Michael O’Donnabhain who was kind enough to invite me to this conference.

Share This

I believe that the inspirational advice from a fellow audiencer at my first TED in 1995 guided me to Nottingham next week. For the British Council I will do a gig entitled “I do not know?!?” Three days ago I asked the crowd to help me prepare for here and now. And indirectly for next week and a fantastic future. The crowd responded. Here is what we put together - together.

(TED will publish a video of the presentation, the slides here does not justify neither the work involved from everyone that contributed, nor the content of their inpsirations)

If you get anything from TED, here is your chance to contribute back! Please help me to present a stunning and inspirational five minute talk a couple of days from now. I therefore ask you to create some material that I might present in less than a minute. Hopefully at least four (4) of you will hear my request, thus giving me one minute to introduce and round up your contributions.

Yesterday I was invited to give a five (5) minute talk at the pre TEDxStockholm conference, which takes place north of Stockholm this Saturday (June 6, 2009). It’s an independet TEDx event, operated under license from TED, that gather a small group of around 40 specially invited persons. These include Klas Hallberg, Janne Gunnarson, Stefan Einhorn, and David Lega who will each talk for 18 minutes. Myself and Björn Jeffrey are limited to five minutes. Behind it all is a concept to disseminate TED.COM via TEDx events. TEDxStockholm is developed by Fredrik and Teo Härén (interesting.org), with help from among others Henrik Ahlén, and the ambition is to arrange the first public TEDxStockholm September 19, 2009.

I have an idea for a talk that I might produce myself, but hopefully yours are more inspirational. The conference theme is “inspiration”, and I will focus the content around providing the best start in life for our children. The TEDx license implies some limitations, which I do not yet know in detail. But the talks should be in English; they will be recorded; TED reserves the right to republish all material whenever and where they want; hence the materials used must be cleared for that copyrightwise. [Update: It will be Creative Commons 3.0, and by submitting to me I assume you grant me and TED the required rights].

As I begun complentating the opportunity I remembered an idea I in December 2007. It sprung up during a meeting about social media with a small group of members of the Swedish Parliament. One of them, Christer Winbäck, raised the concern about finding time to (mikro)blog and participate in social media. Among other things he for instance “had to write motions/bills”. I suggested he might outsource that task to his constituents. His response was something like “have you ever let your audience write the manuscript for your gigs?” Afterwards I published a blog post that I would like to try that. And now it’s time - I hope.

If this works out I am open for your creativity. Please comment or e-mail me (richard.gatarski@weconverse.com) your ideas or material. It might be a video, slides, a manuscript. Whatever that I will be able to present during 55 seconds. Consider the limitations I hinted upon above, and I’ll make a concluding slide listing all contributors. I reserve the right of what to include, and if I at all should fulfill this idea at TEDxStockholm (depending on if I get anything from you). Remember, the theme is “inspiration” and my focus is “best start in life for our children”.

Thank you in advance.

(I will announce this post in Twitter, Jaiku, Bloggy, Facebook, PPlist and some other social media outlets, and update it with more links as soon as I have time).

[Update 15:10]: It can´t be a selling, it’s about sharing inspirational ideas. In another forum Gunnar hinted about Swedish Radio’s show På Minuten (On the minute), as a way to cope with the time constraint ;). Plus I added links to some stuff above.

[Update 20:20] Tank you all for ideas, support, retweets and other ways of spreading the opportunity! So far we have recieved a lot of interest and some more or less conceptualized ideas, but nothing complete. Hopefully you will join the crowd and the content will come from you. It would be cool if you posted your idea here as a comment, and published complete contributions somewhere on the web (tagged as “TEDx Stockholm, crowdsourced”) and include a link in the comment. BTW, the organizers point out [I've recorrected this after comments] that the correct spelling is “TEDxStockholm” (except for microblogs use “TEDx Stockholm” with the space). Hence I edited this post, including its title.

[Update 21:50] A few minutes ago Johan Ronnestam submitted his contribution (after a couple of e-mail passes). I wish I knew of any web based tool for collaborated storyboarding/scriptwriting, do you? Compare Celtx, whis is a downloadable app for personal use. Perhaps I should setup a wiki. Meanwhile I tentatively work out the script below.

[Update Thursday 15:10] Added my intro text and re-corrected TEDxStockholm spellout.

[Update Friday 23:59] Edited the script, added introductionary quote at top of this post.

[Update Saturday 18:50] Sligthly adjusted the intro of the post and added the slides. I did not really follow the script below, as you will se in the video when it gets published.

Script (kind of) With reservations for rearrangings, additions, and removals pending on what comes in and what you say on the way.

50s, Richard Gatarski speaks: Nicholas Taleb tells how we humans tend to simplify the causes of complex phenomena. Even so, I still believe that the inspirational advice from a fellow audiencer at my first TED in 1995 guided me to Nottingham next week. For the British Council I will do a gig entitled “I do not know?!?” Three days ago I asked the crowd to help me prepare for here and now. And indirectly for next week and a fantastic future. The crowd responded. Here is what we did together.

55s Ladislaus Horatius: Freeze-dried wisdom
05s switch
30s Joakim Vollert: 5th grader with Phun
05s switch
40s Katarina Graffman: Look at the kids behavior [preview, to be extended]
05s switch
XXs open
05s switch
30s Christina & Stellan Löwing: This is Lisa
05s switch
50s Johan Ronnestam: Act 4 Kidz
05s switch
15s Richard Gatarski speaks: She, at TED5, adviced me to save for my childrens education. I re-thought that into investing in their and their friends future. It’s time to stop ego-shopping and pay back our own parents sacrifices.
We will do it - right! Thank you for having us here.
Us were [slide with credits].

Share This

.SE (Sweden’sThe Internet Infrastructure Foundation) have without much buzz moved over from their old publishing platform(s) to a host of WordPress installations. I was really suprised when I learned about this a few minutes ago in a meeting for the .SE project Webbstjärnan (which I consult for).

Perhaps I should have guessed this direction when I was briefly involved when WordPress was used to revamp the site for .SE:s main conference Internetdagarna, which previosly was built with Joomla.

I can only compare with my memory about how the old design looked like. But judging from that I cannot see any differences at ii.se (the main site, old proprietary CMS). I addition new sites such as .SE Direkt (domain management), Internetstatistik.se (statistics) are built with WordPress. In sum, a really impressing step, that again illustrate the power of WordPress and open source solutions. Although I wish .SE had credited the WordPress community (e.g. the “powered by WordPress” footer have been removed).

Share This

[Update after the gig] Thank you all for a wonderful morning! Besides the slides embedded below via SlideShare, I have uploaded them as a pdf (6 slides/page pdf 4.7 Mb). Here are direct links to the live broadcast from the first part of my gig, as well as the one where you talked. If you want to check what goes on in the back channels, try a Twingly microblog search for “X-FAKTORI”. [and later this evening I added the link to a video documentation of how Tarja Halonen grabbed the stage from me and Anna last August].

In ProCom (Finnish Web, Swedish page) there are 1800 professionals from the field of communication and PR. ProCom have been the leading organisation for the Finnish communications professionals for 61 years. For over 30 years ProCom members have gathered together for one day for a high-profile seminar called the ProCom -day. This year the organizers plan to concentrate on the future and innovations. The communications directors, consultants and information officers - almost everyone - feel a bit frustrated with all the demands and possibilities this day presents - oth in the private and the public sector.

To this years event, called X-FAKTORI, I have been invited to make a key note presentation under the headline Social Media - promises and perils. I am truly looking forward to again meet Finnish marketing pro’s.

(Afterwards I will meet with Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, for an informal conversation on how to solve societal problems by doing things together by the power of we.)

Share This

This post will be updated/supplemented within a few days, because the content is really not ready. But VIDBlaster, the software in question, is released within a few minutes and I want to share our experiences in concert with that event. In this preliminary video I try (lat and tired ;) the video below I explain what we did and how the gear we used looked like. I actually created the video with VIDBlaster in one single recording! That is, no editing - just talking while mixing me with clips and images. See below for a backgrounder.

VIDBlaster is “a powerful, economical way to record, stream and produce high quality video”, developed by Mike Versteeg. (Early podcasting fans might recognize him as the creator of CastBlaster).  In my view his creation opens up for everyone to own a nano version of an Outside Broadcasting Bus. Resutling in something I call an “OB-case”.

About a month ago my brother Henrik and I used VIDBlaster to stream and document a lecture held for teachers in Botkyrka. At that time we used a VIDBlaster on a laptop, two cameras, one mike, an animated vignette, and some pre-made graphis to mix and send a live video stream over Bambuser. You can see the result at Stjärnkikarna (in Swedish, but roll the video and you will get the point).

Last week we made our second experiment, streaming from a Breakfast seminar arranged by SIME and Sun. This time we had a more powerful laptop and a better mike solution. Please note that on both occasions we did not have much time for much preparation or training. We went there with an idea, and it worked pretty well. You may see the archived results at Bambuser.com/channel/sunsime.

If you have any questions I will try to answer them in a follow up post. Special thanks to Mike (for VIDBlaster), Ewa at Sun and Ola at SIME (for being brave enough to let us do the expirement), and of course to the entrepreneurs at Bambuser (who extend the mobile video frontier).

Share This

[Update 2009-06-16] For those of you who did not know about it, a link to TED.com conferences, as well as one of my favideos (in the school context) - “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity“. Also, check out my video with the cut from my preso when I handed out the Idea books. Turns out we used hash tags “#eTwinning” and “#UKetwin09“.

[Update after the gig] Thank you all for a fantastic morning! I have embedded my slides here (or download pdf 6 slides/page, 6.8 Mb). Here is a link to The Ideabook that the author Fredrik Härén generously gave to some of you.

Really, there are a lot of things I do not know. And a good question is if I need to know that I do not know what I know. But I know “we” know more than I do. And we will soon know what I will do in mid June.

Well, that intro is just a better way to say that the exact title and content of my keynote presentation at eTwinning UK National Conference 2009. A terrific event, with sharing and award giving arranged by the British Council, taking place in Nottingham June 12-14. I am so honored, glad, and proud to have been invited. Not only to share my ideas, but also (rather more so) to take the opportunity to converse with the most interesting people in the UK. That is, those who work together with young humans and are interested in new forms of communication, conversations, and mediation.

Pretty soon the event planners will contact me so that we can co-create the details regarding my contribution. Will they do it here in the open? Will you do it before them? I do not know. But as always, I am looking forward to the future - which is inhabited by your children(s children(s children…))

Share This

Almost a year ago I noted that Encyclopaedia Britannica Online (how’s that for a spelling excercise ;) became more social (post in Swedish). Now they sent me an e-mail (sorry, can’t find ANY info on their site) that opens up with:

“Encyclopaedia Britannica Online has just introduced a new program that makes it possible for you as a reader and subscriber to contribute edits, revisions, and suggestions to the encyclopedia”.

Sounds cool, so I decided to give it a try. Surfed as they suggest to britannica.com and chose “conversation” as an entry in need of an update. First impression - this is not an encyclopedia, it’s an advermedia. The only thing I saw was ads, ads, and ads.

Then I spotted some entries, clicked one and found the promised “Suggest edit” button. When I clicked it some kind of edit screen appeared, but it did not seem to work. So I gave up. Sorry, got more important things to do.

In sum, they sent me an e-mail and I gave them my attention for a few minutes. The only thing I learned is that I won’t return. Too many ads, and I can only edit what they think is important. And “conversation” as something we do is nothing I can do anything about - at britannica.com.

Share This

Today I made a short visit (to mingle :-) at Internetworld’s two day conference Webbdagarna 2009 in Stockholm. And the event was/is of course live video recorded and streamed - thanks to Björn Falkevik. In the Swedish social media bubble Björn is widely known as “Mr Bambuser”, because of his frequent use of Bambuser at all kinds of occasions. And the result is, especially compared to my rant yesterday, really good!

Of course the video stream was live. Beyond that, the recordings were immediately available in Internetworlds section in the Bambuser site after each break in the programme. Björn used two cameras and a feed from the presenter’s computers so that he could insert their stuff in the stream whenever useful. True, the video quality (resolution and smoothness) could be better. But that is less important if you take budget and value into consideration. In any case, Björn was recording everything locally in full HD resolution.

Here is an example of the value. In the morning Creuna’s delivered a really cool presentation of how a bank like Swedbank could look like in the Web 2.0 future. (Internetworld’s story about that, in Swedish). During their talk I sent an e-mail about this to one of my clients within Swedbank. While he missed the live event, he was able to watch the video soon afterwards. So can you, right here (and my story continues below):

If you want to, you may subscribe to the RSS-feed with videos from Webbdagarna. And of course you can share, embed, and comment the videos.

Before I did a key note at Webbdagarna 2007, I spent a couple of hours (my initiative and sole responsibility) to mock up wiki around that event. Afterwards I shared my experiences from that experiment, but most of the back channel support crashed when the wiki provider recently upgraded their platform. This year a much nicer and richer service was set up by Incentive. It integrates wiki, forums, help, instructions, conference programme, blogs, and more - including of course the live video.

That is what a small group of clever people, together with Web 2.0 services and the social media crowd, creates. Fantastic!

Share This

Perhaps this rant is just because of my disappointment in neither landing a gig for this year’s Episerver Days nor getting a good response on my pitch to help them with the event’s social media activites. But I would rather like to see it as an opportunity to learn. Again from others mistake, at least in my view. Compare my video conciderations 18 months ago and reflections on how Media & Message 2008 was video documented.

An hour ago I got an e-mail from Episerver that announced the release of videos and other presentations material from Episerver Day 2009. Sorry folks, I can’t embed anything here. Because the player they use (from Qbrick) does not support embedding. Why is that still so in 2009?

During the event the producers published a live video stream by concentrating on the speakers bodies and forgot their slides. A problem that was pointed out in Twitter by the remote viewer @janjarfalk. In post production (which takes time and money) they either inserted the slides over the video or synced them in a separate window beside the video. The latter is perhaps good for people who still spend their days in front of a web page. Sorry, but none of my mobile phones/players supports that kind of solution.

It looks kind of fun when Beata Wickbom uses her body and language in her Trendspot presentation to explain and overcome the fact that many of her slides did not show up on the screen . “Fun”, because on the web page the slides are actually there! In other words, the video and the images tells different stories. Too bad, because Beata and the other speakers did a very good job on stage.

I am also curious about what those of you who did not see Micael Herkommer live think. Does his fantastic presentation style come through in the video version of his talk The Pragmatic Web?

In sum, my concerns are:

• No support for embedding and sharing
• No RSS feed for the videos
• A click on the first video does not pause, but takes you to a promo for Qbrick
• Confusing layout and different designs of the player for different videos
• The mindset was live TV talkshow, not web 2.0 video documentation

It is OK to make mistakes. I actually love when people and organizations dare to try new grounds. But Episerver and Qbrick? Two major players in the web field - and this is what they present.

WIP, Work In Progress, might be the explanation. If so, please consider my thoughts when fixing things up. As I previously said: the content at Episerver Days 2009 was good.

p.s. Even though Episerver did not announce/propose an official hashtag we created #epiday09, which for example can be monitored via Twingly micro blog search. d.s.

Share This

I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, but never spitted it out. So here it comes:

Micro blogging is nothing more than IM for grown ups.
(and for those who don’t get it - IM stands for Instant Messaging, like a chat)

Before I posted this I did a quick & dirty Google search on “twitter IM grownup” (and various spelling of the word for people who regard themself as more than kids). Certainly I am not the first to make this comparison. Actually, I hope to be flooded by commenters who claim to be more original than me (I know it’s I). But my point is not the similarities in terms of functions and behavior.

The BIG THING is that Twitter and the growing number of mikro blogging services (including add-ons to social networking platsforms such as facebook and ning) implies that grownups will understand the value of the tools kids use on a 24/7 basis. It just takes two things:

1. As adult digital immigrants we have quickly (well…) begun to appreciate and put value on micro blogging behavior. Sure enough, not everyone will agree. But it seems that most people quickly get the point(s).
2. Then it takes a moment of reflection. We have to think: “gee, this is what they do”. And suddenly it will become apparent that it is OK to have the mobile on in classrooms, spend hours in front of the chat windows, feel stressed when we can’t connect (online), and so on.

After that comes the realization that our kids might figure out that they no longer can say “you don’t understand what this is about - dude”. Well, I guess the youngsers don’t know what Twitter is. Just tell them:

Oh, it’s like IM - but for older folks

[Update 2009-03-11] Following Paul Bradshaw’s post today “Why the kids don’t use Twitter…” in Online Journalism Blog I like to add a supplementary remark. Bradshaw is mainly pointing to Danah Boyd’s notion that Twitter is public space and kids (for various reasons) preferr more closed services. I am not so sure that always is true, even though that kind of behaviour/attitude is evident. I am asking myself if the “don’t use” perhaps is because Twitter came in late. And it does not offer anything the kids don’t already have. But again, my point is not that kids don’t use Twitter. It is that grownups do, and thus will understand more.

Share This