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Remember this?
Well now there’s this.
So I did this to see if it helps in any way.
Thinking that either slopping this in your iPod and listening to it might take your mind off a boring 10-minute walk or listening to me huffing and puffing in light drizzle might make you think “I can do better than that loser”.
I just created an archive page for podcasts stretching back to the beginning of 2005. I’m a little shocked at how many I did - it was a bit obsessive at times wasn’t it? 
I can’t find a copy of the very first one from 31/12/04 or the pre-podwalk podwalk so if you’ve got one lying around, please let me know.
These boots were made for walking, but they were just sat on a wall in the back streets of Westminster the other day and just screamed “photograph me” when I walked past.
Quite why I chose this pic to illustrate this post which is nothing more than a wrapper for another outing for my voice & ukulele (1min, 330k) is beyond my comprehension. This number’s called “I want a little girl” and has nothing to do (unless you have a bizarre imagination) with walking, boots, leather or Westminster.
Perhaps I need to increase my dosage.
…is the alternative rendition of this little beauty (660kb 0:42) but here is a one chorus blast of the original.
Not directed at anyone in particular (no, I haven’t been making any girls cry) just the first thing that popped into my head when I picked up my ukulele for a late afternoon recording session and dedicated to anyone whose ever had tears in their eyes.
Cartoon sticker on my computer by Hugh Macleod
No I’m not using adwords on this site, but I wanted to share the selection that came up on a ning social network I’ve just set up for SMC London. All there is on the page for reference is my picture and an introductory post from me, and the title with strap “If you get it, share it (in London!)” which still doesn’t quite explain (at least to me) the link to gay bikini wearing chauffeurs with ringworm.
Btw, of course, if you’re interested in joining the network and thereby generating some more relevant advertising, please do get over there and sign up.
OK, so my bright idea was a little under-attended last week (yes, I was the only one to turn up) but nevertheless I did one of the things I set out to do which was to make some media.
Tonight we had a 500% increase in the number of attendees and half of the people who came along can be heard in the podcast we made! I met up with Ronna Porter (who’s going to lead our discussion group meeting next week) in the foyer of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. To show her just how easy making a podcast could be, I set up my gear and she set up the gear that she’d borrowed for the night and off we went. We talked a lot about the use of sound and music in advertising and PR and my views on podcasting. A little way in, we were joined by Lars Plougmann, whose contribution, you’ll hear, was repeatedly interrupted by his three friends ringing him to find out where we were. Sadly there aren’t as many massage parlours in this centre of cultural excellence as Chris, Howard and Debbie found in Las Vegas earlier but then they didn’t have a tango band in the background.
I was the only one who’d any experience of podcasting so I showed everyone how simply the file was transferred to my laptop, edited and put through the compressor in Audacity and then exported to mp3. I wasn’t able to upload it to my podcast server while they watched as the large amounts of concrete in the National kept us disconnected from the ThamesOnline network. Ronna kept her recorder running while we did this latter part so there may be another podcast to follow! There was quite a bit of discussion about discoverability, tagging and allowing users to create the metadata they need, rather than trying to control it as a creator.
So next week we return to the 3rd Thursday discussion group indoors with beers and nibbles format but on 22nd we’ll be out and about again, this time with our video cameras teaching each other about video-blogging - watch the wiki page for details.
cross posted at the social media club blog
Tonight, 8th March, we will be getting together for our 2nd Thursday weekly meetup at 6pm to talk and share practice around podcasting & audioblogging.
I’m suggesting meeting up in the foyer of the National Theatre on the South Bank - we should be able to find somewhere quiet enough to practice recording, but it’s not so quiet and intimate that we will disturb others. I will have my portable recording kit, feel free to bring your own.
Do let me know if you are intending to come, feel free to bring anyone along who might be interested or tell a friend (or indeed your worst enemy) to come along.
Also do let me know if you want me to shut up about bloody social media club.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, see the FAQ on the wiki: http://socialmediaclub.pbwiki.com/Podcasting
See you at six
This morning’s offering is still 12 minutes, but felt shorter. There must be a message in there somewhere.
A day of tying up loose ends before retreating for a few days of reflection and head-cleaning. Today I mention the portfolio blog which will hopefully get fatter today if I get around to it. The trouble with these wordpress.com blogs is they’re so easy to set up I keep starting new ones…
technorati tags:jvc, podcast, 4th July, wordpress, retreat, london, pimlico
OK, so I got a new mic at last. The old clip-on one finally fell to pieces around Christmas when it got pulled in and out of my one-man-media-empire back once too often. I got round to popping into Maplin’s yesterday and picked up this omni-directional stereo jobby which seems to work quite nicely thank you.
Paul the Clanger comes out a bit nasal when he wears it like this, but I’m fortunate that I can clip it onto my shirt and only annoy you a little with the occasional wire knocking the mic or mobile phone going off.
I’d like to reinstate this routine for myself, so if you like this stuff, subscribe to the feed with your favourite podcatcher.
Mentions today for policyunplugged, working2gether, gapingvoid, johnnie moore and stormhoek.
technorati tags:podcast, audioblog, 060630, lloyddavis, podcasting, richrecords, eventblogging, london, stereo
Yesterday, Debbie and I went along to EMI Music with Al Tickell of Creative & Cultural Skills to talk to their head honcho Tony Wadsworth.
We made the first of a series of podcast interviews with industry people to support the consultation process being facilitated by Policy Unplugged on the proposed Creative & Media 14-19 Diploma.
As well as letting us know what he thinks the music business needs from young people, Tony also gave us an insight into how he got into the business himself. Though he didn’t go into this much detail.
[There will be pics and video from this meeting too, but sadly my laptop didn't make it all the way home with me last night. Lost or stolen is not quite clear yet, but either way it's put a slight delay on processing the video while I procure a 4-pin/6-pin firewire cable. grrr....]
If video doesn’t play please download it here
When I was sitting on the podcasting and videoblogging panel at B4B I just saw 3 or 4 suits animatedly jiggling and nodding and generally getting excited on the front row.
Then one of them piped up during questions and explained that he was the managing director of Prontaprint (a print and copy franchising business) and he’d done his own podcast for staff. Smacked was my gob - how fantabulous was this? So I snuck over after the panel was done and we had a chat.
Why don’t you leave your suggestions here for how Laird and his team can make their own podcast more “street” or just informal or whatever.
tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & Laird Mackay & video & rich records
If video doesn’t play please download it here
I’d had some contact with Joanna before because I did a slot on blogging for IDM at Internetworld last year. I’m hoping that her experience here will feed through into other events that IDM get involved in. Of course I’d love to help in any way I can! If you want to see more of this kind of stuff Joanna, do come along on May 17th
Bizarre synchronicity point: As I was about to cross the road to go into my flat yesterday afternoon, Joanna came jogging by with her sister Michelle. She wasn’t sure if I recognised her, but I assured her that I’d been looking at video of her a lot. I worry that this slightly freaked Michelle out. Just to put your mind at rest, Michelle, I’m not stalking your sister, I just made this video when we met at a conference
Next time you’re passing, ladies, do drop in for a cup of tea. [OK, I admit it, now I'm getting a bit stalky]
tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & Joanna King & video & rich records
If video doesn’t play please download it here
We met Ellee Seymour during one of the breaks. She has enormous energy and enthusiasm for blogging (as you can see) and I’m sure we could have filled a whole camcorder tape just by talking to her. Perhaps we will one day! Check out her post on Rhubarb Lasagne and encourage her to follow through on the Beetroot Trifle.
She’s been getting some mentoring from the East Anglian super-blogger Geoff Jones, so is clearly in good hands.
tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & ellee seymour & video & rich records
If video doesn’t play please download it here
Met up with Hugh again at Blogging 4 Business on Tuesday. I caught him saying this sensible stuff in the first session, but I do think lots of people in the hall weren’t quite ready for it then. I’m sure though that they’d have got it by the end of the day.
If you’re not aware of Hugh’s work, then you must be new around here. I first got wind of him when I saw his “How to be creative” around the time that I started Perfect Path, and then we met last year when I helped out on the first Scoble dinner by providing the wiki sign-up space. Hugh-newbies should also immerse themselves in the Hughtrain Manifesto.
Debbie and I chatted to Hugh later on too (off camera, sorry folks) about cartooning and blogging and global microbrands and blogging, but we also showed him the snowman movie from “All this…” as he’s a Cumbrian resident and was one of the kind and understanding people we rang while on the M6 to desparately trying to find out where there might be some snow. Debbie came away with a signed business card (with three xxx’s no less!) she was dead chuffed.
Lots more video from the conference coming soon, including what I think I said on the panel during the podcasting and videoblogging session.
tags: blogging4business & conferences & london & blogging & hugh macleod & video & rich records
On Thursday, I went over to the fantastic Wilton’s Music Hall in the East End to listen to a lecture organised by The Young Foundation on ageing and age discrimination. John Browne, chief executive of BP spoke and took questions about the issue.
Afterwards I spoke to Geoff Mulgan (pictured right) about what he’d heard Lord Browne say. Click on the picture to see the video.
The Perfect Path interest in this area is in putting together a project called The New Generation, which is a videoblog telling stories from active older people - focusing on their aspirations for the future rather than using simply them as a historical resource telling us about the past. If you’re interested in making a contribution to this project, do get in touch - we are very happy to accept help and support, financially and otherwise.
Lord Browne started by paying tribute to Michael Young. Though they’d never met, and if they had they might not have agreed on the subject of meritocracy, he was sure that they would have agreed on the need to help individuals to reach their full potential, no matter where they are starting from.
They would also have agreed on chronologism, a term that Young coined, to describe the tendency to judge people according to their physical age. Browne pointed out that we have created a bureacracy of age around the ticking of the clock whereas interest and abilities in relation to physical age are actually very diverse and people increasingly refuse to conform. He spoke of the need to break from the traditional concept of retirement which has become the end of usefulness and the beginning of death.
Approaching this from the perspective of a businessman employing 100,000 staff worldwide in the energy industry, he can see four key points:
1. We can’t sustain the idea that everyone retires at the same age – which first came about when men started work at 13 and living to the age of 70 was exceptional. We live in a different world and for much longer. The countries in which we work need people to work longer to ensure that the balance between those working and those not doesn’t shift to the point where paying for it is intolerable. By 2010 23 percent of the UK population will be over 60 as a result of declining birthrates and life expectancy extending beyond 80. At the same time, we are encouraging more and more young people into further and higher education, so the ratio of workers to non-workers is falling year by year. Pension systems may differ across the world, but all depend on continued creation of wealth.
2. The world economy is changing too. 70 per cent of the economy is now based on services rather than manufacturing. It’s a knowledge economy and this is true across industries. So we can’t neglect experience. We can’t say “You’re now too old to be useful.”
“How can we afford” Browne said, “to learn things again and again just because we’ve decided that people have to stop work at a certain age”. He also pointed out that in the US people are retiring later and later – and productivity has increased.
3. The basic demographics of the energy industry. More than half of his employees are over 45. BP still needs engineers. Fewer people are studying mathematics at a higher level, so they are less likely to become engineers, but those that do are in enormous demand. The number of registered engineers falling. So there is every incentive for a company like BP to encourage people to stay on as long as possible.
4. A civilised society needs to overcome prejudice. We’ve come a long way on gender, race and aspects of lifestyle. Most places select people on the basis of merit, but it seems OK to say “We don’t want you if you’ve over 60.” Youth is synonymous with vitality and success and the future. Old is only seed as good when applied to art, furniture or alcohol. The cult of youth is very strong.
Waste is shocking and prejudice is intolerable, people should be given the choice – because some want to stop, but many don’t.
Lord Browne praised signs of progress. There are changes coming in legislation to allow people to drawing down funds from pensions and to improve accrual rates for state pensions. Age discrimination legislation is coming in the UK later this year. The upper age limit for unfair dismissal will be removed and there will be a duty to consider an employee’s request to keep working. This is all good, but the issue is only partly one of process – it’s also culture.
There are good signs, the appointment of Richard Lambert at the CBI recognises the qualities of being older. We at BP can’t change attitudes on our own, but we can show what can be done. We can respond to changing times, giving people choice. We can provide flexibility – the chance to stay on full- or part-time, and live on a combination of paid income and pension. We can give people the option to phase themselves out of the work they do or to change their role – becoming advisors rather than managers. BP is employing older people now as coaches, as sources of wisdom and experience who don’t have to work full-time to make a great contribution.
The key, Browne says, is the principle of mutual advantage and working to find a way of matching both sets of aspirations matching. There are complex issues of motivation as well as economics. It’s not just about 70-year-olds – it’s about how needs get met with flexibility throughout your working life to give you genuine choices.
There were then questions from the floor which is where my note-taking fell apart. I include the following to give a flavour of the discussion, but apologise if I misrepresent anyone’s question or point of view. [As ever, many of the "questions" were actually opportunities to make statements of support or dissent.]
Geoff Mulgan kicked off with asking about the difference between different types of jobs, manual labour as opposed to brain work.
JB: It’s important to recognise that those who have done physically demanding work throughout their life have a great understanding about how the organisation should be run – it’s about transferring what is really important – advising on automatic control systms depends on knowing how things really get done
Q: age-related redundancy isn’t civilised, we have to change this now.
JB: things don’t change rapidly or overnight – but we are making progress.
Q: Your own org is exemplary – but I picked up on something you said, that in 2 years you would be retiring. Is there a rigid rule in force in BP?
JB: We never finish business on anything, everything is a work in progrees and there will always be things that are going wrong. As for me it’s different – it’s about choice and tenure and succession and motivation – anyway I prefer to see it as life after first retirement.
Q: What does BP do for older people who are stuck in their own home?
JB: There is a limit to what non-governmental orgs can do – there is a big role for government to intervene when other societal forces fail. So what we do is set examples and accept that by doing so we’re contributing to things getting better. He can remember a time when it was difficult to talk about employing women. We got better at that. Race and colour embarrassed people too. Lifestyle and sexual preference is becoming less of a taboo and now we’re dealing with age.
Q: How do we spread things across business?
JB: There are changes coming in today - A-day. A huge distance to travel for people elsewhere. How can we spread things around? not by lecturing people, you will be tested by the single failure and people don’t take kindly to being told what to do. The best solution is to raise awareness through networks and local organisations.
Q: Anti-business crowd – how are they reacting to your egalitarian business model.
JB: Business needs to keep thinking about itself – to think about how it can serve human needs. Success comes this way. This purpose is not always talked about – we’re usually focused on profit and return, but business organisations can’t exist unless these needs are thought about. I don’t see this as being purely philanthropic, that’s the role of foundations – for business it’s about looking at what you’re really doing here to satisfy human needs.
Q: Volunteering – is there any evidence of an increased desire to volunteer with age
JB: I don’t know, but it should be age independent it’s not voluntary if its the only thing left to do.
Q: How do you deal with the political points in organisations?
JB: Change takes time and creates anxiety – that fear can dissipate over time if we talk about it. People say to me if I’ve only got 3 employees what can i do. I sa, “Think about the value of having someone who can guide you through”. All business try to learn – and the best way is through people – not through information technology what still works best is passing knowledge on through the oral tradition.
Q: How do we challenge the prejudice the other way – prejudices older people have against younger people.
JB: I don’t have a clear view but i am thinking about it. It varies around the world but the bottom line is saying how can we get rid of prejudice
Q: On the use of networks and awareness raising, we’re getting a new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights – what do you think the balance of encouragement, influence and enforcement should be?
JB: Well you’re right that it’s not just one of those things, it’s a combination. As an analogy, there are groups that still have to keep making the point that women should be treated on the same basis of merit as men – they keep asking the difficult questions and providing possible answers. This is a counterpart to the rules, the boundaries, it’s the ways to make the internals work. We can’t assume things will happen automatically.
Q: I’d like to keep talking about death, gender, family in relation to age.
JB: I agree and I’d like to talk more. My experience is that it’s rare inside corporations to talk about these things, especially death except when people have direct personal experience.
Q: At age X you have to stop working – to what degree do you see bp pushing that logic, and what things are you personally interested in?
JB: Lots of different things and variety is key. Not enough people ask how is the company meeting your needs – how do you maintain a relationship of mutual advantage. If it goes slightly wrong then performance goes wrong because people are anxious because they don’t know where they stand how they’re thought of etc. so the answer is to talk to people about how things are going and you ask people what it means to them and how they’d like to go forward. It’s so important to keep managers in “a good place”. A lot happens when there is big change in the world – managers can underestimate the intelligence of people under them when change is happening.
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The Policy Unplugged gang were invited to Parliament this week to meet politicians and policy makers at a Technology Demonstration Morning at Portcullis House and to talk about their radical brand of events - what Steve Moore is now calling “social conferences” (much more descriptive I think than ‘unconference’, though the concept is similar).
I’m doing more and more work with them, mostly of the social media reportage variety and this was no exception - I spent the morning running around the room either carrying my laptop, camcorder or minidisc player around and (gently of course) butting into people’s conversations in order to get them to talk about what they were getting out of the day. David Wilcox was there too, keeping it in the family by making the most of his son Daniel’s whizz multimedia skills: they’ve put together a Drupal community site for Policy Unplugged where you’ll find more stuff about the day from me, David and Dan.
This includes the quartet of politicians you see above (click on their sweet faces to see them in action). They are, clockwise from top left: Phil Willis MP for Harrogate & Knaresborough, Paul Clark MP for Gillingham & Rainham, Chris Mole MP for Ipswich, and John Warder, Deputy Leader of Chiltern District Council. 10 points for correctly identifying each of their political affiliations [hint - two of them come from the same party]. Bonus marks for spotting which of them might be considered most powerful and why.
OK - so the first of my new projects to see the light of day (your luminescence may vary) is called “All this…and brains too!” and you can find it down at: http://www.perfectpath.co.uk/atab2 for the time being.
Euan said, in response to the shampoo/shower extravaganza, “Lloyd Davis is either a genius or a nutter. I’m not sure myself which…” well my life is all about finding that out but I doubt I’ll reach any final conclusion (except the obvious final conclusion that comes to us all)
All this… is just a little bit more evidence to help you to make your own minds up. Genius or nutter??? You decide.
I’m joined in this new enterprise by Debbie Davies, multi-talented TV producer/actress/writer/interviewer/erstwhile international arms-dealer and all-round laugh-and-a-half.
Debbie’s working with me on the commercial video-based projects I’ve got cooking, but we decided that we needed to do something a bit lighter too (is this light enough for ya?!).
For regular subscribers to Perfect Path here’s the first episode for your podcatching delight. In future, please point your equipment in the direction of http://feeds.feedburner.com/Allthisandbrainstoo
Oh yeah - and there’s a Paypal tip jar button - please use it, however humbly you may appreciate our little offerings. No contribution too small (although having said that, as small as 37p might only just cover the Paypal fees!)
Tags: videoblog & vlog & london & snow & snowman & road movie & Debbie Davies & Lloyd Davis & Allthisandbrainstoo
Last Tuesday I had the honour and pleasure of helping out at a dinner to get people together to talk about Working Together 2, an initiative to help the public sector to work more intelligently with digital entrepreneurs and innovators when using technology to support service reform, rather than always plumping for the “safe” option of one of the big boys. The idea of the evening was to start off a process of co-creation through conversation and collaboration.
In the Soho House bar beforehand, I chatted with people to see what they’d come expecting to put in and take away from the evening.
I think what drew everyone together was a shared frustration with how things are, that it’s just too difficult at the moment for those letting contracts and those bidding for them and a feeling that public service reform is being held back because too many change projects are seen by civil servants as IT projects and therefore risky and therefore not to be touched with a bargepole if you can help it.
The people behind the event are Creative London who are being helped out by Prospect, NMK and PolicyUnplugged - a Working Together site is going up right now and we’ll be making the most of collaboration software to keep this conversation going through the summer.
Photos from the evening are on flickr tagged working2gether
tags: working2gether & public policy & london & Web2.0 & events
to post this open mic session from the last girl geek dinner and the next one is tonight and it’s a good job I’m not going otherwise they’d all beat me up for being a useless boymanchildthing and try to forcibly fit me with a parallel-processing upgrade.
Of course they probably still will all beat me up, just individually, which is worse.
Sorry Grrrls …. whimper…
Ahhhhhhhh I’ve emerged from hibernation!
And the first thing I did (after showering off the dead skin and brushing my teeth 65 times) was toddle off to the Texas Embassy for the third London Girl Geek Dinner organised by top hot totty Sarah Blow.
As usual, I slurped my supper down in record time and then went round recording people with their mouths full, before the open mic session which worked really well - Thanks to Rachel, Bill, Katy, Jen and Sarah for sharing your various views of geekdom with us. A recording of that session will be up next.
Lovely, as ever, to see Sarah, Adriana, and Rachel C, nice to meet Joy, Juliet, Jamie, Jen, Miranda, Sofia K and Rachel J, sorry I didn’t get to talk in depth to anyone else - and I’m not going to mention the boys by name as they really shouldn’t have been there - don’t they know there’s only room for one girl-geek-guy?
tags: girlgeekdinner & girlgeek & london
All good things come to an end. And all cheesy grooming product video blogs must wind up too. So here we are with a pot of hair wax. There really isn’t much I could have done with this without getting totally out of hand and applying it to other hairy parts of my body I suppose, but luckily for you, I’ve only just thought of that and it didn’t occur to me at the time. The best I could manage were a couple of little horns.
So now it’s competition time. I’m sure that those of you with hair can do better, so send me your photos or links to photos of yourself under the influence of a hair sculpting product. Doesn’t have to be wax, it could be mousse or gel just as easily. The only entry requirement is that you have more hair to play with than me - Sorry Neal, I don’t think you’re going to make it in unless you have something from the archive 
The prize…a barely unopened, hardly used pot of Hair Wax, product number 7 in the G-Room range.
And so farewell G-Room review videoblog, it’s been fun getting to know the products - really should have given me some eye-treatment stuff and a free razor and made your face wash smell less like fairy liquid, but I am still using the shaving cream every day and on the odd occasions that I allow women into my bathroom, they’re very impressed by my array of grooming products.
Your suggestions please dear readers for another product range on which I should be let loose.
technorati tags: g-room, videoblog, moisturizer, my hair, grooming
At last the stubble comes off cleanly when I test the G-Room shaving cream using my cheap disposable razor. Now my face is lovely and soft.
Listen out for the classic catch phrases: “It’s very fresh, that’s nice, I like that” , “Ow, don’t poke you’re eye out on the tap, Lloyd” and “Oooh, my face is lovely and soft” But you’ll have to wait till the very end to hear me slap my belly.
File under “shaving fetishes” or “Ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back”
tags: g-room & shaving cream & videoblog & london & blogvertising
OK, we’ve had “Man empties shopping bag”, “Man washes body”, “Man washes hair” now get ready for “Man washes face” with Fairy Liquid. So now you know why I don’t need to wear rubber gloves on my face….or something.
tags: g-room & face+wash & videoblog & london & blogvertising
OK so since both women I’ve lunched with so far this week have begged me to put up another one - here’s part three - Shampoo!
I thought long and hard while in the Perfect Path Editing Suite about whether to cut or censor the scenes of mild and accidental nudity that occur in this one. On balance I decided that it was funnier to keep them in, particularly in juxtaposition with the coyness of the Shower Gel episode and given the way that I really honestly had no idea what had happened until I watched it back just before uploading.
Eat your heart out Warren Beatty.
tags: g-room & shower gel & videoblog & london & blogvertising & my arse
This is the last of three podcasts I’ve produced associated with The Policy Unplugged event at Channel 4 last week, The E Word. Fifty or so thinkers in education - without many of the usual Whitehall suspects gathered to talk about the state of education policy in the UK, to see where there was common ground and explore their differences. I was there as a host with special responsibility to help record the day and capture the essence of the conversations.
With a hard afternoon’s talking behind them, the guests repaired to the bar for….more talking (and some drinking) Again, I mingled among them to find out what they had thought of the day. And they told me. This was right at the beginning mind, goodness knows what they were saying when they’d had a few more sugar-free Red Bulls.
After The E Word (25:30 mins - 11.6MB)
Photos for the event are in this photoset
tags: education & education policy & Policy Unplugged & Channel 4
This is the first of three podcasts I’ve produced associated with The Policy Unplugged event at Channel 4 last week, The E Word. Fifty or so thinkers in education - without many of the usual Whitehall suspects gathered to talk about the state of education policy in the UK, to see where there was common ground and explore their differences. I was there as a host with special responsibility to help record the day and capture the essence of the conversations.
First off, I spent some time mingling with the guests, finding out what they were expecting from the event.
Before The E Word (11:49 mins - 5.4MB)
Photos for the event are in this photoset
tags: education & education policy & Policy Unplugged & Channel 4
[UPDATE: after all the audio problems earlier it should be fine now]
Librivox is an experiment initiated by Hugh McGuire from Montreal to see whether a bunch of interested volunteers can create collaboratively some totally free audiobooks in the public domain. We are taking texts from Project Gutenberg (one of the first resources I ever fell in love with on the internet in about 1992), reading them in chunks and distributing the files as podcasts.
The first project has been The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad and this is my contribution Chapter 7 (10.9MB, 30:52 mins) in which the Assistant Commissioner visits Sir Ethelred (a great personage of Parliament) to discuss progress on the investigation into a recent bombing in London, after which he takes a cab to Soho, planning to confront Verloc whom he strongly (and correctly) suspects of involvement in the anarchist outrage.
Plus ça change…
Note: unlike other material on this blog, which is released under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence, I am releasing this file into the public domain - you may do with it entirely as you wish.
tags: Joseph Conrad & The Secret Agent & London & audio book & librivox
OK, so those of you who’ve been waiting for more video can be temporarily sated with this 1 minute (9.5MB) clip which I shot while walking down the Kings Road yesterday afternoon.
What is bizarre is the angle at which the car had gone through the window of Cafe Nero. It was difficult to imagine that it had been going so fast up the side street, but that’s the only direction it can have been coming from unless it was spinning out of control in which case you’d expect more collateral damage to other traffic.
My favourite bit is all the mobile-phone wielding bypassers doing their thing for citizen journalism!
Just in case you thought Chelsea was boring these days.
So on Friday lunchtime I took a stroll around the room and spoke to various participants about their mid-point views of the day (~35 mins, 16MB). I tarried rather too long around the reality-distortion field that is Ben Hammersley’s aura (not sure whether it’s a projection of his personality or one of the utility items on his utili-kilt).
Sadly I missed the opportunity to let Johnnie Moore explain his spider in a jam jar simile or to quiz Geoff on the lack of women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds as these seem to have been the main points of focus in the post-conference blogosphere analysis.
In rough order of appearance you will hear:
Geoff Jones, Suzanne Collins, Marcus ? from the FT, David Morgan, Ash Rattan, Dave Barker, Peter Wainman, Taron Maberry, Paul Goodison, Steve Price, Alistair Shrimpton, Euan Semple, Jem Stone, Ben Hammersley, Suw Charman, Meelis Kuusberg, Simon Phipps, Tony Hammond, Julian Bond, Chris Bose and Andrew Martin
(who didn’t seem to mind at all when I called him Chris at the end!)
Thanks Everyone!
tags: oursocialworld & our social world & blogging & conferences
OK, so it’s back to first post and suck time. Almost one year into this blog and you get your first opportunity to see me in moving pictures. Having been interviewed by the beeb already this week, I guess I’ve just got the bug, I’ve got to be in front of a camera daahlink.
In this opening episode, Lloyd gets to find out that he looks like sh*t, that his eyebrows look like hairy caterpillars and he has Austin Powers teeth. He also finds the one face that he should never, ever, pull in public, unless he wants to be shot.
Maybe this will be a one off, maybe it will continue - you’ll have to keep tuning in to see.
Also, I don’t know if all of this will work at all in a blogpost, so be patient with me, luvs. [update: ok, it works for me in IE, but Firefox insists on treating it as a text file. Tell me gently what I'm doing wrong, please. Ta.]
The first London Girl Geek Dinner happened and was partially recorded last Tuesday (16th), but in the slow backwaters of mid-August, it takes a week for these things to percolate through on Perfect Path.
The last couple of bashes at the Texas Embassy (special guests Robert Scoble in June and Seth Godin in July) have been throbbing testosterone fuelled affairs, with a smattering of women, but overwhelmingly male.
So Sarah Blow made use of Hugh’s excellent wiki to organise one just for the grrrls. Fortunately for me, guys were allowed as long as they went on the arm of a girl who was already going - and of the several thousand that asked me, Helen Keegan was the first.
Naturally, there was just as much noisy conversation from 50 women as there had been from a mixed crowd of 200 - it was different, but in a weird way that didn’t make sense to my male psyche but the big diff was that I talked so much I didn’t take any pictures and I haven’t seen any either. Certainly something in the room distracted me so much that I didn’t notice until too late that I only had about 25 minutes of space on my minidisc and my brain turned to goo trying to work out why it had stopped working in mid podcast. Sorry Table 69.
I met some new people and some of the usual suspects but overall it was great - I would strongly encourage gorgeous techie women to go to the next one, but guys, don’t bother, you wouldn’t like it. No really, believe me, it was hell, just forget I mentioned it, you really really really wouldn’t like it.
So after Seth Godin had sat down, crumpled in a heap after his marathon hour and a half talking and answering questions, I popped around the room to find out what people in the audience thought.
Quite a few people left straight away (well it was after 9pm - gasp!) but I’m sure you’ll agree a significant part of the cream of the crop remained. Here you can hear from (roughly in order of appearance):
Geoff Jones, Rachel Clarke (saying hello again and nothing else), Paul Birch, Michael Smith, Robert Loch, Helen Keegan and Sarah Williamson, Alistair Shrimpton (sorry still on 3.17 here) and Simon Christy, Max Niederhofer, Loic Le Meur, Andrew Carton, Alison Whelan, Andy Bell, Matt Drought, Feena Coleman, Deirdre Molloy, Charles (?), Mark Rogers.
tags: seth godin & london & marketing & audience
The first Perfect Path podwalk on the streets of London since the explosions on the transport system yesterday, 7th July. My small contribution to “business as usual”.
I take a bus from Waterloo up to Holborn (apologies for the cut, I didn’t feel comfortable talking on the bus, nor did I feel comfortable about feeding you 6 minutes of bus sounds) and then walk up through Russell Square and peaceful parts of Bloomsbury. Pictures are on flickr in a photoset tagged london and podwalk015.
tags: london & podwalk & podwalk015 & london+business+as+usual
Here’s an audioblog from Sunday afternoon.
I walked along the south-west side of the Serpentine, starting off just past the Lido. You’ll hear Canada geese and possibly moorhens as well as the usual varieties of tourist to be found in Hyde Park on Sunday. It’s a kind of pause for breath after the spurt of activity over the last couple of weeks.
Later, I took some photographs of the Live8 site which was still largely enclosed, but with some gaps in the fencing. They’re on my flickr photostream with the tag postlive8.
So here it is podwalk fans, number 14 in a series of not enough. Yesterday I elbowed my way through the tourists along Neal Street, down James Street and into the Covent Garden Piazza. After a clockwise tour of the piazza, I arrived at the East Side for a street entertainment spectacular from Bruce.
If anyone knows Bruce, or knows any way of contacting him, let me know in the comments so that we can set up a virtual hat for listeners to this podcast to donate their two quid by paypal. Apologies for some of the raucous laughter and shouting, I quite forgot I was on mic at times! Pictures as ever on flickr.com with the tag podwalk014
tags: covent garden & podwalk & street entertainment & Bruce
Aaah the relief. I thought I’d never get back on this particular horse, and I was missing it so.
Les Posen broke this news to the podcasters group that the Queen has bought an iPod and started speculation about which podcast Her Majesty would be listening to first.
I thought it would be most appropriate for me to take you on a stroll down from the Perfect Path Penthouse to Buckingham Palace, through Mayfair and Green Park. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I get a call from the Palace.
Last week, I published my first interview with a UK public servant, which is to be part of the offering of Public Service Conversations. I spoke to Liz Railton, who is Deputy Chief Executive of Essex County Council
I’m very pleased with how it turned out as a first go, but I’m making the audio (31 mins 10.7MB) availabe here as well to spread the word and to get some more feedback (the level of subscription to the Public Service Conversations feed is relatively small) particularly from those who know podcasting well, but are less intimate with British public services.
I have another interview in the can, awaiting approval. Before I do anymore it would be good to know what people think of this one.
What do you think of this as an idea? How do you find it as a podcast? Do you think it’s worth continuing with? What questions would you have liked me to ask Liz in addition to what we talked about?
Hugh MacLeod organised a fantastic geek dinner tonight (err.. last night) and yours truly spent one hour of it wandering around and interrupting the fun (54:02min - 18.5MB)
It really was as much fun as it sounds. Everyone was just amazed at the numbers of people and just how well organised it all was. I don’t normally stay up until 2.30 am to post something, but this was a special occasion. I didn’t really feel I could go to bed when there were such geeky moments to share with the world. I felt I’d be letting my fellow geeks down if I postponed it for another six hours or so. But now I must go to bed or else I’ll start rambling.
The wiki page where we all signed up will now be turned into a record of the event with links to people blogging about it, to photographs and any other podcasts.
Nightie night.
Bonus audio: Kosso has a podcast of Scoble’s speech
It’s Friday, thank God, and I get to talk about playground stuff, social etiquette and global acceptance. Bonus question: who are you? - yes you, at the back, the quiet ones.
Short but sweet.
A return for the audioblog after a short hiatus. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a cable in my bag yesterday to get this uploaded. Another one coming later.
Slow to wake up this morning 19th May 2005 but able to squeeze out news that the BeepMarketing podcast is just around the corner and my first submission to sushiradio is up. Bonus rant: the state of Epsom station and the suburban railway system generally.
I asked for it, and I got it. The other day I asked how you saw me and this morning in my mailbox, Neal, the Podchef, had deposited some photoshop delights. I reproduce the one that made me (and my daughter) laugh out loud for your delectation.
This morning I talk a bit about last night’s pianosingsongcast and what else I got up to yesterday - together with what I have planned for today. You also get to hear how much it costs me for one month’s unlimited use of London’s splendid public transport system. Tune in next time to hear me reading from my weekly grocery till receipt!
What I didn’t talk about, was my listening fun yesterday: the cool soundseeing tour that Neal put out of him scrambling around in storage space and BicycleMark’s AudioCommunique #34 on philosophy and the connectedness of being.
Apologies to those who sat by their ipodders all day yesterday, waiting for an audioblog - I decided in the end to have a work at home day (including sitting in the garden, mmmmm….) and so the opportunity didn’t really arise.
I got to thinking about making your own entertainment so a made you this. I still can’t find Carnegie Hall on the map and as I say here: “Practice, it’s all about practice - if I played these tunes more often than once every 20 years, they might sound better”.
[Parental warning: features some explicit improvisation with some scenes of mild cat strangling]
tags: homespun & fun & old joanna
I had a spring in my step this morning. Mostly on the subject of “Podcasting is (NOT) a bad idea” and why I’m afraid I’ll continue to take it personally but also following up on yesterday’s walk in the park.
Then walking to the office I notice that at Selfridges, the Las Vegas Supernova window theme is being removed to be replaced with something yellow and “Beautiful?” Very apt, I think - what is beauty in this new world of democratic media?
I went back to Speakers Corner yesterday (unfortunately sans data card in my camera so no pics) but strolled there from Hyde Park Corner (at the other end of Park Lane) and while I strolled, I talked into my recording machine, very very slowly. A kind of summary of some of the audioblogs from the last week, but also some response to Jonathan’s provocative post from last week. More later on today’s audioblog.
Warning: Speakers Corner is a place for people to speak their mind without constraint except as exercised by their peers. You will hear ideas from some of the speakers that I personally find repellent and offensive - I present them all here because I believe it’s important that we look at what people actually say when given that freedom rather than what we imagine they might say.
Friday 13th doesn’t scare me.
But who am I. No really, I want to know, who do you think I am? From even your briefest accquantance with my writing or speaking voice, with whom do you associate me? I’m definitely definitely definitely not James Mason, neither am I Hunter S Thompson nor Douglas Adams. No definitely not any of those (gulp) dead guys, so who do you think I am? Answers in the comments please.
tags: authentic voice & writing & identity
photography by alison at bestshot
Mesdames et messieurs, je vous donne “La Promenade de Pod Parisienne” dans laquelle je fais le promenade en Paris, marchant et parlant comme un Anglais fol. Les photos se trouvent a flickr.com avec les tags “paris” et “podwalk”.
J’espere que vous l’appreciez.
Stretched out to 20 minutes this morning praise for Gastrocast #7, encouragement for the Fernwood Five podcast and more on Public Service Conversations.
Today’s picture reminds us who owns Oxford Street. Don’t you go whistling “This Land is Your Land” around here, boy!
tags: audioblog & podchef & public service conversations
I get way too philosophical for my own good. This morning’s big ideas are that Adam Curry and Dave Winer are the yin and yang of podcasting and that Life is a Recursive Function. Picture by neilio
Bonus link: The best known way of looking at life as a recursive function
If it’s Tuesday, that must be a wheelie bin This morning I unload my thoughts on you about my experience of accounting in a one-man corporation and start building excitement about the second “cool friends” podcast to be recorded this afternoon.
Bonus pic: my new desk in the Perfect Path Penthouse
Coffee? - check
Shades? - check
Laptop? - check
Minidisc? - check
Digicam? - check
Piles of Paper? - geddoutahere!!
Ahhh Monday Monday Now that I’m a bit further into the day I’ve had to spend more time on accounts and less on salezzzzzzzzzzz.
On the way back to the office after lunch I saw these people quietly protesting against the fur trade right in front of the Selfridges front door.
Yesterday morning. In which you get to hear me shuffle along at a faster pace than usual even though it’s 05:50, more on the podshow thingy and ending with an exciting, will he, won’t he (catch the train) You’ll just have to listen to find out.
This is getting to be a habit. Today’s audioblog features the dev