Good Vibrations – the movie

Just home from Belfast's Queens Film Theatre where a 7 minute pilot/preview of Good Vibrations was being screened to about 100 – 150 people.  "Don't get emotional, now." Said Jackie Hamilton (former Moondog now TV producer as he sat down in the row behind me.  Beside me was John T Davis the maker of the definitive film of the 1970s punk music era in Belfast Shellshock Rock. In a row further down Brian Young from Rudi and Stuart Bailie, now of the Oh Yeah centre. 

It was a fantastic 7 minutes.  And it did bring a small tear to my eye.  So when the full movie is made (no one is saying quite when, there is finance to be raised and shooting to do during the summer), I expect I will blub all the way through. 

Told You I Was Famous Once (part II)

http://vimeo.com/9253890

Belfast Media Square Mile (and a bit)

This is not much more than a Sunday afternoon doodle locating the creative and digital industries (and related offices) around approximately a square mile in Belfast. The idea came from the Silicon Roundabout map in Wired (UK) 2.10 (Feb 2009) More about that here.  It’s not exhaustive. It’s open to add as you see fit. View Media Square Mile (and a bit) in a larger map

So that’s it for blogging, then

The kids don't blog.

“Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults. As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for microblogging with status updates.”

 

So says a Pew Internet report on Young Adults and Social Media  http://ow.ly/13SAz 

Follow that link to read it yourself.  But is your attention span is already waining and you are about to go looking for different eye candy, here are a few facts you can drop into conversation

• 14% of online teens now say they blog, down from 28% of teen internet users in 2006.
• This decline is also reflected in the lower incidence of teen commenting on blogs within social networking websites; 52% of teen social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the 76% who did so in 2006.
• By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one in ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog.

So if one report says they don't blog, and another says they don't Tweet.  What the hell are those kids up to now, then?

(Very) Basic Twitter Tips for Business

This is a version of my Belfast Telegraph column from 2 Feb 2010

It is more than a year since the Great Twitter Adoption.  Within a few months Twitter stories were all over the media. @StephenFry earned acres of coverage when he sent a photograph and Tweets from inside a lift stuck between two floors.  This was the new frontier and Mr. Fry was elevated to be the great public Twitter leader of the non-digerati – rightly so.  Stories of an easy way to communicate with strangers (in or out of a lift) emerged just as the economy was crumbling. Businesses saw this mass migration to one platform as a new way to market.  

Some blundered in and started firing off marketing messages to an audience they hadn’t got to know and without understanding that the great thing about Twitter (and other social media) you can chose not to listen to someone. 

Some got it right. From their experience I offer the following as “learnings”.  Businesses can use Twitter successfully; they just have to appreciate the local customs.

1 – Human or Business?  People like people and they tend to be less interested in corporations and businesses.  A business is there to sell – social media is about being social.  Be a person, use your own name not your businesses.  There are some exceptions – information providers like newspapers and magazines are generally OK to use their business name, only.  But a person is even better.

2 –Write with a personal voice, write the way you speak.

3 – Beware, 140 characters does not lend itself to subtlety or irony.

4 – Follow and be followed. Twitter is a place to get to know people.  Find followers.  What are you interested in? Find people posting on the same topics. Follow them and some will follow you.

5 –Sell? Sell? Sell? – No! No! No! But do provide information.

6 – Reply. If someone sends a message – reply, unless you want to ignore them.

7 – Share.   Don’t just promote your business.  Tell people about what you are doing, reading, exploring and find interesting.

8  – Unless you are amazingly talented – humour rarely works.

9 – Re-Tweet.  Someone you follow said something interesting?  Then Re-Tweet.  Support your friends and they’ll support you.

10 – Remember #followfriday.  Recommend people you find interesting to others.

Ten rules for success in the creative industries

About a year ago I was at a discussion in Ofcom in Belfast where we were talking about Creative Industries and Digital Media.  One session was led by Professor Paul Moore from University of Ulster Magee.   He passed round a few pages from the book The Creative Economy by John Howkins.

In the chapter Managing Creativity the author sets out Ten Rules for Success.  Recently I found the pages at the bottom of a pile of papers as I was clearing up my desk and though that with due reference to the book I’d post a shortened version of the rules:

1 – Invent Yourself Create a unique cluster of personal talents. Own you image. Manage it. Build momentum. Dance as if no o ne is looking. Be clear about your assets and talents.

2 – Put the priority on ideas, not on data Create and grow your own creative imagination. Build a personal balance sheet of intellectual capital. Unerstand patents, copyright, trademarks and other intellectual property … Entrepreneurs in the creative economy are more worried if they lise their ability to think than if their company loses money.

3 – Be nomadic Nomads are at home in every country. You can choose your own path and means of travel, and choose how long you stay … most nomads travel in groups , especially at night.  Charles Handy says leaders must “combine a love of people” and a “capacity for aloofness” … creatives need both solitude and the crows, thinking alone and working together.

4  - Define yourself by your own (thinking) activities, not by the (job) title somebody else has given you.  If you are working for company X on project Y, say you are working on project Y for company X.  People who are brave call themselves ‘thinkers’. Computer companies concoct and sell ‘business solutions’ to their clients solutions; in the creative economy, we can think and exchange creative solutions with each other.

5 – Learn endlessly.  Borrow. Innovative … Creative artists scavenge for new ideas … Use networks, if you can’t find the right one, start it.  Take risks and do unnecessary things.

6 – Exploit fame and celebrity.  The production costs are small and relatively fixed.  fame is what economists call a ‘sumk cost’, which cannot be recovered but which can be freely exploited at no further expense, and both fame and celebrity bring virtually unlimited rewards in terms of the ability to charge more for one’s services and to revitalize a life or career that is momentarily stuck.  Being well known …. is as important in the creative economy of the twenty-first century as good typing speeds were in the clerical economy of the twentieth.  The essence of being a star, as shrewdly revealed by David Bowie is ‘the ability to make yourself as fascinating to others as you are to yourself’ This is … about being famous … for being creative …

7 – Treat the virtual as real and vice-versa.  Cyberspace id merely another dimension to everyday life … Bandwidth is useless without a message, without communication.  At all times use RIDER; review, incubation, dreams, excitement and reality checks.

8 – Be kind.  Kindness is a mark of success.  Data never say ‘please’ Humans can and should say ‘please’, and mean it.

9 – Admire success openly. Equalluy don’t be fixated on success; be curious about failure … You will never win if you cannot lose.

10 – Be very ambitious. Boldly go.

11 – Have Fun.

Twitter trends predict 2010’s zeitgeist

From Belfast Telegraph column 19 January 2010

The best way – and probably the only efficient way – to keep track of Twitter comments and conversations is the hashtag “#”.  Like all good social media, the idea of including a hashtag subject within a comment was developed not by the people who founded Twitter, but by the people who run it – the Users.

The web site What The Trend which tracks Twitter conversations have reported the top trending topics for last year < whatthetrend.com/zeitgeist >. The Zeitgeist is usually defined as “The Spirit of the Times” and What The Trend claims that helps you find out what's trending on Twitter and why.  For each trend, they give a quick explanation of why it's trending. These explanations are edited by the users of the web site.

The Iranian Election is rated as Number 1Trending Topic for 2009 with the hashtag #iranelection as Users around the world changed their Location Status  to Tehran (to help confuse the Iranian secret police) and news from the protests was posted on Twitter giving the protesters a voice they had previously been denied.  More prosaically #musicmonday (and later #mm) is 2 and comments about Michael Jackson’s death is at 3.

In the top 20 we wade through topics relating to film, technology and entertainment. There is, as you would expect, a US bias but the UK does make several impressions on the Zeitgeist.  The top media name was #bbc ,  and the most mentioned living person was Susan Boyle – without the hashtag. The top fictional character was Harry Potter. The top sports are US based until you reach #Wimbledon at 66 and the top and only football team (that’s soccer, not US football) is #Liverpool at 69.  #UKsnow (short lived but big impact) was at 88.

So what are the likely Twitter Trending Topics for 2010? What will inspire the Twitteratti? What event will engage the Slactivists? “Predictions are always difficult, especially about the future” said the wise one time baseball player and manager, Yogi Bera. 

There are some topics and trends that we can expect.  Look out for the return to the Twitter Zeitgeist the hashtag #UKsnow which is already making a comeback. Keep an eye out for #UKVote or something similar in the next few months. And highest regards for the person who manages to come up with a shorter hashtag than #WorldCup2010. A good hashtag should really be no more than 7 or 8 characters.   

I’ll make one prediction that may come to pass in one form or another.  Should the economic conditions remain the same – or get worse, and if predictions of a rise in unemployment are realised then one potential outcome is a new use for Twitter. Users will post links to their online CVs and like 21^st century Yosser Hughes from Boys From the Black Stuff will tag their posts #gisajob.

Star Singers

Off this evening to [Star Singers](http://www.star-singers.com/) – otherwise known as "the choir for people who can't sing". A slightly unfair epithet as most of the people I saw there a few weeks ago could sing – and sing well. What's particularly notable about the choir is that members don't have to be able to sing well or read music. They know the songs (California Dreaming, Heatwave, Daydream Believer) from the 60's and 70's (and maybe more recently). If they don't the words are projected on a screen and if some one doesn't the tune … they can pick it up as you go along. Why? Well, singing should be fun; if it's not, what's the point? And plenty of people think it is – there were between 50 and 60 people there last time. Tonight is the first of the new term. It'll be interesting to see how many turn up tonight. And, no, I won't be part of the choir. Just recording some of the performance for a Your Place and Mine report.

A word with your customers

Belfast Telegraph Business Section have asked me to do an new monthy column as part of Web Watch – the editorial thrust is "how businesses can use the web". In the first article I discuss using the web/internet to build a relationship with customers with Russell Moore.

“The Net is a real place where people can go to learn, to talk to each other, to do business together. It is a bazaar … It is a conversation.”

In April 1999 a far sighted document – The Cluetrain Manifesto  - was published as a set of 95 theses. It didn’t appear as a book until the following year. Yet 10 years on, its observations are still acute. Its simple message was “Markets are conversations.” The underlying message was the Internet can help you understand your customers.

A happy customer is a returning customer. An unhappy customer will talk about your business, but not the way you want them to. A business can use technology and the Web to have real conversations with their customers.

An industry based on managing customer relations has developed and been enhanced by the Web and more recently Cloud Computing.  

With the rise of Twitter, Facebook and other social media, some businesses jump in to what they believe is Customer Relations Management (also called Customer Relations Marketing or CRM) without a strategy. “Many blue birds doth not a CRM strategy make!” says practitioner Russell Moore ACIM. “People are talking about your business; customers, employees, shareholders and competitors. What are they saying and how can you join the conversation?”  

First know your audience. What are they going to be interested in hearing and talking about? “That's pretty much the reason you're in business – to satisfy those audience's needs trying to work out what to make for those people you want to do business with.” says Russell. “Think: Who do I want to do business with? What characteristics do they mostly share? What do they want or need?

“Finding out the answers to those questions is why you use social media – that's the conversation you have to start!”

But a business that just bounces itself into Twitter and Facebook without a sufficient planning is making a mistake. With all those conversations going on how can you track, monitor, analyse and participate effectively?

“You must first understand that what used to be the online brochure – your website – can now be the cornerstone of your whole business strategy: a gateway into your company, products, services, people, and records all of your interactions with your customers.

 

“Ideally, that has to be in place as part of the overall strategy before starting the various tactical things like Twitter or blogging otherwise the whole thing could be a waste of time. So, it's not really about starting with Twitter then 'moving up', it's more about understanding the whole concept and then putting the foundations in place first. Then it all starts to make sense.”

Build your business on a relationship strategy, employ sound CRM methodologies and use each new conversational channel or technology as it arrives. But most importantly ask your customers what they want and listen to what they tell you.

I'm on Twitter (@davysims), identica (@davysims) Skype (davy.sims) and lots of other places, too.

PURE EVOKE Flow

Still getting to grips with my new Web/DAB/FM radio that Mrs. Sims gave me for Christmas. With more than 14.000 radio stations, 1,200 Listen Again and 3,000 podcasts, it's a joy to play with, but a nightmare to navigate. One of the first stations I found was WOMC Detroit which is a fairly standard US AOR (i.e. unchallenging) station, but the music is agreabe.  The temptation  is to stick to that or the all Tamala Motown station.  Not because they're the best in the world, but to search out other stations is a slightly tedious affair.

There is a web site that connects to the radio (The Lounge) where you can change and add "Favourites" which are then fed to the Radio, it could really be beefed up to be the place to Find Play and Share taking the difficulty out of finding stations.  

So I'm looking for recommendations for new radio stations to listen to;  Speech and Music.

Of course as it is a PURE radio, the sound is stunning and many of the Internet stations' sounds are outstanding.

 

People have been telling me that this really is the future of Radio – and I have to agree.  But DXing needs to be made easier.

Fantastic present though – wouldn't be without it.  And it's great not having to be stuck with the laptop. Thanks Mrs Sims