2009 is set to be a big year for i4SM and we hope that the prospectus piques your interest. It’s also set to be the most interesting year yet for social media in general.

If 2008 has been the year of Facebook and Twitter and Barack Obama’s use of social media, then 2009 looks well placed to see further breakthroughs of collaborative technologies into the mainstream.

The global recession looks set to bite hard and it’ll be interesting to see how/if social media technologies can help companies streamline their operations and costs. I’d firmly pin my colours to the “Yes it can” flag as there are myriad ways that technology can help. Of course, companies and people have to want that to happen and engage with innovative ways of working, communicating and collaborating.

So, we’ll see. One area that will certainly forever be changed is governance and politics. No longer can elected officials ignore the reach and scope of social tools when trying to engage with voters. Barack Obama has taught us that and with a general election looming in the not too distant future, just how will the major Political parties in the UK tune their use of social media?

Again, we’ll see.

We’ll also likely see another breakthrough mainstream site like Facebook. Will it be Twitter or an upstart? Of course, in times of economic downturn Internet startups will find it hard to source money, particularly as many of the established players are yet to show anything approaching a profit. Can VC’s continue to fuel the fund burn?

Time will tell.

For now, I’d invite you to take a read of our prospectus and think about how you can get involved. We’ll have some interesting news for you early in the new year on our existing partnerships and projects.

We wish you a happy holiday season and prosperity for 2009 and beyond.

-paul.

Sarah’s Mancunian Way blog is carrying the story today, so you can head over their to read it or pick up the newspaper this Saturday.

A nice write up I thought!

-pc.

As Twaffik is still in it’s infancy I couldn’t refer to it for any information about the state of the roads outside my front door, so I switched on the radio and checked the AA website. All seemed OK, except for a couple of lame warnings about “severe weather” in the north - I could see that by looking out of the window.

Jumped in the car…couldn’t get out of the drive as he car was wheelspinning on the slope, so I got out in the vain hope that I may be able to sort that little problem out. I couldn’t.

At that moment a neighbour came through the gates and said…

“Don’t bother going out there, it’s gridlocked. Took Steve an hour to get to the M61 this morning at 6:30am and Mark 30 minutes to get half a mile. Tyldesley’s all blocked up, all the roads in Westhoughton are choked up and the trains are a mess”.

My phone rang and Lilian Barton said that she couldn’t get out of Littleborough at all and our 10am meeting wasn’t going to happen. Message Twaffik I said.

Back on my laptop @djgraham tweeted that the M61 and A6 were snarled up and that the details weren’t on the Highways Agency site…follow Twaffik I replied…

And this is the point. Twaffik is my neighbour, Lilian Barton and @djgraham all rolled into one…twaffik is all that micro-information that falls through the cracks of traffic conditions - it’s a way of tapping into what the ‘crowd’ are seeing out around Greater Manchester and letting us all know.

We need twaffik because the services we rely on at the moment just aren’t good enough. They can’t process the information at a local level quickly enough and get it out in a timely way. At i4Sm we want to know if twaffik can do a better job.

Follow Twaffik at www.twitter.com/twaffik or keep up to date at www.twaffik.info

-pc.

Twaffik is what I’m calling an ‘experiment’. It came out of an idea I had in the summer after repeatedly getting caught in bad traffic situations in and around Manchester. I’d leave the office, jump in the car and grind to a halt on the A580. I’d have no warning and I’d get a tad annoyed…sometimes so bad that I’d have to turn around and burn an hour or so back in Manchester to let the situation calm down.

It occurred to me that I rely on traffic updates when I’m in the car and there’s little option before you get in. Why? Because most of us can’t listen to the radio at work and the travel update sites (AA, RAC) aren’t that great in my experience. Plus, I’m just not in the habit of checking them, so would always fail to. And, when you add in to the mix that the radio updates are too infrequent and too generalised, you may see why the idea started to form.

I wanted a traffic alert system that covered more than just the roads, was more frequent, came from more sources and was more localised to me.

Thus, Twaffik was born. Twaffik uses Twitter as an engine to provide crowdsourced traffic updates for Manchester and, ultimately, beyond.It’s not just for the road system though…you can use it for rail, tram, air and bus.

Without getting into the detail about Twitter, here’s how it works.

• You sign up for Twitter
• You follow the twitter user ‘twaffik’
• Twaffik automatically follows you
• You send a message to twaffik about what you’re seeing on the roads, the buses, the tram system, the rail network or even at the airport.
• Twaffik then sends that message out to all of his followers.

Effectively, this means we can gather alerts about the state of the cities transport infrastructure and let a large amount of people know about it. Your individual message can end up being sent to a lot of people and potentially really help them take evasive action - even if that action is to stay at work because it’s not worth venturing onto the roads. The great thing about twitter is that you can feed it messages from different channels (sms message, Instant Messenger, website, twitter applet) and receive the messages in multiple ways…even via RSS and email if you wish - and therefore the twaffik updates can come to you in many different ways.

So, it’s an experiment. We’re interested in a number of research avenues here, but it’s also an attempt to provide a very useful, real service using something very innovative, yet quite geeky, like Twitter.

Here are some research questions that I’m spinning out of this:

How do services like this get developed, grow and survive?

What are the motivators to using something like this?

Can the traditional methods (radio etc) be disrupted?

Can a ‘geeky’ service like Twitter be turned into something more mainstream by developing services like this?

What are the considerations that have to be made when developing services like this?

So, there’s lots of research angles. At the moment, I’m still forming my opinion about which way to take it and for now the focus has turned from getting Twaffik working (which is largely down to the technical magick of Alan Holding), to getting people to think about using it.

I’ll keep you updated on progress here.

For now, you can take a look at the Twaffik website and, of course, follow Twaffik over at Twitter.

The most important thing to remember is that you should never, ever, ever, ever use your mobile phone while driving.

-pc.

A sidenote

I should point out that twaffik has been developed at zero cost and is nothing to do with the congestion charge debate raging in Manchester at the moment (timing is purely coincidental). It comes under the i4SM banner because it’s an innovative, interesting project that has been started entirely by us. We’re calling this ideas forum ‘the truth vacuum’ and there’ll be more details along shortly.

As this is i4SM, these experiments are obviously firmly centred on the use of social media in providing a useful service for people. Initially, these should both be of interest to those in and around Manchester.

The first is an entry into the b.TWEEN ‘Mapping Creativity’ initiative. As part of the Manchester Beacon, Mapping Creativity is looking to commission an ‘interactive project that drives Manchester’s collective creativity’. So, they’re looking for innovative projects that fit the bill. You can read more about it over at their pages.

The entry that I’ve been lending my support to comes from Alex Hough. I know Alex through Manchester Business School and he’s a chap who is bursting with ideas - one of which he decided to put forward to the Beacon. Here are Alex’s descriptive words for the submission:

“Merging social bookmarking and viable systems visualization to support regional networks

The Manchester Beacon indicates its purpose as a powerful metaphor. A beacon transmits signals This proposal is to provide a map for illuminating projects. Users who gather around this new map can understand more easily how projects relate to each other. More informed strategic decisions can be made, resources can be optimized, events coordinated, and useful partnerships facilitated.

Technology and Theory

The social bookmarking tool Delicious will be applied to create communication channels between Beacon projects. The channels and systems are designed according to the internationally respected Viable System Model, a theory with strong connections to the region through its originator Stafford Beer.”

Reading between the lines, Alex wants to provide better connections, through Delicious, for community groups and projects across the City. Delicious can certainly act in this fashion and I thought that it would be a great application of a simple technology to a potentially complex set of relationships.

So, I’m going to continue supporting Alex whenever, however and if I can. It’s the sort of project that we at i4SM want to see more of.

So, get over there and vote for your favourite project. I’m not going to offer bias here at all as there are some very worthy ideas popping up as part of this initiative. I’ll look forward to the next stages of the Beacon projects and will keep you posted here.

The second experiment is in partnership with MDDA.  It is in the very early stages of delving into the API of a well known social platform to try and pin down whether our theory can be put into practice. The idea is to provide a very useful service to the people of Manchester.

Early signs are good. We’ve got over some of the initial problems that we anticipated and are now building some custom code to ensure we don’t blast through the API call limits and get switched off.

You’ll notice that I’ve not told you anything about what the experiment is. There’s a very good reason for that and it is this. There are so many great brains, clever developers and quick fingers out there in Manchester and beyond, that I feel if I revealed this idea too soon someone would jump on it, build it and try to make money from it.

I don’t want that to happen. I want this to be an experiment in social media where we get some real insights into public take up and interaction with one of these new social tools. I expect to be able to reveal all very soon…in a couple of weeks maybe.

Keep your eyes peeled.

-pc.

*Update* - Pleased to note that Alex has been selected as one of the four projects to go forward to the final stage. We’ll keep you updated on progress.

My immediate reflections are positive. I really think that the organisers have pulled off a successful event, in what was a very challenging format. Proposing to host a continuous conversation with 200 people, multiple speakers, plenty of prominent Mancunian advocates and a number of celebrities (not to mention a couple of ego’s), was a brave move.

As a ’stop gap event’, the TWE has probably raised a good number of complications about how a more permanent memorial to Tony Wilson should take shape. Talk of a summer school was still evident in some quarters over the last day or so, plus calls from Peter Saville to repeat the conversation next year.

What Manchester City Councils stance is on that is yet to be seen. But everyone at the Council should be very happy with this weekend. Sarah Benjamins, the project manager at MCC, should be applauded for managing the City’s input. Similarly, Sir Richard Leese, Leader of the council has shown a side that most people would perhaps never see - the willingness to engage in open and transparent conversation at a forum like this.

I was particularly impressed with his interjection during one of the sessions, where he implored people to look forward…that’s what the ‘talent’ and the discussion was there for - to look forward and shape the city as a valuable part of the regional and wider economic development. At a time when many were in retrospective mood, I thought it was a timely reminder.

Similarly, everyone else involved in the organisation and delivery should be pretty pleased. Obviously, there’s always things to learn and build on…so from my perspective (and from talking to a few people in attendance) what could make it better next time?

I heard from a couple of people that the conversation was a little mono directional at times, with not enough opportunity for the talent to question the experienced. Indeed, I’m echoing Paul Robinsons comment that even when appealing for a little more chaos, the “rowdy ones were always shut up“. That’s a shame, as it seems that much about the people and activity being remembered were just that, a little chaotic.

A difficult line to tread. However, perhaps the active internet stream forum on Mogulus could have been fed into the tent for those who couldn’t attend to have had a chance to enter the conversation. This would certainly have opened up the dialogue a little and perhaps prompted more discussion inside. Generating lively discussion is difficult, especially for 24 hours and perhaps if the more ‘unconference’ style of some gatherings had been followed then the level of discussion may have been even lower. To have an agenda that just said “turn up and talk’ could have led to a very flat event indeed.

Having said that, there’s definitely opportunity for social tools and some of the methods used amongst the social media crowd to have more of a prominence next time. Some sessions could have been more like workshops and the restriction on photography and video lifted. Harnessing sites like Flickr and Twitter could have helped build more of a real time presence on the web than was evident this time.

Even more, a reworking of the green room could have helped as discouraging true mixing of the experienced and talented was sometimes reflected in the conversations. A bit of a ‘them and us’ feel that was commented upon a couple of times to me. Some more intimate break out sessions, wouldn’t have gone amiss and helped the talent get closer to the experienced. After all, we know that it’s difficult to walk up to someone you admire and strike up a conversation.

So, a difficult challenge. The organisers set themselves a format that was a tough ask. All in all, they pulled it off.

One final thought. I hope we at i4SM get a chance to talk to Peter Saville about our vision for the Institute.  That’s a conversation we’d really relish.

Over and out.

-pc.

But, for me, this was a missed opportunity.  Let’s face it, there’s a lot to talk about where and how the media industry, particularly recording artists, is going and in what kind of shape it could be in, in the future.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

But, in the gaps there were some interesting comments, particularly from Alan McGee. I liked his reference to the music industry now being “easy, but hard”. Easy because almost anyone can build themselves a presence on the web using a site like MySpace. The great success of MySpace has been down to their simplifying the creation of web pages for everyone and then latterly forming a considerable niche as the ‘place to be’ for musical types.

But because it is easy, it is hard. Because anyone can do it, it means there are millions of bands on MySpace, millions of bands with a presence of sorts and millions of bands looking for the attention of a limited number of A&R guys. The stories of bands making it without the traditional A&R approach are still, I would argue, few and far between and the mega-successful new bands are still coming through the traditional methods.

So, the point is that it’s now harder to get the attention of the people who still make the market, harder to get airtime and harder to make it to the ranks of the mega-successful.

Once you are successful though, the industry is changing - or at least the dynamics of the power structure are changing. McGee points out that once a band is famous, why does it need a record company? Tim Burgess is sat next to him as he’s saying this, but didn’t extend the point, unfortunately, when his own band - the Charlatans - has recently made their latest album available as a free download. Radiohead did the same and this practice is gaining momentum.

McGee is right though, it’s OK to do this once you are famous as the buying public will lap it up and you have opportunities to generate revenue elsewhere. When you’re an upcoming band in a thriving musical city like Manchester, it’s harder to stand out from the crowd, especially when that crowd has become so much bigger.

Will the changes that the established bands like Radiohead and The Charlatans are forging trickle down to the grass roots and on the way change how bans become popular? Is there a different model to the industry than we see now, or is it so embedded and intertwined amongst A&R, promoters, record labels, radio playlists and TV pluggers as to be an even more difficult struggle for the bands trying to make it?

That’s more questions than I intended to end this post with, but I suppose what I’m really questioning is whether all the focus on social media in the music industry, all the activity and all the perceived visibility for budding bands is actually making it harder to succeed than we’ve seen in recent history.

To return to the focus of this session. It would have been fantastic to hear Tim Burgess comments on this and even better to have heard from the assembled audience who, let’s face it, will likely never get the chance to be in the same room as these guys again.

-pc.

Unfortunately, I have a prior arrangement for this evening, so I have to leave. Keep up to date over on Paul Robinsons M.E.N Blog.

I’ll be back in the morning.

Ben Kelly designed FAC51, otherwise known as the Hacienda. My wife, Jackie, spent many an evening and early morning in that building and it’s shaped, in some small part, her adult life. It’s not just about the music - the vibe must also have been created by the industrial feel to the Hacienda that was so starkly different to the standard look of the local discotheque. Me, I was into indie, but my club stomping ground was The Jenks Bar in Blackpool. It’s not quite as well known as the Hacienda.

Tom Bloxham is the founder and owner of Urban Splash, one of the most prolific property development companies in Manchester…and beyond for that matter. I’m itching to go to the Midland Hotel now that it’s been restored…and this is key to Urban Splash strategy - redevelopment as opposed to razing and rebuilding.

Peter Saville is joining them on the sofa’s. But first…

Frank Sidebottom has just been on doing, in his own inimitable style, a tribute to Manchester, Factory and Tony Wilson. I’m hoping that the video will be available after the fact…as it was quite a performance.

Fortunately, Mr Sidebottom came into the press room to see where all the action was going on. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, you can judge who has the bigger cranium for yourself.

16:25 - Urban Splash impact on Manchester - chance and accident. This is a recurring theme, it seems. Saville talked earlier about how Factory was just a bunch of people doing what they wanted, looking forwards and not backwards, whilst keeping it interesting. But chance and accident need to be navigated…need to be grabbed, or they’ll pass you by. “Lucky people are successful people”.

I suppose, for the talent dotted around the tent, listening, the message is always going to be follow what you think is the right path, the right thing to do.

Saville is making a nice point here. Urban Splash are keeping the ethos of Factory going - doing as much as they can, as opposed to doing it as cheaply as they can. I suppose when we look at the history of Factory, particularly in light of the case study that I’m determined to commission, this is a nice working title. Factory: Doing as much as it can.

Of course there’s a myriad of subtitles we could string under there, but we’ll leave that to the imagination.

16:45 - Peter Saville is talking about the Manchester Music Archive. I’ve not come across this meme before, but he’s ruminating about some sort of a Centre for Contemporary Arts. This is about recognising what cities have in the now, or the recent past before they destroy it. The Hacienda is a case in point, but as someone said before, the Hacienda meant nothing to most people. I suppose we could say that about any building. Recognising value in the here and now is incredibly difficult it seems.

But, the digerati can play a significant role here. Social tools give us the capability to archive what’s happening now and build an understanding of the current value of the artefacts around the city. We build a current understanding by engaging with the people who actively use or are influenced by their surroundings. The history of the Hacienda is anecdotal…there isn’t that much in the way of an archive of what that building meant to people who went there.

Sure, we can talk to people like Mrs Carruthers and get anecdotal evidence. But, if we could have captured and entered into a dialogue about the Hacienda, at the time, would the future of that building been different?

OK, so sounds like I’m advocating social media changing the world and maybe that’s naive. But if we follow Peter Saville’s point about better understanding the current value of a city’s cultural icons (be they buildings, people or just movements), I think there’s a valuable role for social media in that mix.

Plus, his vision about a Centre for Cultural Arts is a conversation that i4SM should try to get involved with.

-pc.

Not much to pick up on here, but Coogan saying that perhaps we shouldn’t forget the roots of Manchester creativity. The grime, the industry and picking itself up by it’s bootstraps has defined how Manchester looks nowadays. But hey that’s progress and to echo his second thought we shouldn’t get too reminiscent about 1970’s Manchester.

Paul Robinson (sat next to me) was just chatting about how Tony Wilson was villified, almost hated around the place for most of his broadcast life. As we mentioned earlier, it was cool to bash Wilson when we were younger. But, I don’t think we really knew much about the guy…after all, I was a kid in Lytham. I never went to the Hacienda, only picked up on New order and Joy Division late in the day and rarely visited Manchester.

I often say that when I did come to this fair city, that I was taken aback that everyone knew my name. “alright pal”, they;d say and I’d mistake it for Paul. Yeah, yeah…small town kid, funny Manc accents and all that.

Yet, I still would say that Tony Wilson was an idiot. A weird fashion, granted, but it was almost fashionable.

14:30 - whoah, we’re 30 minutes in. Maconie prompts “What would Wilson think of this event?” A series of contradictions…anti-establishment…so how do you create something that fits in with that ethos?

And how does Manchester remember him? Statue…

Again, not much to pick up on that hasn’t been said before. So, I’m going to return to the thread above.

After his death, there’s almost a deification of Tony Wilson in the city. Obviously, people couldn’t see the impact he was having, whilst he was doing it, but after the fact it’s been clear to see. I’m not going to go over it again, but I’ll share this photograph with you.

I took this at the exhibition at Urbis last year. It sums up the very real effect that Tony Wilson had on ordinary peoples lives. ‘Nuff said.

14:55 - Amazing interjection from the floor recalling how in the ‘jolson era’ there was a pub on Mill St that use to have Al Jolson competitions. Now, it seems to have little relevance to the proceedings but what a fantastic comment. Did anyone out there catch what that was all about?

I have to take a break now else my head will explode. Will be back at 4pm. Sharp.

-pc.