It seems like the time might be coming though where it really is bursting at the seams so I’ve been thinking about lightweight ways that we might be able to kick off a bit of a redesign*. Which is where you come in.

Presumably you’re here for a reason – maybe you’re interested in working with us, maybe you already do work with us, or maybe you’ve followed that old link about Web 2.0 footers that doggedly keeps on sending us traffic?

Whatever the reason, I’m kind of eyeing you up like a lion does a gazelle – as handy fodder (although in my case it’s for a bit of user research). I want to know what it is you want from this site – what you’re looking for and why. So, if it’s not too much trouble please could you mosey over to this Google spreadsheet and fill in your user story?

We’re doing a similar exercise here, only on big bits of paper in the kitchen, but rather than guess who you are and what you want it seems only polite to ask you instead.

Thanks everso :)

* Terms & conditions apply…. we reserve the right to ignore what you want, to take ages to make any changes – and even to decide not to do anything at all.

Academics and institutions have formalised this and given it a name – social capital – the strength and make-up of networks, and the value they have for the individuals within them.

Without going into detail, the theory is that as well as providing support and creating shared values, networks facilitate the flow of information, opportunities and financial capital, and that stronger networks enrich peoples’ lives and strengthen society as a whole.

[An important note here: this is just scratching the surface. It's a complex subject and definitions vary – if you want to find out more, check out good ol' wikipedia, what the World Bank has to say and the work of the ONS.]

The value of strong and weak ties

One of the core principles is the type of connections we form, those with people that we share a lot of similarities, networks which provide support and create social norms (known as bonding social capital) and those who we are only weakly connected to, but can bring us new information and opportunities (bridging social capital or “the strength of weak ties”).

In coarse terms, an example of networks that create bonding capital would be your best mates or work colleagues, while bridging social capital might be generated by some of connections you form through Linked In or twitter – people with shared interests, but who live 1,000 miles away and that you don’t communicate with very often.

As you can imagine social networking offers a massive opportunity for developing social capital and for the past year, we’ve been working with Enterprise UK and Virgin Media on a project that has this at its core – the Virgin Media Pioneers programme.

Developing entrepreneurial social capital

The Pioneers project is all about equipping young people with the skills, confidence and opportunities to turn their entrepreneurial ideas into reality, all by connecting them with the right people. We think of this as generating ‘entrepreneurial social capital’.

The project centres around a social networking platform we’ve built, that encourages people to use video blogging to share their experiences, advice and start conversations, with people like them, and more experienced professionals.

Pioneers, as they’ve become known, are creating both strong, supporting relationships and discovering new connections that can bring them the new information and opportunities that they never would have known about otherwise.

Measuring and visualising the strength of networks

There’s a robust and complex measurement programme in place to demonstrate social capital, using in-depth qualitative and attitudinal surveys as well as web metrics. These are necessary to get a detailed and statistical picture – but we wondered how we might tell this as a story, and make it more human.

We realised that the eco-system behind the website was difficult to see from the outside, but that we could make it visible. If we could demonstrate how social capital was developing, in an immediately engaging way, this would have benefits not only for those managing and investing in the programme, but for the people who are a part of these networks.

We’ve developed an application, with technology created by some of our expert technical associates, Ollie Glass and George Bashi, that uses snapshots of the website database, over time, to plot users and their networks over geographic locations, as the eco-system evolved.

To demonstrate social capital, albeit initially in a simple way, we used data on the amount of information that flowed across individual connections to reflect the strength of the different parts of the network, all in a way that could be explored by the user.

The result is not just something that looks pretty, it’s a way of demonstrating what the website is achieving for the people we set out to support.

It also serves as a neat way of reporting success to stakeholders who won’t read a 30-page report, as well as allowing us, and the people within the network to spot areas of strength and weakness.

And, we think it’s pretty special.

Following on from some inspiring efforts from Russell Davies, Matt Locke and our very own Matt Matheson, here is a collection of things currently keeping me up at night.

Death #1: people

Maybe a bit premature at 29, but I cannot stop thinking about death and what it means for online.  This train of thought was sparked by this piece in the New York Times, telling how Facebook has been recommending users become friends with people that have long since died. Ouch. Not that this is Facebook’s fault, it’s not their responsibility to ensure all users have a heartbeat, but it does throw up some awkward questions; should loved ones take responsibility for closing down your social profile? Should we hold odd online funerals, with virtual tears etc? What happens when the number of dead users on a particular site outnumber the living ones? Unsurprisingly there are already processes in place, both Twitter and Facebook cover this subject in their help sections, and brilliantly, @zenbullets wrote this cracking account of how he can now live forever by creating a Twitter bot. And if the idea of living forever on the internet scares you, but you don’t want to waste the vast bucket of content and ideas that make up a human brain, simply become an Intellectual Property Donor, and “ensure that your creativity will live on after you are gone”.

Death #2: information

If humans have lifespans, food has a sell-by date, and most technology products have an uncanny ability to implode after a seemingly predefined period, then why don’t websites and other online entities have a end date? Aside from the significant environmental impact of shit-loads of data living on for ever, it’s also just slightly depressing that information will haunt us forever by default. It makes me sad to think that in my old age, the rap video I made with my friend Tom whilst drunk on Martini Rosso (narcissism FTW) will exist on a dusty Facebook server somewhere, taunting me like an ugly, unreachable mole on the small of my back. I read the phrase ‘digital forgetting’ once in Wired magazine, and I wonder now if we should be given the option to set a lifespan on any content we upload/create, allowing the host site to ‘forget’ it after a sensible amount of time. Yes, the internet is great because of its size and the sheer depth of useless information, but as individuals and agencies I think we should take more responsibility for the age-limit of things we create.

Micropayments actually working

A few weeks back I was listening to a jazz band in an outdoor bar in Montenegro (in stark contrast to my normal evenings, hitting refresh on mountain bike forums whilst being headbutted by my over-affectionate cat Bowie); the band were ace, as was the bar and the cocktails, but the one thing that stuck in my mind longer than the hangover was the way the band got paid – each time I ordered a drink, 0.50€ was added to the bill for ‘music’. Simples. Instead of paying five or six euros up front, or seemingly nothing at all and the price being invisibly added to drinks, everyone drinking at the bar was contributing in a series of tiny payments. Best of all, the amount paid was proportional to the amount of music enjoyed; stay all night and have  six drinks, pay 3€; stop for a quick pint and pay half a euro. Micropayments in action.

Back in the internetz, I shelved this train of thought until I saw a tweet mentioning Flattr, a super clever way of making micropayments work across a broad range of websites. Basically, you pay Flattr a $2 monthly subscription, you then get all up in the internetz as you normally would, and when visiting sites who are signed up to Flattr, you hit the Flattr button to show you like the content on show; at the end of the month, all of the sites you’ve deemed worthy of a Flattr click are given an equal share of your $2. Making the genuis even more genius-er, the makers have developed a Firefox plug-in which allows you to ‘Flattr’ sites not signed up, making the system universal. Only launched in March, the long-term possibilities for Flattr are amazing; current payment systems like the Times paywall will seem archaic in comparison, with users being able to reward a much broader selection content, and the creators receiving rewards for creating.

Naming conventions

Earlier this year I attended FutureEverything, an ace conference that gave birth to a dozen mind worms within my information addled brain, but the one that keeps nagging me came from an audience member in the Infinite Bandwidth, Zero Latency panel session. Following an awful lot of interesting and wordy discussion, a bearded man was passed the microphone, and he proceeded to vent his anger at the labels being thrown around by the panel. He suggested that by being too quick to label new technologies and ideas, that we were limiting them, alienating potential audiences and stifling ideas before they could fully form. As an agency we strive to avoid buzzwords, so much so that we’ve given clients buzzers with which to highlight and shame our use of it during training sessions. What the angry man was saying though was taking this even further; that even the existence of buzzword-y labels was damaging. Would locative services catch-on faster if they didn’t have the annoying moniker? Is realtime a pointless term given that nothing is ever, technically real-time, if we’re being honest, and so why harp on with the label. And lastly, what is social media? Isn’t this all just online stuff? Or just talking with electricity? Or not?

Speed of consumption

Having spent an unhealthy amount of time recently listening to geeky podcasts, I noticed the above [1X] button on my iPhone. If you press it, you can listen to podcasts at double speed. I found this super mega exciting, as it’s like a cherry on the top of an idea we discuss in training quite a lot, about people being increasingly time-poor, and in a state of continuous partial attention. Imagine watching movies at double speed, or reading every other word in a book in order to race through it. And then imagine doing this whilst consuming some other kind of media. Imagine consuming two forms of media (not difficult if you think about reading internetz whilst watching television), at the same time, both at double speed – that would be like four times more than normal. Then imagine having a conversation with a loved one whilst doing all of this, and you can feel your brain start to hurt.

Worth pointing out that if you press the above podcast button twice, you can listen at half-speed, so it’s not all bad. Not sure when you’d do that, but I imagine it would be like giving your brain a hug. Which it would need after listening to this, the ultimate in speedy consumption.

One last one…cats for change

I know this is supposed to be a five item list, but last night I woke up at 3AM and couldn’t stop thinking about cats. Not only are they the perfect evolution of the mammal, but they kind of make the internet go round. Lolcats, cat-bin-lady, auto-tuned cats, there is literally not a day that goes by without some kind of cat viral content. With such universal appeal, is there some way of using cats for good? Could they be an untapped source of power, ready and waiting to make the world a better place? Not sure how, but I’ll enjoy thinking about it.

I was extremely nervous as I entered the NixonMcInnes office in Brighton but, after the many friendly and enthusiastic team members welcomed me, I soon felt like part of the “family”.

After the first half the week, settling in and learning about mapping, I was invited to sit in on a meeting with the Social Media Council for one of NixonMcInnes clients, WWF.  This was basically a meeting to discuss the possibilities of social media integration within their business. So, for example, Max and Jenni showed them some up and coming social media platforms like Stickybits and also talked about Foursqaure, and then we discussed how these can be used by WWF to aid things like the promotion of events.

I had been a bit shy at the meeting, despite Max’s “buzz word bell” and new warm-up game at the start (which involved some invisible samurai sword throwing and some very dodgy noises that made me wonder what people were thinking if they had heard us outside the room!).

On Thursday, I went to London with Louise who had a meeting with people from a big media company who are interested in having some social media training by NixonMcInnes. I learnt about strategy setting and proposal writing which I thought I’d like to do more of. We also met another client to discuss online engagement. It was interesting to see the contrasting ways each company wanted to use social media in order to achieve different results.

Later that day, we went to a PR and social media talk which was scary because I realised the extent to which social media can be used. For example, it included a presentation on, The Internet of Things, which basically said that one day everything we do will be controlled by AI.

I was picturing that day when it’s raining outside and I have just got in from work, a hot bubble bath would be running for me and dinner would be in the oven!

It was a very long but interesting day, involving a nice lunch at a really cool Italian restaurant in London whereby you order your food, they prepare it and you get to watch it being cooked in front of you. There was really weird stuff on the menu too, like strawberry and asparagus pasta, maybe next time!..

Overall, I have had a great week and met some lovely and interesting people. Now I’m just looking forward to what next week will bring…

1. Projector – showing Flickr/FFFound/data visualisation e.g. of @nmstereo listening trends (rejected due to carbon cost of projector)
2. Buy art (rejected as it would have to be permanent as it’d use up the whole budget, so we’d get bored of it)
3. Bike racks on the wall (rejected as they’d drip dirt down the walls)
4. Individual pictures – each staff member displays a found image or one that they’ve created, that means something to them. Done!



5. Local artists – exhibiting in the office, in the waiting area, on a bi-monthly rotation. This may be an interactive digital installation or traditional painted or printed art.
6. Commissioning artists to create a mural on the meeting room walls, potentially using write-on-able coloured vinyl
7. Collaborative staff “make an art” day

So, having completed our own personal art wall, we’d like to hear from the professionals. If you’re an artist (ideally local) and you’d like a space to exhibit your work, please get in touch. Send us a link to your portfolio, or email us some pictures, or just call and arrange a time to come in and bring us things to see/play with. In return for letting us have your art  for a couple of months, you can sell it to anyone visiting our office who takes a shine to it.

Or, if you like painting big and would like to do a mural on our meeting room wall/s, let us know! We have a small budget available for mural art, so if you can give us an idea of your costs that’d be fabulous.

Yesterday I was overcome. After a very intense start to the day, I found myself at the early afternoon with a 45 minute window of nothingness – otherwise known as BLISS…

I turned to my Google Reader to catch up some blogs, something I very rarely do whilst ‘at work’ – a habit I now realise is wrong.

Within about 10 minutes of opening up a select bunch of blog posts from the river of free and excellent content before me, my head brain-gasket was blown.

I was struck, having only half-rolled in the puddles of other people’s ideas, not yet even fully immersed, with how much opportunity there is right now to change stuff for the better, so much so that I became overwhelmed and started shouting across the office: ‘%&*%%$’…….. ‘*@£*$$*£@@’. Except I can’t shout in symblols, but definitely can in coarse words.

There are simply so many exciting things happening at the moment. So MUCH opportunity to get involved, to create new helpful futures, to DO, it just lifted me up into a state of ridiculous excitement, and then cast me down into a trough of happy paralysis – stopped by the bigness of everything.

This isn’t a blog post to tease, or even to share the links, though I will try another time.

That is not the point.

The point is this. It is happening all around us. At pace and at scale. A miraculous and dizzying world of change. The question isn’t what to do, but what not to do. I must resist being greedy, I must resist doing it all. But by jove, there’s lots of good stuff out there to be done.

Sorry if this confuses. I just had to vent a little :)

Howdy there link lovers welcome to another edition of Woodys Roundup.

Kicking off today’s collection of links we have some super cool instructions to build your own Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) like the army use, made with model airplanes and Lego Mindstorms kits robotics kits, pretty neat! Just search YouTube for more amazing Mindstorms projects.

Next we have the amazing journey of a space shuttles booster rocket from the rockets point of view. From launch through to the free fall all the way back to earth. It is both amazing and majestic.

Last Thursday saw the celebration of _why, a legend in the Ruby programming community. On the 19th August 2009 _why withdrew from the online community, check out whyday.org to find out more about _why, his projects and legacy including his excellent cartoon guide (with practical examples) to the Ruby language. Also, released last week and based on one of _why’s projects (Shoes) comes Hackety Hack, a really simple way to get started coding, from kids to adults!

Next we have two links on a photography tip. The first is a load of outstanding colour pictures from Russia take between 1909 and 1912 and second is the tale of the worlds first digital camera, knocked up by some engineers at Kodak in 1975.

Lastly, here’s something to try when one of those annoying telemarketers phones you just when you’re about to start eating dinner. Funnily enough a telemarketer gave Tom a call just as he discovered this page!

And there we have it, a little short this time but I should be back on Friday with some more fun :)

Again, thanks to Flickr user wrayckage for the image.

I thought it was about time I wrote another blog post, so here’s a post about 5 things that are currently rocking my world.

Being outdoors

More and more as I get older, I realise I love being outdoors. Indeed, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been camping this year, whether festival style (I do love an alternative festival or two) or not. For me, the best camping experience is rural, with an open fire. Cooking on the fire, foraging for wood and anything you can munch on and spending time with those favourite people around you. In my eyes – there really is nothing better than it. People often say to me ‘I can never find a campsite that allows me to have a fire’. There’s plenty – some of which very local to Sussex. Here’s a  good website to start with when locating campsites that allow a fire in the UK, but always check with the campsite owners first.

Soundcloud

For me, Soundcloud is really starting to come into it’s own and is now a contender against Last.fm and Spotify for a place for me to go for new music. I’m seeing all my favourite artist have a soundcloud account where they often post pre-release versions of newly produced tracks for feedback, mixes and ‘free to download’ back catalogues of their older material. The ability to comment on media at certain time stamps is great too – encouraging feedback and interaction. Soundcloud ftw. Go on – perform a search and see what comes back for you.

Ostrich burgers

I like occasionally trying something random for dinner. I’m lucky to have a fiance who gives my random taste excursions a go – even if only to humour me. Some time back it was pigs trotters. They went down OK. Though they took too long to cook and had hardly any meat on them. Ostrich burgers however are great! Purchased from the wonderful Principle Meats in Brighton, they are rich, tasty, lean and low in fat. Highly recommended on a rustic baked roll with salad and a tangy sauce.

Jay Rhoderick

Jay Rhoderick is a bit of an improv/training legend – running various courses on improvisation and how improvisation can benefit business and stimulate creativity, not to mention a whole host of other things. In his own words ‘Business improvisation is my passion’. I was lucky enough to attend a workshop run by him a couple of months back (he’s US based) and have since started following him on Twitter. His timeline is great and he’s constantly providing lots of useful resources for creativity, teamwork, commitment, business tips and improvisation techniques. Check him out on twitter or bizprov – he doesn’t have a mountain of a following, but I think we are going to see this grow in time.

Learning new musical instruments

I believe that all learning is good and I’ve always been one to constantly try out new things, sticking with some of the things I discover and putting others aside. My current foray into the world of experimentation is with the fiddle (or violin, depending on how you play it). I’ve always loved this instrument and finally decided to buy one and start learning how to play. True, it’s not the easiest instrument to play, but I am learning and it’s great fun, whether I continue for years or simply binge on it for a few months. I’m almost a tune down and as my fiancé is learning to play the Ukulele at the same time, I can get away with being noisy. I recently came across this video – which show that the fiddle is capable of some quite amazing stuff. Yes or Michael Jackson anyone?

My suggestion to anyone is if there is anything you want to try out, don’t hold back – give it a try, you never know, you might like and be a dab hand.

So those are the 5 things rocking my world at the moment. What’s rocking your world?

On the role for junior consultants we have been overwhelmed by the response, and now already have a strong pool of interesting and talented applicants. If you are going to apply for this role please do so soon as we’re already booking in next steps.

On the more senior role we have a good start, with a handful of the right kinda people interested already, but I’m putting a bit more work into getting to these people aware of what we have to offer here – so more work to do, as always, in finding the few people that fit what we’re looking for. This role is advertised here: http://www.wiredsussex.com/jobs/JobSearchResult.asp?Item=7578

Anyone noticed the extremely rapid feedback loop currently circling Twifficiency. “In a nut shell, Twifficiency calculates your twitter efficiency based upon your twitter activity”. So basically it’s yet another tool that analyses your Twitter profile. Yay!

Anyway, what I found interesting isn’t the tool itself, but the sheer speed of how it was first picked up by Twitter, how it then pissed off Twitter, and how it is now incurring the wrath of Twitter. Within the menagerie of people wot I follow, I first became aware of Twifficiency when at 11:02 Beth tried it out, and at 11:04 Beth scolded it for its spammy auto-posting of your score. That’s two minutes, and is fairly indicative of the feelings of many others. Of course, many Twitter users simply do not care, but many do, and were quick to signpost the pitfalls of putting your details into Twifficiency, such as James Whatley:

Any way, this whole micro-phenomena interests me because this kind of instant feedback is not possible in any other form of media. I’d be really interested to hear what the chap behind Twifficiency think of the explosion of interest, and of the criticism. Interestingly, he’s been quiet so far – UPDATE: James the developer has just tweeted this: “I will sort out the twifficiency auto-tweeting when I get home. Unless anybody know a PHP editor for iPhone ;)”

SECOND UPDATE: since this post was first written, James gained a great deal of attention, was extremely open about his goals for Twifficiency, and has attracted significant praise. This blog post from Paul Clark does a better job than me in telling his side of things.

So, what do you think of Twifficiency?