Planet WWLUG
January 23, 2012
I’ve been asked to explain exactly what a barcamp is… so here goes…
A barcamp is known as an ‘unconference’, it has no set schedule, speakers or events planned… all that is set up on the day.
Yes, sounds crazy, but it works. The conference schedule is decided on the day, by those that turn up. People who come are encouraged to sign up and give talks about whatever topic they like. Whilst the broad theme of the event is technology, this can be interpreted loosely to cover pretty much any topic, and discussions can range from the effect of Government policy on Web usage, through to the history of Internet memes…
I’ve been to quite a few barcamps and they really are that broad… during the 2011 London Barcamp, several hundred people descended to listen and give talks. In one room, a woman gave a talk about Chocolate (she’d set up a website where she reviews chocolate… as her day job… – she’d brought samples…), whilst in the next, a Whisky blogger ran a session “Absinthe for beginners”, whilst in another room a talk was detailing how to build a game for the iPhone. All of this, at one conference, in the space of an hour…
So, at the start of the day, attendees will be asked to gather at the grid to sign up to give talks. As I said, the talks can be on virtually anything (like I said… chocolate and absinthe…). So the next question is, do you *have* to give a talk…
Well, you don’t have to… but you should. The attendees at a barcamp have come to listen to talks. They *want* to hear from you. Noone is there to shout you down, boo you or make fun of you. They’ve come to hear from people who have a passion for a given topic. You really don’t need a fancy Powerpoint, it doesn’t need to be technical, and you don’t have to prepare anything. You can just literally sign up for a slot and talk. It’s about sharing your passion and your knowledge.
You could do a talk about something that interests you, show off a project you’ve been working on, or host a discussion about a burning issue. Just name your session, pick a time slot and that’s it.
Want some ideas on talks? Have a look at this Lanyrd.com search page, it has a list of almost a 1000 talks delivered at hundreds of barcamps all over the world on topics, including “Fancy a Pint?” at Barcamp London (One of mine – my co-host was a woman I got chatting to at the start of the day, and by the afternoon we were discussing how great beer is with a room full of people… no slides, no anything), through to “How to Podcast for Free” at Barcamp Liverpool (not one of mine…). Like I said, *anything*.
If you’re unsure about giving a talk, you can get in touch with me before next saturday (bryn.salisbury@gmail.com, or @bryns on twitter), or come grab me on the day. I’ve had wonderful experiences giving talks at Barcamps, and you should too. It’s a great place to practice public speaking in front of a group who really want to hear from you, and want to support you.
Other than the talks, you’ll also get to see Sioned (@llef), Iestyn (@iestynx) and me do a live recording of our podcast (The Haclediad) there. It’ll be an absolute blast. This year is shaping up to have the most attendees ever, and I’m REALLY excited. If you’ve never been, there’s a tremendous buzz from gathering together with so many people enthused around a topic or area, you’ll want to rush off and start a dozen projects right away… and that, if anything, will give you plenty to talk about when you come along to the one in 2013!
See you in Aberystwyth guys…
B
November 27, 2011
So there’s been some interesting debates going on in Wales recently after
Bethan Jenkins AM (those of you who are ex-Aberystwyth students may remember her from her time as Guild President) wrote an interesting Op-Ed piece for
Wales Home, called
“Time for Radical Solutions” in which she advocates that the Welsh Assembly should look to convert the
Western Mail into a publicly funded company (with editorial protection similar to that of S4C), then letting the company be floated a few years later to be a private company again.
The piece has drawn a lot of attention (BBC News – Western Mail could be taken over by government, says AM, Golwg360 – Galw ar y llywodraeth i gymryd y Western Mail and on Twitter), and seems to have achieved Bethan’s aim of stirring up a debate. Opinions vary from Trinity Mirror (the owner of The Western Mail) saying “no comment” (i’m paraphrasing) though to discussions on the Government’s role in media.
I personally don’t think it’s the Government’s place to be taking over media properties (even with guarantees of editorial independence). We’ve seen in the past how the BBC has drawn fire from politicians of all sides for editorial bias (particularly from The Conservatives). The perception that it’s a ‘Government’ paper would be difficult to shift, and journalists might feel weary of biting the hand that feeds it. Also, given the seemingly incestious nature of media in Wales at the moment, would the WM have ran the story about S4C’s battles with University of Wales if members of its board were also sat on S4C’s?
If you ask me, WAG should be looking to put the boot up the Western Mail’s backside and using it’s position to encourage and foster competition. Wil Stephens suggests that WAG should be looking to set itself up with a seed fund, and investing money in starting up new ventures, rather than taking over old ones (a sentiment I share). Huw Marshall also points out that the Western Mail isn’t exactly an “all Wales” property (I tend to agree, from my experience it’s almost entirely a South Wales affair). So the notion of setting up an ‘All Wales’ news organisation is quite appealing.
The Western Mail is still a profitable (if dwindling) business. What its owners; Trinity Mirror (and S4C for that matter), needs is some competition. Starting a news organisation is expensive (staffing, legal, hardware et al), and is well beyond the means of most… But if WAG helped to introduce a new player and disrupt the market, broadcast and print media in Wales would be forced to innovate in order to maintain market share. A new player could gather journalists from local papers and bring in the best of the Web’s talent and provide a new service, and Trinity Mirror would need to do something to keep up.
So, should WAG take over the Western Mail? No… but it can help us to make it (and media in Wales) much, much better.
October 28, 2011
With
Hacio’r Iaith 2012 just around the corner (3 months to today infact…), I’m starting to collect some notes on a talk I’d like to give on what a next generation S4C would look like (hence the name S4C 2.0).
Since my posts back in April, I’ve had a few more ideas. I’d like though to open it up to a much wider audience and invite you (dear readers) to join in and tell me what you all think. What would you want from the channel? More online services? iTunes/Amazon/LoveFilm access? More multi-lingual content? Greater transparency from the management? A simpler process for getting more ‘independent’ content broadcast? More services for learners?
I’ll start to put this all together around Christmas, and keep you in the loop about how it’s all going.
Lincs/Links
October 26, 2011
Lest you think that I’m over on the Emerald Isle for fun (I’m having fun, but that’s not the primary purpose of my visit), I had one of those “wait, what? oh yeah…” moments during a discussion on secure applications development.
It centred around the this analogy (edit 21:18 – given by the interviewee):
“If we taught people to drive the same way we teach people to do secure code, then we’d have a lot more dead people and destroyed cars”
I don’t know how many of you have been on a secure coding course (I’d hazard a guess and say “not many”), their tendency is to spend most of the time showing you what goes wrong (“look at how bad SQL injection can be!”), then spend a tiny fraction of that time showing you how to do it right. If we continue from our Continuing his analogy, the Interviewee said it would be akin to letting someone crash a car, and then saying “don’t do that…”.
So, my question is this… are we teaching these things the wrong way around? Is it not better to show people the correct way to handle things like user input, SQL queries, or error handling? Once we show them the right way, we can then move to show them what happens when it goes wrong. Having said that, any of these types of training guidelines would depend on the technology being used, and the associated infrastructure for reviewing the code afterwards, so maybe the answer isn’t as clear as we’d like it to be.
It’s an interesting idea, and one I’d like to explore further… if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear from you. If I do manage to nab some time, hoping to do a session on it at Barcamp London.
Diweddaru | Update – 29/10/11
So I ran the session at Barcamp London, you can see the slides here:
An pretty good session, with a very interesting debate. Now to wait for some more feedback over the next few days.
Hwyl!
B
October 25, 2011
So arrangements are well underway now for
Hacio’r Iaith 3 in Aberystwyth, and we’ve already got some sponsors have been lined up. Now all we need is more people to sign up to do talks (to that end, I’m hoping to push out a guide to barcamp talks sometime near the weekend – probably after Barcamp London).
With the announcement today of the S4C’s shotgun wedding to the BBC, I’m even keener to develop a talk on what I’ve decided to call “S4C 2.0″. The talk will probably focus on a lot of the ideas I’ve explored here before (ad nauseum), as well as a few more ideas I’ve been developing off-line.
A recently disclosed bug in ios5 allows an attacker to bypass the passcode to the device and use whatever application was in the foreground at the time it was locked.
The first place I'm aware of carrying this story is BringYourOwnIt.com:
I tried this at home and sure enough it works. I believe this bug is really derived from things not being executed in the right order, your application should be backgrounded before the device sleeps and then brought back to the foreground when it wakes.
This is a problem that goes a little further than discussed in the BringYourOwnIt.com article because it also affects apps that have a 'privacy' mode - the app never gets the instruction to background which means it doesn't clear the history, purge or even wipe the screen.
I tested this with the Mercury Browser; I started the app and enabled privacy mode from the on screen window. Now if Mrs Hyakuhei comes home while I'm "shopping for her super-secret anniversary present" I just close the cover of the ipad and she'll never know. Unless she's read this post. In which case she could open the cover, hold down the power button, close the cover once the power-off screen is displayed, re-open and hit cancel - Now she can see all those presents that I was trying to keep secret.
So, all you ipad wielding secret santas - you have been warned.
October 24, 2011
So, I’ve been on the go quite a bit lately… as I type, I’m listening to the rain lash down on an already sodden Dún Laoghaire (I’m out here for the week with work, staying at the rather nice Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel –
@fitzcastle). I thought, given I’ve got some time to kill…
Blackpool Barcamp 3
So, having missed Blackpool Barcamp last year, I was really quite keen to make it up for this year’s event. The first thing you noticed was how many more people were gathered there this year (which is a credit to the organisers, who’ve grown it from a really tiny event two years ago to one that attracts people from all over the country). I ended up delivering a talk that I’d initially prepared for Tweetcamp the week before but didn’t deliver. The talk centred around themes I’ve previously explored on this blog of
how the web helped me re-establish my ability to write in Welsh.
It was a spur of the moment thing really, and I think had I maybe opted for a later session, I’d have had another hour to practice, and drawn in a few more people to see it… I’ve since had some time to work on it, so I can try again at…
London Barcamp 9
So, picture the scene… I’m sat waiting on an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, and decide “you know what? I’m going to switch my phone back on” and the first alert I get is from Barcamp London, telling me I had a chance to nab a ticket off the waiting list, just as the plane starts to taxi…
Queue minutes of frantic fiddling as I try to remember my Eventbrite login details before the plane takes off. Thankfully, I got one, and I’m looking forward to seeing what a REALLY big barcamp looks like.
Public Parts and Publicness
So, my Twitter followers will know that I’ve been quite excited to get a hold of
Jeff Jarvis’ latest book “Public Parts”. I have to confess however that I’ve had little time to read it lately, and the few times I’ve tried to make time usually result in me waking up the next morning with a cold cup of tea on the sideboard, and the book neatly placed next to it. Thankfully, an hour’s flight to Dublin meant I got some time to catch up.
I’ll post a fuller review in time, but the hundred odd pages I’ve read so far have been quite enlightening. He offers a detailed insight into his life, and the advantages he (and others) have drawn from living an ‘open’ life on the web (he doesn’t advocate full disclosure, merely suggesting that there are advantages to be had by opening up). I must confess, I find it hard to disagree with anything in there. I too have found advantages employing many of the things he suggests. I’ve made good friends through Twitter, Google+, E-Mail Lists, my Blog and at Conferences. I’ve managed to reconnect with a part of my life I had feared I’d lost, and learnt more about photography than I ever could through formal education.
So, I think I’ll try to embrace the concept of publicness a bit more and see what happens.
October 11, 2011
So over the weekend, I spent the day down in the east end of London at Tweetcamp 2011. The conference explored the use of social media within life, work and everything in between. I was surprised to see the cross-section of people in attendance, which ranged from journalists to web designers through to marketing and PR people.
I ended up in a discussion on how you’d approach using Twitter in multiple languages. I got into an interesting chat with a woman working on the next generation of the web (and in particular the approach to a multiple language web). We ended up having a fascinating discussion over issues ranging from the best approach to social media through to how pubic services fail to address or take advantage of the developments in technology.
A fab conference, and a jolly good time.
In completely unrelated news, with my recent issues with my poorly work macbook, I came to the conclusion that I needed to address my approach to backups. I came to the conclusion that I’m both incredibly forgetful, and a little lazy when it comes to such things. My old approach was to connect a USB drive to the laptop (when I remembered) and let it finish. I looked over the backup logs and realised that before this weekend, I’d only backed up once in the last two months.
So, the best idea was to actually make the computer do it for me. Now, I wanted to have a local and eventually a remote backup. The local solution came in the form of an Apple Airport Extreme, which is now letting me share a hard drive over the network, which means that as long as the system is online in the house, I’m backing up my data. So, if the laptop gets broken, I have a backup. The next question is, what happens if the house burns down… What options do people use for a remote backup? I’ve seen adverts for services like Carbonite, but I’d like to get some recommendations from the rest of you.
So, until next time
B
October 06, 2011
News hit the world today that Steve Jobs lost his long fight with cancer. I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on his contributions to the industry in particular and to society at large. Whether or not you like Apple (I happen to quite like their products), there’s no denying the Jobs’ impact on our world. The initial release of the Apple I back in 1976 challenged the perception that computers were tools of business, through to the launch of their retail stores, the launch of the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010 as well as challenging the preconceptions about what a computer was and how it should look. Jobs’ influence has pervaded every aspect of the industry.
Rest in peace Mr Jobs. You’ll be missed.
October 03, 2011
The blog has been quiet for a reason. I have been doing absolutely nothing recently. After the National 12 and the Welsh 10 mile, we had a couple of club 10s left and my times started to creep up again. I think I had peaked around the National 12 and was heading downhill again so I threw in the towel. It had been a great season for me and it has ignited a real interest in the open time trial scene.
I took September off and invested heavily in my beer gut, managing to put on a whole stone by the time I weighed in yesterday morning. It’s scary just how quickly things can degrade when sedentary. I also noticed myself feeling a bit depressed during this time, perhaps due to the lack of any adrenaline or endorphins. The hair on my legs grew back almost as quickly as the spare tyre too.
I did use this time, however, to investigate and plan the following season and winter training. I have decided to adopt the famous Black Book training plan by Peter Read. All it requires is a turbo trainer, a bike and a heart rate monitor. I have all of those items and have set up the summer road bike permanently on the turbo in the shed. This morning at 6:30 AM I stumbled across the garden and mounted up for the first time in a month. The next hour was spent at Peter Reads Level 2 (75% MHR) or in my case 160BPM. I went by feel and over exactly 1 hour I nailed an average of 160 so must be gauging my pace well. It felt good to be back but It felt much harder than it should have. I’m sure things will soon improve. Legs were ceremoniously shaven in the shower afterwards. If only the gut could be removed as easily.
September 26, 2011
So, this Sunday I finally hit the ‘Deactivate My Account’ button on Facebook.
Why? I’d like to pretend it’s because of some massive ideological issue, or that I’m making a stand on X or Y, but honestly it’s because I’m bored of it. Yes, a privacy issue was the final straw, but there’s little more to it than that.
So, the final straw came after Facebook announced some changes over the last week at its F8 conference, where it announced a re-design to the interface, and some API tweeks. For me, the most interesting were to do with the ability of partners such as Spotify to automatically post what you’re listening to on your wall. The same system could also be used for sites like the New York Post to post the articles you’ve read, and as soon as they get a law repealed, what films you’ve watched in Netflix.
Now, the normal response to this sort of thing is that you’ve opted in to using the service, and if you don’t want Facebook to track what you’re up to, then log out. Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, except for a rather interesting article Logging out of Facebook is not enough where a blogger called Nik Cubrilovic shares his insights into how the Facebook login cookies work. It seems that even when logged out, Facebook can still obtain and track your activities when you visit a website with any of its elements loaded (e.g. the ‘Like’ button). In my view, this is a particularly underhanded thing to do, since the logout should be the last interaction you have with that website. By surreptitiously gathering user data with (what is essentially) a hidden bit of code, Facebook is spying on those users who’ve made an effort to take their privacy seriously.
So, that was the straw, but it’s a decision I’ve been putting off for some time now. I only really got into the whole thing because my Ex kept bothering me to join the damned thing. What I realised is that the 300-odd people I have listed as “friends” are either those I lost contact with years ago (people I went to primary/secondary school with), people I follow on Twitter/Google+, or people I email on a semi-regular basis. What little time I invested in it isn’t showing a return, and I’ve got better things to do with my time.
Am I saying you lot should leave it too? Honestly, I don’t know. If you feel like you’re getting something out of it, then keep using it. Otherwise, consider if you really need a way to keep in touch with that annoying guy you went to primary school with who keeps posting pictures of his drunken nights out in your old home town, or that girl you knew at University who keeps posting pictures of her kids. Like me, you’ll probably discover that you’ve grown so far apart, you won’t miss them at all.
Now, back to work…
B
September 13, 2011
Friends, I’ve ridden my hobby horse called ‘S4C rant’ to death. I’ve suggested things, had feedback both good and bad, and even got a few lines back from their press office. Sadly, I fear they’re not wanting any help. I imagine they’re all cruising along to somewhere, rudderless and taking on water, in denial that there’s anything wrong, convinced they’ll make it… somewhere (with “Nearer, My God, to Thee” playing softly in the background).
With a hat-tip to Leighton Andrews AM, I saw this article in the Western Mail about University of Wales failing to back a researcher over a critical report of S4C and I can honestly say I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Based on the Western Mail’s report, it seems that the report is pretty damning of the management, the strategy and pretty much everything going. Nothing said in the report is of any surprise to anyone who’s been watching what S4C is up to.
It goes on to say in the article that S4C now apparently wants its money back. To me, that says quite a lot about them. They commissioned the report to supposedly find out what they’re doing wrong, someone has told them and they don’t like the answer (confirming pretty much exactly what the report is supposed to have said). This type of a report should be the mother of all alarm clocks, shouting a quote I’ve cannibalised from a Risky Business blog post from a few weeks ago…
“LOOK AT THE GIGANTIC FUCKING ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM ZOMG WHY CAN’T YOU SEE IT??? ITS TRUNK IS IN YR COFFEE FFS!!!”
Honestly, I think I’ve coasted far past the point at which any normal person would have given up. I’m now at the point where I doubt anything can be done to save it, which is something I that find truly dispiriting.
B
Well the end of my season has arrived with the end of the school holidays and an apparent drop in my form. I decided to listen to my body and take a month off before building up the base miles in October.
It’s been a great few months since I last updated. I moved focus from the criterium / circuit racing side of the sport to Open Time Trials. Most club cyclists will be familiar with 10 mile TTs as they are the backbone of many a UK club these days. We run one every wednesday in-season and I had seen some great improvements in the past year, having gone from a mid 27 minute 10 mile down to a mid 24. I thought that I was now at a level where I could try my hand at the next level up, the Open scene.
Open TTs are run under Cycling Time Trials regulations and need to be entered 10 days in advance with details from the CTT handbook. Once I’d worked out how to fill the entry forms, I entered a number of events in South Wales. Usually riders would start with a 10 or 25 mile TT and many will never compete at any distance longer than this. I was drawn into TTs by some friends who were entering the Welsh 12 hour championship. In this event you ride for 12 hours and record the longest distance you can. A baptism of fire in TT circles, but what the hell. I’d done 120 miles on the Dragon Ride and than was hilly. How bad could it be?
Not to bad on the legs but very painful in other areas apparently! I rode the event on what was probably one of the hottest days of the year in Wales. Temperatures hit 28C in the mid afternoon. The Welsh 12 is very well supported by roadside helpers with wet sponges, ice cream cones full of rice pudding, drinks, food bags and lots of encouragement. I was pacing myself by heart rate after a visit to the sport science lab to gauge an effort level which I could maintain for 12 hours. I kept to this for about 2 hours before upping the pace, fearing it was too slow. I was able to keep the higher pace but was hampered by problems with saddle pains later in the ride. This forced me off the bike for longer and longer periods. In the end I was off the bike for an hour and a half and recorded a distance of 201 miles.
After the 12, I was due to enter the Welsh 100 mile championship a few weeks later. This was a lot easier on the body as I had ordered a new saddle which alterd the way you sit entirely. Although not recommended to trial a new saddle in a long distance race, I figured it was better than the alternative I suffered in the 12. It was fine on the day and I managed to complete the distance in 4:32:56.
Next up was a 50 mile. I decided to pace this differently and split the event into 10 mile chunks which were displayed to me on the computer as I rode. This helped me keep a much faster pace and recorded a 2:08:36 which I was very happy with.
After the Welsh 12, I was disappointed that I hadn’t covered more distance. Whilst feeling strong mid-season, I entered the National 12 hour championships to try and better my PB. I put another 30 miles onto my distance bringing my 12 hour PB up to 230.90 miles on what was a tough course in the middle of the day with headwinds and rough road surface.
Finally I entered a 10 mile TT on the same bit of A40 which is common to the Welsh 12, the Welsh 100 and the Welsh 50. I certainly knew that bit of concrete Dual Carriage way well by now and a few club mates were entered too. This was my chance to record a 23 minute time. Unfortunately on the day I suffered up the drag to the turn and was only able to equal my PB from our much slower local Llety Gwyn course (24:34). This PB will have to wait for next season to be beaten.
September 11, 2011
So, following the runaway success of last week’s adventures into audiobook land, I’m back again with another. This week I’ve finished off The Thank You Economy by the manically enthusiastic Gary Vaynerchuk who rose to prominence on the internet for Wine Library TV. Vaynerchuck explores (in his insanely enthusiastic style) how to use tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to better interact and engage with your customers and users. He devotes large passages of his book to discuss how ‘traditional’ businesses need to make inroads into this world, and that they need to push forward their efforts to engage with customers via new media, rather than putting all of their money into traditional advertising. My favourite passage was his exploration of new media campaigns, and where he thinks they’ve done well or done badly (from Old Spice’s failure to capitalise on the gains made by the “I’m on a Horse” campaign, through to the little ‘human’ touches of the Joie de Vivre Hotel company).
Vaynerchuck’s over-riding theme is that social tools mean that customers have a megaphone to tell their friends, and the public at large if they’ve had a bad experience with a company that doesn’t care. His premise is that if you engage, and show that you’re approaching it as a genuine opportunity to interact, one of your competitors will, and you’ll lose out.
On a technical note, the audiobook comes out to 5hrs and 41 minutes and the version I listened to was read by the author himself. I don’t know how familiar you all are with Vaynerchuck’s work, but he presents it in his rather unique style. I’m pretty sure that the book would be at least an hour shorter if it wasn’t for Vaynerchuck’s ‘off script’ moments. These moments though reflect his passion for a subject he believes in quite strongly, and therefore add a significant amount to the book.
Until next time.
B
September 06, 2011
So, I was introduced prior to a conference in 2010 to a new website called
Lanyrd.com. It’s the brainchild of
Natalie Downe and
Simon Willison, and was apparently written in a hotel room in Casablanca (three months into their honeymoon).
It’s designed as a social conference directory, letting users compile an elegant page to list attendees, speakers, trackers and event coverage. You connect your Twitter account to the site, and it links your friends together, the conferences they’re attending and gives you links to any presentations they’ve made.
As an example, you can see below my profile looks a bit like this:
It links out to slide decks, videos and photos of any talks or events I’m involved with.
One of the reasons I want to talk about them is my experience with them today. I was populating the page for an event I’m involved with, and thought it’d be nice to see sub-venues (you know, rooms within a conference venue) and was prompted by a message “Chat with Lanyrd”. I figure… nothing to lose, so I send them a message to ask about it. I get a message back from Sophie, explaining it was a feature they’re implementing, but in the meantime I should email the details through to their support team.
So, I send the e-mail off, and an hour later I get a note back from Lanyrd telling me the whole thing is done. Damned good going I thought.
The Lanyrd guys I think are a walking demonstration of the way a company like this should work. They’re active in dealing with their customers and refining a product that delivers (to borrow a Zuckerberg phrase) “elegant organisation” to the wealth of conferences that happen all over the world.
The 7th is their 1st birthday, they’ve just secured a new round of seed funding. I wish them every luck in the future, and look forward to getting to meet them in the future.
September 04, 2011
Since my work has me traveling quite a bit, I opted some time ago to sign up for
Audible‘s ‘One Book a Month Plan’ (signing up through
TWiT‘s offer code).
I figured that, to avoid descending into another round of ranty blogposts, I’d instead list off the audiobooks I’ve listened to this week, and the ones I’ve got left on my listening list.
So, this week’s audiobook is Jeff Jarvis’ “What Would Google Do?”. In which he shares his thoughts on the lessons that Google can teach us in the worlds of business, education, finance, real-estate and more. He defines his first law as “Give the people control and we will use it; don’t and you will lose us.” which, without realising it is one of the things I’d suggested for S4C in an earlier blogpost I’d made. He writes a far more eloquent description of his book here Buzz Machine: The WWGD? World.
You can find “What Would Google Do?” on Audible.co.uk.
So, my upcoming list is:
If you’ve got any audiobook recommendations, please feel free to share them in the comments below.
Thanks!
B
September 01, 2011
So, I found out last night about the launch of a new educational product by an Anglesey based company called ‘
Dysgu Gyda Sam‘ (Learning with Sam). This is a series of educational programs devised to help 3-6 years old learn Welsh (before we go on, let’s just set aside whether or not you think teaching Welsh to kids is a good idea – I happen to think it is). So, you might think I’d like this idea, and in principle I do. The problem has to do with the implementation.
Y’see, they’ve not launched an app, or a website… they’ve done it on CD-ROM.
Yeah, you heard me… a CD-ROM.
This in itself is bad enough, but the company proudly states on their website that they got help and support by the Welsh Assembly Government backed ‘Menter Môn’ (an Anglesey Business Development Quango) to make this. What’s more, the support came as a result of Menter’s ”Bauhaus Project” (which aims to foster innovation and new products from companies on the Island).
I’ll also pause so you can enjoy that little irony.
Seriously… what the hell? (I did have something stronger there, but it wouldn’t translate well)
How does a company get publicly funded help (and possibly grants) develop a CD-ROM product under a project aimed to foster innovation? Who the hell still considers CD-ROMs to be innovative? The character they’ve developed seems to be quite good, but their decision to lock all this up in a 3 part series of CD-ROMs (with the associated books) for £35 each will (in my view) kill the product and the character. I was part of the first generation to be exposed to ‘educational’ CD-ROMs, and I can tell you that they were utterly useless. They were shiny bits of plastic that were all too easy to lose or damage (and at that point quite expensive to replace).
In its current incarnation, the product would have been innovative 10 or 15 years ago, but in this grand and shiny post-PC, web 2.0, Appstore future we now live in, CD-ROMs just simply don’t cut it. What’s even more startling to me is that the whole system (based on what I can deduce from the tech specs on the site) works through the browser (the minimum system specs calls for a 450mhz processor as a minimum – seriously, was this developed in the 90s?), and requires Safari 3.0 (released in 2007) or Internet Explorer 6 (released in 2001) as a minimum – with no mention of Google Chrome.
I should probably add at this point that Dysgu Sam are the unfortunate victims of my simmering rage at this issue, and I appologise to them in advance if they feel that this is a direct attack against them. I’m sure they’re really lovely people, but they’ve been seriously let down. They’ve clearly gone to Menter Môn with a sound concept, but have been let down by people at multiple stages who should have asked “is a CD-ROM really the best way to go?”. To their credit, Dysgu Gyda Sam did respond via their Twitter page (@dysgusam) to one of my Haclediad co-presents Sioned (@llef) that developing a mobile app is one of the ideas they’re investigating. I fear though that they’ve missed out on an opportunity to develop something truly innovative by locking themselves into a format that has no future. Rumours continue to abound that Apple plans to drop optical drives from their range, which the rest of the industry is sure to follow if it turns out to be true.
The ideal way to launch this kind of a product would have been as an iOS/Android app, with a tie-in website. The character they’ve created would have been instantly engaging, and the kinaesthetic nature of touch-screen devices would have meant that kids would be able to interact with it all by themselves, rather than having parents supervise a 3yo trying to use a mouse (I’ve spoken to many tech-savvy parents who are still amazed by how easily their very young children are able to pick up and use touch-based devices unaided).
Menter Môn needs to seriously re-consider their definition of the term ‘innovative’. CD-ROMs have not been an innovative technology for well over 15 years now, and the person who either guided Dygsu Gyda Sam down the CD-ROM avenue, or didn’t question their use of an outmoded technology has serious questions to answer. To my mind is further evidence for my pet rant on how Governments and Institutions in Wales haven’t a clue when it comes to technology, and seemingly get led down the garden path by sharp suited sales guys. We’ve seen that WAG was using Windows NT for years (as a result it seems of a support contract stipulation), S4C’s complete inability to get going on streaming/web based TV and social media (something they’re only just starting to rectify), and Y Lolfa’s troubles in getting Amazon to release their books on the Kindle store.
Wales is falling badly behind on this type of innovation, and falling further behind on such innovations in Welsh. To my mind, the future health and the existence of the language depends on our ability to produce modern and relevant content in a way that fits with new consumption models. Anyone still developing CD-ROMs or such anachronistic media should pack it in. Google, Apple and the tech giants are leading us merrily towards the cloud, and if innovation programs like the Menter Môn’s Bauhaus project isn’t fostering *that* kind of development, then it’s failing the people of they’re trying to help, and more importantly, the future of Wales.
I’m going to lie down in a dark room now.
B
P.S.
In the event that Dysgu Sam or Menter Môn want to come back to me with a response, I’d be happy to update this article (I’ll give your responses a full airing, even if I’m completely wrong and have to retract the article — infact, I sincerely hope I’m wrong). The reason for my ire is simply that I take technology seriously, and I’m deeply frustrated when I see nice ideas like Dysgu Sam’s being let down by poor technology choices. You can reach me in the comments field, by email (see the ‘About’ page, or through my twitter page @bryns)
August 28, 2011
Regular readers (yes, both of you…) may have noticed the subtitle of my blog still reads:
Avoiding arrows by the City walls
This was a reference to what many people in Chester believed to be an old law which allowed for a Welshman to be shot by a crossbow if he was within the City Walls after dark.
Since I’ve now moved away, the subtitle doesn’t really work, so I figured it was probably a good idea to get it updated. Problem is, I’ve no idea what it should be.
Does anyone out there have a suggestion?
B
August 27, 2011
I’ve been trying to write this one for a few days now. Each time I start, I end up thinking “christ, that’s a bit dull…” and delete the whole thing.
I’ve been settling into my new job, and found that I’m really enjoying it. I’d been questioning around the end of last year if I was actually working in the right industry, but the recent change has reminded me of why I enjoyed in the job in the first place.
So, my focus now is switching to trying to decide whereabouts I’d like to live in the long term. I have to say that the idea of living in London is quite appealing, so I’d be able to get into town to enjoy a lot of the rather fab pubs dotted all over the place (one of which featured Somerset based Moor Beer Company’s Illusion IPA). I’m thinking that I’d like to live down the western end, down in the Ealing area. I think it would offer the best balance of being near the centre, and being close enough to get out of the city relatively quickly.
So, this weekend I’m up in Mytholmroyd to celebrate Gareth 33rd birthday. Gareth has, more than most people been one of my closest friends, and I’m really happy to be here to celebrate his birthday.
Happy Birthday, old man.
B
August 14, 2011
Congratulations to Liz and Simon, who got married this weekend in Coventry. I’m really happy for the two of them, and really glad I could be there with them to share in the day with them.
Everything else is great, work going well, enjoying everything… more to come in the next few days.
