There is a fair bit of Te reo Māori (Māori language) in the book. It's great that the language is enjoying a resurgence. Most concepts are explained in context - although you may need to rely on your eReader's dictionary function a few times.

Ideas like ‘social licence’ for me is hōhā, terrible, because it’s based on the fact that the government has trust. I think that’s a fundamental assumption that the government doesn’t have the right to assume, especially after 180-plus years of colonisation.

Some of the lessons it teaches are specifically relevant in a Māori context - for example whether the local iwi may only have signed and acknowledge He Whakaputanga and not Te Tiriti. But the lessons are broadly applicable to to every community.

It really focuses on the systemic issues which can lead to people being (self) excluded from fully participating in digital life:

As well as general mistrust of government, there is a lot of intergenerational ill-feeling in Māori communities and organisations about over-consultation by researchers and government staff.

It doesn't just focus on Māori issues - there are lots of stories about how participatory design should be used to ensure services are move inclusive and equitable.

When the NZ COVID Tracer app was first launched in 2020, the mandatory and seemingly simple act of placing QR code posters in shops and cafés excluded certain sectors of the community. Many businesses displayed the posters in places inaccessible to wheelchair users, which made them unable to comply with the directive to scan in.

It's a great book for the modern digital practitioner with a social conscience.

This is a book about helping you discover if that idea you've had - for a product, feature, book, business, whatever - is likely to catch on. It does this through the lens of understanding users.

The Really Good Idea Test puts people at the heart of innovation, rather than the other way around.

Essentially, it's a series of worksheets - provided free - which help you get answers to the seven questions which make up the test. And all the questions are not ones you ask of yourself - but of your potential users. The whole attitude to the book can be summed up in one early paragraph:

I have seen innovators spend a lot of time diving into the feasibility, where the question is ‘Can we technically do it?’ and working on the viability, where the question is ‘Can it scale?’. The question they ought to be asking before getting too deeply into those is about desirability, which is the question of ‘Is there a user problem, need and/or desire?’. We must start here.

Yes! How many times have you (or your colleagues) started diving into building a solution before finding out if it actually solves a problem faced by your customers or users?

The book walks through several relatable examples. This is not a Silicon Valley book of daring and inspirational examples. Instead it is relentlessly practical. And, thus, avoids the survivorship bias most books choose by looking only at winners.

My only (mild) criticism is Julia's over-use of exclamation marks. But, having chatted with her several times, that is exactly how she talks! Absolutely 100% full of enthusiasm and joy. Frankly, more books need to be this accessible and friendly.

what about gift giving? No one I have ever asked has thought that an e-book was an acceptable substitute for a printed book when giving a gift.

I've received an eBook as a gift (thanks David!) and it was perfectly acceptable. It was nice to receive, and didn't feel like any less than a gift. I got rid of most of my physical books a few years ago. Receiving a paper book is also nice - but it comes with the burden of having to dust it, shelve it, and deal with its bulk when I come to move.

Similarly, some friends got me a lovely CD as a gift (thanks Sookie & Emo!) and it took me a few days to find a CD player! A digital copy might have been easier to use play - if we were all using the same music service.

And, I think that's the real reason why digital gift giving hasn't gone mainstream - the infrastructure doesn't support it.

Is it possible?

Some platforms just don't allow you to send digital content as gifts. For example, PlayStation doesn't support gifting. You can send a gift voucher to a friend, but there's no way to buy them Day of the Tentacle.

Others are laggards. Amazon only recently supported giving eBooks as gifts in the UK.

But even if you can send a gift, can the recipient receive it?

Platform lock in

I don't have iTunes. If someone gifts me the latest Spice Girls album, I'd have to sign up for an account, download iTunes, and find a way to get music onto my Android phone.

If I give someone a DVD, they can play it on any DVD player. If I gift an Amazon movie they need the right TV, dongle, broadband speed, and online account.

There's no way for me to buy a digital voucher for "SpiceWorld: The Spice Girls Movie" - and have it redeemable on the recipient's choice of platform.

Similarly, I could buy a DRM-free copy of a book - but I'd need to know whether the recipient can read ePub or not (hint - Kindle can't unless it is manually converted).

Information leakage?

Some stores do let you give digital gifts. Steam, the video game shop, lets you do that. With one interesting detail:

How can I tell if my friend already owns the game(s) I would like to gift? If your friends are members of your Steam Friends list, you can learn whether they already own the game you'd like to give. Steam FAQ

For a social gaming experience like Steam, it may make sense for your friends to know what games you have. But do you want all your friends knowing you own an eBook copy of "Spice Up Your Life: The Authorised Biography of the Spice Girls"?

Audible - the audio book company - handle this quite well:

What happens if I buy somebody a book they already have? If you give a book that the other person already has in their library, we'll give them a credit or coupon they can use to choose something else. Audible gift FAQ

Abuse

Steam only lets you give gifts to people on your friends list. What's the potential for abuse if you can send a gift to anyone with an email address?

I'm sure you could think of a dozen ways you could annoy or harass someone if you could send them gifts without prior permission.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

At the moment, there are limited options for giving of specific digital gifts. If a store allows it, you can buy a digital gift and then hope your friend is on that specific platform.

Is there a better way?

‘Understanding how the zeros and ones increasingly influence and control our lives is critical to understanding how we can reciprocate influence and control back onto those zeros and ones.’ This vital book is a call to action: to reduce online harm, to protect the integrity of our digital lives and to uphold democratic participation and inclusion. A diverse group of contributors reveal the hidden impacts of technology on society and on individuals, exploring policy change and personal action to keep the internet a force for good. These voices arrive at a crucial juncture in our relationship to fast-evolving technologies.

Possibly the most important and timely book I've read about the state of Digital Policy. Written in the aftermath of the horrific fascist/terrorist attacks on New Zealand - and in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis - this book examines some of the knotty problems facing Aotearoa.

This is not a parochial, inward facing text. All the problems it identifies are applicable worldwide. It presents a compelling case on how we should construct digital policy as we emerge from the shadow of COVID.

The section on Indigenous People's data rights, and the colonialism present in the current infrastructure, has lots of Te Reo (Māori language) phrases. That can be a bit intimidating for a newcomer - but it's nothing that a few minutes with a decent dictionary can't fix.

There were two particularly interesting questions that I was left with.

1. What's the carbon footprint of, say, GOV.UK? Do we make enough use of renewable energy? Can we schedule computationally heavy tasks for times when green energy is at its peak?
2. How do we make the language we use more inclusive? We need to take people on a journey, and if they can't understand our acronyms and jargon, we lose them.

The book is available DRM free from https://www.bwb.co.nz/

As I left court, I asked if there was anything they needed me to fill in or sign. They said there wasn't. I just sort of assumed that I wouldn't get any expenses back - my travel was mostly within my regular season ticket anyway.

Then this dropped on my doorstep.

A hand written envelope. Let's ignore the fact they've misspelled my name (I won't ignore this). Does this mean that every witness in the country requires someone to handwrite an envelope and stuff something in?

That's ridiculously inefficient and error prone.

Let's take a look at the contents. Again! Handwritten. Print on demand is a thing, you know!

I also need to figure out if I'm a "Ordinary" or "Professional" witness - because someone at the CPS has forgotten to tick the box.

Now, that wouldn't be so bad - send them my bank details and let them work out how much I'm owed. But it isn't that easy.

More Forms!

That was just the start - here is the rest of the form: Three more pages! Some of which simply aren't relevant to me as an "Ordinary" witness.

Why do I need to fill this out? The court knows how long I was there. They know what sort of witness I was. If I lie, they'll cross-check - so why not pre-fill this as well?

Where's the online form? I've checked on the CPS website - and there isn't even a template so I can type it up and email it over.

How Hard?

This 4 page form is, apparently, so difficult to complete that it comes with another 4 pages of guidance. Pro-tip, if your guidance is as long as your form - rethink your form design.

How Much?

The form and guidance also came with another guidance form. This 2-pager explaining how much I can claim.

So I have to read the guidance, fill in the form, then manually do maths to make sure it's worth my time claiming. And, I suppose, once the form is received, someone else needs to check all my details again to make sure I've not accidentally over-claimed or under-claimed.

Grumpy

Bad form design makes me grumpy. Non-digital forms make me grumpy. Handwriting makes me grumpy. Misspelling my name makes me grumpy.

Nothing about this experience is delightful.

Dealing with court stuff shouldn't be frivolous - but it doesn't need to be so enraging.

GRRRRR!

How I'd Improve It

• This could easily be done at court.
  • Either get the witnesses to fill out a form while waiting, get a volunteer to help them, or hand them a pre-printed form on the way out.
• If it has to be posted, at least include a covering letter saying something like:

"thank you for attending court. The justice system only works because people like you are prepared to take time out of their busy lives to act as witnesses. We realise that you may have spent money travelling to court - so we want to pay you back."

• Make a separate form for Ordinary and Professional witnesses.
• Test the form with users to make sure it's as easy to complete as possible.
• Incorporate the guidance into the form, rather than having it as a separate sheet.
• Don't handwrite envelopes - or manually stuff them.
• Put the form online.

I don't think any of these are radical solutions. They could all be easily trialled to see which were effective.

Do the hard work to make things easy

I work for a different part of the Civil Service. I'm incredibly grateful that they let me attend court as a witness without it impacting my pay. My true expenses were £3 for a tube journey I otherwise wouldn't have taken. I could also claim £2.25 in subsistence allowance.

Is it worth me bothering with this form to claim a fiver?

September 2017 - I was standing by a bus stop when I noticed a man playing with his phone while driving. So I snapped a couple of photos of him and his car.

London's Metropolitan Police have an excellent, mobile friendly, web portal for reporting traffic incidents. www.met.police.uk/roadsafelondon/ I dutifully filled it in. There's no ability to add photos or videos to it though.

A couple of days later I received an email from the police - could I please send them the photos I'd taken?

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @edentThe police have asked me to delete my photo as they intend to prosecute the driver!

Distracted drivers are dangerous. pic.x.com/pj4qdwibzm

---

Email is basically secure enough for this sort of thing, right? So far, so digital.

And then nothing. Not a sausage. I assumed that was the end of the matter.

Fast forward 6 months and I received this letter in the post. Would I be willing to attend court as a witness? Why yes, yes I would. And this is where my digital journey ended.

I was asked to fill in an attached paper form and post it off. There was no Stamped Addressed Envelope included, so I tried ringing the phone number. After 10 minutes on hold I gave up. So I dropped an email to the named officer. No reply.

A few days before the court date, I tried to look up details of upcoming cases online. They simply don't exist. There's an information dead-zone around local courts. So I rung up. After a mere 15 minutes on hold I was told the case was still on!

I turned up and sauntered through the metal detector. A lovely volunteer from Citizens Advice met me and took me to the waiting room. She checked my name (but not my ID), wrote it on a bit of paper, then disappeared.

She re-appeared a few minutes later. Checked the spelling of my name, checked the details of the case, scribbled them down, then wandered off to her office.

And then reappeared! She'd found the case at last. She read me a copy of their GDPR statement and asked if I was happy to be contacted afterwards. I didn't get an electronic - or paper - copy, but I agreed anyway.

I was shown a picture of the court to help me understand where I would be sitting. I say "picture" - it was a poorly drawn diagram which had be photocopied so many times as to be gloriously indistinct. It was also incorrect; the court I was to be in had a different layout.

I waited and waited and waited. Justice takes time. But there was lots to read in the waiting room.

The prosecutor finally met me. She was sorry for the delay, but the defendant wanted to plead guilty to a lesser offence. His phone had merely fallen off the cradle and I'd caught him as he was putting it back.

"That's not what the photos show," I said.

"Oh? Really? I've only got black and white copies..." And, indeed she had. Somewhere between the Met and the CPS, my statement had been printed out and either scanned or faxed.

I showed her the full-colour and full-resolution photos on my phone.

"You can clearly see that he's holding the phone and pinch-zooming it."

Her eyes lit up. "I'm not accepting that behaviour! Wow! You can see it so clearly! I'm going to ask him about that. Are you happy showing the magistrates your phone if they ask?"

I said I was, and she dashed out of the room never to be seen again. Half an hour later, Witness Services collected me. The accused had plead guilty and I was free to go, without the trauma of testifying.

A few days later I rang the court. I wanted to know what the outcome of the case was. The friendly lady at the end of the phone line said "Oooh! I can't tell you that. Because of... errr... data protection?"

Aside - no, GDPR does not give criminals the right to have their sentences kept private.

I rang the next day and got someone competent. The driver was fined £230, had to pay £30 as a victim surcharge, and £250 costs.

Most importantly, he was instantly disqualified from driving.

So, lets recap:

• Report crime online - excellent!
• Send evidence via email - good.
• Request to be a witness via post - annoying.
• No easy way to reply digitally - inconvenient.
• Court hearing information not online - bad.
• Witness check-in all paper-based - disappointing.
• Evidence not sent digitally - very bad.
• Court case outcomes not reported online - bad.

The justice system as a whole has to do better at being digital.

I am a Grade A+, certified, undeniable plonker.

The man in the hire car office looked at me with barely concealed contempt. Fair, really. He'd asked for my Driver's Licence and I'd collapsed to my knees at the sudden realisation that the slim plastic card was 1,700 miles away from the Canary Islands.

"I am sorry sir, but there is really nothing I can do."

My wife was hobbling around on crutches due to a sprained ankle and we were staying in a villa literally off the beaten track. A week of getting taxis everywhere would be expensive - assuming they could even find our lodgings!

Then, inspiration struck! I remembered that as part of the changes to the UK Driving Licence, the DVLA had created an online portal to allow you to share your licence information with hire car companies.

I ran to the only spot in the villa with WiFi, connected my phone, and hurriedly entered my information into https://www.gov.uk/view-driving-licence and was instantly rewarded with...

A blessed PDF containing all my information and a code with which to view the information online.

Would that be enough? My wife - who is far more intelligent, practical, and resourceful than I - suggested that I check directly with the hire car company's head office.

Woo!

Yet, another taxi back to the airport. The gruff gentleman had been replaced with an amiable woman who, on presentation of my credentials sadly sighed and said "Ah, no. It is impossible. Full licence only."

I pleaded with her and showed the email from her HQ. She sighed again and dialled the phone. There was a period of intensely fast Spanish, some of it shouted. It culminated with "¿Si? ¿En serio? ¿Si? ¿Estás seguro? OK!"

She put down the phone, looked me in the eye, and said "The British are very strange. Everything on the Internet!" She duly took down my details, photocopied my phone, and handed me the keys to a turquoise Citroen.

So, a million thanks to the digital elves at DVLA. Their dedication to making the UK a leader in online infrastructure provided me with tangible help when I needed it most.

Once I went to university, I stopped going to the library. Even university libraries are pretty poor for computer science books - and the ability to buy cheap paperbacks online obliterated my need to visit them. It wasn't until Surrey libraries started offering digital borrowing that I even thought about my local library. Nowadays, I'm found there once a week teaching computer programming to kids.

The popular children’s-author Terry Deary says that libraries are obsolete and, in these times of austerity, we shouldn't feel bad about them closing down.

Naturally, this has outraged both traditional and progressive authors.

Neil Gaiman

@neilhimself

Selfish & stupid, shortsighted & sad. Mostly selfish. Terry Deary gets avaricious & anti-library: bit.ly/15de7Ve

---

Even regular people seem to think that libraries ought to be preserved.

Neil Gaiman

@neilhimself

Selfish & stupid, shortsighted & sad. Mostly selfish. Terry Deary gets avaricious & anti-library: bit.ly/15de7Ve

---

Metty

@_Metonymy_

Replying to @neilhimself@neilhimself what?!? Our library is like the center of our community! Tons of events happen there, and it is always packed

---

(I've picked those two statuses more-or-less at random, there are thousands of people who tweeted Neil about this.)

What it comes down to is asking "what is a library for?"

When I've expressed the opinion that high-street shopping needs to die off, someone always says to me "But old folk like going out shopping - it's their only chance to interact and chat with people."

The is a skeuomorph solution. We're keeping alive a vestigial part of society when really, we ought to be re-engineering it. We wouldn't say "electric car engines should be designed in such a way that they should be started by hand cranks and towed by horses," would we?

The solution for pensioners' social lives isn't necessarily coupled with a retail experience - we should have decent care, community centres, and services which meet people's needs.

It's exactly the same with libraries.

Last month, I wrote about the proper use of the library. It's no longer solely about borrowing books or looking up back issues of periodicals. It's about the Internet, a community meeting space, a learning environment. Being the rampant egotist that I am, I'll quote myself:

The proper use of a library is a space where people can feel safe and enjoy free access to culture.

Let me spell it out simply. Lending books is not what a library is for any more.

We need to decouple the idea of book loans from that of a library. All those people who say that their library is used for events, for poetry readings, for toodlers, for accessing the web, and for teaching kids to code - they're not talking about a building for book lending, they're talking about a community centre.

For readers and authors who are worried about people not discovering new books, or being unable to take a chance on a new author or genre, the ability for a random small town library to carry a specific book is vastly inferior to an author giving away free copies on their website.

Amazon is full of authors allowing their books to be downloaded for free (or at extremely low cost) in the hope that the reader will be sufficiently interested to buy the next book in the series.

Rethinking The Library

What would happen if we shut down all the libraries and gave everyone in the UK a Kindle?

(Aside from massive protests!)

Here's some back of the envelope calculation...

Unison have produced an excellent pamphlet about library provisions in the UK. In it, they estimate that the total expenditure on UK libraries in 2006 was £1,063,120,000.

A billion quid plus change. I assume that covers buying books, staffing, buildings, etc. The Public Lending Right in the UK means that authors get paid when their book is borrowed from the library (6.2p per borrow, to a maximum of £6,600). According to the PLR, the total cost of this was £7.6 million in 2006. That's roughly 122,580,000 library borrows per year - a little over two per person.

I'm unsure if the £1 billion figure includes the PLR's £7.6 million - but let's say it does to err on the side of caution.

A basic eReader's cost ranges from £60 for a Kobo, to £70 for a Kindle, to £80 for a Nook. Let's assume that technology gets cheaper, that eReaders are treated like books for VAT purposes (0% rather than 20%), and economies of scale means that prices drop.

It's not a stretch of the imagination to say that next year a basic e-ink ereader could cost no more than £30. Indeed - the Txtr beagle eReader costs a mere £8. Yes, eight.

The billion pound yearly library budget costs roughly £20 per person per year.

So, dissolve all the libraries. Give everyone in the UK a voucher good for £30 off a qualifying eReader (you can buy the cheap as chips version or pay extra to get the Kindle HD Super Max Plus if you want).

With the remainder of the money, continue the Public Lending Scheme but tie it to a national digital library.

You can either borrow a book - in which case the state will pay the author. You can download a public domain books - for free. Authors can sell their books for whatever price they choose - or give them away.

Who loses? Every person - not just children - gets fast access to infinite knowledge, authors get exposure and get paid, vast sums of public money are saved, and we can use the remainder of the money to digitize our archives.

The physical buildings which house books can be converted into community centres, meeting places, Internet hubs - without the need to store books and insist on silence.

Rip, Mix, Burn

I don't mean we should literally set fire to libraries - nor their book collections.

Apple launched its iMac and integrated CD writer with the slogan "Rip, Mix, Burn".

The idea is simple. Rip the music out of your CDs or vynil and convert them to digital information, mix them up to create new things, burn the new tracks into the world.

And that's exactly what is needed with libraries. Rip the analogue books to digital formats, remix the services so they're more useful to people, burn the new way of experiencing culture into society.

As far as I can recall, we learned nothing about the English Dissenters - the radical sects which flourished after the English Civil War.

Then

As I've continued my informal education, two groups in particular stand out - the Levellers and the Diggers. To grossly oversimplify, the Levellers wanted democracy and religious freedom.

To quote Wikipedia, they wanted...

...extension of suffrage to include almost all the adult male population, electoral reform, for Parliament to be elected every two years, for religious freedom, and for an end to imprisonment for debt. They were committed broadly to the abolition of corruption within the Parliamentary and judicial process, toleration of religious differences, the translation of law into the common tongue and, arguably, something that could be considered democracy in its modern form...

Naturally, the law came down on them. They were harassed, imprisoned, driven from their homes, and executed. Today, they are barely remembered; their activities between 1645 to 1649 merely a historical footnote.

At least, they would have been if not for their writing.

In 1649, John Lilburne published the Agreement of the People - a document which eventually became the basis for the US Bill of Rights and heavily influenced the American Constitution.

After the Levellers came the Diggers. Again, to grossly oversimplify, they wanted the right to farm land in freedom. At a time when the state held unprecedented control over the people, and food prices were at an all time high, they engaged in civil disobedience and used the common land to produce their own food. By 1651 the entire movement was crushed. All that remains is their ideas of communitarian-ism as this rather wonderful song.

Now

As the half the Internet bleeds tears of sorrow over the death of Aaron Swartz, it feels to me like we need to recapture these old ideals.

Our leaders are corrupt, wealthy Barons restrict our access to the commons, the poor suffer while the rich commit crimes with impunity.

The very first domain I registered was called Digital Masons. Not out of any kinship with secret societies - but rather expressing the idea that, like medieval masons, the creators of the new digital economy were builders. A fact perfectly expressed in David Weinberger's eulogy for Swartz.

The figureheads of this nascent movement are ridiculed, pilloried, persecuted, and imprisoned. A few reach the upper echelons of Government or academia where they can be safely tamed or ignored.

Is it enough to write polemics on the web? No. Can we educate our politicians? Not without vast sums of cash. Protests and sit ins? Far too easily marginalised and ignored. Violence? Bows and arrows against the lightening,

We're left with building.

Building better tools, fairer protocols, more open systems, and ingraining openness in our personal and work lives.

We need to push our ideas on freedom, openness, and transparency. Push them into the world so they can never be lost. Like the Levellers brought forth the American Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Right, so we have to ensure that our ideas - our memes - endure.

What have you done today to support freedom?

Another year, another OpenTech. I found last year's OpenTech conference to be awe-inspiring. This year's was equally good.

This is a quick rundown of the sessions I attended that I found particularly interesting.

How can we win the Information Wars?

A roundup of what the Open Rights Group has been doing over the last year. Always good to hear from them. Interesting to learn about the tensions of being up against a company for some issues - yet supporting them in others. Good to see that they're still banging away at the digital civil liberties drum.

Ada Lovelace Day

Once again, Suw eloquently demonstrated the need to get more women interested in "tech" by promoting positive role models. The Finding Ada project runs an international event to help raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths.

Codifying sustainability

How can you trust what you read in a report?

The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 is wildly inaccurate, an academic says.

J Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University, says he believes the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

He is astonished they "misread 2350 as 2035".

Source: BBC News

In the "good old days" we relied on footnotes which, imperfectly, lead us to the original research.

The AMEE project aims to provide an unimpeachable set of references for every claim - allowing you to track the providence of a quote, statistic, or datum. Vitally important.

Building Digital Culture for Free: Can the Hacker Ethic and Comons-Based Peer Production make a better world?

Bill Thompson is always an entertaining speaker. Here, he was discussing whether "hackers" have won the culture wars. You can buy The Hacker Ethic on Amazon (including Kindle). Very reasonably priced.

This raised two interesting questions.

1. How many deaths were caused by Gutenberg and, ultimately, did his invention help propagate his world view? In other words, is Open Source being turned against us?
2. Are our inventions too disruptive to find acceptance in the mainstream?

At times, the questions started to get a bit political - especially around the true definition of Open Source.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

#opentech "SPLITTERS!" it's all getting a bit People's Front of Judea in here.

---

Fluffy and poisonous - Why UKuncut has worked and how you can help.

I've been reasonably impressed at how quickly UKuncut has gathered grass-roots support around what is, potentiall, a dull subject - tax avoidance. I doubt the trades-union would have been able to garner anything like the support we've seen for UKuncut.

But I question whether they have been all that effective. Vodafone's share price has risen dramatically and they are constantly among the top UK brands.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

#OpenTech I really don't think agitprop theatre has ever worked. I don't think @UKuncut is any different

---

(As I stated at the start of my question, I'm an ex-Vodafone employee and a current Vodafone shareholder.)

The answer I got back was well thought out and - to my mind - very helpful in understanding their aims.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

#OpenTech very impressed with @UKuncut's answers. Like the idea of "gateway activism" & memetic seeding.

---

Essentially, causing mass economic disruption to a company isn't a great way to make them change their behaviour and is very tricky to accomplish in the long term. UKuncut are playing the long-game with a meme. Essentially, going around saying "Don't you think she looks tired?"

Watching the Press

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

#opentech really impressed with @davorg's simple deconstruction of how the press lies.

---

I especially liked the demolition of the Winterval Myth

Outpost

This was Tim Ireland's idea to crowd-source fact-monitor all MPs. A fine and noble idea and very well presented.

My only concern is that it avoids becoming partisan. I don't care if Politician X is a socialist, capitalist, atheist, or church-goer. They shouldn't be attacked for that. They should be held to account for any dodgy-dealing, fact free agitating, and dishonest conduct. It'll be interesting to see how it develops.

QR Codes - easy access to data

My slot! Prior to the event, I was interviewed by Imperica. I spent the first half of the day sticking Avery labels with QR codes all over the building.

Video

Slides

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/qr-codes-at-opentech-2011/8054740

Reaction

I'll let other people commentate on my presentation.

Paul Brewer

@pdbrewer

#opentech QR codes trumps Google Refine as the most exciting thing. Snap the code on your camera and get data back - get data, link to data

---

Ann Griffiths

@anngriffx

future possibilities for use of QR codes - councils need to get with these opportunities #opentech http://yfrog.com/h891651009j

---

CycleStreets

@cyclestreets

Great #OpenTech quote on subversive use of QR codes "Your local graffiti laws may vary"

---

Mark Braggins

@markbraggins

Lots of great ideas here: RT @edent: Slides from my #OpenTech session on QR Codes http://slidesha.re/mIRVBw

---

Overall

An amazing and inspiring day. The entry cost per participant was £5. I've paid a lot more for worse conferences. I was glad to see so many civil servants there - hopefully they're getting the message.

I'll leave the final words to James Cattell. This sums up exactly what OpenTech is all about.

James Arthur Cattell

@jaCattell

Left #opentech with 2 questions:
What needs changing in the World?
What's stopping me from doing it?

---

BarCamp London

@barcamplondon

Replying to @edent@edent if you provide the cameras, the 20 person film / editing crew along with some budget sure ;) Its probably a bit much sorry!

---

Does It Need To Be So Hard?

We don't need expensive crews. We have each other! The very idea of BarCamps is that they should be self-organised. So, if you're going to BCL8 this year, here's what I would like you to do...

• Got a smartphone or a flip camcorder? Video the sessions you're in.
• Got a less-than-smart-phone or a dictaphone? Record the audio of the sessions you run or participate in.
• Got neither? Offer to hold someone else's tech while they present.

Before long, every single session will have coverage of some kind and us poor sods who can't make it will still be able to vicariously share in the pleasure of London's greatest Unconference.

Video

There are loads of places to stick video up on the web. But most services have time and size restrictions or want you to pay to store your video. YouTube is limited to 15 minutes (no good for 30 minute BarCamp sessions) and Vimeo is limited to 500MB per week (no good if you've filmed in HD).

Here are two free services which I think will suit the BarCamp Crowd.

Archive.org

Archive.org is

building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

I believe this to be the best place to store the record of our culture. Here's a video of me running a session at BarCamp Brighton. The video is hosted by Archive.org and can be downloaded in several formats.

Videos can be any length and any format. They'll be transcoded to MP4 and Ogg Video. Best of all, video can be uploaded via FTP - which makes queuing large uploads very easy. You can, of course, upload via your browser.

One point to note, videos have to be CreativeCommons or Public Domain.

There are already around 40 BarCamp videos on Archive.org.

Qik

If you have the bandwidth, Qik is the ideal place to stream and store video. I've found the application can be a little hit-and-miss - especially if WiFi coverage gets congested. Here's my presentation from BarCamp Transparency.

(Qik videos autoplay - click on the screenshot to see the video)

Streaming Services

There are loads of sites which will let you stream video from your laptop's webcam. Please - whatever service you use - make sure that it is also recording the stream. It greatly saddens me that the presentations from awesome events like CharityHackDay are lost forever. They were streamed and then promptly vanished.

Audio

Video can be overkill. It takes a lot of effort to upload and just as much to download. It's often simpler just to record audio. Even the most basic phones tend to have a "voice record" function. Once you've got the audio, there are a number of places you can put it.

AudioBoo

Everyone loves AudioBoo. It's a great way of saving audio - although it's currently only available on iPhone. If you don't have an iPhone, you can upload any sound file you like to their website and they'll convert and host it.

Here is a recording of my session at BarCamp Brighton.

I decided to separate the main body of the talk from the discussion which followed afterwards.

Archive.org

There's a whole bunch of BarCamp audio already up on Archive.org.

Audacity

If you want to edit your audio, I highly recommend Audacity. It's free, open source, and works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Collating

Ok, so every session is now recorded and stored somewhere on the Internet. How do we go about organising this mass of video and audio?

Let's look at how some other conferences have done it.

OpenTech

One of the great things about OpenTech was the effort put in by the organisers to ensure every talk was preserved on wax cylinders mp3. The session page is really well laid out and has links to audio and, in some cases, slides.

But what if you can't be bothered or don't have the time to manage a web page?

Lanyrd

Currently the darling of the conference scene, Lanyrd easily allows you to add "coverage" to sessions. You can attach notes, handouts, audio, video, slides, photos or links.

Privacy

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @barcamplondon@barcamplondon @cbetta @tommorris doesn't need anything expensive. Just one person in each session recording on their phone / flip.

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Richard Johnson

@chichard41

Replying to @edent@edent I recorded some videos of #bcl7 but they're massive to upload, some on my vimeo. Or some are "what's said in barcamp, stays in..."

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• Some people won't want their sessions recorded. Please ask presenters to check that they're happy to be immortalised.
• Everyone hates the sound of their own voice - do let people in the audience know if you're going to be recording.
• When in doubt, edit it out.

A Plea

I really want to attend BarCamp London. And BarCamp Manchester. And all the other BarCamps which I can't get to.

Please - if you can - record your session and upload it somewhere. Even a poorly shot, noisy, unedited video is better than none.

This is our digital heritage. We should be proud of what we create and ensure that it is available for posterity.