stickycontent.com Archives

It’s been a bit of a busy 7-10 days, but I’ve finally committed to filling in the unfortunate blog deficit.

– I’ve been chatting a fair bit to Howard Webster, the creator, writer, publisher, organiser and driving force behind The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore, which is ‘second generation graphic novel’, in that it mixes comics, old black and white archive footage, and live action shot with actors including British thespian Colin Salmon. Even more interesting for me is the fact that all the assets from the ‘official’ production can be downloaded and used to create user content, with mash-ups of audio, video etc. And if that wasn’t enough, Howard has an annoying habit of just coming out with other ground-breaking ideas in the middle of a conversation. In a 30 minute catch-up he came out with two or three evolutions of the idea, all of which could stand on their own. And all of which were very interesting. I won’t say more, but I’m currently writing a feature on the project for Disposable Media, out on June 28, so make sure you check it out.

– I’ve also been contacted by Catherine Toole from Sticky Content about a variety of things, including her forthcoming presentation at Online Marketing 2007. I have to say, from previous experience, and the teaser on the Sticky Content blog, it’ll be one of the presentations worth seeing, as it’s rare to see someone combining a obvious passion for social media, with a balanced view of what can go wrong, and then coming up with the solutions that brands and managers often need spelt out for them. I’m just working out whether I can justify a day or two out of the office to pop down and give my support.

-Before this gets to epic length, I’ve also now become one of these accursed ‘evangelists’ for technology. (I’ll never use that term again, I promise). After upgrading my own aged laptop to Windows 2000 Professional (I’m a luddite geek), I suddenly twigged I didn’t have any decent Office-type programmes. No MS Word for example. So I went and downloaded Open Office.
Blimey. Everything I could need for a home PC, in one reasonably-sized download, and with no obvious problems as yet. Why would I ever bother with paying for similar programmes? The only thing I can see me doing in future is investing in a USB stick big enough to carry everything I need around with me.

I attended the first day of the Internetworld event at Earls Court yesterday, but wasn’t able to blog last night as I was watching Chelsea football club crash out of the Champions League semi-final!

It did make me realise the time is right to move to a newer mobile phone, with web access, and the ability to blog without a PC, bearing in mind I decided to travel light for once. One of the presentations was by Russ Shaw from O2, covering convergence, and although I don’t really care too much about the fact they’ve bought the Millenium Dome, I was quite interested in things like the pay-per-clip LootAtMe, the online SIM back-up and the ability to share any pics and videos at My Bluebook. Although everything is currently sent via MMS, the facility is coming this year to instantly share via a simple option, which should increase the 25,000 user group (I think I’ve got the figure right).

There were plenty of seminars by the likes of Yahoo etc, and most were OK., if not revolutionary. Lots of talk about social networking and convergence. Examples like Myspace, Flickr and Youtube. Not exactly startling, but the occasional interesting point emerged in each 30 minute presentation.

Probably my favourite even of the day was “Five things web copy commissioners should know about social media” by Catherine Toole from Sticky Content. Appropriately for someone creating engaging online editorial, Catherine was fairly engaging herself, and for once, acknowledged some of the problems facing companies who are starting to embrace web 2.0 (People actually still use that term?) and social networking.
Catherine was followed by Liz O’Donnell from LinkedIn, explaining how to use social networking for selfish reasons…i.e. to help you as an individual find jobs/employees/companies etc. Again it was nice not to just here someone explaining that social networking is a growth area, and then pimping their product in isolation.

Sadly work means I couldn’t go today or tomorrow, but I think it was definitely worth visiting, just to meet some fellow geeks, watch Catherine and Liz’s presentations, and have the chance to be inspired in real life. I know some of the presentations are being taped to be put on the internetworld site, so I’ll post when they appear.