morning.

it's 11:11 on the saturday morning as per usual - i'm reflecting on a january that seems to have just raced by, at this pace we will be rocking up to december again! :)

i'm heading over to get ella this morning as my usual saturday morning trip over to burton, it's actually the only time i actually wanna visit the place.

i guess you just get used to a place, in some ways nottingham has that effect on me sometimes. i've been spoilt from some of the places i've travelled across the globe and i've still got places to see.

still not got transport and that's one of the most important things that is playing on my mind at the moment but the calendar is certainly filling up for the months of feb and march for work which is a 'good' thing.

january is full of reviewing and testing and speaking. i'm going to be reviewing the first year students work so far on prototypes of the nomad jacket on the 26th at the nottingham ntu and then on the 29th i'm doing a lecture to the 3rd year multimedia students about social media as they are heading out to the 'real world' to show their stuff.

some reality shocks planned there to be honest. early feb sees me doing a speaking session at the new base of fibrecamp two the cleantech building near the jubilee campus in the ng7 district regarding community building using social media.

i really need to come up with a plan for flight casing equipment, would be easy to drop in for a few days a week instead of having kit there permanent - i guess we could leave some lights there.

had a good meeting (lunch) with celialacy from lincuplive which is a 100+ person conference at the end of february in lincoln. i'll be helping manage the student social media team of 12.

getting them into position and coming up with a plan to cover the venue as much as possible for a remote audience. i guess i'll have to hire a suit for that then if we are getting the five star usual lincuplive treatment.

quite excited about that job actually. i've been busy trying to re-work some of my presentations for the 29th/2nd using a new presentation style using impress.js (it runs in the browser - certain browsers that is) which uses css3 transforms to move things around a canvas - it's a bit of learning curve and could really do with a builder but once i have my structure it should be easy to duplicate that style for all my presentations.

i just need to see if it can handle pictures and videos like i want else i have to go back to keynote. i quite like not having to have plugins and such like and i've been thinking i can make some interesting infographic style videos with music and voiceovers - something i could spread on wistia, vimeo and youtube with transcripts too.

we had a meeting the other week about co-tender as well. an idea about working together on projects and stops the 'kicking off tyres' from people wanting web projects but have no idea what they should be asking for.

it's a really useful (basic) service that will email all potential workers on the project regarding elements they can do on that project. i've yet to send out the first newsletter because i'm waiting on the lab-media guys to get back to me regarding the grid/widget - we will probably use that as the infrastructure of getting information back regarding a person.

i'm really behind on newsletters. i'm not really feeling the mailchimp template system i'm using at the moment, the campaign monitor one looks better to build templates with but then the features and layout are not as good as mailchimp. torn.

i really need to start bringing in additional advocacy work over these next few months to speed up the development of the 3x3/widget grid.

i really want it to be supporting about six api's and maybe have something that natively works as a plugin for wordpress as well - to do this i really need to up the monthly payments to labmedia and at the moment on the income i have (which is not a lot believe it or not because of the way i live right now) it's hard to get much done each month.

lastly talking about wordpress i have a stack of sites for the nottingham area that need themes but i'm not in the position to get them started by getting some decent woothemes stuck on them until they can start to bring their own cash in, as some one said the other week 'until they start to wash their own face' - i love that expression.

i'll get a license for some themes over the coming weeks and start to plug them into buysellads and start to flyer nottingham to get the students blogging.

i have a plan. i have many plans ;)

• social media networking new year with fresh new studios and websites makeover (fibrecamp.tv)
• the iklip ipad/ipad2 mike stand for use with teleprompter now in studio (fibrecamp.tv)
• Daily Dose Social Media Tip of the Day - Get visual! (jcsocialmarketing.com)
• Nottingham's workplace parking levy increases by 3.2 (bbc.co.uk)
• 5 Tips for a Social Media Crisis (hightalk.net)
• Social Media for Non-Profits Conference to Empower Charitable Organizations (jhnconnect.com)
• The Importance of Social Media in the Business World (graceabonillo.net)

share your day with me - send your photos to instagram@kodakpulse.com

it's a real shame that kodak has just filed for bankrupcy.

they just could not put enough great stuff out and move those optics forward, if you've not got the glass and the processes to put out equipment to compete against those other brands your always going to struggle.

a year or so back we worked with the social media team to get hold of a kodak playtouch and a 10" photo frame (touchscreen) for storing pictures on.  as it has wifi we have the ability to send images to the photoframe via email which got me thinking about using the send to option via email in instagram.  

this is pretty cool because you can have your family members use instagram to save/send to social networks or just to a private address -- as your on holiday you can be taking photos and sending them privately instead back to the photoframe back home.  maybe you can pick one of these photoframes up in the firesales to come for your family members.

the idea came about due in part to someone we know getting ill over christmas and suffering from a heart blockage and their partner approaching us to provide some kind of picture frame that would invoke memories of the lace market area of nottingham.

we would love to push this idea forward and i'd love to talking to a kodak social media team again or a distributor that has a number of these photoframes left to build a dynamic video wall of them that people can send pictures too from their mobile phones at events and conferences.

• I Want To Hang My Instagram Wall Art In A Polaroid (gizmodo.com.au)
• Personalized Picture Frame (cutoutandkeep.net)
• How Instagram Harnesses the Awesome Power of Mobile, Social Media and Photos: 3 Success Stories (jeffbullas.com)
• I Want to Hang My Instagram Wall Art in a Giant Polaroid (gizmodo.com)
• Kodak Pulse ~ my favorite digital picture frame! (orgjunkie.com)

it's taken five years to get to this point.

by that i mean it feels that it's taken me five years to be ready from a digital footprint space to be a brand advocate for technology and brands that i enjoy.

the .tv advocacy has been an amazing validation of blogging and being a videoblogger. more and more companies are realising that they need advocates out in the digital frontier and ontheground at events fighting their corner for actual real life usage.

every manufacturer is tightening up on r&d and development these days and companies/brands can be made or broken based on quality products and the background ethics of the business via social media channels in a moment.

we live in a realtime, on demand world with a customer, consumer base of people globally that demand devices, technology and elements that help us live our lives. the true power of social media elements to the engagement of people in all chains of a business are here. it's allowing anyone to connect with a brand and visa versa.

my advocacy is quite simple. and that's why it works well for me. it's a paid blogger position that requires me to produce video media, blog posts or social network support as a remote advocate (read: almost a virtual worker invested in the companies projects and products) basically doing the things i'm already doing with fibrecamp but as part of a team of already well respected social media people who have been building up their own personal brands for the last few years.

i'm very keen to show some of the more dynamic cleantech, greentech companies in nottingham how to do the things i do across a variety of services so they can get their message out about the products they are working on.

it's a really exciting arena - fusing together new technology, new ethical ways of working with technology that invests much needed thought about the ramifications of the devices they are making and how we use them.

this makes for really interesting video content for the realtime web and opens up a new fibrecamp space that we are very keen to move into and document -- i'm hoping we can use our .tv advocacy to launch a cleantech .tv channel for the east midlands and nottingham area.

i think all companies that do business over the internet should have brand advocates even if just internal workers who have a clear outline of what they can do and say via social networks within the business all over the world in a digitally connected sense.

it's daytime somewhere in the world and people want information about your brand, do you have the right operatives in the right location?

• social media networking new year with fresh new studios and websites makeover (fibrecamp.tv)
• our £600 crowdsourcing project up and running - we did it! - we raised more!! (fibrecamp.tv)
• faster hd encodes now available at the fibrecamp lacemarket studio with hardware encoding (fibrecamp.tv)
• Companies urged to rethink social media strategy: study (vancouversun.com)
• Companies urged to rethink social media strategy: study (canada.com)
• 5 Tips for a Social Media Crisis (hightalk.net)
• Social Media Driving Leads & Sales, New Report Shows (prweb.com)

lovely surprise today.

usha is doing some coworking currently at pcmcreative studios with cj working on her first website -- on my birthday i bought us all some cakes.

today, after a suggestion of food (not presents because it's collecting more stuff that i really have nowhere to put anyway) usha dropped off a simple container of homemade soup which was amazing.

it had everything, even a bay leaf (so you know it will probably be good) sitting inside it, i love presents like that and she even did a little drawing on the top.

i'm a sucker for food and graphics. thanks usha, it was fantastic. can we put an order in for soup once a week do you think? :)

• Fennel & Bay Leaf Soup With Chicken and Garlic (sadmanstongue.com)
• Woe is Me Wednesday - Easy Homemade Chicken Soup for the Sickies. (foodfashionfeathersfancies.wordpress.com)

while wandering around the maritime museum in london we came across these microsoft surface style touch screens in wooden drawers.

it got me thinking about how a multifunctional device like a surface could be used in the ark as long as the power demands were not too severe.

having the ability to have the surface in a draw style layout that could collapse upwards for television/viewer and flat for ella or myself to use as a computer or monitor for connection to an ipad or desktop could really spark ideas of how to make things multifunctional within a small space.

i think that is one of the things that really excites me about optimising within spaces as it challenges to actually ask ourselves what we actually need. do we really need our houses and housing to have static set rooms laid out in a certain way?

i like the idea of being constantly engaging with the space moving and changing elements around, keeping me busy and charged up. mobile.

i'll be exploring this more and even thou the microsoft surface is super pricy right now and obviously 'microsoft' powered the idea of a multi function platform that can be built into the ark walls/space really appeals.

• Microsoft Surface 2.0 Now Available, Not Your Average Tabletop (inquisitr.com)
• Samsung SUR40 with Microsoft Surface hands-on video (theverge.com)
• Stimulant Develops 2 Applications for Next Generation of Microsoft Surface (prweb.com)
• Lenovo IdeaCentre A720: a Microsoft Surface for the rest of us (hands-on video) (theverge.com)
• Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface Receives Best of Innovations Award at CES (fyeomans.com)
• Microsoft Surface To Allow Glassless Interaction With 3D Objects Someday (techie-buzz.com)