at first i thought it was just the structured way our train journey and route seemed effortless as we boared the eurostar and headed through the channel tunnel delivering us into europe.

i then thought it was the welcoming team at the other side having a focused tech crew pulling together the venue and equipment effortlessly, but it was not either - after all we have teams exactly the same in the uk.

maybe then, it was the brown bag of gifts in the hotel room with 3d glasses, chocolate bunny and a card detailing where the venues were for the next few days - nah, not that.. nice touch thou.

ok, i know it has to be the bandwidth then - a venue with 100 mbit screaming fast connectivity enclosed in a 364 room building that has an incredible history attached to it. well, that did start to perk my interest in the building i guess.

wait, i've got it. it was the moment on the tour of the building that segments of the story of the building and how it makes money and builds community and sells a shit ton of amazing beer in the process. well, yeah that was all good too.

but that was not why it left an impression on me so much that i took a part of it home with me. no, it was something more -- something that i needed to reflect on.

so it seems fitting as i'm heading at velocity towards birmingham that i start to think about travel, journeys and presence again. and of course it's in this moment that it hits me.

it left an impression because that structure was built on an openness of the people of ghent to put on a show, to expose the beauty of how they live and what they care about, that they embrace communication, stories and history with passion.

so.

i look back on nottingham and wonder how a city such as it can be twinned with ghent, where are the similarities and what have i learned as an outsider dropping in from a digital community tool provider?

it makes perfect sense why graduates and students leave places like nottingham after they have trained, the lure of the city life is not enough because the future planning of the digital city is restrained.

where as the city of ghent is heading full steam to make their city centre spot a digital hotbed building on existing library people traffic figures in 2015.

the frank and open nature of the management company regarding the venue was refreshing and a massive departure from the closed loop and seemingly stilted approach of the nottingham city council.

we have fibre in ducts around notts, some rented to bt and connectivity to do some amazing things but until the right money finds the right places nottingham is always going to stagnate in the startup culture stakes.

ghent however, well. that's a different story - i see an explosive of creativity, digital culture and historic storytelling as they transition into the digital frontier.

and i'm gonna be there to watch.

quicklink | payablogger

yay! - go go bloggers of the world.  i love blogging.

i use the internet like a big sticky yellow postit not for my thoughts and inventions, intentions and splenations (shakes head, ran out of sensible words - sorry) throughout the day.

i've been loving flattr for a while actually and i wanted to see if this was the one that might take off so it's good to see a little campaign kicking it off.  i really should look into flattr more clearly and review it in a video as part of my december advocacy.

feel free to 'flattr' me today if any of the content i post on this blog, or this one, or this one and maybe that one is worth anything to you or helped you out in anyway.

like someone who had a very old face to me once said.  'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'

load of old pony but i like the sentiment.

totally weird moment happened to me after writing this blog entry when i used the calculator on the website to work out what i could have earned by blogging by now.  pulls up a small car! - i really need a small car as well for my ark project!

• Can 'Pay a Blogger Day' help Flattr gain velocity? (gigaom.com)
• Support your favourite blogs on "Pay a Blogger Day", November 29 (twingly.com)
• 'Pay a blogger day' launches next week (telegraph.co.uk)
• Pay a Blogger Day Hopes You'll Pay for the Content You Love (mashable.com)
• André Koot: Flattr - Social micropayments (flattr.com)
• Would you pay to read this blog?? [Mike Turner] (ecademy.com)
• We Interview Linus Olsson, Co-Founder Of Flattr Micropayments Service (omgubuntu.co.uk)

instead of policing myself and not posting it i thought i would just post it out to test to see how posterous handled encoding it if i just send raw video files straight from the ipod.

might be a good way to record additional stuff for bambuser if for any reason i cannot get on to login and use it.

loving the h4n and the rails setup underneath.  that's some hot video capture gear.

really great to see people using lighter setups in southby southwest this year for recording.  you can get some great video on the canon 5d/7d with a sweet 50mm/35mm (remember full frame sensor) for that depth of field action going on.  the kit that is out there for getting decent audio into the camera is truly staggering and apart from the initial investment in the camera body for something like the 5d or 7d (and it comes down to the glass you buy after) the effects are truly fantastic of getting a duel purpose awesome camera and HD video in one camera.

i'm on a mission to own a 5d/7d over the coming year.  i think it's the only way to really do the ark, jackets and fibrecamp justice.  now if i could just work out how i'm gonna add that to the list of things to get.  you can often stop your creative process because you do not have the tools to do a perfect job to get the acknoledgement you think you need. 

personally i think an iterative approach to media making so people can see you talent, skill and consistency is just as important as the end result.  that's why i like telling stories with social media so much - it has the power to give people the back story to what it is you do and why you are so passionate about doing it.  if your working with designers and creatives that do not want to tell you the story then is it simply that your a cash cow to their business?

for me, working in the digital realms now is about making solid working digital relationships passed the sale of services, we have moved into a new era i believe of hyper connected relationships based on resources, discussion and open ended sharing of lessons learnt in this realm - where the good, bad and fugly have value.  success is not just a printed glossy booklet.

whoa, tangent.  music does that to me. ;)

still want that 5d. ;)

posted by uTIT PR
behalf of phil campbell (not that place in alabama, the person)

for immediate release

at 20:00 GMT on the left side of the fine dining established known to local residents as greggs in the lower level of the high quality local broadmarsh centre is was earlier learnt that Mr Philip Campbell had received an email via his mifi unit to his ipod touch highlighting the fact that he had indeed secured seed investment for his awefully confusing fibrecamp project based in high pavement, lace market house.

it is not known mr campbells initially reaction but onlooks are posting tweets and twitpics showing my client engaging in clothes lining the chilled sandwich area with him pretend juggling with sausage joys. 

an onlooker in the crowd (using his last eight pence credit on a nokia 2210) tweeted a few moments after the incident.. .

'he made me miss my train, i only waited a sausage roll - he ruined the process control of queing like zombies, we are very let down by his obvious elevation to someon that may no longer be visiting greggs - we wanted to keep him exactly where he was - eating potentially fake sausage meat' said mr ben dover from hug and kiss avenue in the lower downstairs projects of nottingham.

created through the efforts of roundsourcing, that is the ability to go tweet around corners while keeping potential investors in eyesight through diffusion and a mirror the concept proved fruitful on mr campbells fifth attempt when the investors eye he caught failed to make the neural connection and saw fibrecamp and the rattle project progress to the later rounds without query or judgement.

on realising that regardless of nice shoes and a tie that mr campbell was still committed to creating his own status quo, without the ill sounding band of the same name it was put forward that just to keep him sweet and diverting his social media eyes away from the potential problems at hand was a small price to pay for getting back the interns sanity and keeping up with his frentic tweeting.

one collegue, who was quizzed during tea break at the local council retorted that 'it's a good job he's been given the money - we were getting frustrated with his constant tweeting begging for money via crowdsourcing - it's just not the proper business way, it's better to buy overpriced flapjack and fudge the figures'

phil campbell was unavailable to comment at 2:15am this morning after the new of the seed morning which is odd because there is an anatomically correct picture of him gurning at the camera with his posterior on instagram at 2:17am