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)

quicklink | the nottingham cleantech centre launches!

The GreenTech Business Network would like to announce the launch of the Nottingham CleanTech Centre (NCTC), the first incubator in the region dedicated to accommodating and supporting start-ups and small companies involved in clean technologies.

exciting!

something very close to my heart is the merging together of social media, ethics, technology and enviromental issues.  we have the ability to make our voices heard, the ability to do the right thing by the products and services we offer and the technology processes advancing and superlative speeds that we can make subtle changes to the way we engage with our enviroment.

my whole ark project is focused around what a single person can do not only to live more sustainable but redefine what a new fresh life looks like whilst still utilizing technology to improve the relations and contacts around us to be able to live in a digitally connected world with those assets around us with the internet doing the heavy lifting between it.

indeed the ark will use a lot of technology but in an optimized way, it will look at power and need over want, utilizing elements of the cloud to interact with at a glance without too much thought of taking time out to focus on the creation of the content but more of a virtual intergrated element of my day to day life -- taking social media and using it as a barometer or social ping to the people that lie between the studio and the off the grid enviroment. 

so it fills me with great pleasure to be in a potential hub of startups who are using clean, green technology focus to build out products, systems and ideas.  for me, it feels like a bit of a nirvana space and makes the last year of rounding out ideas with fibrecamp one the catalyst leading up to this new space.

what makes 2012 more exciting is the possibility quite quickly of fibrecamp III located in ghent in belgium as a european headquarters and makes spreading the idea of hyperlocal media based studios servicing the five or six blocks around it's area a real interesting hot pot of digital outreach with the businesses being more than just a partner graphic on a website.

it sparks regular interaction bringing down the potential 'head down desk' mode i see from so many companies when it comes to building out services.  sharing, in the business space is as much a requirement as it is for the social realtime world we live in.

i have a really good feeling about the cleantech centre in nottingham, we are going in at ground level, at the rebirth of a space and a refresh for a building that is already bought, it's owned -- it's not rented or has potential of being problematic -- it's a blank canvas of sorts with the potential to foster some fantastic green tech stars of nottingham and the midland arena.

best of all we get to help them understand the world of social media and create media around some of the exciting concepts and processes these green tech companies have which will obviously feed a foundation of topics for the ark project in 2012.

it's a perfect fit.  we can't wait to get started! :)

• Predictions for Cleantech in 2012 (environmentalleader.com)
• A Cleantech VC Who is Unconvinced of Man-Made Climate Change (cleantechies.com)
• Nottingham City Council budget consultation phase 1 (seaadvocacy.wordpress.com)
• Invest in Nottingham train officially unveiled (rail.co)

so for this blog post i thought i'd test out blogsy. 

gotta be honest i'm a bit freaked out that i have to be online to get to my camera roll? - that's just weird and the actual swapping between writing and rich text side is strange as well.  i'd prefer to see a better version of the image instead of the thumbnail mode that i currently have.

anyway, back to the point - goodies! really chuffed this week to receive a number of things including my swagger from watch dot tv which is this amazing quality bag with the .tv logo stiched on the front. great bag, beats carting around using the picnic bag that i had to resort to after the kata bag zips had failed me.

in fact i'm still waiting on a replacement.  what started out as a really flawless customer service experience via email has dragged on a while now and i would have expected to have seen the replacement bag by now.  i love that bag.  it would complement this one actually.

also provided was a kodak playtouch .tv branded camera and a bunch of tshirts for the advocacy. it felt good to receive a bunch of 'advocate' empowering elements in the post i have to say, especially as i was expecting it too be the mbr1400 cradlepoint router, so a nice surprise.

i'll be talking about the router in another post probably after this, i cannot really go into too much detail about the admin and setup yet however as i'm waiting on a power supply to be sent out to get it going -- came with a stateside one.

it's been a busy month and i'm still not finished with the digital advent calendar, i've got a bunch of blog posts to write on my trip down to exeter today and i'm hoping that four hour window will provide me with the headspace to write them.

i'm started blogging so that's a good thing, currently speeding towards birmingham new street to swap over trains to catch the 13:12 to plymouth. hope your enjoying the digital advent calendar, i know some of the posts have been a little bit weak but trying to get the blog posts done, the twitter posting scheduled and actually recording the videos between getting prepared for christmas and new year (especially after not getting vlomo november finished) is a bit of a challenge, some of the ones after christmas day thou are pretty good and i'll be putting some effort into the installing a blogging platform for your .tv domain.

thanks go out to jane and her team for being so efficient and a pleasure to work with on this brand advocacy -- i'm really excited to see what 2012 can bring with this project and is a good base to get out what it is that the fibrecamp studio spaces can do for popup, dropin and run and gun web video media making as part of a busy working weekday.

watch out for some exciting news tomorrow about the second fibrecamp base in nottingham that is popping up near the university -- it's a perfect fit with the ark/greentech projects we want to be engaged with next year.

• Eurovision Advent Calendar: Best National Final Song (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Advent Calendar of Circuits (hackaday.com)
• Scott's Comic Book Cover Advent Calendar - December 14th (politedissent.com)

just got on the 10:03 from ghent train station heading back towards brussells to get out midday eurostar train back into london and then another train back into nottingham -- i'm hoping if we get back on time that i'll be able to go and get my poppet tonight as well.

so, dead time! - i've got thirty minutes to put together the blog post that i've been trying to write since i got here. this was the final job of the year and this pretty much means after next weeks christmas parties a relative downtime and allows me to take 'timeout' and space to be able to throw together the new layouts and designs for the .tv domains and projects.

so this job was really awesome on so many levels -- firstly the eurostar was a dream to brussels and changing onto a train for a small thirty minute journey away once we go there was super easy.

literally access to ghent and what appears to be the digitally connected heart of beligum only half day away. after getting on the wrong tram (4) instead of the number one we went on a bit of a tour around the city the wrong way around.

fun thou and we got to see the sights -- we still made the 4pm venue reccy thou and we were greeted by the theatre team who gave us an audio feed from the desk, fast 100mb wired internet and any other help we needed.

it went super smoothly on the setup side. after setup we checked into our hotel, dropping bags, tech and kit back only five minutes away from the vooruit building. straight forward again, relaxed and easy to find.

after dropping bags we head back to a meal, chat and planning meeting for the next two days with peter and annemaie before getting a guided tour as a group of the 20,000sft building that had three hundred and sixty four rooms.

an immensive building and access points through the whole building, a massive undertaking but it worked flawlessly. the bar seemed to be a popular area with people writing journals, posts and doing general laptop work on the free open wifi network -- with proper management it can work.

to give you an idea how popular this venue is they have two six thousand litre containers which get refreshed at least once a week i think i heard -- they get through a lot of beer, which is not surprising because it is so good!

next morning we woke early and made sure we were 'ontheground' around 8am to get prepared for the day. we had a few problems with audio and cjs laptop overheating through the day but we swapped it out for the next day which ran without problems -- the audio feed was brilliant which really lifted the video.

as this was a cultural event crossing in social media, applications and processes and new technology i found it a cultural gap that people were less happy to be recorded and talk about their projects and process.

flemish people seemed very private people and after asking i was told that they really want to get to know someone first before they open up (wise if you ask me) but they still have reservations about 'putting things on the internet' which i kind of get based on how the culture interacts with each other.

ghent has a really relaxed but focused attitude and a vibrant opening accessible hipster scene feel to it, people are very interesting and really open about how things function and work.

it was refreshing to see how communication companies worked here and got on together, i saw striking similarity with nottingham but felt back home in the uk we had too much ownership and fixed thinking.

during the trip i used path and foursquare a lot and was looking around for places to eat at, everything was really close together and relatively easy to find -- i even found a local pr/communication/social company that was close by that we dropped in on and had coffee and basically told each other what we were working on.

i'm really hoping we can take things further and have a fibrecamp european office in ghent. the twinning of the cities seems a perfect route to develop this on.

having a studio space that we can spend a week at a time in ghent using am airbnb place to relax for the week in the evenings in and get to know the locality and local startups would be a great way to have european content for our fibrecamp bases back in nottingham.

i'm really excited about the prospect of having out fibrecamp 'popup' mobility concept used in this way. i'm absolutely certain that i'll be back to ghent, it does seem to be the digital heart of belgium and seems like a lot of super fast connectivity would be best used by some fast producing rapid social media types like me if i was based there for a while.

with the explosion of connectivity increasing and transportation to foreign lands becoming efficient and speedy, changing your scenery to allow time to reflect on your life actions and future proofing the ability for my daughter to learn another language and try that out live is quite exciting.

guess i need to start learning the language right? want to put a big shout out to cultuurnet of belgium for pulling together the venue and making us feel extremely welcome.

the next one is in april in barcelona which sounds really exciting i do hope we get drafted in for that one, i'm sure fibrecamp will have really moved forward by then and my ark project should have been realised and in full flow.

check out audienceseurope.net for more details and to join the ning website for updates - global cities, local audiences - next event is the 19-20 of april 2012 in barcelona. hope to see you there!

• New international school in Ghent by September (expatica.com)
• Ghent to receive international primary school for expat children (expatica.com)
• Ghent to host 2013 Eurocities conference (expatica.com)
• Ghent - Belgium, Europe (place2visit.wordpress.com)
• [VIDEO] - Arsenic flowing into Ghent-Terneuzen canal (expatica.com)

this last week we managed to get the second set of lights in for shot two. shot two being the sofa area where we originally did most of our initial catchup shows from.

the lights are not perfect yet but they are good enough -- the next thing however is to get another intensity blackmagic card installed into the computer and a second hd camera.

after that, it's a multi mixer for the audio and we should be set for twin 'sets' to do a live streaming show of some kind. it ties in with some news about upgrade fibre.

but i'll leave that until it happens -- watch this space.