quicklink | blast out test on the bike on bambuser

finally had the cash to be able to get this mount.  it's overpriced but i wanted to move forward on the idea and start the ball rolling with the bandwidth in a box concept for extra bandwidth for mobility for events and conferences.

the idea originally was to install two cameras and some heavy duty wifi connectivity with a stack of external aerials on the roof to drag in the cellular signals so we had a good solid constant stream but with lack of reception from car companies we started with what we have -- a bike! :)

if you are a car company, leasin or otherwise we are looking for a smart car sized (electric ideally) motor that will do 10,000 miles in that year driving three times a week a rough total of about 400 miles a week.  you can send me a tweet with hashtag #transport in it to get some information back about what we are doing -- just send that to my twitter account @philcampbell

we are happy to rent, lease or something from around £99 up to say £150 per month but we are looking to give it back after the year is out.  i simply have no use for a three year contract on car as i'm happy with using rail and public transport not having a car now for over two years.

anyway, back to the bike! ;) - had a successful first stream out to the jubilee campus and the second fibrecamp premises.  i'm doing a presentation there tomorrow, i did one yesterday with the ntu students (i did it in css3 with impress.js to be flash) and so went to grab an interview with nick gostick on audioboo.

i'm not sure why the stream dropped on the way back maybe i caught something inside the case or something or the camera screen went off.  i need to do more testing to see what the problem was there and i've reported it to bambuser because when it dropped the connection after 45 seconds of starting recording (i did'nt noticed till i was nearly back to the studio) it stopped all together so i had no locally recorded video stream on the phone to upload as a complement after which was a bit annoying.

that said, i discovered a bunch of new tagging features on the website when i got back to the desktop that allow for timed comments on the video (see top picture) so that means you can jump to certain sections.  i have a plan about grabbing streamed event video and piping that to another service to do all kinds of things.  i've been wanting to get streaming again.  

expect more of this stuff now that i have the mount.  next is to build a decent lightweight mini bandwidth in a box (bag?) to see if we can improve on the speed and quality of the connection (wifi via cellular router with more redudancy involved) as we had it set on medium today -- i'm also thinking that the new iphone4s with the new sony based camera will handle the low light better so i'm looking to source one of those badboys too.

a happy first test run thou.

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)

good morning! - 08:19am here and i'm still at the house waiting till 9 ish to head over to the dentist to get myself all booked in and checked out.

while i have thirty minutes of deadtime i thought it might be useful to pull together a little checklist of how i get into conference mode with the ammobox -- the box of kit that i take with me to every event i go too.

we are heading over via euro tunnel which is a first for me and i'm really looking forward to that, i think we have to change at brussels onwards to ghent where we will head from the station directly to the event.

in that space we usually reccy a number of things including the wifi, wired connection and making sure we have an av feed from the sound desk for the laptop.

europe conferences are often a different beast than stateside ones and depending where your going it's probably advised to get a mifi unit (i love xcomglobal myself) and share that with all your other devices.

the most crucial element for me when 'ontheground' is power backups, the less time i have charging kit equals more time i can interview people so making sure everything is ready to go is crucial.

we do have a boingo account to use in airports and wherever we can find an open spot with boingo support so it's not all bad and we can use a bunch of offline media making tools and push later (or until we get to the conference itself and their wifi) so it's not all mission critical.

as both myself and cj are going we have two roles why at the audience europe event. one is event streaming with a line out from the sound desk for the audio and social management of the online twitter conversation.

for myself mingling with people in and around the crowd findings out why they are there and what they are working on. collecting the stories.

normally i would take a set of pre made cards with me to ask more people while on the ground but this event is spread over the week so we should be fine to get a bunch of audio, video and blogs about our findings over the course of the time we are there.

it's also enough time to get to know the people who are there and to create mini tweetups each evening after what will be really engaging sessions with some fantastic speakers lined up.

i'll be putting up some kit packup videos as part of my december #watchdottv advocacy and you can see them slow released daily over on http://watchdottv.fibrecamp.tv - daily slow released onto itunes too!

• New international school in Ghent by September (expatica.com)
• Ghent to receive international primary school for expat children (expatica.com)
• Ghent World Cup (betweentheolympics.wordpress.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.

it's been really busy for the last month -- flying over to sxsweco, doing a live stream at the local nottingham trent university for eco fashion and sass brown and then taking three days off up to exeter for the likeminds conference.  feels like my feet didn't touch the ground.

so, what's happening where.  let me spend a few moments to give you a bit of a catchup and plan for the next few months.

transportation
i'm still looking for that elusive car rental, hiring for twelve months - it seems that nobody does twelve months and i'm having a hard time finding the right lease company to work with - ideally we would find a car leasing company that wants to wrap the car with their message and we drive, stream and feed into their social media campaign for a year with our live video streams that would run from inside the car -- i'm still looking.

turning ideas into products
anybody who knows me or follows what i do will know that i'm an idea factory -- they fall out of me like digital waterfalls and over the years i have had to put the brakes on with what works and what does not.  recently i have found four main things i want to work on and my multitasking mind seems to be able to chip away at them.  recently i met a

bunch of guys from exeter who i gelled with straight away and could see that their were at the starting point of business - i remember those days.  they are twin team, lightweight and lean and ready to go.  more on developments on that as they unfold.

preorder sales of the nomad jackets
the jacket preordering pages are up on ulule.  we are offering the first ten jackets an exclusive price of £250 for the first batch to raise interest -- the next £300 and the final full price of £350 for all future orders.  get in quick if you want the better pricing.  we are working on v3 of the jacket in november (jamie contact me!) and are looking at a better finish, better ventilation and finally that fabric qr code.

double stitching and finishing of the final product also need review -- the packaging side has taken a bit of a backseat but we are considering lots of recycled products turned into holdalls and bags for your unique jacket.

fibrecamp upgrades
we need a new mac pro, it's getting old -- so old in fact that final cut x will not install on it because the graphics cards are antique.  my rebuilt macbook pro has a new hd but cannot have the latest lion os on.  it's time therefore to start upgrades.  the studio space itself has been a bit quiet over the last month as i've been away and we need to move towards a more standalone operation that does not require me to be managing it.

we have a carpenter (finally) coming in to put our side table in so we can start to do courses within the space.  new sets of lighting and cameras are currently being looked into as well.

ark progress
we have a new date of january 2012 -- it's a long story but this money that was supposed to be there never happened and so other sponsors needed to be sourced, it's been a long time coming but we do believe now that things can happen.  we have got this far it's just getting the production schedule together and ticking boxes.

i'm really ready to get going on it all but i really need transport so i can drop in weekly at conkers to talk about the site and help out where needed.  i even had a conversation with a guy recently that has a satellite truck in nottingham that might be useful to do some 'ontheground' live streams from the forest.

charity work has taken a hit
so with everything that's been going on for the last three weeks it's been hard to commit to anything really in the charity arena which is frustrating but to be expected.  kinda feel i'm waiting for them to have some people step forward from the spread out offices to at least try making some content that we can get together on and brainstorm what works and what does not -- when the side studio table is made in fibrecamp that will make a difference because that means we can bring people over lunch to do some training in the building -- hands on.

watch tv brand advocacy
this has been going well actually, it's actually really good for me getting on top of schedules -- having that constant monthy note taking format from recording tweets that i'm putting out with the watchdottv hashtag on to videos and blog posts that i'm writing about and it was great to go ontheground at wearelikeminds to capture the vibe in terms of how people are applying video to there business.

building and redesigning themes for fibrecamp.tv
this is the thorn in my side at the moment, i'm trying to get fibrecamp.tv up (brand new theme) that will be simple enough that we can make a similar device that works on the ipad and has all those whizbang features of being able to spin the device left and right.  i'm also in the process looking at the fibrecamp show pages which have never been quite right.  it's all getting a bit of a makeover.

ontheground work picking up
as i mentioned above the ontheground work has been crazy - i was in austin, then at the ntu back in nottingham then headed on a train down to exeter for three days, i felt like i was living out of the ammobox for those three weeks.   i feel i have november to get things together now.  four weeks flys by, especially at this time of year.  before we know it christmas will be upon us.