quicklink | futurefactory

(sorry about the poor audio quality in the interview - lessons learnt)

today the team of myself, pcmcreative and ian dearman media were in an 'ontheground' capacity to document, tweet and garner attention for a fantastic talk about eco fashions from sass brown. we managed to get a brief interview before the session started about her travels, book and views on where sustainable fashion is today.

after the interview we shot some pictures with sass that she may be able to use on her website or facebook pages and we like to get this rounded media package on a half day or full day 'ontheground' project.  i thought they came out pretty good actually.

after our little photo shoot we managed to get access to the lecture hall and setup, we had already done a previous day reccy so we had managed to sort out the IT requirements for connectivity and a wired connection for the stream.  we ended up using wireless microphones from ian dearman media who was with us on the day because we could not really sort anything out with the AV team in time.

we had a few complaints about the screen in the stream but this was out of our control.  i had initially assumed that the wooden blinds on the side window moved but it seemed they are fixed and cannot be used as blinds and the AV team had already found the best setting they could for lighting and the screen.

we think that the projector screen contract and throw of the picture could have been adjusted but we were not able to get access to the projector controller or any help in improving that picture.  i should mention that we used flash media encoder in case we got any drop outs but it was absolutely perfect.  the audio in this stream was a really excellent thanks to ians sennheiser microphones we used.

NOTE | no audio until 8 minute 30 seconds

overall a fantastic first outing for the new triple pack team in the form of myself, pcmcreative and ian dearman media working together on providing the ontheground live stream and after meeting a gentleman called ken this week we might have access to an outside satellite truck for those normally hard to broadcast locations that we sometimes get asked to go on.

if your a nottingham business and your looking to live stream your event with full social media coverage for under a £1000 for the day do get in touch as we have the perfect solution for you.

i've arrived!

currently writing this out from the ground base that is conjuncture - a fantastic mellow co-working space in austin texas.

arriving into austin around eight last night as i missed my 3:30 connecting austin flight from houston i got put on standby and did not get going until around 7:15pm - landing just after eight at the austin airport.

i then got chatting to a great guy on the information booth about austin - he gave me a bunch of places that i should check out over the course of the week. feels great to have a conference that i can go to and then explore austin around the edges.

for the first time i also braved out a different method of transport from the airport - the $1 flyer 100 from the airport was super simple. i'll be using that on sunday to get back to the airport no doubt.

wandering over to the hilton last night to see if i could grab the mifi from the ups hosted at the hilton (it was closed too late) it was interesting to see a quieter southby.

the buzz of all my adventures of this city however remain with me so i was painting in the visuals of the crowds regardless. i feel blessed by my sponsors for making this happen.

i'll be trying my upmost to get as much coverage out over here about our livingARK project but also learning a lot from the sessions and the speakers who are in attendance this week.

if your here to demo a product, project or service for sxsweco and we are not following each other on twitter do follow back and check out the ark site - ark.me.dm for more details of where my content from this week will be heading too.

right now, i'm heading out for lunch at the iron cactus i think. i love that darn place, a beer or two and a bit of a lay down in the park near the river till after 3pm when i'm hoping i have a place to crash for the week in downtown.

connected with friends local old and hoping to meet the new ones over the coming days - feels good to get a virtual break of sorts too.

feels like i'm back home.

quicklink | feasibility report, oak tables and mailing list

looks fantastic right? - that's the kind of size the ark will be - the table and chairs next too it are going to be a gift from livingARK.  we are super pleased and chuffed by this offer as it gives me and bella somewhere to sit and play, talk and eat and just enjoy each others company.  i'm actually thinking of taking up lessons for an instrument (guitar or something maybe) - yes yes, i know it sounds uber hippy but i do need the polar opposite of my super fast existance balanced somehow! :)

it's been a bit quite on the ark front over the last four weeks.

a waiting game, sitting waiting for someone to tell us if we have the signoff for the ark project or not.  behind the scenes livingARKs are gearing up for the go and they are scrabbling around making the process as sustainable as possible for it to happen. that sort of planning i find out costs additional admin (seems most things in the world have costs that don't get factored in i guess) so we are trying to resolve those small hiccups with offsetting of products, services and ramping up our output and services here in the fibrecamp studios - slowly things seem to be aiming in the right direction.  with a few clients under our belts for pcmprojects with me working as a volenteer in the space it's time i sorta had a job position again.  that's looking like it might be a possibility after getting the studio to this position.

i'm not actually sure how i would have coped if the ark was built now adapting to the proposition of a partner in fibrecamp and being true to the ark so i'm starting to the think the timing of things is actually better.  i have two crucial stages right now and that's a regular income and transport.  the transport more than anything in at least i can be visiting conkers twice a week and at the same time picking up my daughter and getting her familiar with the site.  she's been before but we need to be going very regular.  i'm still super excited about what this project can bring and i'm hoping that unofficial cradlepoint group will pull a lot of my thoughts together about people on the move, on the grid and in the clouds but actually disconnected from other things.  i'm hoping cradlepoint see it and get behind it.

gerry from conkers (the ranger - go follow him on twitter he's awesome) put together a fantastic detailed feasibility study for the area/land/space where we want to locate the ark - i still have to re-read it but give it a blast it's brilliant.  i do hope very much that i'll be able to work with gerry on his bushcraft skills work that he does at conkers - that guy has so much passion, he's the next web tv celebrity when we up the quality and output.  very keen to get started and tell gerry's story.

Click here to download:

feasibility-report-livingark.pdf (1.41 MB)

another thing i quickly wanted to talk to you about was these oak table sets i've included in this post.  they are normally a tablet set that goes along with every ark that is sold but at the moment as they are building a variety of prototypes they really need the space and they have about thirty sets of tables to sell.  we have managed to get an agreement sorted with livingarks where 15% of every sale of a oak set will go towards the arks admin fund i was discussing at the top of this email.  i'll have more details about this soon but if your interested they normally retail at £1500 (pure oak remember) but we can get a much better price than that on them.

Picnic Oak Set 1.7m price: 540.00;  RRP (recommended retail price: 999.00+)
Picnic Oak Set 1.5m price: 490.00;  RRP (recommended retail price: 999.00+)
Delivery & Assembly price: 150.00

Crafted with passion and the utmost respect for nature, this truly individual furniture is made using seasonal oak - rustic, natural and gloriously unadorned, it looks almost as much a part of the landscape as when still a tree. Custom-made to order exclusively at livingARKs LTD.

drop me a line if interested - remember 15% of your purchase will go towards helping our admin costs for the ark project.

i've managed to pull together a new frontend for the ark project until the new development/site is done. it's a bit more advanced than the last basic posterous theme.

we are still using posterous but this new version allows me to use javascript and jquery for hiding and showing things because we will be interfacing with the api to pull back our posts.

hope you will sign up at the new site to be update to when we launch. the next site will be the site we used to blog and capture/display media while we are onsite at the ark project.

quicklink | airbnb.com

it was really good to see gerry today.

we had a good chat about placement of the arks on a certain patch of land in the heart of the national forest. in fact we had a chat about two places in the national forest that made good plots.

i've not seen the land first hand yet i'm setting up a meeting with gerry for next week so we can do a video and a sit down with the management team of the park.

me and gerry had a bit of a throwaway conversation about six months ago about peak oil, dubai and the park. since then a lot of things have changed for gerry. the timing of him getting in touch could not have been better.

it gave me better options and choices and took away a minor frustration and turned it into a super positive.

today i started to think about once this initial project has been built and i'm already moving onto the next - with an empty field next door to the park it would make a perfect place to host a bunch of arks and run it as a backpackers eco village - people book in via the iphone/ipad application and we can run a series of timed events over the course of seven days.

always thinking, and now beer!