2008 February

Readers of this blog may be aware of the unique football club Ebbsfleet United in Kent. The website “Myfootballclub.com” mobilised 28,000 online football fans to chip in £35 each and make a successful bid to buy a 75% controlling interest in the club. So its the first football club in the world ever to be owned by an online community. Some say it’s the first business in the world ever to be taken over by an online community (do you know better?)

Myfootballclub: http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/

Eurostar

Now Eurostar is a well known and prestigious brand who were already sponsoring Ebbsfleet international football club, since it helps to publicise the new Ebbsfleet International railway station which is part of the high speed rail route from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel. Eurostar’s reaction to the takeover is to embrace the change and piggyback onto the extra interest in the club, which generates free publicity for Ebbsfleet and everybody associated with it. They’ve also taken out some full page newspaper advertisements congratulating the new owners of the club - and naming each of us individually.

“Congratulations to the new owners of Ebbsfleet United”

One further step which showed that somebody at Eurostar does actually ‘get’ the whole crowdsourcing social media thing is that they submitted alternative versions of proposed advertisements to the online community at myfootballclub to be voted on. I voted for it too. The one which won was then sent for publication. It emphasises the fact that Ebbsfleet International is now really owned by 280,000 ordinary football fans whose names have been dumped (with individual permission) onto the pages of The Times.

Eurostar blog: http://fortomorrow.eurostar.com/

Crowdsourcing - what’s next?

So what’s next in line for being taken over by an online community? It would be trivial to buy a top quality racehorse, small syndicates have been doing that for years. What about a Formula 1 racing team? A national radio or TV station? How about setting up a website to accumulate enough people to buy a brewery, a supermarket chain or a bank? You can only buy one share each, so no individual gets control.

Social Media Café

On a smaller scale could we get a couple of thousand Social Media people in London to sign up to buy a little cafe together? Of course we could. Then we’d have somewhere to go that pays for itself, with free access for shareholders.

London social media cafe: http://londonsocialmediacafe.pbwiki.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_YwJUowTrY

debate: The end of the Organisation? February 21, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : debate, blogs and community , 5comments

As with the recent open thread for lurkers, this post is one from a series which adopts different blogging patterns. At the suggestion of Joitske Hulsebosch the format is that of a debate, and the topic we have chosen is “The end of the organisation?” after an article by Michael Gilbert. Josien Kapma has kicked off the debate by arguing in favour of the premise that organisations are going to change unrecognisably in response to technology improvements in the means of communications, namely the internet. “The organizations of the future will not look like the organizations of today.”

So I shall adopt the contrary view and oppose the proposition.

I disagree that organisations are shaped by their communications. For me this is a secondary consideration, with the main shaping force being that of economics. I shall argue that as long as the fundamental economic relationships which lie at the base of society remain unchanged then nothing revolutionary is going to happen. A change in the mode of communication will cause big upheavals in some of the light industries which specialise in knowledge work, in publishing and media, that is certain. But these industries are not crucial to the means of sustaining our lives.
The more important work of providing food, shelter, health, transport, energy and infrastucture will continue pretty much the same, regardless of what is happening in the online world.

Ah but I hear objections already. This is surely cheating! For some people, and indeed the scope of the pertinent essay, the concern is with the so-called “non-profit” organisations, the civil society, and my arguments have flown straight outside the boundaries of the arena.

I will also argue that in an economy which is run for and by the owners of big business, the values which are predominant at all levels are those which support the continuation of the system based on free market economics and the private ownership of the means of prodution. The non-profits are not islands of activity which work in isolation. They are part of the wider society, their clients and employees have to live in the current world and their values and economic relations end up reflecting those of the corporations to defend the status quo.

Total eclipse of the Moon February 20, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : astronomy for beginners, UK , 18comments

There’s a total eclipse of the moon tonight, well tomorrow morning really, the last until December 2010. So if you’re feeling a little insomniac at 3.00am, get up make a cup of hot rooibos tea and look out of the window or go out onto the balcony or garden. The last few nights have been very clear so there’s a good chance of great views of the total lunar eclipse.

Lunar Eclipse
Originally uploaded by leppre

The previous lunar eclipse visible from the UK was on March 3rd 2007, at a more civilised time in the evening.

Marilyn and Ella at Theatre Royal Stratford February 16, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : theatre, Music, London , 4comments

I’m really looking forward to going to the theatre tonight. We’re not going to the West End though, but to the Theatre Royal in Stratford. That’s Stratford, East London, home of the 2012 Olympics; nothing to do with Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. The show is called “Marilyn and Ella” and it’s about a famous meeting between Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe at a time of continuing racial segregation in the USA. Yes, it’s set in 1955, just a few years before I was born and when American society was run under a system similar to apartheid. So it’s a small, two woman production I think, but with a big subject plot and some big songs. The premiere was last night, so tonight, Saturday should be a big night too.

Theatre Royal

I suppose Theatre Royal, Stratford East is my local theatre, but I haven’t been for a few years. There used to be a series of excellent productions once a year which sometimes moved on to the West End such as “The Invisible Man” and “Zorro” but I think the moving force behind these died, and the raison d’etre for local theatre has moved more towards serving the perceived needs of the local community, a community which arguably doesn’t really exist except from a political or funding point of view. But the playwright is Bonnie Greer, an accomplished writer and whose performance on TV the other night in Question Time I think it was, well she just outshone everyone else on the panel.

Bonnie Greer

For the Sunday Herald in August 2006 Bonnie Greer said “I wrote this basically because the information has been suppressed, and if you don’t control the information, it controls you. That’s certainly true in the case of Marilyn Monroe, who was a victim of information control even after her death. She was the biggest movie star in the world and she made this kind of stand for Ella Fitzgerald. People at the time didn’t understand it, so they glossed over it, and now not many even know about it. Which means that it has never really been celebrated.”

Interestingly, this musical stage play began life on Radio 4 as “Marilyn And Ella Backstage At The Mocambo” and then at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 as “Ella Meet Marilyn.” The play has been competely re-written for the 2008 production, and if it has been crafted skillfuly for Theatre Royal Stratford then there’s every chance of a West End transfer in due course.

Celebrity

So part of my anticipation is to see if the question of the emancipation of the excluded black people as a whole class is brought up or glossed over through focussing on forging a pathway for the very few to rise up to become celebrities, leaving the masses behind them. The Marilyn Munroe icon has become a symbol of celebrity itself, so there are some interesting mixed messages inherent in the subject matter. The part of Ella Fitzgerald is played by Nicola Hughes who has been in Porgy and Bess and Chicago and Wendy Morgan from A Street Car Named Desire and The Bill is cast in the role of Marilyn Monroe. So that’s two very brave women to go on stage and play those huge stars.

Songs

I’m also going to enjoy the chance to hear some great songs performed live on stage.

Someone To Watch Over Me; My Funny Valentine; Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Wonderful old classics with which I am familiar not from the Jazz legends themselves but from the great covers sung by Mari Wilson in the nineteen eighties.

They Can’t Take That Away From Me - Lady Is a Tramp - Bewitched. Bothered and Bewildered - Every time We Say Goodbye - Just Two Little Girls From Little Rock - The Man That Got Away - Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend

Also some new songs by musical director Warren Wills.

http://theatreroyallondon.com/

95% of Mac users downloaded the wrong version February 14, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Wiki , add a comment

Thanks to “Observer” for leaving a comment pointing to this salutary story of the worst download page ever, which caused 95% of Mac users to try out a two year old version of a piece of software called Mono, instead of the current one. 95% of Windows users downloaded the wrong version too, the page was so bad. The faulty design was caused by exactly the problem with mediawiki image linking which I explained how to get around in my recent post how to make image links in mediawiki

Well done Miguel de Icaza for honestly blogging about the mistakes as well as the accomplishments, there’s a lesson for us all there I think.

London social media development February 14, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : social media, social objects, London, cider , add a comment

It was Wednesday evening so I went along to the Coach and Horses in Greek St, Soho to take part in an early user testing session for i-together’s new twitter and google maps mashup project. The usability test was run by Ofer Deshe of Flow Interactive who introduced himself as coming from a background in cognitive psychology, using techniques borrowed from ethnographical anthropology, so being chosen as the user to be observed was something of a privilege. I was sat in front of a laptop running a web service with no explanation or guidance, asked simply to explore and try to make sense of it. Well I just hope my slightly flummoxed attempts at navigation and comments provided some useful data.

Afterwards we had some wide ranging conceptual discussions which touched on ideas about public identity and personal security, activities or events as social objects, the natural development of some online communities into face-to-face meetups and much more. There’s still a fair amount of work to be done on the prototype service, both in explaining the concepts and making a winning user interface, but if anyone can do it then Luke, Benjie and Jof are in position to succeed with support from the vibrant and friendly London social media development community.

The Coach and Horses is also the venue for Social Media Café on Friday, and I was happily able to use the free wifi to update the cider wiki to mention the Westons Old Rosie currently on tap.

Blogging in February February 12, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : 31daychallenge , 1 comment so far

I’m hearing some complaints about the “February Blues” and bloggers block which made me wonder whether there’s any truth in the idea that this month is more difficult for bloggers get inspiration than the rest of the year.

Well a blog is by definition time-orientated so it’s easy to go back and look at previous posts all from the month of February, over the years. I was quite surprised at the result of this excercise, which is summarised below :

February 2007 (33 posts)

Wow, more than one post per day last year in February, but what was it all about?

The novelty of blogs is wearing off … but not entirely, it seems
Action Research to develop Wikiversity I wonder how Cormac’s research project is coming along, one year later.
Wiki Patterns Hmm, the thinking behind this one is much clearer now. Why did they insist on ignoring contexts and promote a simplistic prevalence of already established enterprise wiki patterns? It was to make a book - Wikipatterns
The Art of Threading Apparently this post gets traffic from the search engines because the title misleads people into thinking it’s going to be about a popular technique for hair removal! But it’s actually a useful story about online discussion group threads, well I think so. Why can’t they just use electrolysis, wax or chemicals like everyone else?
What is turkey ham? The Bernard Matthews Bird Flu episode took place in February last year, which added to my epidemiology category.
How I would like to use SecondLife - not at all, these days.
Homemade Mayonnaise I try to avoid too much food blogging here, (I do some of that on the uk cider blog) but this was related to the bird flu story.

But maybe February 2007 just happened to be an eventful month, so how about previous years?

February 2006 (15)

Half the volume, but double the intensity?

EXHIBITION DATE March 8th This is a clue that I probably spent most of February franticly making preparations for the climax of my 3 year online BA Honours degree
Significant learning from the cp2 web2.0 workshop Reflections after the event which took place in January 2006

February 2005 (10)

For February 2005 we have to go back to a seperate blog to which were imported archives from my ultralab blog “have envelope, will push” which was taken offline. Then for the month of February we find a series of posts:

Communities of Practice Parts 1 2 3 and 4 ( Have you seen that beautiful scanned squash before somewhere? )
Expert Ants in Wiki World a bit of a breakthrough, that one.

February 2004 (1)

For February 2004 I can only find one post, so I’m not sure what happened there. It’s on an old blogger blog, and concerns Gordon Pask, the cybernetician who developed ideas about learning called “conversational theory”.

February 2003 (0)

In February 2003 I didn’t have a blog, well not one that would be recognised as such nowadays, and you might have found me discussing LOGO in uk.schools.education-it

So there we have a round up of posts from previous Februaries, a month renowned for winter blues, longing for springtime and having to put up with the second or third sesonal headcold. Atishoo.

Open thread for lurkers February 9, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, blogs and community , 17comments

This is an “open thread” patterned blog post which means that I’m not writing on any particular topic, instead I’m leaving it open to my readers to initiate discussion by bringing up any subject you’d like to talk about, or even just to say hullo.

behind the curtain According to conventional wisdom the ratio of lurkers to posters in any online forum tends to be around the 10:1 level, depending on the nature of the topic and I probably only know about a handful of people who would seem to be regular readers. I know there are more out there though, and this is your opportunity to “delurk” as they say, to come out from hiding in the silent shadows and acquire a voice of your own.

There must be something that’s been on your mind, let’s get it out with.

Come on in, the water’s lovely

CC photo credit “The truth lies behind the blurry curtain” by assbach

older posts »

DARnet

What’s in the mirror? February 28, 2008

London Bloggers Blogroll February 23, 2008

Eurostar sponsors crowdsourcing February 22, 2008