PCM creative in action

The Art of Zen Twitter

A refreshing respite from the "How to get a gazillion follows", "top tips of top tips" or "best twitter app list for managing your numerous twitter apps".

This is a simple tale of thoughtful set up, minimal effort with quality returns... using Twitter. If you have no idea what to do with Twitter, no time to engage with Twitter but realise there is something important bubbling within this Twitter lark. This is the article for you.

Back in February 2009 I delivered an intro to social media workshop for Imre Design, the Director Paul Imre I meet very briefly at MediaCampBucks but I was recommended as a contact via Twitter when his company was looking to run a social media awareness workshop for a selection of his regular clients. With my specialism being the web for the Arts I was asked to reflect on one of his clients in particular, Urban Strides a youth street dance company.

Twitter is an element of my hands-on workshops where we sign up to Twitter enabling the protecting updates feature during set up and we tweet for the first time collectively to a central "Blue Peter!, here's one I made earlier Twitter account.

That central account is the reason I am writing this post "The Zen art of Twitter".

A few months ago I decided to re visit the account. I had received several email notices telling me people were following so I logged in to discover 90 followers. When I reviewed the list I discovered 90 very relevant fellow tweeters active in the field of dance from magazines, dance wear shops, dance companies, agents, promoters and venues. There were dancers and dance lovers too of course.

So for a 15min set up time here I am 6 months later with a niche audience. Social Media has to be a conversation and 93 is a number I can talk to when the need arises. Personal direct messaging is far more feasible on this scale. I wonder when companies or even individuals build twitter followers so fast how any real conversation can take place. Networking and lead generation is key. I know hardened tweeters who have finely tuned Tweetdeck groups running in order to take part in conversations. They have evolved to necessitate tailored network filtering to stay in touch. Twitter is... I will say this only once more... a conversation!

So what is the Art? There are many approaches to Twitter - a link distribution platform and browser, a back channel forum and chat room for an event, water cooler chat for geeks, a gossamer thread of friendship, a nifty website updating tool, a instant knowledge bank, its is all of these. If you are a small business and don't know if Twitter is worth your time spend 15 minutes setting up your account fully:

• Add an avatar - a picture of you if its personal or a logo if its for the business
• Add a one line keyword rich biog
• Include your website address
• sign up with a valid email address

With this in place you can sit back and wait. Should you want to get the ball rolling search twitter for your keywords or home location see who else is using them.

For Urban Strides' biog I used their own mission "We want to inspire through entertainment and education and enthuse with our passion for dance." For many there is a compulsion to tweet. Once you start you won't be able to stop.

If it 'don't grab ya' its no loss. Having an identity on Twitter mean you can be referenced. This has Zen value too.

For example:

 

 

Anyone reading these tweets can click the blue text and find out who the person being referenced is.

My Twitter network has taken 18months to evolve. It began as a back channel for an event. Then became my water cooler chat and real world network reinforcement. It has only been relatively recent that I can confidently ask a question and feel assured I will get an answer. When I do I am still humbled that my tweets are indeed being read let alone responded to. Twitter at its most valuable for my business is a way of announcing what I am doing and when so that anyone in the physical area of the event can come along and network.

It all comes back to beer!

N95 can be a web cam - Hurrah!

Live mobile streaming is magnificent. I use Qik when roaming and chatting and grabbing the mood of an event. A Qik player is embedded in this blog. There are times when the hand-held roving video is a bit of a hand full...well both hands full.

For audience engagement web cam streaming leaves my hands free to respond to messages in the live chat (see my blog post about when Pilot Theatre live streamed "The Child") So it has always seemed a logical step to some how use my N95 to perform both roles.

Why take two cameras? PCM creative in action has always been about how social media technology can be harnessed for the arts and creative businesses. When I am traveling around I don't what to cart masses of camera kit with me. Light and liberated...have media will travel that's my philosophy. From a touring perspective the N95 or equivalent smart phone with a notebook mini laptop seems a perfect production documentary set up to get a flavour of a stage production on tour from a behind the scenes perspective.

But I digress...How did I turn my N95 in to a web cam?

After much searching and many conversations with promises of the future talents of the N97 I discovered Mobiola. It has two parts the bit you run on your PC and the bit you run on your mobile. Before you go any further I have to point out that this is not a free application it costs $19.99 + VAT and if you buy before the nifty 7day 20% off promotional code runs out it costs a bit less! See if your mobile is supported. 

Ok... you will need:

• Mobiola installed on your PC
• Mobiola installed on your N95 (or compatible smart phone)
• Your phone's software installed on your PC or Laptop
• Your USB connection cable to connect mobile to PC (you can connect via wi-fi or bluetooth also)

The first time I fired up the application on my PC I was informed I had the Nokia ConnAPI.DLL missing. Please don't run away at this point! I'm not that technical either. I collected the DLL from DLL-files.com, unzipped it, copied the .dll file and pasted it in to the windows/system32 folder on my hard drive. I also discovered that the activation code when you purchase a license is for one PC only so its important to deside which machine you will be connecting the webcam to. I'm using my full sized laptop.

Once I had that sorted and the webcam application running on my PC I

• connected my N95 via USB
• selected "PC suite" when prompted on my mobile
• navigated to the "WebCam 3" application
• selected the USB option on the PC applications dashboard
• selected Options - Connect - USB on my N95
• opened the lens cover on my phone
• shrieked with joy as the cameras feed was displayed on the PC

I've had it working with Bambuser, Tokbox and Ustream. It uses the Mic on my Laptop so I'm going to look in to getting a better quality plug in one. I'm going to field test my set up at the East Midlands Amb:IT:ion roadshow on June 19th. I hope to have blogged again before that but I will report back.

If you have a go please leave me a comment saying how it went.

Keeping a balance - Geek Chart - social media pie!

With so many social media tools, services and sites on the web how do you make sure you get a balanced distribution of content for your time and money?

Being so busy with social media clients recently its ironic that my social media activity has been lacking. Not in quantity as I am a prolific Tweeter which cross posts my updates to several other web services, notably Facebook. My social media activity has lacked focus and depth.

Twitter is a fabulous service for letting the world and your network know what you are up to, what you are discovering as life drags you along. Twitter is up datable from my mobile so its quick and easy.

I tag articles, websites, tools and services I discover during my working day using Delicious and these online bookmarks, kept in check on all my PC's by Xmarks means I can effortlessly maintain my online and offline bookmarks (as an added bonus it means they are all backed up) and using the nifty Delicious widget I can filter selected tagged content in to the various online networks I act as custodian for, at the moment predominantly Amb:IT:ion and it's multiple UK regional digital opportunities networks I am building and igniting.

So... Geek Chart. What I think is great about this embeddable widget is it's a way to show where you share online and most importantly how that activity is distributed. Geek Charts show the last 30 days of your activity on the sites you enter usernames for.

Seeing mine on May 1st 2009 (left) I realised I need to even out my activity.

The active embedded PCM Geek Chart should be in column on the right. If not see it on the Geek Chart site. It tracks Twitter (the turquoise) Delicious (the pale blue) a blog (the orange) Flickr (the pink) StumbleUpon (in green) and also at the time of writing this post - YouTube, Digg and Last.FM.

It is a visual gauge to show your followers, readers and friends where you are most active on line but it is also an excellent indicator to help measure your personal effectiveness and to focus attention on areas of your activity that are weakest and hopefully prompt you to ask your self if your communication is effective and assess how to redress any imbalance.

Quite frankly for me it highlighted how poor my blogging has been, coming in at 6% of my activity. Targets are a good thing and by blogging more I hope to alleviate my blogger's guilt and produce the more focused and considered content the medium of blogging facilitates.  

So see for your self have I addressed the imbalance?

If you set up a Geek Chart or already have your very own Geek Chart please post a link to yours here in the comments. How has it made you think about your online activity and has it promoted you keep a different balance?

Footloose and Fancy Free

Where it all began. My home audience. The reason I do what I do.

I recently write this article for the SMA - The Stagemanagement Association. It should have been a blog article but I never posted it. Here it is.

Article written by Caron Lyon. Published in Feb 2009 issue of Cueline.

Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Ebay, Wikipedia, all words that have crashed in to our vocabulary in the last year or so. All these services are advances in the way we interact with the Internet. Social Media, another new word, is an Internet phenomenon it is hard to escape, a phenomenon firmly embedded in the computer culture. Great if you have a home computer or a computer on your desk at work and of course an Internet connection but for Stage Managers who spend most of their working time off line this online culture is a world many of us have little time for. For many of us the Internet is a research tool that means we aren't confined to one edition of the Yellow Pages when propping or dependent on the local library for research now Wikipedia is here. Ebay is another service that has made propping a little easier for those in the know. Electronic mail, Email, another tool we either love or loathe, when we have access to it. Word processor applications mean we can type up rehearsal notes and create call sheets, save them, distribute them by email or print them. BUT...You have to be at a computer and connected to the Internet to do most of that and the departments we send our emails to have to check their email. In the end it is easier to post notices on a notice board in the Green Room or at Stage Door, get books from the library and source props locally. Another problem is that actors don't have desks and don't have desktop computers, so the good old notice board is the most effective and efficient method of communication Stage Managers have. But think of a world with out mobile phones. Now that is a piece of technology love it or loath it is inconceivable to think about how we got by without. OK, So... this Social Media stuff. What exactly is it, and why do I care? Social media is defined by Websters online dictionary as “the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.” Will it become a thing that in years to come we look back on and wonder how we got by without. As a whole NO but it's a massive arena and there are parts of the phenomenon that will give back aspects of our life we currently sacrifice. It will offer us resources and services we never imagined. It will add aspects to out jobs in the near future we would rather do without. So being aware of this technological advance is important. For example. How many times have we finished contracts and said “Let’s stay in touch”. I remember a time when most of my friends were mobile phone numbers I scrolled through thinking, “I wonder what they are doing now”. The advent of social media and social networking sites like Facebook means we can create Facebook groups, add friends to our profiles, log in to Facebook and declare the same... “I wonder what they are doing now” but now we can see and comment and wonder no more but in all not very useful to our working lives as Stage Managers. There is more, so much more. In August 2008 I was invited by Equity to deliver a presentation about this phenomenon for the Edinburgh Fringe. It was called “How to use Social Media to Get Connected, Get Noticed and Get Work.” The slideshow is online to view. In November I delivered a presentation to MDDA (Manchester Digital Development Agency) called “Mobile Marvels” looking specifically at how Arts Practitioners can use mobile phones to do the same. In future editions of Cueline I'll be looking at some of these Social Media platforms and hopefully giving SMA members some new tools and useful services to add to their repertoire, help improve the work life balance to communicate with loved ones, new friends and old, to use the Internet as a resource while out on tour, how to document and archive productions, answer questions like what is blogging, micro-blogging, podcasting. This Social Media stuff falls in to 3 categories:

• Ways to Publish Information
• Ways to Share Information
• Ways to Network and Connect with others

Next Cueline will look at Facebook and social networks, followed by Twitter and micro-blogging, LinkedIn and business networking, Flickr and photo sharing, YouTube and video, Qik and mobile live streaming, Ning and online communities, Delicious and social bookmarking in future issues. There is a great glossary in Equity's New Media Deals booklet on page 24 giving definitions of all these new words and digital concepts in the context of the Entertainment Industry. Social Media is a voyage of discovery. A favourite quote of mine “Don't add technology to the way you do things, change the way you do things when you see what the technology can do.” Marcus Romer, Artistic Director of Pilot Theatre Company. In future issues of Cueline I'll also be looking at ways theatre companies are embracing Social Media starting with Pilot. After all I am their virtual Stage Manager but that's another article! (Future article mentioned will also appear in the ACE & Amb:IT:ion digital opportunities networks and here too)