FutureEverything

A round-up of some of the best coverage I've found discussing the Social Media Summit and some of the other Futuresonic events. There's content across social networks tagged #futr09 as well. Please feel free to submit links to anything else you see or have created vis the comments below.

• Flickr: "futr09"
  All the pictures from all those at Futuresonic using the tag Futr09 on Flickr.
  (tags: flickr pictures photographs)
• Review | Futuresonic09 round up « InterventTech
  This years conference was really well organised and brought a great collection of speakers together. The ranging insight and expertise they brought to the conference felt relevant and the mix of practicing artists and ‘tech-industry’ representatives generated some interesting debates on the platform.
  (tags: futuresonic futr09 clairewelsby)
• Imagine that ... cathedral bells in Liverpool play Lennon's anti-religion hit | Mail Online
  It's the last place you’d expect to hear John Lennon’s anti-religion anthem Imagine, but the tune rang out yesterday from the bells of an Anglican cathedral.
  (tags: futuresonic, #futr09, lennon, liverpool)
• timdifford #futr09 - Twitter Search
  Stream from Tim Difford which inlcudes links providing more information to Adam Greenfield's resentation about networked city environments.
  (tags: futuresonic #futr09 timdifford adamgreenfield networked)
• FutureEverything
  Hearing their lucid presentations, it was hard not to wonder where Digital Britain took their advice, and how they could miss so much. And, then again it was possible to wonder if Digital Britain matters. The kids are already there. And the semantic web's killer services will likely spring up from nowhere and go pandemic before...
  (tags: futresonic, #futr09, semanticweb, digitalbritain)
• FutureEverything
  Liveblogging in FriendFeed was a cynch. Having set up a dedicated FriendFeed Group for people to discuss the summit, I created a new discussion thread within that Group for each talk that I attended. The title of the thread was sent automatically to Twitter to help draw people into the discussion. I then spent the duration of each talk typing a short paragraph about each point that the speaker made. People following the liveblog saw these appear in realtime without the need to refresh their browser.
  (tags: martinsfp, futuresonic, #futr09, liveblog, friendfeed)
• Futuresonic Social Technologies Summit - FriendFeed
  Coverage via FriendFeed made up a lot of the ongoing commentary and you can access this here thanks to Martin Bryant who worked tirelessly to create this throughout the summit.
  (tags: futuresonic, #futr09, friendfeed, commentary, martinsfp)
• Futuresonic 2009 - a set on Flickr
  Some very artistic shots by SamScam. Considering the festival essentially took place in a couple of fixed locations. Sam's eye for the different has really paid off to produce such a stunnimg array of pictures.
  (tags: #futr, futuresonic, technology, socialmedia, photographs)

It's been quite a couple of days and now the Social Media Summit is over - so time for the conversation to start.

I'm going to take a few hours (and get a good night's sleep) to let all we've heard settle a little before blogging again.

Inevitably, given my journalism work, I viewed a lot of what I've seen and heard through the lense of someone concerned with the distribution and accessibility of news and information.

But there were so many themes and concerns which arose outside of these concerns just going to prove how valuable it is to hear different ideas, viewpoints, philosophies, people, professions etc.

I feel suitably exposed!

In logging off for the night I just wanted to re-iterate what I said from the stage this evening - I'd love to hear more about what other people got from the conference, plans for the future, things that worked - and things that didn't.

These are the random thoughts I'm having at the moment on issues it raised for me - what are yours.

* Who owns my personal data?

* A 'fun' technology can also be 'important' - it's not the medium that makes those things mutually exclusive.

*The collaboration of many could model the planet.

*There's limitless opportunities to embed data into the very fabric of our shared environment.

* Why would any company spend money on doing something that makes their customer's hate them (like call centres)?

And finally one for all you tech entrepreneurs

* If all the free credible content was suddenly charged for, would your business model remain?

All contributions on those and any other questions gratefully received and responded to - later. Night all.

Some lessons learned when setting up tech businesses became the focus of the sessions in space two this morning.

Northern StartUp2.0’s Manoj Ranaweera spoke about his experiences starting with the inspired life map diagram which you can see here.

(Interesting to note that he now feels he was very risk averse during his life until 2004 when he did an MBA).

He started up in 2006 and has built the community to more than 1,400 members despite not previously knowing about tech, or having any contacts in the community. He advised: “Build something, have something people can experience so it’s not just a business plan, and talk to VC (venture capitalists) as much as possible”.

His presentation also included this list of potential funding sources; NWDA, Technology Strategy Board, Nesta and Daresbury Innovation Centre.

Another recent start-up, the personalisation website ensembli had earlier told the audience about it’s experience.

Since setting up in March, it now has several thousand registered users who are mostly UK and US based.

The company found it got a lot of benefit out of attending the American events Demo 09 and SxSW.

Why use the same device (mobile phone) to call for pizza and contact your lover? Taking on board the need to provide a more sensory experience for the latter, Scottish company Distance Lab is looking for couples to take part in an experiment to make that phone call while apart more special.

It has developed something called Mutsugoto - a Japanese word which translates to whispered intimacy. The device allows for a visualisation of movement which each couple can participate in remote locations.

It’s a tricky thing to describe but the image is a shared one which glows darker when the couple make the same interaction – it looked more romantic than it sounds!

The idea has already earned the company an award from New Media Scotland and now they are looking for couples to try it out and help them develop the product.

If you have a romantic relationship that is separated by distance check out www.Distancelab.org

As the speaker at this morning’s session, Stefan Agamanolis said: “Technology doesn’t have to be so hard-edged. “

Can you remember how you first heard about youtube? This was the seemingly innocent question asked this afternoon – and no-one could remember.

I think that’s worth some extra thought – how ever it happened it’s worth understanding, after all it worked and I’m pretty certain it would have happened outside of any institutional education – or mainstream media publication for that matter.

Talking about learning and education, 4ip’s Ewan McIntosh put forward some different ways of assessing the success of online services and learning environments as well as offering an alternative view to the anonymity = evil argument.

As someone who has always felt that education was done to me rather than by me, I was fascinated to see his findings on working with young people.

A couple of main points from the presentation (discussion of which is still going online – use the hashtag #futr09 to join in):

• Anonymity can be prized when discussing difficult issues – think sexual relations or embarrassing medical conditions.

• Instead of a ROI (Return on Investment) consider a Return on Attention. • Success can mean building sites which no-one visits – Doplr and last.fm were mentioned but perhaps Twitter could go in there too.

• People input data when they knows it’s safe, have something to gain or it’s fun but there has to be trust.

• Trust is convened. The session was part of the identity and trust strand of which there’s more posts to come. This is just a snapshot of the whole presentation and Ewan mentioned that he will be posting more thoughts on his blog Edu.blogs.com

Is the future for journalists that of data master for video games? That was the idea put forward in a session on news and gaming by the BBC’s Philip Trippenbach.

Addressing the Futuresonic conference begore lunch, just weeks after the controversial video game based on the real Battle of Fallujah was cancelled, Philip proposed that journalists were ideally skilled to take on the tasks of selecting and curating content for a new audience.

A journalist himself, he said: “The big question for people like me is that social media is turning upside down. This is a big problem for journalists.

“Games like these are pointing the way, to manage all these multiple data streams, journalists as data master. “These are the only things that journalists have left – we can look at information coming in and judge whether it’s good.”

While accepting that many people may still see the whole genre of gaming as a potentially trivialising the news agenda, he argued that the experience of gaming is essentially an educational one, giving the user pleasure in problem solving.

He showed the audience some examples of games which had proved to be both successful and tackle serious issues – Insurgency (which involved input of veteran Marines), Budget Bust – get to control the US budget and even a game about taxation and civic engagement which has sold an amazing 46m copies.

“Is it journalism? – I don’t know but you can argue it reflects the experience of people on the ground.” I managed to grab Philip for a very quick audio interview before he flies off to Poland which you can hear here.

Talking about the next generation broadband, Manchester digital’s Shaun Fensom started by saying – it is all about the technology. These are my notes from the session, a bit rough and ready maybe, but hopefully, useful. In short, Shaun said: “It’s about the technology, specifically it’s about disruptive technology. What you find is there are generational sifts, points at which new generational technologies come in. An example would have been when modems came in during the 1960s but it really did need the introduction of personal computers in order for that really take off. 2nd example is the invention of the www but it took the introduction of echo cancelling modems. While hyperlinks might have been important it was graphics which made it so appealing. 3rd example you are already seeing e-commerce in 1990s but it needed ADSL or 3rd generation broadband to take off. Fist because of the bandwidth, the 2nd was the fact it was always-on. Media has moved from one person with a lot of power when almost anyone can publish. 2nd big disrupter is you can copy media without any degradation. Complete undermining of content business much as music and film starting and now publshing. New wave of technologies that make things possible. Next change is bringing fibre connections to people’s homes. Profound shift – effectively removes the bandwidth limit It will change the way the services can be delivered. Example is, telepresence, the ability to have meetings where some are there while others aren’t. Not just across the planet but people who are just the other side of the campus. The problem is the big companies don’t have an incentive to do this quickly. There are examples such as here in Manchester (Oxford Road Corridor) and there could be a kind of patchwork quilt across the country. Important point is that it will come – fibre to premises will replace copper. Will have just as much effect or arguable a bigger one. The Digital Britain report needs to bring about the conditions where this is possible. In conclusion, the key for digital business is to note the overall message of this talk. It’s difficult to predict what these technologies will do, but very often it is these that have the most profound effect.

Self-confessed “presentist” (as opposed to futurist) Stowe Boyd’s keynote speech looked at the cultural shifts being brought about by the move to a more participatory world wide web - including certain death for the current mass media.

Predicting an impact on society where the values of the post industrialised, more tribal world will return to be important. He said: “There’s a view that this democratisation of the media – we all have a chance to go on the web. It’s almost a pre-industrial ethic. I refer to it as being egalitarian but it’s not really a total levelling of everyone’s involvement. There’s still a lot of room for individual reputation authority.”

Spelling out the well-documented demise of newspapers across America during this morning’s keynote speech, Boyd predicted that the same fate awaited all other countries as the move away from traditional media models swept through.

“The collapse of traditional media is a direct consequence – it’s happening fast across America. It’s a cautionary tale. “All those people in Boston are supposed to be good citizens, buying the Boston Globe, and they are not. “The mass media never put it in these terms, they often put it like a faddish taste.

"It’s not that it’s a power shift. People are deciding for themselves what’s important. We have wrenched ourselves away from the editors and once they’ve done that they are never going to give it back. They can’t erect pay walls and expect to get that back.”

Using the success of Twitter as a prime example, Boyd predicted the emergence of much more social and participatory media where interactions are, by default, public.

“Social location tools, networks in general and future things like social television are coming into their own.”

The full conference schedule gets underway this morning and I shall be bring you updates here and on other platforms using the tag #futr09.

The main event this morning will be the keynote from Stowe Boyd the man who coined the phrase 'social tools'. He's talking about the shape of future culture.

Right now, Drew Hemment is welcoming people to the festival and this afternoon we will be looking at the issue of identity and trust.

Stay tuned and more updates later.

“We are as gods we may as well get good at it.” Quoting the environmentalist Stewart Brand , the key speaker at tonight’s gala event Jamais Cascio , finished his thought-provoking, if somewhat gloomy, analysis of the challenges facing all of us in addressing the environmental challenge of global warming.

His argument, which proved to be too much for one rather vocal member of the audience who had to be asked to leave, was that we now know what’s going wrong, and so have a responsibility to do something about it.

He put forward the argument that the acts of industrialisation had caused fundamental changes in the way that the natural world behaved leaving us open, not only to climatic irregularities, but in other shifts such as opening us up to pandemics.

Addressing the group at the Contact Theatre in Manchester he said: “ We are in a lot of trouble and the real tragedy is that we know exactly what we need to do. “Even if we were to act immediately we would still be coming dangerously close, tipping point, when everything changes and not for the better.

“So if we know we still come dangerously close to disaster what do we do, how many pople are we willing to let die? And that is not an idle question.” After outlining some faintly sci-fi sounding options of space shields (which he conceded would not happen), GM Trees (which would take too long), Jamias said much work was needed on reflective processes to hold back the effects of continued, even if less, carbon emissions.

“There is so much research, action and knowledge behind the conclusion. What we should do is change our damn behaviour but that is not happening fast enough. The effects we are feeling now are from 20 or 30 years ago, he said. “If we don’t act fast enough we will pass the tipping point. Pandemics that will make Sars look like a joke.”

He concluded on a more positive note, calling for technologists to take action by helping to model the different scenarios. With more effort in this area the level of granularity such a project would need would be possible – what happens in different climate zones, with different vegetation etc.

“We can make a better world for everyone. We need the assimilations and the study – that’s why I’m talking about it now. We need to know we are making the right choice.

“Here’s where we start.”

What did you think of the presentation? Does the answer lie in the open source hackings of the technologists? What of political will and a shift in society? Let's continue this debate.