bronwen clune

Last Friday I was invited to take part in a “creative salon” for the Perth International Arts Festival staff and I was so inspired that I thought the idea was worth spreading.

The idea behind it is very simple - get a few people who are innovators in their field and bring them together in an informal setting to share their passions and stories with a group. For the inaugral event I was invited with two other guests - Caroline Wood from Amnesty International and Ian Weir (Gordon Innocent) artist/architect and photographer to come and talk to Festival staff. Rania Ghandour, who is the media relations manager at the Festival and a person of inspiration herself, put the salon together so we could all stop and think about our passions/what drives us and the contributions we make to our area of interest. It was a fantastic experience and Ian and I have already asked Rania that she invite us to the next one

I learnt a lot as well - both Caroline and Ian are amazing people with the most wonderful stories. I love the way that Ian has this bullish passion for his art and just lives and breathes his ideas. He has an exhibition coming up in Artrage soon and I hope to catch up with him then and do some stories on his projects for the Norg. Caroline has this amazing magnetism and presence and this extraordinary calm and focus that for me is always a sign of a great learnt wisdom. She holds a full time job and is also the head of Amnesty International WA and must come across the worst of our humanity everyday, but she remains hopeful and, better still, is doing her part in making a difference. But the learning didn’t stop there, because the audience was as much a part of the salon as we were. So thanks to all the staff for taking time out of your day to come and share your experiences too.

Lastly, I should mention Festival Artistic Director Shelagh Magadza, whom I could spend hours talking to. I think I may have piqued her interest in Twitter - which somemone pointed out was like an everyday Creative Salon - and I hope that she joins. She has so much to share and is definitely someone to watch and be inspired by. Our Festival is is awesome hands and I suspect it will get better every year under her.

Enough lovey dovey from me - I must resume my battle position in the media war, but really it was a great event that helped me recharge my batteries and remember why I created the Norg in the first place. Now to take aim and fire
We can’t all have TED, so can I suggest a “Creative Salon” INS-TED.

What my speech bubble sez.

I’ve mentioned before that I’d like to start doing a bit of videocasting, but at the moment time is my limitation. That was until I was invited to be a “pre-alpha” tester for Seesmic, serial entrepreneur and man with the sexy accent Loic Le Meur’s latest start-up.

The Pulver TV show where I was interviewed by Chris Brogan also featured Loic so it was fitting that it was Chris gave me an invite to Seesmic and also a testament to the shrinking world we live in. Either that or we are all trapped in the same bubble

So what is Seesmic? I’ve heard it described as “video Twitter” and from what I’ve seen that sums up the basics pretty well and there are a lot of people using it as a video lifestream. I like that idea and it seems the users on there are really getting into it. A lot of the video conversations - you can reply to other videos - revolve round Seesmic itself. It will be interesting to see how this evolves, as more users join the community and think about creative uses for the service. I’ve said before that for me a community has really evolved when it finds new uses for services beyond the original intentions. Twitter is an example of this, it’s gone beyond just about “what people are doing”.

For me Seesmic is an easy informal way to video blog, and I intend to use it that way and try and try and show the world some of the great innovation that is going on in Perth and Australia. I’m going to make it my mission to interview as many people as possible and develop my Seesmic stream into a voice for the Australian start-up community. Yes, I could do it on YouTube, but Seesmic has the added bonus of sending it out to the social communities I’m involved in - it can post the video to YouTube, send it to Twitter and hopefully soon be able to send them to this blog.

My other motive for getting involved is I’m really interested in investigating Seesmic’s potential as a Cit J reporting tool, where Cit Js can upload video from Seesmic to norgs. Better still when they can do that directly from their mobile phones. I love this space and Seesmic really excites me.

Grum pointed this out on Twitter.

So do Twitterers all not value our privacy or do we value our openness?

Whatever!

It shouldn’t suck when things you love go mainstream, but it does!

Oh ye and kiraEDGE has a twitter feed - but it appears its just quick thinking a fan. Would have added a whole new dimension if they had created twitter feeds for those tangled in the virtual triangle.

Well, I don’t know what I’ve done, but Twitter appears to have eaten all my followers, just when I thought that Everybody Loves Me.

I’ve gone from 473 followers to 146, back to 220 and now I’m on 207. It seems that my profile was set to private - I have no idea how, but I have now changed it back to public and have still lost over half my followers.

I’ve logged a bug with Twitter and hope they’ll get on to it. In the meantime I feel so unloved

I gave a talk the other day on building online communities, in which I mentioned that gaming elements can be an important part in getting people to take part in a social network. Give most people a bit of a challenge and they rise to it.

Twitter’s newest Twitter poster is a great example of that It’s supposed to provide a visual representation of people’s degree of influence on Twitter. An hey, everyone wants to be a *little* influential.

Except of course if you have a private Twitter profile. Then you just want to be private!

Already I’ve seen a few tweets popping up about how to get on the Twitter poster. How many followers you have seems to be a consideration, but I think there is a bit more to it. Some people with 0 followers appear on the Australian page, so it could just be a pretty picture… Anyone else have theories?

Oh, and you can follow me here BTW.

Game on

Early this morning - at 2.30am Perth time to be precise - I had an interview with my Twitter friend Chris Brogan on PulverTV. It was just a short interview about Podcamp Perth and what we all got out of it. I must confess my mind was a little bit blurry, but it was great fun.

Chris Brogan and I ‘met’ each other on Twitter and we’ve exchanged twitters for some time as well as a few emails. When I added him as a Twitter friend it was long before I got involved in Podcamp and long before I knew he was one of the original two to start it (I just thought he was a cool guy with some great tweets). I love coincidences like that.

So this was sort of like a ‘virtual meeting’ for both of us. Earlier on Twitter I had asked someone to do a test Skype with me as I was having trouble with my USB headphones. Chris Penn - the other Chris behind Podcamp - answered and we had a great chat about the respective Podcamps as well. It really made the world feel small and familiar.

I’ll let you know when the video is up. Andrew Lipson, who does a great job as producer emailed me to say there was an error in archiving and they’d post it up later.

I’ve also started thinking about playing around with Live streaming myself. Have to give Grum and Rich a run for their money