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Carnival tweets

I'd like to take a quick moment to reflect on something we did at 1Xtra this weekend. We've building up to Carnival for some weeks, covering Leeds and Notting Hill Carnivals on Bank Holiday Monday. We always cover it with photos and video, but this year we also microblogged it with Twitter as well. We registered six presenters, two journalists and seven interactive staff and "followed" them from the 1Xtra profile, giving us a "1Xtra and friends" rss feed. We pulled this into the Carnival minisite homepage on the day using one of their flash badges. We also hooked it up to 1Xtra's mobile system, so listeners could subscribe by texting a key word to 1X's mobile short code and receive our tweets on their phone.

It was a bit of a risk - Twitter is a very niche activity in the grander scheme of things. 1Xtra's presenters and production staff had never heard of it, and it's so far off our target demographic's radar it's untrue. But by pitching it as simple text & web updates, keeping jargon out of it, and just getting presenters to text stuff in we kept it simple and it worked. Nice.

Interactive flood map

BBC Berkshire have produced a brilliant google maps mash-up to display the flooding in that area. Includes youtube video, listener pics on flickr and reports from local BBC reporters. It's very cool, and so good to see a mash-up that provides a valuable service.

(via Cybersoc)

Sounds good - the future of interactive audio drama

Oxon Hoath
Originally uploaded by cowbite.

I'm at beautiful Oxon Hoath for a couple of days' brainstorming the future of interactive audio drama. Lots to think about, and it's interesting to consider the conundrums of drama as specifically audio. It's such a specific format, and so much of our drama/story consumption is visual by default - books, art, TV, film, the web, photography etc. A couple of things that have stuck with me today...

The importance of intimacy to audio/radio drama. Radio dramas seem to be more likely to be consumed in a solitary way.  Partly because of when they're broadcast - during the day or late at night, times when people are less likely to be gathered in the same room at home. But chiefly because they ask the listener to create the pictures for the drama for themselves. Radio drama happens in your head.

This got me thinking about intimacy and solitary media experiences. We focus so much on community and networking, harnessing the wisdom, passion and creativity of crowds that I wonder if we have discarded the notion of a solitary experience for a while. The networked world is noisy. Tweets, emails, sms, blogs, rss, facebook, video, audio, blah blah blah. At Oxon Hoath mobiles are strictly forbidden outside the conference room and grounds. Triyoga is mobile-free, as is Blacks. These are all quite premium spaces, which says something interesting about the implicit value being placed on choosing to disconnect.

Other things that sounded fun:

- TomTom hacks - can you programme your satnav to tell you stories on your journey, or about locations you drive through?
- Conflicting soundtracks - walk through a garden to a New York cityscape, tour a city listening to birdsong soundtracks. What does it do to how you experience your environment, and the audio you're listening to?
- The importance of the contract with the listener - they've got to know what they've signed up for. There's an expectation that needs to be filled, or if not the disappointment should be mitigated with something better. This ties into the nature of narrative satisfaction, which I'm still trying to wrap my brain around.

Maybe more later, in the meantime I've an idea about trees to write up...

Multiplatform journalism

Ben Hammersley is covering the Turkish elections via a variety of interactive paths - twitter, blogging, flickr, google maps, del.icio.us, wikipedia, and a sort-of nod to trackback with links to other blogs. All aggregated into one page on BBC News. Cool.

No jam tomorrow

• Closure of BBC Jam - usage and other data - results of Freedom of Information Act enquiry
  Seb Schmoller's post makes interesting reading. Particularly regarding the weekly usage stats. I wonder how this correllates with more commercial offerings?
  (tags: education bbcjam)

5Live's Audience Editor

Louise Birt on being 5Live's audience editor. This is the 5Live's audience top 5 hot topics:

1. Immigration
2. Roads
3. Sport
4. NHS
5. War Against Terror

She's talking about hoaxing being a huge risk for the network, and how the checking she does on potential contributors is now more extensive than it was when she worked in newspapers; "I'm checking the electoral roll, talking to their family, sometimes visiting them at home...". There's a lot of fear here about people using UGC channels to steer the BBC's programming.

Manchester Blogging Project

Robin Hamman & Richard Fair
Originally uploaded by cowbite.

Robin Hamman is talking about the importance of developing sustained (and sustainable) trust with the audience. If they're spending time and money creating content for you, there's got to be something in it for them. It's a big issue that I think we frequently gloss over. Building big moderated communities creates problems of scale and resource, so it's only worth doing when it's part of the core editorial proposition. This is clearly the case with their blogging project, which requires fulltime involvement. Interesting to hear how they're getting bloggers on the radio. I wonder if they can do more - unnofficial correspondants perhaps? It's really blurring the lines between citizen journalism and broadcast journalism. But that argument will run and run.

EBU: Multimedia Meets Radio

Just finished presenting my piece on Radio 1's project in Second Life, which Robin has blogged. Tuija has put a bit of it on youtube... the bit where the video almost didn't work... bit of a scrum up there on the podium. I've got a raging cold, which is why I sound a bit like Kathleen Turner... (in my dreams...)

 

Guillaume du Gardier has also vlogged a converstation we had about it.

70/100

1NMA have given the 1Xtra a nice little review. Although I take issue with the suggestion for more "bling", it's an urban cliche too far...

Pats on backs all round. Then noses back to the grindstone... aiming for a full-fat 100% next time. Onwards!

youtube.com/bbc

Contrary to Viacom's aggressive anti-youtube stance, the beeb are getting into bed with the video sharing website. Brilliant, so good to see some forward thinking, public service sharing of content. But... videos from the youtube.com/bbc channel have had their embed function removed. I understand why - rights negotiations with rights owners, indies, talent etc historically don't accomodate you distributing their work in an uncontrolled/uncontrollable way. So the videos are up, but you can't do what youtube is actually best at - share them. It's a start - the content will reach an audience who may not bother with watching bbc tv or heading over to bbc.co.uk. But until people can embed the video they like, pass it on, mash it up and spit it back out again Auntie Beeb's YouTube channel will only be a half-way house.