DISQUS

Thanks for the phrase "radically insightful", I might start to use that in my publicity ;)

That we learn more from failure than success is pretty much a given — but it takes time to get into a mindset where you can fail without it knocking your confidence to try something else. Tons and tons of things I've tried have gone tits up —  you do have to chuck enough stuff at the "wall" of the interwebs to find out what sticks.

I'm sure there are lots of people that aren't quite sure what "RT" (or somesuch) means. Which manifests itself in responses to you when all you've done is pass on a request from someone else. Likewise with hashtags, as they aren't part of the standard "Twitter package" and never really get explained.

I had an incoherent attempt at this a few months ago http://thebounder.co.uk/blog/583/chinese-twispers/ - it'll only take a "celebrity" retweet in a situation like the one you describe above - combined with the ignorance of the press - to cause someone a load of hassle.

>There’s an awful lot of encouragement of people into social media - which is great - but not an awful lot of helping them set realistic expectations.

Yes, there's a connection with the "pastoral care" theme that Michael Grimes puts so well here: http://citizensheep.com/blog/2008/12/09/digital...

>I think it’s a case of who exactly is failing here, or where some kind of “blame” can be placed. If it’s a single person working alone who’s leading and directing everything then, yes, the emotional cost (or rewards) will affect them.

Most things have an originator - it's not blame it's fear or embarrassment or fear of feeling stupid (or something), of being the one who suggests or starts stuff that doesn't work.

As a personal example (all I can really go on) is "Brum Guide" — i thought that since wikipedia didn't allow conjecture or "un notable" stuff then there would be a need or use for a brum-location encyclopedia.

As it turned out, there wasn't — it petered out after about 10 entries, never gaining any traction. Now, if it was my first "idea" I would have been disappointed, maybe disheartened — would I have put the (admittedly small-ish) amount of effort into something again? I don't know.

What is sure is that the speed of "unorganising" these days is making the chance remark into something owned by groups quickly — so the chance of emotional responsibility, and the potential emotional cost of "failure" is spread and lessened. Or it could be that you can quickly gauge the level of interest or engagement in any idea or project.

>I wonder if there’s a connection with your Viral vs Meme distinction (viral is owned by one person, meme is not owned by the originator)?

Maybe, intended "virals" can fail, memes evolve so can't be intended (at least not real ones). Maybe the successful unorganisations are the ones that go memetical?

@Pete you're right - that's exactly how things should — and increasing can — work.

While the financial cost of "failure" (or having an idea) is now almost zero, there's still the emotional cost to consider - attempting to organise or even trying something without knowing how the people online will react is nerve-wracking, the emotional cost of "failure" may be lessening but it's still quite high.

A wise old newspaper man once said "never start a campaign you aren't going to win" - and while that's not (or shouldn't be) true of personal activity, it's how a lot of people feel (I'm guessing").

@Jon (a tangent, it goes without saying that the presentation is full of the interesting an the true).

>Therefore hierarchies are counterproductive to the goals of the community. If communities evolve through exchanges of social capital, then you limit opportunities to those who have the most capital.

Interesting stuff JH, it's true that hierarchies of authority are counterproductive to the goals of the community - what the web develops more is perhaps hierarchies of contribution.

Those 1% of Wikipedia users that make 70% (sorry figure escapes) of edits have no more actual technical authority, but are important to the health of the community due to the amount of effort put it.

What becomes difficult is when social capital and effort are seemingly linked - which happens a lot on smaller-scale "unorganised organisations", barriers to contribution that neither technically or even emotionally exist - but are perceived. This is where we start thinking about cliques and "groups" - and it's where the ideals of the social web struggle. It's where problems of social scale begin to show themselves.

It quite often doesn't become such an issue as most "unorganised organisations" ("ad hoc"? doesn't seem to stress openness enough) are by nature transitory and will desolve before the problem arises - but long standing (successful?) communities see the trouble. It often ends with originators feeling pressure to continue, or "hand over" responsibility - potential breaking point.

Actually, although a tightly scripted drama may not work, this december's #twitpanto proved that live drama can work on twitter.

See http://www.jonbounds.co.uk/blog/465/its-behind-... for the gen

I'm still struggling on with CoComment - it works, but the RSS updates are sporadic. Sometimes they'll come through straight away, sometimes a week or so after.

New Street should be great for pedestrians, but is instead a horror of avoiding religious conversion, flyering, charity collection and having surveys done to you.

I would seriously consider any control the council has to ban any of these actives, you are not willing to linger over a walk down New Street - but bolt head down to you destination. A real pity as it has some fine architecture, some of the examples of our more independent shops and also often is host to good street entertainment.

We must not be afraid to copy other cities good ideas the Legible London project must have much we can learn from and improve on.

http://www.legiblelondon.info/

And here a review from on of London's top bloggers: http://lndn.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_lndn_archiv...

I've yet to see any compelling evidence that "Virtual Birmingham" 3D modelling would have any effect at all. Specific planning uses, possibly, but for online viewing there isn't a technology that yet works - nor a large enough community of users to make it worthwhile.

I would suggest that greater use of other technologies, eg Google Street View or Microsoft photosynth (which can build up "walk around" models from hundreds of photos taken by the public) would be more:

cost effective
accessible
do more to involve Birmingham in the "mashup" culture of the web

Sounds good. It's now in my Google Calendar.

I've got it working for @replies. The SMSs are a little ugly as they've got subject: & from: info in them. I really want to confirm that I'm not paying for it too!

DMs forwarded from my gmail to the SMS email address are the most important ones.

@Jack - mine seems to be restoring now (taking absolutely ages), but I've been trying since the very moment it was possible to update. Fingers crossed and good luck.

Didn't disconnect, just clicked away to the library and then back on to the iPhone in the sidebar every time the error came up - it then started to look again.

Mine has now connected - it's attempting to restore.

This is a real PR disaster for Apple - they handled the original release brilliantly, but if they can't predict demand…

"We'll be back soon"

Even the sodding boards are down.

Progress? Getting error -4 now.

Thanks for the sympathy Josh, you with your shiny 3G phone ;)

I did wait for the iTunes update to come online, which is why I'm so pissed off — I would have blamed myself if I'd tried the update manually.

It's a huge fuck-up, if their server can't cope with the traffic it shouldn't break the bleeding phones.

Patience isn't really the issue, I think I've been very good by not kicking the cat so far ;)

I can't connect to the store, it throws an error, waiting doesn't help.

Store might be overloaded, but that doesn't explain why an update they've been working on for months should stuff up your phone.

@fred, gives some comfort to know I'm not the only one tho'. I'll post any info I find.

Ah, and the BiNS blogroll is dumped straight from my "Birmingham Blogs" Google Reader folder – one I very much skim-read. Skim-read so you don't have to ;)

Interesting post Pete, I'm not sure I have either a feed-reading or email strategy — expect not letting things build up. That said, I'm going to write mine down anyway…

I tend not to worry about the "unread items" score as it's so often photos of cats, or search feeds I monitor. Things I'd like to see, bit I'm not so bothered if I miss them.

In Google Reader I do have some folders that I read intently and won't miss. Some that I skim and 'star' for later (mostly long articles and videos that I need to concentrate on).Some that I never read and just periodically "mark as read" — I'm using GReader's search facility here, so I can find them if I need them.

In this instance I'm thinking the solution could be partly at least technical. Google Reader could kill all the friendfeed type sites if it added a few features some I wished for here.

And I guess you're right - like twitter it's best not to think you have to read all the small stuff.

I use a plugin called postalicious that may well do the job. I use it to post delicious links to a couple of different blogs (which one based on tag), but it does offer Google Reader support.

Oh and as an aside, I checked every URL up to an including iraq.com to see if the joke worked. Then I got lazy.

Kevin - get to it ;)