I believe that the inspirational advice from a fellow audiencer at my first TED in 1995 guided me to Nottingham next week. For the British Council I will do a gig entitled ”I do not know?!?” Three days ago I asked the crowd to help me prepare for here and now. And indirectly for next week and a fantastic future. The crowd responded. Here is what we put together – together.

(TED will publish a video of the presentation, the slides here does not justify neither the work involved from everyone that contributed, nor the content of their inpsirations)

If you get anything from TED, here is your chance to contribute back! Please help me to present a stunning and inspirational five minute talk a couple of days from now. I therefore ask you to create some material that I might present in less than a minute. Hopefully at least four (4) of you will hear my request, thus giving me one minute to introduce and round up your contributions.

Yesterday I was invited to give a five (5) minute talk at the pre TEDxStockholm conference, which takes place north of Stockholm this Saturday (June 6, 2009). It’s an independet TEDx event, operated under license from TED, that gather a small group of around 40 specially invited persons. These include Klas Hallberg, Janne Gunnarson, Stefan Einhorn, and David Lega who will each talk for 18 minutes. Myself and Björn Jeffrey are limited to five minutes. Behind it all is a concept to disseminate TED.COM via TEDx events. TEDxStockholm is developed by Fredrik and Teo Härén (interesting.org), with help from among others Henrik Ahlén, and the ambition is to arrange the first public TEDxStockholm September 19, 2009.

I have an idea for a talk that I might produce myself, but hopefully yours are more inspirational. The conference theme is ”inspiration”, and I will focus the content around providing the best start in life for our children. The TEDx license implies some limitations, which I do not yet know in detail. But the talks should be in English; they will be recorded; TED reserves the right to republish all material whenever and where they want; hence the materials used must be cleared for that copyrightwise. [Update: It will be Creative Commons 3.0, and by submitting to me I assume you grant me and TED the required rights].

As I begun complentating the opportunity I remembered an idea I in December 2007. It sprung up during a meeting about social media with a small group of members of the Swedish Parliament. One of them, Christer Winbäck, raised the concern about finding time to (mikro)blog and participate in social media. Among other things he for instance ”had to write motions/bills”. I suggested he might outsource that task to his constituents. His response was something like ”have you ever let your audience write the manuscript for your gigs?” Afterwards I published a blog post that I would like to try that. And now it’s time – I hope.

If this works out I am open for your creativity. Please comment or e-mail me (richard.gatarski@weconverse.com) your ideas or material. It might be a video, slides, a manuscript. Whatever that I will be able to present during 55 seconds. Consider the limitations I hinted upon above, and I’ll make a concluding slide listing all contributors. I reserve the right of what to include, and if I at all should fulfill this idea at TEDxStockholm (depending on if I get anything from you). Remember, the theme is ”inspiration” and my focus is ”best start in life for our children”.

Thank you in advance.

(I will announce this post in Twitter, Jaiku, Bloggy, Facebook, PPlist and some other social media outlets, and update it with more links as soon as I have time).

[Update 15:10]: It can´t be a selling, it’s about sharing inspirational ideas. In another forum Gunnar hinted about Swedish Radio’s show På Minuten (On the minute), as a way to cope with the time constraint ;). Plus I added links to some stuff above.

[Update 20:20] Tank you all for ideas, support, retweets and other ways of spreading the opportunity! So far we have recieved a lot of interest and some more or less conceptualized ideas, but nothing complete. Hopefully you will join the crowd and the content will come from you. It would be cool if you posted your idea here as a comment, and published complete contributions somewhere on the web (tagged as ”TEDx Stockholm, crowdsourced”) and include a link in the comment. BTW, the organizers point out [I’ve recorrected this after comments] that the correct spelling is ”TEDxStockholm” (except for microblogs use ”TEDx Stockholm” with the space). Hence I edited this post, including its title.

[Update 21:50] A few minutes ago Johan Ronnestam submitted his contribution (after a couple of e-mail passes). I wish I knew of any web based tool for collaborated storyboarding/scriptwriting, do you? Compare Celtx, whis is a downloadable app for personal use. Perhaps I should setup a wiki. Meanwhile I tentatively work out the script below.

[Update Thursday 15:10] Added my intro text and re-corrected TEDxStockholm spellout.

[Update Friday 23:59] Edited the script, added introductionary quote at top of this post.

[Update Saturday 18:50] Sligthly adjusted the intro of the post and added the slides. I did not really follow the script below, as you will se in the video when it gets published.

Script (kind of) With reservations for rearrangings, additions, and removals pending on what comes in and what you say on the way.

50s, Richard Gatarski speaks: Nicholas Taleb tells how we humans tend to simplify the causes of complex phenomena. Even so, I still believe that the inspirational advice from a fellow audiencer at my first TED in 1995 guided me to Nottingham next week. For the British Council I will do a gig entitled ”I do not know?!?” Three days ago I asked the crowd to help me prepare for here and now. And indirectly for next week and a fantastic future. The crowd responded. Here is what we did together.

55s Ladislaus Horatius: Freeze-dried wisdom
05s switch
30s Joakim Vollert: 5th grader with Phun
05s switch
40s Katarina Graffman: Look at the kids behavior [preview, to be extended]
05s switch
XXs open
05s switch
30s Christina & Stellan Löwing: This is Lisa
05s switch
50s Johan Ronnestam: Act 4 Kidz
05s switch
15s Richard Gatarski speaks: She, at TED5, adviced me to save for my childrens education. I re-thought that into investing in their and their friends future. It’s time to stop ego-shopping and pay back our own parents sacrifices.
We will do it – right! Thank you for having us here.
Us were [slide with credits].

.SE (Sweden’sThe Internet Infrastructure Foundation) have without much buzz moved over from their old publishing platform(s) to a host of WordPress installations. I was really suprised when I learned about this a few minutes ago in a meeting for the .SE project Webbstjärnan (which I consult for).

Perhaps I should have guessed this direction when I was briefly involved when WordPress was used to revamp the site for .SE:s main conference Internetdagarna, which previosly was built with Joomla.

I can only compare with my memory about how the old design looked like. But judging from that I cannot see any differences at ii.se (the main site, old proprietary CMS). I addition new sites such as .SE Direkt (domain management), Internetstatistik.se (statistics) are built with WordPress. In sum, a really impressing step, that again illustrate the power of WordPress and open source solutions. Although I wish .SE had credited the WordPress community (e.g. the ”powered by WordPress” footer have been removed).

Snuttefilt har man ju hört talas om, åtminstone om ”man” inte är redaktör på Nationalencyklopedin. Men Wikipedia har i alla fall en kort artikel som inleds med:

”Snuttefilt är ett stycke tyg som används av en bebis eller ett litet barn. Snuttefilten används ofta för att den ger barnet en känsla av trygghet och säkerhet”.

Analogt blir då snutteforskning ett stycke forskning som används av en medelålders människa eller en pensionär. Snutteforskning används ofta för att den ger människan en känsla av trygghet och säkerhet.

Detta apropå att Nordicom idag (den 26 maj 2009) meddelar om Sveriges Mediebarometer 2008. Nu är ju Nordicom så upptagna med att ringa runt 4 500 svenskar för att fråga om deras internetanvändande, så dom hinner inte med i utvecklingen själva. Inom parantes är det drygt 65 respondenter i varje årsklass, så man får ju ta resultaten med en fet nypa salt.

Jag bortser från att en Twingly mikrobloggsök på ”Nordicom” inte ens ger 10 träffar, att Nordicoms (en institution inom Nordiska ministerrådet) webbplats är byggd med frames och att dom inte verkar ha någon blogg, men väl ett keffigt nyhetsarkiv. Där hittar jag et rafflande pressmeddelande vars ingress lyder:

”Internetanvändingen fortsätter att öka – inte minst bland äldre. Ökningen gäller främst sociala medier. Men TV har fortfarande störst räckvidd med ett undantag – bland 15 till 24-åringarna är det 2008 något fler som ägnar sig åt Internet än TV-tittande en vanlig dag. Vi ser också hur användarmönstret för nyheter håller på att förändras, vilket indikerar såväl en ny journalistroll som krav på en ny mediekunnig och mediekritisk användare. Så sammanfattar Ulla Carlsson, professor och ansvarig för undersökningen vid Nordicom, Göteborgs universitet, resultaten i undersökningen.”

Whow! Det skall till en professor och tung forskning för att konstatera en sån sak. Vilken nyhet! DN öser på och rubricerar ”Unga ratar TV:n – kollar nätet i stället”. Otroligt (att folk fortfarande prenumererar på en sån fantastisk omvärldsbevakare). DN citerar Karin Hellingwerf, forskningsinformatör vid Nordicom, som lär ha sagt (jag litar inte på det som tidningar säger att folk har sagt) ”Bortsett från den nya trenden, där unga föredrar datorn framför tv, är nyheterna få”. Ursäkta, var är nyheten?

Dessutom ger Nordicom ett intryck av att fortfarande tänka (och därmed fråga) massmedier, det står ju ”räckvidd” i meddelandet. Har någon frågat efter ”attention”, ”connectedness” eller om ”medieanvändaren” ser sig som en gatekeeper?

Släpp snutteforskningen (och sluta lägg pengar under gatlyktan). Ut och våga göra nya grejor.

Förresten. Om någon hade ringt dig i går och frågat ”vad gjorde du på Internet i går”. Tror du att du hade kunnat ge ett vettigt svar, i typ minuter räknat och som passar Nordicoms enkät? Jag hade inte klarat det.

(Nu sticker jag laddad för bordskonversation på TU:s vårfest – härliga tider :-)

Jag vet inte hur många som använde Twitter 2008, men är säker på att ingen gjorde det tre år tidigare och ganska säker på att Nordicom inte twittrar. Fortfarande är det inte speciellt många som mikrobloggar skulle nog forskningen ha sagt 2008 om någon hade frågat. Skönt, då behöver man inte bry sig om den grejen.

[Update after the gig] Thank you all for a wonderful morning! Besides the slides embedded below via SlideShare, I have uploaded them as a pdf (6 slides/page pdf 4.7 Mb). Here are direct links to the live broadcast from the first part of my gig, as well as the one where you talked. If you want to check what goes on in the back channels, try a Twingly microblog search for ”X-FAKTORI”. [and later this evening I added the link to a video documentation of how Tarja Halonen grabbed the stage from me and Anna last August].

In ProCom (Finnish Web, Swedish page) there are 1800 professionals from the field of communication and PR. ProCom have been the leading organisation for the Finnish communications professionals for 61 years. For over 30 years ProCom members have gathered together for one day for a high-profile seminar called the ProCom -day. This year the organizers plan to concentrate on the future and innovations. The communications directors, consultants and information officers – almost everyone – feel a bit frustrated with all the demands and possibilities this day presents – oth in the private and the public sector.

To this years event, called X-FAKTORI, I have been invited to make a key note presentation under the headline Social Media – promises and perils. I am truly looking forward to again meet Finnish marketing pro’s.

(Afterwards I will meet with Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, for an informal conversation on how to solve societal problems by doing things together by the power of we.)

This post will be updated/supplemented within a few days, because the content is really not ready. But VIDBlaster, the software in question, is released within a few minutes and I want to share our experiences in concert with that event. In this preliminary video I try (lat and tired ;) the video below I explain what we did and how the gear we used looked like. I actually created the video with VIDBlaster in one single recording! That is, no editing – just talking while mixing me with clips and images. See below for a backgrounder.

VIDBlaster is ”a powerful, economical way to record, stream and produce high quality video”, developed by Mike Versteeg. (Early podcasting fans might recognize him as the creator of CastBlaster).  In my view his creation opens up for everyone to own a nano version of an Outside Broadcasting Bus. Resutling in something I call an ”OB-case”.

About a month ago my brother Henrik and I used VIDBlaster to stream and document a lecture held for teachers in Botkyrka. At that time we used a VIDBlaster on a laptop, two cameras, one mike, an animated vignette, and some pre-made graphis to mix and send a live video stream over Bambuser. You can see the result at Stjärnkikarna (in Swedish, but roll the video and you will get the point).

Last week we made our second experiment, streaming from a Breakfast seminar arranged by SIME and Sun. This time we had a more powerful laptop and a better mike solution. Please note that on both occasions we did not have much time for much preparation or training. We went there with an idea, and it worked pretty well. You may see the archived results at Bambuser.com/channel/sunsime.

If you have any questions I will try to answer them in a follow up post. Special thanks to Mike (for VIDBlaster), Ewa at Sun and Ola at SIME (for being brave enough to let us do the expirement), and of course to the entrepreneurs at Bambuser (who extend the mobile video frontier).