Bumph Box

We hosted an Unconference on Saturday 23rd January 2010 and i’ll be posting some stuff here and over on the ‘We Share Stuff‘ site as and when I get time.

The Digital Mentor Session

Digital Mentors…hmm…Well they need to be ‘people people’, have a strong ear, ability to not force opinion, have patience, ‘get‘ technology. Probably just a few attributes there and it gets me thinking where are the people with these attributes right now? They’re out there doing the work already! Independently in many cases (and often for free). I see the ’surgeons’ from the social media surgeries who don’t have the weight of targets and crap access / tools and red tape to bog them down. This freedom allows them to do their stuff and it works. Then I see others from the ‘black market‘ of ICT twisting the guidelines (sometimes ditching them altogether) and doing what feels right and getting results. Then there’s those who don’t think twice when they’re helping a friend or colleague with a tech problem or issue. They just do it. Shit, I left my previous job delivering government funded, admin heavy, sometimes pointless courses, training and advice because I saw that we were only touching the tip of the iceberg when it came to using technology for learning and improving social capital. In fact, it managed to steer clear of the iceberg altogether on many occasions and that felt wrong.

So since the Media Trust have renamed their project ‘Community Voices‘ it throws the ‘digital mentor’ definiton up in the air.

Should it stay there?

Not that it’s got any copyright attached to it or anything but it’s a shame that such a term becomes applied because the nature of the role is so varied and flexible.

You ‘get’ it?  yes can you share it? yes. well there you go.

So i’m all in favour of a certain approach. One based on continuing the ‘black market’ ‘under the radar’ way of doing things. We don’t need to be called digital mentors and we don’t need any official guidelines, groups or websites – we know what works and how to stay ahead of the game and we know how to connect so do we need to mess?

#bdyrgi

I was in a large computer store just before Christmas browsing through the latest laptops and something really got to me. There was a pensioner looking a tad confused at all the different makes and models. One of the staff went over and offered assistance. Well, you couldn’t really call it assistance when he pretty much shoved a laptop down the chap’s throat without even discussing his requirements. Obviously, the old fella had to put his trust into this assistant because he really didn’t know (thing is, there’s so much you can do with technology that it’s difficult to know where to begin).

It reminded me of that feeling when you take your car into the garage and you need it fixing but you don’t know what’s wrong with it (because you don’t know how cars work) and you put your trust in the mechanic and hope they don’t rip you off.

Anyway, this bloke was flogged some machine that he didn’t know anything about along with anti virus software and office products. Then I heard it reverberate around the store…”anti virus…office, protection, spreadsheets, norton, office…” Like some crazy conveyer belt.

I did buy my laptop and when the assistant turned to grab the additional items I was like..

‘No thanks, don’t need them’ – he smirked and carried on putting the items through the till…
‘I said no thanks’
‘But your computer won’t be protected’
‘Yes it will’
‘You need office for….’
‘No I don’t’

So what’s my point? Well we look at the problems when faced with digital inclusion and to be honest, I seem to be seeing a whole load of different problems compared to the kinds of problems that seem to get the most attention (and money spent on them). This is just one instance. Where people who are willing to get digitally involved are not getting the support and motivation they need.
We need to get a proper digital mentor scheme out and about, in the stores, on the streets, in the schools, in the libraries, in the community halls, in the Mosques… you know… Outreach.

One of Solly’s Christmas presents last year was a JCB toy called Rex the Roller. Once I figured out what it was I got quite excited by the idea that JCB had done a range of toys based on their magical yellow monsters. However, that excitement soon waned as the toy itself was a letdown. No genuine feeling of character with ‘Rex’, shoddy graphics and overall unpleasant plasticness. Add to that an irritating click with each roll and poor geordie dialogue, I think JCB took the cheap route to bringing their agricultural, construction and material handling equipment into our family living rooms. Possibly one of the biggest missed opportunities I can think of. The real equipment had already won us over but now I feel somewhat cheated. Probably not fair to say as I haven’t seen the full range, but this experience has left me feeling that we may look elsewhere for such construction related fun in the future.

Click to hear Rex

I can find no valid argument to defend why I enjoy watching the BDO World Darts Championships on the BBC every January. Yes, it’s darts. Yes, it’s shit. But it’s the way that this shit is presented and hyped that intrigues me so. I could begin the story back in the mid to late 90’s when I wasn’t going through a particularly inspired snippet of life. The mundane, yet ‘real’, nature of the darts, snooker, bowls… even horse racing (my how I now despise horse racing)… take your pick of the BBC sports. This authentic blandness helped me through in some twisted way. I recall a friend during that time, putting the horse racing on the telly ‘for a bit of colour’.

Maybe the story starts a little differently, when the PDC was born and Sky muscled in on the arrows action and stole all the best players. Throwing in their razzamatazz and doing what they could to jazz up the game. While looking tacky and blatantly stupid, it suited the sky audience of the time and left us BDO lakeside viewers wondering what the BBC could come up with. And early doors it wasn’t much. A load of no namers and the eventual winner of the post PDC split, hailing from Canada, John Part, things were looking bleak.

However, the Beeb started getting their act together and took a leaf out of the sky book of spin. the Dart MC’s were getting features, nicknames started becoming the norm – stupid entrances etc etc. At last, I could begin enjoying all the crap that makes the sport so fascinating to watch.

And at the centre of all this spin undoubtedly are the commentators. There isn’t much that makes my soul feel more relaxed than Tony Green doing his best to describe the players wives in the audience during a particularly dull five setter, which seems to make up most of the airtime (or maybe in my head it does).

Check out the Big Train ’staring championships’ or the more recent (but not as good) Mitchell & Webb snooker commentary before tuning in this Saturday.

So don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of the darts as such. But I am fan. people think i’m taking the piss, but i’m not.

OK, here are some the things i’m doing leading up to the festive period. Hoping to get a few weeks break before cracking on in the new year.

First up, the Digital Inclusion stuff i’m doing with We Share Stuff has given birth to an unconference which we secured funding for. Very chuffed we pulled this off and i’m looking forward to sharing tips and stories with folks doing similar stuff.

Signed up for the 4am project which is taking place at the Bodies Revealed exhibition in Digbeth. Looking at the subject matter I thought it would make some great TTV so I’ll probably go with that format. However it might be a chance to try some other similar techniques. If I have time tonight to come up with something that is.

Plenty of other things on the go but nowhere near enough time to talk about them all!

Salute!

Just to keep the content flowing. Been a tad sick over the last few days, reckon it’s that noro virus or whatever it’s called. Nasty thing, violently sick on a few occasions. Glad it’s passed. Been thinking about what I want to do photography wise and I think I might get back into the experimental stuff. The Birmingham wheel is back and that gave me a great subject to try some stuff. Thinking i’m gonna revisit very soon.

Here’s what I did with it before

The We Share Stuff is moving along, probably not as quick as i’d like but that’s to be expected with the time that me and Jon can put into it. We’ve been working on some good projects and making good links along the way so it’s good progress.

I’ll leave it there for now but really need to post more often (note to self: even if you don’t write for others, do it for yourself as a reflective diary thang)

Despite all my best avoiding efforts, I knew somewhere along the line I would have to do something like this. I have spoken to groups before but I think it’s not for everyone, me in particular. I don’t have the best of times articulating myself and i’m always conscious that I’ll miss something important out. Anyway, I spoke at the ‘Sharing Information Digitally’ event organised by WMRO at Millennium Point, Birmingham. I attempted to tie in some stuff around digital inclusion and how that relates to sharing information, or more-so the speed at which sharing information digitally is evolving (which is pretty darn quick). It wasn’t as bad I thought it would be. My nerves steadied enough for me to get most of the content over in what felt like a mildly jerky fashion.

Below are the slides from the presentation and the podcast which you’ll probably need to listen to to make sense of the slides.

Stuart Parker on Digital Inclusion by wmro

Another short break. We did Aberystwyth and I got sick.

Around March 2008 I tried to get the ‘blog club’ going. The idea was to get a local online community up and running via blogging. I ran a four week thing and got a little interest but it was the blog club that inspired me onto We Share Stuff.

A few years back I was somewhat involved with a great bunch of noise freaks. We went by the name of da.nu.lo. We did various music noodlings over the years, even got ourselves involved with The Matrix soundtrack, which was all very exciting. Well i’ve started to archive the music from over the years and pop it onto Bandcamp. It’s all free to download – we’re even considering a comeback of sorts. First up was one of the later EPs we did, Gardensuite. Let us know what you think in the comments.