The four Ps of pain

So here I am again. Back on the blog writing a post at 11.30 at night. But not, this time, because it is a course requirement, but because I am procrastinating. Prevaricating. Prolonging the pain and protracting out the inevitable: that I must write my final assignment for this course. It is due next Tuesday and I am only a quarter of the way in!

Lectures I have attended (not including the one from my mother)

I’ve attended two extracurricular lectures in the last couple of weeks (just because I have nothing else to do.)

The first lecture ‘Digital publishing in 2010 – a Lonely Planet case study’ was presented by Lonely Planet’s Vivek Wagle (Head, Editorial) and Jane Nethercote (Senior Digitial Editor) and was organised by the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne.

The second lecture was by writer and educator Mark Pesce about ‘the changing trend of internet use, possible futures and the risks and benefits of what lies ahead.’ The lunchtime lecture was part of a Corporate Communications Unit seminar series organised by the Department of Health, which is where I work and seem to spend most of my life.

Actually, I lie. I didn’t go to Mark Pesce’s lecture. I wanted to, but due to ridiculous work commitments, I couldn’t manage to find the one hour needed. So I watched his talk on YouTube at home instead, which is a joke really, because a one hour lecture morphed into a four hour episode as I was continually interrupted – either by the kids or by my inability to concentrate on the one thing for more than ten minutes. (Maybe Nicholas Carr is right – the internet is making me stupid!).

Anyway, I’m really glad I made it to the Lonely Planet lecture. Vivek and Jane are dynamic and engaging speakers. They spoke about the sort of stuff I want to know about, like

• what is an editor (“ … a type of DJ, someone who understands the vibe and can put together content from a variety of sources for the moment …”)
• what e-publishing is and the differences between e-publishing and print publishing (in print publishing, errors are failures [who can forget Penguin’s 'salt and freshly ground black people'?], but in e-publishing, lack of responsiveness is failure. And getting it out there is more important than getting it right!)
• what Lonely Planet is doing in this sphere (“keeping on strategy, on tone and on voice”), and
• what challenges editors will face in the next few years (a lot, as the users replace the rules in editorial thinking).

I came out with heaps of notes, but interestingly, what has remained with me is that Vivek prefers the term ‘digital publishing’ to e-publishing, because the term doesn’t look made up and has a bigger word count! Also, this great quote that sums up one of the basic philosophies of Lonely Planet:

“We alone cannot provide everything. But we can show you where everything is. Lonely Planet is about an approach to the world rather than a prescribed set of content creators. We are about people more than places.”

See fellow students Esma’s and Ashleigh’s posts for a detailed synopis of this lecture.

Mark Pesce’s lecture left me with a couple of interesting thoughts too. He suggests that we can’t predict the future of the internet because it is constantly evolving, and that

“… the seeds of the future are always with us in the present, but of course it is up to us to water them … to tend … to sit back and watch them grow.”

Or not.

He gave the example of a current seed – the development of the GPS tracker, working successfully on Melbourne trams but rejected by the Sydney bus drivers’ union – as a potentially insidious tool open to misuse in our ‘database nation’. Currently it works well for public transport, but who knows which way it will go in the future?  It could track information by ‘absence’ as well as by ‘presence’ (i.e. where we are not as opposed to where we are). Mark wants to remind us that

“… it is possible to resist, to push back … to say ‘no’ to the forces that seek to measure us and to monitor us and ask us to comply.”

Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone actually say that we don’t need to embrace every new thing the internet and the world wide web throws at us. Happy with that.

Pause, take a breath. Over and out.

(Way) too much information (Part 2)

Let’s get one thing straight. I am not an ‘early adopter’. I read about new technologies and see people freely using them, but I am not the slightest bit interested in learning of their potential application in my life. If it weren’t for the kids, I would probably only now be considering digital TV (heck, Melbourne has until 2013 to switch over!)

Sure, I’m the one in the house that will hook up the TV to the DVD or VCR (which it still is, even though VCRs went out with the dinosaurs.) But I haven’t yet bothered to hook up the Playstation 3 to the internet. I forwent the option of a T-Box when I took out the Telstra bundle, because I knew that meant more fiddling around the back where the dust lives.

I struggle with the massive amount of ways to gain, sort and keep new information. In the old days we had librarians. Of necessity, now they are called ‘information management specialists’.

The amount of information available also increases with each generation. Is it a good thing? My mother was very sympathetic to my fears when I was pregnant about all the things that could go wrong with the pregnancy and birth. She said that we had too much information and this information wasn’t making it easier for us. In her day, she said, EVERYONE smoked and drank when they were pregnant or breastfeeding. And besides, all her kids turned out alright!

We not only need  to know more stuff, but we feel we have a right to know this stuff. As we collect more stuff, we need new ways to store and retrieve it. It’s all supposed to make our lives easier and give us more time; time for the things that we don’t have time for any more because we have too much information.

When did this information overload begin? Did it begin when we stepped out of the Dark Ages? Is the industrial revolution and the beginnings of knowledge transfer to blame? As successive generations have experienced the incremental increases in information available, so have we had to find new ways to store and retrieve it.

And that is my downfall.

Look at my desktop at work – icons everywhere and I can’t find anything! Why haven’t I made folders to sort them in to?

Look at my bookmarks! That’s just one page of many. Why haven’t I sorted them into folders yet?

Look at the photographs sitting in folders sitting on my desktop at home. Why haven’t I printed them out? What use are they to me sitting in folders on my desktop at home?

Does anyone else have the same information (mis)management issues?

Also see: (Way) too much information (Part 1)

John* in the digital age

* Not his real name.

John is a 55 year old chef who has worked in the hospitality industry for over 35 years. His tools of trade are the knives and aprons and books he takes with him from job to job and are a constant in a transient industry. Chefs come and go, waiters finish their university degrees and move on and cafe ownership changes hands. The books, richly illustrated and sumptuously bound, end up dogeared and saffron-splattered, but are testament to the publishing preferences of this digital immigrant.

All very interesting you say, but what has any of it got to do with writing and editing for digital media?

Well, despite the pervasiveness of new technologies and its infiltration into our daily work and life, I thought a case study of someone I know quite intimately would illustrate perfectly that for some people, there are huge gaps in their opportunities to integrate multiple media forms into their daily life.

John’s day starts with ‘prep’ (preparation) time. This is the mad slicing and dicing and mixing and mashing that a busy café must do to ready itself for the daily onslaught of customers. He checks the two menus – the set  and the specials. Is there enough of everything and does he need to invent more? Prep time is interrupted by the start of service, and from thereon it is cooking to order. Finally, the café shuts, staff clean up and John can go home. Not once has he used an electronic or multimedia device. He has a mobile telephone, but believe me, even answering a call is a nuisance to him.

At home and after a few minutes sit down, the grind of maintaining the family begins. He washes breakfast dishes, prepares after-school snacks, vacuums dog hair from the carpet, hangs out washing and starts the evening meal. (It’s handy having an alchemist on tap!) In the background is the radio (usually and annoyingly, SportsSENtral.) Later, much later, when the kids have finished their homework and I have logged on and logged off, John finally gets the chance (if the motivation still exists) to look at The Drum, missed programs on iView, read the headlines on The Age Online or catch a movie review.

So, aside from the limited material resources at John’s disposal (that is, one computer at home and none required at work), it would seem that the lack of ‘temporal resources’ available to John would be the biggest factor in his limited involvement in new technologies.

No matter. The food is great at my place!

Vote 1, citizen journalist of Altona

There’s a blogging war going on in my LGA. You have got to love us Westies. Even as the sun sets over the refineries and the trucks shake the foundations of our lounge room floors, the passion for our suburbs never fades.

Apparently, Kyle Sandilands (that radio-cum-TV host of fame for no apparent reason), when interviewing the Prime Minister back in August this year, called her hometown of Altona a ‘rat hole’. Now that is not nice, and new Altona resident Anthony Ang (and near neighbour of Julia Gillard) didn’t think so either. He immediately created a blog, called Beautiful Altona, and I have to say it almost brings a tear to my eye. It should be nominated for a ‘most loyal and humble citizen’ award, if there is such a thing, or at the very least, a ‘service to the community’ award.

The blog is incredibly well set-out, with lots of great photographs, links, widgets, embedded multi-media such as videos and databases and even sections that he has plotted but is yet to write. There is a 10-minute video showcasing picturesque areas of the West, an interactive quiz, attractions for visitors, posts on the facilities and services in Altona as well as Mr Ang’s wish list and vision for the suburb.

In one post, Mr Ang says that as a result of creating his blog, he feels he is performing a civic service:

I had received interesting email requests such as a guy asking where he could sell his car and a girl asking how she could find housemates to share her rented house. This is an outcome that I did not expect to have arisen from creating the Altona Blog. If people feel that they can seek useful information from the Blog, the Blog would have a successful start and is on its way to playing an important and larger role in the Altona community.

You have got to admire his obvious passion and dedication, as well as enjoy his quirky posts. He gets my vote!

(Way) too much information (Part 1)

I am close to exhaustion. The noise in my head is getting louder and louder and it’s beginning to sound like there’s a train coming.

Since starting this course, the monumental spike in the quantity, quality and variety of material I need to read has consumed me.

It’s not just the required weekly reading for the course. It’s the twenty-odd weekly blogs from my classmates that I must read and comment on. (Now there’s a challenge. Learning to ‘externalise’, not ‘internalise’ my thoughts and reactions to your blogs!) And then reading the comments on the comments, and the reply to the comments on the comments, and so on. And then following those links and tips that you, dear fellow blogger, point me to. It’s an everlasting meander and I often find myself still sitting at the computer at 12 o’clock at night.

Local community is important to me, so I read the local newspaper. Pity there are THREE in this LGA. I read The Age Monday to Sunday and Herald Sun and Financial Review on an ‘as-needs’ basis. I also flick to the online newspapers every day and when required.

And then I have four personal email accounts and four work email accounts to manage.

Every hour on the hour I receive media monitoring emails that let me know what the three AM radio stations plan to discuss and what they actually did discuss, what the four major TV networks news channels are saying in the morning, afternoon and evening. I get Google alerts on four different subjects, I scan daily email summaries on women’s health issues, cancer-related issues and general health related issues.

And let’s not forget all those interesting blogs and random websites bookmarked in my favourites that beckon unsuccessfully for my attention.

About an hour and a half  of my (daily) life is spent commuting from the west to the City and back – five days a week. In the morning when my mind is fresh I open my uni reading. In the evening when I am a slug I read the Mx, along with every other commuter in Melbourne (Don’t you think there’s something really sinister about us all reading THE SAME THING AT THE SAME TIME?) In bed I read a book, aka novel (Macq: n. a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length, usually having a plot that is developed by the actions, thoughts, speech, etc., of the characters.)

All of this reading is now done with a different eye. Where previously I might not have been instantly attracted to digital media news,  I now actively seek it out. And there’s a lot of it. I read it slowly if it doesn’t make sense, or I scan it. If I haven’t got time to read it, I cut the article out, fold it and store it for later (in one of my ‘piles requiring action‘.)

Here’s just a sample of what I have read in the Mx over a two-day period (admittedly not a great or erudite source to base my random sample on, but you get the point):

Paris Hilton claims she didn’t own the bag in which cocaine was found (even though she posted a Twitter photograph of herself holding it).

British postal service  has launched an “intelligent” stamp – stamps designed to work with image recognition software on a range of smartphones. Using the app (Junaio), users hover the phone over the stamp which automatically directs the user to the online content.

Yay! Tuesday is Webcast day. Mx will tell me the top 5 YouTube clips, Top 5 MySpace sites, Top 5 Tweets, Top 5 Facebook pages and Top 5 Randoms (websites) for the week, as voted by readers, which is practically everyone who managed to get into the train. Hmmm. Captive audience. Should I send them the link to my blog?

Supporters of WikiLeaks founder are now “blowing the whistle on him”, insisting he step aside until criminal investigations are concluded.

North Korea held a secretive national day celebrations at China’s Shanghai Expo, shutting out most visitors and media from the event.

The six puppies seen being thrown into the river in Bosnia have supposedly been rescued by a grandmother.

Psychologists say that using Facebook while studying can lower exam results by up to 20 per cent.

Social networkers and gamers are spending big on virtual goods that are only ever used online.

A Twitter treasure hunt starts this week in Melbourne and another four international locations. Those who locate globes hidden by a travel company will win a holiday.

Way too much information.

On blogging pond

Last week’s reading gave me cause to ponder the range of motivations to create a blog. Those millions of miles of fibre optic cable that enable us to ‘upload’ our streams of consciousness and loose thoughts – all into a forum that promotes us from consumer to producer. This particular paragraph in the reading took my eye:

It was long assumed that producing any product of substance or complexity takes some kind of hierarchical organization or institution. The assumption was the you needed top-down vertical integration to get such things done and out into the world. But thanks to our new found ability to upload – which came about as a direct result of the flat-world platform – you can now produce really complex things, as an individual or a part of a community, with so much less hierarchy and so much less money than ever before.

(From Thomas L. Friedman, “Globalisation of the Local”, The World is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, 2007.)

As I sat late one night and idly scanned a blog hosted by Blogspot, I noticed the ‘Next Blog>>’ button. One click and another craft blog followed. Click again and the next blog is craft-oriented. Click again and – you guessed it – a craft blog. From scrapbooking to tatting to quilting and patchwork and stitching, I’m beginning to see a recurring theme.

I’m reminded of the The Magic Faraway Tree, except that each time I poke my head into the clouds, I’m still in Craftland! (is Saucepan Man watching me and does he knows I like craft?)

And then it hits me. There is a WHOLE WORLD of creativity and talent out there that has previously struggled for expression and legitimacy – the world of crafters!

Each of these craft blogs represents the days of the lives of hundreds and thousands of women who have a skill and a passion and they’re proud (damn it!). They want to SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD. Sure, it’s not ‘fine art’ or ‘modern art’. It’s homely and ingenious and inventive art but it has kept people in blankets and clothes and decorations for generations.

Each of these blogs is created with such a strong desire to share. These blogs are beautiful!

Consider some of the kickers on their blogs:

“Everyday life as seen by a somewhat crafty middle-aged wife …”

and

“Where my creative juices flow and spill out all over the place”

and

“Here I am. Messy. Real. Life. Welcome to my home! The place I feel at home and the place that is my home: my heart”

and

“Being creative | using my heart | my hands | my mind | is an important | part of who I am”

and my personal favourite:

“Adventures of silly woman” (she’s a quilter)

The masses have mobilised and they are women and they are crafty and they are coming to a blog near you!