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2007-08-27, late at night
Well, things have been more than a little insane of late: I’ve gone from a fixed-term contract to full-term employment (with Hyperspheric), moved house (with Jo, giving me an opportunity to use XFN’s co-resident attribute) and engaged in a survival exercise whereby I had to cope for two weeks with neither fridge nor delicious internets (the latter of which has been solved by Be who, by and large, have been excellent).
The majority of the insanity, however, is now mercifully behind me (with the exception of my brand new copy of Bioshock, which seems to feature insanity fairly prominently), so it’s now time to look forward to the future. And to a new experience.
It’s quite a popular topic of conversation: those lucky people who have done it before talk about how fantastic it is, and many of those who have not yet had the pleasure think about what it would be like. Those in this latter category, such as myself, wonder who it’s going to be with, whether we’re going to be any good at it, and of course there’s the worry that it’s going to be over almost before it starts.
Not to mention all the fun that’s going to happen between sessions.
I’m talking, of course, about BarCamp Brighton, at which I lose my BarCamp virginity. As the aspects of last year’s South by Southwest which I remember most fondly were the sense of community and the bouncing around of thoughts and ideas, this looks to be precisely that, without the registration fee or the 12-hour journey time. For those of you who will be attending, I look forward eagerly to seeing you there.
Oh, and I’ve ordered myself a shiny new MacBook: after all, I hear these things can be much more fun if you bring the right toys along.
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2007-04-19, late at night
Recently I received something which was simultaneously both a compliment and an insult, and which was a source of both pleasant surprise and bitter disappointment.
A certain record label (which, for the purposes of this post, will remain nameless) decided that, as a marketing experiment, they would sent pre-release copies of one of their artists’ new albums (which, for the purposes of this post, will also remain nameless) to people who owned and maintained blogs. While there is, of course, no obligation for the blogger to publicise the album in question, either in a full review or simply recommendations to friends, that is clearly what the record label is hoping for. I have no problem with that whatsoever: if I think the album is worth buying, I will – in all likelihood – tell people about it.
However…
When I got hold of my free bit of schwag, my first act was to rip it into iTunes: as I listen to the vast majority of my music in the office, and as I don’t really want to cart a load of CDs around with me, having a new album on my iPod as quickly as possible to give it a good few listens through is a Very Good Thing™.
Unless, of course, the record label has misaligned the tracks on the CD with the songs on the album, so that what iTunes thinks is a track comprises half of one song and half of the next. This is not simply a careless mistake: the record label has deliberately broken the pre-release copies of the album to discourage (so I have been told) recipients from sharing the tracks online.
The way I read this is as follows: “We value your opinion, we want you to check this out and tell your friends what you think. Oh, and by the way, we think you’re a criminal”. Not to mention a criminal who isn’t smart enough to get his copy of QuickTime and re-align the tracks to rip them properly.
This is all a terrible shame, as the album in question is really very good: so much so that, had it not come bundled with a free slap in the face, I would have made sure that anyone with a remotely compatible music taste to myself would have known how good I thought it was. Still, I truly hope that enough people take umbrage to provide a valuable lesson for record companies: if you want to market to bloggers, and if you want them to help you, don’t piss them off.
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2007-04-04, late at night
Two events of particular note have occurred in the news recently: both of them are excellent news for consumers, both of them represent apparent shifts in attitude from companies I would have otherwise thought thoroughly intransigent, and both of them have put a smile on my face.
The first of these events is, as those of you who follow the news and know my stance on DRM may well have guessed, is EMI’s decision to provide DRM-free music from the iTunes Music Store. This is a thoroughly welcome decision for my part, and I truly hope to see more record companies and other “content providers” following suit. As a direct result of this, I now have an iTunes Music Store account: I don’t doubt that there are quite a number of other people who have done the same.
The other event which has me smiling is Microsoft’s decision to start up an Xbox Disc Replacement Plan, whereby damaged game discs can be cheaply replaced (£10 in the UK, $20 in the States). While other publishers have offered a service to replace damaged game media for a small fee (under the premise that the gamer is paying for a license to play the game, rather than the media itself), Microsoft’s returns policy up until now has boiled down to two words. The polite version of these two words is “go away”; I shall leave it to you, dear reader, to guess the impolite version.
As the proud owner of a stricken Gears of War disc, I’m very glad to see this scheme come into effect – of course, I would have been happier to see it come into effect before I bought myself a full-price replacement copy, but better late than never.
Do these shifts in policy, both related to DRM and companies deciding not to shaft their paying customers with it, represent a more global shift in corporate attitudes? Are they just isolated incidents which happen to have occurred within days of one another? Or should we just be glad that they’ve happened now, and not worry too much about where it will lead?
I think I’m going to go for the third one.
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2007-04-01, late at night
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Tagged:
One of the predominant symptoms of depression is a complete and total lack of interest in the world around you; one of the predominant symptoms – some would say the defining aspect – of being a geek is an utter fascination with the world around you.
Isn’t it strange that the human brain is capable of accommodating both of these states at once?
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2007-03-25, late at night
So, I’m back in the country, my mind’s back in the right time zone, my girlfriend is 25 miles away instead of 5,000. My photos are up, and my new iPod is charged, synchronised and suitably road-tested. My desire to buy shiny new bits of tech has at least subsided to the point where it actually listens to my bank account (although the temptation to buy a MacBook is surprisingly strong).
In the year since the last SXSW I’ve started two jobs, left one, moved house twice and done a fair bit of freelance work in-between, so quite a lot has changed. What hasn’t changed is the overwhelming sense of community I’ve experienced from nine short days in Austin. I’ve come away with the sense that I’m a part of a large group of not only like-minded professionals, but like-minded friends. Somehow I doubt that there are conferences in many other professions which can induce that kind of feeling.
That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything during my time in Texas. Granted, some of the panels were just reiterating what most of the attendees already knew, but I gained some genuinely valuable insights at many of the panels – I also gained a genuinely valuable book in one of them, which is nice too. While much of the daytime programme was interesting, inspirational, informative or some combination of the three, I also learned a surprising amount from talking geek during the evenings: it’s a strange feeling, being able to talk about aspects of the .NET framework over Cuban food and mojitos without feeling like an idiot.
Ultimately, the point I’m trying to get across is that I feel truly privileged to be a part of this profession and to be able to swap ideas and thoughts with a group of people who are all working towards one goal: to make better websites.
And if we can do that while eating, drinking and, erm, making merry, so much the better.
