Rachel's Summer Spin Vlog

My good friend Rachel Toole has created her first videoblog!

Rachel is working with us at Outhink this summer helping us with our communications and particpation around the BlogHer event.

She also has a cool mash-up video that I mentioned a few posts back - I'm still palying that one and getting all fired up to meet our friends at BlogHer.

She's got her Feedburner feed up and everything.

Looking Ahead

The reason I want you to look at the screencasts below is that they will demonstrate the various "web services" that we will use in the process of "personal media publishing".

Assignments for this week

Please help each other to accomplish the following this week ...

1. post video to your vlogs (use freevlog.org as a guide)
2. review and discuss the BlogHer conference schedule and plan which talks you might be interested in attending.
3. check out rene's great parade video (part of the assignment is finding it)
4. read about Hugh MacLeod's gappingvoid article on how to be creative (read the pdf version - it is the nicest looking). what do you think about what he has to say?
5. watch this screencast about del.icio.us (what does he mean by "the semantic web"?)
6. watch this screencast about RSS
7. watch this screencast about wiki and wikipedia
8. watch this screencast about social-text wiki
9. watch this screencast about technorati and tags
10. blog/vlog about the screencasts you watch and articles you read

Bandwidth Test

Please click this link from the places you or Dave work (e.g., office, home, apt). Press the "Click to start MySpeed" button. It will give you a pair of numbers indicating an upload and download speed.

Repeat the test a total of three times (just refresh the page to run). Record the numbers here in a comment. I am trying to determine the relative connection speeds (bandwidth) that we are using.

At the time of posting I get the following from my old office in Ojai (I move the connection tomorrow and so things may change - this will act as a baseline to measure and compare against):

Adelphia Cable Premium: 1.27/1.2, 1.42/1.17, 1.43/1.15 (Megabits/second)
Note: service provider claims I get 6Mbps download and 768Kbps upload.

Ojai.Net Wireless DSL: 451/588, 433/299, 424/298
Note: this provider claims 384up/256down. The quality of service is 88%.

Welcome Back!

I hope you had a great time and will post some pics and flix soon. Here is a flickr "badge" of some shots of my last time down in Baja in general and Cabo in particular. Please post a similar badage on your site and show Dave how to do it on his (he uses TypePad and so the screens are a little different for editing his blog, but the concepts and the steps are the same). Please ask Rich to help you "download" all your video (and Dave's) to your portables so that we can edit and then post them to your blogs. We will be following the steps found at Ryanne and Michael's freevlog.org site (please look at the introdctory video there for now, eventually we go throught all of the steps in this process).

BlogHer

Here are some things for when you come back or if you get bored in the fun and sun....

Please take a look at the BlogHer site, study it carefully and start planning for that and our associated meetup. Here are some things to think about as you look over the material...

I would like you to attend and participate as a representative of Outhink and SpinFlow. There is a program to sponsor new bloggers. See if that fits for what we are doing and make recommendations to Dave and I regarding that. I would also like you to "vlog" the event for SpinFlow. I would like this will be a multi-media article submission and it will have to be reviewd for publication like the other articles. (Note to Dave: let's set up a standard article rate and pay it to Rachel as a bonus if published).

There is also a BlogHer sponsorship that Outhink might explore. It seems that at the simple end there is an "ad swap" program and then there are fancier things like sponsoring luncheons, etc. Talk this over with Dave and see if any of these options make sense for Outhink at this time. Please let me know what you decide.

Remember that we are planning to sponsor a "Vlogger" meet-up around Ryanne and Jay's visit. What do we need to do for this? Is the best thing a simple pizza dinner sometime after BlogHer ends at 5:45pm? Are any of the BlogHer folks planning an informal event that is not on the schedule and that we may want to respect in some way?

Please coordinate a budget discussion between yourself, Dave and I. Both Outhink and Apperceive are sponsoring this. Once this is done, please coordinate Ryanne and Jay's travel and lodging.

Let's plan to discuss meetup coordination when you return. I would like you to be the contact point when we make announcements. We may need to set up some sort of RSVP web page for this.

Perhaps it would be good to reach out to a member of the organizing committee and share with them what we are doing and planning and see how we can best coordinate these two events. Maybe Ryanne has a contact she can recommend.

Foggy Morning - Videocast Saturday

I probably will use the weekends to catch up on my other projects, but sometimes I may post here something for the week ahead. You are on holiday, I am moving and so I will probably post very lightly next week. I will leave it to you and Dave to decide the level of "work" you wish to pursue.

But try to post a few thousand words while you are away (and remember how much a picture is worth).

Also, as Dave can attest, I am pretty much always online (not really, but close). So if you need any help getting connected, uploading or accessing vids then give me a buzz and let me know what you need.

Have a great time. Give my love to your mom and Jen. Tell Jen "Geek!". Please show her this video. Be safe.

Friday!!! Vacation time coming!

I have lot's to share, but I mainly want you to do the things you need to do before going to Cabo. I imagine this may be abit of a hectic day and so please know that I just want you mainly to get done the things that will make it possible for you, Dave and your family to have a great trip and come back with some great stories, pics and vids to share.

When you come back, we'll get into posting vids and more about SpinCasting.

I want Dave to have the best access to all our new tools on the trip, if possible. I don't know your plans yet, but will hope you will post text and pics from time to time. I also have a "conceptual" assignment for you that I want you to think about on your trip and perhaps discuss with people you might meet. More on this later.

So, mainly make sure you have a still camera (and batteries and all that stuff). Make sure you have access and can use a video cam (is Dave taking the Sony hand held?). Also, Dave gave Diane a nice little camera for the holidays, I believe. I think it's a nice little Sony that can take 30 second movies. Many people do a lot of interesting video work with those. Requires some simple editing skills? Have you ever done that? I just started. Do you have iMovie on that Mac? Make sure you have the latest version (get the whole iLife package - it's only $79 online at apple.com - have company pay - get iWorks too - also $79). Not a huge priority, but please do it in within the next two weeks ... phone call ... more soon.

Thursday

Hi Rachel. I was hoping to do a bit of a detailed post here but may have to make it wuick for not to deal with a change in meeting time (I'm off to LA for a while - please leave message on cel if you need anything).

I may evolve this post, so please check back. I'll just state the deliverables for today and then fill in more as needed and to document process. You will probably figure it all out without my help anyway.

1. set up a Flickr account (I know you have pics elsewhere, but I have a need for using flickr here). help Dave do it too when he has time. Upload some pics that you are comfortable about sharing.
2. Figure out how to put a Flickr picture in a blog post like this:

(well, hopefully not as funny looking).
3. Set up and learn to use del.icio.us for shared bookmarks. Create at least three bookmarks with the tag "creative professional" that link to sites of passionate creative professionals that you would like to share with Dave and I.
4. Write a post about this and include a link to your "creative professionals" list on del.icio.us.
5. Watch Rene's great vid on tagging. Show it to dave and say "this is Rene in San Francisco".
6. Look at her green thing video too. I have a green thing fabric I would like to pass on to you if you would like. Show this to your dad and say "look, collaborative art in mail and on web in video".
7. Please post thoughts and observations on these two web services on your blog. Make comments here.

New Blog! (soon to be Vlog!)

I am excited to be working with my friend Rachel Toole. She is home from NYU for the summer and we are collaborating to document the process of implementing SpinFlow principles at Outhink, Inc.

Yes, Outhink. Everyone can derive value from more SpinFlow training and discipline. Like Tai-Chi or a martial art, SpinFlow requires study and practice. There are no colored belts, but clearly there are masters and there are people who have a passion to create and wish to spin and flow media with ease.

So how are we doing it? First we are establishing modern networking lines of communication between us and, to that end, we have created a pair of blogs (mine's a vlog, hers will be soon also; others may follow).

Much of our discussions and activities will revolve around using SpinXpress, ANT and vlogs. You can find all the details and my first video related to this on my new vlog. Rachel is free to do whatever she likes with her blog and I think it's already very interesting.

You are invited to observe and participate through the comments, we are very interested in your feedback and value quality interaction.

Rachel's Summer Spin blog.

Welcome!

I am creating this blog as part of an Outhink sponsored SpinFlow project. I am delighted to be working this summer with Rachel Toole, a talented student at NYU. I would like her to help us with SpinFlow: the fine art of moving digital media. I have lot's of fun and interesting activities in mind for this.

Here are the main goals of our summer work together:

• Practice SpinFlow and help others do the same.
• Assist Outhink team members in implementing SpinFlow principles.
• Become involved in web communities and promote SpinFlow.
• Attend and interact at BlogHer on July 30th, 2005.
• Create content for publication at SpinFlow.
  

I have created this blog to communicate with you and to record and share our experiences. I want you to do the same.

Here is your first assignment: work with me and Rich to ensure that you can access this blog and all it's content (especially video) on any Mac or PC that an Outhink member uses (especially Dave). This may require the installtion of software such as QuickTime or Windows Media Player.


Here is a video I created. Click the pic to view it. Please leave comments here to document any issues or observations you have related to viewing it.

Your second assignment will be to create a blog like this one and begin posting daily about your SpinFlow experinces.