It seems to be about now that people are starting to realise they can't come to Interesting after all, because of something or other. Which is fair enough. If you're one of those people I'm sure there'd be someone who'd be glad to take your ticket off your hands. You can offer it at the wiki here (the password / invite key is 'interesting').
Interesting2008.com cloud courtesy of the wonderful wordle.
Back in February as part of my ongoing investigation into Tales From The Long Tail I wondered whether there was some way of getting a twitter feed of a particular book's Amazon rank. I imagined such a thing being immensely popular with authors, who get such little feedback about how their book's doing.
Well, Adrian immediately went and built such a thing and it's brilliant. It's just finished and launched and it's called Booklert. You can subscribe via twitter or email (depending how often your neuroticism needs feeding) and regularly watch the random progress of your book through the amazon ranks. Or discover that you're being completely trounced by James.
Read more about it here.
Just like bkkeepr, it's exactly the sort of thing a major book business could have thought of, should have thought of, but didn't.
And, as part of the Tales From The Long Tail experiment, I've signed up to sponsor Booklert with EBCB for a bit, so we'll see how that goes too.
Is there anyone with an office in centralish London who'd be prepared to take delivery of some big bags of tea and biscuits during the day on Thursday or Friday and could then bring them along to the Conway Hall on Saturday? Anyone up for that? We'd be very grateful. If so, please email me russell at russelldavies.com (Does that antispam trick with the 'at' even work? Surely spammers are cleverer than that aren't they? Oh well.)
UPDATE: We're covered, thanks very much to Nonsense.
picture - blackbeltjones
It's just round the corner isn't it? I'm sure there's something I've forgotten.
Anyway, this is stuff you need to know if you're coming to Interesting.
8am - We can get into the hall to start setting up. If you'd like to come along then and help out I'd be very grateful. Chores will include putting out chairs, filling urns, draping bunting, carrying flight cases, saying 'testing testing 1,2,3' into microphones.
9am - Doors open officially. Come early and watch the exciting preparations or hang out with chums and sup coffee (NOTE: bring own coffee). To get in you need to bring your email/confirmation from eventbrite. We do not print the tickets.
10am - Interestingness starts with community singing. Much talking and presenting ensues.
(There'll be a break in here somewhere. We'll be providing boiling water, teabags, milk, sugar and instant coffee. If you want anything fancier than that you'll have to bring it yourself. Mine's a short, skinny, cappuccino please.)
picture - kjpm
12.30ish - Lunchtime. We won't be providing lunch. We're warning the cafe in the square to expect an influx, there are good cafes and pubs nearby. Or you could bring your own.
1.30pmish - Off we go again.
(Another break here too.)
4.30pmish - And we're done. We'd be grateful if everyone could help with the tidying up. And we're going to try and book the back room of the same pub as last time. Its name escapes me for now. Just for some post-Interesting drinks. We were going to try and do a proper post-Interesting party with Last.fm deejaying action but I've not got round to it and it's too late now. If anyone would like to organise a party let me know and I'll announce it here and on the stage.
Er. Anything you need to know that I've missed?
picture - kjpm
Ah - kids. A few people have said they're going to bring their children along. That's splendid. I think it makes the feel of the thing a whole lot friendlier. So feel free to do that. We can't provide any sort of official facilities I'm afraid, but they are completely welcome. And Arthur's bringing his DS and will be looking for challengers.
The best tag for all your social media doodahing is probably Interesting2008.
We're not providing wifi because the lack of it last time made the whole atmosphere a lot better. Even the hardcore wifi fans seemed to like it. But we'll be doing some sort of slow liveblogging via the medium of scribbles and drawing.
And I think that's it. See you on Saturday.
I sent an email to all the Interesting speakers at the end of last week, it keeps bouncing back from a couple of people so I'm posting it up here as well, just in case. If you're not an Interesting speaker it's going to be of very little interest. Sorry.
Hello, hello
Unless I've got things very wrong then you've kindly agreed to speak at Interesting2008 on June 21st.
This is just an email to remind you, in case you'd forgotten about it, and to let you know some things.
First - presentation stuff
You can present however you like, with slides, without, whatever you want. There's no need to send anything beforehand if you don't want to, we will happily accomodate your AV needs on the day. We'll have a Mac there with PowerPoint and Keynote on it. And I can probably arrange a PC if we need that. If you want to bring your own machine that's fine too. Basically, everything's fine. But if you can send us stuff beforehand that'll make things go a little quicker. Or if you want to do something eccentric with hand-puppets or plate-spinning please advice so we can provide the necessary kit.
Second - more about presentation stuff
One of the joys of Conway Hall is the amount of natural light you can get in there. We can darken the room if PowerPoint demands it, but, if you're doing slides or similar it would be good if you could make them as contrasty and legible as possible. Just so we can keep the room as light as we can.
Third - filming
We're going to film the whole day, and The Guardian are going to host all the videos online for us. However, if you don't want your presentation to appear anywhere then just let us know and it won't. A few people from last year decided they didn't want their video on the internet and that's entirely fine. Just let us know.
Fourth - timing
I'm working on a rough schedule. There's not a lot of science to it but if you have any preference about when you speak will you let me know? Morning, afternoon, early, late, whatever? Or would you like to volunteer to go first?
(We'll be setting up from 8am and starting everything at 10am. We're aiming to be done by about 4.30pm.)
I've had to work this afternoon so I've made myself an energetic muxtape to keep me going. Lots of telly sports themes and marches. Have a listen.
Just over a week to Interesting. Those attending might want to familiarise themselves with this material
Matt and I did a bit of talking about the Instorematic at This Happened last week, and mentioned that we were going to be trying a bit of a barn-raising to get it finished this weekend. Unfortunately, and almost inevitably, we can't do that now. Things have intervened. Huge thanks to the people who volunteered to help us out and watch this space for news of the next planned date.
(picture from tim)
Interesting2007 wouldn't have been possible without the support of lots of very nice sponsors. Well, actually, that's not true, it would have been possible, it just wouldn't have been as nice. The list of people who helped out is here. I'm massively grateful to all of them, so this is dedicated to the sponsors who was down from day one.
And there's been a load of similar generosity this year. Imagination, again, are providing all the AV stuff and people we need. And they're going to film the whole thing. The Guardian are going to host the videos, do all sorts of podcastery, provide some fun in the lobby and sponsor a mysterious thing. Innocent are sending smoothies again, Love are sending Yorkshire tea (and hopefully biscuits). Sledge are providing those excellent eco cups and plates, Moo are providing an afternoon treat and Penguin are hopefully sending some books. And The School Of Everything and Rememble are also going to be doing interesting things in the lobby.
But there's still time to be a sponsor if you'd like to, and can think of something you'd like to contribute. I don't want any money from anyone, that would just confuse things, if you'd like to be a sponsor you just need to provide something that would make the day nicer. Last year, for instance Ideo agreed to pay for apples for everyone to eat and W+K to pay for the afternoon scones. (Though since I forgot to invoice them for it I guess they got quite a good deal.)
(picture from Roo)
As a sponsor you'll get very little reward; a few mentions on this blog, huge thanks from the stage and the gratitude of about 400 people. But if you're looking for ROI then you're at the wrong conference.
If there's anything you'd like to contribute (especially if you'd like to supply apples) give me a shout and we'll work it out. russell at russelldavies.com. And bless you for even thinking about it.
One of the reasons I quit Nike was to 'do more writing'. Specifically writing for money, i.e. trying to be 'a writer'. It's been a story of mixed success but it's taught me quite a lot about my priorities, and some other things.
Thing One, I'm blogging a lot less than I did when I was an employee. This isn't to do with hoarding my words or anything it's to do with the fact that corporate life is full of dead holes you can fill with blogging. And it's superb displacement activity. The twenty minutes between a status meeting and a creative review is the perfect time to fit in a couple of blog posts. Whereas if I'm at home, trying to get some work done or get something written, and I find myself with twenty dead minutes, I'm much more likely to watch a bit of telly, have a cup of tea, tidy up a bit, play with Arthur, do some drumming, than write a blog post.
Blogging, for me, is more fun than work, but it's not more fun than life.
Thing Two. I suspect I might actually need to get a proper job if I ever want to write another book. I wrote Egg, Bacon, Chips and Beans while working at Nike and W+K. Since going freelance I've written precisely no books.
Thing Three. Depressingly, but not surprisingly, you get paid a lot more for writing PowerPoint than you do for writing books/articles. Unless you're a really, really famous writer.
Thing Four. I'm really lucky to have the Campaign gig. The discipline of having to make up 460 words every week is tremendously educative. Like regular gigging or a weekly 10K. And the experience of writing for print is so completely different than writing online. Slower, no feedback at all, but makes you much more considered and always makes you worry if you're using semi-colons correctly.
Thing Five. With the odd freelance writing job I get I always have to do a delicate dance with people to make sure they know I'm not one of the other Russell Davieses. Either this one, or this one. (I did think I'd write something in the blog sidebar to explicity point out that I'm in no way responsible for Dr W__ and his time-traveling adventures but I suspect that'll just make google confusion more likely.) I'm doing this travel writing thing for someone in August and once it had all been agreed by email they sent some details in the post with a note saying 'love your work' which instantly made me worry that they thought I was someone else. I don't really have work you can love in that way. But I'm not sure of the etiquette you deploy to make sure that a person hiring you doesn't think you're someone better than you are. The reassuring evidence that they do know who I really am is that there's no way the other Russells would do it for the fee I'm getting. I had a similar email correspondence with some TED people the other day who sent me a lovely email inviting me to get involved with a project they were doing. I was massively flattered but it wasn't really up my street so I politely declined. But they then wrote back asking if I could point them in the direction of any of my contacts at the BBC. Damn. They thought I was the other one. Good job I was polite or they might have thought he was a real git.
Anyway. I'm rambling. You can tell I'm supposed to be working now can't you?