Writing

Essays and posts since 2003, on making things, hacking, teams and family.

Also: the words I made up along the way.

A few of my most popular pieces

Create something every day
Why I made this my rule for living, and what happens when you decide to make things all the time
Accelerating serendipity
Can you make happy accidents happen more often?
The idea funnel
Is killing ideas just as important as coming up with them?
Learning by hacking
I do hacks. Tiny prototypes for digital things that I show to people quickly. And for five years I’ve been doing, on average, one a month. I call it sketching with code. Here are some of the things I’ve learnt.
Hacking happiness into the daily commute
How rethinking part of my daily routine is having an effect on how happy I feel each day

Essays19

Sketching With Code, 2012 to 2013, on hacking, making and culture.

2013Get back to the craft
2013Hack it in a day
2013Introduction
2013Let a thousand flowers bloom
2013Stop feeding the beast
2013Hacking at Do Startup
2013Hack, Play, Learn — Slides from Google Campus
2013How do you decide whether your idea is worth making? For the last few years, concentrating on “getting good at getting fast”.
2013Back to #startuplife with Makeshift I’m doing a new thing.
2012The Exploralaboratorium - six week-long hacks for Comic Relief
2012Getting good at getting fast I’m about to write up my research for NESTA/Clore’s paper that set me off on the task of researching culture and hacking.
2012Telling stories with hacks A couple of history hacks while on Eigg — two things that might be of use to others.
2012Digital Sizzle - a short documentary
2012Artist or Hacker? “Arthacking and exhibition to remember” is the theme of the next Digital Sizzle hackday , one of East London’s many tech industry meetup events.
2012Culture Hack East 2012 (Video)
2012The Hack as the Message
2012Loosely-coupled productivity A short conversation on Twitter made me realise something.
2012Hack, Play, Learn Build, Measure, Learn.
2012How and what are cultural organisations learning from hacker culture? For the past few years I’ve immersed myself in the world of hack days, and become pretty interested in collaboratations between hackers and artists / cultural organisations.

Pieces at Makeshift26

Written at Makeshift, on Makeshift's own publishing platform.

2014Drawing to think Is a doodle good for the noodle?
2014Teh Guardian FTW!!!1! A tiny, subtle hack on TheGuardian.com
2014Are you building a hack, a product, or a hackquaduct? Bridging the Hack/Product Gap
2014Watch: Encourage your kids to code even if you can’t yourself A 7 minute lightning talk at Kidcrafters
2014An awesome team forming A big welcome to some new makeshift faces
2014Announcing: Twitter lists of your event attendees We have list off!
2014My dad turns into a robot! A tiny game you can play to encourage your kids to code
2014Step away from the screen Apply sunscreen instead?
2014Towards a greater understanding of technology for everyone In response to the response to the Year of Code
2014Leading at the code-face Balancing technical leadership with writing code
2014Learning to say “no” On becoming a non-yes man
2014One hundred pieces Can I write one hundred pieces of writing in one year?
2014Startups—get a room! Pass the remote
2013Hackathon and on and on 24 hours of hacking! Crèche not included
2013Hey Twitter! Let me send a private link to a friend… URL be back
2013Don’t just do one thing Could parallelism be an appropriate way to find the thing you should focus on?
2013How can we teach all the kids that want to code, how to code? A shedcast with Clare Sutcliffe, co-founder of Code Club
2013How to lose form data and alienate people On poor form
2013How to send links via direct message in Twitter now they’re banned A couple of handy hacks for getting round the ban
2013Magnificent failures, hand made video game cheat books and the absurdity of startups: An interview with Ryan Hoover Talking shop
2013Make a useful thing and don’t be a dick Startup or upstart?
2013Not just another blog On making an article engine for Makeshift’s new website
2013On the joy of small software! Building things that just do one thing well
2013Shedcast #1: Stef on the early days of Makeshift The first in our series of podcast conversations from our two-story shed at Makeshift (yes you read that right)
2013Shedcast with Joe Scarboro Our first guest conversation in the Makeshift Shedscraper, with Joe from 3 Beards
2013Showing your work in progress Show people early, get feedback, listen

The Eigg residency7

A geek-in-residence on the Isle of Eigg, documented start to finish. Read in order.

2012Hacking an island?
2012Refocussing the residency I’ve been thinking about what I’m supposed to achieve with my residency on Eigg this autumn, and came to some conclusions today.
2012My Eigg residency, part two It’s the end of my second visit to Eigg and it’s been eventful!
2012Returning to Eigg
2012A place to make and do
2012Speaking in Shetland about Eigg and Geeks in Residence [video]
2012Concluding thoughts on my research Concluding thoughts on the research

Create something every day8

My rule for living: the essay that explains it, and the week in 2007 when I first blogged it day by day.

2013Create something every day Why I made this my rule for living, and what happens when you decide to make things all the time
2007Create something day 6 and 7: Peter Broderick – Float John Xela and I spent the weekend talking about our ideas for the artwork for the new album “Float” by Peter Broderick coming out on Type in a few months.
2007Create something day 5: A rebrand? I’m posting this on Sunday - day seven of my “create something” week.
2007Create something day 4: A Certain Ambiguity The news today is that Penguin Books’ Indian branch have decided to use one of my Flickr photos in the cover of one of their books - A Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri & Hartosh Singh Bal.
2007Create something day 3: Searching for bokeh Summer seems to be upon us for a short while, so I took a few minutes out of the day to find some nice bokeh in and around Moseley/Kings Heath on my way into work.
2007Create something day 2: Get your people to blog my people My second day of creating something every day for a week.
2007Create Something Day 1: Splot To be honest, Monday was a very silly choice of day to start my “create something new every day for a week” idea.
2007I am going to create something every day for a week For the past few years, I’ve had a pretty simple personal rule that I try to abide by every day.

Blog297

The long record: hacks announced, projects launched, letters to MPs.

2020The goal isn’t to run the marathon, it’s to become the kind of person who runs marathons Now that the London Marathon is postponed, along with lots of other races, here’s why I’m keeping going and adapting.
2020Autism, kids, self-reflection and why I’m running the London Marathon for #Autism This Summer, our two kids and I were diagnosed with autism. So what did I do? Start running, of course! Here’s why.
2017✔︎ See the kids during daylight hours We should put what really matters at the heart of how we work
2017Introducing The Thread on Medium For the last couple of years, Makelight, the learning community that I help run has been really growing. It’s turned into a wonderfully…
2016Ephemeralds On the temporary nature of the things we create
2016Do what you love (and pay the bills) On growing a passion project into a passion business without taking investment.
2016Quietly getting on with business For the last few months I’ve been unusually quiet online.
2015Hacking happiness into the daily commute How rethinking part of my daily routine is having an effect on how happy I feel each day
2015If software is eating the world, who’s running the restaurant? There’s a gender gap in tech. Can we narrow it?
2015Getting back to the drawing board I’m leaving Makeshift, so what’s next?
2014Let’s distribute the future What would you give a child to inspire an interest in technology? A box full of awesome things perhaps?
2014Monsters! Everywhere! Sharing my love of drawing monsters with my kids
2014Internet of Things, where are you? Visualising the devices around you right now
2014Lining things up How do you choose your next project?
2014The idea funnel Is killing ideas just as important as coming up with them?
2014Cheers, Medium! You turned me into a writer
2014Introducing “Founder Stories” Startup founders sharing what they’ve learnt
2013Higher resolutions Can you commit to doing something every day in 2014?
2013A tiny act of feminism Which child gets the pink beaker?
2013The ideas won’t run out So don’t worry if you have the idea fear
2013This is from everyone The Web will only be for everyone when we can say that it’s from everyone too
2013Will I really steal your idea? Some people demand signed non-disclosure agreements before they will tell you their idea. I’m not one of them any more and here’s why.
2013A hack is worth a thousand pictures Could making a prototype be better than using words and pictures to communicate your idea?
2013Accelerating serendipity Can you make happy accidents happen more often?
2013Makefulness Is seeking a state of flow what work is really about?
2013Internet filtering will do more harm than good I’ve written to my UK Member of Parliament about new opt-out internet filtering proposals aimed at protecting children
2013What gets done is what gets done How long working hours don’t help you in the long term
2013When to give up The right course of action might be to stop what you’re doing, and regain your biggest asset – yourself.
201330 days of Medium What I’ve learned from my first month writing on Medium
2013Learning by hacking I do hacks. Tiny prototypes for digital things that I show to people quickly. And for five years I’ve been doing, on average, one a month. I call it sketching with code. Here are some of the things I’ve learnt.
2013The Little, Big Idea How just doing the first, tiny part of your idea can help you find out what you need to do to really make it a big idea
2013Make it up as you go along I’ve been making up bed-time stories for my kids.Could imagination and improvisation prepare them (and me) for the modern world?
2013Ignore the news Why I gave up listening to mainstream news so I could concentrate on things that matter
2013Sketching with Code
2012Finance apps for a small business - what I'm using to make my life easier Finance apps for a small business
2012Skit
2012Bootbuckle A vanilla Padrino project for starting new projects. Uses Compass, Susy, HAML, Sprockets, Heroku, MongoDB, Mongoid, Memcached.
2012Sketching with Code
2012Culture Hack Scotland 2012 - 3 of my hacks Culture Hack Scotland 2012 - 3 hacks
2012Through the Lens of Demarco - Hack 3 for Culture Hack Scotland 2012
2012Loftify, a one-day hack for National Hack the Government Day
2012Playfully hacking on things that matter
2012Change Nation - the tech behind the scenes
2012Hacking with GLA environmental data
2012How to block behavioural adverts that follow you around while you browse
2011Wake up monsters!
2011Screened - a map visualisation of UK film screening data
2011Aframe is a Smarta 100 winner
2011Aframe shortlisted for a White Bull "Bully" award
2011The loss of @towerbridge from a cultural point of view
2011Experimenting with Ruby application stacks
2011BT Nexus + Aframe = fibre-powered video collaboration
2011"Log it for me", "Tag it for me" - give us video and we give you metadata
2011Make sense of both sides of the argument - introducing Wrangl
2011My resolution: answer some questions on Stack Overflow Resolution: answer some questions on Stack Overflow
2011Culture Hack Day: CultureGrid hacks - A mobile app, JSONP API and a large image scraper
2011Did I mention I'm a photographer? Anatomy of an HTML5/JQuery Image gallery
2010Launching a monster startup - Aframe
2010Introducing Caboodle
2010Plzen
2010Urban Ideas Bakery - Pilsen
2010Tesselation I’ve recently become reminded of an old fascination I had with tesselation. Earlier this year I helped Emily with a design refresh involving this pattern:
2010Random Play
2010Grandma’s House – a short film Filmdash is an annual 48-hour film-making challenge where participants plan, script, shoot, edit and upload a film based on a theme and an individual brief to include certain lines of dialogue and a prop.
2010Monster Mountain I surprised a few people on Twitter on my birthday when I spent the evening doing this illustration.
2010Get geo-position coordinates from a UK postcode with Ruby Introducing Pat, an ultra-lightweight Ruby gem for postcode->geolocation in the UK.
2010Tweet an MP The Digital Economy Bill for me is the single-most anger inducing piece of proposed legislation that I’ve yet heard.
2010A letter to David Burrowes
2010A letter to my MP on the day of the Digital Economy Bill second reading
2010Email your candidates
2010I'm disappointed
2010"London Wedding Photographer" Emily Quinton After the recent move to London it was time to update partner Emily Quinton's site.
2010Link “Scientists” I get frustrated when I see an interesting article on the web that starts with “Scientists have discovered…” and followed by a surprising new ‘fact’, backed up with a write-up, some quotes but no more information on what the research is, by whom.
2010Yes and… Something I’ve unconsciously been doing to avoid those kinds of conversations is to start my sentences “yes and” instead of “yes but”.
2009The search is on – we’re hiring I’m looking for three people to join the team at All In working on something very exciting indeed!
2009London C-all-in-g Some changes are afoot, and it’s high time I blogged about it. In short - I’m going to be in London doing something exciting.
2009Does BCCDIY risk devaluing digital marketing? Here’s an interesting criticism of BCCDIY - that it risks “devaluing the commercial aspects of digital marketing”.
2009Guardian: Digital technology for public services and communities could make bottom up more effective than top down I just left this comment on an article on the Guardian site that seems to be very relevant to BCCDIY.
2009BCC DIY Hack Day collected memory As the culmination of the first week of our community-powered effort to build our own website for Birmingham City Council, the BCC DIY Hack Day was a real show of how much an informal group of people can now achieve in a short space of time.
2009What should the Library of Birmingham be and do?
2009Artists Taking the Lead I’m involved in one of the shortlisted projects for Artists Taking the Lead, which is a competitive pitch to the Arts Council who will be awarding several groups £500,000 for artistic projects to tie in with the Olympic games.
2009The best vampire film ever made? Last night I watched “Let The Right One In”, which is one of the best films I’ve seen for a long time, in any genre.
2009Wedding Photographer of the Year 2009 I’m incredibly proud of Emily Quinton for winning the prestigious title of Wedding Photographer of the Year 2009 this month.
20094IP idea: Dear Sir Madam It’s a service that lets you as the ‘angry customer’ to make use of an expert tool to put together the perfect complaint letter, with little effort.
20094IP Idea: Easter X Easter X is a geocaching competition that will happen in Easter 2009.
20094IP Idea: How to Look Good Online It’s “How to Look Good Naked” for social networking.
20094IP Idea: Mismash Mismash: mashups that are plain wrong.
2009A bunch of 4IP ideas Last year 4IP hit the West Midlands web scene and asked for our ideas for public service digital content and services.
2009A Google Wave Haiku I am also excited about Google Wave, and I like the way that on signing up for a developer account there was a box titled “Write a message to the Google team”.
2009New Type Records Site Seven years ago John Xela and I started a label called Type.
2009Introducing - Help Me Investigate Help Me Investigate.com is now in Private Beta, which means I can finally talk about what I’ve been busy building recently.
2009Charles on Serendipity A very quick but enlightening conversation with Charles Hunter that’s given me some exciting angles to take in my research.
2009Daedelus on Serendipity An interview with the musician Daedelus on the subject of ‘accelerated serendipity’, the occasion of which in itself had serendipitous qualities - someone else Tweeted, I was nearby, we hadn’t seen eachother since he stayed at my house for a show a few years ago, I had my notebook, conversation ensued.
2009On Serendipity I’ve settled on looking at the idea of ‘accelerated serendipity’, which I think actually encompasses the other topic I was considering: ‘conversational leadership’.
2009A letter to my MP about Ian Tomlinson Watching the video of the police assault on Ian Tomlinson got me very angry, so I’ve written to my MP about it.
2009Help me choose my leadership research topic I have two ideas that I’ve been working up for areas to research during my Clore fellowship.
2009St.Boredom’s I had an unexpected trip to hospital this week which wasn’t much fun, but I’m fine and just have ‘take it easy’ as medicinal advice to take away.
2009Two Big City Plan Wordles Ahead of the coming end of the Big City Plan consultation here are two Wordle illustrations of what’s being said.
2009The Culture Question: What does Birmingham need? The Big City Plan is out for consultation, and it asks some pretty big, and open questions about the city.
20095 Counter-intuitive rules for creative people Here are some counter-intuitive rules that I’m following at the moment, and if you’re a ‘creative entrepreneur’ they might apply to you too:
2009Mix: A Gift to Future Selves Another in my series of experimental, filmic, soundscape, found sound, ambient, folk, classical montage mixes.
2009Twadio - “The Sound of Silence” Announcing Twadio - The silent radio station that plays in your head
2008Why Andy Burnham’s plans for censoring websites with film-style age certificates won’t work How would you feel if everything you tried to access on the internet were filtered for “unacceptable content” by government censors?
2008Ben made a wish and it came true To celebrate the launch of I So Wish, Dubber and I decided to grant a random wish that someone had made.
2008What do you wish for in 2009? If you could wish for one thing in 2009, what would it be?
2008“Going to be a dad” on Twitter A cute new service for new Twitter soon-to-be dads: Goingtobeadad.com
200850+ Birmingham Twitter users you need to follow Twitter has really taken off in Birmingham (UK) this year. Here’s a list of some of the people who are using it and I think you should be connecting with you if you haven’t already!
2008What other brands can learn from the Courvoisier Future 500 Last week I was picked as one of the top 5 in the Future 500, which is sponsored by Courvoisier.
2008Hypercontext “It’s Mr Neologism again” was the first reaction to another of my on-the-spur-of-the-moment word-coinings.
2008Is The Wire better than an MBA? I’ve been obsessed with a TV show called The Wire for the last few months.
2008Introducing Tweetlet - twitter for pregnancy Wouldn’t it be great if you could use Twitter to keep up to date with how your baby is developing during pregnancy?
2008Top 5 in The Future 500 I’ve been picked as one of the top 5 in the Observer newspaper’s Courvoisier The Future 500 list for 2008 (a bit of a mouthful!)
2008Does Birmingham need a Creative Director? I was in Design Week again this week. This time for an article on an idea that’s gaining some traction in Birmingham at the moment - should the city have a creative director?
2008Big City Plan public consultation - who’s in? It’s all been a bit quiet online about the Big City Plan for a while now.
2008Getting a fix on Serendipity As part of my Clore fellowship I have agreed to produce a Masters-equivalent piece of research around a particular area of ‘leadership’ that interests me.
2008Minority Report interfaces will soon be real Pretty amazing video of an experimental immersive human computer interface that has the feel of the famous Minority Report system, with music from Deaf Center on our own Type Records.
2008Recession busting business models Nesta asked some of their contacts what they thought were the best business areas to be working in to weather the storm of the recession, and they’ve used a Wordle to visualise the results.
2008Hello World Today is the first day of Birmingham’s Hello World conference being held at Millennium Point.
2008Making a music video in 5 hours for Film Dash This is a music video I made today for the track Ut Nos Vivicaret taken from Xela’s forthcoming album In Bocca Al Lupo, on our label Type.
2008Jubilee Debt Campaign, Birmingham Introducing a new blog for the Jubilee Debt Campaign in Birmingham.
2008Blog Action Day in Birmingham Blog Action Day is happening for the second time this year, and is an attempt to bring together bloggers from around the world to discuss a shared issue.
2008Clore begins
2008The “One week until Clore starts” brain-dump My Clore Fellowship starts in just over a week, and I’ve got lots of thoughts rolling around about what this means, and what I’ll be doing. So I’m thinking them through here… any ideas, let me know.
2008The Big Picture breaks a World Record (and generates a mini debate) It’s official - the West Midlands, UK has made the world’s biggest photo-montage according to the Guinness World Records officials.
2008Dad’s Okay We all had a bit of a scare last week.
20085alist upgraded Andrew and I spent a few hours on 5alist.com this week, and we now have some nice new features and tweaks.
2008“Thank you” to the Cultural Leadership Programme The Cultural Leadership Programme are generous sponsoring my Clore Fellowship, and they just released the news about the five of us that they are funding.
2008Birmingham from the balcony one evening I love living where I live - in the evenings we get fantastic views of the sky over Birmingham.
20085alist - Top five lists to share with your friends Another week another rapidly-deployed Web idea from Andrew Dubber and me (with a little help from Jason).
2008Introducing Odadeo - a new site for dads For Fathers’ Day 2008 I have launched the ‘private beta’ of new site that I’ve been working very hard on for the last three months.
2008“Please don’t discount these voices” - accepting the Webby for First Light Movies I’m in New York accepting a Webby award for the work that we did with First Light Movies - an organisation that enables young filmmaking all across the UK.
2008Why “Power or Powerless”? I woke up this morning in New York - I’m here for the Webby Awards this evening, and to start the day I tuned into a debate that was happening courtesy of the Birmingham Post, back home in the UK.
2008I’m a Clore Fellow I’ve been awarded a fellowship with the Clore Leadership Programme, and today I am off to London for a day-long event welcoming the twenty-two people who are this year’s group.
2008Web 2.0 or Blah 2.0? Here’s a summary of the talk Pete Ashton and I gave in which we attempted to explain what Web 2.0 is (or is not) and how it is relevant for small creative businesses.
2008The New Created in Birmingham Design We’ve spent some time rebuilding the Created in Birmingham site, updating the design, adding some extra features and generally adding improvements throughout.
2008Give your homepage a mini facelift in about 3 hours “The plumber’s tap always drips”, or so they say. The same is true of web consultancies.
2008“Surface Unsigned” - How not to score a PR own goal when criticised online Social media enables anyone to be a critic of anyone else and to have their criticism heard by all online, which means we must all be careful about what we say and how we act online.
2008Emily is being featured in Professional Photographer Magazine Professional Photographer Magazine asked Emily to write a second piece for them, this time a “day in the life of” piece documenting her day spent shooting a wedding and then a multi-millionaire’s birthday party.
2008One of my images on the first Birmingham Journal of Literature and Language I’ve just received my complimentary copies of the first Birmingham Journal of Literature and Language, and on the cover is one of my images.
2008We Won a Webby Award! The First Light Movies website that we built at 3form has only gone and won a Webby Award!
2008Connect or Protect? How can we open up our ideas and keep them safe at the same time? My new company is registered!
2008Let’s take the ideas in the Big City Plan and run with them In the first of my video blog posts I was pretty amazed by one of the comments in particular that came back and it looks like we’ve spawned a project if I can find some people to collaborate with to make it happen (open invite).
2008What is accelerated serendipity for? In an attempt to break some of the backblog and to get me publishing more regularly, how about video for the format, and to start with how do you think we can make serendipity have real outcomes rather than just ‘nice ideas’ being generated?
2008WordcampUK comes to Birmingham Great news for Birmingham’s ever-growing blogging and social media scene!
200810 things to ask yourself about your new web site home page layout I’ve just been chatting to a friend of mine, Chris Garrett, about a new home page layout for his new venture - a video production company operating in the UK with international clients.
2008Snowladen Branches I’ve been getting slow on processing my images - getting them off the camera and onto the internet.
2008A Webby Triple - One Nomination and Two Honorees The announcement of this year’s tranch of Webby winners is getting ever closer, and this year I’m feeling pretty great about having a triple decker trifle of awards cake.
2008Peter Broderick - “Float” CD and Vinyl Peter Broderick’s amazing debut album is now out, and my first copies arrived on my desk today.
2008The pre-startup preparation I only found out on Friday that I’d been given that all important ‘yes’ on the seed funding to make this thing happen, but already I’ve been making some great progress as well as encountering some pretty tough obstacles to overcome.
2008Birmingham Bloggers Meetup 3 - Coworking and a Social Media Cafe Last night was the third of the Birmingham Bloggers Meetups, and it was an even bigger affair than the last two probably put together.
2008I’m blogging my new startup To coincide with my thirtieth birthday I received the exciting news that I have just received £50,000 of seed funding for my new business idea.
2008On turning 30 and thinking “so that was my twenties…” I’ve just turned 30.
2008The Post-SXSW Interactive “Brain Dump” Last night the crew from the SXSWM trip got together for what we were calling the ‘Post SXSW Brain Dump’ which is available as a 1 hr 15 min video on Bambuser.
2008Archive TV Launches I’ve been working with Cassie Leedham and Chris Garrett on the launch of a great new TV production company specialising in historical crime drama-documentaries based on true stories from newspaper and library archives.
2008Mass intimacy In a great write-up, Daneil W. E. Light talks about a collective sense of connectivity, opened secrecy and intimacy based around the idea of ‘we’ instead of ‘i’.
2008SXSW Backlog Oookay…. So it’s been a bit quiet around here since I came back from SXSW Interactive.
2008Tagged Audio: An interview with Hugh Forrest from SXSW I have converted this recording to a ’static video’ and used Viddler to tag the timeline so that it is more searchable and scannable.
2008Video: Is the future of ‘online’ actually ‘offline’? With my head fried from the SXSW Interactive experience this is a short (1:47 min) video piece of me talking about how it’s the offline impact that social media can offer that will validate out use of these technologies.
2008The SXSWM Gang is Back in Town We’re variously getting over the jetlag, collating all of the information we gathered, sending emails and connecting online with the folks we met, trying to work out what to do with all of the ideas.
2008Why are we podcasting instead of using text? Tom Scotney just put up an interesting blog post questioning the usefulness of the video and audio that we’ve been putting online.
2008“Why South By Southwest?” Video Chris Kershaw from Ideas For Life has been following us on our SXSWM trip.
2008A great conversation with Shawn Morton from Profilactic I’m not alone in thinking that Profilactic could be one of the big stories of 2008 - a service that lets you aggregate and manage all of the various feeds of information that you publish as a person and have them pulled together into a ‘lifestream’.
2008From “Gold Rush” to “Good Rush” - Social Media gets ethical in 2008 If 2007 was the year of the “Social Media Gold Rush”, 2008 is the year of the “Social Media Good Rush”.
2008As promised… bikehugger We’re in a ‘want us to do stuff?’ mood so we head over to Bikehugger at the request of someone who left a message at sxswm and got an interview with a Bikehugger blogger.
2008Day 1 - our summary - “it’s all about conversations” In a brief respite from the geekery, a few of us from SXSWM got together for a chat to summarise our first day.
2008Dorking at Dorkbot We went to the fantastic Dorkbot party and met up with the organisers.
2008SXSWi 2008 First Impressions I’ve spent a lot of my time recording my conversations with people at SXSWi and I’ll be posting a few of them here.
2008Talking coworking, xml facial expressions and other randomness with Alex Hillman and others SXSW is all about the conversations you have - Alex and others who drop in and out during our chat provide a great first one!
2008Why doesn’t Birmingham have wifi like Austin? A conversation with Pete Ashton at SXSW about Birmingham’s woefully inadequate and probably very expensive wifi solution, compared to the ‘everyone just make their connections free’ model that Austin has.
2008Follow our progress at SXSW Interactive on sxswm.com I’ve organised a group of digital media types from Birmingham to go to South By South-West (SXSW) interactive (SXSWi) with the support of Digital Central.
2008The Art of Influence for the Arts Council Pete and I presented at our first ‘double act’ speaking event today.
2008Creative Republic Launch Video Video from the launch of Creative Republic, with speeches from Helga Henry and Pete Ashton as well as shots from the night and a few interviews with Creative Republic board members.
2008Entering the Clore Leadership Programme with a Personal Organisation Chart In brief - ever tried drawing a diagram of how you fit into your work environment?
2008Sam Amidon at the Tin Angel, Coventry Sam Amidon, the artists behind our favourite album of this year “All is Well” was doing a show over at The Tin Angel in Coventry.
2008Birmingham Big City Plan - The Video Given away at the Big City Plan launch yesterday was a lovely little 5 minute video by Squint Opera.
2008I’m blogging for the Birmingham Post In an interesting turn of events I was invited by Joanna Geary of the Birmingham Post to join their new blogging team.
2008I’m Tig Bounder over at BINS has set up a game of ‘blog tig’ with the following rules.
2008Podcast of The Big City Plan Launch The Big City Plan launched yesterday and I was there to see (and hear) it happen.
2008South by South West (Midlands) In short - a bunch of Birmingham digital media types are going to SXSW Interactive in Texas next week, and we are doing a ‘remote control blogging’ thing where you get to ask us to attend stuff and report back for you.
2008The Big City Plan Charter - Any Questions? Today is the launch of The Big City Plan Charter, a document that puts down in writing some of the ‘big ideas’ that are under consideration for the future of Birmingham.
2008What do the BBC leadership have to say about the future of Birmingham? In short - they’re investing in media production outside London and they see Birmingham as being important to delivering on that promise.
2008Rationalise Your Online Identity with Profilactic and ClaimID “Identity” is a hard-to-pin-down concept, especially when it comes to your ‘online identity’ in a world of Facebook profiles, Twitter and what seems to be becoming ‘multiple online identity disorder’.
2008Creative Republic Launch Party and Charter Last night was the launch of Creative Republic and was a great evening.
2008Top 10 Usability Mistakes for Blogs - How Does Yours Rate? The prolific usability guru Jacob Nielsen has a handy post called “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes” and last night I thought I’d scope them out and see if I needed to make any changes to this site.
2008Birmingham Bloggers Meetup 2 The Birmingham Bloggers Meetup events look set for great things.
2008Hello new blogger! Congratulations on starting a blog - nice to have you with us!
2008A mixed bag week The last few days have been a mixed bag and I wanted to put something online about what I've been up to.
2008Andrew Dubber does exist I can confirm that Andrew Dubber does, in fact, exist.
2008How to make a Life Feed You make yourself a Life Feed — a single RSS feed that combines all of those disparate bits and bobs of content that you’re busy making and puts them all in one place for easy consumption.
20083form Shortlisted for a Webby! A nice start to the week - we’ve been shortlisted for a Webby award for the First Light Movies website.
2008Creative Republic is Open for Business! Creative Republic is now open for business, but what is it, and what’s it for?
2008Emily has a photo blog Welcome to Emily, who has just joined us with her new blog at Emily Quinton Photography.
2008My leadership development day on the cultural leadership programme Leadership development day on the cultural leadership programme
2008Give Powerpoint the Bullet. Do something interesting instead Yesterday I gave a talk at Birmingham City University’s Business School on the induction day for a new course - the MSc in Business Creation and Development.
2008An advance preview of the new Redpoint Climbing Centre in Birmingham Tonight was the unofficial preview night for particularly keen people to see what’s been going on at the new soon-to-be-opened Redpoint Climbing Centre in Birmingham’s Gun Quarter.
2008Yay for Created in Birmingham! A joint Guardian Media Innovation Award What a nice way to start the week - Created in Birmingham has picked up some national interest and gone and hit the big-time with a big ‘ol compliment from the Guardian in the shape of a MEGA award nomination for Best Independent Blog.
2008Where is the Creative and Cultural Web Traffic in Birmingham (Part 2) Finding out where web traffic in a city is, which are the important sites, which ones have loads of users, which ones have none is a difficult task for anyone who’s interested.
2008The Big Picture - A huge photography project in the West Midlands Today is the launch of The Big Picture.
2008Broadcast magazine feature on digital media in Birmingham I was interviewed a couple of weeks ago for a piece that Broadcast magazine have written on the state of the digital media scene in Birmingham, and it’s been published today.
2008Birmingham Bloggers Meetup Podcast and Photos Thursday night saw the first ever Birmingham Bloggers Meetup happen at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath. I made it down for the first hour or so, and it was a small, cosy event in nice surroundings. More photos here.
2008How to recycle your old computer equipment in Birmingham I’ve been getting rid of lots of old computer equipment this week.
2007How to set up a simple professional portfolio site/blog in about four hours
2007Igloo Impossible It’s that time of year again, and in time honoured fashion I’ve put together a little festive game for your mouse-clicking enjoyment.
2007Birmingham Clone Town Birmingham is a ‘clone town’.
2007What is Birmingham’s Creative Direction? Another in my series about Birmingham’s Big City Plan.
2007When things just line up I managed a day off today - it was lovely. Not a bit of work in sight.
2007Facebook apps are the new black This week I’ve somehow seemed to strike a nerve with a few of my clients by talking Facebook Applications.
2007Live blogging my new iPhone purchase I’m in the Apple store Bullring right now taking early adoption to a whole new level (maybe).
20073form is 3forming Over the six and half years that 3form has been running we’ve achieved a great deal, won lots of awards and worked with some great people on great projects.
2007How about we design Birmingham with a WIKI? Too many ideas, not enough time to write them all down before I’m on to the next thing. That’s my problem.
2007Created in Birmingham on Facebook I’ve been doing some research for a project that I’m working on at the moment that will rely on Facebook’s new system that allows people develop their own ‘applications’. You may have seen some of these - usually involving throwing pigs at eachother, trying to bite oneanother in some kind of lycanthropic fantasy involving ninjas or in the form of little bits of “that’s too much information, dude” revelations… all of this being ‘virtual’ of course.
2007Are my posts too long? Am I being too verbose? Should I be posting shorter, snappier blog posts?
2007Birmingham - the Big City Plan “City Team” I’ve been invited to be part of Birmingham’s ‘City Team’ which is a group of people brought together to come up with big ideas for how Birmingham might change for the better over the coming ten to twenty-five years as part of a ‘masterplanning’ process being branded as “The Big City Plan”.
2007One of my photos is in the Guardian photography supplement today I haven’t seen it yet, but this image was chosen with five others for inclusion in the Guardian’s photography week series of supplements.
2007Reporting back on Crowdsourcing So - I’ve just got back from two days of discussions, speeches, presentations, private chats, video interviews, and so on.
2007Autumn Recovery I’m starting to think that this modern life we live is more and more becoming a constant blur of overlapping interventions, interferences, opportunities and threats.
2007Plus Festival 07 - Moving Type Found As a first post on Plus 2007, here is a series of ‘found type’ photographs I took during the event.
2007Plus Festival: Live Pacman front-pages YouTube One of the funnier parts of the Plus Festival was the ‘live pacman’ game that was running for most of the five days.
2007Crowdsourcing scales up - Who wants to redesign Birmingham? The meeting was one of the first of what looks set to be a year-long series of meetings, discussions, public debates and events all based around what is being called the “Birmingham City Centre Masterplan”.
2007Doing The National Wedding Show I spent the weekend helping Emily with her stand at the National Wedding Show at the NEC.
2007Plus Festival 2007 Opens After a year of work, we’re all very proud to announce that Plus - the international design festival opens its doors at 10am tomorrow for five days of inspirational design events, perfomances, talks by leading designers, exhibitions, interactive installations, even a real-life version of Pacman played out by humans and cameras!
2007Backlog! Taking some inspiration from the recent postal strike, I think I’ve also generated a backlog of bloggable bits and bobs to post here.
2007Shortlisted for an RTS award We found out on Friday (yes I know I’m slow) that our work at 3form with Maverick for Channel 4 on the 4Tips project has been shortlisted for a Royal Television Society Innovation award!
2007Ten 4 Magazine Issue 7 is out Issue 7 of Ten 4 Magazine is out, and the images I shot at the Channel 4 Inspiration Sessions day are in it.
2007Autumn There’s something about that particular light you experience when walking under old trees on a cold, blustery day’s end, with a clear sky overhead and leaves scattering underfoot that summons memories of years past and thoughts of the future.
200730 albums on Type This month sees the release of TYPE30. Thirty albums in five years isn’t bad going really.
2007Deaf Center and Skallander photos Some photos from the Skallander / Deaf Center show in Manchester at the Sacred Trinity Church, Salford.
2007Type Records and Red Deer Club Present… Tonight is our Type Records night in Manchester with a line up to be proud of.
2007Boosted Yesterday I spent a couple of hours facilitating a panel at a one day mini conference called Boosted.
2007Artfest: Luminarium Levity II by Architects of Air The other highlight of this year’s Artsfest for me was the Architects of Air piece in Eastside called Levity II.
2007Artsfest: Friday was a Blast ArtsFest, Birmingham’s free arts festival (and Europe’s largest apparently, if that means anything) kicked off on Friday with a fantastic piece of performance art/theatre/engineering/pyrotechnics/steampunkery called Blast.
2007Back from holiday - here are a couple of new sites Before going away, we managed to get a couple of projects finished.
2007Change your wireless router password right now Yesterday I was honoured to attend my first School of Computer Science Industrial Advisory Board meeting at Birmingham University.
2007Moseley Folk Festival is Lovely with a capital L Today we took the day out and went to Moseley Folk Festival which is running in Moseley Private Park all weekend.
2007Compton Verney At last week’s Bank Holiday we had a day out at Compton Verney, which was lovely.
2007Khonnor in shock TV appearance (sort of) If you were particularly observant you might have noticed that last night’s episode of the IT Crowd on Channel 4 had an assortment of Type goodies on the set in the background, including Khonnor’s Burning Palace seven inch.
2007Emily’s Birmingham wedding photography business This weekend I spent some time helping Emily out with an update to the website for her Birmingham based wedding photography business, surprisingly called Emily Quinton Photography.
2007Nought for the Day Did you know that atheists, agnostics and humanists are banned from expressing their thoughts on Thought for the Day?
2007Am I getting behind the curve? Yesterday I took part in a survey I found through the Digital Birmingham site, called the Digital Curve.
2007“How are you doing?”… “Oh, busy” I’ve been to a few events over the last week and I’ve started breaking my rule of not using the word “busy” to describe what I’m up to.
2007Fierce Ten out of Ten Many congratulations to the Fierce! team who deservedly won the Birmingham Creative City Award for Best Brand on Thursday.
2007Sofia without Stefan This week I was in Sofia, attending the funeral of a trusted friend and work colleague at 3form, the designer Stefan Marinov, who died very suddenly and unexpectedly last week.
2007Is Birmingham “Getting it?” - Creativity and Culture feature in the West Midlands Power 50 Yesterday evening was the launch of the Birmingham Post’s much anticipated supplement, the “Power 50 - Who is really shaping the future of the West Midlands?” at Birmingham Future’s AGM.
2007Out of Hours: To Blog or not to Blog This evening I’m heading over to the Light House in Wolverhampton for a get-together and some informal discussion on the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’ of blogging.
2007Illuminate I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in Plus - Birmingham’s international design festival for over a year now.
2007100% Geek This week I attended the bTWEEN conference on interactive media in Bradford.
2007Oh No Logo – an article for the Birmingham Post Following the blog post I wrote about the new 2012 Olympics identity, I was invited to write a short piece for the Birmingham Post which was published today.
2007Where’s the creative and cultural web traffic in Birmingham? About six months ago I came up with the idea of setting up a blog to talk about all the creative and cultural things happening in Birmingham (UK), where I live. I’m a relatively busy man so I hooked up with Pete Ashton, blogger extraordinaire, who was thinking along similar lines so we got the thing off the ground - Created in Birmingham.
2007The London 2012 ident - a flop of Olympic proportions? The new ident for the London 2012 Olympics has just been launched.
2007Name in Lights: And the winner is… Una White The winner of the Name in Lights project was announced last night at a champagne reception in Birmingham city centre.
2007Ten4 Magazine Feature - The Sound of Selling Ten4 Magazine have uploaded a selection of features for Issue 6, due out soon.
2007A List Apart Web Design Survey A List Apart (I think I last looked at this site some time around 2000) are running a web design survey.
2007The Creative Inbox Good sources of information are few and far between, and with the constant rise of RSS feeds and email lists I’m often feeling overwhelmed with ‘input’.
2007Going grey Well, it was bound to happen sooner rather than later but as of today I am now officially past it…
200710 sites that make running a business easier For the launch of the new Digital Central website, I’ve written a feature on useful web tools for business.
2007Getting some inspiration Yesterday I was one of the partipants at (and the photographer for) the Channel 4 Inspiration Session on Design and Multimedia organised by Ten4 Magazine and 4Talent.
2007Spring is here and Flickr is back I’ve spent the last few weeks without Flickr.
2007Fierce! Festival hits 10 years This year’s Fierce! programme has been announced.
2007All my mixes in one podcast This weekend I’ve collected all of the music mixes I have published on the web into one podcast.
2007A new lens for Spring While I was in Hong Kong I bought us a new lens and we’re both really happy with it.
2007Home It’s been a long month… I’m happy to be home again.
2007Portable Film Festival - an interview While I was at SXSW I had the opportunity to have a chat with Andrew Apostola, the Creative Director of the successful Australian ‘virtual film festival’ Portable.
2007Use your webcam to make video micro-content On the last day of SXSW2007, Texas I was hanging out with the guys from Viddler and we decided to do an SXSW video wrap up.
2007Impressions of Hong Kong I’m back in the UK after an intense few weeks, first in Texas, then Hong Kong.
2007Hong Kong - Receiving our Digital Pioneers awards I’ve been made to feel really welcome here in Hong Kong.
2007Kong Kong - Behind the Scenes at Happy Valley To top off a great day, last night we had a behind-the-scenes tour of Happy Valley, Hong Kong’s horse racing stadium.
2007In conversation with Scott Ross I was lucky enough to have a chat with Scott Ross, CEO of Digital Domain.
2007Hong Kong - Cyberport And so begins our Digital Pioneers programme in Hong Kong.
2007Digital Pioneers arrive in Hong Kong I’m here as part of a project called Digital Pioneers with the British Council.
2007Hong Kong Day Two – Bokeh Sunday in Hong Kong feels much like any other day with its bustling urban sprawl during the day and Bladerunneresque neon blaze by night.
2007Name in Lights is going viral I’ve just looked through the statistics for the Name in Lights site that we launched before I went out to Texas last week.
2007Stretch Hummers in Texas I was really shocked that in somewhere like Texas, with its history of close connection with the oil industry there was very little awareness of the environmental issues that we hear about every day in the UK.
2007SXSW - The Great British Booze-Up I went down to a party thrown by Clearleft, Boagworld and @media 2007 called the “Great British Booze-up”.
2007SXSW - Colin Devroe of Viddler gives me the lowdown on how to grow a video sharing site I finally met up with Colin Devroe from the online video sharing site Viddler.
2007SXSW - Fortune telling with Chris Messina: the future of online identity I had an interesting discussion with Chris Messina, one of the brains behind the OpenID project.
2007SXSW - Lego playpen There’s a Lego playpen for anyone tired of talking about ‘building’ things in the digital sense and get some real hands on fun… funny that this seems to be more popular with the adults than the kids!
2007SXSW - The $100 laptop There was a chance to play with a new ultra-lightweight $100 laptop.
2007SXSW – the iPod guide This is a great idea – an application that installs all the festival event info onto your ipod, so you can carry it around in your pocket instead of a huge booklet.
2007SXSW - Urban regeneration I took a short walk around Austin, TX while I’m at SXSW… the streets are quiet, traffic is calm and they there was an eerily quiet demolition site in amongst the bland architecture.
2007Live blogging SXSWi I’m starting to find other people blogging SXSW… first up it’s Coline Devroe who’s already finding out about free beer and t-shirts!
2007Do Schools Kill Creativity? A fantastic talk by Sir Ken Robinson on the importance of creativity in education.
2007Get your Name in Lights Fierce! Festival launches its Name in Lights project today and we’ve been working into the night to do our best with the new website.
2007Sharing the Web - Mouse, Camera, Action I was interviewed yesterday by Dr. Simon Davey on behalf of the Media Trust New Media Thinktank and the ICT hub for an article to be published in their forthcoming newsletter.
2007Is having your music licensed in a TV ad “selling out?” Over the Christmas break we had some success at Type when a track from one of our artists was used in the latest Honda advert.
2007Futurology for the Cultural sector I was asked by Ben Payne from the Birmingham Rep to put forward some thoughts on a significant issue that the cultural sector will face within ten years.
2007Synaesthesia I am currently working towards a photography accreditation with the Royal Photographic Society (Associateship).
2007“Photo Finish” for Channel 4’s 4Talent The guys at Channel 4 have started a new site called 4Talent and I was invited to put together a “how-to” guide for photographers looking at setting up a portfolio site using free tools and software like Flickr and Wordpress.
2007Common Purpose - Matrix Programme - Track the Money Day Matrix – an 11-day programme, starting with a two-day residential course and then one day a month.
2006Ryan Teague
2006Channel 4 IdeasFactory / Nesta - “Photo Finish” Photographer and web designer Stefan Lewandowski - whose clients include Vivienne Westwood and the V&A - will explore the huge potential in gaining international recognition for your work through the Internet.
2006A new photoblog Having been banging on about how amazing blogging and photoblogging is, I’ve finally found the time to set up my own little piece of the web.
2006Channel 4 IdeasFactory / Nesta - Creative Hub launch I gave a speech at the launch night of the Creative Hub series of events.
2005Sonar 2005: Type Records showcase A few of us from Type flew over to perform at the Sonar festival in Barcelona.
2004Neo Ouija showcase, Bern A recording from the Neo Ouija Showcase at Dachstock Reitschule, Bern, Switzerland of minimal and warm electronica.
2003Type Sampler This was the original hour-long sampler when we started Type and is a mix of music that was forthcoming at the time, as well as some unreleased material that never saw the light of day, including one of my tracks (8 minutes in) called “The sun, the sky, the sea”.
2003Default at the Bull’s Head, Birmingham A recording from one of our regular, now defunct Default events that took place in the then newly-renovated Bull’s Head in Moseley, Birmingham, UK.
Writing elsewhere Occasional articles and essays, mostly on Medium