I plan to write up my thoughts on being a benevolent dictator a little more soon. But, for now, here’s the slides (as pdf): BettaKulcha Presentation

This is an area I’ve taken up in the last 18 months or so and really enjoy it — without there are distinct benefits of trying to make really good imagery with someone who has, if nothing else, an interest in being photographed and a willingness to engage with what the photographer is trying to achieve.

However, one of the things I’m realising quite rapidly is just how vaccuous and unengaging many of these types of photos are.

I’m beautiful, look at me. No, just look and stare at my perfect face or ample boobs or my perfect pecs.

Yeah, yawn.

This isn’t great photography — it may be technically — the lighting might be brilliant, the composition precise and the clothes and expression might be just spot on. But it’s devoid of life, excitement or spark. Like german-engineered cars — technically brilliant and a thing of beauty — but lacking in personality and lifeless.

If I were to make one call out to those shooting models these days — and there are more and more of them with the rise of the model/photographer social website  — is this: can we have some imagination? Please, can we try to tell a story?

Can we try to move past technically proficient photos — and see photos where you can read a story in them?

I’ll try if you will!

Some modelling websites I use…

• www.purestorm.com
• www.modelmayhem.com
• www.net-model.com

I mean — the amount of effort to go to in an attempt to convince a large audience to react negatively without making the decision for themselves. Well, it’s insane.

It would be far easier to spread a story about a small boy taken away by a balloon… or something similar.

Can they not, for one moment, realise a conclusion that a very large number of individuals were made aware of an article. They read it. And then came to their own conclusion they disliked the tone, inference and content of that article.

And then they got vocal about it.

Worringly of all — some of these people who got vocal and were offended and realised just how hideous the article was weren’t even gay. Even worse some may not have had best friends and relatives who were gay. Some were even just good, everyday folk.

Stephen Fry and his celebrity twittering friends do have a wide reach — but they don’t have an ability to mobilise people without fair reason.

Or do they?

Well, wasn’t it just — and by public life I really mean the bit where the twitterverse and the real world collide.

If you go to the home page of TheGuardian.co.uk today (pictured) there are two stories that probably wouldn’t be there if not for Twitter — and the power the ‘gossiping masses’ now have.

I imagine most of us were blissfully ignorant of Trafigura until earlier this week; when their slightly mis-judging lawyers attempted to stop a newspaper reporting on the goings-on of our government. Maybe sometime back in the 20th century there was a point where this may have covered something up or contained it for a while.

But really — had they not heard of Twitter? Or Facebook? Or… email? Did they really think a big corporate attempting to hush up free press in such a public way wouldn’t cause one or two problems? Whatever they did or didn’t do — I think it was time to PR your way out of it.

And then came yesterday. The lovely Ms Moir of the Daily Mail and her (ill) considered piece on the demise of Stephen Gately. The woman is either very very blind to the modern world. Or she’s got a book coming out.

I’m not going to comment on the article as plenty of other people have done so. But really, Jan, do you expect us to believe, even for a second that you weren’t aware of the strength of feeling when diatribes are published seemingly against any minority? And did you miss the Trafigura tweetfest? REALLY? And — Daily Mail editors — if you’re to promote a food writer to moral overseer can you please at least have the stomach to stand by material already published or retract it. Changing headlines and pulling advertising just reeks of the lowest behaviour.

The world is changing — the people don’t need to resort to arranged protest or a media campaign to make themselves heard. If you are in the public eye it would do you well to learn this and not to misuse your position by trying to suppress or subvert these views.

And for sanity’s sake — please don’t for one second imagine those of us out here in the real world are so lacking in things to do that we’re sat planning campaigns to bring about the demise of fairly low ranking journos.

We’ve better things to tweet about, Jan

After a day or so of chatting online you will be aware that can indicate someone being a little jokey. But, when this is omitted, is it always the senders fault if the receiver doesn’t get that the comment was a joke?

Another example is — when the writer has an obvious inability to empathise with the other users of that space; no measure of how a blunt comment or specific action will almost certainly cause annoyance — why do we feel bad for getting annoyed at them?

Thru millennia we have established effective body language to assist us to communicate face to face.

Over recent centuries we have worked out ways to use written language to achieve the right reaction when producing considered, written material such as newspaper reports or letters.

So why is it that, in under two decades, we have not yet managed to solve the problem of effectively dealing with people who don’t understand how importance of effective communication?

Oh, we have — blind ignorance!

What a horrible practice — and how annoying it seems to those who spend time building relations with those who regularly take part in the discussions within that area! But… it’s an easy trap to fall into; the cynical might just think ‘if I blanket advertise it; I’ll get buy in’ — a slightly more targeted version of viagra spam emails. But I’m aware that I’ve done this from time to time — re-joining Flickr groups I was once (or never) a member of and promoting an event I thought they would really like to know about.

What I’ve since realised is — even though you would do this with every best intention — why not take your time and introduce yourself into the conversation first or at very least contact an administrator/moderator and ask them about your concept.

Discussions aren’t the place to blankly promote a service — just imagine how annoying you’d find it if, in a lull in a conversation at a party, that guy that’s just walked in the front door walks over and tries to sell you his used car/ insurance/ personal services? Even if he stood around long enough to ensure it was on topic — you’d still be a little less than excited by his arrival!

So… parachutists; learn to explore the terrain a little before erecting your billboard and getting airlifted out!

I’m not convinced I solved my problem yet — and am now in the middle of transferring content onto a new installation to make sure — so my first ‘insight’ would be to say — keep your Wordpress install relatively up to date. I didn’t and I’m now regretting it.

How can I spot it?

This was fairly easy — I simply looked at the users screen within wp-admin and saw I had one more administrator user than I should have. What is interesting is the nefarious user includes a small piece of code in their username that then hides their line in the users table.

What did you do next?

I actually spotted this issue when I spotted a user kept vanishing as I refreshed my user screen (thanks, Firefox for not being too fast). I used this to my advantage and, after a few attempts managed to select this user and delete them.

Did this solve the problem?

Dunno — I’m getting around it by migrating the fairly minimally populted site to a new server (something I’d planned to do anyhow).

I’m sure this is far from a full explanation on the subject — but I thought it was worth documenting!

Yesterday I attended Photocamp Edinburgh 1 — not only the first in the city, but the first to be borne from the events we’ve run in West Yorkshire. A sibling, as it were.

Whilst there were differences – it was certainly more intimate – there were lots of similarities. The engaged, responsive audience and wonderful speakers made the event great to attend. And the buzz in the bar when we all went to lunch was obvious. Photocamps do get the audience excited an animated and friendships (if only fleeting) rapidly made.

I bit the bullet and decided to run an impromptu session. Having no access to WiFi (my only real grumble at hosts – The University of Edinburgh) I got on and came up with a quick creative session. I was very surprised to see everyone’s readiness in this single strand format to take part in my craziness and, whilst I’ve not seen the photographic responses), the visible response was quite exciting.

Edinburgh was brought together incredibly quickly – in August organiser Darren (JudyCabbages) met past photocampers John and Louise at the Edinburgh Festival. A few weeks later Darren attended Photocamp Bradord {2009}. I’m not sure if this is the case, but rumour goes that the Edinburgh venue was booked whilst he was in Bradford. The website and booking went live a couple of days later. All this means the event, including marketing, was brought together in less than 30 days.

I’m not going to review the event itself – as that is for the organisers and the attendees but here are my thoughts on the differences; and how this might impact on future events;

• The size (capacity: 45) was perfect for a first event. In retrospect eighty for the first Leeds event set expectations very high and didn’t allow us to experience how amazing a smaller-scale event could be.

• Edinburgh managed to pull off ’unconference’ a lot more effectively than we have in West Yorkshire. Whilst some attendees proposed sessions ahead of time the actual running order was pulled together on the day. I strongly believed this changed the attitudes of those attending. You felt more forgiving of speakers, over-runs seemed less invasive and all-ways round it seemed more barcamp-y; but also it felt like more people became involved in the conference – taking ownership of the day.

• Interestingly the organisers did the same thing I had; trying to deliver more ‘add-ons’ than they had time/capacity to prepare for. I’m coming to the conclusions that initiatives should be limited to one before and one during an event.

• The main ‘on the day’ initiative was similar to the one we ran at the first Leeds event – with delegates photographing another based on name badges; this seemed again to go down well.

Anyway the long and short of this is Edinburgh Photocamp 1 was, in my eyes and reflecting on others’ reactions, an absolute success – and I wish Darren and his team every best with planning future events.

But, being stuck with a tyre in need of replacement on a Sunday and they being the only place open I thought I’d give them a chance at redemption. So, I phoned up, explained the problem and stated the tyres I had on. I was assured they had them in stock but that they couldn’t see me for a couple of hours.

So, I wait around for 2 hours — not wanting to drive far in car and not having time to do much else — and then take the car over.

At which point they agreed the tyre needed replacing… but admitted that they didn’t have any in stock. So, having wasted time on a Sunday, still having no new tyre and now thinking Kwik Fit are completely crap. I think they just managed to put me off them for life.

All this could have been avoided by  properly listening to me and checking stock.

However I’ve got a newfound vigour to this — brought on primarily by being interviewed last night by Caterina for her PhD on social networks and migrating these to the real world (my description of her work — must check what this actually is!).

What was a real eye-opener to me was how little I understand about what I do — and poor Caterina seemed to receive a significant ‘brain dump’ of where all these crazy ideas I have come from, take root and get to fruition. I think by the end we were talking about event planning based on ‘horizon clouds’… go figure!

So — as I am not in a position to blog about my day job I think I’ll try and document a little about how and why my activities around Leeds group on Flickr, Exposure Leeds and Photocamp came about — and where I like think they’re heading.

But the big question is… how long til I really offend someone?