But I’m so bloody happy right now! I’ve just come back from Sixpiece — a one day only exhibition of images submitted from the mass photo shoot at Kirkstall Festival. 33 photographers submitted images to what will probably become the start of an amazing archive images recording the festival and it was amazingly curated by  Rachel Barker and Lauren Pissochet and supported by Ken Stratford (along with both East Street Arts and Kirkstall Valley Community Association).

Some days (well most of them) I’m too busy dealing with the future to enjoy what’s happened — and the last 18 months have been an absolute blast. Exposure Leeds has been amazing and the fact that we’re now moving this to a structure that will hopefully allow it to flourish but what has been amazing is how this little social enterprise has allowed me to flourish.

This probably isn’t such a deal to others but tonight I walked up to an MP and introduced myself; and he turned around and congratulated me on all I had achieved. I doubt he really knows anything much about Exposure Leeds — and he probably says the same to loads of people he meets. But, I introduced myself to an MP!

My little bit of world has changed shape so much lately and I can’t help but be proud of all that the group of amazing individuals that is Exposure Leeds has managed to do. As the group moves from loose form into a properly constituted entity and starts to set in place elements that will ensure future stability and continuity I hope to review the first year and a half — but one thing is for sure; when I look back at what we’ve achieved I’m always amazed at how we’ve done so much, made so many good links and given a wonderful energy to so many people.

And for those of you out there who are part of it — every last one of Exposure Leeds’ members is a true star in my eyes!

My initial statement would have been dangerous a few months ago — back then my work was in providing variations on the theme of the Flash-based pageturner. However, I’ve moved on, but I actually like the concept of using containers to manage chunks of well designed editorial content. And  the use of this visual device to indicate a movement from one portion of text to another has established itself over hundreds of years and, despite Microsoft’s patent, will probably be prevalent online for a few years to come.

Why?

That’s simple — people love print. Absolutely love it, and most people I come across would — everything else being equal — prefer to receive information direct to paper rather than screen. In fact I suspect if web content could be delivered directly and instantaneously to paper then my job role would be very different.

However, the truth is that we cannot send content to sheets of paper and so we rely on electronic devices to display this rapidly updating information and, because of this, content providers aim to make this as simple a transition as possible.

Of course a web purist will say that the visual page turn isn’t appropriate online. But, what on earth is wrong with transitional metaphors? Change is always a lot easier to deal with when it has some home comforts!

Hopefully this will limit waste in supplying social activities and not do too much harm to those who need the help most however is society ready for the supersizing?

After years of the diminishment of mutuals and charities; of less natural volunteering — people used to do things to help their community out without this being organised. Now it seems to require an army of support.

My personal thought is that we need to promote altruism and this needs to come from society as a whole, here are some suggestions:

• Freeing parents and carers up to volunteer
• Employers to give every employee a day’s paid volunteering
• Bosses to be given a reward or recognition for mentoring
• National service for the jobless young
• Day release for teenage employees
• Volunteering accepted as a natural part of unemployment
• Pre-retirement volunteering introductions
• Tax breaks to professionals for providing services to the voluntary sector
• Some form of GiftAid for voluntary work — allowing charitable bodies to claim some tax from those who volunteer for the organisation.

However biggest of all — we need new ideas to demonstrate that taking part in society isn’t about purely being some selfless saint character. Taking part in voluntary activity is good for you — it teaches new skills, opens up new experiences, broadens social circles and gives a huge ‘up’.

How is it so difficult to get this across to people? My feeling is that for so long the populus have been told to think that it’s government’s job to supply these sorts of services — I, for one, would prefer society as a whole to take a firmer control of itself.

People do have time to volunteer and take part in their communities — it’s just about freeing up time. I suspect most people are able to do this, given the support of their family, friends and neighbours. It’s also about exposing people to those opportunities that appeal and effectively reward them.

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

UPDATE

Here’s me on Youtube…

For more see http://bettakultcha.blogspot.com/

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!