opinion – Page 15 – Hello, I'm DK

Remixing Copyright | Creating / Curating Public Works

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There’s this website where, at the beginning of each week, it displays works which are now in the public domain due to their copyright terms expiring.

You can subscribe by email or RSS, and even choose specific fields in which to be notified about (whether that be music, graphics, poetry, design etc.).

Then there’s this social layer in which, after creating an account, you can upload back into the community remixed works from ones which inspired them. This new content forms an interconnected ‘network of influence’ which is graphically illustrated for users to navigate around.

As a member, you also get access to tutorials, interviews and options to participate in group tasks and creative challenges set by the worlds leading artists and thinkers.

Sounds great, doesn’t it…?

The above doesn’t exist. Want to work with me on it?

Hearing Aids (Understanding) | Can You Hear Me Now?

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From a speaker who can’t hear.

Above are my results from a recent hearing assessment (an audiogram—please note the grey areas in the four graphs as they indicate the ‘normal’ range!

The ‘bad’ left ear (one which has a history of operations) is only functioning at 25% and at 40db (bottom left graph), the volume most people speak at.

The ‘good’ right ear is also under-performing (bottom right graph)—just 50% at speaking volume—therefore, I’m basically picking up maybe half of what people are saying at best…

The specialist discussing my results last year stated I’ve probably become very good at figuring out what people are saying rather than totally understanding their words (this is not a compliment).

There are two options:

hearing aids—for an instant fix to raise my hearing to within normal range;
(potential) surgery—first on my ‘bad’ ear to raise the level of hearing before doing anything with the ‘good’ ear (as the latter has a retracted ear drum which could require surgery at some point before it causes further problems)

All of the above left me gutted at the end of last year and after recently gaining a second opinion it’s time to face reality and make some decisions.

You have to understand that most of my childhood is littered with memories and issues relating to my ear problems. The constant poor hearing, ongoing visits to speech therapists from about age six (as my deficient hearing meant I couldn’t hear sounds properly to form them—how ironic that part of my living now is made by public speaking: irony or awesome…?). Then the teenage years, living with constant ear infections and three big surgeries which ate up months of my life with long hospital stays and even longer recovery times.

There are three parts to the decision of accepting and exploring hearing aids as part of my future:

Fun—to embrace this with a smile and surround it in joy. There’s simply nothing to get upset about. It is what it is and who knows what I’ll learn and discover about myself during the opportunity I’ve been given to go on this journey;
Sign—it’s always been on my to do list but now it’s more relevant to learn sign language to supplement my hearing impairment;
Hack—to explore the hearing aid hacker scene (inspired by the news of the tuning being done already to existing devices:

Any thoughts, ideas, assistance, advice, help, links etc to assist in this will be humbly received.

Fun fact: ‘here’, ‘hear’, ‘ear’ and ‘year’ sound the same when spoken due to my Welsh accent.

It’s About Intimacy | The Privacy Debate

The big friends request debate.

I got a ‘friend request’ from gentlemen whom I met briefly at a conference. My approach to Facebook is to use it as a place to cultivate relationships:

of people I know
have been introduced to by trusted contacts
or built up a relationship through other social spaces

*moving to the other side of the planet makes this platform a lot more important medium than normal.

I explained my reasoning to said guy of how I use this platform as a more personal network and also gave him links to this blog plus my Twitter as alternative ways of connecting.

Was interested to receive his take on how he thought “false psychology to disconnect the personal from the professional” and how it was a very old way of thinking.

For me, it’s not about privacy but more about intimacy.

Just as the media landscape continues to evolve so does our use of the many platforms available to us. People forget we can decide how we use them. We can define its uses.

How do you decide to use your social spaces? Do you? Is this thing on…?

Buy the mug

Hillman Curtis | RIP

Tears for a guy I never met.

I never met Hillman Curtis.

I wanted to.

The three times I visited New York emails were sent to attempt to connect, however, he was always busy with other things.

Busy with his amazingly adept creative offerings which I featured regularly on here (the last included a comment thread between myself and the great man which humbled me to the core).

This man was a mammoth creative influence on me. Raised expectations and understanding of the visual narrative; the simplistic but oh so sweet connection one can create through the video medium.

This guy was a master of his craft.

My last email to Mr Curtis was about a month ago after seeing the video above. I was selfishly asking him about his thought process as he embraced the need to lead a more creative life.

I now understand why there was never a response.

Thank you sir, for your creative offerings to the world.

Thank you for allowing us all to see your work.

Thank you for inspiring.

Thank you.

Creatalyst | Releasing My Inner Artist

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Images. Words. Soundscapes. Questions.

The opening lines on the about section of the Creatalyst app says:

“The creative process, a business project, even life, is a journey expanding our vision of what’s possible.”

Photographer, mentor and good friend Dennis Hodges, developed this app as a spark to the creative process we find ourselves in day to day.

The categories of Visualize, Compose, Explore, Develop, Deliver, unfold (literally) as you delve deeper into the audio/visual offering.

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Used alone, it could simply excite the senses and neurons to reconnect thoughts:

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And/or spark new ideas:

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There are also deeper options such as favouriting images, deleting them from the image bank, sharing through social spaces, adding comments for yourself and others in the Creatalyst community to read.

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I remember Dennis describing the seeds of the app idea on a train journey back from Lucerne to the Zurich, Switzerland (Feb 2011). As the magnificent view offered us lakes and majestic mountainside I was more intrigued by the essence of the idea shared.

Congratulations Dennis.

Not just on bringing an idea to market, but also on making it so engaging.

All links to the Creatalyst app are non-affiliated.

Education vs Life | A Thought

The answer to learning.

Most formal/traditional/current education systems provide lessons with the view the learners at some stage will complete some kind of test to prove understanding, skills, knowledge etc

Life on the other hand, provides tests and it’s up to us to make sense of the lesson (with the opportunity to pass that knowledge, skills, understanding etc on in some way).

Because I didn’t know better, the social media training I’ve developed and delivered in the past takes this test-first approach. Providing a problem to solve and a reflective space to discuss the lessons learnt (sometimes after failure), meant highly engaged participants with fantastic feedback plus obvious learning outcomes.

Would be fun to reverse the current educational paradigm of teach, learn, test.

Then again, that’s just my opinion—say otherwise in the comments below.

Google Has Gone All In | The Big Gamble

Will it pay off… or not?

From the clever fingers / brain of Marco Ament:

It’s easy not to “be evil” when you’re ahead. But when you’re backed into a corner and your usual strategies aren’t working, it’s easy to get frustrated, scared, and angry, and throw previously held morals and standards out the window.

Google’s foray into social networking was late.

They knew this. The reversal of some of their key policies, touted as differentiators (such as now welcomes young people, when it said it wouldn’t and now it allows pseudonyms, sort of, when it said it wouldn’t), smacks as a little desperate along with the ‘Google+-button-creep’ into all of their other product lines.

So why are they going all in?

Maybe, it’s not to create hoards of long term users (especially when you take into consideration how users only spend 3 minutes on the site last January, compared to half of the same time for Pinterest users or 7.5 hours for Facebook maniacs) but more the fact that it simply increases their ability to productise your ongoing use of their other platforms:

Google scrambled to build Google+ because it watched Facebook and saw users were willing to volunteer biographical data to their social network, and that data is crucial to serving accurate ads users want to click.

From the insightful Google doesn’t care if you ever come back post—which is why you’ve already cleaned out your Google data… haven’t you…

Being such a big Google fan and user, this is a fascinating scenario to watch play out.

Especially if you extend the metaphor a little further with the knowledge that you might get lucky, but in the end, the house always wins.

What do you think, will their gamble pay off?

My name is DK. And I approve this message.

Nothing Is New | Pinterest Is A Remix / Redux / Mashup etc

The world does cartwheels for new.

The problem is it’s hardly ever that.

Most “newness” is just an element of it’s overall offering.

Just like Pinterest—the latest social media wonderkid (although it’s been going for nearly 4 years).

The idea is not original.

It’s a visual Delicious, a more ordered Tumblr / Ffffound / We Heart It / ImgFave, a girly Reddit / StumbleUpon… the UI/X is cleaner, more intuitive and due to this the user numbers has really ramped.

The fact is we’ve all been scrapbooking for years.

Now we just aggregate digitally.

Faster.

Tidier.

With more people.

Over wider topics.

New is rarely something monumental but rather a quiet shift and addition. A gentle increase to the discourse. And by adding in multiples of time and people, it appears more than it is.

This is replicated in the (misplaced) discussion about social media and how it’s constantly changing and morphing, when it should be about the fundamental skills not the platforms themselves. Seeing it as not a mountain to climb but a wave to catch totally shifts the thinking and approach.

Be careful of the smoke and loud voices because it’s what’s behind the curtain that counts.

Focus on what’s best not what’s new.

Everything is a remix.

A redux.

A mashup.

Nothing is new.

This is not a negative post about Pinterest. It’s a great site. Am playing around with it myself. Just wanted to move the conversation along.

UPDATE: although now I’m reconsidering being on there, you also should.

The Freemium Model In Action | Steens Manuka Honey

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Tasters. Teasers. Tempters.

Steens Manuka Honey is the best tasting honey on the planet. Not only is it rich in medicinal properties (you can put this stuff on your wounds and it will aid recovery) but as a brand they also understand how to entice a customer.

Above is a little strip of card with a sealed packet of the delicious nectar on the reverse. Snap the strip in half and enjoy a sweet sample.

This for me is the correct definition and real-life use of the freemium model—leveraging the quality of the product through a sharable short-form handout.

This has parallels with social media, as every tweet, blog post, video vignette etc is a taster to the larger brand offer. A cheeky flavour to excite those to want more.

Done well, with grace and quality, it’s a simple and sure-fire way to build up a customer / consumer base who advocate you further by distributing your free little contributions.

Develop and dispense tasters.

Simple.

Big thanks to Dom who first gave me the honey strips and a jar to get my hooked. Further thanks to Sheryl for being a wonderful soul through our contact on Steens Facebook Page and for sending me more tasters—my colleagues are going to enjoy these and I’m sure will be converted into customers as well.

WATCH my TEDx talk (now on ted.com), the public speaking lesson you never had, and BUY the companion Speaking With Purpose e/audiobook.

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