I used last year’s project with Shambala as a template for my activity. The live blog in particular carried through similar elements, including a mobile friendly blog and distribution techniques – but there were differences, as I’ll explain.

Wi-fi Network
Uploading material on a 3G network was a real problem at Shambala, and as I’ve mentioned before this made mobile journalism at last year’s festival very tricky. Thankfully this was not an issue at Womad, which was down to the excellent site wide public WiFi provided by Etherlive. I spoke to the MD Chris Green and he told me in total they shifted 1TB (terabyte) of internet traffic this weekend – which I got really excited about, my wife didn’t.

Kit and Tech
Last year I had an Android HTC Tattoo, Flips, dictaphones, SLRs and a Flash mic. 2011, I had an iPhone 4. My dependency on additional bits of tech to give comprehensive multimedia coverage was less needed. It also meant that I approached it differently. Video was shot and uploaded directly to YouTube from my phone and photos were initially shared on Instagram first. I still had my SLR but Instagram tended to be my first port of call. I would like to find a web app that makes it more useable and interactive online – not least an app that allows search and the opportunity to search for tagged photos and install slideshows. Further investigation is needed into the Instagram Realtime API and these interfaces. At Womad Festival, all my photos were run through Flickr with video and slideshows broadcast on YouTube.

Radio Womad
Being involved with the Radio Womad staff meant audio was a priority, features and “Secret Sessions” (essentially backstage acoustic performances), were broadcast on the radio and enhanced for the internet. Unfortunately a big question mark still hangs over whether we have the right to publish this material. I hope we can as the Secret Sessions were fantastic – particularly the session with Bomba Estereo whose improvised instruments included a fire extinguisher and a water bottle.

Radio Womad’s backstage gazebo was a perfect platform to let the artists do what they want in their way and I’m delighted there’s a digital archive of this ready to be shared with a global audience. I think it would be great for Radio Womad to have a shareable archive of the sessions.

Whilst the video was by no means professional it would offer music fans a glimpse into the unique, unplugged gigs. Also many of the labels and artists liaisons want to see the material so it seems a shame not to share with the wider public. Surely sharing this material would be good for everyone?

Staff
My experience with Shambala was essentially to manage a team who in turn managed our Press Gang (teenagers we trained to capture footage on our behalf). For Radio Womad it was about adding value, enhancing social media and putting a multimedia twist on the audio material. Although the Radio Womad team were largely impressed by what I achieved it was difficult to wrangle multimedia stuff (which they were taking personally) off them, in the end I managed to steal memory cards and copy clips from the station server to create my material.

The benefit of the team at Shambala is that we saw the festival through younger eyes. I’d love to work with Radio Womad again but I wonder whether next time the project might benefit from repositioning itself with the main website, which could also help sidestep any reproduction permission issues.

Moving on
Whilst for the moment the secret sessions may remain secret it seems to me that this is a direction that I’d been thinking about with Village Underground “In The Cab” performances. I know recording and sharing the performance of the artist Marques Toliver secured him several UK gigs because the material was so shareable and exposure extended beyond the 300 people who turned up to see him live. This is an area which I will no-doubt return to when I undertake some more work with Village Underground later this month. As for the festival itself and working with Radio Womad, it was a hugely enjoyable experience and I would love the opportunity to do something next year.

I’ve collected everything together at the working blog, Facebook, and have hosted all material on the Mashed Festivals Soundcloud Flickr and YouTube Channels.

I would love to know what you think – or if you’re interested in working with Mashed Festivals.

I’ve spent a lot of time developing the site and defining the brand over the summer, it’s still very much in development. In fact, one of the main advantages of working with Shambala was that they were open to new ideas and willing to help us develop, but naturally there was a degree of reciprocation with this relationship.

Shambala suggested Mashed Festivals (MF) offered media training to teenagers and taught them how to produce online content using mobile techniques. I wasn’t too keen to do this in the beginning as I wanted content on the MF site to be professionally captured from a team of journalists with different expertise. The best stuff for the site would be produced by my core team which would set the bench mark for the quality of the user generated content (UGC) – I was concerned the teenage training element would devalue this.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. With the cooperation of Shambala we sent out an invitation to all teen ticket members and cherry picked a small team of six girls and boys who were enthusiastic and talented to boot who became the MF Press Gang. Their final output which comprised 40 stories on the mobile optimised microsite is of such a high standard that I’m now moving away from the idea of curating unfocussed UGC altogether.

I still kept my professional core team who had a breadth of experience but were able to specialise and train in certain areas. I offered advice and assistance in photography, Juliet Spare advised on audio and Jon Kennard’s expertise lie in film and video. Caroline Beavon was in control of the process of collation and uploading.

Jon Kennard details his experience training for video with Hannah Lepper and Kyle Douglas here.

Both Iona Berry and Holly Game were studying photography at college. Iona brought her own camera and was pretty self-sufficient. We provided Holly with a camera and she needed a little more encouragement and guidance. I offered advice on what looked good online and stressed the importance of speed rather than spending days filtering and treating photos.

None of the teenagers had any experience in audio but wanted to learn so Juliet trained two members of the press gang. Josephine Gilbert learnt very quickly delivering perceptive interviews.

Piers Baker experimented with different media and with contributions from his girlfriend Phoebe and other members, delivered some excellent self contained packages.

Some of the best material came when the gang teamed up to combine skills. My favourite examples being the slideshows. Which included contributions from all the group.

My favourite experience was taking the Press Gang backstage for the first time, showing them how to gain access, secure interviews and find the person in charge! This resulted in a wealth of material and a superb interview.

I was very pleased the Press Gang didn’t just stick to one skill. Being competent in a few different fields is important for journalism overall these days and vital for Online Journalism.

I took with me 2 Kodak Zi8s and a Flip, my Dictaphone and an SLR camera. I was very happy with the material I shot. My first catch was Marques Toliver performing In The Cab. We were able to grab him between soundchecks and take him to the drivers cab of one of the tube trains on the roof. After his interview he performed an exclusive song. I shot this on all three cameras but put a quick rush on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This was in the hope that it would upload before the gig and maybe encourage people to come. However, it was shot in HD and cutting, rendering and uploading the clip took from around 5:30pm to 10:30pm. People were able to look at it after the gig and next day though, especially when Marques posted the video to his site. At last count this had 124 views. It’s worth noting with the free Vimeo account I couldn’t even upload the full Marques Toliver interview and instead I just broadcast the song.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It makes me wonder how much extra value there is in uploading a cut between 3 cameras a strong piece can stand alone? I also interviewed Kyp Malone – but this needs more editing, another lengthy process. It’s taken me 4 hours to convert the two Kodak files to MP4 and now I’m sitting waiting for it to load into Sony Vegas. (started 16:20, an hour later just 5% into material)

I spent the following day uploading my favourite Kyp Malone excerpts onto YouTube and with the help of a dedicated fan I was also able to rename them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m in a dilemma about using video. Inevitably it is much better quality in HD, compare the clip above with the Flip clip below for example.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It does take considerably longer to put the HD stuff edited and online. The best practice might be to work out what can be uploaded instantly and do the more time draining stuff later on. When I put the Kyp Malone interview online, I’ll aim for as professional level as possible, and include idents and credits.

Next time I want to concentrate on chunking the material whilst I record it and spend more time thinking about processing the clips as I’m recording them. In future I will shoot 2-3 minute chunks and try to start or finish on the musical bar!

Tuesday was spent mainly filtering, editing and uploading Kyp Malone material and resizing and uploading pictures to Flickr. I was also able to grab an audio interview with Rosie Thomas from Collaborative Dance Experience. There wasn’t an awful lot to photograph at the ‘get in’ so instead Rosie gave me performance and production shots, which I quickly made into a 3 minute slide show. This was then published on YouTube and the Facebook fan site in time for their performance and maybe drive interest and audience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next time, I’d make the compilation of the slideshow a priority. This is simply because a slide show is the quickest way of publishing mixed media online, especially in upload terms.

Conclusion
Overall, I had an enjoyable few days experimentation which included a lot of variety. Having first hand experience of life working at Village Underground was the best way to explore and utilise the in house resources.

It’s fair to say that I did most of the work solo. I was concentrating on experimenting myself and didn’t want to lead, although I was grateful for help from my sister in law. Next time I will have a clearer idea and better contingency plan in place for speeding up the process, using people from VU and providing good content quickly.

At the moment, we’ve got our sights set on covering Kate Nash’s performance, depending on what her management think of the material we’ve produced so far!

I was also talked through the early stages of Ruby and given a book on Rails by @budhhamagnet whilst at Ruby In The Pub. Although I know I’ve got a steep hill to climb I think I might be able to develop something even better.

In preparation for International Dance Festival frolics Chris Unitt has alerted me to the possibilities of playing around with augmented reality app Layar. Keep an eye and ear out for more developments…

In the mean time you may not have spotted the enhanced podcast, with pictures in iPod or iTunes or just a nice sound tour for everyone else. Download the enhanced podcast here. Or the normal MP3 here.

A bug bear I have about Birmingham is creativity occurs on the fringes of the city, and often this can make us appear self deprecating. It’s almost as if were embarrassed by our artists so we push them to the outskirts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m behind the redefined Eastside. In fact I wrote the brochure’s main copy. But where I struggled was working out how to make art accessible and appealing in description, without appearing to trivialise or belittle ‘the art.’ A picture paints a thousand words, I just wanted people to visit Eastside and make up their own minds. Hopefully, many will this weekend.

The great thing about CiB shop’s centrality is that people can check it out, with very little effort. If this shop was based in Digbeth, for example, they wouldn’t have a fraction of the footfall. Take a look at this large and diverse mix of people in this 30 minute sample (recorded by me at 11am on a Thursday).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Okay, Pete Ashton in particular acknowledges it’s “in a shopping centre” so there are a few pieces that might be too leftfield for this consumer-centric audience. But its strong centre-stage presence is great exposure for all artists adorning the walls and shelves. And intrinsically Created In Birmingham features independent artists creating original pieces.

Besides wouldn’t it be great if when the City Of Culture judges get off the train and the first place they pop into is this shop?

Once I’d re-located the sites and venues using my own memory of the walk (with a little help from Birmingham Music Map) and Chris Phipps himself, I firstly geolocated everything in Audioboo then inserted the information on my own map.

View Home Of Metal Birmingham Tour in a larger map

My original plan was to embed audio onto the pinpoints, but currently Google Maps doesn’t allow you to use any kind of audio player. The nearest I could achieve was to embed a YouTube slide-show into my map – click on the Town Hall pinpoint at the top of the map as an example. As I mentioned in my last post, my main objections to YouTube are its clumsiness and untidiness, it would be better if you could resize the slideshow and view it like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A site called Woices uses Google Maps API to embed a walk. So far the site pretty much does what I can do below, with a touch of Social Media added.

More interesting is the Infospot which allows you to customise the site and access to analytics. In addition to the normal download option it can be triggered by Geolocation for iPhone users. I’ve been playing around with a trial version which isn’t viewable to the public.

To make this customised site viewable it would cost 59 Euros a month! This would be great if I had funding for this project and there was some kind of revenue model. A more cost effective way of producing this would be to set up a map in Flash, research Geolocation and maybe build a phone application myself.

If this was to be a more permanent serious tour project, I would also need to pay Chris Phipps for the use of his material. And even ask him (and others) to talk about other venues and their experiences of Birmingham’s musical past. I would also need to consider how the newly relaunched Home Of Metal site is developing. Home Of Metal is after all a place where non-professional Heavy Metal fans can share their own experiences, memories and stories.

Finally, I need to consider how far this has moved from being a journalism project. News sites often geolocate stories and many online news projects can act as archives to preserve the past. But is recording the past, and creating and maintaining tours the responsibility of the journalist, a civic society or a historian?

STOP THE PRESS… @hadleypaul just alerted me to this beauty by @buddhamagnet

View Boobase Home Of Metal marks in a larger map

Te great thing about this is that it finds the boos by tags, so if I were to add more venues to Audioboo and tag them ‘Home Of Metal’ they would also pop up here!

Finally, I’ve created a full podcast with musical interludes to give you time to walk between pinpoints.

For added visual treats and ‘chapterisation’ why not download the enhanced podcast?
(right click, ‘save target as)

The thing is I know Vimeo is generally considered the better platform, especially for aesthetically sensitive designers but it appears my allocation only allows me to upload on HD package a week. And besides YouTube now offers unlimited HD. For standard Vimeo there’s a cap at 500Mb. Here’s the two clips together, see if you can really spot the difference. For extra fun play them together.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I started producing my Silver Skins podcast, I was often asked whether I’d cleared the music copyright. My argument was far from comprehensive, usually involving an explanation that I always talk over the beginning and end of my tracks in traditional ‘Radio 1 Top 40′ style. I also mumbled that much of my music is new material which is benefiting from exposure to a niche ‘older but still cool’ audience.

Silver Skins is a receptacle for music that I am passionate about. The intention behind the podcast was to appeal to a generation who, like me, still loved music and refused to be knocked into any kind of middle-age music box. The passion part also has a lot linked to my ideas behind Blowback: this isn’t cycnical aloof abstraction about music industry trends but genuinely wanting to play the best music I experience – and pass on that experience. I’ve had fans of the podcast contact me, claiming that since listening to the show, they have gone out and bought the album, or seen the musician live. I’ve recently discovered this opinion is shared by UK Podcasters Association and was backed up by The 2008 MCPS-PRS Podcast License.

For a while I’ve sided with Andrew Dubber’s view on copyright, musicians should benefit from exposure rather than try and claw back the potential money they might have been lost. Nevertheless, in a world where people are illegally uploading and downloading entire movies or albums I very much doubt PRS would be interested in the one compressed track that I rabbit all over. But if the request does ever come, I will take it down.

In the mean time, I might be able to offer one further justification. I was inspired by Mixmag’s excellent podcast which provides enhanced capabilities. The fact that you can click on an image if playing in iTunes, (or possibly even on iTouch or iPhone – yet to test) you could buy the track in full from the store.

With my Enhanced Silver Skins, these are all bitly short links, so I will be able to measure how many people click through to the store as a result of listening to my podcast. Hopefully my case will be strengthened by recent reports that paid for downloads have boosted music sales.

There are other enhanced treats aswell, so have fun downloading and let me know what you think of the tweaked podcast. At the moment I realise that this podcast is a bit Apple-centric so if you have any idea of how I can reproduce the same effect in PC and on other audio devices then please let me know.

You can download the enhanced Silver Skins 3 by right clicking here.

Or you can subscribe to the RSS via my archive site.

I went to Sprocket Cycles, off Allison St Digbeth where Gordon quick-fitted a new bike chain in 3 minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I also grabbed a short audio interview with Gordon talked about cycling safety, National ‘Bike’ Service and just what is the correct kerb distance?