An online notebook
I recently got a Kodak Zi8 video camera. It’s like a beefed up Flip and I think it should be considered the default choice for social reporters everywhere.
I did this video review of it, which turned out even ropier than I thought it would. Still, I’m learning.
Ironically, the review was recorded using a Flip. Maybe that’s my excuse?
Nick Booth has just published a nice post, where he recommends the Flip over the Kodak for ease of use.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week I will be spending a couple of days at the Digital Inclusion Conference, helping to make the event a little more, well, inclusive by doing some social reporting.
It won’t just be me, though – leading the team will be David Wilcox, along with Clare White and Tim Davies.
All the reporting will be appearing first of all on the social network we have created, using Ning. This enables us to get as much content online as quickly and easily as possible, from which we can edit the best bits to appear on the Digital Engagement blog.
Please do swing by and comment on what we are producing, and leave your own views on the issues around digital inclusion. From what I saw at the Digital Britain Summit, and some of the comments around that event, it certainly seems a topic that a lot of people are very passionate about, and quite rightly.
I am rather excited to be live blogging the Digital Britain Summit tomorrow, providing one way for the many interested folk who were unable to attend to still find out what is being said, by who.
It’s a really good looking line up, with some big names present, such as:
I’m lucky that my notes will be joined by some live video streaming, thanks to Gavin and Shane at ConferenceXtra.
Also, the official Digital Britain twitter account will be providing updates and responding to people’s tweeted comments.
All the action will be happening on the Digital Britain blog, including the streaming. Make sure you check it out during the day.
Just to be completely open, I should disclose that I am being paid by BERR to do the blogging. But I promise to keep my toadying to a minimum.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow, as a gang of folk from DIUS‘s engagement team (led ably by Steph) and I will be spending the day reporting from the All Together Now event in London.
Hosted by Channel 4, DIUS and BECTA, the event’s convener, Steve Moore says:
the focus of this event is not specifically about next media or future technology it is instead focused on what people – particularly young people – are doing now with the tools and platforms that exist NOW! In my view the scaffolding has come down. We are the tools to connect with millions of people, access to most of our accumulated knowledge with two clicks of a mouse and ability to give voice publicly to our thoughts and ideas without permission. The egalitarian ideals that drove the development of networked computing that helped foster the internet and helped created the Web have now been matched by an infrastructure of massively popular technologies. Altogether Now resolutely focuses on what people are doing with these new affordances, how they bringing themselves and their peers into experiments in what is possible and all of this is happening now. It is teenagers that are at forefront of these developments. It is students who are pioneering and making amazing stuff so this event is about watching, listening to what is happening out there right now. Participatory culture is alive, vibrant and it’s implications are at once profound and present.
It should be a great day. We are going to be videoing, photographing, twittering and blogging away like nobody’s business, and all the results will (wifi permitting) be published on the event’s social network as soon as we can.
You are of course welcome to join the network and add your stuff, or if you prefer working in your own space, just tag your content with atn09 and we’ll pick it up.
Last week I covered what online services are good for covering events online – what is rapidly becoming known as ‘social reporting’, thanks to David Wilcox’s evangelism.
It might also be useful to write a few notes about the physical kit need to successfully report an event online – which can be very, very simple to rather more complicated, depending on budget and how large your bag is.
Have I missed anything? Let me know in the comments!
1. Cameraphone
At the very least, this is all you need. A mobile phone that can take photos, and preferably video (hang your head in shame, Apple) and has at the very least email to send stuff is perfectly adequate for social reporting at a basic level.
Using something like Ning to publish social reporting media makes this easy, as it enables you to upload content to the site by just emailing it as an attachment to a special address. If your phone has wireless or 3G built into it, then this is made much easier than using the traditional network!
Using your mobile with other services can make things even easier – such as Qik.com for many phones other than the iPhone (unless you have been naughty and jail broken it…) which enables you to stream live video content to the web, which after ‘transmission’ becomes embeddable just like YouTube, Vimeo et al.
If you have an iPhone you can also use it to make audio podcast type interviews, using the excellent Audioboo service which I also covered last week. David used this at the recent World Entrepreneurs Summit to great effect, as written up by Paul Henderson.
The other advantage of using a phone is that most delegates will have one too – so it is easy to show them how to use it to create online content and get them involved in social reporting.
There are limits to using a phone for this stuff though – you wouldn’t want to live-blog too many events using predictive text, for example!
2. Netbook
The next stage up is to take a little laptop with you. This will help when blogging and will also enable you to perform some basic editing on the content you are producing, without having to lug a big laptop around with you.
I find my Macbook a bit cumbersome, to be honest, and my current favourite machine for this task is a Samsung NC10.
3. Camera
Most times, the quality of a picture taken on a phone is good enough for social reporting. However, you might like to take a dedicated camera along to take some higher quality snaps.
This could be a simple point and click digital camera, or a DSLR if you want even better quality images – it really does come down to budget and how much kit you want to lug around. I use a Nikon D40 which is a fairly basic DSLR but is lightweight and easy to use.
Obviously if you use a dedicated camera, you’ll need a computer to be able to upload your images.
4. Flips
Flips are little video cameras that were made for social reporting. Very, very easy to use, they are also cheap and small. It is probably fair to say that they are also less intimidating that traditional camcorders for recording interviews with delegates.
Flips are so easy to use (press the red button to start recording, press it again to stop and, er, that’s it) that you can also lend them to delegates and get them to interview each other, thus combining some digital enabling with the reporting!
Again, you will need a computer to upload your videos, but at least with a Flip, all the software you need is built in and ready to use.
5. Audio recorder
Mobile phones can be used as audio recorders, as mentioned above, but it might be the case that you want something a little better to record either audio interviews or perhaps to capture speeches and talks that are given at an event.
Dedicated audio recorders come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and prices. You need to make sure that the one you choose can pick up a good level of sound, and can exclude background noise. It might be best to choose one that can offer a lapel microphone or similar.
I have an M-Audio Microtrack II, though I rarely get the most out of it – perhaps I should read the manual. I have also heard good things about the Edirol R-09HR.
If you are recording audio using a dedicated device, you might need some half decent audio editing software on your computer – Audacity is a good option, or most Macs come with Garageband which is ok.
6. Camcorder
You might need something a little more professional than a Flip camera to record some video footage – perhaps if you are live streaming talks or speeches.
Things to look out for are having an external microphone socket – as audio quality is so important with online video; and it helps if the camera records to hard disk or a flash card, so you don’t have to spend ages converting the video before you upload it.
With this sort of video content, you might need some video editing software on your computer – which can get costly. iMovie on a Mac is probably all you need though, or on a PC Adobe Premiere Elements is reasonably priced.
7. Powerful laptop
If you are getting into video and audio editing, the likelihood is that your Netbook is going to struggle power-wise. Not only that, but you might need the Netbook for blogging at the same time that you are uploading video.
So it’s a good idea to have a more powerful laptop around to do the grunt work. You can leave it uploading, for instance, while you go away and do other stuff.
8. Other bits
There are a few other odds and sods which are vital to bring along to make sure everything goes smoothly: