thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

As many of you know I have been working on re-development of a significant NZ government related website which focuses on the roll-out of ultra fast broadband over the next few years.

That site Crown Fibre Holdings finally went live a few weeks ago. I’m very proud of the great design work that has been done on a project of such national significance. In replacing the old site the CFH team and my team wanted to re architect the site and improve usability so that it was much easier to reach out to the key sectors.

I’m delighted that the content and the thinking has progressed along and like all great projects there are some more changes to come.

Crown Fibre - Website by dialogCRM

For the WordPress geeks out there the site is a custom theme which uses lots of video and for government related entities – yes – it is running on a Microsoft IIS server.

Individually and collectively as a group there has been a great deal of effort put in to make the website work on as many levels as possible. It is a learning system and I hope and trust it will become a showcase for all the NZ communities it seeks to represent and engage with.

But wait !- there is more. I’m fascinated by all the debates going on – all day, every day on twitter and other forms of media. Comes a time though -when some straight talking is needed.  I work in marketing and communications and so I organise or help with various events and conferences. I much prefer organising parties  and concerts but conference events have their place as there is no substitute for face to face in real time.

With any project what we are really looking for is for real street level moments of truth. One of my tag lines is “ideas into action”. Yes we need the talk – but we also need to share from our hearts about what moves us and what connects us and what makes a difference and that is ultimately measured in actions.

I was delighted to have Poutaua and Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule as presenters at #WordCampNZ 2012 as our keynote speakers only last week. They believe in speaking the truth with love and humour and it shows.

The clip below comes from another event that I hadn’t seen before today. We have video still coming from #WordCampNZ however here are Nik & Taua’s slides Nikolasa & Potaua Biasiny-Tule – DigitalM?ori & WP Magazine Stylz but watch the video below first.

The conversations we have about ultra fast broadband are important. We need to have more of them and we need to be present and really listen to each other.

As always let me know what you think – are we doing enough to be inclusive and enabling with our ultra fast broadband policy ?and the roll-out? – what more can and should be done?

Please also follow @DigitalMaori over at TangataWhenua.com for more from them.

Earlier this morning I was privileged to be on Radio Wammo live talking about this years #wordcampnz in Auckland next Saturday 21st of April. We talked about who should come along, why and what it is all about.

The format is q & a with no real script. Glenn Williams does this every day and once the talk is over the video goes up on the Radio Wammo site within minutes.

RadioWammo runs on WordPress (as do many media sites now.)  It is radio with the added zest of being able to watch it either live on ustream or later off the site. Below is my post on the wordcampnz site

“Glenn Williams is a tech media whiz. His @radiowammo show is a treasure trove of radio shows with great people such as Vaughn Davis, Jayson Bryant, Ben Young, Russell Brown and even a very long running series with Sam Hunt.

What is different about Radio Wammo is that Glenn live mixes the video on air. The various shows are on each weekday between 7am & 10am (UTC 1900-2200) and on demand 24/7 at other times.

The show is mostly completely unscripted and completely live with no edits – enjoy. Questions and comments as always are very welcome.”

“P.S – For wordcampers – Glenn will be doing a lightning talk on Saturday afternoon about Radio Wammo see our latest speaker announcement.

I forgot to mention we will filming all speakers on Saturday and making a mixtape DVD of the results for #wordcampnz attendees. BTW – we won’t be live streaming since there are some bandwidth challenges with our particular location although we may try to do some of that if we can.

Sites mentioned in the show:

• TangataWhenua.com    speakers Nik & Potaua see speakers
• Paleo Zone Nutrition speaker Julianne Taylor
• Crown Fibre Holdings speaker (the writer – Jason Kemp)
• NZ Womans Weekly“

Special feature (WordPress example in the show) have a look at the Crown Fibre site. CFH is all about the Ultra Fast Broadband rollout in NZand is a project that I have been working on for quite some time. It has been completely rebuilt in WordPress and I’m delighted to have been the developer on the project.

Will do a separate post about that – please let me know what you think about the video and do come along to #wordcampnz next weekend.

One of the most fascinating chapters in Daniel Levitin’s book “This is Your Brain on Music” is about how musical tastes are often set early in life and become quite hard to change later on.

It has been a while since I read the book but Levitin goes into much more detail on why we like what we like. The question I was looking to answer though was “Is there a Way to flip people back into music Explorer mode?

It turns out that short answer is “no- not really”. The music that we like is very much connected to our own culture and identity and often from a particular time like our teenage years. I’m over simplifying here but we develop our own schemas which are like a musical map or filter that becomes part of our music processing brain.

Levitin also has this idea that we might be able to tune our music systems like tuning to a new radio station. In real life though many people go with what they are comfortable with and this extends to our expectations about new music from our favourite bands.

I’d say that Elvis Costello fans will be on the high adventure end of the scale since Elvis is clearly an explorer and new styles, sounds, ideas and reinvention is part of his brief.

OTH many bands almost get trapped into a particular “sound signature” where new songs often reference their earlier work. The art is to make new music but take your listeners with you on that journey.

I was struck by this when local faves ELEMNO P released a new song “Slow Down” which sounds very much like an old song (not a bad thing at all), much more like their 1st and second albums than their 3rd album. Listen for yourself as you can download it for a tweet from http://weareelemenop.tumblr.com/ But I digress

In the same chapter about musical likes Daniel muses about the possibility of an

“adventuresomeness knob …that will control the mix of old and new etc.”

In this time of sharing and socialising our likes and activities it is no surprise that Spotify is launching in NZ soonish. Spotify socialises the sharing of musical playlists with your friends. It is very closely tied to facebook as there are some common shareholders.

For more background read – Spotify’s Daniel Ek: The Most Important Man In Music – Forbes

For a alternative service check out LetsListen and their site is http://letslisten.com/

However I tend to think that most people know someone in their extended group who is a tastemaker of sorts and for those who like to explore new music there are many that are very well established now.

The Hype Machine is one of the better ones and as the PBS video below shows there are many other great “tastemaker” sites out there. Maybe this is the real “adventuresome” music button?

Off Book: The Evolution of Music Online from PBS Arts on Vimeo.