Thursday, February 23, 2012

Talking in Public

At school we had to give a talk in front of the class on a subject of our choice about once a term. I used to hate it. However it was a skill that I feel that I should master if I’m going to get on in the business world. Luckily I have a good outlet to practice on.

I love aviation and I’m a member of a society called Air-Britain and where I used to live in Bournemouth we have our own branch of the society. OK so they are all my mates but it still involved getting up and speaking, trying to hold their attention for a whole evening etc. Being mates they of course heckle a lot and that has helped me too. I’ve now got to the point where I enjoy the challenge of talking in front of people. I still get as nervous as hell and I think that may affect my performance but its fun.

I have a love/hate relationship with the preparation. I’m giving my next talk on Friday night and I’ve spent practically all my spare time over the last two weeks preparing the talk. In some ways it’s been great. If I have had to research a particular subject then I always find that I learn something more about it when I’m preparing a talk. It is horrible feelings when you’ve got a whole section of a talk set out and then learn something that completely contradicts when you were going to say.

I know I have to work on my authority. Most of the time I’m giving a talk on something that I know more about the subject then my audience members but still don’t feel like I have a tone of authority in my voice to say look I know what I’m talking about here. Something I’m working on.

So tomorrow night my main subjects I will be talking about are the Tannkosh Airshow in Germany, Museum of Naval Aviation in Florida and the Warner Robins Aircraft museum in Georgia.

I might as a little ‘treat’ to a friend do a small bit on how London Underground numbers its tube trains. We had quite a discussion about this when we were in London last. He’ll cringe at it but it will be funny.

Finally I’m also going to reveal for the first time a new website I’m working on, get their feedback and hopefully get them onboard with it.

Labels:

Thursday, February 16, 2012

What's in a name?

It was the day after the Dutch Air Force show and me and my mates were heading down to the museum aircraft museum at Soesterbourg. As it didn’t open until lunchtime we had a morning to kill. A friend had done some research into locations of aircraft that are now used for display and other purposes. There was one on display at the gate to an Air Traffic Control centre. One used in a display at a children’s theme park and a couple more which seemed to be scattered around a field. There purpose still isn’t clear to me.

He used a variety of websites to locate these aircraft and that is when the thought struck me. Why not do one website with details of all these aircraft on it. Now there is no way I could keep all the information up to date, so there would have to be some form of user interaction. So why not make the whole thing a user generated website and totally embrace Social Media.

It’s an idea I’ve been toying with the past six months or so. Lack of time meant I didn’t do much with it but as I recently resigned as webmaster of the Bournemouth Aviation Museum I decided to get this project up and running. Writing the code is well on the way and next week I’m going to show some sample screen shots at a talk I’m giving to the members of a local branch of Air-Britain.

My one bog issue I have is what to call it. Now me and all my friends refer to such aircraft as ‘Migs on Sticks’ This was a phrase coined by a Russian lady called Olga. A friends runs aircraft spotting trips all over the world and Olga is his Russian Tour guide for when he does he annual trips to Moscow. She helps with the organisation and all the paperwork needed for a aircraft related trip to Russia. On these trips they like to visit aircraft memorial and the like. So on days when they are not at airports, Olga says that they are looking for Migs on Sticks. The name has stuck and now many of us use that name to define any aircraft placed on a pole or mounted for display purposes,

I’d love to use that name but I don’t want to fall foul of the MiG aircraft company for using their name (though I’ll use a small g rather than a capital G). The site will of course state that it has no connection with the MiG aircraft company. Asking for permission isn’t really an option here. We are talking Russia, even in this day and age, no-one dares to make a decision in case it’s the wrong one and they end up in their bosses bad books. Also the site will cover all aircraft not just MiG’s but many of us in the aircraft enthusiast community know that a Mig on a stick won’t necessarly be a MiG. Is it worth calling the site what I really want to, or shall I play safe and call it some generic?

Labels:

Thursday, February 09, 2012

FlickR and the creative commons.

This blog is in response to a Dan Slee blog of a couple of weeks ago. For those who don't know him, Dan is a much respected Local Gov figure and his blogs are always worth a read. He has earned this respect by me and a lot of other people across the country for his knowledge and understanding of Local Gov, content strategies and Social Media. In his blog he listed 20 things he learnt at the recent UKGovCamp and such is the power of the man, many other people have followed his lead and done their list of twenty things as well. In Dan's list I agree with 19 of the things. However there is one thing I do disagree with. Dan stated that he wished for a council to put all their photographs on Flickr under its Creative Commons licence. Sorry mate but I don't agree with that.

Correction, I cannot find the original blog post where Dan made his comment… I'm not even sure that it was Dan that said that now, apologies if it wasn't you Dan. If anyone can find the original source then please let me know. Anyway as the bolg is already written and with less than 30mins till #weeklyblogpost's have to be in, here's the blog anyway.


Two thing are in issue here, FlickR and the creative commons licence. I've never been a fan of the FlickR website. I really don't like that way they organise and display their photos. Their groups system means the name of the photographer gets lost along the line. If I see a nice photograph I want to know who took it so I can look out for more of their work. I've got a few photographs on their myself from my days when I helped out at the Bournemouth Aviation Museum, but for my general photography I am in the process of writing my own photo gallery to host my photos in the way I want.

I won't be releasing any of my photos under a creative commons licence for all and everybody to use. I have had requests in the past for permission to use my photographs on websites and magazines and I have been more than happy to grant this permission. But I've still retained control over my photographs. It has taken my time and money to produce those photographs why should I be expected to just give them away.

It the same with photographs taken by Councils to which Dan is referring to. Someone at that council has obviously taken a great deal of time and public money to produced a set of photographs. Time and money spent going out to get take the photographs and all the editing and so forth done back in the office. This is something that most councils won't do. In these times of cuts, corporate photos libraries are an extravagance that many are not willing to invest in. To my mind it would be very hard to create a business case that could justify the huge outlay for little reward that a corporate photo library created by a council would involve, Unless of course the council tries to sell those photographs, to try to recoup some of the huge costs. But of course they will then be competing with the professional photography market.

My local newspaper, and I'm sure other around the country, has made a big thing about its collection of photograph. You have been able to have copies of Echo photographs for many years. Indeed many years ago when my brothers appeared in photographs in the newspaper my mum went down to their offices and ordered copies of those photographs. Buying of photographs was never hugely publicised, not like it is these days. Newspapers are now in the situation where people expect their websites to cover the news stories. Take the example when certain national papers introduced a fee for anyone reading their articles online. The decision came under some negative comments from users expecting everything for free.

Anyway, back to the Echo. Having their articles on the website must mean that their sales of the printed paper is going down and so it seems that they are pushing there photography side much more than they used to. They are also producing more books, based on their huge back catalogue of photos. A catalogue that they would not have had if they released photographs on creative commons licensing years ago. Whilst I don't know if the photographs have saved the paper, I‘m sure it is helping.

My views on copyright theft has hardened since I've been talking to my sister-in-law, who is a published author and have been planning my own detective series based in Bournemouth. I aim to spend a long time planning and writing these books and I am not going to give them away. I've even heard comments from people about the price of e-books, kindle books etc But there is no printing and shipping costs, so why aren't they next to nothing to buy? Well the author still spend many hours writing it, paying an editor to edit it. Agency costs etc. You can't expect them to give it away after that.

I digress, back to photographs. Ian Hislop made what I consider a very important statement to the Leeveson inquiry into Journalism. I can't remember the exact words so this isn't a direct quote. But he said something like 'We live in a society now that expects everything for free, that's why we have no film industry to speak of and a bad music industry'. Would flooding the market with free photographs help the professional photography business?

I'm reminded of an article I once read about the flower markets in the Netherlands. Growers selling their flowers for export all over Europe. I see Dutch registered Lorries nearly every day in Bournemouth, supplying the local florists. In the article the reporter asks about what happened to all the flowers that don't get sold. Surely they get donated to a local Hospital or the like. Certainly not was the reply, they just get destroyed, sounds harsh but that's business. If people knew that flowers were being delivered each day to the hospital for free, no-one would buy flowers for their sick friend and relatives in that hospital. If they gave them away it would instantly kill their own business and put them out of wok. Which would end up meaning that nobody would have flowers.

Labels:

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Aren't all artificial pitches Astroturf?

Something I learnt the other day. Astroturf is a brand name for one make of artificial pitch. I learnt this when chatting to a leisure centre about their website. Their artificial pitches are not Astroturf ones and so cannot use the name Astroturf on their website. This will of course mean they loose out on hits to their website, loose out on bookings for their artificial pitches and thus loose money. Why, because so many people think Astroturf is just another name for an artificial pitch and will Google Astroturf when trying to find an artificial pitch to play on and so they might never discover their local leisure centres artificial pitches..

Labels: