Nottingham H.O.U.S.E once constructed was dismantaled; each component was loaded on to the back of a lorry and transported down to London for reassembly and exhibit at the 2010 annual Ecobuild exhibition in Earls Court. High up in the rafters of Earls Court 2 I set up a camera, laptop and internet connection to live stream the two day assembly for Architects Journal and project sponsors Saint Gobain. Architects Journal took an aggregated feed of all the web media generated during Phil Campbell’s time on site over the previous 4 weeks along with a live streaming player during the build showing the projects progress on the home page of their web site.
On day 2 I grabbed an opportunity to talk to the Nottingham HOUSE team who had come down to London for the fit up. I couldn’t have been more delighted when I discovered the live stream had turned out to be far more valuable than a peep show, fly on the wall observation tool.
quicklink | bambuser architects account onsite today at earls court 'behind the scenes' we are watching the build out of the nottingham h.o.u.s.e - due to time constraints for myself on the www.conkertu.com project this weekend i could not make it down to london to watch the house being constructed but this is almost as good! so look out high in the rafters like a super spy and you will find @pcmcreative - the other part of the duo team that have been pulling together social media content together for the nottingham h.o.u.s.e project. We will be taking the content and speeding it up for the time lapse and things are on a tight time frame to make sure that the build out makes it into the dvd for the tuesday morning - but we will do it. We have some fantastic friends helping us out (thanks @aquilatv)
Just another set of photos from last friday at the meadow park campus university in nottingham. It was hectic, masses of people had turned out, lots of people were producing media and health and safety had been ramped up. The modules were taking serious shape and the internals were starting to form. I'll be over again this week to gather some more interviews with people who have provided some of the materials for the house.
watch out this week for some more audio interviews! :)
a digital content producers media life is very transient. i feel i need to move swiftly but lightly but have effect on those around me to utilise, engage and connect their ideals - show them the tools i have used for decades but have now progressed past just lipstick makeovers to fully ready software and hardware solutions to make a creators daily life more productive. everyone should produce. it is far too easy to consume. something so valuable to produce on so many levels. you engage in life more, you can feedback and share in the actual experience instead of watching from afar and missing what it 'felt' to be their, watching how it made the people involved feel. those are emotional connections that make us grow. discover more of our importance that we can feed back into the world. i've been trying to package those experiences over the recent years to make teaching social media to the next generation more worthwhile - not all things in life should be a 1 click operation. while i have been onsite at the nottingham house i have been more excited about the intelligence of the human mind than anything i have ever see spat at me from my television set and read in newspapers (between the lines of course) - i got to experience hands on people shaping, nurturing and building a house, a home - a building that should be the prototype for all houses that are built. we have the technology, the time is now for these things to become standard and not just a tick box on a form regarding 'things eco' - i have never been so clear about how and what i want to live in next. I'm never going to own another house unless it is totally eco. I celebrate intelligence and integrity and the nottingham h.o.u.s.e has shown me what is possible when you put together the design brain power of a universities students an the forward thinking sponsor like saint-gobain. I would like to think in some small way as well we (womworld/nokia) have helped out with the media output. I have only really got started. The house has gotten under my skin like anything would that is an obvious step forward in housing and living more sustainable. These projects should be getting regular tv airtime. These are the projects that great britain should be celebrating. They are important markers for our children to see often. As, you can tell. I'm pretty hooked on the house! - it really is a stunner.
This is the very custom jib that was designed especially for the nottingham house entry into the decathlon of solar which will be happening in june in madrid (plenty of solar action!)
The jib was a custom piece of work and it was not cheap, they can only use it for a six month period i was told as well, i'm not sure why that is the case but i'm guessing that most jibs have a lifespan to them. as i'm not an engineer i cannot confirm that. either way this will be used to stack some of the modules on top of each other. Looking forward to seeing the house built at ecobuild at earls court shortly!
This monday i was once again speeding over to nottingham to spend the morning with the nottingham h.o.u.s.e project team to see how progress was going with the build. i was expecting to see at least one of the smaller modules taking shape and was duly impressed with the cladding on the smaller unit that was in the main old broadcast space area. time is precious for the rest of the modules so i'm sure people will be pulling out all the stops over the coming weeks to make this eco house a reality. I'm really looking forward to the progress made when i head into the university again on friday afternoon.
they have really managed to pull together and claw back some of the time lost waiting on supplies. last sunday they had a great turnout so they could crack on and get back on track. i wonder how many of the other universities that are currently taking part around the world are using students instead of skilled workers to build up the units? It really is fresh new territory for some of the students involved. one thing i want to chase in the next couple of weeks is quick interviews with the project managers of the other projects using a system called wetoku.com which allows one to one interviews - we will post these on the blog.Some of the social media skills i'll be hoping to feed into the 10 person strong media making team over the coming weeks to help with the 'media' component of the project. starting the conversation around a piece of media posting updates and links to bits of media is not really the point of social media. yes it has some value to notify people/fans/followers of things you are doing but really you need to be creating a conversation around those bits of media, know what to capture next time, feed back information from outside the project into it from other people not connected but interested in what your doing. you have the ability to have a realtime editor crowd sourced from a potential workforce of eyeballs all sitting around the globe looking at the things your making. that's a powerful thing.
tagging your content for people to be finding your content anywhere on the internet it is valuable to give the blog post, video or audio media the correct tagging. we are also using the hashtag of #solardec on twitter so that we can combine all the feeds together from around the web when people are talking about the project. a lot of work is going on behind the scenes to bring together as much of this information as possible so you can get a real time feel for the build.
remember your audience they have already made strong headway in this area but utilising a number of different twitter accounts to cover a good cross section of people from different backgrounds. i really like the idea of different identity twitter accounts that may offer more relevant information to you about the things your interested in. i can see multiple twitter accounts for businesses taking on an additional layer of context around conversations this year. 'one size does not fit all' for twitter accounts. keep it snappy, do it regular not the script for a 'carry on film' but more about keeping the conversation alive. people are busy, lots of people are mobile. a lot of people are snacking on updates and then checking in later based on the density of your posts and progress on topics that are of interest to people. i always try to think of what it must be like for the remote viewer. i make sure that the updates are released regular for those that are searching or waiting for the next block of media to appears. always check if you have any conversation points to pick on between posting media. put yourself in the seat of the remote viewer. it's a lot of work often but the viral part of the conversation often comes from providing a regular stream of context and content. using webtools to find existing conversations i use http://search.twitter.com, friendfeed, tweetdeck and backtype quite a lot. i also use google alerts for certain keywords. i guess i could do a complete blog post on conversation tracking alone but that is coming as part of my social media side project that i have been working on the textual content for the last three months behind the scenes. The quick answer is to track the people you know that are going to the event, find out the hashtag for the event and look for common tags and themes that are happening based on the tweets that are coming out of the venue. look out for the rezpondr system and theme for the ecobuild day! - it's going to be awesome. ;)
quicklink | the website Fantastic to see the Saint Gobain Media Site going live, can feel the buzz of content that this amazing house is starting to generate and i'm starting to feel incredibly lucky to be able to document the build out. As a small content producer it got me thinking about how we can help bigger brands get the message out about such fantastic products these days that normally would normally get overlooked. The design, the process and the contents of this solar house really are cutting edge. I'm so excited about seeing it built and indeed making media from inside. roll on media making friday! :)
Another fantastic morning over at the The Nottingham H.O.U.S.E, (meaning: home optimising the use of Solar Energy) and its the University of Nottingham's entry to the Solar Decathlon Europe 2010, to take place in Madrid June 2010. i got to meet a number of the students and i can really see the team and project coming together at pace. i'm sure by next week a massive amount will be done. i'm looking to head over on friday afternoon again and hopefully take over some mobile phones to enable the social media side of the project. we are going to do some bambuser live mixing in the weeks coming and when the project gets shipped down to earls court.
Going to be doing some social media twitter training with the media team and we had a brief chat about using bambuser for live streaming on the womworld/nokia sponsored phones for the media production side of the project. I'm going to really enjoy the media output from this project. Every time i go i learn a ton of new stuff about the building. it really is fantastic to see this module house built up in this manner. I'll be posting some audioboo links to the content i recorded today as well. Some of it good, some of it unplanned but still valuable as you can feel the vibe and passion that is going into the build.
. .. next week we will be taking over some devices for the social media group of students for them to collect media within the next few crucial weeks and for the build up in the main indoor area.
as planned i headed over to the nottingham campus where the uk/nottingham h.o.u.s.e entry into the decathlon of solar was being constructed. last week was a hive of activity and again today with a number of students cutting wood and drilling boards. a prototype team to a prototype project - i managed to catchup with a student, philip gilder (student)
. ..and mike siebert again (project manager) to find out how things were going.
finally the cladding had arrived and it was obviously that a real push was needed to get to the next phase. taking into account that eight modules for the house need to be built the logistics of moving pieces of the build around with limited space was obvious - they are however move heaven, earth and wood to make it happen. things are starting to get really exciting over at the h.o.u.s.e build.
*update* - @zerocredit_uk also came along today and captured her own audioboo about the project.
