Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

I’m probably one of the last to blog about the Barcamp event that took place over the long weekend, but nevertheless I promised a couple people I would write about it, so I am.

My work colleague and me arrive arrived 2 hours before the start, not because we were super keen, but because of a mix up in times between the website post, and the email we were sent. I could have certainly done with the extra sleep.

After meeting a couple of the campers, and a few technical glitches at the start, the unconference was ready to start. Initially, I did feel a bit out of place, I was one of the very few running Windows on my notebook. There was a lot of matrix screens, with heavy code text displayed, surrounding me. I managed to position myself next to a marketer though and slowly began to ease up :)

Below I’ve quickly wizzed through the presentations I attended:

• The stuff they never taught you at Comp Sci 101 – Rashid Omar
  I never did Comp Sci 101, so I felt a little left out. *sniff*

• Firefox Extensions & Plugins – Craig from Quirk Marketing
  A very interesting presentation on an extension Craig developed that enables a Firefox user to view the search status of a website, namely the Google and Alexa page rank of a website. It has roughly 50 thousand users!His best quote of the day, “It’s really quite a small script, very easy to do, only a few thousand lines of code“.I’m glad I’m a designer!

• Podcasting – The New Media Revolution – Glen from the ZAShow
  If you are interested in podcasting you should have been there. How to record a podcast, what software to use, where to publish it, what to talk about and how to attract listeners was all discussed.

• Plone – Jean Somebody
  An interesting, open source content management system, with strong multilingual support, ideally suited for intranets. Jean exposed the capabilties of the system very well. Don’t ask me to repeat what he said though. The words were flying a few hundred meters above my head.

• Marketing yourself as a contractor – Jo Duxbury
  The title says it all. Jo covered exactly how you should sell yourself as a freelancer when approaching potential clients. If you are a freelancer, or a business owner requiring a freelancer check her site out.

• Technologies for schools – http://www.wizzy.org.za
  This presentation included 3 technologies under priviledged schools around Africa can benefit from technology cheaply and efficiently.
  • The first way was by making full use of the online Wikipedia in schools. With a little effort this online encyclopedia can be used offline in schools. I’ve never really thought of Wikipedia like this, but in essence it can be used to replace Dictionaries, World Books and the Internet, in one very small download.
  • The second was Linux thin clients (or something to that extent), which basically one or two powerful servers to host applications, displayed on recycled old machines in the classroom. The server does all the processing, the PCs just display all the information through fancy network cards. A very cost effective solution!
  • Thirdly, there was the Wizi Digital Courier. Basically, a flash drive that stores all the emails sent and recieved, and all the websites requested on it. It gets plugged into a PC with a dial up connection over night, as this is the cheapest time to connect, and does all the work required in sending and recieving information over the internet. The next day you plug your flash drive into your school computer lab “server” and presto internet offline. The information may be a day old, and the emails may arrive a day late, but its a small price to pay for young under priviledged children to be internet enabled.

• Marketing 2.0 – Dave Duarte
  A fascinating presentation on the way marketing is going. Viral marketing and blogging are definitely two of the biggest, and probably cheapest, marketing tools available today!Dave used the success around Stormhoek wines as a case study. Just check out these guys web stats, amazing growth in an amazingly short time frame!

  Graham Knox from Stormhoek wines had a tight advertising budget, and didn’t want an advertising company to swallow it up, so he turned to blogging. His offer: any person who blogged about the Stormhoek blog would get a free personalised bottle of wine. The offer was happily accepted by loads of people and back links came firing in.

  Obviously it helps to have Hugh McLeod, the well known disruptive marketer, and owner of the famous blog, Gaping Void as a mate. Hugh drew some of his famous cartoons for Stormhoek.

  A long story short (that you can read more about @ the Stormhoek blog), Stormhoek won Best consumer Campaign” for online work at the London International Wine and Spirits Trade Show, they are now exporting to the USA and the UK, and soon to China I think, all because of a blog!Dave also used Caffeine Spot as a case study. A new and fast growing blog written by some guys running a coffee shop in Sea Point, Cape Town. They have a similar offer, blog about them and get a free coffee and muffin. And that’s what I’ve done. And now I have lunch.Dave’s words I enjoyed, “Get a bit creative and see what social media can do for you“.

I was unfortunately unable to attend on Saturday, but visit Rafiq’s blog for a list of links of posts about Barcamp Cape Town. Thanks must go to Conrad for all his hard work in organising the event! Top notch Conrad!

No I didn’t do a presentation, I just didn’t have enough time to prepare anything. I designed the t-shirt though :) I preferred it on a baby blue colour shirt, to the creme one that we recieved, but a big thanks to Quirk Marketing for sponsoring them.

I’m officially tired of writing (and hyperlinking). I’m retreating to Photoshop.

If you were there, leave a comment. If I incorrectly stated something, correct me.

Forget buying your DVDs from a limited selection at Musica. The future could be instore download kiosks.

According to Reuters, the major movie studios are reportedly in talks with American retail heavyweights, like Walmart, regarding archiving their entire movie collections for downloading to instore terminals with high speed connections. This comes as an attempt to combat the global decline in DVD sales, as a result of the evergrowing force of digital downloads.

These kiosks will allow you to download any movie, whether it be 50 days old, or 50 years old, to your ipod, external harddrive, or DVD.

You walk in with your little ipod, hook it up to one of these terminals, download the latest movie, retreat back home and wirelessly connect your ipod to your plasma TV.

Sounds a bit all to futuristic for my likings. I think I prefer looking at my branded copy of “Braveheart” next to my TV. On my book case. In my DVD stand.

I want to buy a new camera. I don’t have the money at the moment, but when it comes knocking at my door I want to know which camera I should get. Seeing I am a point and shoot photographer I don’t know much about digital SLRs. However, I hope to learn, and one day become a world famous photographer.

Ok, maybe not quite, but I do want to be able to decorate my house with my own personal photos. And I want the photos to have a wow factor.

I think I have narrowed my choice down to two cameras. The Nikon D50, and the Canon EOS 350D. Some people think the decision is easy, one of the cameras is far better than the other, others believe they are both great cameras.

What I want to know is what you, my readers, think? If you’ve got one of these cameras let me know what you think of it. If you have heard stories of one, tell me.

Have your say by commenting below.

Someone who has mastered photography, and must have a great camera, is Sam Basset. His photography is quite unique. Check out his portfolio on his website. Well worth the visit.

This morning I found a great article to follow on from the post I wrote a few days ago (regarding ABC’s decision to offer free, ad-supported episodes of certain popular TV series on their website), stressing the ever-growing power downloadable TV is having on the networks in the USA.

From the article it looks like CBS, NBC and FOX networks are joining ABC network and the force that spearheaded downloadable TV, iTunes. The networks have realised the huge threat downloadable television poses, and rather than be threatened by this new form of media, they have jumped on the bandwagon. A smart move.
“It’s going to be a while before the service models are compelling enough for the world to turn away en masse from today’s TV, but it’s clear we’re at the start of a major disruption that will shake content producers (the networks) and the distributors (cable) to the core.” (Source: Techcrunch)

It’s awesome to read about how the internet is revolutionizing so many aspects of business worldwide. Downloadable TV may only be avaliable to us South Africans in a few years time, but it is definitely something to get excited about.

Definitely worth a read :)