I went out and bought myself a really expensive Yamaha earlier this year. It is the sort of thing we men do when facing a mid-life crisis, sort of. You see, my Yamaha is black and shiny with 3 pedals and 88 keys. And I have just uploaded my first piano composition to You Tube. How cool/sad is that?!?

On Friday evening, we took the boy to see Art Brut at The Trinity in Lawrence Hill, a great venue and a great gig. I really enjoyed Art Brut and particularly, the singer's natural good humour on stage - "We made a lot of money from this next song. I spent it all on Faberge eggs and gold furniture, which I then ate..." A man clearly in his element.

I suffer from an age-related complex called "theysoundalotlike" This bad-dad habit involves pointing out, ideally in a loud and patronising voice, which bands of the 70's, 80"s and 90's new bands sound a lot like.

So for me, Art Brut = 2 X The Leyton Buzzards + 1 X The Band of Holy Joy

Theysoundalotlike is clearly a genetic condition and the boy has inherited it. He pointed out that the singer from the support band, A Human, "sings like Russell Brand and dances like Ian Curtis" - I was really very impressed with this equation.

One thing that has changed massively is the way fans interact with bands. Mobile phone video clips are posted on You Tube within hours of the end of many gigs. But Typography videos interpret what launguage looks like. There are many examples on You Tube that sync animated text to song lyrics, scenes from films, or even notable speeches. This JFK typography is really worth a watch, great video, great speech.

One Art Brut fan has also created a fine example here - who cares if they did get a word wrong.

“Are you, what do they call it, partially visionary?” asked the taxi driver.

A black cab in a dark street, no light on and no engine running, it is not the easiest thing to see.  I guess the driver had been waiting, possibly waving or somehow trying to catch my eye.  Eventually he resorted to beeping the horn, which worked for me but probably not for the neighbours at 6am.

When I got to the cab the guy was annoyed.

“They should tell us” he complained as I climbed in. “It’s just not fair, it makes us look bad.”  Despite my protestations that it was no big deal and that I usually get an automated call back on my mobile, which helps, he wouldn’t let it go.

“I did it, I pressed the button and it should have rung.  It’s not like we can get out of the cab and knock.  I heard about another driver last week who rang the door bell at 6 in the morning, but it was the wrong house and they threatened him… they really should tell us when people are partially visionary it’s just not right.”    

“So what do you do then?” he asked.  “I work for the council” and phew, we were back in far more comfortable territory – ‘council –shit, arena – shit – museum of Bristol – shit – schools – shit...” Thank god for predictability.

When we got to the station he said, “Right I will walk with you” I politely declined, explaining, “It’s fine, I do this several times a month”.

He became more and more insistent.  Eventually I grabbed my bag and headed off, at a pace.

So why do I tell you this?  Partly because it nicely illustrates the bizarre explanatory conversations that I frequently have to get into at all times of day or night, when all I want to do is buy a sandwich (can’t read the menu), catch a bus (can’t see the number) or as in this case, doze in the cab before catching a train to London.  

But the real reason I wanted to catch this vignette is because I love the phrase partially visionary, a mix up that suits me pretty well.  So cheers drive, I am ndeed Partially Visionary and so now is this blog.

»8:18 AM    »1 comments (0 )     »45 TrackBack(s)     »Send entry    

Posted by: stephenhilton    in: General

I have resolved that this year I will be musical.

Which raises the question, how does a tired old dog like me learn new tricks? I have discovered the answer - it's You Tube

If you have enthusiasm, a reasonable ear but limited theoretical knowledge of music, You Tube provides zillions of inspirational, bite-sized tutorials - some good, some not so good, just take your pick

As a budding pianist, my own fave is Shawn Cheek's Easy Piano Lessons - he has his own You Tube channel

I love that Sean he has invented his own musical notation system and often during his lessons you can hear kids crying in the background - just like on webcameron!

Now I must admit that I also have a human, fantastically talented piano teacher but the pattern is this - think of song I want to play - find You Tube Tutorial - watch - play - watch - play - watch - play - have lesson to get feedback - repeat until I become a pop-star

This experience made me think of one of the best speakers I have seen in recent years - Professor Stephen Hepple

He is concerned with the future of education and IT and unusually for an academic, has put his theories in to practice, apparently with great success in the Not School Project. I seem to remember he started his presentation by holding up the Encyclopaedia Britannica on CD Rom, saying "£2.99 in the bargain bin at WH Smith's - why would you pay that, information is free!" He went on to predict that without a radical shift in the way education is delivered, school attendance will contine to decline as young people find their own, far more engaging, ways to learn.

For me, the online video lesson, followed by one-to-one feedback is certainly the way that I will choose to learn from now on, whenever possible.

My ex-colleague and heaps missed friend Sacha is shaving-off her hair for the Leukaemia Foundation and no doubt, because she craves the attention that she will get.

Sponsor her here and if you happen to be in Melbourne on 16th March, pop into Blvd around 6.30pm, find the soon-to-be-bald chick and tell her, 'Stephen says hello and hopes you still have your hat!'

 After.....

E-petition mania, bees abandoning their hives and ... final digital challenge presentations - February was a strange month.

It started and ended well with a sunny rather than snowy weekend in Prague and a sunny rather than rainy half term in St Ives. But the weeks in between were a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride.

The relief felt after handing in our final Digital Challenge bid was soon replaced by nagging uncertainty. What should we do with our final 30-minute presentation to Government?

We started off with lofty ideals - no PowerPoint (too boring), Flash animation (because they will expect it from Bristol), video conferencing to bring in voices from around the city and not to bother repeating the bid (because they will all have read it). A week before the presentation we received the judges' written questions, which swiftly changed our minds.

Kevin, Jane and colleagues did a fantastic job assembling 7,500 words in response to 18 Government questions. It is fair to say that we all know a great deal more about business continuity planning and waterfall application development than we did at the start of the month. However, our real ‘wow factor' was Makala Cheung.

Makala is a young woman who works at Knowle West Media Centre. She has a delightful Bristol accent and talks a great deal of sense about life in Knowle West and the work of the centre. Initially I asked Makala if she would make a short video story that we could include in our presentation to government. But after spending more time talking with Makala about her work as a mother, singer, colleague and mentor, I realised that this was something the judges needed to hear for themselves - firsthand.

Makala joined Dick Penny, Barbara Janke and I on the trip to the Barbican, where we gave a really excellent presentation (no one would have believed that this was the first time we had made the presentation - there was no opportunity to get everyone together for a run through). However, the judges' questions threw us a little. Whilst we were geared up to talking about social and digital inclusion (which is the focus of the Digital Challenge), the majority of questions concerned business transformation. We answered strongly but remain unsure if our answers were strong enough. It is simply impossible to tell. I am sure Makala wouldn't mind me repeating that she said ‘coming along to the presentation was the most important thing she had ever been asked to do' - that will stay with me whatever the result.

And now it is all over bar the waiting and shouting and doing... until 13th March when Angela Smith MP will make the announcement. There will be a live webcast here so you can watch us all squirm.

Of course, I do have things to do - I am supposed to be preparing my presentation for next week's NOMAD Cutting the Wires conference; swotting-up on transformational government; commenting on the council's ICT strategy and deciding what to do on my birthday which is next week... but it really is hard to focus with the final decision looming.

Remind me never to enter a competition again.

»8:24 PM    »2 comments (0 )     »Send entry    

Posted by: stephenhilton    in: Digital Challenge

It has been the mildest January ever says the weather people. I can’t say I noticed because January was bid-writing month.

Like some demented keyboard-tapping-hermit, I spent 12+ hours per day most days up until 18th Jan, huddled round my laptop; writing, editing, scratching, sniffing, twitching, grumbling, editing, writing and more editing – until Bristol’s Digital Challenge bid was born.  Despite my isolation, it was very much a team effort. Such is the nature of digital communications.  Hand-making and hand-delivering 12 copies to London on 19th was both symbolic and a great relief. With the help of a friendly commuter and an Evening Post photographer, Jane and I even made it into the local paper.

Having safely dropped the treasured bids off, I stayed in London for the weekend. This marked the start of my slow weaning off isolation. Back in the real (ish) world we went to the Tate Modern to feel excited by the ‘are they art or play equipment’ slides; to the top of St Paul’s dome to feel awed, and to the Hockney exhibition to feel squashed and fleeced. Seeing Anthony Gormley amongst the Hockney crowd was a highlight.  I wanted to go up and say ‘fantastic angel mate, and don’t let that council Planning Department make you take those people out of the sea’ but Anthony was extremely cool-looking and I was just too shy. 

February is media, PR and presentation month.  We are gearing up to present a memorable and exciting picture of Bristol’s bid to the Digital Challenge judges on the 19th Feb at the Barbican.  The final announcement will be on 13th March. 

We (the consultation team and I) have also just published a new guide to e-participation.  Sunderland Council, for North East Connects, commissioned us to write this during the summer. I had forgotten how subversive in style and tone it is.  Not at all like a usual council publication.  I will be launching it when I speak at an LGA / LARIA event in a couple of weeks time – just testing the water.

I am off to Prague for the weekend.  A short but well deserved break (really).  It will be delightful to quaff Budvar somewhere other than Watershed.

I don't seem to enjoy nostalgia anywhere near as much as I used to. But at this time of year it feels compulsory to look back in dismay at how one has squandered yet another year. Anyway, I need a break from working on the bloody digital challenge bid, so here goes.

For me 2006 has been a journey. Not a spiritual one but something more akin to travelling from St Anne's to Baldwin Street on the number 36 bus (oh the memories). Lots of expense, waiting around for things to start, many twisty and turny bits, arriving where you need to get to - but about six weeks too late.

At work there have been some dizzying (ish) highs and oh, the awards... My BT Government Innovator Award arrived just at the right time; the same evening we submitted our first round Digital Challenge bid. And what a fantastic corporate spectacle Madame Tussauds provided for the awards bash - cruising past a smiling and waving wax Muhammad al Fayed who was standing in front of Buckingham Palace, whilst I was seated in a London cab, on a roller coaster - it must have been a hallucination?

The very next day I somehow managed to be flown club class (a new world of never ending tiny wine bottles and hot towels) to Crete, where I spoke to a conference about e-democracy in bristol and partied all night, in my best suit, with a fantastic pair (brother and sister) of Greek solicitors.

In July, I was less impressed than in the previous year by being on a conference panel Chaired by John Humphreys at the Good Communications Awards. At least Campaign Creator won an award and Blaze from the post room looked dapper, going-up in his sparkly suit. More recently, there was yet another award - the Euro Cities Award for Participation. Being caught unprepared to deliver an acceptance speech at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester reminds me that I really must get more organised about these things. This was also the first year I got published, in a proper journal called ASLIB Proceedings. And then there was Cannes, which apparently one says sans the ‘s' Kevin.

It is also the year I left the council, sort of. Like Bruce (for Ellie), I went for a walk and I never came back. Unlike Bruce, I only went down the Watershed. Carol and the council team have proved that I wasn't needed anyway. So, like all absentee fathers, I have started a new family at the Watershed, who have just about kept me from going completely crackers as I try to talk to everyone in the whole world - thank you my children.

Anyway, enough gloating. There have also been some low, lows. February's Activists and Authorities Conference shouldn't have worked but it did! 1 still can't believe that both sides got home without a fight.

Undoubtedly, the worst workday of the year was spent with Dick, Carolyn and Jaya waiting, waiting and waiting outside the judge's room in Taunton to see whether Bristol had made it through the regional heats of the Digital Challenge. An experience I never, ever want to repeat - but will have to in March, when the national announcement takes place.

More generally, I have pissed everyone off this year, family and friends alike, by working all of the time. So next year, I promise to find the ‘off button' on the BB, honest.

Outside of work, I can't recall a decent book, film, exhibition or TV prog. I have seen this year. But I do need to thank Tom for introducing me to the Dirty Pretty Things, who make me laugh. I have eaten carbon like there's no tomorrow (timely saying that). Venice in January with my mum, drinking 5 star gin and tonics in the Gritti Palace and speeding across the lagoon in a water taxi, pretending to be James Bond. March saw my birthday in Birmingham with probably the best meal of the year at a veggie restaurant called Jyoti in Sparkhill. During a summer week in Brighton with Tom, we acted like we owned the Hilton. A family trip to Croatia included a visit over the border to Mostar, which left me wanting to see more. But most delight came when we managed to blag a flat, complete within the owner's chaotic teenage daughter, on the island of Lapad, which really is "little Hawaii". A late train trip to Paris, courtesy of the Telegraph (no I don't wish to subscribe) meant Tom and I could search out Jim, Oscar and Amedeo (Modigliani) at Pere Lachiasse. There were also trips to see my Auntie Norah in Bradford and to old haunts like the Faversham in Leeds... now that is really something to get nostalgic about.

Happy New Year and White Rabbits in advance - you wouldn't believe how many people stumble across this blog (and then leave) after searching for that! My best blog post of this year was here. two years now, maybe I'll keep it going for another.

Back to the bid writing now...

»5:21 AM    »3 comments (0 )     »Send entry    

Posted by: stephenhilton    in: General

I was horror-struck tonight by the appalling behaviour of the city centre X39 bus driver who refused to back-up his bus by 10 feet to the official drop-kerb to allow a passenger in a wheelchair to get on. He simply closed the doors and drove away leaving behind the stranded passenger and an irate peak-time queue.

I was delighted tonight when an X39 bus driver pulled up on a busy Keynsham main road 100 yards ahead of the official stop to allow Tom and me to get on.

I guess both broke the rules, both could be sacked.    

I blame the travel agents. 

If they had tried a bit harder to be interested in you - the customer; been a  bit better informed about the holidays they were selling and not so willing to rob you stupid, then this whole self-service Internet thing might never have taken off. 

Now it seems that if Andy at Firetail has his way, there will soon be no need for loveable estate agents.

Firetail's new blockhunter site  allows would-be home buyers to register their domestic desires and would be sellers to see what interest exists ‘out there'.  I have registered both to buy and sell my own home and am about to close a great deal. 

Fortunately, there is no commission to pay!

Like any great community site (and it is a great idea, very simple design too) it needs critical mass to make it work.  So help Andy out and REGISTER NOW!!!.  It is Christmas after all and who knows how soon it will be before the public works out they can do their own Google map hacks and then - bang - another set of skilled intermediaries will join the ranks of the not-so-needed-after-all.

»4:29 AM    »2 comments (0 )     »Send entry    

Posted by: stephenhilton    in: General