Hacking the university (5/52)

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Jonathan Cresswell

Last year, I helped with an event to encourage computing students to make cool things, to hack and do more coding. As part of that, we filmed about 10 hours of footage over that weekend, which was used to make videos during the event. But after that, my job was to produce a 10 minute film to summarise the event. So I did.

But we had 10 hours of footage. So…

This is The Story of DevXS. A 30 minute film spanning a three day event. There’s students with ideas of how to improve uni life with new ideas and technology. The importance of people who code. Life as a nomadic web developer.

And a proper cool inspirational bit.

It’s not going to appeal to everyone, but it’s my first longform thing like this in ages and I hope you enjoy it.

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Words should be pretty too (4/52)

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Jonathan Cresswell

The internet is a wonderful, blank canvas. There’s so much potential for incredible creativity and technological innovation which can push how we create and consume content.

This wanky introduction leads me to this point. With the opportunity to make such great things, why is so much of the internet shite?

On Thursday, I read a lovely feature in the i about the Commodore 64 and its impact on a generation and discussing the link between creativity and coding. In the newspaper, it’s a nicely presented piece with a colourful background that really draws you in.

So I went to find the online version of the article to share it on Twitter. I have to say, I was impressed. Impressed at how carelessly it seemed dumped online. Squished in to a 380px column between related posts, adverts, boxes for Facebook and anything to distract you away from the interesting content. It scrolls for decades, with the sidebar of the timeline just dumped at the end as text.

If you were designing the pages to put a feature in the magazine or newspaper, and you submitted such a careless text dump with a tiny image, you’d be rubbish at your job. But online, it seems acceptable. Why?

The benefits of online journalism include being able to use so many more tools. Hyperlinks, interactive elements, galleries, videos, audio… but the design side seems forgotten.

Obviously it’s also about using things when appropriate: the 200 word story about the cat in the tree in the local news doesn’t need much in the way of enhancement (it’s as fascinating as it could be already) but when it comes to those special stories and features which have had so much work poured in to them: do something special with the look of them!

Doing it right

I’m constantly finding myself use The Verge as an example of a fantastic news website and how they display long articles is one of the reasons why. The news posts look as you would expect them to look (but without distracting you boxes saying “HEY! People read these 5 year old stories on Facebook! WHY DON’T YOU?!?!”) but with reviews and features they really come in to their own.

Despite claims that long-form writing is dead online (because something always has to be dying) it has such a great chance of life. This feature about Kickstarter, as well as being a brilliantly interesting piece of writing, is presented in a way that makes you want to read it.

The use of subheadings, images, columns, pullquotes,videos: it all comes together to make the article not seem overwhelming and it looks great. Even down to little details. Normally having text flow in columns next to each other as you would in print doesn’t work online due to the need to scroll: but on that story the few instances they do it – it never goes on for longer than the height of the average laptop screen so it causes no problems.

Give people the right tools

The biggest thing holding more people back from doing this is probably the tools they have. Content management systems can be dire at best and don’t play well with creativity. Stick the text in, add the meta-data, publish. Even on WordPress, an incredibly versatile system, doesn’t have that much to play with by default. There’s buttons to make text bold, do a list and a blockquote if you’re pushing it.

If you know the HTML you can do much more of course, but even buttons for headers aren’t part of the post editor. I’d hope that more people would look at this and go “hey, we could do more” – it can’t be that much work for your publisher’s developer to add a button and shortcode for some pretty pullquotes, sideboxes… even small things just to make more of what we’ve got. Equip people with the tools to do more.

It doesn’t have to be huge amounts of require sinking hours in to design and planning to make a better reading experience. The BBC News website is a good example – they’ve not got the level of design detail you’ve got on The Verge, but the use of sideboxes for related links and analysis, pullquotes, subheadings, video and audio embedded at relevant points within the post. They’re not huge things to design with but there’s enough there to make a difference and show that there is one.

And then maybe as the people higher up see the benefits of what happens when people have these tools for the simpler things, then more will be made or made available for use. With the way some sites look you’d think they believe presentation doesn’t matter on the internet, but how much time and resources have they spent building up a look for their publication in print, designing templates for pages, creating a style toolkit of resources to make pages look good?

Although all news organisations will lament the quality of the technology they work with, newspapers aren’t now put together with typewriters and prit-sticking an image on top. So why should things be online?

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Do a better job on the box (3/52)

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Jonathan Cresswell

As a fan of television (I know, a broad statement) I have to say I’ve been a bit disappointed recently. We’re in a bit of a January lull where the phrase “there’s piss all on telly tonight” is being muttered so often it’s at risk of becoming a catchphrase.

The annoyance got deeper this week with the BBC cancelling my favourite show on BBC Three (and I think my thoughts on the rest of that channel are pretty well known), Mongrels. They’ve probably got decent reasons, particularly with their attempts to Deliver Quality* First (*terms and conditions may apply), but each week there seems to be another show facing the axe. Shooting Stars, Something for the Weekend… soon there’ll be nothing on the BBC left and although that’d mean they wouldn’t spend any money the usual suspects would find a way of moaning about it.

At times the BBC seems to be like one of the all-time great artists who just happens also be a self-harming alcoholic psychotic. They’ll create something glorious like Stargazing Live but then proceed to cut their own leg off, pick up a newspaper, scream “WHY DOES NOBODY LOVE ME”, down a bottle of whisky and orders another series of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents.

So with them limping along until Hustle gets put down in a few weeks time, I’m left to look elsewhere for TV shows – and a recent commission has caught my eye. Enter The Exclusives, for ITV 2, where six hopefuls will compete for a 12 month job on a Bauer magazine.

There are about one million different potential flaws with this show that it’s hard to know where to start. But maybe it’s best to go in with an open mind. Maybe it won’t be like The Apprentice and just do ridiculous tasks for television entertainment so no-one notices that making sausages is essential to knowing how to run a business, it won’t ridicule the industry of journalism and so portraying it in an interesting light and maybe it won’t act like famous people and red carpet events are the be all and end all of the universe.

But on the other hand it is on ITV 2.

The thing that bugs me is that it’s another example of working being seen as a prize. And the winner is… YOU! Wow! Well done! You’ve earned the right to earn a wage! At least they’re offering a 12-month contract (which is pretty good going these days). Up For Hire attempted to solve record-high youth unemployment by getting national companies to offer a handful of 3-month Christmas temp positions each.

This weekend Iain Duncan Smith told the Sunday Times he thought the graduate who had to work at Poundland without pay to stay on jobseekers’ allowance was a “snooty so-and-so”, saying “…it’s a human right for the taxpayer to know you’re doing something productive instead of wafting around looking for the job you want while someone else pays for it.”

Apparently, wanting money in exchange for work seems to be an unacceptable, snooty high standard these days. It’s not about that stacking shelves is ‘below’ someone, rather that large companies shouldn’t be using unpaid labour in this way.

Every time someone asks me what I’m going to do after university I just say “find a job that pays money”. Unfortunately, that’s already a hard task. And now I’m supposed to think that wanting a wage is an unacceptably high standard.

Maybe I’ll just sit down and watch some telly. Hopefully there’ll be something better on.

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What came first, the Netflix or the egg? (2/52)

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Jonathan Cresswell

The last time I got excited about a streaming service was SeeSaw. The dream of having one website with a large wealth of TV series to watch at any time legally distracted me from the fact it came in to being as the unwanted child of a tricky relationship meaning the chance of it taking off was… well, the less said about that, the better.

So I took the news that Netflix, a service popular in the US, was launching in the UK I decided to tone down my excitement. I waited at least half the day before signing up for the free trial.

Not for the ‘flix’ part of it. Oh no, I’m not particularly a fan of films. Sure, I enjoy them and watch them, but ask if you want to stick on a DVD and I’ll already be half way through a binge of Boston Legal.

It’s for series binges like that which is why I want a service like Netflix to succeed. Say you want to watch a random TV show from a couple of years back. Maybe Moving Wallpaper, a funny series on ITV a few years back. My options now are… DVD? What if I don’t want to own it? In many cases, things are available on iTunes, although as a Windows user I consider that software as being the devil’s work.

There have got to be hundreds of TV series which people aren’t buying on DVDs. Maybe the repeat fees on Sky channel 742 are still coming in, but they’re not great. I’m sure the companies have all sorts of internal reasoning for not just licensing out archives more, but as a consumer, it makes no sense. There’s a chance for those shows to still make some money.

Think of it like the music industry. Sure, there was radio and physical media. And then MP3s. But subscription services, videos on YouTube, Spotify… make it easy, less people will pirate, more money can be made.

Channel 4 have caught this idea well with a long list of series available on 4OD. Sell some ad spots round them, it’s not cannibalising the Father Ted repeats on More4 but making content people want to watch more available. Oh, and they’ve put their content on SeeSaw (RIP), YouTube…

Which leads me to Netflix. It’s got a great starting selection of shows, some American and British and the streaming is working pretty good. I’ve already enjoyed watching The Thick of It, but it pales in size to the (more established) US service. For a service to really take off, it will need more on there to watch – but will companies be willing to license more of their shows until they know there’s enough customers to be making much money from it?

Hopefully after the success of Netflix and the instant streaming in the US the precedent can be proven, and we’ll see regular updates – and my thirst to watch random programmes can be properly served.

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Twits, stop being twats. (1/52)

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Jonathan Cresswell

Yes, I’m trying to do weekly blog posts again. Good luck me. I give it a month.

The cliché used to be that “all people use Twitter for is to say what they have for lunch”. Sometimes, I wish that was still true.

How a typo made front page news on Saturday.

In the last few weeks there have been all sorts of storms in a tweetcup as people have complained that the BBC were sexist for having a panda as a lighthearted list of things that had made the headlines, and Ed Miliband made a (very funny and ironically timed) typo.

When Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter in the last week, there were some fears he could buy the service. But we shouldn’t be worried about the website turning in to one of his publications. No, Twitter is doing its best to become the Daily Mail.

It’s easy to point and go “oh well they whipped up fake outrage about Ross and Brand things where people never heard it”, how were people reacting to Jeremy Clarkson’s comments on The One Show?

Without actually seeing it, thousands of people made snap judgements with an out of context short clip on YouTube and no-one bothered to think as tweets flew around about how he should have been fired.

When every little thing said will get poured over, pulled out and used as a stick to beat people with (with an army of retweet wielding lynch mobbers) we risk ending up at a stage that people won’t say anything of interest because of fears it could needlessly spark.

Obviously there are times people should exercise restraint, be careful what they say and who to – but there are benefits about being more open and honest allows us to have more interesting and fun discussions learning more about each other.

If every tweet, blog and message online has to get mentally filtered through 5 press offices we’re going to lose all sense of personality online. If you’re writing a tweet and can’t imagine it actually coming out of your mouth, whether it’s serious or about a squirrel’s penis on Great British Bake-Off, don’t bloody write it.

That’s the real problem with what Ed Miliband tweeted.

“Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters.”

That’s not how anyone actually speaks. And it’s not how he speaks either. It’s the words of someone called Kenny working in the Labour office who decides showing sympathy would be good for the public image.

But then even worse, you can imagine it being said by him. Not him actually saying it, just that those words in that order came out of his mouth in the manufactured way that takes the need to be appear serious and statesman like three times too far.

And even if by some misfortune that’s how he actually speaks (presumably at a time where strikes are wrong when negotiations are still taking place), then it’s still a waste because we know it wasn’t him saying it. It’s not the honest reaction and showing his memories. It’s a press release statement destined straight for the recycle bin.

I’d rather he tweeted what he had for lunch. Unless he had black pudding and then we’re back to square one.

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My year in review

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Jonathan Cresswell

It’s almost 2012. So why not look back over the last year?

…yes, that’s all you’re getting by the way of introduction.

Failed at writing less than I failed at before
In 2010, I stupidly decided to write a blog each day for a year as part of #oneaday. For any writers, I fully recommend it as a way of pushing creativity, idea generation and just writing often. I managed 56 days in a row before dropping it – in a mix of long posts of more than 1,000 words and others that were barely longer than the introduction to this post.

This year, I tried to write decent-sized blog posts each week. I got 8 weeks in to the year, pretty much matching the progress of the year before. Trying to pick a highlight of such a VAST ARRAY of work surely would be difficult, but I’m going to go for the cycle of BBC Three.

I think I’m going to try it again. One year, I’ll beat the 15.3% barrier. Give it another 15 years.

Tried to bring the university in to disrepute
I took over the editorship of the University of Lincoln student newspaper, The Linc, and in true Linc style I didn’t keep quiet and spent September reporting on what we jokingly called Accommogeddon.

We broke the news that 200 students would start the year without a place to live for the year. The story turned out to be bigger as a temporary student village was built, and we were there when the students moved in. I was contacted by BBC Lincolnshire and Look North, and with their reporting pushing the story along too – the week culminated in me being asked to go on 5Live to talk about it.

I’m sure I’m REALLY popular in the administration ranks of the university. Note to self: don’t ask them for references.

Didn’t win an award
Speaking of The Linc, we were nominated for a BBC Innovation Award for our General Election coverage in 2010 which involved blogging, video, audio, and live things. We didn’t win, but you know, one for the CV.

Continued being a media whore
When I see a story break like the Playstation Network hack, there’s a small part of me which bets whether I’ll get a phone call about it to talk on TV. It broke at about 11pm – and within a few hours it was mentioned on the Sky News ticker. I thought “I’ll get a call, about lunchtime to go on in the evening, that’s what they’ve done the last few times”.

The next morning I was woken at 8am by a phone call and was on air with Eamonn Holmes at 8:30 from my bedroom via Skype. And from then, someone from BBC World Service was watching and I got invited on for half an hour. It’s good fun to search Twitter for what people say afterwards. Apparently, of course I’m a gamer as I’m so pale and need to go outside.

However surreal being on in the morning was didn’t really compare to a discussion about gaming addiction on Sky a few months later. Sky sent a satellite van round to my house, so I was sat on my sofa with a furry mike between my knees and a cameraman knelt on the floor talking on THE NEWS. Whilst rubbishing the subject of ‘games are addictive they are evil let’s ignore proper psychology on this to just attack the target of the week’ is quite important to do, it’s slightly worrying what news resources can be put towards me rambling. Oh and filling stuff on a normally light Saturday morning.

Went viral (kind of, sort of, what a horrible word that is)
I had two fairly big hits this year online: a summary video of Microsoft at E3 and its Kinect filled glory got 75,000 views on YouTube.

My favourite of the two, the BBC Three generator (which isn’t a shameless ripoff of the Daily Mail generator) has had 10,000 hits and got linked in a Comment is Free article on the Guardian. I’ve also enjoyed seeing people who work in TV start following me on Twitter, but it also led to the best email I received all year as someone currently working as a series producer on a show I probably watch more than any other emailed me saying they loved it.

Now I just need to come up with more funny things. No pressure.

Did things for money
STRONG HINT: You know, I do some work for money occasionally. And from May I’ll finish my degree and be open for job offers and more freelance work and can TOTALLY be emailed at hello@jonathancresswell.co.uk.

I’ve had two commissions from C1 Media for school related projects. Firstly, Creation Sensation, a website to showcase all sort of creative media work from a primary school which features a whole bunch of original cartoons for the site and a fun comic maker which has been used in class. The second was Junior News, a news site written and for primary school children for a one-week turnaround.

Helped organise a conference
I’ve spent the last two and a half years working on journalism degree. Despite the amount of things I’ve done on the student paper, in my course and work around the department, the thing I’m most proud of at university… was outside of that.

I helped put together DevXS: a three-day event in November with 200 students from across the country coming together for a 28 hour hack-a-thon challenge to encourage use of open data, building new things and making higher ed a better place. My main job was running the media team of three of my friends and fellow journalism students as we filmed and documented the event, but became involved in brainstorming, organising and helping to run the event. You can watch a bunch of those videos on YouTube.

Hopefully we inspired those people, allowed them to meet like minded developers, taught them a few things and got them exciting about building cool stuff – and in years to come those people will have done amazing things because of it.

I’m working on a 10 minute and a 30 minute film of the whole event that will hopefully come out in January.

…so, 2011 was a bit busy then. And that’s leaving out being stolen by girls at MCM Expo when dressed as the Doctor, discussing my tweed jacket with Tim Westwood and finding a Hopping Road machine in Skegness. Hopefully I’ll have done at least half as much in 2012 (oh yeah, and finished my degree, keep forgetting about that).

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