140 characters is the brainchild of some lovely folks at The School of Communications Art 2.0.

The idea is to get a load of user generated content and tweets and make a live improv show along the lines of Who’s Line Is it Anyway? Neil Mullarkey (who is quite famous you know) is hosting the show – and he and his improv team will be working off suggestions provided by Twitter.

Follow @140characterstv

It should be rather interesting. Not sure if anyone has tried such a thing before? I was watching Frozen Planet and the twitter stream was so popular that it was whizzing down the tweetdeck – you couldn’t keep up! So that scenario is perhaps not best for mass scale social telly participation. Mind you if you just used twitter.com and not tweetdeck you manually refresh so might be easier to follow. Any how I digress – back to the main event.

They say:

“On 7th November we’re filming our pilot show as part of Internet Week Europe. There’ll be a human audience, a pixelated one on the web, a team of improv geniuses and your input to feed their funny glands.

Neil Mullarkey is one of our 450+ mentors. Our students know him as their ‘improv mentor’.Others know him for bringing improvised comedy to television in ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway?’, or for appearing alongside his former comedy partner, Mike Myers, in two Austin Powers movies, or for performing alongside the likes of Paul Merton as a Comedy Store Player. Neil and his improv team will be working off suggestions provided by Twitter.

The event is going to be filmed and streamed live online at http://www.140characters.tv/, so anyone in the world can influence the direction of the show.

BUT ONLY 140 PEOPLE CAN WATCH THE SHOW BEING FILMED

Tickets are limited. Book now to avoid disappointment.

CAN’T MAKE IT TO LONDON? WATCH THE SHOW LIVE ONLINE

AT 7PM ON MONDAY 7TH NOVEMBER

www.140Characters.tv

Tickets to watch the show being filmed are available here – http://140chars.eventbrite.com Follow @SCA2Dean for the URL to watch the show streamed online live.”

We are working with Nice Agency, Edelman and Get Additive to make this happen. Wish us luck!

We’re excited to be working with the Arts Council and BBC Academy, who have joined forces on a project called Digital Capacity for the Arts, which offers training and guidance for arts organisations around creating and distributing content and reaching audiences via mobile, IPTV and online platforms.

There are a series of practical seminars and workshops until August 2012 and a growing base of online resources, including webcasts, short films, presentations and podcasts.

You can watch all the seminar sessions from the Seminar on Audio and Audiovisual Content online here:
http://digitalcapacity.artscouncil.org.uk/videos-seminar-2/ plus a ‘Seminar in 200 seconds’ highlights video that the Kinura crew edited in lightning time.

The next event is in London in October, and it’s all about Creative Use of Archives

The twitter hashtag is #digicaparts if you want to keep up to date.

http://videos.thinkingdigital.co.uk/

I imagine there’s going to be plenty of comprehensive follow ups after ThinkingDigital2010 last week. There’s a good post already here from Michael J Bell (aka digitaljoseph).

I was trying to think how I felt about the conference, still buzzing from it over the weekend, and decided that ‘outrageously uplifting’ was a fair summation. It’s hard to convey the cool atmosphere of the Livecast lounge where I hung out with fellow digerati and even got a free shoulder rub!

You’ll be able to watch videos from the event soon. And the twitter comments are worth a butcher’s if you weren’t there – follow #TDC10.  Also – I’ve uploaded some photos from TDC10 on flickr.

Here’s a few things I learned/realised at TDC10:

I need to play more

You don’t need vast sums of money to create something worthwhile

I have a deep voice, and this is potentially a good thing in terms of ‘sound business’ and self-assertion

Visualising data in new ways is revealing, energising and helpful to indviduals and orgs

CAPTCHAs are helping to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows – for FREE

If you get creative (and get off your a**) you can create top notch media using cheap(-ish) kit and ‘amplify’ your message fantastically exponentially with social media

The trivial/inexpensive can have massive power in terms of recognition and customer loyalty

If we don’t have stories life becomes inauthentic

Diamond Shreddies are a genius invention

Also – a few book tips from the speakers:

Pull
Bursts
Predictably Irrational
Obliquity
Nudge

So now to follow up on all the business cards I gathered.

And will post as soon as videos go online.

The discussion covers all kinds of things – creative approaches to content, audiences as creators, communities and community ‘tv’, extending the online video experience into the ‘real world’, authentic experiences. We went a bit off on a tangent from the official seminar synopsis, but hey, we’re creative so we’re allowed. Have a watch or listen to this anyway. Let me know what you think.

You can get to the rest of the videos from this conference, and others on StreamingMedia.com

There’s some great notes below for those in the creative indsutries, taken from the spin-off ‘unconference’ that happened instantaneously during the C&binet Forum, driven by twitter with the hashtag #outofthecloset – so you can check out the tweets for yourself.

Claire Reddington from the Pervasive Media Studio and Jaya Chakrabati, MD of Nameless have most kindly written up notes. As food for thought or call to action, these words are worth a read. With funding cuts to the creative industries and tough times for small businesses, there has never been more need for collaboration. But how do we achieve this? What can or should C&binet be doing in future? How do we best learn from each other and get government to listen and put money where their mouth is? Do we need more support to develop leadership skills or understand legal issues?

The debate continues…

a C&binet unconference (Jaya’s notes)

Disruption and curiosity: #outofthecloset unconference (Claire’s notes)

[image above courtesy of Duncan Cumming - licensed under Creative Commons)

I’ll be hosting a panel called Creativity Bytes at Streaming Media Europe on 15th October at 4pm. Joining me will be Andy Bell from Mint Digital, Caroline Bottomley from Radar Music Videos, Alex Morrison of Cogapp and Noostar, and Dr Martin Zimper from Zurich University of the Arts.

Here’s the synposis:

“What can we learn from the way that creative businesses, artists and educators use online video? This panel session will look at the importance of digital archives for creative and educational projects; creative approaches to content production; collaborative projects and out of the ordinary strategies that use streaming video to create new narratives and deliver cross-platform events in the real and virtual world.”

Just a few things to cover in an hour then…

Check out the conference programme now at StreamingMedia.com

He makes a great point in his essay when he writes, “It is no longer enough to tell a great story in linear fashion…What is important…is the discussion and conversation about the story itself on internet platforms, in chat rooms, on blogs and in social networks.” You can read the full article here. And you can see him in action here, (in German).