Riding a (good) viral event

The word "virus" in relation to computers started out as a bad thing. But now, with blogs, to have something you uploaded "go viral" is a huge thrill. I'm getting a small taste of that now, and it gives me insight into the world view of my son and fellow students. On the Sunday before the CBC TV interview which brought Melanie Coles' "Where On Earth Is Waldo" project to the attention of Brazil, and eventually the world, I put together the above video based on a slide show that I made as a an assignment for class. I uploaded it to YouTube when she got on TV the next day. In the one week that it has been up there, as of today 700 people have looked at it. That is a whole movie theatre worth of people. (And if you click on it now, it will be 701!) As a comparison in the year that I have been uploading videos there, I have had just over 800 views of all the other 12 videos.

So now I am right in the middle of being involved in a good story, and, because we live in a time-compressed world, now is the time tell it. Today I'm going into school to use the sound studio to do an interview with Waldo to upload to YouTube as fast as I can - hopefully before Monday (April 14) when Melanie has a national radio interview on "Q". See my postings below on April 10 and April 3 for more details and a link to her site. She has embedded a link to my blog, where, before the word got out, I had posted an article looking at her work in the context of other art. I subscribe to Google Analytics and I have been monitoring the echo effect of people coming over from Melanie's blog to check out mine.

She is using analytics to monitor her site too, and we both noticed that the sudden peaking flattened the prior lines on our graphs. Her blog was getting 1500 hits AN HOUR yesterday, whereas my peak was 90, the day that Brazil found Waldo. But for me it is a thrill. And I am beginning to understand how seductive it is to check how you are doing on the internet. So this has been a good COABC moment of insight.

Another COABC insight is the sense of urgency to put more material up there to meet the demand, out of a sense that we might be hitting Minute 7.5 of our Andy Warhol quota. I have looked around me in the lab during this end of term crunch, and know the solution to time compression is to find shortcuts. Here is where I trip over my ten thumbs, which feel very big right now! I had enough knowledge to be there doing the scanning, but not enough to know that a shortcut I took was going to have exactly the catastrophic effect I keep assuring COABC's is not likely to happen if they just take the risk and thrash around a bit. Long story short, I found myself without access to any of the source files I had so carefully collected during my role as Melanie's video documenter throughout the project. I knew I was vulnerable -- that my external drive was old, and was suddenly being carried around a lot. But I needed to be able to move all those files somewhere else. And the problem with backing up large amounts of data, is that you need a bigger container. I had already bought myself a larger external drive, but to do all the formatting and so on I needed to either take the time to figure it out, or organize myself to ask for help. So it was sitting on my table, stlll in the packaging, when the one it was supposed to replace took a dive. Murphy's law had kicked in, as it tends to do when you are busy and it feels like there is no time.

So that was the bad news. But the good news is that I DID know enough all along to be burning DVD's of the Waldo source files and giving them to Melanie. So I actually had that "backup" that computer repair guys always ironically ask you for. And for bonus points, it was "offsite". Though getting it back involved Melanie hiding the disks that night in a hole in a wall next to her place of work. Unlike Paris Hilton, we both had to interrupt our fame to go in to our part-time jobs. I had a cell phone moment like one sometimes overhears late at night on buses, as Melanie gave me directions to "it" and my side of the conversation must have sounded like a drug deal! Bottom line, today I have the files, tomorrow (please God) I upload a new video to YouTube to catch the wave of CBC listeners on Monday. Wish me luck!

Live and Around The World With Computers - by Michael Godin

I first became involved with computers back in the mid-80s when I was still working at A&M Records as V.P. of A&R (Artist and Repertoire). Computers first became introduced there with a big main frame for all of the financial aspects of the company, sales, inventory, recording budgets, etc., and then personal computers for the various departments. Over the subsequent years, I became involved with computers, but for mainly office type functions.

However in 1997, I came of age with computers and the Internet when I started an online oldies radio show, Treasure Island Oldies. In those days, listening to music on the Internet with a 28.8 kbps modem was almost the equivalent of having to hold two tin cans attached end to end by a piece of string. If you spoke into one can and both ends were held to keep the string taut, the person at the other end would hear that other person's voice. However, dialup was susceptible to the 'loose string' syndrome, and you often lost the signal. Since those days in the last century, my show has grown with the technology of better audio streaming technology, higher bandwidth and much greater stability.

I host the occasional video feed of the show live from the studio; a chance for the listener to play voyeur into a radio studio and watch the dj putting on the show. The show is available in stereo in high speed broadband in both Real Media and Windows Media formats, and is heard all over the world with listeners in the far reaches of the Earth. I receive a lot of email from those listeners and I am also able to see the various countries where listeners and visitors are from who come to the website. Another cool aspect is that the live show is archived for later listening on demand. As the show is live from 6 to 10 p.m. Pacific time Sunday evenings, many international listeners can hear the show at a more convenient time for them.

The show is extremely interactive, with a library of over 12,000 titles (so not many repeats of Pretty Woman and Unchained Melody every 20 minutes), a live chat room where the "nuts in the hut" hang out together every week for four hours of music and sharing the live show together. There are instant email requests and a 24/7 voicemail request line.

May 4th marks the 11th Anniversary of Treasure Island Oldies, a passion of mine for all these years, and a labour of love, with the odd bit of income from text ads from AdBrite and Google Ads, and a handful of listeners who "subscribe" to the show for $4.95 a month via PayPal. But I don't and have never doine this show for the money. If that were the cae, it would have ceased years ago. I do it because I must, need to, am driven to do it - I love it. It's my artistic release. I love sharing great music and the memories that go along with it.

What I am most proud of is how this show remains my prime creative passion and outlet, and the fact that it is now one of the longest running oldies radio shows in the world on the Internet. Do a Google search for any number of phrases like oldies radio show, oldies blogs, rare oldies, lost treasures oldies, etc. You'll be surprised with the results.

Since September of 2007, I got tired of either no replies or negative responses from networks to carry my show, so I established my own private syndication network and apart from being online on the mediaontap network, the show is now also heard on FM, AM and other Online radio stations across the USA in Georgia, New Hampshire, Indiana, Washington State, Massachusetts, Texas, and New York; in the UK in Manchester and London, and in Sweden in Gothenberg. This week I have a brand new station joining the network, 102.7 FM CIWS Whistle Radio in Whitchurch-Stoufville, just north of Toronto. They only launched a few weeks ago and they are now my first radio station in my own country, Canada!

So yes, I sure have come of age since computers and in particular, the Internet.

Waldo project getting global attention!

Three days ago, Melanie and a television crew did a CBC TV Interview on the rooftop. The part I liked the best was when she put her hand over the lens and said "Don't photograph the rooftops!"

Next day her website WhereOnEarthIsWaldo.com got 4,000 hits from Brazil, where the project had been covered by both TV and radio. The day after that (which was only yesterday!) Melanie found herself cutting class and requesting extensions on her due dates at school in order to do interviews with media - not only Canadian but also from the US and the UK. She tells the story of her surprise ride into fame on her site.




This morning two local newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and 24 Hours both had a photo of Waldo on the front page.

We were really glad that I had a short 1.5 minute video based on my slide presentation on Melanie's project to our grad class already done. The day the news broke I uploaded it to YouTube. Here is a link
"The Making of 'Where On Earth Is Waldo'".


Next for me is to make a second YouTube video based on the premise of an interview between myself and Waldo, about how it feels to be a famous quarry (again). Here is a photo of myself and Waldo, after we had finished laying him out.

The cover story yesterday in the newspaper "24 hours" concluded "The popularity of the project, which caled for 15 friends working 16 hours in a lower Eastside studio, proves anything is possible." As one of those 15 -- who became involved right from September when Melanie first described her very simple, oddball idea -- I know that, hands down, this has been the most fun I've had at art school. As a COABC I've been hesitant to come forward to work with groups, and have tended to isolate myself. A lot of that was due to self-imposed fear and shame about my slowness on the uptake with the technical tools. I am so glad that Melanie and I were part of a small mutual support group on our grad projects. She welcomed me as a collaborator, and I can see that my participation has been useful, and that I did bring a different but also useful set of strengths.

And now I'm off to work on that video! This coming Monday, Melanie gets interviewed on "Q", the CBC Radio One show. I hope to have something up there by then!

Where On Earth Is Waldo?

As I describe in my profile, as a "Came of Age Before Computers" artist I rather reluctantly switched into media arts when I became convinced that the innovative art for the foreseeable future was going to involve digital material and be accessible through the Internet. On of my friends during this, my final year as a student of Media Arts, is Melanie Coles. We have been helping each other out with our grad projects, and so I've had the delightful experience of working with her on hers. Her work is a good example of interesting art which uses the internet as the medium, just as other people use paint. Though she uses paint too....


I was one of many volunteers who helped her to paint a huge "Waldo" and hide it on an undisclosed rooftop in Vancouver. It is now there, cheerfully looking heavenwards, waiting for the next Google Earth "fly-by" when a satellite photo will be taken.



Last night we sat side by side in a computer lab at school as she was looking for the first time at aerial shots taken from a helicopter. To see the shots from the helicopter, follow the attached link to Where On Earth Is Waldo her blog about the project. We have already found the rooftop on Google Earth, and have found that the level of detail of the zoom showed a barbeque right next to where her Waldo Painting is now located. When will the photo of Waldo show up on Google Earth? Nobody knows. They schedule regular updates of their photos, especially in urban areas like Vancouver, but have a policy of not disclosing when they will be aiming their camera at a particular area. Possibly because there is an increasing interest in projects like Melanie's where objects are being created to be seen from a Google-eye view.



As an art student, Melanie has deliberately situated her Waldo within a history of land art that is on a scale and located in a way as to be aimed at the eye of a deity rather than to be seen by those on the ground. The huge images carved into the chalk on hillsides in Britain stretched back to ancient times, long before it was visalized that people could ever fly. In July 2007, as part of the launch of the Simpsons movie, a biodegradable Homer was painted next to a famous chalk fertility symbol called the "Cerne Abbas Giant". Here is a link to the BBC coverage about how local pagans "Wish for Rain to Wash Away Homer"

The huge, donut-waving Homer is part of the growing body of "Google Earth" art work which is intended to be experienced indirectly through the lens of satellite photos. Some real-world artworks, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa as seen by Google Earth can be found easily by typing the name into the search. The link I gave is to a searching a popular website called "Sightseer on Google Earth" which facilitates looking at monuments from a different point of view. It was only a short step beyond looking at real monuments for artists to start doctoring digital photos to add content. An example is a series by a group of Australian collective of artists and designers called "The Glue Society". The example shown here is a Google-eye view of the parting of the Red Sea. Here is a link to an online article "The Bible according to Google Earth"





Those of us who relate to Google as primarily a work or research tool sometimes do not hear about how deeply it is becoming embedded in our culture, especially for those who grew up with it. There is a growing, highly ironic, theory growing in Vancouver 24-hour internet coffee shops about "Is Google God", since it seems to possess many of the powers that have been ascribed to a deity -- for example "Sees all" and "Knows all". There is a tongue-in-the-cheek website called The Church of Google which offers eight proofs that Google is indeed God. I would be interested if anyone who grew up in the days before Google cares to comment about what role Google has taken in their lives.

One less "oops". A success story.

I have an ambivalent relationship with my cell-phone. I cancelled my "land line" a few years ago, without regret. But currently I prefer the simplest, least committed type of relationship with the my cell phone carrier-- a "prepaid" account -- analogous to living together as opposed to being married. I pay by the minute, from the moment a connection is made. Needless to say, I try to avoid making unnecessary calls -- let alone unintentional ones.

How can one be surprised at having initiated an outgoing call? It is very easy to do on my phone, due to what seems to me to be a design flaw in the placement of the keys. The keys are so small that I often find myself pressing the adjacent key rather than the one that I intend. The red key is used for hanging up a call and for turning off the unit. I sometimes accidentally hit the #3 key which is right below it. One function of key #3 is for speed-dialing. So sometimes, after thinking I have turned my phone off, I have heard a tiny little mystified "hello?" coming from my pocket.

This has proven embarrassing as well as expensive. I partially fixed the problem by getting into the habit of immediately changing the speed dial assignment of any new entry to my phone book from #3 to something else. That works fine, except that my phone just cannot leave that #3 slot empty, and automatically tries to assign it again the next time.

I've just come up with a solution which I think is fairly elegant -- I assigned the #3 as the speed dial for my cell phone company's customer service line. The only free calls I can make are to them. And since this company also provided my poorly designed phone, I think it is fitting that my accidental calls are now going out to "Andrea", their automated robot voice. I smile when I hear that tinny little voice calling out of my pocket to tell me "Your call is important to us!" She can't even make any money for her company out of my mistake!

Shutdown Day 2008 is on for May

Good news! Computer Shutdown Day is a "go" for this year, though this year it will be later in the spring -- sometime in May. They are taking the time to build the event without burning themselves out! I'll pass the date information on when I see the announcement.

In the meantime, the stirring of this year's activity is like a bear coming out of hibernation. I found to my delight when I looked there that the event began here in Canada. The organizer Denis Bystrov is from Montreal. Together with another Montrealer, Ashutosh Rajeka, he has expanded upon last year's success and registered as a Quebec non-profit society to promote the theme of finding a more balanced life. Both career software developers, they describe themselves as "first hand victims of excessive use of computer related technology". So there is a lot of common ground between the issues that I look at here and those being addressed by events like this.

I plan to do a small video about my experience with last year's event. So stay tuned!

In the meantime, here again is the very funny video they made to introduce the concept for the first Shutdown Day, last year. It is called "Alternate Uses for Your Laptop".



Update in 2013: Wikipedia article on Shutdown Day

Pirates of the Seabus

In my last posting I stated my intention that I would try to be one of the ones to show up when the call went out for people to get out of their houses and do harmless goofy things in public spaces. I have been monitoring The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) website for their next call to action. The idea for an event called "Pirates of the Seabus" was proposed, but then the expectation was for interested people like me to pass the word through our own groups. I asked four friends, but none of whom could make it. By the time Friday evening came, my energy was low, and I was on the verge of changing my mind. But my friend Juan, equally tired, had managed to get through his equally busy day and he still intended to get there. He was motivated by the fun he'd had at the Halloween Party on the Skytrain, and it had been his enthusiasm that made me so curious. As soon as I got into the atmosphere I got energized. I am practicing my pirate's "Arrrgh" with him in the final frame of the video below.



This blog's theme is about the issues that arise when seniors get stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. So how does my participation in a flash mob fit in? I see two points of connection.

One of my fears, as a COABC, is about the possibility of social isolation for those who use computers extensively. I worry that online social networking might become a substitute for face-to-face encounters. But my fellow pirates, on the basis of information spread as a Facebook event, enthusiastically launched themselves off on an adventure in the real world. They played with identity using real, cheesy costumes, and interacted face-to-face with strangers. Here, I've seen a concrete example of how Internet based social networking can connect people into "First Life" (as opposed to "Second Life"). A key element in the success was spontaneity and low barriers to participation. Being tired at the end of the day is enough of an inhibitor! The timely spreading of the news needed instant, easy communication to make it worth our while.

A second COABC reflection upon my participation in this event is about my surprise today in finding that, as of the time I'm writing this, my video is the first photographic material to be uploaded to the VPSN Facebook site. I tend to assume that I am the least tech-savvy person in a group -"ten thumbs" technologically. But after my time as a media student, I am seeing that I have gained hard-won technical skills that might be setting me apart from other people who came of age before computers. I not only took a gig worth of material on my digital camera, but had facility in using it -- for example, switching to recording sound using the "sound memo" function when I didn't have enough memory for any more movies. In one of my classes last term, I was one of the few who passed the Apple Certification exam for level one in Final Cut Pro, the industry standard for editing movies on computers. I now am teaching seniors how to use digital cameras, and am getting quite good at helping them move from mystification into confidence.

Last night I put together the little movie you see above, and then uploaded it to YouTube and FaceBook and here on my blog. Since I had other commitments in the four days since the Pirate event, I was sure that I was going to be so late in contributing my material that everyone would yawn and say "been there, done that". People might still yawn, but it will be from boredom, not competition. To my surprise, not only have I produced a pretty okay movie, but I'm ahead of the crowd. Go figger!

Will there really be another Shutdown Day? Can you plan a viral event?

Two postings here back in March and April 2007 recorded my excitement at the Internet-based Shutdown Day on March 24, 2007. A site encouraged people to turn off their computers, and do something else, just to see what it felt like. More than 50,000 people responded. My second article in April, entitled "Shutdown Day - the Day After" expressed disappointment that the majority of people reported that they "sex" and "computer use" as what they had done (sometimes in combination). Even at the time, I recognized that it might be a "generational thing" on my part to be so surprised. I myself had spent the day with a friend participating in a haiku writing contest. I've been checking the official site periodically and have been googling around, without finding activity yet on Shutdown Day 2008. I now am asking myself -- why does it need to happen again? Isn't it okay that it happened once, and that I had a day that got me thinking?

On Shutdown day there had been simultaneous flash mob pillow fights in a number of cities, including Vancouver. With very little lead time, a word-of-mouth announcement went out, boosted by emails, cell phones and messaging, inviting people to drop what they were doing and show up with concealed pillows. Although nobody called ME, the following video taken on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery shows a very engaging alternative activity to being hunched over a computer. Two viral events in the same spirit on the same day. Coincidence? I think not. Repeatable? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm starting to get it that the nature of a viral event is that it gets set in motion, and then it is what it is.



Vancouver | Flash Mob Pillow Fight 2007, Feather Extravaganza from ardenstreet on Vimeo.

And now I am intrigued -- a flash mob wannabe, waiting for my first opportunity to check it out. Since last year I've become much more comfortable about both the short lead-up and quick wind-down of viral events. In fact, I've joined a Facebook group called "Flash Mob Vancouver". I am now poised to leap into that loop, and to be ready to pocket my palm pilot and go show up. Whether or not the Shutdown Day website fires up again and gives me a place to report, I can move on and apply that experience towards another step. I'm ready and waiting to shut down my computer and show up for the next "international day of fluff" -- 2008 World Wide Pillow Fight Club 3.0. And I'll report here.