Hugh Garry

Storytelling tips from Ira Glass

There are few better storytellers in the world of radio than This American Life's colossal host Ira Glass. If you're not familiar with This American Life then I suggest you subscribe to the podcast and feed on its wonderful archive of amazing stories. 

So as a huge fan of the man, and the show, I was delighted to stumble across this great interview in which he discusses his craft in great detail. some great advice in there for anyone in the business of telling stories regardless of the medium or platform the story is made for.

Part 1:

"OK. So you have the building block which is the actual sequence of actions, the anecdote part of it. This thing happened and then this thing and then this thing. That's one building block. And the other big building block, your other tool, is that you have a moment of reflection. And by that I mean at some point somebody's got to say here's why the hell you're listening to this story. Like here's the point of this story. Here's the bigger something that we're driving at. Here's why I'm wasting your time with all this".

Part 2:

"You have to be really a killer about getting rid of the boring parts and going right to the parts that get into your heart. You just have to be ruthless if anything is going to be good. Things that are really good are good because people are being really, really tough".

Part 3:

"And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves".

Part 4:

"And so we've all seen really bad videos done by people who talk like people on TV. Just like when I was first on the radio I just tried to talk like somebody on the radio. And of course everything is going to be more compelling, it's just like one of the laws of broadcasting, everything will be more compelling the more you just talk like a human being and just talk like yourself".

The BBC: In the business of 'Social Objects' since 1922

Had a pleasant evening in the company of Hugh McLeod and Mark Earls discussing Social Objects. It came at the end of day in which I'd given my last departmental talk at the BBC. Earlier Jem Stone had done a great turn about the history of the BBC and Social Networks. 

In amongst all the conversation around 'big brands not getting social objects' it occurred to me that the BBC has been in the business of social objects since its inception in 1922. If you ever need to convince a brand that social objects work tell them to take a good look at the BBC. 

We originally brought people together around a wireless, then the TV and gave them something to talk about. From the first radio broadcasts to the Coronations, to the first Wimbledon and FA Cups shown on TV, Desert Island Discs, The Reith Lectures and Radio 1's Roadshows and Big Weekends, we gave people a reason to connect with others. 

Around the watercooler, down the pub, in the playground people would share, debate or bond over content that challenged, provoked and stimulated intelligent minds. Then came the internet and social media which made talking and sharing a hell of a lot easier - but we know that the tools are never interesting, it's the social later that sits upon them that is. Thankfully our ROI is not measured in the number of followers we have on Twitter and Facebook - and never will - we measure our success in engagement.

Because we focus on people and not profit the idea of social objects comes easy to us. We have always placed a high value on the conversation that brings audiences together rather than being obsessed with the brand to customer schtik that other 'dinosaur' organisations continue to invest their energies in. 

With an eye on the future, things are looking good too. As our archive grows and we continue chop all our content into easily found shareable chunks people with find new friends and conversations around the objects we throw out there. And like the Kula Ring these objects they share will continue to come second to the ceremony that surrounds the act of giving and receiving. 

When amazing people work together...

Great things happen. I'm really lucky to work with some incredible people. Last week there were a few examples of this happening in my world.

The first was something rather brilliant that happened on Thursday night in a studio somewhere near Radio 1. Radio 1 exec producers Rob Lewis and Piers Bradford have been amongst the most forward thinking radio producers in all my time at the station, embracing digital and continually smashing through the boundaries. Take last week's U CTRL KATY as an example.

When offered a considerable amount of time with Katy Perry they could have opted for a tried and tested formula, a safe bet, something like a co-hosted show. But no. With nothing more than a few days to organise and some rather brief conversations with myself, Sam Bailey and Will Kinder a plan was hatched to take her off air, put her in a white room with a webcam, then let Twitter, Facebook and SMS control her.

So just let me recap there. Given the option of having her on air for an hour with a DJ talking to her, or taking her off air, putting her in front of a potentially smaller audience in front of a webcam and allowing the twisted minds of our audience dictate what she does they chose the latter. There should be medals handed out for decisions like that. It's what makes what we do at Radio 1 so exciting.

Sam Bailey's excellent project management skills were well and truly put to the test. Having previously project managed Scott Cam this might have looked like a walk in the park, and he certainly made it look that way as he talked me through his work flow on his iPad - or perhaps he was just showing off. In radio sometimes things have a habit of jumping up and biting your ass when you least expect it and if he ever writes the blog post he's promised then I'm sure he'll explain that 'a walk in the park' this was not.

Excellent joint effort between on air and online producing a moment of 'Radio' that you are unlikely to stumble across anywhere else on that dial.

Music Hackday London

Over the weekend I attended Music Hackday London. Over 200 hackers worked together quite literally around the clock making some really innovative apps. You can see the full list and try some of them out here.

As reliable as ever my colleagues David Hooper and Patrick Sinclair produced a couple of humourous hacks using the Essential Mix and Playlist data. Patricks's Essential Mix Glow Sticks tracks all users mouse movements (converted to glow sticks) on the Essential Mix page. David's Playlist Squirrel is a game that allows you to discover new music on the playlist with the help of everyone's favourite woodland animal.

TrackDropper from Yves Raimond on Vimeo.

I thought Yves Raimond's Track Dropper was brilliant. It is like geocaching with tunes. It's something I've been wanting to do with our content for some time. The closest I've come was at Big Weekend this summer when I dropped a load of links to shows from the festival around Bangor via Foursquare.

Another one worth a mention (all of them are worth a mention but it's getting late) was Earth Destroyers. Using the Songkick API it looks at the journeys travelled by bands on tour and maps out their route from gig to gig. Some bands plan their tour in a way that ensures they fly as little as possible, whilst others happily zigzag their way across the planet giving little if any thought to the amount of C02 produced as a result. This app lets to does all the maths for you. Very simple. Very clever. Stand up U2 and bow those heads in shame.

Rewarding the Love Pt. 2

Earlier this summer I blogged about 'Rewarding the Love' of your audience. As a broadcaster one of the best things about the emergence of social media is that it allows us to find what is being said about our output and respond. Our audience have grown up listening to us via a box formerly know as 'The Radio'. Now we can listen back to them and when we respond the results can be amazing.

And sometimes dangerous.

At this weekend's Reading Festival we delivered some 'Reading Presents' for our followers on Facebook and Twitter. We wanted to connect our listeners who didn't get tickets for Reading with the bands that they love. The idea was that we'd give them a present to make up for them not being there. More often than not the present would involve their favourite band carrying out a request they made to us via Twitter or Facebook. Sometimes we'd just surprise them by giving them a present for just tweeting about us.

You can see the kind of requests we got in the video featuring Fred Durst, Biffy Clyro, Arcade Fire, Paramore, Klaxons, Frank Turner, Paramore and a shed load of others.

In the last post I described it as being like a digital autograph, but having given it more thought these have much more personal value than a scribble on some paper. To begin with they are shareable and not confined to a dusty book you bring out once a year. They have much more kudos because they are 'real', they're pictures or videos that are connected as part of a bigger conversation, not just paper memory. Also, there is the WTF factor; that is actually your hero in that film/photo doing exactly what you asked BBC Radio 1 to get him/her to do via Twitter/Facebook. How does that happen from a bedroom in Bristol?

As you can imagine people's heads were exploding when they got their's whilst some people retweeted and retweeted and retweeted when they worked out what was going on. Their thinking being that the more they talked about us the more chance they had of being picked. Jealousy is a powerful tool.

Finally, the bands themselves retweeted what we were doing to their fanbases, which is not far of 2 million followers in the case of Fred Durst. Thanks Fred

Well done to Kate Lawrence, Laura-May Coope and Will Kinder who worked their socks off this weekend delivering these presents to our followers. You made a smaller group of people happier than we ever could have imagined in the days before social media.

TEDx, Me and Mobile Phones

Here's my TEDx North talk from last year. I'm rattling on about why old media should look at how young people are using mobile devices to capture their lives and learn a thing or two. My colleagues are bored of me going on about it, but I thought you my find it interesting.

It became obvious whilst making Shoot The Summer that certain old assumptions about 'perceived' quality no longer hold and that there was lots to learn from the new masses of mobile film makers. I used the example of how the arrival of the Box Brownie at the start of the last century made us a republic of photographers giving insights to the fine art photographers of the day.

As one of the BBC's core values is 'Audiences are at the heart of everything we do' I strongly believe we should continue to encourage and learn from our audience. More importantly, as a public funded media organisation, we should play a bigger role as an enabler. My former boss Dan Heaf has been delivering amazing public service over at 4iP enabling unpolished digital ideas from it's audience to become real, profitable businesses.

Charles Leadbeater described the current media landscape as being like a group of pebbles on a beach at the Picnic conference in 2008. He said the beach is made up of big boulders and tiny pebbles. His point being that the big boulders are established media organisations (BBC, ITV, Sky and Channel 4) and the pebbles are the millions of user generated clips on Youtube, and soon the pebbles would rise and eventually cover the big boulders.

Somewhere in my idealistic mind I like to tell myself that the BBC would not let that happen because we would enable those pebbles to become medium sized stones by encouraging and enabling. We would turn the kid making films with his mobile into a small media company through a combination of projects like Shoot the Summer and 4iP, leaving the landscape a perfect balance of every shape and size of pebble. I made that argument in October 2008, but sadly, as we all know, the BBC is rapidly becoming a different place than it was then and the likelyhood of my vision becoming a reality sinking quicker than a badly skimmed fat stone.

SXSW: Maps, Books, Spimes and Paper (quotes and links)

The Internet is situated in the real world, and interesting experiences have to blend physical and digital. Mixing new technology - Arduinos, GPS, RFID, QRcodes - and old (web, paper), this session presented examples of the recently possible future, and the lessons learnt.

Chris Heathcote (anti-mega.com)

"Screens are becoming mundane. Digital is natural, not a special thing anymore".

"Getting off screen and back to the real physical world " post digital"

"The recently possible new media".

"Let's just try stuff and see what works, and let's try it really quickly".

"Curation, Criticism and Craft are the 3 things Google can't replicate".

"Most people prefer to pay for products, not services".

http://newcurator.com/

Local London

As It Is Today

James Bridle (http://booktwo.org/)

"Books have that feeling of permanence".

"One thing digital hasn't been able to do yet is to create souvenirs".

"Something changes when we start thinking about designing stuff for time, rather than for a specific format".

"One thing the great painters didn't do when photography came along was to say f*ck it, guess we'll go get lawyers".

"Cameras are not just picture-takers, but digitizers. You just snap and upload".

SXSW Field Notes

Mike Migurski (Stamen)

"Openstreetmap.org was the only publicly-available street level during Tehran demonstrations last year".

"Walking papers. print maps out, scribble notes on them and then scan them back in".

"SheevaPlug is a whole server in the size of a wall wart".

Ultra Mapping 

Sheeva Plug

Ben Terret (Berg)

"Analogue friction in producing digital to print objects gives it value, sense of craft and endeavor".

"Moving past digital infatuation and analogue nostalgia".

"There are magnificent bits of infrastructure just lying around".

"We've broken your business, now we want your machines".

Newspaper Club

The Postcode Paper

the most fun Ben's had all year from russelldavies on Vimeo.

Games and Radio

One of the most amazing things about working at the BBC is being privileged enough to be involved in 'firsts' and this weekend's first ever Big Gaming Weekend on Radio 1 ranks highly amongst my favourites.
 
Games have become such a huge part of our audiences' lives and I've been looking at how they can fit into what we do in Audio & Music Interactive. A key thing I found is we need to know more about how to talk about gaming on-air. I'll be honest, it's not been easy. Non-gaming producers have been resistant to the idea of talking about games on-air. Their worries about isolating the non-gaming audience are to some extent understandable.

But the UK gaming community is huge and hugely popular amongst Radio 1's target audience. For me, not talking about games is like not talking about what was on TV last night or what films are on in the cinema. It's a no brainer for Radio 1.

Thankfully recent changes in gaming have allowed DJs to engage the audience in ways that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. There's been a dramatic changes in the demographics of gamers due to the rise in casual gaming. The growth in online gaming, UGC and the rise of 'self improvement' games offer lots of opportunities.

The Big Gaming Weekend was packed with great moments. On Friday afternoon we witnessed Edith Bowman challenge Steve Coogan to a few verses of 'Knowing Me Knowing You' on SingStar. On Saturday, Vernon got on the Xbox in the Games Lounge and played what seemed like half his listeners online. On Sunday night, Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw encouraged their audience to download the assets pack from the website and make a 'Switch' level in LittleBIGPlanet. And on Monday, Fearne Cotton brought the nation together for a version of 'Knights of Cydonia' by Muse on Guitar Hero (listeners without Guitar Hero were invited to join in on air guitar).

We ran an online poll to find the Greatest Game Ever; Radio 1 listeners voted Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare their number one. You could check the leaderboard to see how all our DJs and guests were doing in the Games Challenge, then check out the BBC's first ever games blog 'Get Your Game On' written by 1Xtra's Rampage.

The long tail of our Big Gaming Weekend was what excited me most. The weekend was a great opportunity for us to make our mark in the gaming world and reach out to non-listening game players. The ideas were fairly small scale but did allow us to drop bits of Radio 1 into the online world for players to stumble across via their consoles. We did this by introducing our DJs into the homes of many online gameplayers, creating a Radio 1 round in the game Buzz and encouraging our audience to download assets to create their own levels in LittleBIGPlanet or create machinima. All great stuff and all pulled together in less than a fortnight.

So what next for games? Well, rather then looking a head to the next Big Gaming Weekend, my big hope is that productions teams are inspired to introduce games into the everyday language of their shows. The task is no different from the one I faced when I first joined the BBC in 1996 when I had to convince our DJs to talk about the first ever Radio 1 website. "Sorry, we don't want to isolate our non web audience" came the reply.

Virtually Nothing Has Been Invented Yet

I've just stumbled across this great TED Talk from from 2004 by serial inventor Woody Norris in which he demonstrates hypersonic sound technology that directs sound the way a laser beam directs light. Its an incredible talk and given that I work in radio had me thinking a lot about the postives to come from such as unique invention.

It really opens up the possibility for getting radio into public places without it becoming a public nuisance or having to provide headphones like they do on planes. Imagine being able to point directional radio at individual seats on public transport. Woody gives a great example of how this could be used in a car allowing the children in the back to listen to completely different music to what the adults are listing to in the front without either of them being able to hear each others. Sadly, the technology has been used mostly in war.

There's been much debate about the origin of the idea and the actual quality of the sound but that matters little when you consider Woody's comment that relatively speaking "virtually nothing has been invented yet". Taking the light bulb as an example did Edision ever envisage a time when laser technology was correcting poor vision? I doubt it. So the failings that exist now will be corrected and hopefully the uses in wartime will feed innovation in more worthy areas other than war.

...like having dinner with Joe Pesci

Russell Davies is crowd sourcing an analogy library so I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring. Here goes...

Working for the BBC is like having dinner with Joe Pesci. Sometimes it's impossible to know how people will react when things go wrong.

With so many heads rolling over the whole Brand Ross affair one can't but help look back and ask 'How did it all come to this'? If for a moment you can somehow try to erase everything that has gone since from your mind, and bring yourself back to that moment, would anyone predict that what had been said would have had such dramatic consequences. Really? Ultimately it all comes down to a judgment call on whether Andrew Sachs would view such comments as lighthearted or intentionally offensive.

The whole thing reminds me of the scene in Goodfellas when at the end of yet another hilarious anecdote by Tommy (Joe Pesci) somewhere in amongst the riotous laughter Henry (Ray Liotta) is heard to say 'You're funny'. Unfortunately for Henry the comment made in good spirit was not taken that way by Tommy and what followed was very comfortable to watch...pretty much like the news this week.

From this point on it's hard to imagine how Russell Brand or Johnathan Ross will perform given that somewhere in the back of their minds is the fear of a Pesci-like reaction waiting to leap on every comment made about a celebrity. Similarly staff at the BBC will fear a Pesci-like reaction from the public at any content deemed 'risky'. Who wants a bad judgment call on their CV? Calculated risks will be gone forever, replaced by much safer Radio/TV programming at a time when people are calling for the BBC to be more distinctive. I'm not saying insulting people is distinctive, but look beyond the bad language and both were capable of distinctive TV.

Fortunately for Liotta, Pesci was winding him up and it all ends up with laughs and smiles. Sadly for Brand, Ross and Leslie Douglas the only people laughing are the 30,000 who went out of their way to hunt down the audio on Youtube so they could be offended by it. It's a bit like that old Tommy Cooper joke... "Bloke goes to the doctor and says 'Doc, my arm hurts when I do that' (holds arm up in a weird way), so the doctor says 'don't do it then'. That's two analogies in one post.

Ross Brand Visualisation

Here's what the public felt about Sachsgate as seen via Wordle. First visualisation represents comments from readers of the Daily Mail.

This one is from the Guardian