Paramore – Fricking Awesome
Dec 15th
I can’t even begin to describe how good Paramore were last night, so instead, I’ll let the videos do the, errr, singing.
Video of moi!?
Oct 31st
Unfortunately so! This is the video from the talk I did at Ignite Cardiff 3. I won’t go into detail, other than the basics:
- 20 Slides
- Auto rotate every 15 seconds
- Karaoke Style (Claire and Neil made the slides, I had 2 days to write the “content” for the talk)
Enjoy (if you can!)
Ignite Cardiff 3
Oct 14th
It’s Ignite Cardiff 3 tomorrow evening, at the Wales Millennium Centre (18.30 start). For those of you who haven’t heard of Ignite, or if you want more information about the event, try one of the following links :
http://www.cardiffwebscene.com/
So, at the last Ignite, I did a talk on Twitter trends for Cardiff, and I really enjoyed it! So this time, I’m doing whats called “Ignite Karaoke”. To quote Claire….
When we came to announcing dates for Ignite Cardiff #3, along with new speakers a couple of our previous Ignite speakers got in touch saying they had such a good time before that they’d love to speak at Ignite again – but also wanted to give the newbies a chance.
Not wanting to say no I discovered that a lot of Ignites in the States run ‘Ignite Karaoke’ presentations, where I (as Ignite organiser) would put together a slide deck of random slides and our volunteers (in this case the lovely Mark Stevenson – @mstevenson83 and Rob May – @robwmay) then have to talk to my slides. They can talk about anything they like, but they only see the slides 3 days in advance of the event so have very little time to prepare.
And right now, I’m sat here with 20 slides in front of me, and absolutely no idea what to talk about. SOOOOO, if you have nothing better to do tomorrow evening, come along to Ignite and watch all the other amazing speakers…..and then have a laugh at my expense as I try to bumble my way through, what could well be, the most embarrassing 5 minutes of my life so far!!
Hopefully I’ll be able to upload the slides on Friday, with an outline of what I talked about……but that’s a long way away….!!
Wish me luck (I’m sure Rob could do with some luck too if his slides are like mine) !!
M
Ignite Cardiff
Apr 14th
It’s only taken me a week to get round to this, but hopefully it’s been worth the wait!!
So last Wednesday was Ignite Cardiff 2, at Sodabar. I won’t explain what Ignite is, just clicky here and have a read. But to summarise: It’s ace.
I was down to do a talk at the first Ignite, but just didn’t have a clue / time to prepare really, so offered to do this one instead. My first real public speaking experience (excluding Uni presentations etc etc!), so I was a smidgen nervous! An amazing turn out made it all the more nerve racking, but strangely, I love that!
If you’ve never been to an Ignite, then I really suggest you try and make it to the next one. Some really interesting talks. If you missed it, you’ll be screwed when the Zombies attack, be spending far to much on Wine, and have no idea where your Cat is. Intrigued?? You should of attended….!!
My talk was on Cardiff Twitter trends. A subject that, at first, worried me, because I thought it would be really dull to talk about (Stats, stats and more stats). Evidently, I think it went well. Of course, I think it went appallingly, but others beg to differ 
There is a video coming soon I think, but for now, there is a plethora of stats available here. It’s important to remember that these stats are in no way gospel, they are just an analysis of Cardiff Tweets over a period of time, extracting pre-defined terms that signal our emotions. Also, if you aren’t within a 10 mile radius of Bute Park and you don’t have your location set with Twitter, then you’re not in the stats
So that’s that, an evening with like-minded people, a good laugh, and some interesting talks. Ignite Cardiff is a definite must for anyone with an interest in the web, geeky things, social media / networking, or just a good night out
And I did that whole post without mentioning the copious amount of Alcohol that was provided free of charge for speakers and guests, because, although its an amazing perk, the event sells itself without that Special mention to Neil, Claire and anyone else who played a part in organising the event, really excellent
Roll on Ignite #3
Cardiff Twitterers
Feb 19th
So, for those of you who don’t yet know, the next Ignite Cardiff event is on the 8th April at the Sodabar. It should be a really good event, so if you’re around, its going to be well worth popping in for a bit!
I’ve (foolishly, maybe!) offered to do a talk, so even if your not in any way interested in the Web Scene or anything related, at least pop in and laugh at me (that’s a definite “at” me, and not “with” me!).
It’s OK offering to do a talk, but of course, you need something to talk about! So for the past couple of weeks now (and for the following weeks leading up to Ignite), I’ve been tracking Tweets from people within a ten mile radius of Cardiff (According to Wikipedia, the centre of Cardiff is slap bang in the middle of Bute Park, so its a 10m radius from there!). Basically, I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of tweeters we are. Whether that’s Happy, Sad, Moaning, Drunk, Over Worked or just chatting to each other a lot, I thought it would show some interesting, and hopefully amusing stats relative to the people who will be at Ignite.
Before any one worries…..I’m not keeping the tweets themselves, so there won’t be any examples of embarrassing drunken tweets about your boss, who may well be there!
I don’t want to reveal too much, but here’s a taster to the kind of things I’m noticing (If you’re interested in viewing the stats in detail, pop me a comment, I have graphs and everything, how exciting!)
Stats from Saturday 7th February to Wednesday 18th February 2009
- Top Twitterer: Sianz - An impressive 936 tweets so far, with a total word count of 11556. Ironically, 2nd place WalesOnline have tweeted 12825 words. Over 1000 more, but only a total of 563 tweets.
- Ville1955 really loves Dancing on Ice. Cardiff tweeters have used the trend 135 times, with Ville1955 using it a massive 98 times alone! (Along with the following Dancing on Ice related trends: #Ice, #Todd, #Ellery, #Ray)
- On average, we tweet over 50% of our Daily total during “Working hours”, making over half of us “Social Notworkers”
- Wmjohn is the happiest tweeter, with 124 of their 495 tweets containing smiles, or happy words.
- There are currently 1293 Twitter users being located within 10 miles of Cardiff. If only 30% of those users could come to Ignite, it would be amazing, and very full! Hint hint
Of course, these stats are just for fun.
If you’re interested in seeing the stats so far, or have any ideas of things that would be cool to track, then please let me know!
That’s all for now!