Next on stage is the BBC’s very own Mr James Richards, he’s a development exec for the Learning Development team. They are a small multiplatform development unit based in White City for the time  being (soon to be Salford) targeting formal learners. He introduces the audience to the BBCs prime aims to Inform, Educate and Entertain. We see a photo of the Deptford Working Mens Institute in 1929, they were the University of the Air. This was facilitated by the BBC and learners could get a certificate signed by the head of learning!! We see a grab of the BBC Networking Club homepage moving forward to a more up to date BBC Learning homepage and more interactive beta page. James started on the Hull project doing Interactive TV. James works with George Auckland who is head of innovation for the BBC. They are a small team with a small budget to show value of innovation and then sell the technology internally to producers and directors. Now there are 6 areas that they focus on; user generated learning, pervasive media, social networks, games and play, open technology and knowledge enablers(how they contextualise content for learners). Thisdeveloped into the following areas; Open web, Pervasive, TV, Enhancements, and he’s changed slide… thanks James!! btw way, he showed a cool picture of George Auckland done by Nathan Barry. I’m sure you can find it on Flickr if you search for it! He’s on to a project called over the bridge which is a drama about young people in a school that appears on mobile. It includes film, text messages, text content and you can follow the narrative by being a part of it. Acts a part of citizenship curriculum and as a catalyst for discussion in the classroom. The content is all very bitesize and appeals directly to the audience of secondary school kids. This was produced as a trial to discover how it could be used and distributed. The infrastructure turned out to be quite flakey. A second trail was done where content was handed out buy people where value is created by the fact that this content was handed to you by a trusted person. The next project is ‘subtext’ which is a high concept project. It harks back to schoolbooks with notes, drawings and annotations. How would transfer into the 21st century? We watch a film…. great product. Users can read a book, comment on points, comment on other peoples comments, share them, separate them, access them via text to speech or reach speech, make scrap books, or organise the content in anyway they deem suitable. Beautifully presented film from BBC Learning Development. The client for this was BBC Bitesize for GCSE and A Level revision. Adding tags and comments to book makes it more searchable and adds a subtext to the book (tada) The product is called booknotes and is actually live at bbc.co.uk. This could be adapted for use for a future Shakespeare season on the BBC and include annotations from the actors. Also shows BBC Draw encouraging young people to draw and pulls in brands from the BBC. BBC Data Art using BBC Data to unlock data and render it in unusual ways and others… Up from the streets about secrets in sounds. Another using in car GPS and locates you and feeds you content that is local to you on your journey. iPhone ap that helps you to learn to sing. You can ask more questions to James @kidhelios

As we career towards the end of the day, we come to Anna Debenham who’s talk is intriguingly entitled EPIC FAIL: The sorry state of  web education in schools. She also seems to be having a few issues with setting her laptop up… I’m saying nothing!! She’s been making websites since she was 16 which makes her incredibly young! She talks us through how she worked her way through the web, learning how to make websites and manipulate pages including things like mySpace making pages for other people. THis talk is about Scrunchup for young developers. She references the Royal Society and some OFSTED reports about the state of ICT in schools. The slides have flown past too quickly to copy down the document names but I’m sure they are Google-able. Apparently GCSE ICT is down 44% between 2006-2010 also a 33% drop in A-Level ICT in the past 6 years. 57% in A-Level computing and a 60% drop in university applications for computer science. This is bad for the economy and will force work to be outsourced in future. This has happened because there are not enough teachers, students don’t have to take ICT exams. Teacher don’t really know what they are meant to be doing and are not confident in teaching ICT. She is OK with maing ICT a cross curricular subject but teacher not trained in ICT are expected to teach ICT and there is a lot of duplication. There will be a massive shortfall in jobs in the region of 500,000 people. Higher attaining students are insufficiently challenged and student often have more knowledge than teachers. Software is out of date and they are not teaching programming. She referes t a list apart called elevate web design and university level, another one called brighter horizons for web education… look those up! She demonstrates that the curriculum is woefully inaccurate and out of date in the way it describes some approaches to ICT. Even exams are asking incorrect questions. Students are being trained to pass exams rather than answering questions correctly. The exam examples are, quite frankly, shocking. The teacher guidance is frightening. It’s no wonder we are not producing world class ICT specialists. Students are not rewarded for doing something different. Students are encouraged to make webpages using PowerPoint or even Word. YIKES!! We’re all dooooomed!! Back on to the topic of open source and why third world countries are using OLPC laptops and we aren’t. Schools aren’t interested in using opensource software or OS’s because of the fear that they will bring networks down. This could be pointed to the comfortable relationship that government has with certain large software providers. Industry doesn’t think that students come with the right skills and that they won’t receive value for money. She points out that kids aren’t going to be learning stuff that they don’t know. She’s showing us sites that are build by school kids that demonstrate that they are well versed in technology but are not being supported by education. Schools just can’t keep up. Anna wants industry leaders to work with exam boards to make the learning more engaging and accurate. A large round of applause for Anna, she is well received.

Bar a few questions, that is all for today. It’s been a good day and great to hear what people are up to in learning without  being sold at (BETT I’m looking at you!). If you ever find this little blog then Matt Jukes thank you for organising a fantastic day and for hanging in there. I think it was well appreciated.

Until the next conference I go to…

Now were listening to Stefan Richter owner of scribblar.com .He’s the guy that created that brilliant fridge magnet website where you could see people moving the letters around and you could all post swearwords together. He also did a collaborative drawing site and other tools. This was in the early days when the web went from being something you interacted with rather than a medium that enables you to interact with others. He’s also showing a collaborative free for all online puzzle game too. The images for the puzzle game were pulled in using the Flickr API so images were always new. From this he wanted to make this into something more useful. New technologies like FLEX came a long that allowed this approach to be built to make a more useful tool. The first tool is like a collaborative interactive white board that enables you to pull in text, images and drawings. He went through several iterations of this idea to get to scribblar.com (it’s scribbler, with an A!). Got a bit more branding and marketing behind it but he says it’s hard to keep on top of hit. It marries the collaborative creative element with live chat and sharing making it quite an effective teaching and learning tool. You get live student feedback and can link listening with writing. Poeople upload all sorts of things like Dungeons and Dragons maps that they can create together. They could write an opera collaboratively and other school districts have use it to connect campuses. They use Scribblar to teach maintenance people how to look after energy management systems too. There seems to be endless possibilities for the uses of Scribblar. It’s intersting that they are providing creative tools and interaction but don’t define how it should be used. It very much fits in with what previous speakers have been saying. There is also a hacking element to it but pulling in CC licensed Flickr images and can also pull in data from WolframAlpha to use various pieces of learning information, formulae and information. Stefan can be reached at @stefanrichter

Edward Upton comes on to the stage to tell us ‘I don’t have a PowerPoint presentation!’. Yay for Edward, he is our hero! It has been noted by Owen that there is definitely a uniform for the speakers. They’ve thought, ‘Shit! I’m standing up in front of people and talking. I’d better stick on a shirt with my jeans today, instead of my usual regulation t-shirt.’ Well that’s what I did, and I’m not even speaking, so well done, and thanks for making the effort!!! Edward is talking about ‘Who profits from excellent education’. His product is called Teachables. Content is uploaded by teachers and peer reviewed before appearing live as a resource on the website. Teachers pay to use the service but Teachables pay Teachers for content. The site is values for delivering quality content. 50,000 teachers use the service, not all paying users. What is radical about this service that people find unusual. Perhaps it’s the money factor. He makes the following statements: Education is a noble act and people shouldn’t profit financially from education. 20% of teacher hold this view. There are people who do profit from education. Uses BETT as an example of a forum from lazy products from dull companies sold by aggressive sales people!! Second statement. Individual teachers should not be profiting from content that has been made as part of their school work. Someone says if they are publicly paid they shouldn’t privately profit. He says this all depends on contracts etc… There is a lot of teacher produced content that isn’t out there and is locked up inside teachers laptops where it should be available to other teachers and schools. He says, practically this content should be unlocked. They do work with schools as sellers of content. The contributor gets 50%. Some give to charity and others split between the school and the author, some between school and charity. This is a public service that could and should be run centrally by government for the benefit of the education industry. The government need to encourage entrepreneurs to produce services that support education. He refers to a service called curriculum online supported by the government. It was a total failure and was ultimately shut down. Seems that it was ruled by committee and this led to it’s failure. To sum up, there is a future where private enterprise can profit from education in terms of development and innovation. It can help schools to get revenues by sharing their content etc… He says it’s a great thing that government quangos have died because it makes the industry more competitive now the government isn’t holding it back. Now questions… They use quite a restrictive CC license to stop people reselling their content. Resubmission needs to be more than 50% changed or improved. They need to be able to track ownership. They don’t align themselves with the OER (Open Educational Resources). His business model enables the users of the system to fund the service. Thanks Edward… you can put your t-shirt back on now!!

The event MC is back on the stage telling us there is 7 further speakers and we have a lot to get through. The hall door has been closed and the timing is key. We’re just going through who is coming on and the next speaker is Laura Dewis who is presenting a case study of how a university is opening up it’s content. MATT CARDLE IS ON THE FIRST PAGE OF HER PRESENTATION!! O.M.G.!! Thank the lord… it’s gone now! So… what is open media. it’s free and accessible on BBC, iTunes, OpenLearn and YouTube. Their vision is that the OU is recognised as the world leader in sustainable, quiality open educational resources. Starting with the BBC and OU (there’s a chap on the screen in a kipper tie, well it’s an improvement on Matt effin’ Cardle!). People used to stay up late to watch OU programming. This went on until a few years back when the OU and BBC ceased to broadcast this content. It was inspirational at the time but now the OU’s relationship with the BBC is different delivering content to hard to reach audiences with things like Coast, Bang Goes the Theory, Darwin etc… on TV, web etc… We’re looking at the showreel with various BBC talent making engaging learning content for people who may not even realise they are learning. This content gets over 300 million views a year in the UK and over 1 billion worldwide. Quite literally WOW!! She’s pointing people to OU content online and on mobile devices. This is aimed at all ages not just older learners. iTunes new is a new thing for the OU appearing next to MIT and Oxford university. OU has always delivered education using technology. They get 300,000 weekly. They have a YouTube channel too. Short form content mainly. Getting involved in YouTube has enabled them to get involved in projects with Google. Now we’re on to the main site for OU. 5% of all their course material is available for free. That’s 6000 learner hours of content and all available under the creative commons license. Is this too much of a good thing though? Too many destinations, too much demand on academic time, too much moderation needed. Academics giving too much time to delivering this content outside their regular work. These are just some of the questions. The new site, OpenLearn, in Drupal and now in BETA, is the central point of this content. For topical events related to their core content. Should launch properly in the next couple of months. They are trying to differentiate each o their digital spaces. OpenLearn – aggreagator, high traffic media rich, Learning Space, more formal learning, built in Moodle containing OU courses. Also Lab Spaces where mashed content can be uploaded. A home for OU remixed content. This all has to be accountable so they have to keep track of public awareness, public engagement, conversion/avtive learning (informal to formal learning) and value for money / ROI. These are the KPIs for this area of OU content. Although her department runs on 30 people out of 11,000 OU employees they are generating quite a stir in the media and a buzz in the learning comunity. Ultimately the mission is to be open to people, places, methods and ideas. Course have no formal entry requirements and help people who don’t think they are good enough to get qualifications to succeed.

More at www.open.ac.uk/openlearn

His business is called lovele and he doesn’t care how you pronounce it! It’s about open, e-learning, education etc… Now we have a picture of Joi Ito (@joi) he is an internet leader. Now we’re on to interoperability and connected devices. He’s moving really fast and I’m not sure my fingers can keep up. I’ll try my best!!. It’s low cost to try things out. Sourceforge is there as an example, he mentions open source and the open movement and how his business could benefit from that. The highest cost to development isn’t the coding it’s the rights clearance. Using a comic strip to illustrate IPR… we’re flicking though them so I can’t transcribe them down, but the jist is that there should be more sharing and less hang ups around IPR. Copyright started in 1700′s to protect and encourage learning through printed work. This doesn’t apply to today though. So is there another way, a copyleft? Using Creative Commons as an example. He asked if organisations use CC and I ask my boss, he predictably replies ‘no!’.  James flicks through how CC works and says there is something here to change e-learning from where it’s been over the past 10 years. He’s talking about the 4Rs Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute. Technology shouldn’t interfere with the 4Rs. Now were are onto the conversation prism and back to the cartoon again. There is steam coming off of my fingers now and my brain is starting to ache!! There is a lot of stuff in this presentation that is attributed to other people, and I guess this is part of the point he’s trying to make.  Another reference to sethgodin.typepad.com and on to something else. Talking about social networks and social graphs, our trusted network and where we get learning and information from… moving on very swiftly… The social technographics ladder by gartner and we’re back to the strip again. Aaaargghhh… slow down!! I’m not sure this dude has taken a breath yet either!! More quotes from twitter and back to the 4Rs and a picture and links to James’ own twitter and he talks about attribution as he has attributed everything throughout his presentation. He talks us through how he’s attributing the content using text, links through to the actual CC license that is all machine readable by Google. Getting on to context and serendipity. Put in the links and this will build his social capital and I think that if you provide the resources to the learners and they have trust in you then you don’t have to fear that they won’t come back to you or your content. In summary, hacking, open, digital, content. Legal hacking, access permissions “rules”, HTML – view source URI/URL linked data, context – relevance localisation provenance. Make stuff available but giving access to learners so they can consume it in the way that is suitable for them. What is the source and where does it come from. This is what lovle is about (he says lov-el) and it launches in February. It’s all about taking other peoples content and repackaging that in a usable, visible and machine readable format.

@deburca

Aral Balkan is not talking about mobile but is going to be doing some live coding (Yay!) and about teaching programming to kids. He’s just started his timer and he has 20 minutes. Here we go.

Are we creating a generation of programmers or a generation of secretaries? He doesn’t know, but her refers to the final speaker, Anna, who will also talk about this later.

The students are not getting the right exposure, they are learning about word, office, excel and powerpoint. These are office skills and secretarial skills. He describes this as boring and not something that he wants as his first exposure to ICT and computers. His visit to BETT confirmed this due to a plethora of deliver of Microsoft products. That vast majority of schools are using Windows and none are using Ubuntu or Linux based systems. No sight of OLPC either. He’s now showing a video from BETT. The speaker is talking about how ICT in classroom is product focused rather than creativity and communications and programming, which is what should be taught in the classroom. This would give a better ICT experience to kids in the classroom. Aral talks about bring digital literacy and creativity back in to the curriculum. But why weren’t there more open source solutions there? None of the people he spoke to said there was space for open source solutions. He’s back on to OLPC and that we don’t see many in the UK because they are aimed at third world countries, although, he says, that out approach to ICT learning could be considered as comparabale! We’re  back on to the subject of the way education values ICT and how they pay nothing to ICT teachers and therefore they won’t get the right kind of people to do the teaching in schools. I’ve now been confronted by Aral as a child on the lap of Elmo from Sesame Street!! Where did it all begin for him? His first experience for a computer in DOS (DOS prompt on screen!)…  His father gave him a computer and a manual and told him he couldn’t break it. He wanted games but there weren’t any, so he made them himself using BASIC. He demo’s 10 Print “hello” 20 goto 10, and Hello streams down the screen to the delight of the audience. Now he can’t stop it and it decends into chaos!! All fixed now His second attempt, also in BASIC, is more about games… He inputs some code and a dot appears on the screen. Then we graduate on to plotting lots of dots on the screen! Well it doesn’t as he’s getting errors. His coding must be a little rusty!! He makes a slight change to the syntax and now we see a screen of stars in different colours. This was magical to him as a child as he was on his way to creating games. It is important that we give kids access to creating this magic. So what can we do today to teach this to kids. The tools are better, we have graphical tools to teach programming (I think he’s using something called SCRATCH 1.4 on a mac). Bascially he’s showing us drag and drop programming which looks really cool (as a non programmer). I think my 8 year old would love this stuff!! He’s dragging different commands onto the stage that control a cat on the screen. Very cool! Lots of examples, you can see how kids would be totally engaged by this. Maybe not all but more that you might think. This is just one example and there are many others. Kids can now share these things where as he couldn’t so easily. Oopps, another tech fail! He can do this level of programming using java in a browser so no extra software is required. He’s demo’ing javascript code with a preview and you can see it straight away. His timer is up and he’s asking for an extra 5 minutes. His request has been granted by the BeBettr overlords!! You can see how even this level or Javascript could be taught in school. It’s very simple and it can be copied and shared to get kids excited and proud about and would give them some magic to show. In closing, if you want to empower a generation you have to give them technologies not proprietary software and show them how they can gain re-usable skills to create. These things don’t have to be expensive, the software, when opensource, can be free. Teach design and development, allow them to hack. Train the teachers so it trickles down to the students and pay the teacher what they are worth to teach. We have to power to create a new generation to instil them with a sense of awe and magic.

@aral on twitter.

We’re 1 hour into the days proceedings and the talks are proving very interested. So far we have hear from the guys from School of Everything that aims to match teachers with learners in an more informal environment. Their approach is based on study circles that appeared in Sweden in the 20th Century. This informal approach to learning was introduced in the UK during the 70′s on trains across the country. This is the back in the days where carriages were divided into sections and learning groups or study circles would meet in these carriages and learn subjects that interested them on the way to and from work. Utterly genius approach to learning and a clever use of that dead commuting time. Shame the opportunity to do this doesn’t make itself apparent or possible now. Having said that I learned to play poker on the facing seats of the Northern Line in the early to mid 80′s, so perhaps there is hope for learning on the underground yet!!

Next up was David Jennings who is pitching the idea of Agile Learning. This is based around the idea that education doesn’t need to be delivered or consumed in a formal environment like schools, colleges and university. People are able to consume information and learn in many ways and the thought is that as long as you can abide by the ‘rules’ of learning that you don’t necessarily need a teacher figure to guide you. One goes through life learning lots of things everyday without the need for a teacher figure. We are completely able to ingest and process information without someone to help us. The example of music is presented as something that you might learn about over time. You become familiar with your favourite bands, their music and style without very much guidance. What you do have is the familiarity of the framework through which you access this information. I guess by this he means via the radio, magazines, concerts, web, and physical and digital music formats, as well as recommendations through friends and acquaintances. The term he uses to describe people who graze information and turn it into education in this way is ‘feral learners’. He finishes by asking the audience to to think about what they think Agile Learning is because he wants the crowd to be able to define this concept rather than himself. He can be contact via twitter @agilelearn .

Manga High is a website that engages young people with mathematics through proper gaming. Mohit, like his colle

He gets cool technology and subverts it for his own amusement tells a room of geeks and they all think they’re clever! He’s saying that ideas spread from mind to mind… like memes on the internet.

More stats… 4bn mobile phones on the planet, more than half the world have them, but he has three on him! He repeats the more phones are sold per second than babies born stat. Not sure if it’s actually true though!!

He mentioned Gameswipe on BBC4 and the breadth of games and gaming, not just shoot em ups etc…

Games have become disolved from play, they are no longer linked which is sad. He suggests a paradigm shift which he calls…. when he finds the slides… pre-raphaelite gaming (not to do with Ninja Turtles) the re-examining of gaming as with art. Talks about games within society, pre video games. Also different types of games. Within games there is a magic circle, within that is a suspension of belief that enables you to interact more effectively.

On to games that have a political or environmental message. Bringing fun to serious topics. Sometimes not enjoyable but engaging and educational all the same. Mentions ARG across consoles, TV, film and mobile and real world… he forgot that! Talks about re-addressing who the gamer is and mentions a Nintendo DS ad that wants you to get your Mum to play and your Granny too! He saw an older lady playing braind training on the plane but she wouldn’t play Mario Kart with him!!

He doesn’t think social networks are new but extensions of existing practices. Social capital – bridging, bonding, grooming, gossip. He calls Facebook social grooming, letting your friends know you’re thinking of them. The voyeurism of watching your friends feeds.

How can mobile gaming influence play… ambient play, less tied to time… mentions the twitterfall became more active when it was on screen. Emergence… a game with a chat engine. Reappropriating spaces using mobile. Intimacy… touching peoples phones to pass something on (?), collective intellengence, LOLAPPS & NANOFUN, serendipity and physicality, not everything is digital, you can wear a badge that says what Wii Mi you are, moving from the digital world to the real world.

Is it me of does this guy remind you of Joe Pasquale? I don’t mean to offend!!

…design axioms… note to self… look up axioms in the dictionary!

Games can change the world! No questions… or perhaps one… he’ll be in the bar later!! Applause

Closing comments… and off to the bar.Thanks to all involved, plug a few things, blah blah, no more stats…

Thanks for reading (Petros!)

We just had a nice chat with Dr Adrian Woolard from BBC R&D about trainee engineers and ambisonics and now I really want to go to their studio downstairs and see how it works! The troops are regrouping for the final sprint now which will start with another video talk followed by Rosie Allimonos from BBC Drama and Entertainment then Paul Coulton from Nokia. We’ve moved a row nearer the front each session and now we are sitting behind two rows of reserved seating in-which no one is sitting. I think one person sat there before so I’m not sure whether they are truly reserved or whether it’s to keep us normals away from the high brow speakers!!

Silence decends and Herb Kim is about to do the prize draw in which I have a card…. drum roll please…. not me for the first one!! and… not me for the second one… ah well at least there is a free drink later so everyone is a winner. Now we’re going to watch a 5 minute video from TEDglobal in Oxford. Seems to be on YouTube called One Love Playing for Change Song Around the World

Yay for Bob Marley

Connection is getting a bit flakey so fingers crossed for the last few talks. Actually they’re playing HD YouTube so that’s what us probably sucking up the bandwidth!!

Next speaker here is Hugh Garry who does interesting digital things for Radio1. Last minute entry I assume… yes he’s a fill in! He was inspired by the JJ Abrams talk and is not sure what to talk about. He’s got no power point but does have a film called shoot the summer that was shot by users on mobile phones. They shot the film and he edited it together and presented it at IBC in Amsterdam which was about HD 3D etc… and he presents film shot on mobile!!! He felt as if he was urinating on their chips to coin and northern phrase! But what is important is the pixel. He remembers grainy shots of key moments in recent history and youtube clips and not super HD. If it’s powerful it doesn’t matter if it’s super HD. You don’t think about the grainy picture of the planes hitting the WTC but the event in history itself. You make your own HD.

YouTube combined with phone cameras has been revolutionary. Like Kodak turned everyone into photographers, YouTube has turned everyone into film makers. He thinks users are happy to accept lesser quality images, and they are, but traditional media have trouble embracing this concept. This led to the creation of the mobile film, shooting the summer, and it was showed at the electric proms and won and was nominated for many awards.

Play the movie…

They covered a festival from each BBC network to create the film to be representative which is a tough thing for the BBC to achieve so hats off for that!! The quality… he wanted to know that it was shot on a phone but you forget quickly that is is phonecam quality because some of the footage is so good. The final scene where the camera falls over, the editor was trying to take out imperfect clips where there were missing heads and the footage was shot on it’s side but he felt it important to leave it on to put across the language of filming (by youngsters) today.

I think people should strive for imperfection, there is nothing wrong with that!! He agrees and uses photography at the turn of the last century as an example. Basic ideas of young people who are doing things carefree and accidental should be embraced by programme makers and artists alike. Making films on mobile allows you to get close to the filmmaker. They gave a camera to Jo Whilley to film stuff, she filmed the Kaiser Chiefs before they went on stage and cos it was just a camera they were more inclined to let her closer to their pre show experience (there is more but it’s grim!)

They sent a couple of people to Bestival with the cameras and they get trashed and forget to film. At the end of the festival so they try to sell the phone and film their experience and they try to sell the phone on ebay to raise money for next years festival, showing that they actually thought editorially before shooting their film. He compares this to the first days of wedding videos where people didn’t know what to do in front of the camera.

He ran over and we wants to tell the JJ Abrams story… he went to Bebo wanting to take over their homepage, they said it was £100k and laughed him out of the room. He said there was a project at Radio1 when only 4 people know about it and it was to do with the Black Box – He recounted the story of JJ Abrams Mystery Box and this was enough for them to hand over the homepage!! He recommends Benjamin Zander on TED.

He is interested in the users of technology and the non users too! There are a lot of single site studies but he’s interested in what happens when these studies come together. He’s going to be looking at Gaydar as an example and how they comodify the difference of their users. (whatever that means… I’m sure I’ll catch on soon). This is about niche social network sites and what happens when they collide with mainstream sites like Facebook.

He shows a pic of him at an event (work) and another with his partner on Facebook (social). He shows us his profile pic on Gaydar and how this might effect people view of him. He also says that he’s not like the advertising imagery of muscley men. Mentions that a lot of the interfaces on Gaydar are quite old technology compared to other social networks. He talks about how people profile themself on this site in many respects and what their interest are in terms of potential partners. What is not included in the options are people who are camp queens (his description not mine (like Mr Humpreys from Are you being served!). This site is all about personal ads rather than groups that exist on Facebook. People seem to move to Facebook to overcome some of the limitations of Gaydar. This generates stats about the gay audience regarding technology and spending etc… and this produces market data and the classifications are required in order for people to be marketed to.

He searched Facebook for Gaydar to see how this sector uses a different social network. There seems to be a feeling that people done feel that Gaydar doesn’t represent them to they have moved on to a different place. He says that mentioning Gaydar on Facebook opens Gaydar up to a larger audience and increases the visibility of Gaydar.

So now niche sites are being linked into other social networks like Twitter and enables people to access them via other platforms and events enabling people to become more immersed in the brand. Finished and questions…

Ben is worried about the interrogation… How does Gaydar differ in purpose to other sites, he names one… an adult dating site… it’s all getting a bit filthy to be honest… back to the point… they are talking about how public people are about their used of various sites. Ben thinks there are different sorts of people on these sites and they appeal to people on all levels. Someone now posts that they have gone to FB where they can discuss things they can’t on niche sites (in this instance it’s a parenting site which is refreshing!).

I hope this finishes soon cos I need the loo! Crosses legs and hopes!!

I think we have another 30 minute break soon then we’re back with Ubiquity and Behaviour, a video TED talk then Rosie Allimonos from BBC Drama and Entertainment.