Kevin Gilmartin

In June I found myself with the rather fantastic job of doing the live tweeting for media140 at their first Social Media event in Scotland.

Now, if I’m being totally honest, it was the first time I’d live-blogged an event on site. I’d done it before off the back of TV coverage – tweeting the Budget and the election from the Planet Holyrood account – and I frequently join in with the discussion/debate/caustic ranting on the #bbcqt hashtag when Question Time is on.

But this was different; this was a live, specialist event, where the speakers were talking right in front of me and I had to get their message out on Twitter quickly and efficiently.

Mark Jennings, the man who organised the event, tells me I did a grand job of that. That is nice to hear. I have since been asked by others to lay down some thoughts on the subject. Flattering. I love flattery; so here goes:

1. Practice

With enough notice of an event you can easily put in some practice.

Get on YouTube and search for the speakers. Familiarise yourself with their style of speaking and write up some dummy tweets while you’re watching them. I had to blog Trey Pennington, Pat Kane, and Steve Berry – all three very different speakers with different styles.

If you can’t find your keynote speakers on YT then politics is a great proving ground.

Politicians love to talk, they go on and on and are usually very deliberate in their delivery, much like event speakers are, always coming to a pertinent point. Fire up some old PMQ videos, or Andrew Marr on the iPlayer, or those ludicrous leaders’ debates from back in May, and get your tweet on.

2. Every character counts

If you’re live blogging on something like WordPress or Drupal or Joomla! then space may not be much of an issue, but if you’re live tweeting then every character counts.

Your speaker might take a while to make a point, and I can guarantee you he’ll do it in more than 140 characters! You need to be able to process the relevant parts of his/her speech as it’s delivered and shrink them down to fit in a tweet. Come on, how many of you actually click on Twitlonger links? I thought so.

In reality you don’t have the full 140 characters to play with; once you add in the speaker’s Twitter handle and the event hashtag (and those are essential) you’re down a fair chunk of tweet real estate. Once I’d included @treypennington and #media140 during Trey’s talk I was left with 116 characters per tweet to get Trey’s point across.

Don’t be afraid of summarising – it’s not optional, it’s essential, and confidence is key to it. You have to do it quickly, post the tweet and start listening for the next one. You don’t have time to 2nd guess yourself.

3. The right tools for the job

Equipment wise, you only need 2 things to do a good live tweeting job: a laptop and a cameraphone.

Do the tweeting from the laptop with its big screen and keyboard. Everyone has their favourite Twitter client but, for me, when you’re live-tweeting, the easiest one has to be the classic Twitter web interface – it’s neat and compact and rarely freezes up.

Yes, Tweetdeck and Hootsuite have multiple columns so you can follow @ replies, but during the talks you’re going to be too busy concentrating on covering the speeches to reply back.

On the laptop have a notepad window open with the event tag and each speaker’s name and Twitter handle typed in so you can quickly copy and paste when you need them.

The camera phone is where you’ll add some colour to the timeline. Between talks, or at the social afterwards, snap some pics, and instantly share them on the phone’s Twitter client. Your choice of photo-sharing service is down to you, but I like Twitgoo as it retains the background theme of the Twitter account you’re posting from.

The points above are just a few thoughts I put down on my process before and during the event in June. I’m no expert, but to my mind live tweeting is about engagement. It’s about bringing a little of the ambience and the atmosphere of your event to those who couldn’t be there, and enhancing it for those who could.

Your audience is in the room as well as out in the world. Try adding a little personality to your tweeting coverage too; if something’s funny then say so, if you think sharing a link to an external site (like How To Tie a Bandana) will add flavour to the moment then do it! You’re a tweeter, not a robot.

I have come to realise that my 20s were pretty mental.

It’s true. I have just had the maddest year, and it is all about to come to a juddering halt when uni officially finishes with the hand-in of my MA portfolio, but the path I took to get here started when I moved to Edinburgh at the tender age of 20 – a nice even 10 years ago.

So, since this is the first post I’ve written in a long time – too long, but I plan to keep things current from now on – it seems appropriate to take a look back at the events that led me here, to this very blog post and the upcoming completion of an MA from Glasgow Caledonian.

Right then, I graduated from Napier University in 2001 (I think) with the BSc in Multimedia Tech after going straight in to the 3rd year. I didn’t do honours for various reasons, not least of which was that I was totally skint, living in Edinburgh and in dire need of a full time job; part time work in Argos only just covered the rent.

I went full time in Cash Converters on Leith Walk for a while and one day, when I was walking out the door at the end of my shift I got a phone call. Totally out of the blue a mate from college called to say he’d been promoted at his work and they had tasked him with filling the vacancy he left behind. So there I was with a job as a web designer.

That was for a mobile content company which shall remain nameless, and we did some pretty mad stuff back then – much of it I will not put on public record! Web design led to multimedia production which also involved creating affiliate newsletters.

The newsletters were the trigger for the career change. We were about 3 years in, and after various, um, let’s call them ‘failed strategies’  the company was in trouble and I started looking around for new jobs; there were none.

After sending out one particularly witty newsletter the manager (my mate from college) came chuckling out of his office and said “You shoulda been a journalist, Gilmartin!”
It was a career I’d considered way back in high school, but somehow I just fell in to IT and multimedia. That was the moment I decided to make the switch.

I applied for a journalism course, pulled a sickie to attend interview and started that August. It was an HND, and the first year was crazy in good ways and in some pretty bad ways. 2nd year was better, due in no small part to the birth of my son – but that did put paid to any plans I had to go to uni.

So by 2007 I have two HNDs and a degree, no relevant job prospects, and extensive experience working for broadband tech support call centers….

In 2008 I moved from Tiscali to O2, having resolved to save some cash and go get a degree and a job doing what I wanted to do.

Now, something I definitely will put on public record is that O2 was great fun to work for. I loved the guys in that team and am still in touch with many of them. O2 was good to me; it was well paid, they gave me plenty of opportunities for growth beyond a mere phone monkey, they sent me to Leeds for 5 days, which was nice, and they hooked up their staff with free Sonisphere tickets last year – which was even nicer!

I was sad to leave O2, but last September was the beginning of that degree I promised myself I’d go and get – MA Multimedia Journalism. Now the exams are over and it’s just portfolio I need to hand in. It’s been a good, difficult, challenging and enjoyable year.

I look back on the near-ten-year journey tht brought me here, and a few paragraphs doesn’t do it justice. The memories and the people are the important part; more important than the piece of paper from any uni. I think it really is true that it’s not where you’re going, it’s how you get there that matters.

So what of the next 10 years? Well, get a job or set up on my own, watch my kids grow up, and who knows what else? I’d like to bump into some of those characters from the last 10 years whom I lost along the way. Mick Walsh, and Nessa Illott from Cash Converters (remember Pint Fridays, guys?), Paul Reilly, the college mate who got me the job – get in touch Paul, I think it’s your round.

I was never happy with my Napier degree – it was too easy. No challenge. I’m happy with the MA. Ultimately I just want to live on my own terms now. When you’re in your late teens and early twenties you want to set the world on fire. I just want to set my world on fire, and fiddle while it burns.

A wee bit of Shakespeare to kick off this particular post – the first in a while, for which I am duly repentant.

So I’m a player of games and, until just recently, I thought myself a rather cosmopolitan kind of gamer. I’d play any game, kill any thing on any gaming platform. I’m not a biased person.

A few days ago though a rather worrying thought fleetingly danced across a synapse. I fired up the PC to renew my EVE Online subscription and possibly have a crack at some old X-Beyond the Frontier when I found myself thinking “Why bother…there’s no achievements.”

Well, dear reader, I was in shock and disgust at myself. Have I become….AN ACHIEVEMENT WHORE??

No, of course I haven’t – I love my PC too much to demote it to a jumped up blogging machine. I still love Hitman, and X-Beyond the Frontier and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and all those good old titles that are pushing their teenage years. But it does raise a valid point.

Is the achievement and reward system on Next-Gen consoles killing the art of gameplay for its own sake?

There are of course people who will relentlessly chase achievements until they get all 1000 gamer points, even to the extent of hunting down like minded fok (Chievy Chasers, as I like to call them) to get the online and co-op points nailed. These are the guys who are killing gameplay for themselves. Maybe they enjoy it, but when you come across them in a lobby or in a random game they can quickly suck the joy out of the experience.

For most gamers, myself included, I think achievement systems make us better players. They encourage you to practice certain skills, they instill a sense of patience, and I think ultimately they keep many old games fresh.

I’m not an achievement chaser. If I accumulate points in the course of gameplay then it’s a bonus, but I don’t play a game until it’s exhausted.  The first achievment I ever got was in Crackdown – I’ve still got many to get in that game and the sequel is out soon; hell, I don’t even have all 1000 points for Oblivion!

Hmm, all this talk of playing games has me in the mood now. Some Assassin’s Creed 2 might be just the ticket.

Last exam is over with, at least until the inevitable resits – I ballsed up Govt and I’m pretty sure I failed paper 2 of Law; it had two stinking questions that covered areas I was weak on.

So. Yeah. That’s uni finished now; I am no longer a MAMJ. I will miss most of the cohort and there were a few I didn’t really get to know as well as I’d have liked.
I’d like to think we’ll see each other around, but my job prospects are limited while the kids are the age they are and the rest of the guys have the world at their feet – some of them are moving city already!

Good luck in London, Gemma.  And to Martin and Christine who get to move to Edinburgh, I’m well jealous! You’ll love it there. If you stop by Robbie’s Bar on the corner of Leith Walk and Iona Street, keep an eye out for a crazy goth wummin with some mad colour of hair – she’ll be the island of sanity in a pished Hibee sea of madness. Tell her I said hi.

Right then. Time to get a full time job…

…maybe after I’ve played some XBox…

So to all three of my readers, I apologise.  My life has been a riot for the last few weeks.

So I haven’t posted here for a while – mad busy with the MA, the kids and a few other bits and pieces. Not least of which was the return of Planet Holyrood, the Scottish politics comment/blog/stuff site I run with Alaster Phillips. It’s a bit sexy, I suggest you check it out and vote in our poll – tell us who you plan to vote for on May 6th.

Also, I’m about to start working on a new online project; domain names are bought, collaborators are signed up (hopefully with more to follow) and the webspace will be puchased just as soon as I can scrape £80 (+VAT and set up fee) together.  It’s a bit exciting, and has a lot of potential if we can do it properly. I’m not saying too much about it right now – but it’s going to be delicious!

Anyway, I was just checking in here as I’ve not blogged in ages. Next time I post I shall hopefully be able reveal  a bit more about the upcoming project.

Today I attended the funeral of Billy Wolfe.

I only knew him a little; he was a friend of my father-in-law for many years and he attended my wedding and both of my kids’ christenings. He was a lovely, lovely man. When we first started Planet Holyrood a few years ago he tried to get us in to the SNP spring conference. It didn’t happen, ultimately, but he tried, and he didn’t have to, and he did it simply because he could.

I wrote his obit on Caledonian Mercury last week. But an obit never does justice to the person concerned. Today’s funeral ceremony, though, did Billy justice.

It was the closest thing I think there’s ever been – at least in modern memory – to a Scottish state funeral.

There was a simple mass at St Ninian’s in Hamilton, said by his friend Father Bogan (possibly the most entertaining priest I’ve ever encountered – he was quoting TS Elliot ‘off the cuff’); the church bell tolled as Billy’s coffin was brought in, and a standard funeral mass was held.

Among the congregation were notable SNP figures. Fiona Hyslop and Nicola Sturgeon were present as was John Mason, MP for Glasgow East. But the mass, the chapel, was time for family. Billy’s granddaughter bravely completed a reading, and soon Father Bogan was telling tales of Billy’s exploits.

There was little mention of Billy’s political life throughout other than a few jokes about his pride at being at arrested whenever he went on Faslane CND marches. I think he enjoyed that. He used to park his car outside Maryhill police station before heading to Faslane – they always took him to Maryhill, and this way he could get home easily after a time in the cells.

I’m told he was most upset the day they took him to Greenock!

At the Crematorium in Holytown the crowd was five-fold, at least. I have never before been to a ticketed funeral – I likely never will again.

Billy’s coffin, wrapped in the Saltire he loved, was brought in. The SNP’s Mike Russell stood at the podium; on the right of the chapel, in the front row opposite the family, sat the Scottish Government. Well, not all of them, but a fair chunk: Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney, Fiona Hyslop. John Mason, a Westminster MP, was there too.

Once the gathered throngs were seated and settled, the proceedings began.

Mike Russell spoke of Billy first as a friend, and second as a colleague. He spoke of Billy’s familiar New Year cards, “the last piece of Christmas post was always from Billy.” And he spoke of Billy’s last card, with a hand-written note on the back. It read “It’s all so different now, being an SNP member, with an SNP government, to what we did 40 years ago.”

Mike’s reply, one he had delivered before, was “Billy, we would not be an SNP government if not for what you did 40 years ago.”

Billy’s son, Patrick, and his daughter (Eileen or Sheila – I’m afraid I can’t recall which one) spoke at length of their memories of Billy and read some of his poetry. Poetry of which, I am privileged to say, I have been a recipient; he wrote one for Janice and I when we got married.

Following the family, it was the turn of friends. Specifically one friend – Michael Toner. My father-in-law.

Whenever Michael takes the stand you can be guaranteed that somebody will be embarrassed, but everybody will be laughing. He stood there, not 10 feet away from most of the Scottish Cabinet and said, “I’ll keep this brief, as I’m not a public speaker – as you can tell – and I’m not a politician either so you can be pretty sure that what I’m saying is thr truth.”

My mother law was embarassed. Everyone else laughed.

Michael ended his speech by announcing, “Billy died on the 18th, and on the 19th I submitted my application to join the SNP. Billy would have liked that – ‘ane oot, ane in’ ”

But our First Minister is not a man to be outdone. Upon being introduced by Mike Russell he said “I have special dispensation from Michael to tell the truth today. Let me be the third person to welcome him to the SNP, and Billy would indeed have approved of ‘ane oot, ane in’ – fortunately for Michael the SNP has no such tradition of ‘last in, first oot.’

The FM read from Scotland Lives: The Quest for Independence, and recalled his last meeting with Billy. He quoted Father Bogan’s eulogy where he referred to Billy not as a conviction politician, but as a conviction human being. He closed by saying “it was said of John McLean that he could reconcile his actions with his conscience. So let it be said of Billy Wolfe.”

As I said at the beginning. I knew Billy Wolfe only a little, met him only a handful of times; but as I studied him over the last few weeks and heard stories from friends and colleagues, despite not seeing him face-to-face I feel like I’ve known him for many years. He was by all accounts a man of conviction and determination. He loved his Scotland second only to his family and he was quite simply, a good, kind man.

Whether or not you agree with his politics, whether or not you agree with Scottish independence, and all things considered, here was a man whose life’s work changed the face of Scotland and her politics for me, and my children; and that has changed the world we live in. How many of us go to our graves with that epitaph?

Damn few, an’ thir a deid!

No, not the musical style. Not even the noise. And most certainly not the hideous term for carbonated drinks.

“Pop” was the name that my granfather McGoldrick’s grandchildren referred to him by. I never had a grandad, I had a Papa on my dad’s side and Pop on my mum’s.

I’ve mentioned my Papa already this year, and how he was such an influence on me. But on Tuesday the 3rd anniversary of my old Pop’s death rolled around, and it’s time for a trip down Memory Lane.

I really have been very lucky with my family. My parents are still together, I get on great with both of them, and until four years ago I had four living grandparents with all their mental faculties intact. I still have both of my grans.

I mentioned before how my Papa gave me a love of the news and deepened my love of the martial arts. But my Pop….well, he was a different character altogether!

He was, in a word, brilliant! Forever tormenting my long-suffering gran with a great big cheeky grin on his face. I actually chuckle out loud to think of it – he’s just been up to some manner of mischief, my gran storms out of the room yelling something back at him, and he sits back in his chair with a grin of undiluted satisfaction and glee on his face.

I don’t doubt that’s a memory held dear by every one of his grandchildren and the older of his great-grandchildren. I’m not sure how many of us there are anymore – there’s more than 20 grand kids, and my daughter was the 10th great-grandchild.

Yup. Big family.

Where my Papa gave me current affairs and martial arts, my Pop gave me fun, an appreciation of the art of the torment, and just bare faced mischief. Remember when KitKats and Dairy Milk used to come in two wrappers? A paper one in the outside and a tinfoil  one around the chololate, remember?

Pop taught us all how to shape the tinfoil into wee trophies. Pretty harmless, you might think, and you’d be right. But part 2 of that lesson was how to soak a ball of bog-roll in spit and use it to stick tinfoil trophies to the ceiling! My gran used to go BANANAS at him for that!

He never met my kids, but Layne was born just before Pop went into hospital. Just days before he died I spoke to him on the phone and he said to me “I’m proud of you, son. Another great-grandwean! I can puff my chest out a wee bit further.” When I saw him in the hospital he was tired, and I think he knew he wasn’t getting better, but he was still joking about with my uncles and still insisted on being clean-shaven and was still being cheeky to the nurses.

So Pop, if you’re reading this wherever you are, rest assured that when the time comes Layne and Abi will be fashioning tinfoil trophies from sweetie wrappers and sticking them to their grannie’s ceiling. They’ll be fully aware of what to get when asked to retrieve a pair of stinkiningins, and they’re already being disciplined to respect the Golden Rule.

You’re never far from my thoughts; I miss you. See you in the white house up the hill.

Unbelievable! Nothing ever happens around here, at least not on the kind of level that makes the news.

But today, on this bright March Friday, news is breaking of a body being found in Airdrie. Not only has it been found, but it’s been found about 2 mins away from my house!

Every journalistic instinct in my body and mind is screaming at me to get over there dictaphone in hand, with my laptop and 3G dongle, and get something filed for somebody, maybe the Cal Merc.

But I can’t. Not today.

You see, Airdrie’s finest have found this body on the day when I’m laid out in bed, hardly able to move, with pillows placed strategically around me to maximise comfort and minimize movement. Yes, gentle reader, I’ve hurt my back. I don’t know how I did it, but it’s the worst physical pain I have felt in 30 years of life.

Normally I’d think “suck it up, Gilmartin – get over there!” and just battle through the pain, but I can hardly move to turn my head let alone walk up the hill to the police cordon.

It’s killing me. Not the pain (although, yeah, that too…) but the thought that I’m not up there doing my thing. I probably know at least one of the officers on duty too. This honestly sucks. As an old aquaintance of mine once said, this situation could suck-start a leaf blower.

Typical. This could’ve been a great scoop too.

You’re probably thinking to yourself “you’re well enough to write a blog post, Kev! Man up!”

Well, I’m actually posting this from my bed using the Blackberry WordPress app and moving little more than my thumbs. Gotta love technology.

Right. I’m going to try getting to the loo – I don’t actually need to use it, but I probably will by the time I get there.

It’s all a bit quiet at the moment, isn’t it? This is my first post in nearly a month which is shameful, I know, but I just haven’t really spotted anything worth mentioning or opining over.

Google Buzz was a flash in the pan, and from what I’ve seen hasn’t had much of an uptake – maybe regular Gmail users will use it a lot, but I certainly don’t check it much. Google Wave has levelled off too.

The problem with Wave was that it was complicated if you weren’t a techie, but it did seem fairly active for a while. But now even the most active waves in my inbox have died off.

Twitter is still going strong, and Facebook is doing its thing quite happily, but I wonder if perhaps we’ve reached a plateau? Twitter and Facebook are massively successful, probably too successful and well established for any other app to come along and seriously compete. They don’t have to worry about each other; Twitter is broadcasty, for us to shout to, at and with the world whereas Facebook is more for close-knit community networking and one-to-one discussion.

If Twitter is the Microsoft of social networking, and Facebook is the Apple, then stuff like Wave, Buzz and the others are the little customised versions of Linux that you get on netbooks.

It could be that things have quieted lately because we’re seeing a calm before the storm. With Twitter due to release a load of new features on to the web interface maybe other developers are holding back. Maybe.

I think it’s more likely, though, that they’re not even trying to compete in the first place. The main reason for the success of Twitter and Facebook is that when it comes to it, they’re just downright good fun! That’s a market they’ve got cornered – so if you’re trying to develop a new social network then it better be the most fun you can have online without hearing the word “HEADSHOT!” or you might as well not even bother.

The future of social media, I reckon, lies in targetted development. For smaller developers to survive in a world dominated by Twitter and Facebook they need to start developing custom SM apps and tools for businesses and organisations and trade sectors. Like a scaled-down LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is 3 years older than Facebook, it’s still going strong with 60 million users worldwide (I was among the first million. Just sayin’) and it has never felt threatened by, or the need to compete with, Facebook. Why? Because it is aimed purely at professionals seeking work and contacts.

So before the Social Media Sci-Fi Apocalypse, I think we’ll see a lot of break-away developers trying to narrow their focus and cater to a niche. I joked about it in the post I just linked to, but when it comes to competing with Facebook and Twitter resistence really is futile.

Addendum: On an unrelated note….if you can please tune in to BBC Radio Scotland at 0900 tomorrow (Monday 7th March). There will be a documentary on about prostate cancer. It was written and produced by a friend of mine, John Thomson, who is himself a recovered prostate cancer patient. It promises to be informative and entertaining. If you can’t tune in tomorrow, check it on the iPlayer later.

God…so here’s another one. Google Buzz.
The short version is that it’s a nice mix of Twitter’s open broadcast and Facebook’s closer, intimate, networking all wrapped up in a lovely lovely Gmail platform. With a pink ribbon tied around it.

The long version is, frankly, much less intersting than the short and far too depressing to contemplate. Social Media is just getting silly.

As it is I look after 2 (sometimes 3) Twitter accounts, several email inboxes, a reasonably active Google Wave account – cos, y’know, I don’t require spoonfeeding to figure these things out – and a Facebook page. I do not want another social media tool making a grand entrance and getting a huge uptake.

But I’ll check it out anyway. Yup. Because I’m a drone – part of the social media collective. That rather sad self-admission led me to a revelation, dear reader; a vision, if you will. I now believe that social media will bring about the end of man kind as we know it.

Drastic? Certainly. Dramatic? No doubt. Possible? Possibly…read on.

Marshall McLuhan taked about a vast electronic information loop to which we will one day all be connected and interdepenent. It has been argued that this loop is the internet, and yes, that argument was probably right on the money. But social media is Internet 2.0, isn’t it. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Digg, Buzz and all these things that keep us talking and connected to one another all day every day, I believe that these are the real loop that McLuhan foresaw.

We’re all connected to that loop with PCs, mobiles and laptops right now – but think of this…

…what about 20, maybe 30 years from now when ultra-powerful computers are implanted in our brains? Our social media interfaces will be wetware applications! We’ll be one step closer to a collective online consciousness. I’m only half joking!

Ever read The Forever War? Man will become Man! Or worse, we’ll become The BORG!! Christ! We’re being assimilated by the internet! Resistence is futile!

Science fiction is full of collective or hive minds, all sharing information and living in harmony. I’ve already mentioned Haldeman’s Man, and Star Trek’s Borg (they sound Swedish) and those are terminal examples. But there are others.

Alasdair Reynolds’ Conjoiners are perhaps a more realistic vision of our future. They retain individuality but their mental capacity and abilities are augmented by neural implants that can be used for information sharing and communication. They are, in effect, a living, breathing social network.

Of course the Conjoiners were feared and persecuted by the rest of humanity and after losing a viscious war they were forced to flee across the stars – that would never happen to us, the Blogging, Facebooking, Buzzing, Digging Twitterati would it?

Wouldn’t it? Think of it! The Social Media Collective vs the Twitter’s For Twats Brigade. I reckon we’d win. Our social media would keep us connected to the troops on the ground and give us  a massive strategic advantage. Once victorious we could run the non-conformists off the planet and start a whole new hive mind utopia right here on planet Earth.

Hmm. That’s probably how the Borg got started.

Ah well. It’s coming and it’s time to start picking sides. Tweet you on the front lines! Qaplah!