blogging and web rev B

A couple of announcements:

blogging

My hope of getting back in the blogging saddle has resulted in agreeing to try the occasional entry for bdonline.co.uk and their new housing blog. I’ve kicked off by relying on some fairly classic texts for comfort and expanded on what began as a twitter message musing on the value of sculleries. You can see the results here:

www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/blogs/the-housing-blog/

I’ve no doubt the breadth of the topic will give opportunity in the future to wander into both theory and practice and I look forward to trying to weave both together. I’ll also hopefully be using it to subtly introduce other links to online content that you might not find in other mainstream media. You’ll note for example that I’ve snuck some links in to the first entry to the fantastic librarything.com

This is of course partly because of my involvement with…

be2camp

Thanks to Sir Clive Sinclair, his rubber-keyed Spectrum 48k and several copies of Computer + Video Games magazine I am what the technology industry likes to call an ‘early adopter’. During the last 6 or 7 years I’ve been trying to take the geek enthusiasm (ranging from furtive activities such as mucking about late at night with the beginnings of this blog or organising flash mob assaults on Oxfam shops) into my office during the day and use it to change the Way We Work. It’s proved valuable in many ways; from public facing projects that have benefitted from the openness and agility of communicating on the web and in three dimensions, to experience with behind the scenes project management tools that we can include as part of our normal service through to just the simple ability to be able to run an office without being beholden to an IT Department or causing unnecessary overheads.

What’s perhaps been most surprising about these past few years is how long I kept feeling like an early adopter. We’re a conservative bunch in the construction sector it would seem and encounters with fellow geeks were few and far between. This is particularly odd given how obsessed us architects tend to be about concepts of technique or process, making us prime targets for the Getting Things Done philosophy found in many of the online tools available. Our interest in craft and production combined with, say, a predilection for pretentious graphic design and a pedantically chosen font would also suggest we’d be suckers for offshoots in this digital territory like, let’s say, Moo business cards. Yet for years I could cause an embarrassing amount of fuss at a meeting by pulling one out of my pocket and explaining that it was the simple connection of an image sharing site, short run, print-on-demand services and web 2.0 user generated content principles. Admittedly, we’ve adopted blogging and twitter with gusto in the last 4 or 5 years but then we always did like to Go On A Bit (see aforementioned BD blog entry) and frankly, there’s more possible with Web 2.0 Revision B than that.

This is changing however and meanwhile, like a scene from an episode of Heroes, others like me have been gathering to share the powers invested in them by their binary mutated DNA sequence, forming crack squads of digital communication experts ready to infiltrate the-

OK, enough with the uncharacteristic and fairly unattractive hyperbole. I’m allowing myself such melodrama because it’s with no small amount of pride that I highlight tomorrow night’s event at the Building Centre in London.

After several years of be2camp events around the country, the network’s founders will be announcing the results of the nominations and voting at be2awards.com. Those listed, along with many of the folks who came along to support at past be2camp sessions will have given their time and knowledge free at events like the ones I’ve been involved in organising in Birmingham for the last two years. Whilst the meetings and unconferences may not have reached a mainstream audience in the construction sector yet, we know that much has been learnt, shared and developed by all of us who’ve been able to take part.

So, it’ll be a worthwhile celebration. Please do register on the site and come along and join us during the afternoon. Alternatively, just keep your eye on twitter for the most important category of all: Nearest Public House.