Projects 2010 > Fortnight > Journal
I normally love blogging and am generally prolific with my posts. But this is possibly the worst time ever for us to stop and do a bit of reflecting here. So, this is going to be unusually short for a Proto-blog. A quick run-down of where we are/what we’ve been up to:
After the last Proto-blog, Gillian and I spent a weel in Bristol where we met with a number of interesting tech-related, or pervasive media-related specialists to give our idea a good pounding. We also spent a day specifying all of our technical needs and getting things ready to be built. Simultaneous to that, I had a meeting with the folks at InfoLab in Lancaster who have granted us some time/expertise and equipment to help make our dreams a reality. With the combined forces of these many experts, we hope we’ll be able to deliver what is really an ambitious little project! Also while in Bristol, Gillian and I thrashed out our three-day-test-version of Fortnight, which we are now furiously preparing for. It launches on Monday so we’ve been busy setting up websites, writing code, writing texts, building things, ordering ducks (yes), and making films. Its busy times…
The best part of being in Bristol on our last visit was a day that Gillian and I spent tweet-walking around the ‘catchment’ area we have set ourselves for the project. We gave ourselves the following tasks:
Buy something for each other that costs less than £10 (I bought Gillian some lovely paper, she bought us tickets to an event that we didn’t go to!)
Buy a coffee (mine was from Arnolfini – cute boys!)
Ask someone to take our photo (mine is below-the guy who took it was not very friendly)
Ask someone for directions to temple meads (I had two friendly people give me directions in the rain)
Send each other a photo message to each at noon (mine was of a pattiserrie that we went to in Soho, that happens to have a Bristol branch! Gillian forgot to send hers until around 13.30 and it was of a funny postcard)
Borrow something (neither of us did this task!)
Post something (I sent a ‘love letter’ to Wes and Rachel who were at home in Lancaster where Rachel was recovering from her stint in the hospital in Bristol).
We also limited ourselves to two sms communications total to each other except for the photo message.
And we said we would meet at 14.00 at the Bristol Old Vic, having eaten and ready to process the experience.
These tasks were all about forcing us to see Bristol in a different way and interact with people. We took different strategies, but we both tweeted as we went. Below are images of my tweet stream (starting from the end of my journey and going to the beginning if you read from top to bottom, as it appears on twitter):
We took lots of photos and a few of these are now living on a secret page on our project website.
At the moment, we are all just trying to keep focused for the kick-off of test #1 which starts on Monday. After that, we regroup, revise and do another test in October that will last a full week. In the meantime, we will be setting up fully integrated technical system that allows us to make our magic happen. Can’t wait to report on that.
