Twitterbuzz Data Visualisation takes top UK Award

CNN's Twitter Buzz

A first for social network apps, yesterday at one of the UK TV calender's most illustrious events, twitter beat the best of TV News.

Well not exactly twitter, but its engine combined with the programming might of CNN's 2010 world cup presentation.

Tis the season of awards and sandwiched on a table between Channel 4's Dep Ed Martin Fewell and Mark Stephen's (Julian Assange's laywer) I mulled over whether one of my strong selections two months earlier would materialise.

That is did was satisfying given the strong field.

The category, News Innovation, featured the best UK broadcasters ( BBC, Sky, Reuters, ITN etc.), so CNN working Twitter to take primacy truly was something.

As a juror for this year's Royal Television Society Awards ( RTS) and for the past three years, the playing field for innovation certainly has changed.

From Newsnight's 10 Days to War ( I interviewed its creator, Peter Barron, now a senior executive at Google) to today's concept from CNN, this was simple but ingenious.

Using a spatial matrix similar to Maramushi, here filters plumbed to twitter feeds would influence the size of the visual data. The more popular a subject e.g. England's disallowed goal, the bigger the matrix.

Twitterbuzz as CNN calls it married the echo effect of Social Networks back into the news chamber, allowing presenters to talk about the relevant subject on a live show.

This is what I wrote about it when I combed through the judges pack in December 2010.

Twitterbuzz

"For me this use of a tool currently part of the digital media zeitgeist has found a worthy home in the broadcast world. The manner in which it was used exhibiting a global conversation in real time has huge added value. Reminds me of Maramushi – a site that tracked google and presented the news spatially.

Ben Wyatt talking about the archive option providing historicism of the debate and the calendar option was a good touch.  This has statistical analysis for broadcasters in understanding their users via looking at trending, archive and following up with targeted programmes. A simple app expanded past its baseline use. Next to be used in Politics and culture?" 

CNN didn't exactly have it their own way. In contention was the BBC's Live Page which combined expert analysis, comments, video and user feedback during the Chilean Miners' rescue and ITN's Instant Polling which you would have seen during last year's UK election, with their live tracker giving instant feedback to viewers' reactions to the leadership contest.

Away from the awards, more recently a piquant use of Twitter mashup, which is playing a role in today's Irish election, though how much is questionable, is this popularity gauge in the Journal.

The work of Professor Barry Smyth and team from UCD, twitters imbrication with main stream media appears to have found a cosy bed.

end

David Dunkley Gyimah is a Knight Batten Innovation in News winner. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster and PhD candidate at the SMARTlab at UCD. He's been an RTS juror for the last three years. His videojournalism work with a new generation of Egyptian journalists from its state TV over the last three years can be seen on viewmagazine.tv

A week in media, the arts and academic Review

A week in media, the arts and academic Review

06.10 Saturday 10th October. David's log....
" After leaving my academic institution and introducing Masters students to blogs, I have now reverted to a student as I continue my exploratory journey along this space-time continuum.

Our Lt of the star ship SMART lab summed up our predicament in a piquant fashion: "Where as BAs and Masters students have a designed module to follow, you will be responsible for devising your own and then justifying it".

Whereupon, she also informed us that this was approach resembled an inductive epistemology.

Seven years back, I would have gurumped mildly under my breath for the evocation of such obtuse words. In my ear would ring the words: I AM A JOURNALIST. I AM A JOURNALIST. ( I AM A LECTURER TOO BUT) I use words sparingly and eschew this excessive verbal display.

Come to think of it, second para above, replace "piquant" with "clever" .

This odyssey has me marveling at what others are doing and many times drawing wry smiles or squinted eyes. In two hours time, instead of our obligatory RnR ro round of the week, we will be back in the simulator room. A two hour journey. ITS SATURDAY Grrrr

Today's lesson: "writing for your academic thesis" - the Kantian art of writing impartial, objective, attributed copy with the air of authority and chutzpah". That's my definition.

0.6.20 Saturday
The week has finished how it started, warp factor something. An intro semiotic of news was deconstructed. It can be such an elliptical thought process: "What is News?".

It holds steady in some areas, yet is steadily changing into a Humanoid-Klingon. In the background the voice of a Ferengi asks : "Where is the profit in this?"

Then it was media law, defamation, contempt and the rest. Yesterday when I listened to Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, Stalin's grandson, say he had started libel proceedings against a liberal Russian newspaper for defaming Stalin, I gestured: "In the UK, you cannot libel the dead".

The journalism that we once knew. Yes and I too once edited tape and two-machined an edit, is becoming a distance galaxy. Next week I'm sharing data with out Masters about writing for robots and google. Who would have thought?

But as the saying goes: " If you can't be found, you can't be read. You write for two audiences"


06.30
Midweek Aastrid a postdoctoral researcher from Norway sat me down for an interview. We had Caribbean food and in between the succulence of chicken she fired away. It would be unfair to disclose the nature of her interview, because its very uniqueness is why she is researching it in the first place and why her oversee ers will endorse its veracity.
But it involved some reflective questions, with me explaining an area of creativity within journalism discourse.


06.35
Lemn Sissay is to poetry what Hitchens is to journalism. It's energizing, provocative. If words could physically slay a man, then Lemn should carry a human board saying: "Don't speak to me or your dead".

I'd that morning had a shoot for a friend. Reciprocity. Berman, aka as Sitbonzo is a photographer extraordinaire. He needed me to document a shoot. I was more than willing to oblige. By 12.00 shooting vistas and perfectly formed species ie models, it was time to head off to the South Bank for National Poetry Live Day.

Did I tell you Lemn Sissay is extraordinary. In speaking to our artist in resident (AIR) coordinator Becky I have agreed I'll produce a site and accompanying films for the AIRS.

06.42
I have now lobotmised my brain: Here, you do Art, you do Journalism, and You, yes you.. were do you think you're going.. you do Academia and Research.

I'm told there is a mind melder soon to come in our midst who will help me collapse all into one.

Us plebeians cannot perform those feats where we seamlessly switch personalities. Who said you should anyway, other than I'd hate the idea of walking into a journalism class and start talking about hermeneutics.

But at some point soon I will be presenting to some at the South Bank where all three disciplines will collide. I have an idea of presenting on the day in a Pollacksion fashion".

David's log end++

Get creativity with creative precision

SMARTLabers at work

Forget everything you know.

Editor of 20 years standing, director with 15 years in the field, artist and commissioner with awards? Forget it.

It's time to get wired up, give youself a work out, bench press 2151b with your mind: Origami lessons, late night Chinese language classes, or how about those glider pilot wings?

In my case can I do the PhD programme, peleease?

I had heard of them, read about them, and now I had the chance to feel one - the SMARTlab.

Ever joined the Territorial Army or observed the draftings on TV and the Warrant Officer's (WO) notion of character-building.

"What do you mean, you'd like to stop so you can breath some air", clips the WO.

SMARTLab is the antithesis of this, but you'll inclined to question your self worth all the same.


Who am I?
I started off composite, intact, but soon perceived I knew nothing.

A black cloud hung. Was I some imposter about to be found out?

And then slowly, surely by a methodical process I experienced a rewiring.

I'm reliably informed it doesn't stop.

You find new thought pathways, and then more.

And so it goes until at some point, in the future, you emerge from the end wringed, squeezed, exhausted, pressed, more certain of what you thought you knew but weren't sure of at the time.

Well that's the theory and that's some time away, millions of axons firing-off away.

But for now some clarity emerges about old thoughts.


I am
Director Professor Lizbeth Goodman asked the question, a game, which effectively probed for a deeper understanding amongst the cohort's research: "Whatdyameanbythat?"

"You're researching quantum physics applied to dance forms. Whatdyameanbythat?"

That wasn't the actual question but you get my drift.

Lizbeth: "David, so what are you doing?"
David, head down in Mac: mumble, mumble, mumble
Lizbeth: "Whatdyameanbythat?"

At that moment, for once, a sheath of clear thought.

Lizbeth would express her surprise. For the first time, she'd got me.

Truth, for the first time, I'd got me. She wasn't as half surprised as I was.


Clear Water
Being forced to self evaluate, ask yourself again and again what your ideas stand for is a template worth considering.

Imagine you've been taken out of your comfort zone, but you're amongst friends with no fear of ridicule.

It allows for a certain openness.

It's akin to two dancers tangoing at close quarters, whom moments earlier had never met before.

Go on try it at the next club.

Chances are you're cantering forward with a space the size of the grand canyon below both your waistelines.

You're still closed off.

Cross Pollination
This week I have been privy to Location-based learning, the process of creativity, motion capture in art, the alternative Net (rant), Immersive game culture and experts from Nesta, to name but a few.

If you could replicate the programme across work, bars, gatherings, outside Liverpool street station, sparks would fly.

If you could amass a group of editors and have a coterie of mash-up youngsters take over the board room, sparks.

If you could grab some broadcasters and show how laptop programming could revolutionise creativity in production; if you could mix the commissioners with the technologists, somehow I feel you'd be inviting new paradigms.

For somewhere in there you're embracing that new mantra: If you want to know about water, don't ask a fish.

And that author you respected towards deity status may just seem more human; still respected, but human.

"Kill you darlings" was one solid piece of advice.

Smart Lab
Dr Leslie Hill, a senior faculty member, proposed a thought-provoking line of questioning - reverse feedback.

"So what one thing would you take from a talk around the conscious and sub conscious, which you could incorporate into you work?"

Imagine that?

When was the last time you saw a presentation on fantasy play, feminism or the sub conscious and thought that'll do me nicely.

But, pause for a minute.

We do it all the time, often sublimely, erratically, with no coherence to our actions. On the odd occasion, it's even naked.

That visit to the design studios, Society of Editors conference, consultant who charged the equivalent of his mortgage - all events which would stimuate ideas.

The big difference perhaps is these were obvious transferable ideas.

They were safe, within your scope and because of that you felt comfortable.

Most times also there's no pedagogical form to capture the work flow of the idea.

The answers that drive new paradigms invariably do not exist in the spaces we already occupy, and even if they do they require a generosity, a velvet hand to cajole you, bad cop you, make you think.

Et voila SMARTLab.

It's scary and makes you forget everything.

Everything that is which just might lead you to doubt yourself in the first place.

NB For good reasons, Chatham House Rules apply with respect to authors' work.