ASH-10

Since I announced before Xmas I was jacking in the whole social media schtick and becoming an artist there’s been a bit of confusion as to what I do these days under the ASH-10 banner. Which is perfectly understandable.

After a fairly quiet January, spent mostly taking photos and figuring out ways to display and sell them, I’ve got a short spurt of ASH-10 work at the moment so, as of right now, this is what I do for a living.

• On Wednesday I was asked by Shropshire Council to talk to organisers of festivals in the region about how they might use social media more effectively, or even at all, for their events. As one of four speakers I outlined some basic concepts, advantages and potential pitfalls, bringing in examples from festivals I’ve worked with or volunteered on, followed by a general discussion.
• Today Will Perrin of Talk About Local asked a bunch of us blogger-types from the region (specifically Jon Bounds, Nick Booth, Marc Reeves plus TAL staff Nicky Getgood and Mike Rawlins) to join him in a meeting with the BBC’s Head of English Regions at the Mailbox to discuss how they could, or should, engage their local online output with the local online community, which led to figuring out what “local online community” means and so on. It was an interesting discussion and while I have serious reservations about how a monolithic macro broadcast-focussed institution can embrace the micro, it was good to see them thinking about this in a serious and open way.
• Tomorrow and Saturday I’m liveblogging the X48 Microsoft XNA GameCamp where a bunch of games programmers will be coding through the night at Millennium Point. My job is to record what they’re up to using all manner of tools from text blogging to video and photos. Low-impact, lo-fi, grab the content and whack it on the Internet stuff, which is how I like it.
• From Monday I start work at the Created in Birmingham shop in the Bull Ring. This is 100% Chris Unitt’s baby and I won’t be taking any credit for the shiny impressive stuff. My role here is going to be back-room since I’m the only person with any extensive retail experience, even though that was 7 years ago. I’m rather looking forward to devising a staff rota! This is going to take up most of my time over the next couple of months though and while it’s not strictly got anything to do with the Internet I will also be using the shop as my office/base for work and meetings during the quiet periods. I’ll also have my photography on sale so if you’ve been putting off buying a print…
• Finally, on Tuesday I’m running a Website Workshop at the Moseley Exchange. This is a bit of an experiment in that it’s not paid for by a funding agency or anything but done in a more collective way. Each attendee will be chipping in £20 towards my fee and the event is being hosted for free by the Exchange as a service to their members. It’ll be interesting to see how this model works as it certainly cuts out a lot of administrative clutter. The Exchange’s members are mostly self-employed people with a fair amount of creatives and artists and I’ll be pitching this as the online equivalent of working in your kitchen for free or paying a nominal sum for the Exchange. You don’t need a posh office at this stage so why do you need a posh website? There’ll be a short presentation of what’s possible and what others are doing followed by a two hour workshop resulting in them having the beginnings of a sustainable website they can manage themselves.

So that’s what I’m doing. If you think you can use me in something along those lines, or something sort of but not really along those lines, do get in touch. I’m quite a long way off being a millionaire artist so will probably say yes if there’s money involved. :)