Michael MD

I went to the opening of the ceBit BloggerZone this morning..

It was interesting experiencing the much friendlier vibe on the opening day before the main exhibition starts.

(even though it did mean getting there before 8am!) ...

anyway if you are heading to ceBit check out the BloggerZone in Hall 3... the place with beanbags and computers and some groovey tunes.

I loved the installation with those animations triggered by people walking over it.

I would love to see one of those at a party!

Writing this was also a good excuse to check if the XMLRPC metaweblog api here is still working
(so I'm posting this via a nice Firefox plugin called "Scribefire" - but where do I enter tags?)

If anyone here on spraci is having any problems posting to their blog or has suggestions for making things
easier to use don't hesitate to contact me!

here is a rough blurb I recently sent to someone asking the often-asked question I get in my mailbox -

"djing - how do I get a start out there?"

 I'm not much of a writer but after writing this I though I should post it.

As an article it's unfinished but as I said I'm not really a writer... and the hints might help someone out there.

For me (as shy as I am :-) the start was doing a radio show on a local
community (volunteer-run) radio station back in the late 80's...
The first dj sets at parties were at radio station benifit nights... then
people started calling up inviting me to play at their events...

music speaks louder than words ... if people like what they hear enough they
will ask... so get out and play wherever you can - it's also the only way to get experience playing publically.

- so yes ask around at events - offer to play (even if it means playing for
free in the beginning and having not-so-good timeslots to start with) ... remember that if people like what they hear you will get better opportunities...

... and ...

Find your own style - something where people will want to hear YOU rather than thousands of other djs out there.

Find your niche!
Don't try to imitate the big names - yes you can learn things from them but do it your own way.
They didn't get famous by trying to imitate others.

If you have electronics knowledge that will help ... You will have a better understanding of how the equipment works and what you can do with it.

If you have also produced or performed music of any kind in the past it is an advantage. You will (perhaps without even realising it) have knowledge that will help you.

Don't feel limited by equipment... be ready to cope with playing on less-than-ideal setups or in less-than-ideal conditions.. (dodgy turntables without pitch, poor foldback, something broken, missing headphones, power failure during a set, annoying requests from drunk people, whatever) because believe me EVERY dj will occasionally find themselves in those situations.

Don't feel limited by money either - you don't need to have the latest or best gear to get started... a good dj should be able to play a set on just about any kind of turntables or cd decks (or whatever their media of choice
is) and mixer... as long as they actually work!

btw track selection is first and foremost (good mixing skills do certainly help but without good/interesting track selection it will be hard to get people to listen)

The essence of real djing is spontaneous track selection .. so don't get too caught up with preplanning sets...
work out what tracks are good to mix with what... but leave room to change your choice if you need to ... as a party is almost never as you predict!

Regarding mixing:

let the music speak ... yes mix where not too much is happening to make it more interesting...
but where the track itself is doing something interesting - let it do so!
Mixing skills are a good toolkit to help you make the set more interesting
... and should be used that way ... I think people who misuse mixing to make a set sound samey or bland are definately NOT mixing well - even if all the beats are "smooth"... - remember a dj set is a journey, and a journey
moves around!

 also - don't get too hung up on any mistakes you have made in the past ... EVERYONE makes mistakes...
people tend to remember what they enjoyed, they usually forget what they didn't.

... what more can I say? ... except .. do what you love! ...

does anything ever change?

After living though the 80s and experiencing a taste of freedom ... then came the conservative 90's

(I always hoped that would be just a passing fad and kept djing) ... but now in 2007 things still look pretty miserable out there...

For those wondering why I havn't been playing lately the fact is I can't be bothered in a time where people only go out in groups and avoid even speaking to anyone else. I only wanted to promote a bit of freedom not this kind of oppressive tribalism I'm seeing nowdays.

Perhaps I need to travel ... to find somewhere where being single and a little shy isn't looked down apon

Somewhere where people aren't all in some kind of fake survival mode all the time.

Sure the economic situation is not good for most people (except for wheeler-dealer types)

... but I can't remember a time when it was ever good ... and sure it has gotten worse over the years but we do still have enough to eat! ... yet even weathly people seem to only think about money ALL the time!

(if only I didn't find that topic boring ... but I do) 

Where are there people for whome a good night out is defined by having fun and meeting friendly people rather than how long it takes to recover from it?

(could someone please tell me where I might find such a place)

One thing I have learned is that going out to hear music I like is not the answer these days

... the vibe doesn't seem to follow that any more...

I need to start looking elsewhere ... but where? 

Is it any wonder that I don't feel like I could be bothered djing any more?

I'm sick of hearing people saying bullshit about "family" at parties just because they want predictability or to fit into a group.

I never really fit in and can't see the point anyway.

The tribe1 vs tribe2 vs tribe3 mentality always annoyed me anyway... I guess 20 years ago I thought the culture would have moved past that by now ... but things are worse than ever out there. 

I don't want predictability - I want surpise!  I want change! ...

I'm also sick of the sexist expectation about guys having to take all the risks.. why? people say because it has always been like that (I can't believe that people are so stupid that they regard that as an acceptable answer!)

I never learned to play that game and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to start - especially when those risks shouldn't even be there!

Doesn't anyone question anything any more? 

Just got home after my first day at WD06.

I decided that I should add something to MY OWN blog a bit more often (even though I'm not much of a writer!)

Interesting day!

I love fact that microformats are be promoted so much!

Reason: I've been looking for years for tools to help event promoters provide data feeds from their own websites with all the information required for event listings in a machine-readable format.

Yes of course most people add events to spraci by using the "add event" forms but there are some promoters out there who are so used to dealing only with street press over the years they assume websites also work the same way and think that if they send out a press release blurb there will be someone hired to type it in for a free listing.
Of course in the real world that is not the case.

However if those promoters already have their own website with listings of their upcoming events on it they coulld provide a data feed of their events which sites like spraci (and anyone else compiling event listings) could fetch and use.

This might be obvious for geeks like me but try explaining that to most people out in the real world!

About a year ago I came across this: http://www.microformats.org/

I read about hCalender and that got me interested in microformats.

What a nice simple idea!

It allows the use of existing tools...and a web page can itself be a data feed!

It doesn't break anything... existing software will treat those class names as ordinary CSS markup.

I think microformats bring us one step closer to the day when there will be tools where an event promoter. without having to think about it, can put an event up on their own site and have it automatically listed on any listings sites/media that  are looking at their site/feed.
The other exciting thing is that I'm seeing people out there actually starting to use microformats for real-world applications.
eg: technorati.com, flickr.com, upcoming.org, laughingsquid.com, meetup.com and yahoo local just to name a few.
 
I've been trying to encourage machine-readable data feeds for events about a decade, but only in the last few years have I seen standards start to emerge.
Without standards, it was of course limited to cusom sulutions for people I knew personally....
but in the last few years we have seen the emergence of RSS+Event, iCal and Microformats... finally we have some standards  emerging wher people can represent event dates.

also ... there is RSS+Event (extended RSS with date tages for events) or iCal (used by lots of desktop calendard software)
The problem with most of these is how do you specify what city or country an event is in?

Sites like spraci need this extra information so that listings can be shown in the right cities.
also - how do you specify a category such as a music genre?

Microformats allow you to mix-and-match parts of different microformats to suit your needs.
So a hCalendar item can have hCard markup inside it for the address, city, etc and if the latitude/longitude are known even geo can be used.

(Event promoters and publicists take note!
 ... its well worthwhile looking into machine-readable markup or data feeds - those who do it have an advantage over those who don't - and I'm not talking about some imaginary future - I mean RIGHT NOW!
In the future I think even street press and other media will be asking for machine-readable data because of the huge time and cost savings that are possible)

Now here is something I hadn't thought of that was mentioned in one of the talks today - The potential of microformats for accessibility!

The idea of future screen-reader software being able to find events listings, contact details, etc in a page and make that information very easy to use!
All the more reason to start marking your content up with microformats... I'm sure it won't be long before such software does exist.

So I say a bit thank you to speakers and the crew putting on the conference for encouraging the uptake of markup for machine-readable data.
Whether it is microformats, extensions to RSS, iCal, whatever.... surely any of this is is better than people needing to retype their event on every site where they want it listed!

btw. If you are a Firefox user check out the Tails extension.

also - has anyone thought about some kind of tagging convention for place names?
eg: NSW or New_South_Wales?
(yes we know about geotagging but how many people have a GPS device or are motivated enough to find the coordinates of something on a map site before posting?
- surely spraci is not the only site that could find standardised placename tagging very useful?)

You may have noticed some new features on spraci.

Blogs are now themeable

(you can change the look of your blog easily - go to "blog design" to change your blog settings).

New admin page

There is a new "Dashboard" page to help you manage your own content on spraci which shows your most recent blog posts, events and forum posts with links to all the forms where you can post and edit your content.

User Groups have been added.

You can now create a group which other people can join with its own forum and a combined blog of all group members' blogs. (with rss feed)

If you are the moderator of a group (you are the moderator of any group you create), you can set the forum to be "open" (anyone can view it, users who are logged in can post, like on the other forums)
or "closed" (only people who have joined your group can view its forum or post to it)

Look for the "Groups" link in the forums section or go to http://www.spraci.com/groups to start your own group or joing a group.

coming soon - group calendar (showing events added by group members) 

More "Tag" (category) fields on forms.

Freetagging is nothing new here on spraci - internally it has worked that way for many years, but now it is being opened up more giving you more places where you can enter tags of your own choice to describe what your post is about.

("Tags" are just keywords you can use - try to use common names for things such as music genres) 

Some tags that are synonymnous are mapped to a single tag (and sometimes also to an existing spraci keyword - to make it easier for you to find things or get your news seen by people) 

You can see what events/news/blog items/forum posts match a tag by going to

http://www.spraci.com/tag/yourtag (replace "yourtag" with your chosen keyword) 

wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editing in more places.

Easy to use rich-text editing on blog and forum posting forms. 

You can edit/cut/copy/paste just like in a word processor. 

Image links are integrated with "My Files" so you can easily use any images you have uploaded in your posts. 

To use wysiwyg editing when posting to the forums use the "topic" view and click on the "WYSIWYG" link on the posting form.

This will also set a cookie so next time you go to post to the forums it will go straight to the wysiwyg version of the form. (to set it back to the bbcode version just click the "BBCODE" link)

Latitude/longitude fields added to some forms. (more soon)

If you are adding information about a place or venue it is recommended that you enter the latitude and longitude (and also the postcode) if you know it. This will make it possible to provide future services like showing a street map of the area, and more local searches (eg. whats near me?)

Bulk event upload form 

If you want to add events and already have them in a file, page or feed you may be able to use the bulk upload form to speed up entering them into spraci.

Formats supported:

hCalendar (see microformats.org for a good way to embed machine-readable data in html), iCal, Outlook and RSS+Event. 

The bulk-upload form can be found in "My Events" (yes you have to log in first :-)