The time has come! There will be an edition of Stilgherrian Live tonight from 9.30pm Sydney time. You’d better start nominating people and things for “Cnut of the Week”.

“Cnut of the Week” is where we honour the example set by King Cnut the Great, who demonstrated to his sycophantic courtiers that trying to hold back the tide is pointless.

We’re after your suggestions for people, organisations or other entities who are futilely trying to hold back the tide of change — especially changes wrought by our increasingly networked digital society. It has to be related to something in the news in the last week, and you have to explain yourself. Nominees have to be not merely doing bad things, but failing to notice or adapt to the change around them. And you have to nominate here, in a comment on this post, for your entry to count.

We’ll have our usual offer of a t-shirt of your choice from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing. Just nominate a “Cnut of the Week” and be watching the program when we draw a name from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity.

(Of course, neither me nor King Cnut Ethical Clothing are as lame and unethical as to share your email address with anyone else. I for one have site policies about this sort of thing, and so do they.)

Who do you nominate, and why?

Yes, Stephen Stephen Conroy was voted “Cnut of the Week” for the third time running by the audience of last night’s Stilgherrian Live — which you can watch online now. My people do not like his Internet censorship plans, it seems!

We had so many nominations, ranging from “NSW wheat farmers” (who, despite record crops in some areas, are still whingeing because the world economic recession means they can’t get the price they want for their grain) to “the people of Arkansas” (for their medieval attitude to gay couples adopting children).

Still, despite a strong final field including Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (for calling US President-Elect “tanned”), Vitamin D (you’ll have to watch) and NSW Premier Nathan Rees (for recent state budget cuts), Senator Conroy was the clear winner with 66% of the vote.

In just 4 hours, we’ll discover whether Senator Stephen Conroy is chosen as “Cnut of the Week” for the third time running — because it’s just 4 hours until tonight’s edition of Stilgherrian Live (9.30pm Thursdays Sydney time).

Senator Conroy is pre-nominated because… well… he’s continuing his denial-mode tactics in relation to Internet censorship. I know mah peeps, and I know ya want to nominate him. Who else? It’s the same rules as usual. We’re after people (or abstract forces of nature, or organisations or whatever) who’ve been futilely trying to hold back the tide of change.

Who do you nominate, and why?

Last night’s episode of Stilgherrian Live is now online for your viewing pleasure.

I reckon this was one of the smoothest-running programs ever, with more controlled ranting — or do you prefer the uncontrolled rants?

Senator Stephen Conroy was our clear winner of “Cnut of the Week” for his continued involvement in the creation of Australia’s Internet censorship regime.

I’d like to do next week’s program from outside the office. Not the Manly Ferry, as @JonoH wants, because it’ll be dark at 9.30pm. I’ll save that for a special Saturday or Sunday afternoon edition — which would be better? So where should I pick? Somewhere that’ll be accessible and interesting after 9.30pm on a Thursday night.

Oh, and did you see the special impromptu edition the other night? It’s in four parts, episode 30A parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. There’s a naked bottom to be seen, amongst other things.

Yesterday I spent some time thinking about Stilgherrian Live, my “live on the Internet” program. Here’s what I’ve decided…

I’ll start another series of eight “regular” programs at 9.30pm (Sydney time) next Thursday 4 September. One-hour programs, like the “extended” episode 8 of Stilgherrian Live Alpha, with some new regular segments as well as “Cnut of the Week” and other “popular” elements.

Some of these segments will be pre-recorded, because I need some brief breaks during the program and it changes the pace nicely.

There’ll also be at least one interview per program — any suggestions for people you’d like to hear from?

There’s a few other changes too…

While I won’t detail everything just now, here’s few snippets to whet your appetite:

• Some new technology should enable me to go mobile, doing the program from anywhere within range of mobile broadband.
• I’m getting a “proper” video camera so we can do 2-camera shoots, as well as better pre-recorded segments.
• Each episode I’ll reveal some vital fact from my past. It may be disturbing.
• Despite saying previously that it wouldn’t happen, maybe hand puppets do have a future.

Some people have compared what I’m doing with Rove Live or The Colbert Report. That’s delightfully flattering, thank you. While I’m not (yet) as polished as those consummate performers, there is one important point there: the “program format”.

A program’s format is its pre-arranged sequence and structure of elements. It makes it easier to produce because you already know that you’re writing a 2-minute to-camera rant, say, and the audience knows what to expect next — or is surprised when you break the rules.

What interests me is how this new medium, the Internet, can reach a smaller, more focussed audience and how that changes the format. Both Rove Live and The Colbert Report are “broadcast TV showbiz” style. Big, loud, colourful. What I’m doing is more intimate, with the camera much closer to my face if nothing else. That makes it a lot more like radio.

Apart from the regular Thursday night programs, I may do occasional live feeds at other times. Indeed, if the plans for mobile connectivity come together, that may combine with the Internet’s ability to tell people that you’re going live now to create a more time-flexible operation all round. More on that soon.

So… Anything else you’d like to know? Anything else you’d like me to do?

With Thursday’s night’s episode the Alpha series of Stilgherrian Live came to an end. What next?

Across eight “proper” episodes, plus a couple of impromptu programs from a local pub and a hotel room in Canberra, I achieved my main aim. I proved that it’s possible to do a live video program on the Internet using equipment I can carry in a backpack.

I got a feel for how much pre-production is needed. I got inbound talkback calls working via Skype. And I was very pleased to sustain a regular live audience of 30-odd people. Thank you.

Recently, thanks to Qik, I was able to broadcast live video feeds from my Nokia N80 phone. They’re still viewable at qik.com/stilgherrian. However the “standard” 3G available in Australia meant the technical quality was pretty average. It really does need HSDPA, i.e. a new phone.

So, given that “we have the technology”, what sort of programs should I create?

The 8-plus-2 episodes of Stilgherrian Live Alpha, all linked off the program page, were a mixed bag. They were meant to be based on a half-hour chat show format, but some weeks I simply didn’t have time to prepare and they were little more than me ranting at the camera. Should I continue aiming at that sort of format, or something different?

Here are the random thoughts I’ve been having, numbered so you can refer to them in the comments:

1. Am I worrying too much about making things look like traditional network TV graphics? Where should I be on that scale of “polished” to “rough”?
2. Can there be different kinds of Stilgherrian Live, including more serious interviews, quick random broadcasts using Qik, the more “produced-up” weekly chat show etc?
3. What sort of topics should I cover?
4. How does this fit with my writing here on the web (both the essays, the link compilations and the random bits), what I do on Twitter and what I do for Crikey?
5. And, given that I only have a finite amount of time, how much of each do I do?

I’ll leave it there for now, because the Snarky Platypus and I will be meeting at the gym shortly. I do have more thoughts, but I’d like to hear from you, my adoring public, first. And then I’ll respond. Comments please!

If you missed the first episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha, it’s over at Ustream. That’s the program exactly as it was broadcast on Thursday night.

(Yes, I could have embedded the Ustream player in this page, but I didn’t because of point 3 below.)

I’m chuffed that a 26-person audience generally found it “entertaining” and “enjoyable” even though it was screwed up technically and the main feature interview didn’t happen at all. It felt much worse from where I was sitting.

Traditional media runs technical trials behind closed doors. Only when everybody is happy that it “works” does the new technology get used “for real”.

However I chose to make this public. With bleeding edge technology it’s useful to share experiences. It feels like extreme programming: just start building it, knowing that you may change things along the way, and learn everything in parallel.

So even though our program didn’t fly well — heck, it’s a flaming wreck at the end of the runway! — the black box flight recorder tells us many things…

First, though, remember the aims of this 8-week Alpha: it’s to assemble the toolkit of hardware, software, services, procedures and mindsets that can be used after that. What does happen after that may or may not be a 30-minute weekly program.

I assembled a toolkit with whatever was at hand. This first program has certainly told us which items need replacing! I appreciate the people telling me that the “set” (whatever was behind me in my office), lighting and camera angles need fixing, or the audio needs equalisation. Keep that feedback coming!

With that in mind, here are our many learnings:

1. Ustream works quite nicely, in general. Good audio quality, and good image quality. (The low frame rate was happening on my old computer, so that can be fixed.)
2. There’s lots to learn about the audio side. I need a better understanding of how OS X sound routing works, and how Ustream’s “co-host” function works. Time to do some RTFMing.
3. The “grammar” of this medium is different. For example, a traditional pre-recorded TV program has 2 seconds of black before the program starts, so I did the same, and started recording during that black. However when Ustream generates the thumbnail image for the program website, it takes the first frame of the recording. That’s why the Stilgherrian’s video clips bin has a black rectangle. [I didn't want this page to have a black rectangle either, so I chose a frame grab instead.]
4. Trying to do everything new all at once is stressful. Even stuff I did know, like hosting a talkback show, I hadn’t done in 15+ years. When the audio screwed up and my guests weren’t available at the right time (not their fault), I was overwhelmed — and that’s why I was sounding so hesitant.
5. I am on TV, not radio. I must not fiddle with my nose, because people can see me.
6. I suspect I should resist the temptation to make things look slick. It doesn’t have to be “just like ‘real’ TV”. The aim is for immediate, salient content. That’s why people still found it entertaining when disaster struck: when I needed to fill time, I told stories and jokes. Narrative always wins out over fancy packaging. The time spent making graphics could have been better spent experimenting with audio routing.
7. Does it need to be at a set time each week? Some level of consistency is needed so people know how to fit the program into their lifestyles, sure. But with modern real-time notification systems people can be told when things are on — and it’s all recorded anyway, even if they can’t participate at the time.
8. Does it need to be a set duration or structure? Ditto lifestyle. But the program doesn’t need to fit into a slot in a TV channel’s rigid schedule. The Internet has an infinite number of channels! Programs can be broadcast whenever they choose. And if this program is about what’s happening in my world, then maybe the timing and content needs to adapt to that. Somehow.

For now, I’ll stay with the plan to do episode 2 this coming Thursday 15 May at 9.30pm Sydney time.

However the following week I’m at some tech conferences and maybe it’d be more appropriate to fit the timing around them. And then there’s Eurovision on Sunday 25 May…

I’ve just organised by first guest(s) for tonight’s inaugural episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha. And, as you can see, we’ve spent half the night playing with graphics too.

I’ll be speaking with Adam Purcell and/or Jared Madden from Emerge.tv about tune-out.com campaign — their counter-campaign to the music industry’s propaganda film, Australian Music In Tune, which I wrote about the other day.

How can the music industry respond to the dramatic changed happening around them? Is it actually too late for them to change? And it’s interesting to note that the film on their website right now isn’t quite the same as the one originally released…

Since it’s the first program, I’ll probably tell you a bit about myself and what’s been on my radar this week. If there’s anything you’ve wanted to ask me, now’s the time.

Stilgherrian Live Alpha is recorded live at stilgherrian.com/live at 9.30pm Sydney time (1130 UTC), and I’ll be talking “talkback” via audio and video.

If you turn up early, you’ll probably see us doing some last-minute technical tests. And once the program is recorded, I’ll turn it in a podcast — details later.

“This is what broadband was invented for.”

The program is currently “taking break” until I can regain the enthusiasm which led me to start the experiment.

For more details and the back story, try reading posts in the Stilgherrian Live category.

If you’re having technical problems, try going to www.ustream.tv/channel/stilgherrian-live. I won’t be able to do technical support while the program is on air.

If there’s nothing happening here, you can always check out Stilgherrian Live Alpha, the technical tests which began with episode 1 on Thursday 8 May 2008. It was a technical disaster — but I suppose that was the point.

Then you can try episode 3 and episode 4, episode 5, episode 6, episode 7 and the extended episode 8. Episode 2 was not recorded.

There were also impromptu episodes 5.1 from “Irish” pub Kelly’s On King on 21 June (part 1, part 2) and 5.2 from Canberra on 24 June (part 1, part 2).

During the latter part of 2008 we had the “Delta” series, with Episodes 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 and 35.

There was also a special Christmas edition, but only the first 70 minutes was recorded. It featured His Benevolence Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message.

2009 kicked off with episode 37 on 12 February, then episode 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52 and 53.

Episode 51 was an afternoon special, co-produced with Metro Screen, which has not yet been put online.

Decided! The first episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha will be “recorded live” on the Internet this Thursday 8 May at 9.30pm Sydney time. Oh shit! That’s tomorrow!

I won’t repeat what I’ve already written about my plans [1, 2]. This post presents a Program Brief — so I can clarify my thinking as much as anything else — and gathers a few recent thoughts. I’m intending to make the entire process transparent in the immodest hope that someone might find it useful.

Aims

1. Continue my process of moving from doing hands-on technical work to media production, executive production and consulting.
2. Build upon the “Stilgherrian as a blogger” brand to establish the core personal media global microbrand of “Stilgherrian as a presenter”, around which I can gather other projects.
3. Establish a regular audience who can become the core of my 1000 True Fans.
4. Develop and document production workflows so that we can produce similar programs quickly and cheaply.
5. Experiment with and settle upon a suite of hardware, software and services which works for me in this context.

See, there is method to my madness!

Program Brief

Title: Stilgherrian Live Alpha. Stilgherrian Live is the primary name, and will continue to be used for my personal live programs. The Alpha emphasises that this is pilot material. It will be dropped as soon as we’re happy that we’re moving to a beta product, i.e. all of the components have been individually tested. This may or may not take more than the initial 8 episodes.

In a nutshell: The world from the perspective of a Sydney-based geek. The program will naturally reflect my worldview and interests. However talking to people who have different worldviews will help clarify my own and, with luck, create interesting dialog.

Target Audience: Anyone who’s curious about the world they live in, with a geeky slant. Eventually I’d like to present a general talk show. However I currently work on geek stuff, and the potential audience is primarily geeks. Since I want to build a strong audience initially I need to take that into account.

Format: 8 x 30-minute video programs. The exact format is still to be decided, but I’ve identified some possible elements which I’ll talk about later.

Schedule: Thursdays 9.30pm from 8 May 2008. Live streaming will begin before the program start time for technical tests, and to give the “true fans” a behind-the-scenes view. Recording will start at 9.30pm sharp. Streaming will continue after the live program recording ends so that we can discuss technical issues.

This schedule may change. Tuesday nights probably offer a better audience, and I may need to work around other commitments. Plus there’s our Eurovision thing on Sunday 25 May.

Technical Plan

Live Broadcast & Recording: This is the set-up I’ll be using for the first episode — pretty much what I have lying around. I may upgrade various elements as I go along.

• Camera: Logitech Webcam Pro 4000 USB. It’s pretty crappy, sure, but my aim in the first episode is to assemble a broadcast chain, now win an award for cinematography. It will be replaced by the built-in iSight when I get my new Macbook Pro.
• Microphone: Logitech ClearChat Pro headset.
• Video Mix: CamTwist.
• Audio Mix: Audio Hijack Pro?
• Video Monitoring: On-screen.
• Audio Monitoring: Logitech ClearChat Pro headset.
• AV streaming: Ustream.tv.
• Primary Recording: Ustream.tv.
• Backup Recording: Snapz Pro X?

Podcasting: The program will be podcast as soon as possible after broadcast.

• Ustream: Automatic after recording.
• YouTube: Automatic cross-post from Ustream.
• Stilgherrian.com: Download after broadcast, do a top & tail edit, and post using podPress.
• iTunes: Automatic cross-post from podPress.

Talkback

Yes, I will be taking calls. Initially this will be via Ustream’s system, so you’ll need a Ustream account. However I plan to take voice calls via Skype — which in turn will allow be to use SkypeIn to take calls from any phone line.

So, how does all that sound?

My podcast thoughts are rapidly congealing into a nice creamy chocolate custard pudding filled with cocaine: edgy and invigorating, but still appealing to traditionalists. And deeply, deeply satisfying.

Conversations on Twitter this morning helped provide focus for the evolving plan… and raised some questions. I’m determined to make this program “live”, or at least “recorded live”. But how will it actually work?

I have the technology and experience to produce full “broadcast quality” audio material — see the pretty Sennheiser microphone? However I really want to explore the program format(s) and production techniques needed to produce micro-radio and micro-TV using whatever can be carried in my backpack. While audio quality may not be perfect yet, it’ll eventually catch up. For the time being the novelty value means the audience will endure it. Especially if I can keep the content fresh.

As I said perhaps a little too cruelly this morning, podcasts sound either like ABC Radio National (people talking to themselves), or the worst of community radio (ditto). Being able to interact with people while the program is happening is important. I admit my opinion is coloured by having produced (endured?) 4000+ hours of live talk and talkback radio.

So, further to what I said yesterday…

1. It will be a general talk show. I was pleased that @deanlk said “You’ve hit the right mix of geekery and [Australian] news & politics.” If I have to write a tag line now, it’s “How the world works, from the perspective of an Australian geek.”
2. Weekly, 30-minute programs. I know, the Internet doesn’t have to be exact, but it’s still a good discipline.
3. Format: video. The video is going to be mostly me, sorry, but I’ll always find some imagery to match the conversation. CamTwist allows you to automatically create a live slideshow from a Flickr photo stream, so that shouldn’t be much work.
4. Schedule: a weekday evening, time TBA. The schedule is the tricky bit. It needs to happen when the audience is available, and that’s either weekday evenings or on weekends. Tuesday night is traditionally the busiest night on the Internet, and hence the biggest potential live audience, but Thursday works better for me. And what time? 9.30pm Sydney time, when it’s 7.30pm in Perth, giving them an opportunity to join too? Whaddyareckon?

I’ve also had some thoughts about what I might cover in early episodes.

1. It’s my birthday, so introduce me; talk about Baby Boomers vs Generation X vs Generation Y etc and what it means; is it OK to lie about your age? Who should be my first guest?
2. China (various angles); the Federal Budget.
3. CeBIT Australia and the current state of geekery. Lots of material there!

I’ll spend the rest of this week brainstorming the possibilities, then decide on Monday 5 May how it’ll actually proceed. Please, more comments!