Street Performance World Championships

The Street Performance World Championships recently did a corporate evening that I was lucky enough to be invited along to. Little did I realise I'd be made look like a real 'dummy'....

Kings of Concrete 2009

Just saw this over on Irish Street Art and it had to be shared.


Next weekend (25th & 26th July) over 20 different writers from all over Europe will be coming to Dublin for the annual Kings of Concrete Street Festival. In a complete blur of colour, sound and movement, this years two day event will transform Wood Quay from the everyday, into a canvas of art installations. Just some of the events taking place will include Breakdance Battles, MC Battles, Free Running and Skateboarding.

This is the 4th year the event is taking place and is expected to draw over 10,000 people during the two days. This is a free public event hosted by Dublin City Council, so there's no excuse not to get yourself down on at least one of the days. Check out a full event listing here.

To get you in the mood, check out this video from last year...



Cheers to Andy for this!

Tilt-Shift Film

This is a fantastic example of Tilt-Shift Film. I absolutely love how the simple change in depth of field and perspective completely changes what we think we're looking at.

Augmented Reailty: New York Subway Map

I posted about the London Underground Augmented Reality App recently. Definitely a really cool and practical use of AR. Though completely useless outside of London. Well fear not people of New York - you now have the same AR luxury at your disposal. Intorducing the New York Subway Augmented Reality App...



I really am lovin' these practical AR Apps that are starting to spring up. I think it's an awesome use of technology, perhaps the most cutting edge convergence of mobile tech and data activation that anyone is developing at the moment. Most of all I get giddy at the potential for what will come next. Consider the technologies that already exist for visual displays and the level of miniaturisation that is possible with camera technology - will it be long before AR can be seamlessly, and noticeably, integrated into a pair of glasses? Think about going to a new city for the first time - just rent a pair of AR specs. Going to a museum or gallery - rent a pair of AR specs. So on and so on.

Someone just has to do it.

Bad Reporting on Silicon Republic

I have about two dozen Google Alerts that I run, and get results from everyday. Mostly client brand terms and company names, but I also run some generic alerts on industry terms. I was interested to see Zesty's recent Social Media survey referenced in the teaser for a Silicon Republic article. Nice I thought, good coverage for Niall and Lauren, I better take a look at this.

So I click through to have a read.

I was less then over enthusiastic about the article's title 'Workers waste two hours a day on social networks', and could immediately see that the author, John Kennedy, was already on track to produce a sensationalist piece of nonsense.

The article references 300 people as having participated in the survey and goes on to throw around statistics from this that it attributes to "the Irish public". The number of people who participated in the survey was 182 (though not all participants responded to all questions). As someone who has studied statistics for over 5 years through various parts of my education, I will tell you straight off that this is not a statistical sound representation of the 'Irish Public'. Neither is it a sound cross-section of the 'Irish Public'. How was the survey promoted? Who are the target audience / regular visitors to Zesty's site? Both extremely important questions that are not even considered in the article. This is a PR site that was promoted through Social Media channels. Reason stands that the participants will be Social Media users.

For those who care; to give statistically sound inferences on the entire 'Irish Public', with a confidence level of 99%, with a confidence interval of 1, it would be necessary to survey 16,575 people (based on a July 2008 Irish population figure of 4,156,119).

I would also like to point out that the survey does not delve into the reasons why people who participated in the survey were using Social Media. I took the survey and can tell you now that I definitely skewed the results. I work in Digital Marketing, I currently have several live campaigns all active in Social Media channels. I therefore spend a huge amount of time every day on Social Media channels. However, in this case, my employer should be worried if I'm not on them, not if I am.

I would like to make this very clear - I don't have a problem with the survey at all and I think it's great that Zesty took the time to do it, and freely shared the results. Fair play! Zesty themselves describe the survey as an "overview of how Irish people use social media" and nothing more. They indicate that the major stand out for them was "just how much time people were spending online", but again this is no huge revelation and is merely a reinforcement of the widely recognised fact that media consumption habits are changing (have changed) and digital is the fastest growing media.

My problem is with the completely sensational article that John Kennedy has written, and the "conclusions" that he has drawn. Very, very disappointing that Silicon Republic would happily publish this.