Liking Before Social Media

I've seen huge changes in communications tech. It began with the army field telephone we used on the farm to talk to the two families that were near neighbours and relatives. The phone in those days was for adults. Kids were a bit frightened of them. Imagine that! There was a party line for people further up the road but we weren't connected. Anyway, the operators were not unknown to listen in and your business would be spread all over the neighbourhood, and if that were untrue, it was at least the fear.

Letters written on cream wove with a post office nib were more reliable. One of the favourite jobs at primary school was mixing up the ink for afternoon copybook lesson. The bad boy in the class always got the job. Apparently, I wasn't bad enough. One time he beat me up. I was a bit on the light side and under powered for my age. I don't remember what I did to provoke him but I do remember getting into trouble for fighting. After all, I was the one with a black eye. I guess they thought he was a lost cause. No wait! I remember. He called me a bastard and I took umbridge at the slight on my mother's reputation. I knew what the word meant but didn't really understand swearing yet, and what's more I was excessively loved up as a kid.

Style Can Be Overrated

This school photo of all the pupils at Tummaville State School is from a couple of years previous to the fight I mentioned. Tummaville was undergoing something of a population explosion at the time. There were too many kids for the one teacher school so the education department put in a school bus to Milmerran. The hour long run finished at our mailbox. I can't remember ever getting into a fight at Tummaville, we were all friends. I'm the bright looking one beside the teacher sporting the "cockey crest" hairstyle common amongst boys who attended the home barber. It attracted a lot of comments and was not to come fully into its own for many decades, too long to consider myself a trend setter. On the whole, I don't think farmers make great barbers and while the short back and sides was a step up from the basin cut, few took the trouble to hone the skill of barbering to the art-form it is today. Hence, the cockey's crest was commonly spotted in the neighbourhood. When you could get the crest to lay flat you knew it was time for another haircut. I guess it had a certain kind of logic.

When Telecommunications Started To Bite

I was there when the automatic telephone exchange came in, no operator. All you had to do was dial the number and you could call any other phone, in the world presumably. It was awfully expensive.

We had an army disposal generator driven by a lister diesel engine. It pumped water from the bore to the header tank at the same time. It kept a bank of batteries charged up to supply us with 32 volt electricity. It was great for lighting and dad's record player though he only had one record for a long time. Sometimes he would get out his cornet on Saturday night and play along with the trumpet voluntaries. I like to think of it as an early form of YouTube DIY videos, without the videos of course. That word hadn't been invented yet. The generator couldn't manage a fridge, kettle or toaster. Anyway we had a wood stove, so toast was easy and the kettle was always singing on the hob.

The generator also powered the electric wireless, which was always switched on about five minutes before the morning, midday and evening news. That gave the valves time to warm up before the broadcast. Transistors were still a way off. We also listened to community hymn singing on Sunday nights, religiously, and sometimes I would listen to the Children's Hour if there was time between getting home from school an hour away, and fetching the house cows and locking up the calves at night ready for morning milking. The calves got the milk through the day and we got the morning milk.

Social Networking By Radio

I joined the ABC Children's Hour Argonauts Club and sent away by mail for my Club badge. I remember it as being inset with emeralds, however, now that I checked the YouTube reference, it may have well be green enamel. My number was 14 or 7 or 32 or something like that and I cannot remember which "boat" I was on as I lost the certificate and badge while getting the cows in on the day it arrived in the mail. They broke through the fence and nearly got into the river paddock. I got distracted dreaming about what my life would now that I was an Argonaut. Though I was devastated by loosing the badge but shared my grief with no one. You get those stinging tears but don't really cry. I felt adrift for some time and my status as an Argonaut was unclear. There is still a bitter-sweet part of me that is sad about it all, one of the hard knocks of childhood, loosing something precious, however I have retained my curiosity and sense of adventure inspired by the Argonauts to this day.

Then the electricity was connected. It was expensive to put on but after that cost hardly anything. There was no such thing as electricity bills going up. The more you used the better the value. It paved the way for television. For quite a while it was just the ABC and when the Toowoomba channel was launched we still only watched the ABC. Our parents had a persistent concern that we would become addicted and the art of conversation would go into decline. Their fears were well founded. I got a transistor radio later on but mostly found my own thoughts more interesting. You couldn't listen to it while you were doing tractor work anyway.

Video For Everyone

When computers arrived I really couldn't see the point. I liked fountain pens. Biro's gave you hand cramp and leaked a gooey mess that smelt bad. In hot weather a blob of ink would collect just above the ball point and would make a dreadful smear on your paper if you weren't careful. At least you expected fountain pens to leak and we knew how to handle ink blots, with your blotter. Then it was caligraphy, one of Steve Jobs passions tha tmade the link to the digit information age.

Fast forward to 1999 when the first Apple Mac with Firewire came in. I was beside myself with excitement. This was video for everyone. iMovie meant you could edit without being a millionaire. My addiction was finally beginning to pay off. I felt my world had finally arrived.

iPhone anyone?

The shift in media production has been seismic, not just from my nostalgic amblings, but from just a year or two ago. This week I got a new app for my iPhone that can stream a live video story with graphics and B-roll straight to the live stream television broadcast happening on my Mac. It can handle 9 streams simultaneously eight others simultaneously. I will get on to that later in this series of posts. By the time we get there we will have discussed everything you need to know to set up a content driven inbound media campaign. It's an integration of content and commerce, or content and distribution and is the way of the future. This blog will give you a head start. So take the load off you feet, subscribe to the feed on the side bar and Bob's your uncle.

How to Make Great Social Media Content

My parents concern about us kids being glued to the television or getting square eyes had at it's core the idea that the more time you spend learning about something the less time there is for learning by experience. The fashion seems to emphasise form over content. We all know how to be filmmakers with our smartphone but many do not know how to tell a good story how to have a conversation that flies to the heart of the matter and has us sitting at the end of our chairs, hanging off every word. The primary goal of this page is discuss how to have people lean forward metaphorically into your story and just as importantly, how to discover theirs even when they have not articulated it before. To get started, I have a for you a BluePrint on how to guide a conversation for depth and meaning and that will often go on to motivate action.

Subscribe in the form on the sidebar and I send The Guided Conversation Blueprint to you right away.

Tags: iMac, radio, tech history, video