So, how do we fix this? I would suggest that we start doing it more until it becomes commonplace, second nature, part of the culture. Part of how we use the web. All we need is a mechanism

Twitpay is a such a mechanism. All you need is an Twitter account and a PayPal account. There is then a simple format for making payment on Twitter:

@mawawa twitpay $2 for proposing feasible micropayment structure for indie content producers

And that’s it! At the top of your blog post, ask for payment. At the start of your podcast, ask for payment. At the start of your video, ask for payment. If you don’t ask you won’t receive. If you do ask you will receive.

On this blog, if I publish content that I think is worth charging a fee for I will ask for that fee.

This is all inspired by Mediacamp Nottingham and the problem of monetising content. Does this help? See you in the comments.

List of the active Twitterer’s although pretty much everyone at the event had a Twitter account. This would not have been the case at last year event. Also read the timeline for #mcn2.

Interesting discussion on last 10 years and next 10 years in media by Glenn Le Santo. News is the least unique of all media. The Times is about to put its content behind a paywall. Reinventing social active. All content is now about interaction. There was a large focus on monetization which I tend to make me switch off. There is rarely talk of how to increase quality of content, targetting content, syndication, editing or a hundred other topics around why content is king. It always comes back to monetization, which I agree is important for content producers but we’re always talking around the subject and not doing anything about it. When was the last time you visited a blog/site/platform that was experimenting with paid content?

Time lapse photography of Nick Walker’s journey to Nottingham. http://post.ly/Vpeb (via @walkerama)

Talk about building community by the Creative Nottingham team was really interesting. Lack of funding for creative industries in the area has meant that people just get on with it. Its a great site that is expanding rapidly and importantly has lots of support from its community. Interesting comment that “Website is least important part of what we do”  as they also use Posterous, Facebook, RSS and Twitter. You need to use their resources more!

@iainsimons gave a very passionate talk about Gamecity. I’ve never made it to any of their events and his talk made me realise what I’ve missed out on. This year I will attend! He also introduced their idea of a Festival API. Great idea. Slightly off the wall but it makes so much sense. I think its that API is such a common term now that it makes sense in uses outside of technology. Can an API refer to a paper process, why not? The examples given where to inform the jacket potato vendor of the process he needs to follow to run his stand. I assume this would include application, payment, compliance with regulations, timetable for the event etc. This same API could then be used be used by any other festival who is also planning to sell jacket potatoes. A bizarre but excellent way to reduce bureaucracy. Is the videogames industry really going to change the way we handle paperwork?

Missed @philcampbell‘s talk about Posterous and didn’t even get chance to see the new streaming studio.

Lovely sandwiches and cake from @hungrypumpkin in the Lace Market

Very intersting talk about social media and the Olympics by Jennifer Jones. The Olympics is finally opening up to social media. Has authorised press and unathourised press centers. The Olympics is the biggest media event in the world bar none. Impact on host cities is massive. London in year 5 of 14 years of Olympic pain. How are the communities affected.

Purposely controversial session “The web site is dead” chaired by Glenn proved that it is and it isn’t. Static web pages are dead by their very nature. Social interaction on pages makes them very much alive. Someone commented that everything in their house is what other people have liked in reviews. Nothing is bought without recommendation. Is this is last gasp of consumerism. Need to communicate with others has returned? We don’t need brands. Better to have all that invested in communications. The logo does not help customer service.

Alexia gave a great intro on personal branding. What are your strengths? Decide what you don’t want and then start going in the opposite direction. People do business with people – do this apply to a website? Attract the things that align to you. Lots to think about.

The event rounded off with a great session from Ben Walker. A very intimate session with a true internet superstar. Listen in then buy online.

Posts from people who wrote stuff quicker than I did:

• Design & I

Nottingham Twestival

Twestival 2010 is on the horizon and once again I will be heading up the organisation of the Nottingham event. The last two events have been great with over £500 raised for worthwhile causes. At this event we’ll be concentrating on requesting corporate sponsorship.

I’ll be looking for a team of keen volunteers to help choose a venue, select entertainment for the night and spread the word!
Follow @nottstwestival on Twitter and join the Facebook group.

Volunteer meetups are currently taking place with much more help than last time, thanks all! With the venue agreed it is now the interesting part of finding sponsorship, getting raffle prizes and choosing bands.

To find out more about Nottingham Twestival , check the blog and follow @nottstwestival.

The Invisible Festival is taking place over the weekend of 8/9 August 2009. The venue for the festival is wherever you want it to be. The soundtrack is the same but the venues are different. The very simple idea being that you invite all your friends to your place and you listen to a set playlist. This happens at many different venues but the experiene is shared on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Its all provided free but donations are requested for Cancer Research UK.

The music is provided by The Invisible Festival as playlists on Spotify. The event wouldn’t be happening without Spotify which as a service has to be seen to be believed. See Lifehacker Spotify article for glowing review. Spotify has 3.8 million tracks available for streaming, for free. Its like iTunes without the shopping cart.

Similarly, without the Invisible Festival I wouldn’t be a Spotify user. Its ridiculous but I just didn’t realise how great it was going to be even though people have been raving about it. And its a nice smug feeling that the UK is one of the first countries to get access to the service.

Spotify and Invisible Festival made the best festival of 2009!

With the continuing speculation (Silicon Alley Insider, BuzzMachine, WebProNews) surrounding the possible purchase of Twitter by Google why not get a sneak preview of the end result by using Twitseek.

It’s like Google, only for Twitter. It’s an attempt to present the results from a Twitter search in a different format. It’s information from Twitter that looks like information from Google. It should have been called Twiggle or Twoogle but it just didn’t sound right!

Twitseeking BRIT Awards
• U2 at the Brit Awards
• Liveblogging from BritMusicScene

Twitseeking Girls Aloud
• Photos from Philip Schofield @schofe
• Popjustice is twitpiccing too @popjustice

Twitseeking Duffy
• Pride of Wales
• Duffy backs illegal downloading

Twitseeking Coldplay
• Coldplay post their own pics
• Coldplay to give away album

Other terms from throughout the night:Bono, Kylie, James Corden.

Short URL: http://www.martinwright.tv/u/13

2. The iPhone

With limited access to useful websites at work, the iPhone was crucial in being online all the time. Without it many fewer tweets would have been twittered.

1. Tweetie

Having migrated from Twitterific to Tweetie about a month ago, it’s handling of multiple accounts really came into it’s own as I needed to flip between @mawawa and @nottstwestival. It’s great for quickly checking and replying to replies and direct messages. The search feature allows you save search terms which are then displayed on the main screen which made it great for checking tweets for Nottingham Twestival. The ‘Nearby’ feature was great for finding local twitterers who may have been interested in attending Nottingham Twestival. After finding people, it’s very easy to follow them too. It can post to Twitpic and it makes it easy to retweet. With an integrated browser it’s possible to get most stuff done within Tweetie. And by adding this tweet as a Favourite, you’ve always got Google at hand in Tweetie.

Tweetie really helped me with Twestival.

Short URL: http://www.martinwright.tv/u/12

I sent out a few tweets on Twitter to see if someone else was interested. There was interest but no one was stepping forward to arrange it. So I took the plunge, and others followed shortly after.

Getting the venue was the first task and the first of many that fell into place with great ease. The Castle pub was chosen. An iconic Nottingham pub named after Nottingham’s biggest non-landmark, opposite the tourist trap that is the Robin Hood statue. It has a function room that can handle 75 people, it has wi-fi (key requirement) and it serves London Pride.

The blog and ticketing system for every one of the 202 Twestival’s was provided centrally by a dedicated team who cannot be forgotten in this whirlwind of activity. It is the blog and ease of ticketing that allowed each event to promote and sell itself.

The first blog post at Nottingham Twestival was posted on 29th January 2009, only 3 days after the first call out on Twitter, was announcing the venue. The following post was call for help to make the night one to remember asking for co-organisers, musicians, stand up comedians, DJs and projectors.

I was starting to get logo envy from a couple of the UK Twestival’s which were further ahead in their organisation so a shout went out on the blog and on Twitter. Within 2 days we had a fully formed logo for Nottingham courtesy of @lucyhg of hg design studio. It was as this point that the possibilities for Twestival become clear.

To contribute to the global effort of promoting Twestival I wrote Using Twestival To Increase Your Audience While Helping Raise Money for Charity for Twitip.com.

In order to promote Twestival outside of Twitter, @JoannaButler set up both Facebook and LinkedIn groups to spread the word. Both of these groups quickly grew in size and help others to connect via Twitter.

With plenty of people expressing an interest in the event, it looked as though it was all going to happen. And that meant that money was going to have to be spent. If all money raised was to go directly to charity: water, an amount of sponsorship money would be needed.

It was at this point that something brilliant and unexpected happened. Another event was being planned, in Nottingham, for tech people. The inaugural NottTuesday was being planned by @adambird of Esendex for Tuesday 10th Feb 2009. It provided not only a relevant local company to approach as a sponsor but also a target audience of punters to approach for the Twestival. Adam agreed to sponsor the Twestival after only a single Twitter, and many of the people who were there on Tuesday also attended the Nottingham Twestival.

The night got off to a bizarre start as I posed twittering for the Evening Post article on Twitter which also plugged the Twestival. It was also here that I had my first face to face meeting with those whose I had been in contact with over the past couple of weeks. Joanna Butler helped work the room to make sure everyone knew about Nottingham Twestival. CJ held a camera at me, not for the last time, as she interviewed me about Nottingham Twestival. She then proved to be the tech saviour by providing the projectors for the Twestival.

Raffle prizes for on the night also proved easy to come by with generous donations from Nottingham Panthers ice hockey team, Just the Tonic comedy club and Wild Duck Productions.

The only thing that was missing was any volume of ticket sales which would be the case right up until the doors opened on the night.

Somewhere amongst all this, the idea of the UK Twestival Gumball Rally surfaced. Four guys would drive from Newcastle to London on the day of the Twestival visting other Twestival cities on the way. And Nottingham was to be included. I arrived at the venue at 12:30pm to meet the guys completely pumped up with energy and was streamed live to the web before I had even drawn a breath. I’m told they were only there for 30 minutes but it was such a whirlwind that it could have been any amount of time. They left us to shoot off to Birmingham, Oxford and finally London.

As snow fell heavily in Nottingham and the fateful refresh on the ‘Tickets Sold’ page painted a single digit turnout for the night it was all looking a bit bleak and futile. Setting up in The Castle, CJ and I got the projectors and laptops set up for a multimedia extravaganza of a night and hoped that the dodgy wi-fi we had seen in the afternoon would behave itself.

At 7.30pm on the dot, the first person arrived, then in quick succession others too. It was happening, the first Nottingham Twestival was in full swing! We had Monitter, 4charitymate, Flickr, video.liveearth.org on screens with Twestival.fm playing through the speakers. People who couldn’t attended were twittering #nottstwestival to join in from home.

The raffle was a success with very happy winners. All money from ticket sales and raffle tickets, plus the majority of the sponsorship money all went to charity: water, to fund clean water projects.

New friendships were created, old friends caught up on the past. A great time was had by all. Nottingham needed this. charity: water needed this. 1 in 6 people in the world needed this.

So that was that and its all over now. Not quite. Twestival never truly finishes, it just rests until the next time.

Short URL: http://www.martinwright.tv/u/11

NottTuesday on Tues 10th Feb 2009 and Nottingham Twestival on Thurs 12th Feb 2009.

NottTuesday is being put together by Adam Bird of Esendex. Twestival is part of a worlwide fundraising effort being run organised by volunteers using Twitter to connect people.

Social media meetups have finally arrived in Nottingham!