A few years ago, Jens gave me a CD with some files on it that I needed for a school project. Also on the CD was a folder titled “NASA – 1172 Pictures (Black Magic Alchemy Illuminati Nwo).”

Knowing what I did about Jens at the time, I wasn’t super surprised. I also thought that the contents of the folder were awesome and, for the most part, exactly as advertised: over 1000 old-school space and rocketry pictures. There are photos of astronauts, galaxies, and the earth from space. There are diagrams of rocket trajectories, and landscapes of the moon and mars.

Some of them seem to be pictures from magazine articles, while others seem to be scans of official slides. They’re all amazing.

When I asked Jens where he got them, he said he didn’t even know about the folder, and that he’d originally gotten the CD from another friend of his.

Wherever they came from, they were too awesome to keep bottled up on a hard drive and I decided to upload them to Flickr.

Enjoy them.

-Parker

I arrived at Mesh bright and early on Tuesday morning. After picking up my name tag and agenda, I was handed a big bag of swag. Two bags actually, one laptop bag (similar to the one I received last year) and a second smaller lunch bag. Both were filled with a bunch of swag that I’ll probably never use, and definitely don’t need. Not to mention I had also brought my own bag, so I was now left with 3 bags to cart around and no coat check or drop space to leave them in. I am definitely down with receiving free goodies from sponsors, but why not introduce the concept of digital swag (this being a digital media conference and all). It would have been so much cooler to receive a login and user code where I could peruse and select free digital gifties online. I wouldn’t have had to cart any extra gear around with me all day, and I would probably have actually made use of and paid attention to the sponsors’ freebies.

Hit #1: Keynotes

Great Keynote presenters and topics on Day 1! Day 1 was all about privacy and security. The first keynote was Chris Thorpe from The Guardian, who spoke about their decision to open up their content and data to developers. Great session (expect a detailed blog post in days to come). The second keynote was Joseph Menn, who spoke about his new book Fatal Systems Error, and went on to tell gangster stories of  digital crime lords—very cool!

Miss # 2: No visibility

You couldn’t actually see any of the presentation if you sat toward the back of the main auditorium rooms. Mesh set up large screens behind the speakers and then just projected the Mesh logo. Great as it is, it would have been so much better to project the speakers onto those screens. It’s so much more engaging when you can both see and hear the panels.

Hit #2: Food and drink

There wasn’t a break that went by that didn’t offer snacks, meals, drinks, and tasty treats. Everything from ice cream sandwiches to giant pretzels were supplied along with your choice of juice, coffee, and even Red Bull. Mesh organizers did a great job to make sure us meshies never went hungry or thirsty.

Miss #3: Sessions and Tracks

Mesh would benefit and keep people coming back for years six, seven, and eight if they divided tracks and sessions geared toward beginners and more experienced digital marketers. I totally understand the need to have 101 and base-level sessions, but unless Mesh sessions continue to expand and geek out as we do, numbers will start to drop off. One thing I heard from a five-year mesh goer was that the first year it changed her life, her entire career path, and way of thinking, but five years on the level of education she was receiving was really tapering off. DON’T LET IT TAPER OFF! Offer some more in-depth, geeked-out sessions next year!

Mesh Hit #3: Mesh Live

Mesh Live encouraged people to share their Mesh experiences, photos, and videos online, direct to the Mesh website. This feature was a great idea. Hopefully going forward there will be more photos and videos of actual Mesh presentations; sometimes it was hard to choose between sessions, and it would be amazing to have access to the sessions we missed (hint hint).

Did you go to Mesh this year? What did you think? Any suggestions of how to improve the experience for next year?

There was some great discussion around that topic, and I’ve decided to follow it up with what I hope is another question that can help me out:

When is it okay to wear a blazer?

Not being incredibly fashion-forward, my original phrasing of this question to a friend was, “What’s the deal with guys that wear suit jackets with different coloured slacks? That just looks tacky.” My friend quickly pointed out that these guys are wearing blazers, and that these are less formal (“sportier”) versions of the suit jacket.

My take on it is that if you’re going to bother putting on a suit jacket (sporty or not), match the pants to it. Otherwise, it looks like you just pulled out the first two things you saw in your closet. The fact that 3 of the first 10 results in Google for “When is it okay to wear a blazer?” are for how women should wear them doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in me that this is an appropriate look.

AskMen.com has an article titled Men’s Blazers: 6 ways to wear them. In order, these ways are:

1. With a deep V-neck cardigan

2. With a plaid shirt

3. With a chunky patterned knit

4. With heavily distressed denim

5. With cargo pants

6. With combat boots

And none of these six ways seem like good ideas, despite coming from “The Number 1 Canadian Men’s Lifestyle Portal”.

So what’s the right situation for wearing a blazer? Am I completely wrong to think that it isn’t a professional look?

If there’re any Australian readers out there, I’d love to meet you!

I’ll be in Queensland from 1 April to 11 April. I’ll be giving a presentation at QUT on 7 April (Z2 Block, Level 3, Room 306, Creative Industries Precinct, 2pm – 4pm). Later that day, I’ll probably be at the Mana Bar.

From 11 April to 15 April I’ll be in Sydney. On 13 April I’ll give a talk at the Centre for Independent Studies. It’s not game-related, but it’ll deal with the question why Europeans often see Australians as the plebeians of the Western world.

On 15 April I’ll arrive in Melbourne. I’ll be at the University of Melbourne on the 16th, at Monash at on the 19th and at RMIT on the 20th. I don’t know the exact times yet, but let’s hope I’ll be able to get to sleep in.

I’ll continue to Adelaide on the 21st. No talks this time, but I’ll meet Melanie Swalwell who has done a lot of research on the history of digital gaming in Australia. I’m looking forward to some exciting talks with her. Maybe I’ll also get to meet the people behind the Gamers4Croydon party.

On 24 April I’ll fly to Perth. My presentation at Murdoch University will be either on the 27th or 28th. Again, some details still have to get figured out.

In the first week of May I’ll give a talk at my alma mater, the Gold Coast campus of Griffith University.

And that’s pretty much it. For further details check my twitter account, as I’ll be posting updates about the times and dates of the talks.

-Jens

Like most brain busters it began simply enough. My friend told a story of how she had been in the car with her dad watching him manoeuvre between his cellphone, blackberry, MP3 player, and the steering wheel. “He was like a zombie”, she said, “doing a million virtual things at once”, barely even conscious of the conversation he was supposedly having with her. In that instant, almost all of her dad’s faculties were fulfilling virtual obligations over a variety of virtual networks.

Envision a matrix, each technology filling a virtual space around us, connecting slowly but surely with other virtual spaces until we are in fact living most of our conscious lives in a virtual realm. Kinda scary, but not that far-fetched.

This brings in the discussion of augmented reality, the real-time intrusion of technology into our physical environment. However, I am not talking about overlaying our environment with technical or digital information. I’m speaking more about disconnecting from our physical environment altogether.

Forget the notions of Second Life, where users are still quite present in the physical realm. The reality of our current situation mirrors science fiction, whereby our physical selves are not necessarily needed for much of our day-to-day lives. The matrix of different networks is definitely starting to fill out, taking more and more of our consciousness with it.

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We put so many hours of energy into virtual worlds and networks every day—tuned to our laptops, iPhones, and Blackberries so as not to miss a single nanosecond of social networking, emails, video games, online shopping, or music. If the law above holds true (and it does), where does this energy go? Does it flow out the other side in the form of new creations, products, events, and innovations? Or does it get trapped behind the screens in a virtual space awaiting our next visit? If we are engaging in three or four or five different mediums at a time, giving small pieces of ourselves to each one, how much of our conscious minds are “here”, and how much is already residing in virtual space? And more importantly, what end are we all working towards?

We need to ground ourselves and remember that at least for the time being we are existing in the physical realm. It is important to turn yourself off of social networks, cellphones, and other virtual devices every day. Spend some time and energy with your feet rooted in the soil.

What do you think? Have you found yourself having this same conversation? Did you get any further in your discussion than we did?

A few weeks ago, the good folks from the Canadian Institute were kind enough to give me that presentation in video format so that I could share it with my readers.

I pretty much walked straight from the presentation to a job interview at MAVERICK PR, where I now work.

For more on this presentation (including my explanatory notes and the slides), please see this post or visit ParkerMason.ca/Globe

Anyways, it looks like the Canadian Institute has another Managing Social Media conference coming up in Calgary in March. I’m sure it will be good, so if you’re in town you should check it out.

-Parker

PS: You should totally follow BlogCampaigning on Twitter. It is twice as easy as RSS, and all the cool kids are doing it.

Earlier this week, Sohmer wrote a blog post called “Thanks for Stealing” in which he expresses his displeasure for the fact that someone has created an iPhone application that allows people to easily view the comics that Sohmer writes. The maker of this app earns money from the sale of the app ($0.99) and from ads within the app. Sohmer’s displeasure stems from the fact that he isn’t seeing any of this money, and that someone is essentially profiting off of his hard work.

At first, I completely agreed with him. Then I read the rebuttal posted in the comments section by AsmodeusLore (clearly a student of the Masnickian school of economics) in which he constructs and airtight argument as to why Sohmer should not be concerned about this iPhone app.

The essence of his comment is that the comics haven’t been “stolen” but rather “copied” (something quite different), and even though this app isn’t driving any traffic back to Sohmer’s website, it is still serving as a promotional tool for the comic. Existing fans are able to enjoy it in another way, and at least some of the new fans will want to know more and will eventually end up at Sohmer’s site or buy one his books.

Read the post from Sohmer, then read at least one of AsmodeusLore’s comments below it and see how you feel.

I think there is a huge opportunity for Sohmer to partner with the creator of this app. For example, offering to promote the app on his site if the developer changes the app so it links back to the site, or share revenue with him. Not everything needs to end up with a lawsuit or take-down notice.

So what do you think? Is it still stealing? What does this make you think about the “piracy problem” facing the entertainment industries?

-Parker

For more information, check out the Facebook Event (and let us know you’re coming so we know that there’s enough space). While you’re at it, join the Thirsty Thursday Facebook group.

Hope to see you there!

-Parker