I get easily distracted when I’m attempted to tidy up, so when I found a pile of business card sized bits of paper I ended up making some DIY business cards instead. (If I had to choose between an old fashioned printing press and the latest/greatest 3d printer, I’m not sure which I’d go for… can I have both please?)
All ready for any future Tuesday Tweetup or Winchester Web events I make it to… except I’ll have probably lost them under a pile of stuff that needs tidying up by then!
Just back home* from the second Tuesday tweetup (excellent event once again) with a grand total of zero high-fours (the Poken term for exchanging contact information).
Everyone at the Information on Demand conference (@IOD2009) was given a Poken, so if I’d been in Berlin recently, there would have been a massive captive audience of Poken users to high-four with. A conference seems like the natural environment for a Poken: lots of people with a common purpose all wanting to network, and multiple brands looking for a new piece of plastic to give away with their logo on.
Photo from “IBM Information On Demand 2009 Berlin with customized Poken” set by Ayman van Bregt (some rights reserved).
Unfortunately, as Andy has already mentioned in his Poken review, there just aren’t that many around. One glaringly obvious question is why it’s not possible to use mobile phones to do the same job, which is something almost everyone has already. Poken themselves saw that question coming and have a plausible answer about compatibility and usability but I think the shear number of Poken required before they are even half useful means a phone based solution must still be a strong contender. Using bluetooth couldeasily get round the problem of working out who even has a Poken, and there are ways to use it just as easily as a Poken. For example, the cityware digital co-presence project was pretty similar in lots of ways, using bluetooth device IDs combined with a Facebook application to manage contacts later, rather than beaming bluetooth contact information directly, and all without any awkward high-fouring. Obviously it also had its downsides, one of which was needing cityware nodes to log when devices were in the same place.
To earn a permanent place in my pocket, the Poken would have to deliver more, even if I never see another Poken. For a start, I’m just astounded that the Poken I have doesn’t even provide some simple USB drive storage. Or, to focus a bit more on the core purpose of a Poken, why not build it in to a business card holder? (Or a Moo card holder if you’re Andy!) Or even go the cityware route and log bluetooth device ids as well as other Poken contacts.
I still have my Poken with me but I don’t see them taking off in the wild for a long time, if at all. On the other hand, they are ideal for specific events and defined groups of people, such as employees for example, where I think there’s a lot of potential. A high-four is certainly far more natural than messing around trying to find some well hidden feature of your phone, especially if you know you aren’t going to be met with a blank look for suggesting high-fouring in the first place!
There’s more talk about Poken on Dogear Nation
* I didn’t actually get home this late, but half way through writing this post TalkTalk decided not to bother providing an internet connection for the second night in a row. It’s not going to take too much more of that before I disconnect from TalkTalk permanently.
Updated: …with a photo from IOD. (17 June 2009)
Update: More thoughts on Poken on Barry Leiba’s blog. (26 June 2009)
Update: Looks like a Poken might be trying to creep back in my pocket; the new Poken Pulse finally includes a 2GB USB drive! (2 October 2009)
Update: Interesting list of different ways to establish online connections from real world encounters, including the Poken. (8 July 2010)
Last night I went along to my first ‘proper’ tweetup. I’ve had minor tweetups with friends and fellow Hursley tweeps before, mostly involving a nice cup of tea and a sit down, but all the big tweetups seem to be in London. (Or Reading, but who’d want to go there?!)
PR gurus, students, lecturers, web designers, application developers, personal trainers, salsa dancers, cake bakers, comedians, film makers, journalists, metaverse evangalists, entrepreneurs and those new to twitter were in the basement of Dock Gate 4 for the first Tuesday Tweetup. Not sure how many people came in total, but @Tuesdaytweetup‘s (Lisa‘s) efforts meant there were more than enough people to talk to in one evening.
Without Pokens, QR codes, Cityware, or a decent memory to be sure, I think I met @_hb, @RAndyVee, @DanShilcock, @CatStormont, @jonsa57 and of course @Tuesdaytweetup (who did I miss?!), and heard some great stuff about an ultimate set top box project (in need of Linux hardware driver guru) and owl flavour cakes.
I didn’t recognise many people at the tweetup (most of the Southampton tweeps I do follow weren’t there) but it was also good to catch up with @epredator and @cminion.
All the signs are that the Tuesday Tweetup will be a regular event and in the mean time, the second OpenWeb Southampton is on soon. (I guess there’s still no Southampton network in Facebook yet though.)
Notes from a small field 