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| This is a statement of fact. |
The speakers this year ranged in subject matter from comics to typography to content to music to infographics to all different aspects of the web... it really was quite mindblowing. What really gets me about Webstock is everyone who goes to it is totally engaged with what they're hearing. It's buzzing with energy from the very first speaker. It's buzzing even before the doors open - if the audience has managed to beat the queues at the coffee machine that is.
One very cool idea that popped up on the first day was making use of Google Docs to create an open document for each speaker that anyone could contribute notes to. Go here to read the full list of notes on the speaker's talks. It worked brilliantly.
There's so many highlights it's hard to pull out a few. Some of my favorite speakers included Merlin Mann who gave a great talk using slides that were low-fi photos of index cards he'd scribbled on (unlike other presenters, who even had credits for the typeface in their sumptuously designed slides), and Amanda Palmer, who made her entrance to Webstock by busking outside the Town Hall, playing on the screen inside via video link from an iPhone. She walked inside the town hall, belting out Radiohead’s Creep while playing ukulele. The video link cut out half way through. Don’t know if the phone was connected to Vodafone or XT.
Whenever one of the Webstock speakers swear, all eyes shoot to the sign language interpreter to see how they sign it. The best example was Webstock’s Mike Brown introducing Palmer, as her full performing name, Amanda F**king Palmer, and turning to the sign guy and saying I want to see how you do this, and sign guy looks at Mike and says “is that a noun or a verb?”. Cue laughter.
Palmer talked about her experiences of being signed to a major label, how that worked really well for a while, then stopped working. She said that the major labels were like the Titanic, and they were already sinking and yet they were still in denial they were going down.
Palmer mentioned using Bandcamp as a great model for distributing music, and also using Twitter as a way of organising her tours - finding places to stay, and staging spontaneous 'ninja gigs' as she calls them.She talked about staging a ninja gig in Byron Bay in Australia, which was great, but all the people who came were from outside Byron Bay, not locals as there's no internet coverage there.
They best example she had of using Twitter was when she was flying from the US to UK to do some advance press before starting a tour there. The stopover was in Iceland, and she landed just after the volcano blew up. It quickly became apparent that she wasn't flying anywhere when the airline started talking about offering her a hotel to stay. So she got on Twitter and asked "Anyone here?"
She knew no one in Iceland, but a friend in NZ who was originally from Iceland, called her old schoolfriend back in Iceland, and they came and picked Palmer up at the airport and gave her a place to stay. Within 7 hours of being stranded, Palmer had sorted accommodation and a gig for that night, and borrowed a keyboard for the show.
Palmer said “Free content breeds success which might not be immediately visible or measurable”.
She said that giving your music away for free, if it's good, will make people pay for more. If it's shitty, they won't give you a cent.
DJing at Webstock is an entertaining gig - you're basically playing background music for folk while they have a break for morning/afternoon tea, or lunch. The people attending Webstock are so friendly - they would ask if I needed any food, or drink, and complimented me on the music. Thank you! You are lovely people.
I got to hang out with some awesome people at Webstock. Hope to see you again soon! Thank you for inviting me, Webstock.
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| And when I wasn't DJing, I was probably on Twitter. Photographic evidence |
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| Webstock also provide attendees with free grapefruit and lemon Frujus. Classy |
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| Amanda Palmer entered the stage playing Creep by Radiohead |
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| Apparently I missed the geek memo about wearing checked shirts to Webstock. Not these guys |
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