One thing struck me how in a lecture situation we demand the students attention; mobile off, listen and learn, I was struck by how comfortable, and useful, it was when the conference delegates were commenting live on the sessions. Twitter again demonstrated the facility to complement and augment the conversation.

The sessions were wide ranging, strong keynote from Graham Attwell, and following this talks ranging from Andy Black talk on new technologies to Brian Whalley showing real applications for these in the field with geography students.

We’re still it seems struggling with technology; blogs and wiki have relevance but don’t represent the key qualities of the expression and discussion we seem to have the desire to facilitate. There’s a lot more to be defined here, Steve Wheeler did a good job of clearing up the distinction between blogs and wiki but that’s only a small portion of a very large pie.

Pat Parslow held a session on digital identity which, thanks to tweets from some of the participants, I was able to eavesdrop on and toward the end of the session join in. The idea of the dislocation between the actual identity and the perceived identity may be thought of as something new but in reality we’ve been dealing with this for many years. Meeting someone in the flesh when we’ve spoken at length on the phone always requires some re-adjustment and so it is with the difference between digital and real persona.

If the work with the Graphics students site goes well I’ll have something to contribute to this next year.

A one stop service which offers design, development, hosting and email along with support and backup.

For me the important thing is the experience. If you visit a bar suggested by a friend there’s a connection between you, and a shared experience; it feels good. Time Out can’t give you this because it’s impersonal. Twitter gives the option of immediate feedback, if Brilliant Trips made a bad suggestion I can reply from the venue and say what I think, and if it’s bad it’s also very public so I guess there’s also a connection and a sense of trust here. As I wrote in my earlier post, I started by tweeting Brilliant Trips asking how to get by on £35 per day bearing in mind the poor exchange rate and they tweeted back with a link to a post on their blog.

So where did I go?

Benji Lanyado suggested Clärchens Ballhaus, Auguststrasse 24, Mitte, Berlin, and linked me to an article he wrote for the Guardian, I took four friends along and we had a great time watching a tango lesson and eating pizza. Earlier in the day I visited Vorspannkino (Cinema of Titles) at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, on until 19th April. Four screens showing over 50 film title sequences. A few that caught my eye were; To Kill a Mocking Bird (Stephen O. Frankfurt), Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard) and Bullitt (Pablo Ferro). The following day I opted out of the walking tour suggested by Brilliant Trips since the weather was awful but took them up on the suggestion of eating at student cafeteria and ate at the Humboldt University, just off  Dorotheenstraße, managing lunch for two for 7EUR. The afternoon was spent looking at galleries; the Contemporary Fine Art Gallery, Am Kupfergraben 10,  had an exhibition of all Peter Doig’s posters for Studio Film Club, well worth a look.

When someone suggested they’d like to see some live blues/jazz I tweeted my request, BrilliantTips came back with the suggestion of B-Flat, Rosenthaler Str, 13 and a friend in Seattle offered B-Flat or Yorckschlösschen. Since we had two prompts for B-Flat that’s where we went, although the venue was good and some of the sets later in the week looked promising, Wednesday night was open house with no entry charge and after an hour of experimental jazz we left.

Berlin TV Tower (interior) ©Neil Glen 2009

I set aside Twitter for a regular city map and in freezing snow flurries made trips around the Jewish Museum, TV Tower (interior pic above), Bauhaus Archiv plus numerous smaller galleries around Kochstr U-Bahn station. If I had braved the freezing wind and pulled my phone out to check Twitter I would have found a tweet from Benji Lanyado pointing me to Berlin Weinerei, a series of bars run on an honesty system where you pay what you think the food and drink was worth. I would also have found out about the Berlin Twestival which would have been a step too far toward geekiness for my friends. Instead we ate at Botzow Privat, a small bar on the corner of Tucholskystraße and Linienstraße, alternatively, just cross the road to Schwarzwalstuben on the same intersection, they did a rich orange cream dessert and the main menu looked great, it just happened to be busy when we arrived which suggests it’s worth a look. We spent the rest of the evening in Victoria Bar, Potsdamer Straße 102 watching a changing crowd of media business executive types lining a long 60/70′s style bar attended by staff dressed in period airline style uniforms.

Luzia Bar, Kreuzberg ©Neil Glen 2009

A complete change for the final morning, after exploring the Berlinische Galerie, which had a great photography exhibition of documentary panoramas (As Far As No Eye Can See), headed out toward Kreuzberg, a more diverse area than I’d previously explored and one which felt a lot more lively, helped a lot by clear blue skies. Cafe Luzia (pictured left) first stop, stripped out interior and Banksy style wall paintings. Lots of quirky shops, mix of antiques and modern graphics/prints, worth visiting for the Search and Destroy skate shop, painted by Stefan Marx, in the square on the intersection of  Oranienstraße/Mariannenstraße and opposite this a cafe serving simple food at good prices; mix of French, Spanish, German and English customers.

After all the intensity of the major museums and the heavy architecture I found this area relaxing; simple food combined with simply made art.

The budget for the trip, clients budget not mine, works out about £35 per day and given the poor exchange rate at the moment this comes out a 40 Euros. I’d no idea how far this would go but @BrilliantTips came back pretty quick with a summary of travel and food so I just need the design bit.

Unlike Benji I don’t have 624 followers, nor do I write for a national newspaper, but I do have friends in Berlin so I’ll rely on their guidance as well. I’ll post thoughts when I get back.

*TwiTrip: a twitter inspired trip (see link above to Benji @ Guardian)

::update:: follow this link to find out how the trip went

• What happens when interaction and exploration is not mediated by devices and conventions we already know?
• What new conventions and tool sets can be envisaged that do not associate themselves with existing conventions?

For example, web sites have a set of preconceptions that allows us to approach them in a familiar way, but if the media contained within them is experienced differently through a different tool set, is it more meaningful or more useful?

A recent conversation with Wendy Keay-Bright helped me to clarify the thoughts that have built up in my mind and set these out more simply, thanks Wendy.

http://domain.com/portfolio/new_work

This works fine until you click on the category link at the bottom of the post, which should display a list of posts under the category ‘portfolio’ and this takes you to;

http://domain.com/category/portfolio/

when you expected

http://domain.com/portfolio/

I’ve just set up a new site for a client and used and combination of two plugins; Decategorizer and Redirection and it seems to work fine under WordPress 2.7. Setup is simple enough, first install the Redirection plugin and then activate this. Once it’s active set a redirect up by clicking ‘Tools’ and ‘Redirection’. The option to add a redirect should be filled in as below.

Once you’ve done this you can install and activate the Decategorizer plugin.

So far this seems to work with sub categories, which is an improvement over any other methods – which just return a 404.

Check this out on the site; Other Rooms – although I should point out there are no sub-categories on the site presently (don’t worry about the excessive body copy, I’ve only just handed the site over to the client to start adding content).

Neil @ just-pressed