And so 7 Wonders In 7 Days #90909 launches at Futuresonic 2009

I had an amazing time presenting at the public launch of 7 Wonders in 7 Days at the Contact Theatre on Manchester’s Oxford Road yesterday evening.

Temporarily decamped to the quirky building in Manchester’s academic heartland, this month’s Social Media Cafe Manchester took place as part of Futuresonic, the yearly festival of music, events and ideas which is currently front of mind for every hacker, geek, and social media lover in the region!

Here are my slides. You can also download them from Slideshare.

Note that these are not the exact slides I presented. I’ve tidied them up to get rid of a duplicate page(!), added hyperlinks to URLs and clarified some bullet points.

During my talk, which happened in the second of the two sessions at the unconference-style event, (I arrived after the start of the first because I was waiting for a taxi!), I got a number of really good suggestions for the project which really drove home the importance of the Social Media Cafe for Manchester’s creative and developer community.  But more on that in a minute.

Here are the ideas, some of which came out during the informal chat after my presentation.

I jotted them as soon as I could at the event but probably forgot some. If you heard my talk and suggested something I haven’t mentioned please leave a comment as I need all the help I can get!

I’ve also tried to credit each idea by including a Twitter screen name when I can. If you were there and see your suggestion without your (Twitter) name, leave me a comment with your screen name and a reminder of your idea!

If I attributed your idea to someone else, please shout out!

• Reduce the Trip Itinerary from Thomas Cook’s current suggestion of 10 days to 7 by linking up with a Geography department at one of universities in Greater Manchester, perhaps even Manchester University. By Rachael Howarth @rachaelhowarth

• Consider an alternative or back up trip itinerary in case flights are missed, suggested by Josh R aka @technicalfault. This could potentially be with Star Alliance or some other global airline network.

• Contact a mobile operator and request a World Roaming SIM card to save money on calls whilst abroad. Suggested by Ricky Chotai @ricky_chotai.

• Find a way for developers to get involved to simplify the technical side of running the project. Perhaps by running an iPhone App competition. Suggested by Perry Bonewell @pbonewell. This is something I’ve given some thought, actually, more on this soon.

• Approach the makers of video game Rock Band for sponsorship by offering to play their game at each country visited.   This was jointly posed by Alan Holding @brokendrum70, @technicalfault, @grayle and @ricky_chotai.

This funny idea morphed into contacting Nintendo and offering to play Wii Tennis on my travels by serving a shot (is that what they call them?) in one country and maintaining the rally in others.

I chipped in and giggled and contributed and it eventually became what I think is a powerful iPhone app idea: Cross Country Tennis.

I will expand on this after listing the other ideas!

• The Living Post Card – aka the Chi-chiGram! No funny business though.  The idea is to deliver a special message to someone at each country. Idea by @brokendrum70, cheeky name by @technicalfault.  Sensible one by yours truly.

• Approach TV documentary producers to ask for a ‘covering film crew’. There is more and more interest in programmes like this and Dave Gorman’s travelling documentary is an example, as suggested by Richard Hudson @RichardHudson.

• Run a competition for a Someone Once Told Me (SOTM) picture taken with someone at one of the 7 countries. This came out of a conversation with Mario Cacciottolo aka @marioSOTM who runs the popular social photo site and is in Manchester because he is speaking at Futuresonic 2009.

Mario also offered a very special SOTM prize for what will become one of the first 7 Wonders In 7 Days charity auctions.   I’m keeping this under wraps for now but I can’t wait to share it when the time is right!

Back to Cross Country Tennis:

The idea for this iPhone app is to allow iPhone users (and Android phone users, hopefully) an opportunity to play a game with my geo-location(!) as the trip progresses.

Basically the idea is that your iPhone playing a game of tennis (or another game of your choosing) with you using updates of my location as a trigger.

The game starts when I leave the country and my geo-location changes. The game/app would then appear to have served and kick-started a game of tennis, for example.

It’s your move now; you must return the serve before you receive my next geo-location update or you lose the point!

And so on… The game you are playing can be changed to say, a penalty shoot out in football or round of golf or a session of clay pigeon shooting.

Whatever… The idea is you play and when I move from one location to another, I play.

We also briefly talked about cricket and rugby but I don’t get those games so can’t elaborate.

The way this game developed in the space of a few minutes epitomised how important the Social Media Cafe Manchester has become as a platform for sharing ideas and getting feedback about projects at an early stage.

This is something that Francois Nel @francoisnel and Steve Matthewson @stevematthewson and I discussed much later sat by the Contact Theatre bar.

It’s amazing to think that at just over 6 months old, the Social Media Cafe is providing such an important and previously overlooked role in nurturing new ideas in Manchester’s digital sector.

Another chat with Caleb Storkey, founder of Freedoma, the newly launched social-media powered local business directory was another case in point.

An opportunity to share ideas spawned a slew of fertile ideas.

The Futuresonic festival proved a fitting setting for all this cross pollination.

I will explore the ideas listed above in coming weeks on this site/blog. Stay tuned.

Please add any additions or others you may have in the comments. Many thanks in advance!

Still to come on the site is a lot more social media integration. Flickr, FriendFeed, Last.fm… Will be really good when it’s done.

As I said at the end of my presentation, I need your help to get the 7 Wonders in 7 Days project off the ground so if you haven’t already, please cast your eye over this itinerary suggested by Thomas Cook Manchester and help me reduce it from 10 to 7 days!

Thank you!

Related posts:

1. Sow an Idea and Watch It Bloom at Social Media Cafe Manchester
2. Travel Update – 7 Wonders Trip Probable in 7 Days #90909
3. People Would Rather Meet Than Compete
4. How do you stay connected on the go?
5. Do you speak WordPress? Help us refresh the 7 Wonders in 7 Days homepage.

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Tags: #90909, #futr09, #smc_mcr, Contact Theatre, Freedoma, fundraising, Futuresonic 2009, Futuresonic festival, Manchester, social media, Social Media Cafe Manchester, social media for change, Star Alliance, Thomas Cook Manchester, YouTube