Free-e-day live

Free-e-day live was the real-life gig to tie in with Free-e-day, the global online celebraion of internet culture that I dreamt up on the bus one afternoon and ended up attracting 100 participants all offering amazing creative things for free, and giving us workshops and webchats with invaluable resources for anyone outside the mainstream. It has been all a bit of a wonderful haze.

Free-e-day live was put together by local singer-songwriter Nikki Loy (pictured) who, being an illustrator as well as musician, embraced the multi-arts idea behind the festival. Held at Oxford's Cafe Tarifa, the night featured an art ecxhibition, belly dancers dressed as skeletons, music and reading. It was a fantastic night with a fantastic crowd. Let me bore you with a LITTLE about what makes a live, indie occasion like this great.

First off there's the hyper-contrived shot for the local rag (who thought, for some reason, that we were giving away electronic gadgets and wanted Nikki and I to hold up some mobile phobnes for the photoshoot!). next there's the inevitable when you invite people from London. As the 8 o'clock kick-off approached, 2 writers and the headline band remained, as so many before them, and so many, I dare say, to come, stranded on the M40. Never have I been so pleased (I'm always pleased to see him, but I can't remember physically bear-hugging him before) to see Roland (pictured left), who gave us a brilliant rendition of Chapter 17 of The Beach Beneath the Pavement. Hearing his words somehow made them even funnier than they had been on the page, a reminder that stories - whatever your age and their genre - are best read aloud.

Setting the reader-musician rhythm we were next treated to a rather endearing keyboard and vocals set from the big-voiced Mol Hodge. "Most of my songs are a bit morbid" she told us nervously. "Bloody hell, if you think that's morbid just wait for SKIN BOOK" I thought. Mol has a great voice, and plenty of time on her side, and as she explores the melodic range of her music over the years to come is sure to be someone we see more of.

Nikesh Shukla is someone the world has already seen plenty of. With a string of TV and radio credits, festival appearances, awards and the like, he is far the most advanced and successful of any of ourt artists on the night, and we were hideous lucky to snag him - not only that he doled out copies of his kidologies CD to grateful audience members. Having introduced Nikesh as a poet he proceeded to read us a short story, but the performance element of Rap Tracks - a hilarious tale of pre-teen rap, Asian grandmothers and Gujurati dialect - was the match of anything slam poetry can offer. More confirmation that anyone who says writers can't engage an audience with prose is talking nonsense.

I met Nikki Loy, who came on as Nikesh departed back for the next of 20 gigs in 32 days, when she was busking on Oxford's St Giles. I was so taken with her guitar and vocals I snaffled a card and dropped her an e-mail, and I've been impressed with her ebergy, verve, and all-round artistic enthusiasm ever since. This was the first time I've seen her live, and I was impressed by the way she handles a crowd and the way she handles a guitar. She too had freebie CDs that were gobbled up gladly.

In the interval, Nikki came up to me and said "can you hold this?" pointing to a UV tube. "Er, OK" I said rather confusedly, until I saw what was coming next, a train of skeletons snaking to the stage who proceeded to shake their fluorescent booty to music I was too gobsmacked to notice much but think may have been some scuzzy Goldfrapp.

The Scary Skele-belly Dancers gave me the perfect segue into the world premiere of the whole of SKIN BOOK - you know "those were th bones, now for some skin" - ah the joys of improv! Won't say much about me (below). That would be rude. Suffice to say my opinion remains unchanged - performing to a live audience is THE best thing a writer can do - feeling attentive eyes, listening to the gasps the sighs - that kind of engagement is what writing is all about. I THINK people enjoyed it - if enjoy is the right word for a story about a woman whose diary is made from skin she harvested from her twin bro.

The headline act seemed to enjoy it, though, which was nice. The Joker and The Thief describe themselves as a folk blues combo which had me worried before the show. I dislike folk so much I wouldn't hand a picture of Fleet Foxes to my dartboard because it would be unfair to the bristles. But The Joker and the Thief were an unexpected delight. Full of energy (proper energy - the kind you actually believe might just come from some kind of dark passionate place rather than the gurning wurzelly cheeriness of much folk), they delivered a set that was variegated and exciting. They have a penchant for playing around with different instruments, whcih added colour to the set - from frontman Dan (sounds like an epithet from Total Wipeouut) banging the cymbals with an assortment of bells and sticks, to Josh's alternation of ukelele, sax and accordian (far my favourite - I could almost feel myself on the set of Amelie).

A pretty much perfect night was rounded off when two of the skele-bellies came back dressed in burlesque and the crowd dispersed happily into the night.

There seem to be some obvious lessons from a night like this. Everyone would do well to bear them in mind:

1. There is a ridiculous wealth of talent outside the mainstream.

2. The creative world is full of almost boundless energy, enthusiasm, and can-do attitude.

3. Writers are every bit as engaging as musicians.

Here's hoping this is the first of very many such nights I get the pleasure of being involved in. A HUGE thanks to all who contributed, to Cafe Tarifa for being such great hosts, and most of all to Nikki for making it happen.

A full list of artists who contributed to the exhibition:

Cheryl Pearce – Poet
cherylpearce@yahoo.com

Will Mankelow – Photographer
RocketoPhotography@yahoo.com

Sandra Farrow – Photographer
http://www.farrowphotography.co.uk/

Nikki Loy – Illustrator
nikkiloy@yahoo.co.uk

James Whayman
– Photographer
http://www.unformedmind.com/

Sarah Kennedy – Artist
email: acrylicartist@gmail.com
http://www.sarahkennedyart.com/

Year Zero Writers and Rob Lennox - artist: http://www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com/

Be Part of Something Amazing

You may remember that several months ago I mentioned a hair-brained scheme for an online festival called Free-e-day, the idea for which was that a whole bunch of independednt creative people would offer something of their work for people to keep, for free, on December 1st.

Like me you probably thought that was the last you'd hear of it. But what has actually happened since then is that 58 writers, artists, bands, musicians, magazines and indie organisations gave so far got together to offer something and support the event. 24 of them have sent me pages with fantastic creative stuff on. These, along with a bit about the event, and a directory full of weblinks to where the free downloads will be available (many are available now), comprise the first brochure for the event, the cover for which you can see here.

You can download the brochure in full from the Free-e-day website, or you can read it on your screen by clicking "read now" on the bookbuzzr on teh sidebar of this blog (or at the bookbuzzr site).

There are also loads of workshops and webchats going on on the day to encourage debate as well as to offer practical help to independednt creative people. It's also looking more and more likely there will be a real-life concert on the day.

Now there's something tangible for you to see, I hope more and more of you will want to join up and get involved. Remember, you're giving something away for free for one day. But the next time fans out there have money to spend on a CD or a book or a picture, maybe, because of Free-e-day, they'll look beyond the usual places to get it.

So drop me a note here if you want to take part, share the bookbuzzr, tell people about the event and the site, and get as many people as you can to sign up to the Facebook group (there are 200 members so far - the more we get the more creative types we can get on board). And you could be part of the next brochure.

WHAT IS FREE-E-DAY

Free-e-day is 1 December 2009

Free-e-day 2009 is a celebration of the independent creative spirit.

Free-e-day is for every singer, writer, artist, artisan, photographer, film-maker, whatever who believes that the most important part of culture is the fans. And it’s for everyone who loves culture and wants to experience the very best of it, or just try out something new, for free.

Free-e-day is the chance for everyone and anyone to give some of their work away for free, as a thank you to their current fans, and a present for their new ones.

Free-e-day is the world’s biggest showcase for the massive, indomitable, indestructible, joyful, independent creative spirit of the human race.

Free-e-day is the chance for everyone to discover the most exciting culture the whole world has to offer.

Free-e-day is a 48 hour (because we recognise that a day starts one side of the date line and doesn’t finish till it reaches the other side) carnival with online events like webchats and debates; and workshops to offer advice to anyone who wants to do it for themselves.

Free-e-day is not a directory. It’s not exhaustive. It’s not a list of stuff that’s available for free. It’s a celebration of a group of amazing people who’ve all endorsed the principle of being fabulous in their own way. It is, in other words, a community.

Just How Free is Free?

So what have we learned this month? Seth Godin thinks free is good; Chris Anderson thinks free’s good as long as free’s actually freemium; Malcolm Gladwell thinks free doesn’t work; anyone without an agent thinks free’s the cure for everything from cancer to climate change; and a whole host of frightened writers with an agent thinks the devil’s put a lot of idle wannabes’ hands to work and come up with free.

But isn’t every single one of them actually missing the point? Free isn’t free at all. Free’s a privilege a small minority of already lucky people have bought at the expense of everyone else.

The problem is this, and funnily enough, it originates from the camp in which I’ve well and truly planted myself. The freevolutionaries would have us believe the internet has revolutionised a writer’s access to the marketplace, and the consumer’s access to all and every form of writing that exists outside the mainstream. Free is empowering – it means anyone’s work can be read by anyone. The cream will rise; bottom-up self-forming groups of devoted fans will create trusted portals of true excellence where the world’s readers can find the very best of the kind of stuff they like; the pie of culture consumers’ money will be able to be sliced up amongst everyone, by everyone.

For the freevolutionaries, in other words, free is a matter of enfranchisement. What they’re waving the flag for is universal cultural suffrage. Which is not only revolutionary. It’s fantastic.

Only it’s not. It’s not only not true, it’s a dangerous, dangerous idea. Which is why my beef’s not really with those fighting the freerguard of stuckism. They think free is dangerous too. And what’s more they’re so obviously wrong I’m happy to let them carry on talking to themselves whilst the rest of us have a debate that matters.

The reason it’s dangerous to see posting your material for free on the internet as universally enfranchising is this. Suppose we win that battle, get others to see that yes, there’s not only a kind of moral imperative to empower producers and consumers, to pay by merit, and to acknowledge that culture belongs to the people not an elite; but there’s also a pretty hot business case for ditching any form of protectionism in our approach to free. Suppose we do all that, then the war’s won. We’ve handed cultural power back to the producers of culture, where it belongs.

Only it’s not, and we haven’t. In many ways, we’ve created a worse situation than the one we’re in today. And we’ve convinced ourselves it’s not a problem at all. By focusing the battle for cultural access (for producers and consumers) we’ve ignored the billions who’ve never seen, or even heard of, a computer. We’ve defined them out of the cultural conversation altogether. By creating the illusion of universal access to the market, and a more meritocratic system of market-driven reward for producers of culture, we’ve enforced rather than deconstructed the idea that culture comes from and belongs to the privileged.

And even worse. What of those on the periphery. What of the Sao Paolo poet who has brief and intermittent access to the one computer in the shanty. He can post his work for the world to see. He can be picked up by trusted cultural portals and brought to the attention of millions. He does have access to the market. Problem solved. Great. Only…how does the market, that thinks he’s great and thinks he should have a slice of the pie, actually pay him? No, really? Into which Paypal account do they put their $9.99? How does he use the money they’re willing to pay to get the goods he needs to buy?

So free’s bad then? No. Free’s good. Free is great. Free is empowering and enfranchising, but it’s not a final answer. It has to be part of a strategy that seeks to make cultural access truly global, and access to the market truly universal. Free is part of a much wider nexus of moral and practical imperatives designed to remove more slices of the pie from privileged hands and put them where they truly belong. The cultural question won’t be answered until the poet of Sao Paolo can put his work somewhere for everyone to see, and the coconut harvester in Laos can offer a part of his material possessions in a way that is materially useful for the betterment of the poet’s life.

Free as the debate is put today will cost many in the publishing industry a portion of their salary, and some their jobs, and it will take that money and give it to great writers currently outside the mainstream. And hurrah for that. But when free is really free a whole lot more of those in the industry will lose a whole lot more money and jobs; and those who benefit from the first wave of free will lose out to the same degree. And the slices of all of their pies will end up in Sao Paolo and Laos and Monrovia and the Amazon Basin and the deserts of Mongolia. And, if we really care about culture, a double and a triple hurrah for that.

©copyright Dan Holloway, July 29 2009. This is an expansion of a point I made on Jonathan Fields’ blog on July 26, and of a subsequent e-mail I sent to Dr Christine McDougall.

Mine, all Mine!!

Today is Anti-Plagiarism Day, a wonderful initiative fromm Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works. Throughout the day, literary bloggers are going to be giving their own perspectives on why PLAGIARISM SUCKS. So here's mine.

I give much of my work away. You can download my entire novel for free here. My writers' collective gives away its anthology for free here. I even organise Free-e-day, an Indie festival based around celebrating Indie culture through free downloads. I actively encourage everyone to whom I give the anthology, and the novel, to pass it on again. And I have absolutely no problem with anyone "illegal file sharing" either of them.

So I shouldn't care about plagiarism. I should think it's just another gripe of a tired industry for which I have no time. Right?

Er, wrong. I care about it very much. I choose to give my work away, and let people do the same. And those two words are the key to the whole thing. "I choose". Some day I might choose not to. And there are plenty of people who don't choose to do so, which is entirely up to them and no one else.

But file-sharing isn't the real problem with plagiarism. Nor, for me, is the thought that someone might steal my book and pass it off as their own. Yesterday, I cam across the wonderful query worksop site The Pitch Parlour. Writers are advised to submit their query, their synopsis, and the first 2000 words of their ms for scrutiny and comment. The site does a fantastic ob of reassuring writers their synopsis will only be posted with explicit consent in case of fears over plagiarism, which is a thoroughness I really admire. But my approach to this kind of plagiarism has always been that if someone gets a publishing deal for my book, they've simply done the hard work for me!

What I really object to is people stealing my blog content. Not problems with them using it - if people ask, I am almost always amenable to their request. My particular concern is my reputation. I have some controversial views about writing and publishing but I try very very hard always to frame them in ways that are helpful and constructive, and I always try to be respectful and courteous to my harshest critics - some of my best friends in the business are people I disagree with most strongly. All it would take is one person to lift my content and use it inappropriately, and soemone to trace that content back to me to ruin that (well, not ruin it, but create a lot of work smoothing things over).

Plus, the reason I give my stuff away is that I believe in collaboration and bringing culture to the widest possible audience, for free. If someone took my content and used it for gain, I'd be sincerely dischuffed.

So that's my piece. The point isn't how I DO use my material. The point is, it's up to me how I use it.

Soemthing lighter on Monday :-)

Free is not a Four-letter word

Well, I couldn’t really stay out of the debate, although I’ve already blogged at length about the value of giving writing away for free. The release of Chris Anderson’s “Free” and resultant hoo-ha (http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6670080.html?desc=topstory) is too much of a happening for me not to write again. I’ve already posted a few thoughts on
http://loudpoet.com/2009/07/06/free-is-wrong-for-writers-freemium-might-not-be/#comment-12230088

I’ll keep this brief as a result. The last thing I want is “Dan going on about free stuff” fatigue. I’ll also try and keep it opinionated because facts seem to be out of fashion in this debate. Personally, I just don’t understand the objection as a business model to so-called “freemium” promotion – offering a basic version of your product for free, and charging for a premium version. Music practitioners have used the model so successfully I’m not sure I can see the negative argument.

Which suggests to me the argument is ideological. People who are excited about the freemium model are, by and large, people who have day jobs and want the chance to give them up and be paid for doing what they love. People who object tend to be those who are already paid to write. I understand that people don’t want to lose their livelihoods. Of course they don’t, and of course none of us wants them to. But protectionism isn’t the answer.

Literature is a breeding ground of innovation, and should remain so. And the public should have access to as wide a range of culture as there is out there. I believe they should be able to access it for free, and decide, from a position of knowledge not ignorance, which of it they want to spend their money on.

The argument that this will pollute the cultural world with rubbish is just nonsense. If what’s offered for free outside the establishment is junk, the public will discard it, and no one in the mainstream will lose their paycheck. If some of it DOES turn out to be better, then why shouldn’t some on the “inside” take a pay cut so that some on the outside can have a slice of the pie?

My call to action is simple. Make your work available to the public for free download. Let readers decide what they want to pay for. It’s not the end of the world. It’s the beginning of an aspiration to take culture seriously. That’s why I started Free-e-day (www.freeeday.wordpress.com) as a platform to bring together givers and takers of free cultural content. I also see it across the web in great initiatives like www.jet-pack.net

Free isn’t a four-letter word. Free is good. For the producers of culture. For the consumers of culture. For culture itself. Come and embrace freevolution

Free-e-day. The World's biggest indie culture online expo & giveaway

Free-e-day, the world’s biggest cultural giveaway

http://freeeday.wordpress.com/
search free-e-day on Facebook and join the group

What is Free-e-day?

Free-e-day is 1 December 2009

Free-e-day 2009 is the biggest ever cultural electronic giveaway & celebration of the independent creative spirit.

Free-e-day is for every singer, writer, artist, artisan, photographer, film-maker, whatever who believes that the most important part of culture is the fans. And it’s for everyone who loves culture and wants to experience the very best of it, or just try out something new, for free.

Free-e-day is the chance for everyone and anyone to give some of their work away for free, as a thank you to their current fans, and a present for their new ones.

Free-e-day is the world’s biggest showcase for the massive, indomitable, indestructible, joyful, independent creative spirit of the human race.

Free-e-day is the chance for everyone to discover the most exciting culture the whole world has to offer.

Who can take part in free-e-day?

Anyone can join the group. You don’t have to be giving something away; you just have to think it’s a good idea.

And anyone can give their stuff away. If you’ve ever written anything you’re a writer. If you’ve ever sung anything you’re a singer. The established industries might tell you what you’re not. We believe in celebrating what you are.

How do I take part in free-e-day?

All you need to do to participate in the spirit of Free-e-day is give something away for free on 1 December 2009, or take something that’s being given away.

On the other hand, we want to make this the biggest, shiniest, most fantabulistic cultural giveaway ever, so, if you want to give something away:

Sign up to our Facebook group. That way we can put a number on it and show the world just how many of us there are.

• Post your name, what you do, and 32 words about yourself.
  Include up to 8 tag words to make it easy for people to find your stuff
  
• Post a link to somewhere you’ll be giving something away. It has to be something people can take away and keep. A pdf, a jpeg, an MP3 or MP4 file.
  
• Tell us what you’ll be giving away
  
• Make sure, come free-e-day on 1 December, you put up your freebie. If you don’t have the tech to do that, you can give people an e-mail address instead of a URL, but make sure you send your thing by the end of 1 December.
  
• If you have some way of doing something live, let us know what, when, where, in the same format as above
  
• Don’t post more than one plug. It’s rude. And it’s unoriginal
  
  If you get something fantastic on Free-e-day, remember to tell us. Remember to tell the lovely people who gave it to you. And most of all, remember to tell everyone you know.
  
  If you want to speak to me about Free-e-day, whether you want to publicise it, get a quote, offer moral support, volunteer to do something, or even tell me to p*** off and make people pay for things, send me an e-mail: songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
  
  So What’s Gonna happen?
  
• I’m going to turn the free-e-day website into a directory with sections for:
  · Music
  · Writing
  · Film
  · Photography
  · Art
  · Pot luck (you can put anything here if you prefer people to come across your stuff serendipitously)
  · Craft
  · Live Shows
  If I’ve left anything out let me know.
• I’ll paste everyone’s details over, including the links.
• I’ll paste your links as you post them, but it’s your job to make sure they work. There’s only one of me!
• This needs to be a live – and living – event. So from midnight on one side of the world to the following midnight on the other, there should be events
  A 48-hour long open to all webchat
• Workshops. Some of the most important things anyone can give are experience, time, and advice. This is a day for fans, but with so many people around, it’s a great chance to host a workshop to help your colleagues
• Live events – online and in real life. If you’d like to offer a live show as part of Free-e-day, the only criteria are that it’s held on the right day, and that it’s free. Anyone hosting an event will be sent some free e-files with media releases and logos nearer the time. Just let us know.
• Whatever your social media of choice, make sure Free-e-day is what people are talking about. And make sure, come December 1st, everyone’s giving and getting a whole load of stuff for free
  
  How can you make this a sparkle in the cultural firmament?

Volunteer to do something. I’ll need help with the following:

• Admin. If this is going to be a big event I won’t be able to do all the cutting and pasting and sorting. I’ll need help.
• Publicity. Point anyone and everyone to our website and our group. I’m up for interviews and all kinds of publicity.
• Hosting – care to host the webchat for an hour? Or to host a workshop advising and answering questions from the people who work in your area – or another?
• Tech. There are probably things out there I need I have no idea I need. If you’re willing to offer it/your time for free, let me know. I’m sure at some stage, to paraphrase a certain Spielberg movie, we’re going to need a bigger website. If you can offer that, supertastic!
  
  I’d love to think we’ll get lots of coverage. If you come across any publicity anywhere, send me the link – to the Facebook site, by e-mail, or to the website, and we’ll build a great big bumper archive
  Send me an e-mail if you’d like to volunteer: songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
  
  
  Free-e-day Against Spoilsport Twits
  
• Spam sucks. Everyone needs to put food in their mouths. Some of us do that by selling stuff. Fans love to buy stuff. But not on Free-e-day.
  
• Plagiarism really sucks. If you’re giving stuff away, make sure it’s yours. Its’ not up to us to make sure it’s yours to give away. It’s up to you
• If you’re with us you’re with us. If any nice people in the press and stuff give us some inches, we can say you’re on board.
• Viruses and worms and other terms borrowed from questionable if ecologically essential branches of the tree of life and metonymously applied to inanimate scuz beyond suck. I’m not responsible for what you put out, but if you do that kind of stuff there’s a whole bunch of people gonna like you not very much.
  
  
  Oh, and any ideas – e-mail me, post them on the facebook group, or add a comment on the website

Year Zero has a Website!!

Warning: this post was composed at midnight after a heavy Beethoven session. May contain banality!!

www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com It’s 2 days in and we’ve had 176 hits so far. Now there’s a Bridget Jones type thing to keep you updated on! And we’ve had some lovely comments for which a huge thank you!

Some of our writers have started posting their profiles there already, including Oli Johns, whose Benny Platonov is one of the first books to be released, on September 1st. It’s still right at the nascent stages so be patient. But you’ll start to get a feel for who each of us is and how we write.

Every writer needs a website. So does every writers’ collective. We knew that. We also knew it had to be a free one. But that was about it.

So why Wordpress? Well, I won’t say we’re done with thinking this through, but let me give you a little insight into where we are so far.

We’ve been hatching our plots for quite some time now. Since January, in fact, when we first decided 2009 was the year we should give it a shot, and do the very best job we cold of the collective lark. We’ve been doing it on a [secret] Facebook group, with Sarah’s bra as our rallying logo. Secret Facebook groups are great for hatching plots. It’s a social networking site so it suits cabalistic connivances. We’ve been able to do things like hold a 24 hour marketing brainstorm session across gazillions of timezones, which generated 118 posts.

But Facebook’s not really ideal as a website with all the copyright stuff. We have a Ning site (www.yearzero.ning.com), with some amazing graphics thanks to our techie genius Garalt, which is super. Ning’s a fantabulous whizzy do it yourself social networking site. So you can have your own groups without any of the copyright problems. Do come and join ours and see how you like the site! The problem with it is there’s no central area where we can say this is who we are and this is what we do. No real structure at all. Social networks are great for interacting, and we all want to do lots of interacting with our readers. But we also want somewhere that’s nicely structured where our readers can have a look and see who we are, what we do, and who writes what.

Wordpress seems to tick all the boxes. Or it did when I set it up, but as soon as I’d done that Sarah messaged me to say I should’ve used blogger because she’s a whiz at doing themy things with html on it! What Wordpress does let you do is structure the site. The first thing we needed was an orderly way to display the profiles and work of the 13 of us who’ve put work into our sampler, which we’ll be launching on July 1st. Wordpress lets us create a profiles section with 13 sub-sections, all of which can be further subdivided (it’s administrator’s heaven!!)

So that’s how we arrived where we are. We have a central site, with which we are very happy, and which we can stuff with cool content until it’s positively bursting with goodies. From there people can find each of our footprints, that roam far and wide across the web, sucking people unwittingly into that one central honeypot.

At some point I’ll go over how we all use our other virtual bits and bobs. I’m a huge fan of twitter, for example, and have found it a wonderful place to meet other people who love books and the whole indie scene. Sarah, on the other hand, because she’s dead good with images, uses deviantart. We all have blogger accounts, and I can’t be the only one who’s got a YouTube channel (agnieszkasshoes), whilst Octavia is ahead of the game and puts her books up on textnovel. All of this is well worth a who does what and why blog at some point. But right now the alarm’s due to go off in 5 hours and I haven’t had my bath yet.


Tomorrow: all about Free-e-day, the biggest FREE celebration of independent creativity ever seen.