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Responses and Thoughts – Requiem for Detroit

March 16th, 2010 · Opinion

It has been interesting reading up on other people’s responses to Julien Temple’s BBC 2 commissioned documentary Requiem For Detroit, not least from Detroiters themselves.  There’s a real diversity and noticeable heterogeneity in the views.  Here’s a cross-section of thoughts and links, for no better reason than sharing =)

More White Than Black

The Detroit Unreal Estate Agency‘s Jimini Higgnet described the piece as Toothless and Incoherent, one in which the underlying racism contained within the city is further drawn out in the movie by the prevalence of white men telling a black man’s story and the propensity to portray the few blacks included in the footage in a very negative fashion.

As a dispassionate observer – who am I kidding? – I would like to see it differently.  I think part of Higgnet’s argument holds weight but his response is a passionate and emotive one to a rather lop-sided storyline, told essentially by suburban whites and a full range of blacks from one end of the social spectrum to the other .

I think anyone could argue that certain angles in the story were heavily under-played, and that others such as the apocalyptic vision of Detroit are played up for the benefit of the argument.  Everyone has an agenda ultimately, and only so much of a complete story can be told covering all bases.

Why Not ‘Requiem for Coventry’?

To some of the viewers in the  UK, the documentary begged the question: why bother commissioning and sending Temple to Detroit to analyse the industrial past of the Motor City when the same effect could be viewed in any British industrial cityscape, Coventry for one, the once thriving home of the British motor industry.

No doubt if this was the case, the documentary may not have been as glamorous and equally Coventry couldn’t be described as the frontier of the motor industry nor the assembly line, taking its lead from Henry Ford and Company.  In addition and even more breathtakingly is the sheer scale, not just of the city but of the exodus, and the stark social disparity amongst the city and the various suburbs, driving the story home even more.  As a reporter friend of mine points out:

Detroit can’t really be compared to any other city. European places like Manchester got quite ragged but never lost their urban life. Other US places like Cleveland and Buffalo definitely got beat up, but Detroit is just incredibly extreme for a whole bunch of reasons involving race, bad government policy and the cozy decline of the auto industry from the 60s onwards, accelerated by the oil crisis of the 70s.

Iggy and The Stooges

Even Iggy Pop made his opinion known on the documentary itself – Iggy on Julien Temple’s Detroit Flick… -  having been asked to participate by Temple:

Yeah. And he’s talented but he also has a particular style. And so I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just wasn’t a part of that. Not that I object to his expressing himself. But it’s a great place. Michigan is a great, great place. It really is.

And I would be inclined to agree with him.  Why be inclined to focus on the purely negative when there is so much positive to focus on.  Things could be a whole lot worse and Detroit does have much to offer, culturally and otherwise.  It is not yet a ghost town and cultural wasteland.

Too Historical & Complex?

The documentary does a great job of driving home the ‘popular history’ history of Detroit, even if its means for doing so can be questioned, but as I said have said before, more interesting is the Detroit of today. The dichotomy.  On one hand the ruins, the desperation, the scandal and the vast wastes of industrial wreckage, whilst on the other hand the totally functional side, the parts that give reason to love Detroit, not the totally dysfunctional ones.

All in all I wonder if the documentary actually adds value to our understanding, or does it do harm?  I have probably answered this already, indirectly.  I suppose what you take from it depends on your view point, but from my perspective it leaves much room for hope and inspiration, even if those on Time’s coverage of the film Requiem for Detroit less than palatable (view the comments):

As a life long resident of the suburbs of Detroit and current resident of the UK I was able to see the full length documentary this evening. I was both pleased and shocked (albeit not surprised) by the portrayal of the D in the documentary. I thought the film was a bit too artsy but did a good job citing certain aspects of the city. However, I felt it chose to discuss too many topics rather than focusing on few.

Ultimately, though, I think it proves the need for a proper safety net, and one in which more is done to help struggling post-industrials.  It’s easy for companies to suck what they will out of a city and then close up shop, leaving whatever they will behind, but as a society, can and should we really let that happen?  To this end Daniel Broughton’s blog on Social Policy and Thought, focused primarily on Detroit has some pretty interesting reading.

The More Recent Past

For those interested in the more recent past there is some interesting material published online that help open one’s eyes to the issues that have beset the city, it’s definitely well documented:

The Weekly Standard’s The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep, runs to 5 pages talking about the incompetence of the newly coined “Detroit Three” and the city-wide corruption of government officials:

Somewhere along the way, Detroit became our national ashtray, a safe place for everyone to stub out the butt of their jokes. This was never more evident than at the recent congressional hearings, featuring the heads of the Big Three automakers, now more often called the Detroit Three, as that sounds more synonymous with failure.

Bloomberg ran a piece The Fall of Detroit – An Insider’s View back in 2007 that looks at the decline from a more unique perspective, that of a retired auto plant worker, running through into the early 90s from the 60s:

That’s the hard part about being a former autoworker living near Detroit. Even though GM, Ford and Chrysler cut two-thirds of their employees in the past three decades, even though the Fleetwood and Willow Run assembly plants are gone and the UAW is a shadow of its former self, we’re not done paying for our mistakes.

Most succinctly of all though I think is Lowell Forest Boileau’s Fabulous Ruins of Detroit, which sums up the parlous state of the city in pictures, for they shout a thousand words, whilst the placard on his web site greets you:

Now, as for centuries, tourists behold those ruins with awe and wonder. Yet today, a vast and history laden ruin site passes unnoticed,  even despised, into oblivion.

Really, there is so much great stuff out there online, and I still only scratch at the surface.  No doubt there are pages I should have mentioned and haven’t, but I have been foraging furiously online soaking up as much as I could, and enjoying what I find, because ultimately I am intrigued and fascinated by the history and the present story of the city.  I find so much beauty in it, even if the current sorry state of affairs seems like a veritable hell to some.

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Requiem for Detroit – Post-Industrial Decline

March 15th, 2010 · Opinion

Julien Temple’s documentary Requiem for Detroit is “a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision.” A “slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims.”  In 75 minutes of narrative, Temple paints a stark picture of a declining city that was once the USA’s 4th largest and the “frontier” of the American dream.

His is a picture of a city at its peak in 1915, but which was hit hard by the Great Depression and never fully recovered, beset by union trouble through the 30′s and then ultimately living at the behest of the massive automotive industries that defined what Detroit has become, ring-fenced by massive industrial decline and troubled by rampant social concerns.  It’s a bleak tapestry weaved, with the city in an undeniable and terminal death spin, and little ability for the powers that be to help bring it under control in the present day and age.  Nowhere is the post-industrial decline and the impact thereof more brutally apparent than it is in Detroit.

Whilst the city is being stripped bare, quite literally by scrappers, from the threads of the history of the city and the strokes of such an awful picture, Temple begins to construct hope.  There’s a realisation that positives can be drawn from the current wretched state.  The rebirth and regeneration of the urban agricultural movement, is one, whilst the arrival of artists, adding to the cultural heritage, puts the place at a new cross-roads.

The documentary draws on incredible footage, from the vintage archival film clips projected onto a decaying cityscape, to modern shots that speak for themselves: drive-by footage of burned out shells for houses, crumbling tower blocks sprouting organics, and deserted office spaces, left at a moment in time, as if someone had called up and told everyone to drop what they were doing and leave town immediately.  It’s an incredible sight.

From a peak of 2 million inhabitants the city now sits as home to some 800,000 people, a complex network of neighbourhood islands that outline huge disparities between social stratum, still markedly split down racial lines, the city seems unable to pick itself up with a saturation of poverty, unemployment and huge business that has sucked the life blood out of the city and is incapable of understanding its social responsibility.

It’s a harrowing story, vividly told, and, as Temple states, like taking a time machine 1000 years into the future: a decaying wasteland and urban explorer’s paradise.  It makes you wonder where Detroit will be in 50 years.  Not even the likes of Martha Reeves, famed Motown singer and present council woman, nor Mitch Ryder, the high-octane strummer can seemingly rescue the heart and soul of the city, but they are trying damned hard, that’s for sure.

Julien Temple is a well-known film maker, starting out his ‘career’ shooting the Sex Pistols and more recently conjuring up documentaries about Joe Strummer and the Oil City.  From his article for the Guardian Detroit: the last days he opens the narrative with a clear and simple take:

Leaving behind the gift shops of the “Big Three” car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger.

Having run the gamut of social documentaries about Detroit before, including BBC 4′s Motor City’s Burning, I didn’t necessarily learn anything new from the history that is told, but it certainly brought my understanding and knowledge up-to-date.

I think we are all ofay with the past, but no one really knows the Detroit of the present.  It might be ‘glamourised’ by the lyrics of the Eminem, Iggy Pop, Kiss and others, but Temple takes the torch to it and strips everything back, and thank god he does.  Whether this will make a difference, who knows, but at least the rest of the US can no longer morally turn a blind eye.

Moreover, what does this tell us about the rest of the post-industrial age? Where are we all heading?  Does Detroit represent a unique case or is the same fate going to befall all of us.  I do wonder if the same socio-political and economic woes will beset other post-industrial economies.  It’s a stark warning to the rest of us for sure.

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McLaren F1: Real-Time Race Action

March 14th, 2010 · SEO

In the past week there has been a lot of chat about Mclaren F1 and their newly designed and shot homepage that integrates in-race action – plaudits to Stink Digital’s Kristian Saliba (Designer) and Henry Mason (Film).

The amount of chat proves that their is real vigour and interest for what they have done, and not just from industry types providing a little mutual back-slappery, but across the entire web from race fans and web aficionados alike.

From my perspective, what I find interesting is the fact that this isn’t a site with the most amazing technology. It is a low-tech approach that takes what people love doing, such as barking about themselves on Twitter, and flips it on it’s head so that the entire Mercedes McLaren team can broadcast what they are doing, and you, as a race watcher, can feel like you are right down there in the thick of it, during the race.

As a race watcher I wonder to what extent the new rules of the 2010 F1 season have made it easier to open up, having taken the strategy out of the race with no more fuel stops, but overall this is the kind of thing that really enhances live action TV, and it is a shame there isn’t a consensus and more of the teams doing the same thing.

Real Time Headaches

For any F1 team divulging what is going on during the race, there is a fine line to be trodden between getting the thing in real-time, in sync with the TV broadcast, and giving away in-race secrets. I know from watching the last Formula 1 season that teams do analyse broadcasts and relay info about the race back to their team mates at the track to help better inform their race-making decisions.

That being said it is no mean feat to have set up this feed system, collecting data and passing it out to polling clients, and moreover, to keep it going for the benefit of the fans on a free-for-all basis.  This is definitely a great coup for brand McLaren.  There’s nothing quite like having it easy, I know from my own experience of working on the whole Nokia/From The Basement Dead Weather gig, and from talking about the whole JFK election campaign on Twitter, it’s a lot easier to run a campaign feed in a long drawn out process, or scheduled in advance, than it is in real-time, so it’s a unique first and great achievement for the tech team at McLaren.

Stream vs Blog

So why a Twitter-style feed?  The data stream style definitely better suits the data format, and people are used to it.  I love the way they essentially turned their site into a data monitor unit, providing that “in the pit” style.  But overall, the real advantage of the stream is that the content is light and easier to throw together.

One shouldn’t, however, under-estimate the benefit of the blogosphere, and no doubt McLaren will be tapping into that also.  The power of such interesting posts as the MOMA’s article detailing “blow-by-blow” the conservation of Claes Oldenburg’s Floor Cake, another “outsider looking in” style blog post, makes for amazing content too, and, perhaps of note and interest to us as content producers, massively did the rounds of the social sharing circuit, Twitter, Delicious, et al.  It’s definitely less easy to share real-time social media objects.

Each to their own I suppose, but I like the way McLaren has avoided jumping on the bandwagon, and done their own thing, and in a quality fashion to boot. Aggregating race data, using chat transcripts and tapping into the on-board telemetrics is definitely clever, and using their web site as the medium, rather than Twitter or any other messaging service is a strong choice.

Low-Tech & High Values

As mentioned already, the nicest thing about the overall sensation that is McLaren’s new in-race feedback is that it is low tech.  They have gone back-to-basics and done it well.  This totally disproves the theory you need to be at the cutting edge and doing everything with the latest and greatest.

I would like to think that by taking the decision to build a sure in plain old HTML, the execs at McLaren were actively walking an all-inclusive path.  One in which they realised the stream would be as useful to someone sitting on the couch at home, watching the race with their laptop in hand, as it would be to someone on an iPhone in the race stands.  It’s a logical decision, but not one that is always consciously taken, much to the chagrin of those excluded.

It reflects the fact that an all inclusive route, where content is the driving force, and the appeal of it, rather than the device, is a critical one, and one which can be taken, not to the producer’s detriment.  This ties in nicely with the drum I have been banging of late, advising a device agnostic route, and for those in a field where inclusiveness is key, it is best to develop web apps, rather than platform specific apps.

Anyhow, congrats to McLaren on a web site well built, and a project superbly executed. Let’s hope their first season of this new decade comes off as excellently too.

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Online Plagiarism & Copyright Theft – Thoughts

March 12th, 2010 · Opinion, Personal

In the past when I have had content ripped off and paraded as someone else’s I have been much less sanguine.  Who can forget the episode of Greg Passuntino who ripped a blog post, and then had his pretty picture and name by the text whilst his web site continued to leech the pictures from my own server.  That was his mistake! Needless to say I didn’t waste time in swapping them around hahaha (don’t ask!).

Anyhow, Today I realise Museum Media in the Netherlands has done the same thing (original), but at least this time put my name on the post with a link to the original article on this blog.

What annoys me more than anything is that not only did they copy my words verbatim, but at no point did they bother to contact me to ask if they could use the content.  How hard can it be to find an email and send a message to the author?  Not at all.  I frequently contact people whose content I use or whom I wish to quote in a blog post to ask for permission.  It’s only courteous, and in this digital age of super inter-connectedness, hardly difficult.

Perhaps if someone from Museum Media is reading this, they might like to politely email me (me@vincentroman.com) and ask for permission to re-publish my original blog post, and if not I suppose they can benefit from the naming and shaming of this blog post.  Shame on them!

Just yesterday I was having a discussion with a work colleague about copyright in the context of a discussion about disproportionate reactions from copyright holders, in this case sending excessively high demands for money.  Is copyright right merely a means to and end?  Anyhow, I am all for sharing.  I have some 9000+ photos on Flickr that are licensed as Creative Commons.  That being said,  at no point on this blog does it have such a license, and although, listed as ‘All Rights Reserved’, doesn’t stop me sharing with those that ask politely – It’s not like I am asking to be paid.

Given the effort that goes into writing a blog post, not just the time, but the experience you draw on, versus simply pointing and shooting a camera at a bit of graffiti, for which I do not hold the copyright anyhow, I find it a harder pill to swallow.  Moreover, I hate the idea of duplicated content across the internet, for SEO and other reasons.  I have taken recently to summarizing posts in other places to help draw interest and traffic, so I know how quickly it can be done to summarize something, and if so, why not in this case rather than to simply copy and paste?

The internet craves original content, however much it has generated a mash-up culture, but to simply copy and paste content is a mortal sin.  Working in an industry driven by ideas and in which you are only as good as your last award-winning piece, you need to strive to search out new things, and not merely regurgitate the old.  Derivative work is a big NO-NO and anyone authoring their own blog should strive to do the same.  It’s one thing to reference other authors and quote them, but to plagiarise or create 99% of your own post from theirs???

For those wondering, the copyright heart is from a much larger piece by graffiti artist ©opy®ight, shot in London behind the Old Blue Last and long gone :(

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Actually, We Should All Hate Each Other!

March 9th, 2010 · Opinion

It seems ex-Stinker, Tim Davis, newly freelanced and focusing on his burgeoning music career as part of Bim, disagreed with me on my post How Well Is Your Company Really Doing?

His take is that strident relationships in a company produce creativity, they bring the edge and dynamism that a team needs if people are, not quite at each others’ throat, but know where to draw the line and stop at fulfilling their work role, as producer, developer, or office hard man. This doesn’t, as he points out, doesn’t make for good friendships, at least perhaps he is right, office relationships are realistically more nuanced than either he or I have portrayed them.

In his book “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be” Paul Arden talks about mediocrity and about creativity in the context of ideas, success and the ad industry.  His take is one that describes the office as a place for the interchange of ideas, and the continual drive to seek out higher thought and better standards.  His picture is one of the battle of minds, rather than of personal relationships, and one that doesn’t predicate fractious inter-play or tense relationship.  Professional relationships do not  preclude personal friendships.

I’ve talked before about the Soup Metric, one of Tara Hunt’s devices to determine your real friendships in the realm of social media.  It’s a rather blunt tool, but it is one that proves a clear point and perhaps reflects that my rather blunt indicator, the so-called “Relationship Score”, could be equally indicative of the base social glue within your team.  Whether it is love or hate, that you desire amongst your employees, is another matter, but it is an indicator nonetheless.

The nice thing about the “Relationship Score”, in my unbiased opinion, is that irrespective of the nature of relationships within office, it glides swiftly over them.  A publicly fractious relationship doesn’t necessarily mean an unproductive one, whilst at the same time not necessarily reflecting a lack of friendship either.  It would be a mistake to assume that professionally tense relationships, whether good or bad for the company (you decide on a per case basis), cannot foster respect and friendships.

If anything, in its current state, the “Relationship Score” is a little too blunt and needs to be sharpened up to factor in the weighting of professional relationships and other dynamics in the company in question, such as the desired levels of inter-play between individuals.  It’s of course one thing to operate like the army, it’s another to run the show like factory.

Having grown up with a father who has been self-employed since 1978, and between 1984-96 pretty much ran a full-time office from home with anything upto 10-15 employees in tow, I find it intriguing to watch, analyse and understand office relationships or “politics” for want of a better word.  During my own career in web development I have found it interesting to see how even the slightest details can cause seismic changes in the way people interact, and understanding these can be the key to making your company a success over a competitor, not just your strategy online.

Ultimately any office relationships, be they on a professional or a personal level need to result in growth.  Not just for the company but on a person-to-person level.  Being able to tick the industry boxes and garner the silverware for your trophy cabinet is one thing, but perhaps more importantly, making sure the dynamic works within your team is critical for a desired success.

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