I attended my first Tuttle Club on Friday morning, and it was well worth having a day off work and the train fare down to London, not least because I got to meet Neville Hobson in person, finally, after several years on chatting online. We spent a happy time talking mobile devices, video, and Qik, with Tim Davies. Tim had some great thoughts on how this kind of content creation can be used to draw young people into greater levels of participation. It has its risks, of course, but potentially great benefits too.

There was also the chance to introduce myself to Josh March, and I am eternally grateful to him for not punching me ;-) Lloyd Davis was, as always, a great host and good conversational value. Even if the Tuttle Club develops no further, as a weekly gathering of like-minded folk it can’t be beaten, and he deserves our thanks for that. Hopefully, though, things will gain more momentum and it sounds like Lloyd has a number of volunteers ready for action. With Lloyd’s vision and the enthusiasm of this remarkable community, anything is possible.

Most of my time was spent with Tim and David Wilcox, talking through ideas around increasing participation and how roles, worldviews, platforms and processes can be developed. Here Comes Everybody was mentioned, of course, and the Shirky mantra of organising without organisations is becoming central to our thinking about issues. It’s a great concept because the online isn’t necessarily given priority and the blending of offline techniques with social media will probably produce the best results. Discussions around news and journalism were interesting, especially in the light of David rebranding himself as a ’social reporter’.

The three of us then had a chat with some ladies from Qik, the live video streaming from your Nokia people. We had a great chat recorded onto Qik which I also recorded on my traditional camcorder. I’ll bung the results up on YouTube when I get the chance. Qik is an amazing service technologically, but it also has potentially huge ramifications for citizen journalism and the setting of the news agenda. Every person with a decent Nokia phone now has a TV studio in their pockets. Amazing. I’m sure I will be writing more on this in the near future.

Tuttle Club is fab, therefore, and I’m hoping to get back down there before too long.

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