The Apple iPod Shuffle Shuffle from OpenTech 2005
Okay, not exactly one of my better ideas, but in the end nobody got hurt, and the iPod Shuffle with the PGP Private Key got back to it’s rightful owner. What am I talking about? My Physical Media Hacking experiment at OpenTech 2005.
I’m still convinced the theory behind this is pretty sound (especially when you see the number of Apple fans defending the concept of the iPod Shuffleand the idea that listening to random music is the way forward). The experiment was planned to go something like this. Two pairs of volunteers would come forward from the OpenTech audience at the Media Stream session (hopefully with a pair of 512mb and a pair of 1gb iPod Shuffles). They would swap over their units with each other, and take away an iPod Shuffle with a different audio mix on it. Taking some media tool, doing something with it, and getting something different. That’s a hack.
It would also have the advantage of waking up an audience who had sat through the previous session, get them involved, and generally give the speakers a reactive audience that would enjoy the talks they were going to give. Well at least that part worked.
Right up to when I had one 512mb and one 1gb owner at the front it was working fine. I asked for another two people, and unfortunatly 4 people came forward, all with 512mb shuffles – remember I’ve not actually told the volunteers what’s going to happen yet. Now I could have done a bit more jiggery-pokery with the volunteers to get a comfortable pairing, but a mix of the Showman in me, and the evil voice of Crow in my head (sure, blame the bird – Crow) led me to throw caution to the wind. I saw a box on the floor and said to myself ‘if that box is empty, I’ll put all five iPod Shuffle’s in that box, mix them up, and hand back a random unit to each person.’ It was empty.
So the iPod Shuffles were dropped in the box by their respective owners. As I shook the box, I could see a mix of both laughter, horror and incredulity from the audience. I couldn’t see the volunteers or the penny dropping from them at that point – but the shock on some faces, and the smiles on others when I turned to face them meant that I felt it had gone really well. I waved them to the side so I could grab some names and details of them, and see if anyone wanted to swap back (away from the glare of the audience). Unfortunatly, the took the wave to mean “back to your seats,” and not “go up there and let’s sort it out.” Looking back I should have re-iterated that point, but on Saturday the audience was now in the right mood, and my job as chair switched from warming-up to getting the presentations going, so I didn’t.
To the volunteers on the day, I can only say sorry for not covering every angle. Thank you for being good sports, thank you for putting up with me while we sorted it out throughout the rest of the day, and I’m very glad one of you got back your PGP Private Key.
I’m still convinced this idea could work at a conference – maybe with more preparation, letting every attendee know that there will be an iPod Shuffle Shuffle stand at Registration, and spending a bit more time on contingency planning – which given I thought of the idea at 1am that morning I didn’t do enough of.
I also know a few other things. Every attendee at OpenTech has probably written their email address on their iPod Shuffle now, my two minute cabaret act is already starting to get attention around the web… and if I ask for volunteers next year it might be a little bit more difficult!
As one of the volunteers, I can vouch for the combination of amusement and trepidation :)
Once the shuffle shuffle was over, I inserted the one I’d been handed into my laptop..
First thought: “Ah, this person uses gnupod too! what’re the chances!” (at Open Tech, probably fairly high) followed by “Hmm, this person has a strangely familiar collection of Bruckner and Radio 4 comedy..” – yep, got my own shuffle back. A 20% chance and something of a relief!
A good jape all round though. Glad the guy got his PGP key back
simply a genius participation idea, pity you didnt have 4 512 shuffles but then again no-one can really be sore unless they’re cynical bastards :D Nice job mate.
Even if mine had been a shuffle rather than a mini, I wouldn’t have volunteered… way too many embarrasing tracks on it.
Two Cool Things That Happened at OpenTech
The second cool thing was some “physical media hacking”: Ewan Spence asked for people with iPod Shuffles to come down to the front. He had five volunteers; he took their Shuffles and put them in a box, and then, while saying “and now we hack this media!“, shook the box and then gave each of the five back a random Shuffle. Ha! Good things about this: as Ewan said, this is what media hacking is all about; you try a new thing, and if you don’t like it you go back to what you had before. And it was hilarious. The people who were shuffled didn’t think so, mind; one bloke had a face as black as thunder. He may have had some private information other than mp3s on it, mind; nonetheless, it was an excellent bit of crowd-pleasing by Ewan.
O’Reilly Developer Weblogs
Owners of iPod shuffles: beware. The next time you attend some geek conference and some dude stands up at the front asking you to raise your hands, think carefully about the possible consequences.
“Some dude” in this instance might be a Scotsman called Ewan Spence who decided to demonstrate the ultimate music mix experiment while taking part in the Opentech geek get-together in London last Saturday.