I spent my Sunday at the Dalhousie Student Union building at TEDxNovaScotia today along with nearly 400 other people taking in some ideas and music. I caught wind of this event back in early February and dithered about going. I have been regarding the TED format and phenomenon a little differently after thinking on some critiques and insights from friends like D’Arcy Norman’s I won’t be going to TEDxYYC and Brian Lamb’s “a particular innovation feel…” and regarded this event with some scepticism, but … on the same hand … this TEDx event was organized and executed by student volunteers, some of my favorite people have lit up the TEDlights, and sometime presentations just Doot Doola Doot Doo It Yourself - so I ponied up the reasonable $25 fee and found my way to the SUB.
I won’t give a blow by blow of the the entire event, but here are a few notable pieces that captivated me:
Audacity vs. Austerity: The New Struggle for Innovation in Higher Education
Robert Huish is a a professor of International Development at Dalhousie University who has incorporated brilliant elements of service learning in his undergraduate courses. An interview on CBCRadio last year touches on many of pieces he addressed in his talk.
Political Engagement 101 (MP3)
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The Debt of Creativity
Max Haiven is an artist, postdoc with the NYU Department of Art and Public Policy, and an Adjunct Faculty with Nova Scotia College of Art and Design - Historical and Critical Studies. Max spoke brilliantly about projects he is involved with: Strike Debt, Radical Imagination Project, and wasn’t shy to show his support of arts education and NSCAD.
Ben Caplan and the Great Yawp
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Hailing from Hamilton, Ontario, Ben Caplan put down his pegs in Halifax a few years ago and forged his joyful noise within the crucible of the city’s musical talents. Amidst one of the 3 songs Ben played he led 400 people in a primal scream exercise … it sounded like this:
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Singer, you must search for your place on the earth
While the same for your nation is true
So lift up the soul of your country
And a place will be found here for you
But don’t go and run ‘til your song has been sung
And the words of your soul have been said
Far a land without song can’t stand very long
When the voice of its people is dead~ Stompin’ Tom Conners – The Singer (Voice of The People)
I can’t remember when I first heard Stompin’ Tom’s music, I just always remember hearing it. I suppose, growing up in the Maritimes, Tom’s music got a fair bit of play on the radio, not to mention hockey arenas, Legions, and Community Centers across the Eastern provinces. Songs like The Consumer were on the radio as a kid in the Maritimes – Tom sang about challenges of the everyman I heard my community talking about as I grew up.
I remember going on the road for a few days with Stompin’ Tom. Tom would drive his car, which had a CB contact with the other van. They’d go into towns like Leamington, Delhi, and Petrolia, and they had an advance guy – like in a circus – who’d go in three weeks before, book the high-school gym, buy an ad for nothing, stick up posters everywhere, give the school the coat concession for the use of their space, make sure anybody could come to the show and that kids under nine were free, and he’d sell out everywhere.
On A Cold Road: Tales of Adventure In Canadian Rock
When I first starting playing guitar I learned to play Moon Man Newfie just because the song was such a hoot to play with friends around kitchens and living rooms and filled me with pride that as a kid growing up in a ‘have-not’ province there were some things my region was rich in – joy and revelry.
Throughout my travels across Canada and overseas I always had a copy on Stompin Tom Live At The Horseshoe Hotel with me and have been know to gift friends and hosts with vinyl copies of it. Whenever I got homesick I’d always listen to a little Gumboot Cloggeroo to lift my spirits.
When I moved to the NWT to work in Aklavik as a teacher, the country band I played in – The Shorty Lake Boys – played a bunch of Stompin Tom tunes – among which was The Martin Hartwell Story. (Wikipedia)
Canadian MP Charlie Angus reflects on Stompin’ Tom and his influence. [MP3]
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Across This Land With Stompin’ Tom Connors (MP4) – a great live concert filmed in 1973 at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto.
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The Stompin’ Tom Hour – CBC Radio Retrospective (MP3)
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A couple more of my all-time favorites from Tom:
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Tom passed away today and left a brilliant collection of Canadiana. His music has been a ribbon throughout my life and will continue to be so – I am so grateful for all the stories and songs he shared.
And they said, “Oh, great non-stop singular song to beauty.”
And he said, “Stomp upon the terra.” They did.
ds106rad.io underwent some DNS resolution hiccups last week resulting in the our ds106rad.io URL not resolving to IP 64.69.64.245:8000 consistently … it is all worked out now and as @scottlo would say, “Is All Set For The GumBall Rally”
The ds106rad.io server will have a copy of @aforgrave’s great browser-based player at ds106rad.io/listen this weekend – mobile friendly and for all you iOS fans it just happens to support AirPlay - listen to #ds106radio throughout your entire ÄppleÄbode!
And we’ve got new widgets …
http://ds106rad.io/widgets/live
http://ds106rad.io/widgets/today
http://ds106rad.io/widgets/week
Feel free to throw these widgets in your sidebar and share them around. I used iFrame Widget to setup On Air Now in my sidebar to the right.
It has been over 2 years since the freeform webradio experiment #ds106radio poked its head up on the internet. It has been a fast, loose, out of control experiment in audio held together by chewing gum, duct tape, and a whole lotta awesome people.
I was never quite crazy about the /AutoDJ element of CentovaCast and have always been looking for a a better (and more fun) alternative and found one in Airtime - I absolutely love their slogan “Find a way, or make one”.
The live #opened12 live audio streams were powered by an army of mic wielding volunteers and Airtime. It worked great and served up live audio from mobiles over 3 concurrent conference streams. See here for listener #s over stream 1, stream 2, stream 3.
So taking inspiration from TeamDTLT and their great Domain of Ones Own ethos I figured it was high time #ds106radio gets its own domain and start exploring some interesting ways to further freeform and distribute the audio experiment.
So, introducing the new digs:
The link above is a placeholder for what will morph into an HTML5 friendly mobile player. For now, you’ll see links to 128k and 64k streams along with a widget the shows what is playing now and what is scheduled up next.
Much of the functionality of #ds106radio remains the same (e.g. mobile broadcasting, scheduled rotations of audio collections) but there are a few new pieces that I am jazzed about.
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Smart Playlists
ds106rad.io will will have it’s own dropbox coming soon – goodbye http://dropitto.me/ds106 . Airtime’s ‘Smart Playlists’ will allow blocks of programming to be scheduled that will only play tracks submitted to ds106rad.io according to a wide range of criteria. These playlists will be generated dynamically, so essentially if you wanted a show called ‘Listener’s Choice’ you could create daily Smart Playlists that only play submissions made that day/week. Each day/week in that slot you will hear a different mix.
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Scheduled XCasting
There is a long tradition of #ds106radio XCasts – essentially taking a live audio stream from your computer or terrestrial station, broadcasting it to #ds106radio and narrating over the top. Airtime supports the ability to dial in any online stream and syndicate it with a given time period. For example, in the North American witching hours on ds106rad.io listeners will hear UbuWebRadio syndicated. This sort of radio syndication is something public broadcasters have been doing for decades – tune into NPR, BBC, or CBC in wee hours and you are likely to hear programming from PRI and other such groups – now #ds106radio can play with this too. At present I am only syndicating WFMU (Tues thru Thurs 9-11 EST) and UbuWebRadio (Every day – Midnight-5AM EST).
If you have any other live programs you think are a good fit for ds106rad.io which have a live online stream please let me know in the comments – would love to fill out weekly roster with some scheduled XCasts.
I will be keeping the old server at 208.82.115.69:8010 for a few months as a relay of everything that is being broadcast at http://ds106rad.io/listen .
Now despite all the new fun stuff like smart playlists and AutoXCasts you can all still broadcast live – cause that’s where the magic happens. The live settings are:
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Name: ds106rad.io
Server: ds106rad.io
Port: 8010
Mountpoint: live
Username: source
Password: ds106
Codec: mp3
Bitrate: 128 (or less)
Protocol: Icecast2
Stereo: Yes (or no .. as you like)
Will put the above settings for /LIVE broadcasts in play starting tomorrow. I will be posting some details on how everyone can turn their hand to station manager hijinx soon – stay tuned. Looking forward to playing with the new digs.
