Caught on camera

Life This afternoon I was interviewed about blogging. The brilliant Katie Lips is one of the people behind the Bold Street Project, a multi-media project about one of the shopping areas in Liverpool close to the FACT arts centre, where, beginning this Saturday there will be an installation collecting together material contributed by local people. There's a blog about the project here which includes photographs, poetry and yes, interviews. Katie wanted someone to talk to on camera about weblogs in general terms and for some reason she chose me.

After being introduced to some people in the offices at FACT, Katie took me into the media centre and we picked a spot in front of some rather swish iMacs for the interview. I haven't really talked about blogging in the real world much and in fact to most of the people I know it still seems like quiet a curious thing to be doing so there are still a lot words like 'audblog' which I'm simply not used to saying. More than that its only about the fourth time I'd actually attempted to explain why I do this, and this time it would be filmed.

You'll have to watch the videos themselves when they're posted soon to tell me how I did. Since it's the first time I've been interviewed for anything other than I job I was quite nervous and all the standard old ticks drifted in, the gabbling, the inability to remember the English language and forgetting to say all the things I really want to say. Somehow I managed to mention Heardsaid without being able to remember any facts (I mumbled something about the Grand Canyon) and spent more time talking about The Hamlet Weblog than anything else. When asked what my favourite weblogs were I failed to name any, which isn't really true as I then went on to choose couple no doubt offending everyone I didn't.

Certainly Katie was more articulate than I was, particularly in relation to what a blog actually is. I think I came across as being more evangelical than cynical about the whole thing even if I did imply at one point that there was a kind of divide between London and the rest of the country in terms of how blogging is perceived, which on reflection I'm not sure is actually true. It was another case, though, of realising I know more about this stuff than I thought I did tossing in types of blogging and practices from nowhere, dropping the 'blogosphere' word somewhere in there too. In the end we talked for fifty minutes instead of the expected twenty and I think we could have talked for ages more given the size of the subject.

It was a great experience and I've certainly got the bug. If any of it was usable and is posted I'll let you know and you'll be able to see what I look like moving around and talking. But really, if it's anything like my previous experiences of seeing myself on video, expect bad hair, boss eyes and wild gesticulations ...