Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas! I’m currently in Perth and have spent a great day full of Christmas celebrations with friends and family. I’m also quite full with champagne!
I was hoping to get some photos of a pretty cool Christmas lights display in Perth this year but when we got there, the displays were turned off due to some complaints from within the neighbourhood (apparently the road was so congested that residents couldn’t get into their houses). So I leave you with the YouTube video of the place we saw (except we sadly didn’t get to see the full display shown in the video).
There are 26,500 light bulbs, 128 lighting channels, 5 kilometres of electrical cable, 220 man hours to set up and $3.40/night in power to run this display. Every light is synched to music which is heard by motorists on a FM92.5 as they drive past this home in Bishop Riley Way, Churchlands Western Australia. The home owners aimed to raise $10k for Princess Margaret Hospital but ended up raising $11,839.
You might have notice another phenomenon going around Twitter at the moment - a sea of peas in the avatars of many Twitter users. This is in support of Susan Reynolds, artist, author and social media consultant who, ever since she discovered that she had cancer in early December this year, has been twittering her breast cancer journey.
I love Twitter and how I can drop in and out of conversations, getting ongoing insights into people’s lives. I love social networks and social media. I love how much more human and real the stories are. I love the interconnectedness I have with friends and family who frequent the same social networks that I do. I love how I can reach out, metaphorically, and there’s someone listening or someone to talk to and to exchange ideas with. I love the whole concept of ‘little’ ideas and news taking off in a big way, stuff that the mainstream media doesn’t always get to.
Social media is a lot more than blogging, podcasting, and social networks. It’s effective at reaching the people beyond the keyboards and microphones and connecting them to important things.
So back to Susan Reynolds. I wish her all the best with her recovery (she’s out of surgery this weekend). You can follow her blog, Boobs On Ice. Also, check out the Frozen Pea Fund website where you can make a donation to Breast Cancer research.
For those of you in Canberra, the Canberra Web-blast is happening tomorrow night. It’s free to come along with free drinks and free food…plus lots of door prizes!
So what is Web-blast? It’s a huge end-of-year party for the web community - bringing together web designers, web project managers, interface designers, information architects and other web professionals. Join a range of Canberra’s web communities and celebrate the end of year in style.
