The Campfire Project

When Twitter first arrived on the scene in 2006, its use wasn’t immediately apparent. “Why would anyone care what I’m doing right now?”, conventional wisdom went. Slowly but surely though, the broadcast system proved its worth, particularly when it came to live events and breaking news. It did and still does have a flaw, though. Text just isn’t all that fun to look at. And in our rich-media world, hotter media wins. Enter Periscope, a new app launched last week that seeks to bridge that gap by adding live broadcast video to Twitter portfolio of products. Will it have build the network and return Twitter to its important roots? That’s the question of the day.

There’s something special about documentaries. Their rich narratives, lush design, the idea that what we’re watching isn’t only a beautiful story, but the truth. This, is how it happened. Perhaps that’s why documentaries seem to be becoming more popular, and with that power the ability for those stories to have a greater influence on the world they reflect back at us. Some do more than just show us the truth. They’re asking us to make a choice. This week, on episode 48 of The Campfire Project, we take a look at some documentaries, the stories they tell, and the power they have to influence the conversation.

From the desk, to the lap, to the pocket, and now the wrist. This past Monday, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook took the stage to give his company’s latest product a proper release. Much more than a rehashing of what was announced last September, this week’s event marked a shift in the discussion around Apple Watch, away from technology and form factor,  toward small, subtle, everyday uses. The foundation now laid, we’re about to see the company’s first foray into the wearables market. Today, on episode 47 of The Campfire Project, a deeper look at Apple’s latest device and how it may affect our lives.

For the music industry, it has been a slow and bloody descent. Gone are the days of record-breaking sales and platinum awards for all but a few artists as new formats and listening habits take over. Music, like all media, has always been at the mercy of technology. And as our recordings got better, storage got cheaper, and those songs you love went from something you buy off of a shelf to something that’s pumped directly into your device of choice, it became…truly ubiquitous. Something special and unique, but somehow utterly expected. Like water flowing from a tap.

You see it everywhere you go – people looking down at screens, tapping on glass at work, at home, and just out in the world. They’re full immersed in the goings-on online, and sharing what they’re doing with those they know. As everyone becomes their own publisher, with an unseen audience of hundreds or thousands and an online reputation to uphold, has the art of face-to-face connection become antiquated? An afterthought of the new ways we communicate? This week, a look at how conversations in the virtual world are changing our behaviour in the physical one.

We all want to be better – better players, better managers, better storytellers. No matter what your craft, hobby, or job, everyone has always at some point thought to themselves, “If I could only just…” I’d be able to take on the world. Thus the self-help genre was born. And the market for motivational stories and do-it-yourself life hacks has only gotten more persuasive and profitable as these stories move from books to television and the web. In this episode, a look at why and how these stories are so captivating, plus we’ll give out the 7 secrets of highly effective people that will make your life better without even trying.

With Chris under the weather, Breki Tomasson joins Matt to talk about podcasting, storytelling, and the pros and cons of starting your own thing.

There is nothing quite like the Super Bowl. The pageantry, the spectacle. With each passing year the game becomes less about football and more about the songs sung at halftime or number of advertising dollars spent. The Super Bowl no longer tells a story of football teams, battling for supremacy, if it ever did. In our digital age, the best stories happen around the field, rather than on it.

When the President of the United States speaks, everybody listens. At no time is this more apparent than during the State of the Union, an annual address that provides the president a prime-time forum to lay out the political agenda for the coming year. Telling the story of an entire country in a single night is not easy, and with technology, the event has evolved over time. From missives tens of thousands of words long, to shorter speeches, to radio addresses to live TV broadcasts. This week, when Barack Obama gave his speech to the 114th Congress, both major US parties sought to tell competing stories of the last year in politics – and the web was their enabler.

We live in an age of ubiquitous technology, when the world’s information exists at our fingertips, and the answer to almost any question is never more than a few taps away. We’ve mapped the world, crossed it, conquered it. The planet fits in our pocket. As technology helped shrink the world, it also gives us the power to build new ones. Digital realms where anything can happen, with new frontiers to explore. That is the promise of virtual reality, a concept that has for decades seemed always just over the horizon yet always frustratingly out of reach. Now companies are making a big push to bring virtual reality into the mainstream. Today on episode 40 of The Campfire Project, a question: with seemingly limitless power already in the palms of our hands, isn’t our own reality enough?