Take part in live internet puppetry workshops
Stiqman over at Puppets and Stuff has set up a weekly live workshop/discussion on puppetry. He’s using BlogTV, sort of like a live version of Youtube, where you can watch him discuss various topics on puppet building. He shows us tips and hints, tools and materials, gives a tour of his workshop space, or whatever us viewers would like to see. The idea is that the live vodcast (video cast for those non-geeks out there) will be fluid, allowing us the audience to interact. As Stiqman puts it: "You can request to go live within my screen and explain what your puppet problems are with video and hopefully we can come to a solution. Or you can just sit and watch and listen and say nothing." There’s even an opportunity to do some live mini workshops/build-a-longs.
You can find the vodcasts at http://www.blogtv.com/people/StiqpuppetsLive. If you join the site, you can have the opportunity to post questions or chat live; no camera necessary, just your keyboard (although I think you can use cameras if you wish). Like Youtube, there is a subscribe button, which if you use, will send you reminders of when the show goes live.
The show will be live Thursday nights at 6pm (American Pacific time); there is a countdown timer on the page above so you can work out what that means to your location.
I haven’t managed to watch/participate in the first one, which was last week (by the way, you can watch the first one at BlogTV, although it looks like only ten minutes of the whole vodcast was recorded), but am definitely setting aside some time to participate next time. I’m probably going to watch, maybe ask some questions via keyboard, and test the thing out for myself. If I can figure out how to do it, I’m going to do a live vodcast myself on my shadow puppet freebie that I’m planning to do; Stiqman has also offered other people to join in and host some discussions/workshops too. So if you have some ideas, please head to P&S and leave some comments on what you’d like, or simply turn up on the night and participate. I personally think this is a brilliant idea, and if I weren’t so camera shy I’d run something similar myself (more on that another time, as I do have some plans up my sleeve for something interactive).
Hope to see you there, it looks like a fun way to spend a few hours!
Want more? Help build a puppet!