Band newsletters are SERIOUSLY DULL

The Internet is all about writing. Writing that inspires and excites, writing that informs and educates, writing in tags that make the web work, writing in 140 characters. Whatever you do in real life, it’s going to be represented on the web in writing. Yes, images and videos are important too, but they’re the cheese slice and gherkin on the Internet burger.

Coming and Crying

Today I woke up to find an email from Meaghan in my inbox. It wasn’t just to me – it was an update to all the supporters of Coming and Crying, one of the most amazing webby/creative projects around.

Meaghan works at Tumblr and I met her on the Man (hat on) tour, when I played the Tumblr office in New York. She and Melissa, both writers, have put together a book of short stories about sex. They have funded it through Kickstarter and have been documenting the whole process in blogs, on Twitter and in emails. They have had live events like the intimate readings and the latest listening session, where authors and supporters gathered to listen to studio recordings of the stories.

The update email is only for supporters (we paid for the inbox love ;), so I won’t reprint it all (there are plenty of public updates too), but here are a couple of excerpts to give you a taste:

I’m not gonna lie to you guys, because you are my safe space: writing a story that is in a BOOK with your name on it, while managing the production of a book, while working fulltime and trying to find a place to live is A RECIPE FOR CRYING TO YOUR MOTHER.

Having the book back meant one very specific, wonderful thing, and that is that while I was moving (I strongly advise anyone who is considering making a book and moving into an apartment at the same time to RECONSIDER), Melissa printed the whole thing out in a fancy Kinko’s way that costs more than an actual book. Which means that for the past 10 days or so I have been walking around town, hugging an actual physical object to my body, flipping through it, reading little pieces of it, and realizing just how goddamn good this thing we all decided to fucking go for really is.

When I first read about the C&C project on Meaghan’s blog, I signed up and handed over my money almost immediately. I hadn’t read the stories yet. Many of them hadn’t been written. They hadn’t started to make the actual book. They didn’t even know how. None of this mattered. I wanted it to succeed, and I wanted to be a part of it. And I wasn’t the only one. They raised about $5,000 in three days, completely smashing their Kickstarter target. The total donations are now $17,243.

Writing

The success of the venture rests on Meaghan’s writing. Coming and Crying is very cool, but the idea isn’t unique. There are loads of worthwhile and interesting art projects going on around the Internet, and Kickstarter is packed full of ideas. Meaghan’s Tumblr blog was popular way before she starting working for Tumblr (back when she was Jonathan Coulton’s Scarface) because it’s such a satisfying read. She comes across as honest, funny and likeable (which she is). When she writes an email to the mailing list of supporters they are inspired and excited.

We managed a tiny version of this with the Little Fish Paper Club last week. We made something personal and handmade and sent it out in handwritten envelopes to 100 people. It was beautifully designed by Bekim Mala and it arrived in the post like a present, but at its core was a piece of writing by Juju that was inspiring and exciting. When the Fishy Paper Squares arrived on Monday people were posting thank you messages and pictures on Facebook and Twitter, and thirty more people signed up for the next edition.

Juju’s story was based around the song Am I Crazy?, but that’s not what made it work. People want to connect with Juju. They can do it through the music, but on the web it’s through writing that the connections are really made. The constant conversations on Twitter and Facebook, the blog posts, the emails, the comments. It doesn’t always have to be about the music.

Band newsletters

I unsubscribed from most band newsletters ages ago because they tend to be SERIOUSLY DULL. Now I mostly just get updates from the bands I play with. But I had a dig through the email archive for some examples of good and bad writing and came up with a few. I’ve vaguely anonymised the quotes. Let’s see if any of them are as inspiring as Meaghan’s C&C email:

Keen for something completely different?

XXX and I have collaborated on a new album, Odd Frost, downloadable at this link…

And if you’re around XXX on XXX, we’ll be launching at XXX with a performance bash. Please see the ‘Nightvisions’ section of the theatre’s newsletter below.

Thanks much for your time and consideration!

Hmm… How about this?:

Goodevening everyone, i do hope that this finds you all keeping warm and well.

I am very happy to say that we will be mastering our second album in the very near future after which we will reveal plans for its release…. exciting times indeed… and there is more good news as well in the form of a very talented keyboard player who will be joining us for our show this sunday evening. So do try and make it down to the XXX for the XXX. It promises to be great evening.

I don’t mean to be mean. I’m just as bad sometimes. But you get the idea, right? Not very inspiring.

Musicians, get writing!

If you’re a musician, you need to write for the Internet all the time. Not only blogs, Myspace updates and Facebook messages, but also meta information for MP3s, Bandcamp track descriptions, Twitter biographies, interviews and endless ‘about the band’ copy. So aspire to make it great. Not just interesting, but inspiring and exciting. Don’t make people sit through any more ‘Hi, it’s me. I played a gig. Buy my album.’ emails. Brighten up their day with some great writing. And it’s not compulsory, but ending a sentence in uppercase can often make it AWESOME. ;)

BT outage, 01993 exchange (part 4)

Friday 28th May 2010, 7.20am
I ran through what has become a daily routine; switch off the router and BT Vision box, make a mug of tea, have breakfast, switch everything on and watch it all come back up.

Then I try to load web-pages, run an FTP command and access BT’s own NNTP server. I also try to access BT Vision. All of these functions continue to fail.

I wait for the engineer’s arrival.

At 9.40am, I took a telephone call from a BT Openreach engineer who had a bunch of new information.

He said he wouldn’t be coming out, because the problem has been identified as an equipment issue in the local area.

Apparently, on Tuesday, BT Wholesale upgraded some of their hardware in the 01993 exchange. Since the upgrade was undertaken, more than 200 subscribers in the 01993 have been unable to access the internet.

The engineer said that BT Wholesale were aware of the problem, but until BT Wholesale correct the problem with their equipment, there was nothing that any of us – including the BT Openreach engineers – could do.

I decided to do the only thing that a sensible person in my position would do, I drove in to Abingdon to take Sophie out for lunch.

When I got home – about 2.30pm – I checked the internet.

It was working!

Instead of contacting the BT Broadband hell-desk, because, let’s face it, the quality, content and validity of the information they have exhibited, over the last four days, has been absolutely meaningless, I went to the bulletin board.

Yep, several people were reporting that they had a full range of internet services again.

So that’s it then.

Problem solved.

We’re all back online.

The thing is, as it appears to me, that as soon as the appropriate department of BT became aware that there was an issue in the 01993 exchange, the problem was corrected in less than four hours.

But it seems to have taken 72 hours for that critical piece of information to surface.

So the three questions that have to be asked are:

1. why did it take 72 hours for the fault to be correctly identified?
2. why were BTs offshore call-centre staff never aware of the true nature of the problem?
3. why are BTs offshore hell-desk staff so hugely unhelpful and combative?

BT outage, 01993 exchange (part 3)

Thursday 27th May 2010, 5.50am
I try to load web-pages, run an FTP command and access BTs own NNTP server. I also try to access BT Vision. All of these functions fail.

I don’t *want* to call the BT Broadband hell-desk, it is a pointless, fruitless experience that has yielded nothing of any value, but what is my alternative?

I decide to browse BTs forums and I am actually thrilled to find other BT Broadband subscribers from the 01993 area, who are all experiencing identical problems!

I call the Broadband hell-desk. The chap on the other end says there is a technical problem and it will take 4-5 hours to fix. I tell him I’ve been waiting for three days and I’m asked to hold.

When he came back on the line it was to tell me that there is no longer a problem in my area, that it has been fixed.

I tell him that it hasn’t been fixed because I still can’t load web-pages, can’t establish an FTP connection and can’t access BTs own NNTP server.

He says we can fix these things. I admire his resolve.

I’m told to reset my WiFi router and instructed to run a couple of command-line updates to clear the laptop cache.

None of these actions fixed the problem, so the call-centre operator puts me on hold again.

When he returns it is to contradict himself; there definitely is a service outage and it will take approximately four hours to rectify.

*sigh*

As I was hanging up the phone my mobile rang, it was xxxx from BTCare. I’m not altogether sure what this guy’s role is, but I get a strong sense of ownership from him – that he’s owning my problem and is going to try and sit with it until it is resolved.

It’s clear, from our conversation, that he’s up to date on the quantity and content of my telephone contacts with the various call-centres.

He tells me that according to the status boards, there is no service outage in my area (which contradicts the information I’ve just been given!) but, he goes on to say, it is equally clear from the number of people in the 01993 area who are experiencing the same problem, that there clearly *is* a problem. He says he will do some running around and will call me back shortly.

Although getting his call gave me a lift, my faith in BT has been so tainted that I’m not convinced he will call back.

Ten minutes later he calls back. A major service outage has been escalated to a technical team and he’ll call me back after 11am with an additional update.

Around noon he calls back to say that the problem is being flagged as ‘fixed’. ‘Can you connect to the internet?’ he asks.

No.

So we have arranged that an engineer will visit tomorrow morning.

I notice that in the late afternoon a problem status page appeared on BT’s ‘faults’ website, with an expected ‘two hour fix’ statement.

Four hours later the status against this problem is ‘Fixed’.

Yay!

I try to connect to the internet. I try to run an FTP session. I try to connect to BT’s NNTP server. All of these actions fail. The problem clearly has not been fixed.

I go to bed feeling very grumpy.

Judging by the comments on BT’s customer bulletin board from other 01993 subscribers, I am not alone.

BT outage, 01993 exchange (part 2)

Wednesday 26th May 2010, 5.40am
I try to load web-pages, run an FTP session and access BT’s own NNTP server. All of these functions fail.

I call the BT Broadband hell-desk and ask for status update on the outage. The call centre operator put me on hold, then came back a couple of minutes later to say that yes, there was an outage last night but it’s been fixed.

I explain that if it had been fixed I wouldn’t be calling for an update. I also explain that I am experiencing the same issues as last night.

The Broadband hell-desk operator makes me undertake the same, well-worn set of processes that I was forced to undertake last night: delete and recreate the network connection from my laptop to the hub and use a cable to the hub. We go on to perform a hard reset on the hub, to reset the factory settings on the hub and to reset the IP Catalog on the laptop. We then perform a firewall disable on the hub. All of these processes change nothing. I am still unable to access any web-pages.

I advance my theory that last night’s outage has not been fixed.

The call centre operator says he will escalate the problem and that he will call me back in half an hour.

Disturbingly, the call-centre operator does not tell me to reinstate the hub firewall, but I do that anyway.

Just for fun I decided to fire up Sophie’s laptop. It failed to connect to the internet too. I knew it would, but I’ve been staring down the barrel of BT’s failure for so many hours that I’m starting to doubt my own sanity.

Two and a half hours later I decide to call the BT Vision call-centre. My logic is simple: the BT Broadband hell-desk has not called me back and BT Vision is down too, so why don’t I give it a go?

How happy do I feel when the automated greeting message invites me to use the self-service help function on the website at bt.com? Not happy at all.

After sitting in a queue for an acceptable period of time, I speak to a nice lady called Doreen in the BT Vision call-centre.

Doreen had me jump through a range of low-level hoops that included swapping cables from port to port, reversing cables, rebooting the BT Vision box and pressing ‘pause’ on the BT Vision handset.

None of these things fixed the problem, so we rebooted the hub (again!) and then we restored the factory settings on the BT Vision box.

‘That’s going to take some time,’ said Doreen. ‘You need to call us back when it has reset, if you still have the same problems.’

Time passes…
A couple of hours later I reverted to calling the BT Broadband hell-desk and asked for an update on our continuing issues.

A very ebullient young lady listened to my problem, checked my details and came back like a rocket to say that yes, BT have been getting calls from other customers in the 01993 area. She confirmed there was a known issue and that the engineers were working on the problem. She also said it could take them up to 48 hours to fix the problem.

What is interesting is that the major issue that all of my to-ing and fro-ing and faffing about and an aggregated span of time on the telephone to BT that runs in to hours has exposed, is a significant failing within the customer service divisions of BT.

Why was only the last person I spoke to immediately aware of the outage? It is not a new development, I’ve been speaking to BT about it since 7pm yesterday evening and I’m sure that I’m not the only BT customer in the 01993 area who started talking to BT nineteen hours ago.

More time passes…
Just for good measure I called the BT Vision call-centre to let them know that resetting the factory defaults on my BT Vision box had not succeeded.

Even more time passes…
Twenty-four hours after the outage started, I called BT’s Broadband hell-desk again.

This time the call-centre operator said that there was no service outage. He performed a line-check which, like all of the other line-checks that BT has carried out over the last 24 hours, indicated that there was no problem.

The call-centre logic went like this: I am able to connect to my hub. My hub says it is connected to the internet. The call-centre can look down the line and see my laptop. Therefore everything is working fine!

Yay!

Except that I am unable to access any web-page, can not run FTP, can not access BT’s own NNT server and my BT Vision service does not work.

This call-centre operator was patronising and argumentative. He guided me through a couple of basic ping tests for an IP range that returned 3 out of the 4 pings.

This result, he insisted, clearly demonstrated that the problem was with my web-browser. While he was being so dogmatically insistent I opened sessions with Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari and tried to access Google, BBC News, Apple and CNN on all of them.

Everything failed.

The call-centre operator’s response was to tell me that the problem was obviously with my laptop as (and I quote) ‘there are no known issues affecting my area’.

I offered to fire up both of the other two laptops in the house but he said it would be a common fault with my equipment.

This guy was unhelpful to the point of being bellicose, argumentative and belligerent.

As soon as we ended our conversation I called the BT Vision call-centre where the person on the far end at least listened to my story (after the last call to the BT Broadband hell-desk, this, at least, was a result!).

She put me on hold for three or four minutes and then came back to say that there was a known issue in my area. A number of customers appeared to be able to connect to the internet but were not able to access any web-pages and, as a result, were not being able to access the BT Vision service.

She said that the engineers were looking at the known issue but it could take some hours before they had resolved it.

At 10pm – 27 hours after the as-yet unresolved service outage first occurred – and it is time for bed.

I am exhausted by my repeated attempts of trying to get this service issue resolved.

I feel weary and battered to the point of near-submission at the general unhelpfulness and, latterly, complete intransigence of BT Broadband’s hell-desk staff.

I ask myself this question, ‘Why am I still with BT? Why haven’t I migrated to a different service provider?’

For some reason, I am unable to provide an answer.

BT outage, 01993 exchange (part 1)

Tuesday 25th May 2010, 7pm
For the second time in the last couple of weeks, our BT Broadband and BT Vision services have dropped out.

We are able to connect  – by WiFi or cable – to our router, and when we do connect with it, the router indicates that we are ‘connected’ to the internet.

But we are not connected to the internet, because we are unable to load any web-pages, can not run FTP services and can’t access BT’s own NNTP server.

I call the BT Broadband hell-desk.

After validating my security details, I am asked what the problem is; I give a detailed and thorough response and underline the message by saying I have tried a variety of browsers and tried to access a range of websites.

The Broadband hell-desk operator responds by ignoring everything I’ve just told them. I am asked to sit at the laptop and look at the network connection details.

I can see where this is going, so I try to head off the meaningless exercise by reiterating that yes, I am connected to the router and that yes, the router is behaving normally and that no, I am unable to launch any web-page and that yes, I strongly believe there is a problem with BT’s wide area network.

But the call-centre operator tells me that while we have been speaking he has run a diagnostic on my telephone line and there are no BT problems, so he continues to direct me down a fruitless path.

We break the connection with the WiFi router, establish a new one and that tests fine. We use the WiFi link to log on to the router and examine the router setup and that works fine.

Because I am able to access the router and it tells me that I am connected to Broadband, the call-centre operator is adamant that there is no BT problem.

I ask him why I am unable to load any web-pages, why does my BT Vision not work and why am I unable to use FTP and NNTP services.

He puts me on hold for less than 60 seconds.

When he returns, it is to contradict his earlier statement; he tells me that there is a major outage on our exchange and that’s why I am having these difficulties.

I summarise that he and I have spent 14 fruitless minutes wasting each other’s time, performing a series of meaningless functions, all to validate my initial diagnosis, which I put to him when we began the conversation.

His response is to say that the tests he ran to my telephone number didn’t show the problem that he has since been made aware of.

*Pauses for breath*

Where, in this scenario, is anyone’s definition of quality?

Where is the quality in the tests that the call-centre operator ran?

Where is the quality in the call-centre’s ability to *listen and respond correctly to* a detailed explanation of symptoms?

In fact, where is there any degree of quality to be found anywhere in this horrible scenario?

A good night’s sleep passes…

Pissed at BT

Soz for being so quiet. We’re both still here but we have no broadband service (no BT Vision too, but that is less important).

We have been ‘dark’ since Tuesday; hopefully BT will fix the problem today.

I’m not holding my breath.

We’ll try not to flood the internet with the posts we have saved up!

When is spam not spam?

Parental advisory: very strong adult language is contained in this post; very strong. You have been warned. Really. I’m not joking. This is bad.

I have just received a retweeted tweet (if you see what I mean) on my Twitter account. The retweeted tweet says:

bryonythomas: I’m showing someone #howtwitterworks, could you please RT to help me demonstrate?

I thought, that’s interesting. Let’s have a look at the profile of @bryonythomas

Instantly, two things are noticeable.

1. six minutes ago @bryonythomas tweeted ‘@Godzilla this looks like spam to me.. who are you?’

2. three hours ago @bryonythomas tweeted ‘Off to get a new marketing exec set up on Twitter, Facebook & Wordpress this morning’

Well obviously, my response to #2. is ‘So you’re doing this so that the new marketing exec can use his/her Twitter, Facebook and Wordpress to spam everyone with?’

And my response to #1. contains the words ‘Hoist’ and ‘Petard’.

I dig a little deeper and the profile of @bryonythomas says, unbelievably, ‘Marketing Clear Thinker: When you can’t out-spend the competition, you have to out-think them.’

Actually Bryony, based on your first tweet, there’s no evidence whatsoever of clear thinking going on in your locale.

So for the benefit of @bryonythomas and every other spammer or marketeer who uses social media to generate junk mail, here’s what I do when people – who are obviously spamming marketeers or spamming salespeople (because there clearly is no difference in the non-sales, non-marketing world) attach themselves to me.

Even though they may not have yet tweeted me, by following me they are potentially building a database of people I communicate with, so I send them an ‘@’ reply tweet along the lines of:

‘@nameofspammer What the fuck are you following me for, you cunt’

And then I block them and report them for generating spam.

So go ahead punk. Make my day.

The Digital Economy Bill is very bad for musicians. Don’t let it through.

That’s the subject line of an email I just sent to my MP (Andrew Smith, Labour, East Oxford) urging him not to allow the bill to be rushed through Parliament on Tuesday, when the election is likely to be announced.

The Digital Economy Bill gives government the power to cut off internet connections (from homes, schools, libraries) if they suspect anyone there of copyright infringement. That’s insane, and its only possible use is for major record labels to inflict or threaten disconnection in an effort to weigh down their trousers with as much gold as possible as they sink into the quicksand.

If you’re at all interested, go and read Ben Werdmuller’s post about the Digital Economy Bill. He makes some smart points.

Here’s the rest of the email:

Dear Andrew,

I am a musician and a web professional. I use the internet to publish my music, to share it and to sell it. I use file sharing services and sites legitimately and legally to distribute and download music that is produced and consumed outside of what the government sees as “the music industry”.

Threatening to disconnect citizens from the Internet for copyright infringement is a ham-fisted approach to regulation that benefits nobody except the major record labels and publishers, and completely ignores the subtleties of our online interactions and behaviour.

I am amazed that the Digital Economy Bill has got this far with a huge majority of both the music and the tech communities vocally disagreeing with it, and I believe that if it is allowed to be rushed through on April 6th it will strike a crippling blow to our digital society and economy which we will be unable to reverse for years to come.

This is why, as your constituent, I will not be voting for you or for your party if the Bill is passed.

People like me, who are concerned about this issue, will be looking to see who has done everything they can to make sure this Bill is not crashed through on the last day before an election.

I would very much appreciate it if you could do everything you can to raise this issue with ministers and party managers to make sure that these provisions receive proper debate and scrutiny in a new Parliament.

Ben Walker