Podnosh

I’ll be watching www.birminghamelections.org.uk/ tomorrow night to see how the service, fronted by Adrian Goldberg, delivers coverage of the local elections results.

It’s a job I’ve done myself – anchoring the Birmingham Results for Radio WM and reporting general and local election results for TV and radio. Days on research and spent preparing preview pieces and briefs for reporters etc. Even then I was expressing frustration with the fact that whilst the BBC was making results available instantly online local authorities didn’t. No RSS feeds of results to allow anyone to upadate their web service live. It seemed to reflect a fear of being the final publisher. Slowly thats changing and I think it is time that councils begin telling their own stories rather than relying on the mediators.

So lets see how it goes.

Update:  click here to see how it went.

Students at Frankley High have returned to their experiment with podcasting which I was helping to support last year. It’s taken a while to get back but we’re hoping to create a learning group where those who worked with us last year begin to show the teachers how to use the kit.

We also went through a fascinating process for a Creative Partneships project – we had a series of teachers pitch to us about how they would like to use podcasting.

It is a really positive starting point for any school work because it helps the staff focus on why they might want or need your support. It allows us to put our effort where we are most likely to find the enthusiasm to turn the skills into something of mainstream value, which of course is likely to further encourage other teachers to experiment with social media.

Anyway thanks to Laura for listening to the warm up podcast for a year 9 group and commenting. Laura also helped me spot this youtube film from commoncraft on her blog. Useful woman: Laura.

Update. Thanks also to Andy for his thoughtful comment on the Frankley Talk blog about the problems of background noise and people with hearing problems.

Lolcats iz hair ing.

Hat tip Jemimakiss.

Click here for a fine series of posts on how some news is now being provided by people writing things called newspapers.  Hat tip NUJ Newmedia blog.

Since July 2007 my friend Pete Fletcher has been keeping a record of each of his sneezes but waited until today to tell me:

http://sneezecount.joyfeed.com/

He offers these thoughts for anyone else embarking on a counting project:

When choosing something to count, it is important to realize that some things work better than others^c. Sneezes work, but other candidates for counting are demonstrably less rewarding. For example “saying the word fish”, or “cleaning my teeth” are countable, but can be produced almost at will, and so lack much of the joy of incremental documentation. (As well as my delight at the times I’ve sneezed while updating Sneezecount either online or the notebook, thereby generating recursive Sneezecount references.)

Bless you Pete.

Pic courtesy of fernyfern (not Pete by the way)

Since the last time we got together at the end of March a number of folk have arranged smaller meetings. This is intended to be the monthly main session. Al at Rooty Frooty in the Custard Factory is happy to stay open again for us, this time 6pm to about 9pm on Tuesday April 29th.

Not much on the agenda, although some of you might want to talk about the first UK based Barcamp for Wordpress users: WordcampUK, which will be held in Birmingham on the weekend of 19th and 20th July 2008. Tony Scott got the ball rolling with this post and since then there has been a collective plumping for Birmingham as a city central enough to make sense for all sorts of folk.
Of course most of you might just want to have a chinwag and enjoy a spring evening in good company. Last month a number of people came along who were simply interested in blogging and social media in general. It’s relaxed enough to be open for all. We have a Facebook group.

This Youtube channel is my idea of good. A series of cleanly made but short (typically 3 mins) videos on personal experience of discrimination and reflections on human rights. The film above is from Michael Etkind, who survived a Nazi concentration camp. Other films feature Tanni Grey Thompson, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Radio 1 DJ Nihal Anthanayaile.

These should provide readily accessible sources of debate for people to use on their blogs, in classrooms or where ever. Media as a social object.

Tweet tip.

Welcome back to my surprisingly irregular smattering of random links called Monday Mentions.

Ofcom on social network users in the UK (hat tip):

• Alpha Socialisers – mostly male and under the age of 25. They use the sites in short bursts to flirt and meet new people
• Attention Seekers – mostly female of all ages, who crave attention and comments from others, often by posting photos
• Followers – males and females of all ages who join sites to keep in touch with friends and family
• Faithfuls – older males and females generally aged over 20, who typically use social networking sites to get into contact with old friends
• Functionals – mostly older males who prefer to use social networking sites in order to pursue specific interests

Matthew Taylor of the RSA chewing through multiple personalities.

John Craig of the Innovation Exchange wants a competition between ideas, not institutions. Gawd that would help in this city! (hat tip). Perhaps it would encourage Birmingham free Wi-Fi

WTF is Brum? created by Pete Ashton on tumblr.

Digital is Dangerous coming to Brum, spotted on Fade and in Jibbering Records.

Blogging policy for non-profits (or anyone)
Om Malik thinks Pageflakes is slipping down the toobs.

The sensitive cycling jacket.

Robin Hammans poll on what do you check first is worth 10 seconds.

Community Empowerment Networks losing funding nationally. Birmingham’s CEN closed last year as the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund came to an end – according to The Stirrer with no useful measure of its (the NRF) impact in Birmingham.

What have I missed?

If you missed this fine link on D’Log here it is.

A month ago Eccentric City put up the offer of a £1 commission and I wrote this – saying I’d pay anyone who came up with something a tenner – really just meddling with being a patron of the arts…

Well Pete Ashton tells me that Simon Raven came up with this remarkable film:

So I need Simon Raven’s address someone please.