Posts Tagged ‘hyperlocal’

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Age isn’t a barrier! Birmingham East and Sheldon Community Website

Posted on 22nd April 2013 by

At the same time as running the project we’ve been working on in South Birmingham with the Community safety team we’ve been engaging with communities in east Birmingham in the same way. In fact we’ve just wrapped up the first lot of surgeries in Shard End and it looks like we’ve had some great results with people coming to learn about twitter, facebook and blogging.

One of the patients who attended was Lol Thurstan.

Lol came along to a Social Media awareness session we held at The Pump on Kitts Green Road and subsequently attended our Social Media Surgeries at Shard End Library. Chair of his residents association and lead coordinator with his neighbourhood watch, He wanted to learn how to use social media to support his Neighbourhood Watch group

In just 4 sessions (including the initial awareness session) Lol has established B26 Community, A neighbourhood website for the Sheldon community that allows him to not only share Neighbourhood Watch news but can also involve other groups in the community to improve communication in the area -

By his own admission Lol was a late comer to starting to use technology but he came with a willingness to learn and as I think you’ll see from this video, age isn’t a barrier to learning something new and getting stuck in !

 

Posted on 22nd April 2013 by
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Posted in Hyperlocal, Social Media Surgery | 1 Comment »

The value of Social Media in neighbourhoods and appealing to communities

Posted on 24th January 2013 by

Yesterday a sad thing happened; 2 children went missing. It was presumed at the time that they’d gone of their own volition and they were later found well and safe, but none the less it was an awful thing to happen.

This all happened in Darlaston, 5 miles from my house, in Wednesfield and as such when the press release went out appealing for witnesses we posted it to the WV11 site and Facebook page. We were aware that while the children weren’t strictly from the WV11 area our readership expands beyond our borders, and friends,and friends of friends,  would most definitely cross over into Darlaston and the surrounding areas.

We posted the photo from the appeal along with the copied the police release verbatim,  all we added to the post was two words at the end “please share”

And share people did.

Within an hour 565 people had re-posted the news direct from our facebook page and less than 2 hours later that number had jumped to 1984!

 

It seems to me 2 things had happened to make the numbers jump like that  - every parent that uses our site could empathise with the  situation these parents were in, no one can imagine, or would want to imagine, what it feels like to find your child missing like that, and going on the old adage that “it takes a village to raise a child” everyone wanted to help raise awareness to bring these children home safely.

The other thing that happened was we were there, we were local and we we part of the community and we appealed to them directly with the “please share”!

Darlaston falls under Walsall Council  but it is fairly close to the border with Wolverhampton. Both Councils picked up the police release and shared to their facebook pages, Walsall’s post was shared 20 times, Wolverhampton’s 136.

The local radio station, Free Radio also picked up on it and shared to their page too, Their story was shared 550 times.

Looking at those figures it seems clear that being community based and very local really had an impact on the way the community interacted with the appeal.

The important thing here of course is that the children were found and returned home safe and well, l but as an observation it is interesting how much being part of a community can make a difference

 

 

Posted on 24th January 2013 by
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Posted in Hyperlocal, Neighbourhoods | 1 Comment »

Birmingham Hyperlocal Website for sale on e-bay

Posted on 22nd October 2012 by

an image taken from e-bay of the auction

Jon Bounds has a talent for the unusual. He’s just listed Birmingham It’s Not Shit – on e-bay.  Stating price £1000.00. Previously he’d been asking for offers over £5000.00.

The site is one of the longest standing of it’s kind and gave Jon a remarkable platform over the years to innovate in using the web and represent another view of his native city.   This will be interesting.

Posted on 22nd October 2012 by
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Posted in Citizen Journalism, Hyperlocal, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

Wikipedia goes local in Monmouth

Posted on 3rd January 2012 by

Monmouth

Since it’s launch in 2001 Wikipedia has been growing at a rapid pace. Its army of volunteer collaborators have now edited more than 20 million articles in just under 300 languages worldwide and it is still growing.

So what’s next?

This year Wikipedia are launching Monmouthpedia, it’s first venture based on location,  a community collaboration for town centric Wikipedia pages. The hope being that residents and visitors will contribute articles and photographs on interesting and notable places, people, artefacts and other aspects of Monmouth life. QRpedia codes could then be placed near points of interest around the town for smartphone users to scan and view the relevant Wikipedia/Monmouthpedia page right on their phone.

The Wikipedia page for the Monmouthpedia project adds:

Articles will have coordinates (geotags) to allow a virtual tour of the town using the Wikipedia layer on Google Streetview, Google Maps and will be available in augmented reality software including Layar.

Could you see this model being useful for where you live?

The collaborative part of Wikipedia has always intrigued me and I’d be really interested in seeing it put to work on such a local level.

Image used under Creative Commons: James Stringer

Posted on 3rd January 2012 by
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Posted in Hyperlocal | 4 Comments »

#hyperbbcwm Notes (part 1) of a discussion between BBC staff and hyperlocal bloggers in the West Midlands

Posted on 1st April 2011 by

Gavin Wray’s notes from table 3

Table Three discussing hyperlocal blogs and the BBC

Table Three discussing hyperlocal blogs and the BBC - source podnosh on flickr

Access and archives

Bloggers mentioned copyright as the main barrier to exposing content in the BBC archives to a wider, and local, audience.

Frustrated when historical archives are copyrighted, preventing you sharing it with your audience. One volunteer wants to share old photos of areas around Birmingham city centre for others to reminisce, share stories or simply for curiousity. Copyrighted BBC content, in the iPlayer for example, prevents content being put in the public space for comment, discussion and consumption.

There is also a wealth of great archive content by the BBC, spanning decades of local media, that isn’t yet online. There’s lots of interest in this.

Video of Nicky Getgood talking with Robin Morley asking (more…)

Posted on 1st April 2011 by
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Posted in Citizen Journalism, Neighbourhoods, Social Media Surgery | 1 Comment »

Blogging for the BBC on hyperlocal websites.

Posted on 19th October 2010 by

This picture is of the BBC blog and links to it.

I’ve just started a blog for the BBC on hyperlocal websites.  It emerged from a meeting which Will Perrin organised between local Birmingham bloggers, the BBC’s Head of English Regions David Holdsworth and Laura Ellis – both of whom had been my bosses when I was at the Beeb.

We were discussing the best way for the BBC to connect with an understand the growing movement of very local, or hyperlocal, blogs.   I suggested at the time the BBC started blogging about these sites.  The why is pretty straightforward.

Something  I had learnt back in 2005 when I started the Grassroots Channel Podcast (which told the stories of active citizens in Birmingham) is how making media about people is a great way to establish relationships. Through interviewing people for a podcast two things happened, I established stronger relationships with them, but they also started connecting with each other.  The simple idea of understanding each other better and, to a degree, sharing a platform.

It was the case I was making last week at the new currency event.  Storytelling is about connecting people and we hope to help do that through this blog.  We will concentrate on the wider West Midlands region and the sort of blogs that interest me are outlined in the first post here. Besides taking an interest in the bloggers, what they write and why they do it, I’ll also be talking to a number of BBC newsrooms and production teams and introducing people.

I’m really looking forward to this.  I have a passion for both the BBC and for people who use various forms of social media for civic good.  I think they’re natural bedfellows.  We shall see.

Posted on 19th October 2010 by
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Posted in Big Society, Local Government, Neighbourhoods | 2 Comments »

Things I've spotted August 31st from 14:24 to 22:49

Posted on 31st August 2010 by

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading August 31st from 14:24 to 22:49:

Posted on 31st August 2010 by
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Posted in Link Love | No Comments »

What would you show from Birmingham to demonstrate how the web can do local better than local tv?

Posted on 27th August 2010 by

Earlier this month Will Perrin wrote a blog post setting out why Local TV  probably won’t work and, more importantly, doesn’t need to. He was responding to the government’s announcement of plans to encourage the development of up to 20 new Local TV stations by 2015.

He echoed a huge number of my thoughts on linear media, transmitters/printing presses and local-ness.  Will  challenged the government’s concentration on Local TV with a series of statements (for Will’s expansion on these visit his blog post here.):

  • Why use television as a medium of transmission at all?
  • TV is not local
  • For small audience local TV there is no need to regulate news in the traditional way.
  • The footprint for any of the 80-odd transmitters is orders of magnitude too large for a real big society impact.
  • If you start with the internet, instead of TV low cost public service models are apparent.
  • Of the hundreds of good local websites in the UK very few regularly use video to tell stories.
  • Public service news done in the traditional British broadcast way is too expensive for local TV

There are a number of other thoughts I could add: (more…)

Posted on 27th August 2010 by
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Posted in Citizen Journalism, Government, Local Government, Neighbourhoods | 24 Comments »

Stuff we've seen March 9th through to May 21st

Posted on 25th May 2010 by

These are my links for March 9th through May 21st:

  • Why its essential to socialize your business philosophy – “If you can’t or refuse to adapt your business philosophy to realize the full potential of social media, you will be wondering why your socialized competitors are doing increasingly more business than you are.”
  • Home is where the Art is: How to do social media – “Whatever you do with digital media, it is just that – digital media. The important stuff is the conversations it supports. No conversation, no point to digital media” This is from a customer and makes me very proud!
  • Talk About Local 2010 – What we learnt – Blog - – Much to our surprise, Greener Leith won the ‘Best Specialist Hyperlocal’ award, for which we’re most grateful. We’re still laughing at the plastic umbrella (price tag unremoved), tiny plastic trophy and the camouflage hat that made up the prize
  • Nick Petrie | One year of Redbrick – The student media scene is a great place for experimentation because the business model is different. It is an environment where risk should be encouraged and entrepreneurship supported. Social media is the buzz topic at the moment, but it is the concepts that surround it that matter; relationships, community engagement and conversations – the interactions that publications have with their audience.
  • 2008-09 Citizenship Survey: Empowered Communities Topic Report – Corporate – Communities and Local Government – “Using 2008-09 Citizenship Survey data, this report provides an in-depth examination of community empowerment: whether people feel they can influence local and national decisions; whether they would like to be more involved in decision making; what would make it easier to influence decision making; and how people would influence decisions if they wanted to.”
  • future interviews « ‘i interview interesting people’ – Interesting journalistic process from Robert Dale
  • Design for America – Sunlight Labs is pleased to announce our latest contest — “Design for America.” This 10 week long design and data visualization extravaganza is focused on connecting the talents of art and design communities throughout the country to the wealth of government data now available through bulk data access and APIs, and to help nurture the field of information visualization. Our goal is simple and straightforward — to make government data more accessible and comprehensible to the American public.

Posted on 25th May 2010 by
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Posted in Link Love | No Comments »

Looking forward to June’s Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery

Posted on 24th May 2010 by

May's Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery in thestudio

We’re now looking forward to the next Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery, which will be at the Studio in Central Birmingham on Tuesday June 8 between 5.30pm and 7pm. The address is 7 Cannon Street, Birmingham, West Midlands B2 5EP.

If you’re from a Birmingham-based voluntary or community group and would like to receive some friendly advice on using social media, then you can sign up for the surgery by following this link to the Social Media Surgery Plus site.

There’ll be another surgery in July and then we’re likely to take a break in August, before being back in September. I’ll give you a dates as soon as possible.

If you’re new to the Central Birmingham surgeries then you can find out a bit more about them by looking at this link. And, if you’ve never been to a social media surgery before, it might be worth reading this blog post, which attempts to explain what there all about.

It’s worth reiterating our earlier thanks to the folk at thestudio for allowing us to use their restaurant area for free. The staff have been brilliant – always very helpful and quite patient with our sometimes slightly tardy departures from the building. Hopefully the weather will be good on the 8th and we’ll be able to enjoy the terrace, too.

Although our last surgery was pretty quiet, there were some really interesting outcomes. In particular, it was heartening to see Emma Neil and Hannah Severn, who are both volunteers at the Birmingham Conservation Trust. I’ve written a little about the last surgery, which also includes a video interview with Emma and Hannah where they talk about their experiences.

It was also great to see a number of our brilliant surgeons down, including Gavin Wray, Mary Horesh of Friends of the Earth, Simon Gray, and Heidi Blanton. The surgeries wouldn’t be able to work if it wasn’t for members of the Birmingham Bloggers group, like the people I’ve mentioned above. They volunteer their time absolutely for free and have helped dozens of people.

Posted on 24th May 2010 by
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Posted in Social Media Surgery, Third Sector | No Comments »

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