Tag: Social Reporting

More links and things we’ve been up to: Care Data and some other stuff

The end of Stirchley Community Centre and some fab social reporting.

We’ve been working to get local volunteers and local officers sharing the changes around Stirchley Baths.  A couple of peopl we taught with out social media surgeries di some cracking social reporting of the last days of the Stirchley Community Centre (closed down because of a Tesco development and being moved to the Stirchley baths site when the work there is done:

Here a link with plenty of videos from Stirchley.   And here’s a video of the Stirchley Stitchers created by the brilliant Jess Allen – who’s natural social reporter.

Bishops Castle and Household Energy, homeless young people and women in Wolverhampton!

Steph has been all over this week – helping out some people starting a social enterprise in Bishops Castle – the Household Energy Service –  and also a group of women as part of the work we’ve been doing with Women of Wolverhampton.    Lloyd Davis has been an loved extension of Podnosh with our work with the Foyer Federation in Stratford,  East London.  Some young people in the E15 Foyer have started a site about life in East London (after a good discussion about ways to build stronger relationships with the local community and potential employers) – although we’ve still to crack the business of getting them publishing between out visits!.

Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery

We worked with fbec a good while a go to help them get a site set up which gave them control over what they could publish.  We also supported them with a number of sessions of one to one help to encourage them to share useful material and share it often.  Sometimes you look away and hope things stick.  I looked back today  and can see how often they’re publishing now – simple things like a notice for the AGM – or a report on a visit from the Lord Mayor.  I wonder if they’ll be bold enough to liveblog their AGM?

How much does it cost to look after people?

Lesley Curtis of the Personal Social services Research Unit in Kent has published this research on the Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2013>  Only available as a pdf – would be much more useful if the data were available as a spreadsheet.   Potentially useful for Paul Bradshaw’s Help Me Investigate Health.

Unit Cost of Health and Social Care 2013.

Which flip camera should I buy? – the update for 2012

A couple of years ago I wrote what turned out to be an often visited post answering  the question: “which flip camera should I buy“.

Things have moved on a good bit since then (mainly that new owners Cisco decided to discontinue the flip) so I just want to update it really.

My thinking on the best kit for social reporting is very simple:

  1. Speed counts more than quality – so shoot in standard definition not hi definition – it uploads faster.
  2. Decent sound often counts for much more than decent pictures.
  3. If you are using a stand alone video camera simplicity matters.
  4. The most sensible thing to use is what you are most likely to have to hand.

So:

zoom camrea hd
Zoom Q3HD

Buy the ZoomQ3HD – Hi Definition Nick you say?  Yes – but don’t use it that way –  change the video setting from high definition to standard definition. You get a good widescreen image. Prices have come down quite a bit over the last year or so – so you wont regret buying this one. It comes with great sound so also works as a fantastic audio only recorder.  Do not buy the ZoomQ2HD – Why?  Because it doesn’t come with a built in usb – and that means you’ll have lost the cabel just when you need it.

or

Alternatively: if you can find a standard definition Flip (ideally Mino but any) then buy it – it will probably be second hand but is small, widescreen (which tends to look the part) and very simple to use – keep it in your pocket or bag.

or

Use a smartphone – currently the iphone 4 onwards does  a great job, and we’ve been tinkering with the Samsung Galaxy SIII – for audio use audioboo to capture.

or

Your ipad – that can be a fab social reporting tool.  But take to get good sound – you’ll will probably need to hold your ipad or phone closer than feels comfortable for decent sound.

Good luck.

 

Live Blogging/Social Reporting – a new digital skill.

New Optimist Forum Future Foods event 11th June 2012

Earlier this week Max, Nick and I went to the New Optimists Forum – Future Foods, We’re were there in a professional capacity Social Reporting from the evening to get an overview of the event online as it happened. This was Max’s first outing as a social reporter and talking to him afterwards reminded me how tiring I found it when I first started live blogging events. So I asked him afterwards what 3 tips we could have given him before we went into the session to make it easier.

These were his responses;

1. Don’t be complacent.

Max thought it was going to be easier than it actually was and didn’t expect to be quite so tired afterwards – It’s not an easy thing trying to record what is going on, keeping track of the sometimes multiple conversation and listening for a perfect sound bite to capture on camera.

2. Make sure your laptop is not too big.

Turning up with all the tools you’d need for a social reporting job as a *mobile” social reporter is easier if you have a lighter laptop. We had audio recorders, flip cameras, a stills camera and our laptops with us – spare batteries, spare chargers and a mi-fi – lugging that around can be tiring.

3. Don’t delete anything.

Max admitted afterwards that the thing he found hardest was listening and picking out the “best” bits. He said he would start writing something and then something else interested would start to be discussed so he’s scrap it and start again. He realised he could have just kept it all. He could have bullet pointed all interesting points and not worried about going into too much detail – if he’d wanted to elaborate further he could have grabbed the attendees for a video clip, getting them to reiterate the relevant points they’d made.

Social reporting is all about getting a flavour of an event, an overview of proceedings not precise minutes – it can be used at all kinds of events from large conferences to smaller neighbourhood meetings and everything in between.

It’s a skill we are employed to use often and it is also a skill we teach in our aptly named “Social Reporter Training” packages where we look at the tools to use and the “how to” of social reporting and while we already teach “Don’t delete anything” I think I’ll be adding the rest of Max’s tips  into the next session we host.

 

 

Wolverhampton LNP, Social reporting and finding their feet on Twitter.

We have recently been doing some work in Wolverhampton with the Local Neighbourhood Partnership (LNP), talking to their neighbourhood wardens about how they can use Twitter to communicate on their patch, the sorts of conversations they could be having and showing them practically how to use it.

As I live in Wolverhampton, sit on the board for my local LNP and use twitter in my neighbourhood with @WV11, one of the examples I used when training them was live tweeting from our meetings.

Bi-monthly in each LNP area Read more