Podnosh

A great turnout at February's Social Media Surgery in thestudio

Well, it seems sometimes you get what you wish for. February’s Central Birmingham social media surgery had a really good turnout. Nick decided to make me ‘organiser’ for the night and, perhaps, it would have been best if it had been a quiet night.

But, largely because everyone was so nice and actually knew a lot more about what was going on than I did, it ran very smoothly. A big thanks in particular has to go to the surgeons who did a really good job to juggle the large numbers of people, who often had very different interests.
We had folk in looking for help with everything from Twitter to Google Analytics on the evening – and from lots of different organisations.

Feryal Iqbal, of Friends of the Earth and Localise West Midlands, seemed very happy with the help that she received. Feryal will be working with both the organisations and wanted to learn how she could set up a blog, as she explains in this audio interview.
Feryal interview Social Media Surgery february

It was also great to see Neil Holland, from the Midlands Arts Centre, who wanted to find out a little bit about how to use social media.

Andy Mabbett helped the Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery set up their own WordPress site, which they are already using to publicise their petition to force Birmingham City Council to restore the listed chapels there.

Susi O’Neill, who is a Web 2.0 surgeon in Nottingham, also popped in – and helped Martin Miley, Rick Cokayne and Martin Field of the Birmingham Social Investment Trust. Martin (Miley) and Rick wanted to set up a site for the Civic Centre Residents Association. And, thanks to Susi, they now have their own Posterous site.

Chris Crean, of Friends of the Earth, was keen to see how social media could support the campaigning work he does within the organisation, as he explains here:-

Clearly I need to work on lighting for the next surgery. But I’m really hoping we get an equally good turnout again next month, when the surgery will be on March 9 – a Tuesday – from 5.30pm to 7pm. See you then!

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These are my links for January 12th through January 14th:

• John Popham’s Random Musings – "I have been quite annoyed by some of the accounts of “heroic” struggles to get to work through the snow, because, it seemed to me, that some of them just weren’t necessary." John on why the web doesn't seem to make it easier for people to work without traveling through snow.
• Building the “reusable video” player « Carl’s Notepad – "What i’d like is a player which has the ability to pull content from any source, youtube or vimeo or a traditional video storage platform – I’d also like to add value by providing a feature that allowed me to layer content, questions etc over the top to gain additional benefit from the original content. I’d like to be in a position to reuse our existing video archives and repurpose them, or use other public material from either central government or other local authorities providing the content was reusable”"
• Official Google Blog: A new approach to China – "we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties."
• Google to end censorship in China | Technology | guardian.co.uk – "Google acknowledged that the decision might well mean Google.cn, and potentially the company's offices in China, would have to close."
• Management | Zoetica: Connecting Organizations with Their Networks – Beth Kanter becomes a Chief exec.

It’s a question I’m often asked.   May I start with something simple.  I’m assuming you want something that is easy to use, easy to carry and makes video which is simple to edit and very quick to upload to the internet.  If so buy this one, the Flip Mino – but not the high definition one.

If you are going to buy a flip get this one

Why?

It is light and very easy to carry in a pocket or a bag.
I’ve used and owned the larger ones but found that the red record button was prone to stick.  On these it works like a dream.
60 minutes is plenty of recording time.
The built in usb connector is darned useful.
It does wide screen, which is nice.
There’s no point in buying the high definition one because the lens is the same and the files are just bigger and take ages to upload to the net.

Tip:  the white one if often cheaper than the black one and you’ll rarely find any for less than they sell on Amazon.

What if I want something like a Flip that isn’t a Flip?

At the moment the best reason to do that is because you want better sound. The Flip does perfectly decent sound in straightforward conditions – but make it very noisy and you start to struggle a bit.

Oddly there are not that many sensible choices. There are growing number of high definition flip type camera  that allow you to do what you can’t do with a flip – plug in an external microphone.

Dave Briggs has this very informative explanation of why it’s worth buying a Kodak Zi8:

What Dave says is right, but the point of the Flip is simplicity.  Once you have to add an external microphone, plug it in,

Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera - almost but not quite

mess with it, hope it doesn’t drop out then – to keep the file size down, remember to reset the video recording quality to less than HD (for upload speed) I’m not convinced the more complex camera will be better. It does have one advantage – you can take stills.

It is still simpler to buy the Flip and ask someone to step into a quiet room to talk to them.

However sound is all important in online video so there’s a more expensive but better solution.  I bought one a few weeks ago and love the new Zoom Q3.  You can record just audio if you wish ( a still photo combined with an mp3 makes great content) and will record very simple video with great audio. There’s a built in USB connector, you can use and sd card and the file sizes are weeny – so whizz up to the net.

This is what @documentally says about it – and I agree with him:

What then is special about it?:

Robust
Same ease of use at the Flip
Great sound without needing an external mic
Low resolution video – hence small file sizes.
Does just audio in great quality

So for for me the almost ultimate is the Zoom Q3 – give me widescreen yet low def video on the Zoom Q4 and I’ll be a very happy man.

These are my links for January 7th through January 10th:

• Steadicam Smoothee for iphone 3gs – 'The Steadicam Smoothee™ is specifically designed and engineered to work with your Apple® iPhone 3Gs. Based on the same technology as the big $60,000 rigs used in Hollywood, it allows iPhone 3Gs owners to capture incredible video without the shakes normally associated with hand-held video shot on the go, right out of the box, the very first time.' via @edmore
• Social workers start turning the tide over media coverage – Mad World – "Angered by inaccurate media reports in which Tracy Dawber, the community care worker charged in relation to the Little Ted's Nursery child pornography ring, was identified as a social worker, users of Community Care's CareSpace discussion forum wrote to both the BBC and the Daily Mirror asking them to correct their coverage."
• Akvo blog » Blog Archive » Akvo Really Simple Reporting (RSR) – "it has become clear that sophisticated project prospecting, project reporting and monitoring tools are needed to be able to effectively scale up implementation efforts to handle many thousands of projects in parallel. Akvo will be developing these tools as Open Source software tools and will also be running an online service which anyone can use, without having to install and maintain these tools on their own servers."
• A large pile – Viewing a problem – FixMyStreet – Another reason why I love www.fixmystreet.com: "It needs clearing away before it becomes an unofficial tip for the weak minded and indolent."
• Doing journalism in 2010 is an act of community organizing – Good to see thoughtful journlaistic material making the case that bloggers have made for a while: "Nothing frustrates me more than watching journalists who've lost their newsroom jobs entering the blogosphere… with no clue as to what they should be doing online. Too few emerging online journalists understand that the function of news publishing has changed in the Internet era. Simply reporting the news, however you might define that, is no longer enough, not when you are publishing in such a competitive environment."

These are my links for December 16th through December 17th:

• Film Exchange on Alcohol & Drugs – alcohol/Drugs video discussions – A really simple idea to collate a range of film resources – in this case on drug and alcohol abuse
• Twitter / Steven Tuck: Spent most of the journey … – "Spent most of the journey doing a small social media surgery on the train. At least one more person blogging :-)"
• bit.ly blog – Announcing bit.ly Pro – "…. a new service: bit.ly Pro. The Pro service provides custom short URLs powered by bit.ly. Publishers and bloggers will be able to use their own short domain names to point to pages on their sites"
• mySociety » Blog Archive » mySociety’s Next 12 months – Part 1 – "we used the technique that powers KittenWar.com to help decide our key strategic priorities for the next year: after all , if we don’t, who will?"
• FutureGov Network – "OK most of government isn't as sexy as (m)any of these brands, but we thought it might give you some inspiration when looking at how to build your Facebook page."

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading December 4th from 22:11 to 22:41:

• The challenge of pledges | Created in Birmingham – Pledges to support local theatre/culture. Could they be adapted to strengthen local community?

  "# Attend 12 theatre shows in the next 12 months, 4 by West Midlands writers/artists/companies you haven’t seen before, 1 in a West Midlands Venue you’ve never been to before.
  # Take 12 people who have never been, rarely go, or don’t ‘do’ Independent Theatre to a show. Share transport.
  # Host a meal/party for 8 people 4 of which you barely know.
  # Write 12 comments/reviews/blog entries about theatre on other people’s sites.
  # Attend 1 mid*point or return to the next Open Space event."

• Another day, another report « Chief Inspector Mark Payne’s Blog – How did it stop being like this? "In West Midlands Police we have been one of the pilot forces for ‘community resolutions’. This effectively allows officers to use their judgement to make decisions at the scene of some lower level crimes, and together with the victim agree on a suitable remedy. So if a gang of kids break your window, you can ask them to apologise and pay for it, rather than enter into the criminal justice system. So far we have carried out 8000 of these types of resolutions, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Police officers are allowed to use their professional judgement (or common sense as it is more commonly known,) based on the full circumstances of the case, not on narrow performance objectives."
• Idiot English: Vorsprung durch Biscuit – This is blogging to warm the cockles of my heart: "My wife likes Bahlsen's Choco Leibniz biscuits, so we often have some in the pantry. But their presence weighs heavy on my pedantic mind. There it is, in my home, the yellow box with its (in)famous slogan:
  More chocolate than a biscuit
  Eh? It should be "More chocolate than biscuit"! (They're about two-thirds choc.) I can only imagine that this slogan was the victim of hypercorrection in the seminar room"
• A quick start guide to Twitter – "The guide takes absolute beginners to Twitter right from the start – explaining what Twitter is, and how to sign up – right through to replying, retweeting, hashtagging and using tools to measure success." Dave Briggs knows his stuff – and he can be funny.
• Pulitzer or community – daddy or chips? | Joanna Geary – "It reminded me of a hypothetical situation someone put to me the other day:

  You are the editor of a newspaper. You are allowed to employ one more person. You can choose either a writer that has won a Pulitzer prize or a writer that has built an online community of 40,000 highly committed readers and contributors. Which do you choose?

  I know nothing is ever that clear cut, of course. This is a real “daddy or chips” question. Yet, I guess how you answer it gives a good indication of how you think we should train our journalists of the future."

  I'd choose both.

• Thriving too: Making Openness Work – The 'Open100' competition is a celebration of the power of openness and mass collaboration. You can be part of the competition by nominating the company you think is the best open innovator. The competition will be open until 12th February while the winners will be announced on 24thFebruary. The winners are those who will be included in the list of the world's top 100 open companies
• Official Google Research Blog: Automatic Captioning in YouTube – Google experimenting wiht automatically captioning video: "The auto alignment features is available for all new video uploads, however the scope is limited to English material. The auto captioning feature is initially rolled out to a set of educational partners only. Although this is very limited in scope, the early launch makes the results of the system available to the viewers of this material instantly and it allows us to gauge early feedback which can aid in improving the features. We will release automatic captions more widely as quickly as possible." via @pigsonthewing

These are my links for August 10th through August 12th:

• pachube :: connecting environments, patching the planet – Welcome to Pachube, a service that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world. The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.
• haque :: design + research – The domain of architecture has been transformed by developments in interaction research, wearable computing, mobile connectivity, people-centered design, contextual awareness, RFID systems and ubiquitous computing. These technologies alter our understanding of space and change the way we relate to each other. We no longer think of architecture as static and immutable; instead we see it as dynamic, responsive and conversant. Our projects explore some of this territory.
• Introducing GrowthSpur – Recovering Journalist – Wow – very bold claims for growth spur: “How much money? We believe, based on our research and experience, that a well-run, sophisticated local site can bring in more than $100,000 a year in revenue from advertising, e-commerce and other sources. GrowthSpur exists to help local entrepreneurs achieve that level of success—and more.” I suppose it depends what you mean by local.
• From Grierson to Podnosh – a history of Participation | daveharte.com – This is ridiculously flattering bu also well worth a read: “From the moment we were taught how to white balance a video camera it felt like we were being given tools of dissension – not to be frittered away on shallow subject-matter but rather to be used to tackle dominant ideologies and tear down class structures. Sounds pious now I know but video’s ease of use and its directness felt that enabling. Ultimately we fell a bit short of changing the world but it was fun trying for a period there in the late 1980s.
  So how does the participatory work within Social Media fit into this?”
• MediaShift . Five Ways to Use Mind-Mapping Tools in the Newsroom | PBS – Very useful post, which, naturally enough, quotes a Brummie.

Here are some o the things I’ve been reading July 5th from 09:59 to 13:20:

• Sustainable independent and impartial news. WriteToReply consultation – "Sustainable independent and impartial news; in the Nations, locally and in the regions" is a 12 week public consultation document published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that "seeks views on the proposal for a contained, contestable element to be introduced to the next licence fee settlement."

  This WriteToReply republication of the original consultation document allows interested members of the public to comment on the consultation document at a paragraph level.

• The Investigatory Powers Tribunal – Welcome to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal website. The IPT exists to investigate complaints about conduct by various public bodies, in relation to you, your property or communications.
• paulcanning: A SocMed history moment – "This is a historical moment. A question from Iranians, via social media, gets asked of the US President. Mark this one down"
• What's wrong with Flips? – The Daily Grind – A Flip Pro would be breaking new ground, and that’s an order of magnitude more risky. Are people ready for it?
• Social media in public service: ideas for the Capital Fund at LocalGovCamp « Policy and Performance – "We were (ARE) looking for ideas: CLG’s Efficiency and Transformation Capital Fund potentially includes some significant funding for innovative and effective social media projects. The ‘only’ criteria are that projects can roll out quickly, achieve real outcomes against local priorities (as set out in Local Area Agreements), be scaleable and applicable across authorities, promote empowerment, link to the Total Place approach as that develops…!"

These are my links for June 27th through June 30th:

• Poynter Online – Youtube Launches Citizen reporter Support – The site has just unveiled a new effort to improve and promote videos that are newsworthy: the Reporters' Center. The Reporters' Center launched Monday with about 35 instructional videos from professional journalists on how to handle a range of reporting challenges, including: understanding privacy issues (and staying out of jail), shooting video with your cell phone, fact-checking assertions, conducting a good interview and covering a humanitarian crisis safely.
• Building Britain’s Future: the next step to better policy discussion online at Helpful Technology – "a fair crack at how we might present big policy documents online. To me, this is one of the big challenges in digital engagement right now: we have a fair number of tool options for consultations, and are getting better at applying the ‘classic’ social media tools of Twitter, YouTube and Flickr – but the practicalities and small-p politics of presenting large documents in anything more than a downloadable PDF are still daunting. Like Digital Britain or New Opportunities, BBF is not (primarily) a consultation, so has to struggle with the thorny question of what to do with feedback and whether to solicit it at all."
• http://mypolice.wordpress.com/ – MyPolice.org is a web-based service that fosters constructive, collaborative communication between communities and the police forces which serve them. MyPolice originated at (and won!) Social Innovation Camp, June 2009. Sicamp is a challenge to turn back of the envelope ideas which use the web to tackle 'stuff that matters' into a reality. In just 48 hours.
• Reuters Editors » Blog Archive » Rethinking rights, accreditation, and journalism itself in the age of Twitter | Blogs | – Reuters understands hat social media can also be journalism: "To a 23 year-old athlete, used to putting out a “news feed” of every detail of her personal life and training on various social media platforms, there simply isn’t a distinction. Her life IS a news feed. Her blog IS a publishing platform. Her Facebook page IS the daily newspaper of her life."
• The Conservative Party | News | Speeches | David Cameron: Giving power back to the people – "Information is power – because information allows people to hold the powerful to account. This has never been more true than today, in the information age. The internet is an amazing pollinator, spreading ideas and information all over the globe in minutes. It turns lonely fights into mass campaigns; transforms moans into movements; excites the attention of hundreds, thousands, millions of people and stirs them to action. And constantly accelerating technology makes information infinitely more powerful.

These are my links for June 21st through June 23rd:

• eGov monitor – A Policy Dialogue Platform | Promoting Better Governance – Helen MIlner: "I actually trust Lord Carter’s vision. There is no doubt there remains considerable work to be done to move Digital Britain from paper to practice, to balance the books and to co-ordinate the consortia of new agencies and old friends, but I for one am a believer. I’m therefore genuinely saddened we’ll be losing Carter’s leadership, and I’m looking to him for a smooth handover of ideas to his team, his boss, and his successor. "
• Twitter / Nicola Toms: RT @72prufrocks: Building … – RT @72prufrocks: Building community takes love, service, patience, hard hat, steel toe-caps, high vis jacket and gin (via @podnosh) :))) (Tahnks also to Lloyd Davis )
• 100 Awesome Open Source Tools for Writers, Journalists, and Bloggers | Online Courses –
• Three pillars of Open Government | Kate Lundy – The three pillars of open government.

  * Citizen-centric services
  * Open and transparent government
  * Innovation facilitation

• Tom Watson: Crack open the lobby cartel, rip up the rules, and let a new era of accountability begin – Commentators, Opinion – The Independent – Crack open the lobby cartel. Let in a new generation of online commentators. Share access to lobby briefings with a more diverse group of reporters. Rip up the lobby rules and put all briefings on the record. Do this, and a new Speaker can genuinely be part of a new era of accountability.