I really can’t get my head around this. The BPI’s new website appears to have no rss feed. Does this symbolise why the BPI is struggling to understand what is happening to music, the web and business models?
Update:
Well it took Stef 2 minutes to sort the problem of rss from the site (why didn’t the BPI do this?): http://page2rss.com/page?url=www.bpi.co.uk/category/news-amp3b-press-release.aspx
I’ve been asked by MADE to write 200 words for the Birmingham Post. They’re gauging opinion before the Technical and Environmental Mayor of Copenhagen speaks in Birmingham next week. Klaus Bondam will be at Town Hall on April 6th to share with us how he expects Copenhagen to stays a wonderful place to live.
I was asked about an hour ago and the deadline is tonight. Here’s a bashed out draft of what I fancy saying. Please encourage, discourage amend etc in the comments. Does anyone have details of that survey that put us the 2nd best place for social media behind, is it Chicago?
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Is this a good place to talk? It’s not a question we often ask about cities. After all the whole point of a city is that we can connect, trade and work. Non of that happens without talk, does it? No it doesn’t, and neither does innovation.
Conversation is about scale, it happens where it’s easy for people to gather in small groups. The ICC is evidence that we know about audience on a grand scale, but how well do we do small scale gathering?
We need many places where we can meet, deliberately or by accident. That means a city which is easy to walking but above all has many interesting and modestly scaled places that people want to go. It means a tolerance of other’s ideas and interests, a city where people also like to listen.
These are partly planning issues and partly cultural issues. How good are our public services at setting the example and being interested in us, how good our our planners and designers at encouraging the interesting?
And of course we don’t just want to talk to ourselves. Birmingham needs take part in a global conversation. So our schools need open access to the internet and our school teachers and pupils helped to have the confidence to take part in sharing and developing ideas with people across the planet.
Oh and Birmingham doesn’t have free internet access in the city centre, whatever our PR folk may so. So Birmingham Fizz needs to be turned of or turned into a proper free wifi service, so we can finally start hearing each other speak.
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Well?
Steven Tuck drew my attention to this remarkable piece of openness on the part of Kirklees Council. Like other local authorities they pop their press releases online, but unlike other local authorities they give the public space to say what they think. Have a look at this example here, it is so simple it is powerful.
I’m not alone in thinking this. When I mentioned this on twitter this morning I got these responses:
abeeken @podnosh Brave and bold – excellent engagement! I like it; shows Kirklees has balls.
supercoolkp @podnosh Well I never. So open – and it must make folk in Kirklees really feel listened to. I wish BCC would do it – what are the chances?!
getgood @podnosh Wow, that’s something.
Walsall Councillor Mike Flower has been tweeting from the budget setting meeting of Walsall Council. A while back he popped up one saying the council will stop paying Microsoft £258,750 for software licenses:
How, I enquired, by going open source? Yes, he thinks:
Thanks for reporting for us from the council meeting. Very interesting. Have they budgeted for some re-training, or are they confident that the transition can simple be made. Any one from Walsall Council willing to flesh things out please do so below: