Podnosh is based in Birmingham in the UK, so often we write about exciting things that are going on near us.
Some of you may know that podnosh began as a podcasting business in 2005, with the Grassroots Channel – audio stories of active citizens in Birmingham.
At the last social media surgery Christopher Woods interviewed me for what has become the first episode in his freshly minted About Brum podcast. You can listen below, and it’s worth it, because Christopher has a very appealing and relaxed style.
After a brief consultation process and suggestions from a number of folk, including this lengthy burble from me, Birmingham City Council has launched birminghamnewsroom.com.
It’s a wordpress based site for their news service to the public and press and describes itself as
…your first stop for all the news from Europe’s largest local authority.
The aim is to improve our news delivery, so we want the newsroom to be a useful resource for both journalists and members of the general public.
Deborah Harries, head of news at the council, blogged about where they are at:
The press office at Birmingham City Council has moved into the 21st century and after months of hard work we’ve finally launched our online newsroom. This is an exciting development for my team and hopefully this site will prove to be a useful resource for journalists, bloggers and residents.
We haven’t quite read the last rites to the press release but the world of media relations is changing. (my emphasis)
People consume news in many different ways now and we’re keen to reach a wider audience through the burgeoning and exciting range of social networking tools available. Don’t get me wrong, this is far from the finished article and we’re looking for your views to help further develop the service.
Included is:
A dedicated Youtube Channel, managed partly through vodpod, with straightforward self made content like this:
There is a series of photos in their self hosted gallery (I’d like to be able to link to and use these images) and the twitter account, which popped up a while ago. Plus the all important RSS feed(s?) and it’s good to see comments enabled on individual blog posts/news items. I imagine trackback is too?
I think it’s wonderful. I’ve got a head full of things that could be done next or perhaps a litle differently, but they can wait. It’s through using social media that you get good at it and here the council has created a wonderful place for doing just that.
Congratulations to Geoff Coleman, who’s been nursing this for some months, and Deborah Harries for just getting on with it.
(Declaration – from time to time I get paid by Birmingham City Council – not for this though!)
On Saturday I popped up to Handsworth for a community consultation event.
John Heaven, a council officer, was there live blogging with this wordpress site that he created literally as the event started. John and I also tweeted the event (using different tags – doh) and you can find the streams for the event here and for Handsworth in general here.
If you’re not sure what a hashtag is there is a complicated explication on wikipedia here or put simply its a label than any of us can use on twitter to mark that we are talking about the same subject. When used in a search of twitter the tag then brings together every thing everyone has said about that subject.
It also helps those not in the room watch and join the conversation. So as we twittered about Handsworth from a meeting room in the neighbourhood, observations were added from other parts of the city or country by David Nikkel, Leonardo Morgado, Andy Mabbett, Cyberdoyle and Carrie Bishop.
Carrie even pointed to a new service she has helped create to allow the public to reflect their opinions of police service called MyPolice.org.
So not only has social media been used to creatd a simple and immediate record of the meeting but it has also brought new attention to what is going on and the potential of fresh ideas, input and questioning.
Non of this was planned – John and I just got on with it because we could.
Why was I there? I want to meet some people who could help me set up a very local social media surgery for the area. More on that soon.
I also posted this over at Be Vocal.
Above is Sarah Lay from Derbyshire County Council talking about her recent experience of using social media to tell the story of the council elections of 4th June 2009. As SOCITM the organisations which represents the folk who run council websites, puts it:
County Councils saw their web traffic double last Friday and Saturday thanks to their provision of a sophisticated online election results service coupled with use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and email alerts.
Sarah describes how the council announced the results straight onto twitter (followers trebled), plus offering an election map and a virtual council chamber. They also used a Facebook fan page (yes 74 people claimed themselves fans of a local election) where people were able to have their own conversation about the results.
In effect they by-passed mainstream media. This system treats journalists just the same as any other citizen, offering us all the same information at the same time and space to talk about it. However this is also good news for journalism, because it allows the professionals to spend increasingly precious time checking for truth and getting to the bottom of the implications of the election, rather than simply shoveling fact.
Sarah has written in much more detail on her own blog. In the first of two posts, on election day itself, she wrote with great passion about preparations:
All of this has been going on for a number of months (not full time) and has been a learning curve and exciting project for this team to get into. For the first time we have had a significant presence internally in promoting and reporting on elections. It’s provided an opportunity for us to raise awareness of our work internally and work with colleagues in other departments to enable everything to happen.
Our results system will hopefully be the jewel in the crown of what we’ve done so far. We won’t know until the dust settles tomorrow and we have some feedback from Derbyshire voters, councillors, other officers and colleagues in the public sector who are kind enough to take the time to have a look.
After the elections she said:
I am still a little emotionally charged from the adrenalin of working at such pressure yesterday and giddy with the joy of how well our team worked together on the day and in the run up. Now we just need to decide what to tackle next!
Simon Wakeman at Medway Council was one of a number of people who gave support and encouragement to Derbyshire and other councils embarking on this path. He has written about how a variety of local authorities used the social web on election night. Also on Sarah’s list of supporters was Al Smith in Newcastle.
All the above was recorded at the truly wonderful localgovcamp, held here at Fazeley Studios in Brum