Tag: blogging

Five new blogs – four from Birmingham one not – plus something new from WordPress.

I just want to say hello to Andrew Hemmings who moved from lurker to blogger after last night’s mini Birmingham Bloggers meet in the Spotted Dog. (Don’t panic, it was an impromptu meeting for Joanna Geary who will miss the next one this Monday 7pm at Rooty Frooty in the Custard Factory) Andrew talked to a number of people about blogs and their possible impact on his work in promoting the TIC. He had a typical response to a first bloggers meet:

By the way…thanks to all those last night who so willingly shared their knowledge, views and opinions to a newbie at the blogging table – I’ve got plenty to think about! Those thoughts will follow….!

Now he’s done the perfect thing, and started his own blog. It really is the fastest way to appreciate/understand the possibilities. So welcome Andrew.

Hi also had a fine chat with Nicky Getgood who was watching the blog meet from the bar then came and joined us – mostl because she’s very friendly, but also because she blogs here.

Chris Unitt was also at the Spotted Dog and is blogging for the fantabulous Fierce Festival here. You can also vote to help them programme the festival. Hi Chris, I like the scratchy graphics. Did you do those?

Simon Howsey is new to me – he seems to be using wordpress to aggregate a whole series of feeds, many from Birmingham Bloggers.

A belated hello to a blog I subscribed to a while back thanks to a tip off from the very fine fine Tim Davies. Alice Casey has set up her blog to explore some of the ideas which percolate through her work with with Involve. This (and many other blogs) are about the link between social media, neighbourhoods and social good. Which is of course where I began a good while back with the Grassroots Channel podcast. She and I will both be at a barcamp in May to explore social media and youth participation – which again relates to some other work I’ve been doing.

For anyone who’s just set up a new WordPress blog an hour ago the rather heavily revamped WordPress 2.5 went live. Looks good. Time for some upgrades.

Winding up the BBC blogging experiment

Robin Hamman and Richard Fair’s BBC Manchester Blog has just been officially wound up as an experiment.

When I first wrote about this I and others were arguing that a culture change needs to come too – and that is what Robin is setting our more explicitly in the key things they have learnt:

1 Being part of the community by participating as equals, as opposed to participating as a broadcasting organisation keen for new content but not interested in the community, brings with it many editorial and personal rewards.
2 People don’t necessarily blog or post content about the topics, stories and events that media organisations might hope they would – and, in our experience anyway, rarely post about news and current affairs.
3 As a stand-alone proposition, the amount of staff time and effort spent was high in comparison to the quantity of content generated and size of audience served. But, when we were able to use the contacts and content we found through the blog on-air that equation immediately changed. That is, in resource terms, the blog was costly as just a blog but much more efficient as a driver of radio content.
4 The best way to get noticed online is links and the best way to get links is to give good links yourself. That is, you have to play by the established rules of engagement and, online, that means linking prolifically.

I think a lot of people in the BBC now know this and understand this. The BBC guidelines on staff using social media (here and here on blogging) strike me as realistic and relaxed. Let us hope the new public interest test and governance structures don’t delay those folk making the most of their understanding of the social web.

See also:

Manchizzle “but they did good”.