Tag: heritage

9th January 2014

Museums, Heritage, Archives and Social Media

Today we are in Shrewsbury delivering a workshop for an array of people that work in museums, heritage and tourism from across Shropshire and the West Midlands. We’re running a session talking about the importance of building social capital and working hyperlocally. The day will be roughly structured as follows:

Building Social Capital and making use of it – including time to reflect on how this relates to what you are trying to achieve.
Working Hyperlocally, What does this mean and what does this look like? Your examples – are you already doing this? – Show us.
Lunch/Social Media Surgery and Networked learning. A practical session with support from Podnosh and learning between yourselves – time to start exploring the tools and concepts we discussed this morning.
Where next for you. Group discussion, based on the thing you’ve learnt in this mornings session and started to put together in this afternoons surgery, What is next for you?

These are the notes from the discussions that took place after our presentations

Building Social Capital

Nick Booth talked about Social capital – your social capital is the group of people, or the community you build around your cause or organisation. These are the people you have invested time in and in return they are prepared to invest time in you to get things done/ make a difference / help you out.

Q. But is this bigger than our individual organisations? Social capital can work on a large scale – but also for individuals, and individual groups. Sharing information, being social and useful helps build your social capital and helps you make things better.

Q. But what about the groups what have already – if they are reluctant to use use the internet? It usually only take s one or two people to come on board for others to start seeing the benefits,

To make the best use of your social capital and to see it really work you have to build it in the first place – it’s just like any other relationships – the more effort you put into it, the more you’ll eventually get back out of it.

Working Hyperlocally

Hyperlocal is a really messy word to imply something niche and local – this could be a street, a neighbourhood or somewhere larger like a City. WV11.co.uk is a hyperlocal website that covers Wednesfield a neighbourhood in Wolverhampton, yet Connect Cannock is also a hyperlocal website that covers the entire town and the surrounding areas in Cannock, Staffordshire.

Museums, Tourism and Heritage organisations are also Hyperlocal – serving areas both big and small, but that are local and niche.

Hyperlocal Blogging

Steph Clarke talked about her Wednesfield Blog = one of the questions that was asked was around competition – if there are lots of people in an area all talking about that area isn’t that overkill? In short the answer was no. NO because the useful website will outshine the useless ones and on the other hand the more people talking about an issue/cause/place online the more varied and vibrant the conversation about that place will be.

Another question was asked about community and conversation, how long does it take to moderate and how is the community built? Going back to the points that were made about building social capital – in the beginning it took more time as we were building the trust and building the community, Now, on a day to day basis we can keep the facebook page up to date and moderated in around 20 mins a day because we don’t have to moderate conversation – the community help us by managing themselves. Posts to the main website can be scheduled.

Tools

A brief look at some of the tools discussed.

Facebook: Pages vs Groups – one is more public than than the other.
Twitter: start conversations, join in conversations, look for “local” hashtags ie #oswestry or #shropshirehour
Tripadvisor – What are people saying about your venue or attraction?
Foursquare – what tips are being left, gamify visits prizes for the mayor?
Blogs – talk about what you are doing. Invite others to write for you

Links

Here is a list of links and resources that were mentioned by attendees or discussed in sessions that would be useful to look at and share experience.

30th August 2010

Stuff I've seen August 26th through to August 30th

These are my links for August 26th through August 30th:

I couldn’t possibly comment: Westminster commercial noise map – experiment with Google Fusion Tables – Will Perrin… "It isn't perfect, but it's easy. If you can use a spreadsheet you can take some real public data and make a map to make a point."
Reflections on the Birmingham Hacks & Hackers Hackday (#hhhbrum) | Online Journalism Blog – Paul Bradhshaw: "a different skill to that normally practised by journalists – we were looking not for stories but for ‘nodes’: links between information such as local authority or area codes, school identifiers, and so on. Finding a story in data is relatively easy when compared to a project like this, and it did remind me more of the investigative process than the way a traditional"newsroom works
Response: The digital era has not made publishers defunct | Comment is free | The Guardian – "The idea that publishers "now appear frozen in the headlights of the onrushing digital revolution" is simply untrue." (Is it?)
UK Sound Map – This is wonderful….. "Join the British Library in creating the first nationwide sound map. Take part by publishing recordings of your surroundings using the free AudioBoo app for iPhone or Android smartphones or a web browser. When uploading soundscape recordings via Audioboo, add the tag 'uksm' and they'll appear on the SoundMap"
Socialreporter | There is no Big Society Big Plan – and that’s no bad thing – There is no Big Society Big Plan, and no-one is in charge.
Unfortunately, in the journalistic sense, it’s not much of story.

19th August 2010

Stuff I've seen June 19th through to August 4th

These are my links for June 19th through August 4th:

NHS spends millions on websites that fail patients, says government report | Society | The Guardian – Here, here… ” A layer of NHS bureaucracy, represented by websites built by primary care trusts, foundation trusts and strategic health authorities, received “almost no recognition” from the public. “The question is raised why these sites were developed in the first instance,” the report says.”
O2 makes text donations free for charities – Civil Society – IT – News – providing news and in-depth coverage of charities, voluntary organisations and not-for-profits – O2 has become the second mobile operator to pledge to deliver 100 per cent of all text donation value to charities in a move which could signal an industry-wide shift.
Birmingham Post – Business – Business Comment – Business Columnists – Jerry Blackett: Science festival brings hope – The New Optimists asks the simple question: what are you optimistic about? The essays in response – many from academics working in the region’s universities – Read more

31st October 2009

Stuff I've seen October 26th through to October 31st

These are my links for October 26th through October 31st:

mySociety » Blog Archive » Harassment problem leads to FOI strangeness – Interesting story about how government departments are making quite subjective judgements about which information to release through FOI: "Today we have a strange story about a department that appears to think that it has a duty not to release information under FOI if it makes people angry."
We Share Stuff – Accredited course in Social Media – A triumph for wesharestuff: "We’re really pleased to announce what we think is the first officially accredited course in understanding and using social media for those with no previous experience. We Share Stuff has developed the course and it’s now part of the OCN framework (WSS are an OCN Centre), as three units of 10 learning hours each."
Data is what we want – but why? – Birmingham Post – Business Blog – Paul Bradshaw explains in simple terms: "The best analogy I can think of is polymers. When the technology behind polymers was developed in the last century, it created a whole new market – innovative producers could create new products, and cheaper ways of producing old products. Similar opportunities are available with the release of data – release postcodes for businesses to use cheaply or for free, and you have the opportunity for new businesses creating applications based on location. Release transport data and others can tell you which direction to head in for the next bus."
Blog | Birmingham Conservation Trust – Really interesting film about The highline – a community campaign to save an old elevated railways line in New York as a green park. Fascinating ideas about how to galvanise community.
Green shoots of recovery – Birmingham Post – Lifestyle Blog – Kate Copper: "The accidental empires of the 20th century weren't forged in workshops (not even facilitated ones), but in back bedrooms, unused garages and fusty university research labs. At the forefront of this revolution were pizza-fed, caffeine-fuelled nerdy boys who couldn't get a date. These brainy T-shirted lads did weird math, challenged their mates to do even weirder stuff — not in order to make money or lead a revolution, but simply to explore what it was that they could do."