Three weeks and a little bit into the role as Online Communities Editor with Media Wales and we’ve only gone and launched a community website for Cardiff.

We’re taking a bit of a risk, developing as we go along and hopefully building a community around the yourCardiff website. I’m hoping that by being open during the development stage we get people chipping in, suggesting ideas and feeling like it’s their site too – rather than just being developed some suits in an office.

This does however mean we’ve got a few gaping holes, some bits that say ‘under development’ and no doubt some parts that don’t display properly in Internet Explorer or some obscure browser.

But, it’s a win. We’ve hit the ground running, we’re building from the bottom up and hopefully creating a site that Cardiff can be proud of. It’s about the little things, celebrating what happens in communities (both location and interest wise) across the capital city of Wales.

We’ll no doubt have some fallings out, some disputes and some triumphs but I’m sure it’ll be fun along the way as we try to break our content down into hyper-local chunks – putting news and information into the hands of people in Cardiff. Sounds dangerous, it could be. Sounds ambitious, it is.

We’ll be using social media to help build our community, but it’s also about getting out of the office, out of the media hub and sticking our camera or pen and paper, into different places to find out what’s going on.

As I saw posted on a rather visceral blog post the other week – hyper-local is nothing new. It’s doing what local news organisations do best, tell people what’s going on in their area and community (be that location or subject of interest) but the web just opens up new opportunities and ways of doing that.

And finally, a huge thank you to unclewilco (Andrew Wilcox) for his break-neck development over the last few weeks. There’s much more to come.

Image credit to Auntie P

I’m starting a new job in Cardiff with Media Wales on January 11th. While I have been assured I will be spending many hours in the office/hunting down stories in Cardiff, I am hoping that I will be allowed a few evenings to explore Cardiff and the surrounding area. Here’s my list of places to visit so far, but please comment below or message me on twitter (@ed_walker86) with your suggestions of other places to try. My mission is to visit/do the things on the list by the end of 2010, and most likely post some evidence (photos/videos/links) on this blog.

Cardiff

Have a filthy night out at Metro’s

Dance like a muppet in the Welsh Club (Clwb Ifor Bach)

Watch some bands at the Buffalo Bar (via @evacaiden)

See some art and drink a cocktail at Milgi (via @evacaiden)

Watch a Six Nations rugby match

Watch a Cardiff Blues rugby match

Watch a Glamorgan 20:20 game

Go for a coffee with Glyn Mottershead (via @egrommet and @digidickinson)

Take a photo of the Millennium Stadium from the terrace at the back of my flat at sunrise and sunset

Visit Cardiff Castle and learn about its history

Go for a curry at Mint & Mustard (via @evacaiden)

Complete the Cardiff City Centre pub crawl in one day/evening (via @uncle_wilco)

Have a coffee and cupcake at The Pot Cafe (via @fillefi) – I had a coffee but not a cupcake, had some hummus and pitta bread instead

Take in the view of Llandaff Cathedral and enjoy the prettiness (via @fillefi)

Eat a pizza at Kalla Bella in Llandaff (via @fillefi)

Go shopping in the Arcades and enjoy some cheese at Madame Fromage and sandwich at the New York Deli (via @fillefi)

Take a Sunday stroll around Roath Park (via @fillefi)

Have a picnic in Sophia Gardens (via @cardiffbites)

Get cultured at the Chapter Arts Centre (via @cardiffbites)

Attend a Cardiff Tweetup (via @cardiffbites)

Watch the Cardiff Devils Ice Hockey team (via @cardiffbites)

Go to Cardiff Museum and St Fagans (via @cardiffbites)

Find the cheese market at the Castle and much some lovely cheese (via @becky_rutt)

Have a pint of dark in either Old Arcade, Vulcan or Goat Major pubs (via @uncle_wilco)

Potter round the junk and interesting stuff at Jacob’s Antique Market and have a mug of tea (via @uncle_wilco)

Have a ham bap from Cardiff Indoor Market – and smell the fish (via @uncle_wilco)

Chicken curry (off the bone) and chips in Caroline Street after a night on the SA (via @uncle_wilco)

Feed the ducks at Roath Park lake – or risk a boat ride (via @uncle_wilco)

Have a Clarks pie (cold & warm) (via @uncle_wilco)

Have tea at Waterloo Gardens Tea Room (via @speedupdating)

South Wales

Take a trip to the Gower and sit on a sandy beach and watch some birds

Visit the Big Pit and find out about mining in South Wales

Take a walk down Cosmeston Lakes (via @cardiffbites)

Visit Tenby and go to Oakwood Park (via @cardiffbites)

Visit Caephilly Castle on a wet Sunday and see Tommy Cooper Statue (via @uncle_wilco)

Have fish and chips from Boffy’s “Cod Father of Sole”‘ on Barry Island (via @uncle_wilco)

Wales in general

Buy a welsh hat and wear it on St David’s Day (via @uncle_wilco) – a welsh hat is one of these (I have been reliably informed).

Take an evening/weekend course in Welsh and learn the conversational basics. Any recommendations for where I can do this?

Let me know anything else I should be doing/exploring/seeing/experiencing in Cardiff and South Wales!

Image used in this post is of Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay. Image credit to John Greenaway.

Creating content is one of the toughest bits about running a blog. Waking up, hitting the start button and then realising you’ve got nothing to write about. Here’s a few ways to ensure you’ve always got content flowing through your blog and keeping your finger on the pulse of your local community.

Use RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a great way to get feeds from websites that offer them and this will keep you up to date with websites – without having to keep visiting them! Win. You can use sites like Bloglines or Google Reader

Use email alerts

Don’t rely on RSS. A lot of websites do email newsletters or allow you to subscribe to email updates. You’ve got an email account, so get email alerts dropping into it regularly. They’ll often give you a lead.

Your local paper

They still exist and they generally aren’t going away. Subscribe to the RSS feed of your local newspaper(s) and take a read of this every morning. This will give you a clue as to what is on the agenda at the moment. You will also find they often just do snippets on community stories that you could make much bigger. Take one of their stories and see if it could go further, is there a new angle? Could you do an in-depth interview with someone featured? Whatever you do, don’t just copy and paste what the local paper writes as you’ll end up in hot water and you’re not adding value to your blog.

Your local council

They are always doing stuff. Events, taxes, councillors, elections, new projects. Local authorities are busy places and there are lots of people to speak to. Subscribe to the RSS feed if its authored, or email the press office and get on their distribution list for press releases.

Other local blogs

There will be other local bloggers. Someone will be extolling the virtues of your local river, or something like that. Find them and connect with them. Subscribe to their blogs RSS feed. Their two line post might lead to a series of posts for you about a subject, or they might even guest post on your blog. There’s a few ways to find them:

Google Blog Search, put your location in and away you go

Go to blogger.com, find a blogger from your area. Got to their profile and click on the location, it’ll show you all other bloggers in your area.

Once you start finding them. Create a page on your blog as a local blog directory, it’ll be popular.

Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing website. But it also has groups – put your location into the find a group box and you’ll be amazed at how many people are taking photos of your area. Connect with these people, feature their photos with your posts (always remember to give credit to them for the photos) and you’ll find little snippets and stories.

Youtube

People seem to like making videos. There will be some for where you live. Go to Youtube and put your location into their search box. You’ll be amazed at what you find. Feature the videos on your blog, connect with the users and you’ll get even more. You can even get an RSS feed so you don’t have to keep checking for new videos.

Facebook

It’s the biggest social network – Facebook. There will be lots of people in your area on it. There will be groups about your area. Join them and keep in the loop about what local people are saying. Local campaigns will often have Facebook groups and it’s a great way to connect with people involved in local issues.

Twitter

It’s growing quickly, and don’t forget it’s got a handy little ‘Location’ bit on people’s profiles. Download Twitter Local – and put your location in. Then follow those people, some might follow you back, some might not, but you can see the conversations going on in your area. You can also go to http://search.twitter.com put your location in and get real-time results for what people are saying about your location. You’ll find snippets, follow them up, and you might just be able to create some content.

Theyworkforyou.com

Every area has an MP. Go to TheyWorkForYou and put your postcode in, find out who the MP is and then get an RSS feed or email alert everytime they do something. You’ll be amazed what your MP talks about and either how much or how little they talk. You can also get loads of great information about how they’ve voted on big issues.

Openlylocal.com

A new website – OpenlyLocal – it doesn’t have every local authority but it does have a lot, and it gives you lists of councillors, committee dates, new documents etc. Well worth checking out if you’re short of a meeting to cover and get a story.

Whatdotheyknow.com

A brilliant site. Freedom of Information requests can often lead to some juicy requests. It’s worth registering with WhatDoTheyKnow yourself so you can make FOI requests, but you can find all your local authorities and subscribe to RSS/email updates for when items happen relating to them. You can also get an RSS feed for your whole area. I’d recommend signing up to:

- Local council, local police, local primary care trust, local schools, local colleges, local universities, local county council, local fire service

Fixmystreet.com

Get reports on when stuff is wrong in your local area via FixMyStreet and someone needs to fix it. Get an RSS/email alert for a specific location. Follow it up and you’ll have a wealth of short stories that really are about your local community, everything from pot holes to dog dirt.

Help Me Investigate

A new service, launched in Beta – Help Me Investigate. It’s collaborative reporting, you ask a question and people will help you find the answer. You can also join in national questions and then break that down to your local area.

Getting out there

Nothing is a substitute for getting out there. Go to meetings, go to events, meet people, go to the pub and you’ll see posters, hear conversations and find out about things that are happening in your community. Just make sure you’ve got all the online stuff there so on a slow day, you’ll find there’s always plenty to write about in your local area.

If you find any other good websites for sourcing content, or think we’ve missed any then please let me know and I’ll add them. There will always be new website or tips and tricks for finding content, so this list is by now means exhaustive but get setup with these and you’ll never be short of new posts.

Image credit to miss_blackbutterfly

At the Talk About Local Unconference there was a lot of talk about creating a network of hyperlocal blogs. Talk About Local are doing a superb job of getting people started in blogging for their local community – but what about those people already underway or who have bigger aspirations?

I have learned through working on Blog Preston since January 2009 that there is a real thirst for community content about the place where you live. The local media is fixated on scandal, car crashes and the like and misses the community content. There is a real space and it needs to be filled.

The Talk About Local Unconference has convinced me that Blog Local can work. Our idea is to create a network of local blogs, some of them will be created under the ‘Blog [insert location]‘ brand and we will support these centrally with technical help and guidance on creating good and interesting community content. Others will be established blogs that are already happy with their technical stuff and their content, but would like to opt in to a wider network of local blogs.

We would use the powerful Wordpress Multi-user platform to create this network, and be able to create powerful plug-ins for local blogs that deliver relevant local information. One thing we’ve learned from the failure of local media groups at trying to fit standard templates is that it doesn’t work, Blackpool is different to Preston, Preston is different to Harrogate and Harrogate is different to Southampton. Each of them has a different audience the the website for the ‘Blog [insert location]‘ site needs to reflect that and it also needs to take into account the skills of the person updating it. If they are better with a camera than they are with words, it needs to be more of a photojournalism blog. If they can’t take a good picture to save their life, it’s more of a wordy affair but with a design that compensates for this and keeps it interesting.

One of the struggles for anyone running a local blog is content. Not everyone who starts or wants to start up a community blog is a recent journalism graduate or unemployed graduate. They don’t have the legal training, they don’t know how to knock out 250 words into 10 minutes and they don’t often know where to look for stories. Often local blogs wither and die after a few months when they think there’s nothing left to write about. Wrong. There is always information, events, opinion, gossip, news, photos, in your local area – you just need to build a network and tap into it. Blog Local will support its network to do this and to keep producing good content.

Add to this that Blog Local is not-for-profit, so the content is driven by the community and not by shareholders and it creates an interesting concept. Taking the new technology and tools available to create a mix-mash of community blogs across the UK, producing local content and information.

Is there a business model in this? I’m not 100 per cent sure yet but I do know that over the next few months we’re going to be working with some very exciting new people to help create a network of local and community blogs that can help lift the lid on their local communities.

Image credit to Aishihik

Les Cochrane, and me, chatting with Lichfield Blog at Talk About Local 09

Went down to Stoke-on-Trent yesterday for the Talk About Local unconference. It was a gathering of local and hyper-local bloggers, some community activists, people who run community websites and people who run tools that can help community websites.

There was a great mix of people. Immediately I identified a split between people like myself who had some journalism training and were setting up, or have set up, a community blog/website for their area to act as an alternative to the local media. Others had just set it up because they wanted something different.

An unconference is a great format. You arrive, eat some Staffordshire oatcakes (amazing) and put post-its on a board about sessions you’d either like to run or see be run. These sessions are then moved around, some are merged together until a session schedule becomes clear. There’s another board to put post-its about who you would like to meet at the event and another one to put URLs of your site or others you feel are relevant.

I put a post-it up offering to run a session about Blog Preston and Blog Local, explaining how we wanted to expand the Blog Local idea with other blogs. We got mashed into a session about social media surgeries and using social media to empower communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Went to a Leadership Launchpad event on Monday 7th September at the New Continental on Broadgate, Preston.

It was an event hosted by North West Vision and Media and it was aimed at getting the leaders of creative industry into a leadership programme, called LEAD.

LEAD operates via many host institution’s, the one we were being sold was run by Lancaster University, and it was interesting to find out what was offered by the programme. LEAD offers the chance to learn more about leadership, especially if your business is three/four years underway and you need the chance to step back and get a different viewpoint. It’s not like a degree course, it’s very hands-on and there’s lots of workshops, guest speakers and action-learning.

The unique thing about this LEAD programme is that it is only for creative businesses, as they found that people who lead these kinds of organisations have a different perspective on things compared to conventional businesses – who are often largely driven by profit and not much else.

So, while there was a bit of hard sell the evening was a good chance to learn more about the programme. I’m definitely not in a position to go on it yet but it’s the sort of thing that in a few years time, if successful with Blog Local, I might give the time of day to – and it would also depend how the business is financially!

The event was free, which was nice, and speaking to the nice ladies from North West Vision & Media afterwards it was eye-opening to find out just how many networking events there are for not just creative businesses but businesses in general across the North West and also all the opportunities for funding, partnership working, grant funding and training that North West Vision & Media can help businesses tap into.

Image credit to anselm23

If you blog about local issues or class yourself as a hyper-local blogger then you need to get yourself registered for the Talk About Local Unconference.

It’s Saturday 3rd October 2009 in Stoke-on-Trent, at the University of Staffordshire.

It’s a chance for all those involved in local community journalism/blogging to come together, share their experiences and find out what other people are doing across the UK.

The website states:

The conference is not for you to come and be comatised by web 2.0 marketeers telling you how you can monetize 24/365 relationships or transition viral ROI it is for real people, running real hyperlocal sites to network with people who are doing the same thing.

The thing people say to us most when we are talking about Talk About Local (and you may have noticed we love to talk about it!) is ‘I didn’t know anyone else was doing this’ so we are giving you the chance to meet up with all the other people who you didn’t know were doing the same as you!

The format is going to be Unconference, fun, relaxed and informal. As well and the unconference event, we will be holding social media surgeries where you can come along and speak to friendly developers and experts to get advice about your site or how to fix that niggling problem you just can’t seem to get your head around.

I’ve registered as Blog Preston. It’s free to attend and there’s even some free lunch.

Me presenting at Preston Tweetup

The first Preston Tweetup that I organised in March 2009 was filmed and now the edited video has appeared online. It shows how twitter users in Preston got together to discuss how the web could be used for the Preston Guild in 2012.

The Preston Guild is a big celebration that happens every 20 years in Preston, Lancashire, UK to celebrate the city, its organisations and its professions. Everyone gets involved, but the last time the Guild was celebrate – 1992 – the world was a very different place and the Internet was not as widespread as it is now.

The tweetup was hosted by myself, through Blog Preston, and had support from Stage 9 Marketing, a local marketing agency, and They Eat Culture, Preston’s arts organisation. The venue we used was the New Continental, in Preston, which has free wi-fi and great drinks.

The videos are in sequence as the night was in four parts, the introduction (from me!), the break-off groups coming up with ideas, the feeding back from each group and finally the summing up. It’s a great chance to see what happened at the Tweetup and if you’re planning to go to one, wherever it is in the world, it gives an insight into what it’s like.

Watch part one – the introduction to Preston Tweetup

This post originally appeared on Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists as part of their May series about advice for those about to graduate in journalism this year.

It’s a tough market out there at the moment, not just in journalism but in any industry. As a legion of graduates prepare to scrap like never before for jobs with contracting companies, it must feel horrible to have started your studies in 2006 when the economy was stable, optomism was high and journalism was starting out on its adventure into a multimedia future.

Now it’s a different story. I read Kyle Christie’s post with interest, particularly about whether you should take a ‘non-journalism’ job to pay the rent or whether you should risk debt and starvation on a basic trainee salary.

There’s no easy answer. But I wouldn’t rail against anyone who took the non-journalism route, as that’s what I ended up doing.

My first job was actually a journalism job (and a few other things besides). It was running the student media at the University of Central Lancashire Students’ Union and I’d thoroughly recommend the opportunity to any students reading this. If you get the chance to stand for election, or apply for the position as it is in some places, do it. You learn a lot in a short space of time and you learn how to manage a team. You’re the editor, it’s on your head. It’s a great experience and it’s a real experience.

But, as I came to the end of my tenure as editor it was time find a job. I applied, citing my experience, showing my skills, pointing to my excellent degree. But nothing came of it, interviews came and went and I was staring unemployment in the eye. I landed a job where I had been working but on a short-term contract, it was a mix of different roles but ultimately a web-based role. It needed some journalism skills.

The advantage to doing a journalism degree is that you learn so many transferable skills. You learn how to tell stories, create content, edit, it’s not hard to make the jump into some other industries. You have to be organised, confident and a good communicator – and be able to work as part of a team. You’re ticking a lot of person spec boxes in many jobs that require less work/effort and command a better salary than those trainee positions.

But, as Kyle alluded to. You’ve got to keep your hand in. Once I had my reasonable salary and regular hours, I found I had some spare time. I set up a hyper-local blog for where I live. I wrote content, I blagged content from people. I got into my community, put on events, took pictures. Now I have 150 unique visitors a day, on average, and I might be able to apply for some funding.

So, if you do find yourself in a ‘non-journalism’ job, just remember it’s not the end. You can still be a journalist, you just might have to do it as a hobby to start off with and then see when the break comes. When it comes, take it with both hands.

It’s taken three months, but I’ve finally got above that damn Robert Peston. Preston Blog is now coming up as number one on Google. No tricks, just damn good content:

Preston Blog number one on Google