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 »

Preston and Lancashire are home to two very exciting unconferences this autumn, it does seem as though the UK is going unconference mad at the moment!

First up there is Barcamp Blackpool on Saturday 17th October, I’m in London so can’t go to it, but it’s an opportunity for creative, innovative and passionate people to come together to talk about whatever they like – the agenda is set on the day. It’s going to be held at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and there are going to be well over 100 people discussing everything from the latest tech stuff to the best way to rear a ferret! Gemma Cameron who organises Preston Geekup is behind it so it’s bound to be a success, she’s seeking sponsors so if you’re interested get involved.

The second is Open09. This is being organised by the people behind Sandbox at the University of Central Lancashire and it’s going to be another unconference but it also involves Turtles. I’m not 100% sure what Turtles are but the website says:

An informal workshop with a group of up to 40 participants. Each Turtle has its own dedicated website with its own authors, participants and agendas.

The topics at Open 09 range from the future of journalism and media to the latest goings on in the world of fashion. If you’re in any sort of creative industry you need to make sure you’re involved in this, it looks like it’ll be immense.

So, I’ll be joining in with some of these unconferences this autumn and I shall report back about my experiences at these rather unstructured events. How will they compare to the stand up and be presented to with a powerpoint events?

Image credit to Scott Beale / Laughing Squid