Dealing with the deluge

I was recently away from work for a few days, some lieu days needed taking (use them or lose them as they say) and the combination of a Bank Holiday and the chance to visit the girlfriend back up in the North of England was too good a chance to miss.

So, I returned to my desk the other day and found an over-flowing inbox, many missed calls, voicemail messages, twitter messages, an RSS reader full to the brim. I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all.

I’m a pretty organised person, I use Remember The Milk for my tasks, I’m good at responding to emails and phone calls and I’m generally good at not forgetting stuff. But how do journalists deal with the information overload? How can we sift through everything when we come back? Especially when your role is as someone in the community that people want to speak to.

This post from Chris Brogan, ‘Your Blog Is Not Your Job‘ made me think, with the advent of social media and easy communication tools – it seems to be becoming even harder for a journalist to take a break.

What tips have you got for coming back off holiday and dealing with the deluge? How do you sift through everything and decide what to do first?

Image credit to dylanroscover

Using Twitter at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival

Last month I volunteered at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival. It was the first year it had been held, it was in the middle of nowhere, but it was a cracking idea. Put a load of great comedians in a small Welsh town and let the madness unfold – plus a fair amount of laughter.

I volunteered to help with press & marketing for the event. With it being voluntary, we had people, passion and a bit of time. But zero cash. What could we do? Enter stage right – social media.

Twitter has been invaluable as we were able to build a following relatively quickly, make lists of people involved in the festival and performing at it. Plus use the location based functionality of Twitter to find nearby people who were on the service and might be interested.

The real benefit of Twitter was felt during the event itself. We had the official Mach Comedy Fest account under the stewardship of the brilliant Beth Charlesworth (of A Little Bird Told Me), tweeting updates, changes to event times, photos from events. I was tweeting in with updates from my personal account and we had the hashtag #machfest buzzing with tweets from comedians and fans alike.

So, why bother tweeting during the festival? Surely we were too busy running around like mad people trying to make sure everything was done. Yes, we were running around but also we wanted to show people who hadn’t come, or who on the Friday night were thinking of coming that they were missing out. Twitter allows people to follow and stake out the action – and it might just sway them to dive in and get involved.

Machynlleth Comedy Festival was great, and I’ve no doubt that Twitter helped make it that little bit more social and great.

How have you used Twitter for festivals/events? How did you find it? Did people take to using the hashtag? I’d be interested to know your thoughts in the comments below.

Image credit to Ed Moore

Does the web allow us to get to know a place faster?

In early 2010 I moved to Cardiff, Wales. A completely new city, a new country and a new language. Everything was new. My job meant I had to get up to speed on what was happening, know the back story to things and get to know the communities, locations and people that make up the capital of Wales.

This post attempts to explore how the web has changed getting to know about a place. Let’s rewind 20 years and imagine having to do the same thing, uprooting from where you are, trying to find out about somewhere new – what would you have done?

What it would have been like?

The printed word would have been god. I would have got myself a guide book, no doubt filled with useful information but potentially out of date as soon as it’s published. I would have got an A-Z, in fact I own a Cardiff A-Z at the moment and it’s invaluable when I end up getting lost in the mean streets of Ely.

Going on a guided tour of the city, or at least the historical bits of it, would have been a good idea. I might have popped along to the tourist information office, rented books on Cardiff from the library – but nearly everything would have been backwards looking rather than perhaps the here and now.

Of course there would be the local newspapers and these would be able to provide some background information and an insight into current affairs, but to access the archives would have been either a costly (ordering them) or time-intensive exercise (sitting in the local library and reading them).

Very little of this research would be done before arriving in my destination, other than perhaps getting hold of a guidebook and an A-Z. My biggest source of information would be people, through meeting them, asking questions and relying on their memories.

Using the web to get local knowledge faster

Before I even came for a job interview in Cardiff I was able to research it. I was trawling the web for articles about Cardff’s history, looking at Google maps to make sense of where my potential new home would be and looking at flats and houses on property websites. CF10, the dispute over Bute Park and the opening times of the Castle were all at my finger tips. This really is the wonder of the web, accessing all that local information before I even arrived.

However, there were a few extra tools I could use to get that local insight.

The first was Flickr. There is a strong Cardiff group on Flickr and this allowed me to put pictures to places that I was reading about. The best thing about the group is that it often captures unusual places around the city, from interesting angles and this gave me a chance to see a different side to the city. A few times when driving around, or walking along, I’ve sen something and thought “that was on the Cardiff flickr group” and the connection had fizzed in my brain.

Next up was Twitter. It’s like walking into a pub and shouting ‘What’s good to do round here?’ – I did just that via this blog – and got a great response. Now, whenever I have some spare time, or some bored time, I can go and do something. It’s a great list of things to see and do, recommended by local people or people who know their stuff about Cardiff. Not experts, but certainly people who can vouch for things they’ve done and enjoyed. It’s certainly an eclectic mix and it’s a great way of learning what the locals like to do.

Twitter also allows you to make connections with people in the city before you even arrive. These might be informal connections but this makes meeting people easier, and certainly in my case it was great to connect with a few colleagues before even arriving in the office. Opening that conversation with them allowed me to quickly feel at home and crack on with what I needed to do.

Using RSS is a good way of building up your local knowledge. If local blogs or websites offer RSS feeds, subscribe to them. I set up a folder called ‘Cardiff’ in my Google reader and in it I’ve got news feeds from news websites, blogs and loads of other Cardiff websites that keep me abreast of things that are happening in Cardiff. Often I don’t get chance to look at it for a few days, but it’s always great to have a skim through and I’ll pick out two or three good things that I did not know about. The nice thing as well is having a variety of sources, it means I get different viewpoints often on the same issues, helping me to be better informed about issues or things that are happening in the city.

Google maps. Where would we be without it? Lost I reckon. Google maps has been one of the biggest tools I’ve used since moving here. Everything has a postcode and I’ve been able to understand where I am in relation to other parts of the city. I can quickly find routes, find buildings and find things that are near me. It gives me a knowledge of road names, of road numbers and before I even got to Cardiff I had an idea of what was in the North, East, South and West of the city just from Google maps. While an A-Z is handy, Google maps is interactive and allows me to quickly plan my routes.

What else could I be doing?

Some of the offline things I’ve found really useful are:

Visit a local museum. I’m lucky that Cardiff has a rich history but there is nothing like a museum for organising and displaying historical information in an easy to understand way. It gives you a sense of the traditions and values of a place, but gives you an understanding of where the place has come from.

Visit local pubs. The conversations you hear, the notices you see and the characters you meet will soon allow you to get a feel for the city, plus you can get to know the local ales. Never a bad thing.

Join a leisure centre. Even if it’s just for a swim every now and again, or a quick dash in the gym or if you’re more adventurous a spinning class – it will give you the chance to overhear conversations, see local notices (I’ve found Maindy Swimming Pool in Cardiff has a gigantic noticeboard and a huge swathe of leaflets as you come through the front door).

Take a different route home. Instead of hot-footing it, or blasting the accelerator, try going 10 minutes out of the way and take a different route home. You’ll be amazed at what you come across.

Summing up

Above all, there is no substitute for getting off your computer and getting out there. Meeting people, speaking to them and finding out what they think and know is one of the best ways of expanding your knowledge. I’ve heard some great stories already, met more people than I could name and all of that helps you to understand the passions, concerns and interests of the people who live in different communities.

So, the web definitely allows us to accelerate our learning about a place. I have no doubt that in the short time I’ve been in Cardiff I’ve learned a lot more through using the web than I would without it – but is this accelerate knowledge a good thing? Will I just be skimming the surface and not getting enough in-depth knowledge? How long does it take to become a ‘local’?

Making connections: attending my first Cardiff Tweetup

Strolled into Y Fuwch Goch (or the Red Cow as it’s also known) to join a random bunch of people the other night for Cardiff’s first Tweetup of 2010. A what? A Tweetup. It’s where people who are on twitter, meet up and have a chat about whatever they like. Might sound crazy, but it works.

We had IT managers, web designers, technicians, PR people, journalists, lawyers, politics students, university admin people, photographers and a hairdresser sat round the table chatting about random stuff. People who had only met moments ago were quickly engaging in conversations about diverse subjects, swapping contact details and coming up with ideas.

The power of social media was being put to good use in Cardiff, bringing people together to talk and connect. There was a good turnout to the Tweetup but the number of people who tweeted to say “sorry, can’t make it” shows that there is a growing community out there who are happy to leave their mobiles/laptops to one side and enjoy meeting random people.

The only criticisms of the event are that it’s on a Friday night, not the best of times to try and persuade people to come to a Tweetup – they are going away, already on a birthday night out, knackered after a week of work or various other excuses. Also, a topic could be nice. The Tweetups that I held in Preston had a civic topic up for discussion in the first part of the event and then it moved onto more socialising – but the topic helped as at least you got to meet people, share ideas straightaway and then had a subject to chat with random people about afterwards.

It’s great to see Tweetups happening in Cardiff and here’s to many more happening, along with all the other hyperlocal/social media stuff that’s happening in Cardiff at the moment.

So next time you see a Tweetup advertised, don’t be shy, get off Twitter for a while (if you’re not on Twitter, you can still come along) and you’ll be surprised who you’ll meet.

Image credit to markallinson

This post was originally featured on yourCardiff

3.2.1 – launch a community website for Cardiff

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

Local bloggers content starter kit

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

How can we make Students’ Unions stronger with social media?

I’m off to Birmingham next week, the social media centre of the UK, for an event organised by AMSU about how social media can be used to make Students’ Unions stronger. I like the title, it implies that the Union is already strong but there’s much more we can do. It’s a fitting time really as the Union’s Facebook page has just had it’s 1,000th fan join (good times!) and we need to know how we can improve what we’re doing with social media.

Ahead of the event we’ve been asked to answer the following questions:

• the biggest single issue your students’ union is facing and also
• one thing you think social media will be most useful for

The biggest single issue UCLan Students’ Union faces:

How to keep doing what we’re doing, but potentially with less, and proving our impact and legitimacy

It’s no secret that in the future there is going to be less money around. Less money means less resources, less people and less time. But, as a Students’ Union how do we keep giving our members best value, innovative opportunities and chances for involvement without comprimising on quality? It’s not going to be easy to keep current services operating the way they are. And at UCLan, it doesn’t seem like student numbers show any sign of slowing down and also the students that we have in our numbers are becoming increasingly diverse and spread out across different campuses. The pressure will also be on to prove what we are providing, show how we measure that and as a lot of Unions become charities – show our impact.

One thing you think social media will be most useful for:

Engaging and mobilising groups of students

Social media can be a driver for getting students involved. Not just in the Union’s business, getting them to vote etc but also by empowering them to use social media themselves to campaign, inform, mobilise other students and make friends/contacts. If we have a membership that is twittering, facebooking, blogging, creating video, posting photos that is an active and engaged membership that will help the Union achieve its goals. At the moment a lot of that activity is lacking and we need to find ways of inspiring and instigating it – but this needs to be balanced with letting students have their own opinions in an increasingly policied space (both by the Union, the University and other organisations).

I’m hoping from the social media course I am able to learn what other Unions are doing, pick up some hints and tips and put together the start of a plan of how the Union can use social media particularly in its membership functions.

Talk about Local Unconference 2009: oatcakes, community media and hope

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 »

Local blogger? Get to the Talk About Local Unconference

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.

The first Preston Tweetup videos

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