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

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

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

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.

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 »

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

Headed down to Liverpool on Sunday 30th August to the Matthew Street Festival. I had never been before and it was really impressive, especially for a council run event. You expect council’s to somehow make these things a damp squib (it was damp, but no one can control the weather!) but there was an incredible buzz across the city.

Looking through the programme I was stunned by just how much there was on. Six outdoor stages, what seemed like every pub and bar with bands on during the day and late into the evening. The place was heaving as well, I think every person in Liverpool had come out to celebrate the festival.

A lot of the events were free so you could just turn up and join in, not worrying about spending a fortune going into places. Only a few venues, such as the Cavern Club were charging – but even then it was £5 for 20 bands throughout the day covering Beatles classics, and you could get a stamp and come in anytime.

The traffic management seemed good, the parking was available and there were plenty of stewards and police around. The atmosphere was celebratory, there were plenty of drunk people but it was a happy drunk.

Liverpool City Council should be congratulated on what was a fantastic event, and their use of social media and the web was excellent. The Matthew Street Festival website is well put together, they were using twitter and flickr to bring short messages and photos into the festival. Other council’s and organisations planning music or big outdoor events should definitely learn lessons from this, particularly Preston City Council as Preston heads towards the 2012 Preston Guild.

A top event and something I’d like to go back to next year.

Image credit to Eric The Fish.

In January 2009 I decided as a new year’s resolution to set up a blog for where I live. Inspired by St Albans Blog, run by Robin Hamman, I boldy registered Preston Blog. I decided to go with a wordpress.com account as I wasn’t sure how much time I could commit and I was also a little short of cash so a domain and hosting were out of the question.

Since January 2009 I’ve been amazed at what the blog has achieved. It’s now just a few unique visitors away from having 10,000 in three months. No mean feat for something that I try to update as and when.

What’s the point in having a community journalism blog for Preston, Lancashire? Well, simple really: people want it. The sheer number of emails I’ve had and twitter messages saying “thanks for the blog/post, keep it up”.

I thought I’d take the chance, just over three months on since launch, to reflect on how the blog is going and pass on some advice for anyone thinking of doing something similar for where they live.

It will take up your time, a lot of your time

I started off just posting here and there. I thought no one would read what I wrote, then I saw the stats. 100 unique visitors a day, holy shit, people are reading what I write and they are commenting too. I started pulling hours getting content. You need to be prepared for the commitment of it, for talking about it, going to random events, getting lost down dead-end roads because Google Maps told you that’s where the venue was.

You will get involved in your community

People love publicity, they like to let you know they are doing stuff. Make sure you’ve got your optimistic people-loving mindset on as you’ll meet some weird, amazing and wonderful people. I’ve already met a Subbuteo enthusiast, a man who loves Open Street Maps and a bunch of rather kooky authors at a live literature night. But I love that, I love the diversity of it all.

Twitter is your friend

Twitter has been brilliant. Without it then I don’t think I’d have found half of the content I currently have on my blog. I post all my content to it, I thank guest writers, I debate things with people. Twitter is my living breathing news feed from the people of Preston. I use a great little application called Twitter Local, or the ’stalking thing’ as it was referred to by my ex-girlfriend, to find anyone who is twittering in Preston, Lancashire. I follow them to see what they are saying, and if they like what I’m about they can follow me back.

Other people will write far better than you

I have a wide and far-reaching network of guest writers. They are great and without them the blog wouldn’t work. I have someone who is an expert on the built environment, so whenever there’s a story about a ‘new development’ in Preston he knows what is actually going on. I have students climbing over each other to write stuff and get it in their published portfolios, although whether I’m a ‘real’ media outlet will be up to their tutors to decide. I want the blog to be a variety of voices writing about what they are passionate about, people will always read passionate writing. It’d be boring if it was just me all the time. One of the best and most viewed pages on the blog is ‘Get Involved‘. I count getting involved as anything from subscribing by RSS, commenting on a post to writing a guest post.

Look online and you will find

I’ve found some great content on Flickr, I have a feed of photos that comes in and is updated nearly daily with people snapping ‘Preston’ on flickr. Some of the shots are incredible. I don’t need a photo crew, I’ve got a whole photo community. The same with video, there’s plenty out there.

Don’t just sit online

Because my phone bill would be huge, I have to get off my laptop and go and speak to people. I phone people and arrange to meet them face-to-face. It’s great, the interview is so much better and you learn so much more about what’s going on. Preston Blog also inspired the Preston Tweetup that was fantastic. Just over 40 people came together, with a live-twitter feed, and discussed how the web could be used for Preston Guild in 2012. Local council’s should be doing this stuff, but they don’t, so we will instead. The ideas were ace, the people were ace and we’ll do it again sometime soon. But it was offline, it was great publicity for the blog and it made for some great content.

There’s a few thoughts about the blog and how it’s gone. I’m enjoying it and now it’s the time to get serious with it. The local newspaper has no rival, and it’s getting a bit lazy. Preston Blog has shown there is a demand for quality, local, community reporting. Preston has no newspaper, and I’d never open a newspaper, but it can have a great and virbant community journalism resource.

Over the coming months we’ll hopefully be shifting Preston Blog to a domain name, getting a new design with a proper Wordpress template. We’ll be bidding for some funding, registering as a nonprofit, and building some great content. We’ve got plans to live-cover some events over the summer, with full multimedia coverage. But, although we’ll get bigger, we will never forget what the blog is about. It’s about Preston, it’s about the people that live there, the places you can go, the things you can do, and the stories that it all holds.

Thank you to everyone who has read, writter for, commented on, twittered about or spoken about Preston Blog. We appreciate your support.

Preston Tweetup in action

I thought I’d take the question above as a starting point. A Tweetup is a new concept and it’s something that is really starting to catch-on in some places.

I organised and hosted Preston’s first Tweetup just over a week ago and it was a roaring success. We had nearly 40 people in the room, many of them with wireless enabled laptops and mobiles, all contributing to a discussion on one topic.

The idea for a Tweetup is that instead of having a networking event or discussion where the conversation is completely physical you also have a virtual conversation going on. Bear with me, it does make sense. The structure of the event is an opening preamble and then a topic is discussed by the people in the room – often splitting off into separate groups. This makes it easier to manage.

For example, at the Preston Tweetup we were discussing the Preston Guild in 2012 and how the web can be used in it.

The discussions were flowing around the tables but also on twitter, take a look at the #prestontweetup hashtag feed and you can see all the good stuff that was coming out of people chatting about the topic. Yes, some of it went off on tangents – but that happens with any discussions.

The best thing about the Tweetup was that as an organiser I was getting instant feedback. If there was a problem with something I could pick up on it straight away by watching the tweets. I could also easily collect information after the event and condense it.

This backchannel conversation was incredibly useful and exciting. It also allowed some great interaction between the groups, so that people might take a question asked by one group and explore it and the then fling some more questions back out into the twitter stream for other groups to consider. There was a fantastic collaborative environment at the event.

So, I would really suggest giving a Tweetup a try. You don’t need 40 people there, maybe just 5, but get going with it and see what happens. And if you’re in the education or conference/networking sectors, you need to be on this. Doing it. Making it happen.