With Rachel Sterne of Ground Report I co-chaired a meeting of folk interested in hyperlocal media in the UK. The meeting was at the Department of Culture Media and Sport at the request of Sion Simon MP the UK Culture Minister in advance of the digital britain bill. I shall post more on the discussion when i have had time to reflect. But to make the meeting as transparent as possible here is some of the core information.
The meeting had the Twitter hashtag #cabinet and there is a Tweetdoc. The group was informed by Rachel Sterne’s slides dissecting the hyperlocal market and Douglas McCabe’s statistics from Enders. Three good posts have already emerged; from Hannah Waldram at Podnosh including attendees and twofrom Paul Bradshaw
At the end of the session the participants stuck post its on a boards with suggestions for what the government should and shouldn’t do in this sector. Here are those post its in the raw, as transcribed by DCMS staff and grouped into themes (some came from tweets). The post its were un-attributed.
Things Government could / should do
Legal
From @ journotutor: Sort out libel laws, stop wasting money on writing national occupational standards and develop digital literacy.
Reform libel laws.
Water down/remove draconian libel laws.
Clarify legal responsibilities and liabilities of publishers of user-generated content.
Immunity for defamation arising from comments.
Funding
Open arts funding to journalism.
PAY ME.
Can we have a UK Knight Foundation to promote enterprise?
Run competition X Prize to innovate.
Increase size of community radio fund and open it up to all community media.
Subsidise local public service reporting for use by anyone (or tax breaks).
Access
Free Wi-fi in cities – please!
Broadband for all.
Get MORE people online.
If you get people online – they will figure out the rest.
Let the market determine localities and interests. The Govt needs to be transparent. Not a nanny.
Training/attitudes
Incentivise employers (subsidies, grants etc.) to train staff in citizen journalism technologies.
Work in schools as a valid local platform for area-wide learning and citizen journalism.
Support grass-roots digital training for active citizens.
Train citizens to be leaders not writers.
From @ dilyan-damyanov: Promote a culture where bloggers are treated with the same respect as journalists.
Treat hyper local authors, publishers, bloggers the same as traditional media.
BBC
Defend BBC and notion of public service (as opposed to market funded) information.
Open up BBC and other public service skills and support resources in e.g. journalism and law to 3rd parties.
Prevent BBC from launching more localised sites.
Require BBC to make video news content available to grass roots publishers and not just legacy players.
BBC create innovations fund.
Prompt the BBC to provide its technology for distributed media/journalism.
Local Authorities
Prevent councils from distorting publishing market by running ad-funded propaganda newspapers.
Get councils to publish data (in an open format).
Develop guidelines for councils so they realise they should treat local bloggers as they would the local press.
Provide clearer guidelines for council publications e.g. should they have a ‘property’ section like Huf News does.
Make sure local authorities treat hyperlocal reporters the same way (?) they would traditional media – easy access to councillors / police etc.
Require councils to audio / video stream meetings and provide on-demand archive.
Access to data
Free all the data intelligently, faster and better. The more I think about it, the more I think this is the nearest there is to a single key.
From @johnbradford
Make information free by default (rather than FOI by request) and then keep out of the way and let hyperlocal blogs and twitter deliver.
Put out geocoded data easy to use.
Free up data and FOI.
Fund Geo-location tools / standards for info.
Release postcodes and other geo-data to encourage innovation.
Require all Govt / Public information to be published web first.
Set standards for publicly funded information.
Broaden FOI to include anyone spending public £.
When you free our data, combine it with an engagement plan that provides support to those that want to use it.
Other Ideas
Encourage ultra small scale experimentation with low overheads and low cost of failure.
Use open hyperlocal approach to enhance Total Place agenda and pilot different models.
Have a clear vision and strategy for democratic renewal / reform, which guides their investment.
Monitor and evaluate civic impact of citizen journalism – net benefit or harm to civil society.
Act as a catalyst to encourage openness to dialogue with neighbourhood/hyperlocal sites.
Consider and publish impact assessments of major interventions eg newspapers.
Add journalism as act of supported volunteering.
WHAT GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT DO
Funding
Fund IFNCs. They will duplicate the BBC and distort the market.
Invest in new structures without consideration of their sustainability and legacy.
Fund unsustainable local publishing initiatives which don’t have ongoing (+multiple) funding sources.
Drag out the death cry of publishers through subsidy.
Bail out failing publishers or support traditional business models.
Bail out Channel 3 local/regional services.
Spend time/money on platforms.
Build a platform for news.
Councils
Stop council papers.
Don’t stop councils publishing.
Don’t stop councils publishing magazines, but set parameters to avoid undermining independent publishers (eg carrying ads).
Exclusion
Exclude people. Have multiple engagement platforms online and offline.
Forget that 15m are not online and that traditional media still has a role to play for many citizens.
BBC
Decimate the BBC. Yes it’s not perfect and could do more, but if we over slice and dice we may be worse – not better off.
Introduce expensive top-down solutions and one- size-fits all platforms.
Other don’ts
Make their own apps for opening government data.
Use Government defined boundaries/identities to determine provision of tools and resources – should enable self-definition of need/ [illegible]?
Assume information holes to plug are traditional media shaped.
Let big organisations have too much influence – they’ll stifle.
Define journalism by platform.
Be a nanny!
That is probably the best thing I can say about this weekends event.
We were not really sure what to expect on Saturday morning, we had spent the whole of the last week planning the un-conference getting swhag from sponsors and working out the logistics of getting it all to Stoke-on-Trent. On Saturday morning once we had set up at the uni, we said well all we need now are people. At 9am the first delegates started to arrive, at 9:30 there was a queue and the breakfast oatcakes had gone! By 10 we had about 50 people signed in, this was our personal success point, we had said all along if we get 50 or 60 people we’d be happy. At 1030 there were still people arriving the room was getting pretty full and people were starting to organise the days sessions on the boards.
People! Photo Simon Perry
Post-it notes on the board with the days sessions on
The final delegate count was 88, which is fantastic number for our first event and the free lunch seemed to go down well.
In the afternoon Nicky did a session on games which culminated with a game of pork pie rounders, yes you read correctly PORK PIE rounders..
Pork Pie Rounders Picture Will Perrin
We are not sure that Nicky will be allowed in to Stoke-on-Trent again as she used the local Wrights pies for the game and this would be treated as sacrilege, but if we don’t tell anyone she might be ok…
There were too many sessions to mention here but some of the highlights were Andrew Stott speaking about data.gov, Nick Booth on Social Media Surgeries, Will Perrin on Talk About Local and the future of Hyperlocal blogging.
I personally got a lot from it, met up with some old friends made a lot of new friends and contacts and I hope that each delegate not only made some connections and contacts but also learnt something or shared something that will help others who are hyperlocal publishing.
Since the event a number of posts have been written and videos uploaded by people who attended so we thought we should try and list as many as we can here.
RaveCam
The #TAL09 rave cam, @franbury got feedback from people as they were leaving the Un-Conference
A lot of delegates took pictures at the event and posted them to our Flickr pool. If you took pictures please feel free to add them to the pool for us to share
There have been many blog posts about the un-conference most of which are linked in the comments below. If you know of any posts that we haven’t got a link to or have not had a pingback drop us a quick mail at the address below and we’ll sort it out.
Feel free to leave feedback here or drop us a mail to info[@]talkaboutlocal.org
All the team are working away on different bits to make sure that Saturday is a huge success. We will have wireless connections in the venue for you to use, but due to the complexity of academic networks we will be using 3G routers throughout the building, so if you have your own mobile broadband you may wish to bring that with you. If you do use our connections please play nice and don’t start streaming movies! We will have a couple of cat5 connections for people who are presenting or running sessions to plug in to.
As Will has said previously, we are pretty awe struck with the names that have appeared on our delegate list. We have some of the best bloggers and social media people around turning up. There is one ‘very’ special delegate, Andrew Stott who has signed up to come along and has offered to give a talk on data.gov.uk to say there was a certain amount of jaw dropping when we saw Andrew had signed up would be an under statement!
We have had an excellent response from sponsors and supporters who we would like to say a big thank you to (in no particular order):
We have shwag for you, we have pads, pens, mouse mats (does anyone still use them?) mugs, a free copy of The Sentinel courtesy of Mike Sassi. Interestingly we will be having a competition to win a serious prize provided by Media Trust as part of the Festival of Learning. Nicky is busily working away at some questions for you to win a blog make over.
The prize will include, a trip to Talk About Local offices in Fazeley, a make over for your blog by some of the best social media practitioners in the UK, lunch and some other goodies.
We won’t be able to stream the event but there will be a number of social reporters covering the event and we ask that delegates use #tal09 as your tag to appear in these feeds:
- Twitter
- delicious
If you have any questions about the event, need to check anything or just want a chat then drop us a mail at info[@]talkaboutlocal.org and we’ll get back to you.
We look forward to meeting you all on Saturday morning, or on Friday night if any of you are getting there early.
On Saturday me and Mike were lucky enough to enjoy a day in the sunshine in the name of work, giving something of a mini social media surgery under a tent in a field. We spent the day introducing people enjoying Fulham Fest to the new community website for the London W14 & SW6 neighbourhoods, a ning site which manager Annette Albert has built up into a fantastic local resource that covers local events, news, groups and information.
We got a fair few signed up to the site and many got cracking with adding to it straight away by poll voting, posting events, starting discussions and joining groups. What was most rewarding was inducting people who initially had reservations, either because of a fear of the technology or because they could not see how it might be used. It was just a few simple steps to show people how easy the site is to navigate and discuss issues important to them that the site could help with.
Getting people there who were at first quite reticent enthusiastic about the site really highlighted the benefits of holding a social media surgery as part of a larger, community event. Many of the people I met on Saturday wouldn’t have come to something solely about social media or using a community website, but by being part of a fun and informal family day we were able to teach in a relaxed, ‘non-training’ atmosphere and get past preconceptions they may have had.
So now I’m all for a social media tent becoming a staple part of local fetes and fairs. Next time you’re organising a community festival or gathering, think about making space for a couple of laptops next to the face-painters. It’s a great way of raising awareness of a new hyperlocal site and you’d be helping people discover something new, get involved with local activity and carry on communicating long after the party’s over.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover an old friend from my home town of Cardiff, photographer Dan Green, has started a brilliant local photography blog Big Little City – ‘a window into the lives of those people who help give cities their unique character’. The site was born out of his first major exhibition, Cardiff Characters, which he has developed in his online space with pictures of people who epitomise Cardiff and reflect its ‘unique vibrancy and soul’.
The focus will be on highlighting communities and the people who make them tick be they a rugby star, a bus driver, a lollipop man or lady, an artist, waitress, café owner, musician, dancer, or eccentric.
It got me thinking about how people really make a place, and most communities have a few characters that you couldn’t imagine being without – be it because they’re local heroes, a bit eccentric, or just that they and what they do is such a long-standing local institution.
And then there’s Mr Ralph. Mr Ralph is something of a Digbeth institution, invariably found in one of the many Digbeth pubs, peddling customised goods from his battered old suitcases. Rumour has it he holds the last existing Birmingham pedlars license. I found Mr Ralph quite fascinating so I wrote a blog post about him after he kindly agreed to it, including photos of him and his Mr Ralph branded goods.
Do you have any key local characters like this? People who really make your neighbourhood what it is? Talk to them, see if there’s a way you could present them and the great stuff they do online somehow – be it with photography, film or just writing about them with passion. Perhaps they’d like to contribute themselves, either on a regular basis or as a one-off with a story they want to tell. Try getting them and their voice onto your site, either by letting them speak for themselves or, if they’re a little shy, by telling as much of their story as they’re comfortable with. That way your site starts talking about ‘who’, as well as about ‘where’ and ‘what’.
By far the most inspirational talk I heard at Open Tech 2009 conference was from Robin, a member of Space Hijackers, who spoke about ‘Community and Democracy in Hijacked Space’. I’d recommend you listening again if you have the time.
It was a great to hear about play being used as a surprisingly effective and disruptive method of protest. Space Hijackers, who attempt to ‘corrupt the culture of architecture, and destroy the hierarchies that exist’ by staging hilariously anarchic happenings, got me thinking about putting the fun back into local campaigning, which many hyperlocal sites find themselves involved with.
Obviously, justifiable anger and reasoned argument about issues causing serious damage to the community is a great and worthwhile thing, I’m not denying that. It’s just that sometimes you’re met with problems so ridiculous the best option may be to fight like with like.
For instance, Birmingham pub The Rainbow has recently faced closure after Birmingham City Council served a Noise Abatement Order in response to complaints from one lone tenant, who lives in an apartment block built long after the pub was. The council seeing fit to threaten this renowned live music venue because of one complainant, but aspiring to develop the area’s cultural character in their Big City Plan, seemed kafkaesque enough to warrant a game. After hearing Robin speak, I was pondering on some noisy, twisted version of musical statues, or a loud complaints choir outside the council house.
The fun doesn’t necessarily have be physical, you can have it in your online space too. Keep Digbeth Vibrant do a great job of tempering their obvious frustration with Birmingham City Council Environmental Health, with quirky creations like the spoof Stella advert above and The Digbeth Whisperer newspaper.
On my site Digbeth is Good, when Birmingham City Council Leader Mike Whitby commandeered a Big City Plan public consultation bus from my neighbourhood for a photoshoot on the other side of town, I initially responded with righteous indignation. My emails and calls to the press office were met with a wall of silence until the fantastic local satire site Lolitics helped to bring it to a wider audience. Soon after a lolled image of Mike Whitby appeared, closely followed by several of a walrus bemoaning the loss of his bus, I received an apologetic statement from Director of Planning and Regeneration Clive Dutton. The increasing amount of attention from other sources the incident was getting seemed to make them realise ignoring me was not making me go away.
So next time you’re met with local plans, politics or problems that would be funny if they weren’t so angering, perhaps just try highlighting the funny. Point out the silly and match it. The results this approach gets from The Man may be limited, as he’s not known for his sense of humour, but it will make engaging with the issue much more fun for your readers, and give you a bit of light relief from feeling just plain mad.
This documentary of one man’s journey into the derelict Birmingham Battery building is one of the best YouTube films I’ve ever seen. Not because of the production skills of creators Living Proof Films (great though they are), but because of the quite emotional narration. You really do see inside the iconic building from the photographer’s perspective:
You begin to see the building as having a life of its own. It has characteristics and charms, like a person does. I must admit, I felt an attraction to the Birmingham Battery.
Although you do learn some things about the building whilst watching it, you are not left feeling you’ve been told all its facts and figures, instead you go on quite an intimate journey with the narrator and learn how he feels about the space.
Expressing a personal preference like this is far from a bad thing – buildings and spaces are not only special because of their architectural or scenic merit, they become special to people because of the responses they illicit or what happens within them.
For instance, many born and bred Brummies I know get quite nostalgic when walking past Snobs nightclub, a nondescript building which contained many a night of youthful abandon and coming-of-age episodes. During a recent pub conversation no sooner had one person mentioned Snobs than everyone else enthusiastically chipped in with their stories. It ended with plans to take a group trip there, to share more memories that walking through the nightclub might bring to mind. That’s the great thing about expressing your reactions to a shared space like that – others will be compelled to join in the conversation with their own tales about it.
Jon Bounds highlighted the importance of sharing personal stories about spaces when he created his Campaign for Real Heritage blue stickers, encouraging us to see that what we feel is important about a place holds as much value as the National Trust’s seal of approval, and should be duly marked:
‘…the real people have history too. It deserves recognition, YOUR history deserves a blue plaque.’
Ben Whitehouse spoke of creating a tour of alternative Birmingham landmarks, asking for suggestions of stories rather than traditional tourist spots.
I’d like to put together a list of places around the city (preferably the city centre) that hold personal resonances for people who’ve visited Birmingham, people who live, work and play here.
I’ve been running my own hyperlocal blog Digbeth is Good for just over a year now and, although it initially just contained local news, events and reviews, as my confidence grew it also unashamedly became my own personal journey through the area. But I found readers reacted rather well to this, sometimes responding in kind with their own take on things. For instance, an early post about Guardoggy prompted Bobbie Gardner to comment with her encounters of the dog.
So don’t be afraid to get personal with your site, and convey to readers your own reaction to the area as well as news and infomation about it. You never know, it may encourage readers to chip in with their own stories and your site could become more than an information hub, it could be a place where a community feels free to express itself.
One of my favourite books at the moment is called Watching the English, by Kate Fox. In it she puts forward some very persuasive generalisations about how we use our gardens, including the observation that we will wait for months for an opportune moment to speak to our neighbours in their front gardens rather than knock on their front doors. This is certainly true for me – memories of a stint selling Avon door-to-door still bring me out in a cold sweat – and it holds true in Stoke-on-Trent, right through to her other observation that except when they are serving as a neutral space to chat about the weather and that awkward planning application you put in, front gardens are for show only.
Anyway, it was looking for a more succint reference to these observations that I stumbled across a new seam of hyperlocal blogging in Britain: the garden blogs. Starting off with the Patient Gardener’s Weblog from Worcestershire, the bloggers have formed a clear community across the country and share delightful photos, drawings, questions and observations. A look through the Patient Gardener’s blogroll quickly takes you as far as California and Nova Scotia, but of course many of you will prefer sticking to England and the chance to peer into some luscious hidden back gardens and allotments. You can even follow the journey of a novice bee-keeper.
There’s always a bit of a perception that blogging is for computer geeks or wannabe politic pundits, but the ease of blogging, linking and adding photography means that there are plenty of communities sharing their passions for each other and the rest of the world. If you’re wondering whether this applies to your hobbies and interests, have a browse round Wordpress’s Showcase section or Google blog search. (example). ‘Passion-blogging’ is also a great place to start if you’re not sure you have anything interesting enough to blog about. Regular, enthusiastic, reflective and useful blogging will always find an audience, especially if you make the effort to put friendly feelers out to other bloggers through comments and links to posts you enjoy. And as the gorgeous gardening blogs show, there’s no such thing as too hyperlocal.
For untutored online adventurers like myself, Google has always been the gateway to exciting things. I always wanted to publish my own writing and when I was growing up it involved carving out a career in journalism. That’s a load of work experience, a degree, a load more work experience and then, if you’re very lucky, landing a job where you’ll actually be able to write something you’re vaguely interested in (I did manage to do so for a few years before packing it in to try and earn a living a little closer than 250 miles from home). Blogging tools cut out all those years of toil in one fell swoop. All you need is time, computer access and you are your own editor.
Google’s LocalGov day was a great insight into how the engineers use their own tools. For the hyperlocal blogger this is really useful. I don’t know who you are or what you want to do, but chances are a few of these powerful tools will help you do it really easily – and, of course, for free.
