Archive for category General & News
Authority 2.0 Conference acclaimed as an “Outstanding Success”.
Posted by Paul Hadley in General & News, Social Media for Social Good on April 30th, 2010
Image: Jon Hickman. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonhickman/sets/72157623837016447/
MA Social Media students from Birmingham City University Media Suite delivered an extremely high quality event on 28th April, based around how officers from West Midlands Police do, and can communicate and engage via social networks with citizens in the digital age.
With presentations and debates hosted by students, the event also highlighted how social networks and digital communications from Western and Eastern cultures are used to both good and bad effect, giving the students a prime opportunity to showcase their research, experience and professional practice to a broad audience, including senior police officers, photographers, council representatives, local government officials and members of the public.
The event itself saw audiences engage with presentations from students Paul Hadley and Jennifer Yang, with Jigar Patel chairing the “Terrorist or Photographer” panel debate, the main feature. With the assistance of BCU technical team and Aquila TV, a live video link to student Leland Strott in Baltimore was executed faultlessly, enabling the audience to ask questions and receive answers immediately following Strott’s pre-recorded video presentation.
Using digital multimedia technology to increase audience participation, the 46 invited guests attending were joined by 386 visitors via a live video stream and immediate commentary, where Twitter and ‘live blog’ information was spreading the messages from the conference across the globe.
The visitor statistics collected by students show that the online audience reached digital participants not only in the West Midlands and UK, but also in Japan, Australia, USA, all parts of Europe, Asia and pockets of the Middle East.
Featured guest presentations were also delivered by Nick Booth, a local social media specialist and founder of Podnosh Ltd; Will Perrin, former Cabinet Office advisor and leader of Talk About Local; and Jon Hale, regional director of Gov Delivery, digital communications specialists for local governments.
The “Terrorist or Photographer” debate featured open questions and discussions from the audience and internet social networking sites, with representatives from West Midlands Police and the photography and media industries. Panel guests for the debate were Chief Inspector Mark Payne, Detective Chief Inspector Ian Grundy (Terrorist Intelligence Unit), Karen Strunks (professional photographer) and Christian Payne (social technologist and mobile media creator).
Some of the comments after the event from the physical and digital audience include “awesome”, “fantastic content and intelligent debate”, “totally engaging” and “fascinating’.
MA Social Media course leader Dave Harte and lecturer Jon Hickman described the event as “a really excellent event” and “superb”.
More information, video recordings, presentations and photographs are all available at http://eventwith.me/authority2
South by Southwest (SXSW) 2010 – Quick Update!
Posted by Jigar Patel in General & News on March 18th, 2010
Currently I am in Austin, TX for South by Southwest (SXSW) which, is considered to be one of the biggest Interactive, Film and Music festival/conference in the World. Thanks to Dave Harte, Jon Hickman and John Kirk for giving me this opportunity, as well as Birmingham City University. As my first time at SXSW, it has been fun, exciting, informative, and exhausting. What makes SXSW one of the most exciting conferences is not the panels, speakers, and trade shows (although they are very informative and useful) but its the people aspect of the conference which, is what is the most valuable. Believe it or not its the moments before the panels as well as after the panels, along with the parties and sitting around waiting for your iPhone to charge at the lounge is what makes it an unique experience. I have met many people here and built a stronger relationship with the ones that I had already met in Birmingham.
In the past week I have attended more than 30 panels which has resulted in information overload. However, there were some key panels that have inspired me to start new projects as I go back home to Pennsylvania and then back to Birmingham. One thing that I have learned and observed is that the panel speakers aren’t necessarily the experts, its the people in the audience, who are asking the questions and challenging the assumptions of the panel that know more than the panel speakers. For everyone that is interested in seeing the tweets from all of the panels at SXSW have a look at SessionTweets. Also have a look at PepsiCo’s Zeitgeist project, which will show you trends, locations of tweets, photos and almost everything you need to know.
The Interactive part of SXSW was extremely overwhelming, especially because it was my first time. However, I think if I decide to come back again next year (which the chances are very high) I have learned some things that will make it so much better. Now that the Interactive one is over, the Music one started yesterday. The Music part kicked off and the culture of the conference has completely changed. Not so much of the free drinks, cocktails, foods, and parties, but more of the people. You can tell that the nerds and geeks are gone!
I am still in the information overload state, which is completely fine, but I will reflect more on the whole SXSW experience, once I get some time to sit down and think about it.
Putting the my in myTown
Posted by Jigar Patel in General & News on January 18th, 2010
When I left Birmingham to go home to the United States for christmas holidays, I couldn’t have predicted that I would end up creating a little buzz in local politics. As part of the Enterprise module, I created a project called myTown. While working on the module, I decided to take this idea a little further and implement it in my own hometown of Jonestown, Pennsylvania.
At home, I got myself a meeting with the Mayor of Jonestown. Turns out it was the Mayor’s last week in office, but that didn’t keep him from getting me in touch with the Borough Council’s Vice-President (now the President), who manages Jonestown’s website. While having a chat with him, he asked me to come present it to the Borough Council. At first, I was extremely excited to present it until I realized it was the first meeting of the year for the Borough so there will be quite a crowd there.
I opened my presentation with the following, “MyTown is a social enterprise which aims to build a stronger community by education and empowering the citizens digitally to ensure sustainable civic engagement.” Looking around I saw some confused yet excited faces, which to me meant that they were eager to find out more about it. The presentation ended up being good enough for the Borough to unanimously adopt it with a budget of $200.
Since, it was the first meeting of the year, the local newspaper was present there along with the County Commissioners of Lebanon County. One of the Commissioners, Jo Ellen Litz, who already films the weekly commissioners meeting and uploads them to YouTube, got in touch with me and asked me to come present the same presentation to the rest of the commissioners. I immediately said yes, without considering the fact that they had already declined to do this when Commissioner Litz asked them almost a year ago. Commissioner Litz thought that since Jonestown’s Borough unanimously agreed to adopt the project, why not see if it can be adopted for the entire county.
As I was preparing for the presentation, I spent nearly three hours looking for data relating to Lebanon County. Let me tell you there is very little public data available. Lebanon County website does no justice at all either. Taking account of this, I decided to spend majority of my time talking about the need for transparency in local government. The county commissioners meeting occurs every Thursday at 9:30AM. I was given 20 minutes to talk about the project and majority of my talk I focused on why the county should adopt it. I also mentioned the fact that many people couldn’t attend this meeting because it was during business hours and most of the people are working full-time jobs. They listened and moved to a vote, no one second therefore it was not approved.
Their decision to not approve gave me my 15 minutes of local fame and put the two commissioners in a situation that could have easily been avoided with a simple yes. Turns out the story about them declining the offer to have their meetings webcast, turned up on the front page of the local daily newspaper. People who follow local politics were outraged from this and posted their comments on Lebanon Daily News’s website. The day the story was in the paper, I was also invited to talk about it on the local radio station WLBR 1270 AM.
Even though my offer was declined, I have decided to continue on convincing them to adopt it later in the summer. There is a bit of irony to this, which is, during the presentation, one of the things that I talked about was how streaming the meeting would mean the commissioners would be talking and taking actions directly in front of their constituents. Their constituents would know exactly what they would be saying, not something they would hear from the local newspaper or radio station. Turns out the commissioners want to wait and see the results of live streaming the meeting in the Borough of Jonestown, before they decide on taking the project up in the county. However, that wasn’t conveyed in the newspaper correctly. Only if they would have listened to me! 
We Live in Public – in Birmingham
Posted by Dave Harte in General & News on December 19th, 2009
Here’s a short story of how our enterprising MA Social Media students JFDI (‘Just F**cking Did It’).
It’s been a beef of mine for a while that sometimes Birmingham misses out on getting good indie or foreign films into its cinemas until well after they’ve been released across the UK. Whatever the reasons it was clear that it was going to happen again when the award-winning documentary ‘We Live in Public‘, about the internet entrepreneur Josh Harris, was released in the UK in November. In fact the schedule of upcoming screenings didn’t include Birmingham at all, whilst Northampton and Norwich, amongst others, were all lined up to get a viewing.
As part of the MA Media suite (PDF link) of courses that the MA Social Media forms a part of, the students have the chance to organise some activities under the banner of ‘Personal Development Planning’. In fact there’s even a bit of cash to spend on the activities. So in mentioning to my students that an exciting, important film about the late 90s dotcom boom was bypassing the city, quick as a flash they reacted. As I went off grumbling about the situation Paul Hadley quietly got on with the job of organising a one-off, special screening of the film. Within 24 hours the cinema was booked and the film hired from the distributor.
The eventbrite page went up and on December 9th a cinema full of people took their seats to learn how downright weird things were the last time we all got excited about the potential of the internet. The film focused more on the personal life of Harris which was inevitable since he put his personal life on display when he and his partner chose to wire up their house to the internet.
The film told an intriguing story although I could have done without knowing how Harris enjoyed dressing as a clown and probably a bit less of the ‘it’s all his Mom’s fault’ rhetoric. I haven’t seen ‘Startup.com‘ for many a year which covers similar ground but with a less frenzied stylistic approach.
Many thanks to the (so wonderful we should list it) Electric Cinema in Birmingham, Dogwoof, the film’s distributor and Paul Hadley for pulling this together and for introducing the film with a glass of Absinthe in his hand.
Christian Payne also attended the screening and recorded an audioboo. He also seemed fond of the Absinthe.
Reading Club: The Creativity Gap
Posted by Paul Hadley in General & News on October 28th, 2009
Reading: The Creativity Gap. Auth: James Heartfield
http://www.heartfield.org/Creativity_Gap.pdf
In preparation for The Big Debate, and as part of the Social Media as Culture module, this week the BCU MA Social Media students will be reading this piece, and hosting a public discussion on Wednesday 4th November, from 9-11am.
The venue will be:
30 Church Street
Birmingham
B3 2NP
The discussion is open forum with public invitation.
Please do come and join us.
UPDATES:
Here is an audio recording of Charles Leadbeater’s speech, taken at The Big Debate, some of which is perhaps relevant to our discussion-
Here is the audio recording of our reading club, part 1-
…and here is the audio from part 2-
Buying Facebook contacts and Twitter followers
Posted by Simona Serban in General & News on September 28th, 2009
Everything is for sale nowadays, including friends. On Facebook and Twitter at least, if not in real life. The Usocial company, specialised in online marketing services, offers packages of up to 5,000 targeted Facebook friends and up to 10,000 Facebook fans for businesses that own a Page. As regards Twitter, one can buy an overwhelming number of followers (up to 100,000) with guaranteed delivery in 365 days. Incredible. Needless to say, the individuals interested to buy fans and friends are brand owners, looking for online human brains to market their products and services to. It is bad manners to spam your friends, but the social media ethics are still under development, so creatives take advantage of the lack of regulations and sell everything, including cyber friends. However, the contacts bought are not random names that will appear in the friend list out of the blue, Usocial claims, but “targeted” contacts according to such criteria as country, industry and interests. One Twitter follower is worth 0.10$ per month, according to Usocial, whereas one Facebook friend can bring more revenue, 1$ per month. Therefore, Facebook friends are far more expensive: $197 for a 1000-friend pack, gradually increasing to $1167.30 for a 10,000-fans pack. Twitter followers, on the other hand, who can be bombed only with short snappy promotional messages, cost $87 for a 1000 pack delivered within seven days, and $3,479 for a 100,000-follower offer.
What are bought fans and friends going to say? Are they part of an opt-in system, or will they be spammed without their consent? What if later on they will just get pissed off and click “remove myself from fans”? Usocial is quiet about these insignificant details. Hmm, by the way, what is your price?
My job on the MA Social Media team
Posted by Dave Harte in General & News on September 28th, 2009
I always seem to end up in jobs that are difficult to describe to my mother. For a while I had the grand title of ‘Cluster Innovation Manger for Interactive Media for Education and Entertainment’. That took some explaining by her to those who asked what young Dave was now doing. For the last 12 months it’s been a little easier – I’ve been ‘working for the council’.
That’s a simple statement to repeat and the great thing about it is that it creates a different impression depending on who you tell it to – it could just as well mean emptying the bins as working in an office. I notice my mother doesn’t add further explanation when telling people I ‘work for the council’. That’s fine by me – the detail was rather complex.
I was actually Economic Development Manager for Digital Birmingham which basically meant I went around saying how good the internet was and specifically championing the use of social media to anyone who would listen. There was a tad more to it than that but now my time there has come to an end; or rather, I’ve decided to bring it to an end to take up the exciting opportunity of working with the good people at Birmingham City University on the MA Social Media.
I’m the ‘award leader’ for this degree which largely gives me an administrative responsibility to get the students from one end of the course to the other. I’ll be pitching in with teaching of course but the key role is to support the development of the course and keep those student numbers looking healthy.
So whether you’re a current student or a prospective one then I’m looking forward to getting to know you.
My First week in Birmingham!
Posted by Jigar Patel in General & News on September 26th, 2009
My first full week in Birmingham wasn’t as interesting as it might seem. Especially moving in on a sunday, since everything seemed to close at 5 around here in the weekends. This is my third visit to England, so I thought, I have already been here twice, I think I should be able to settle in pretty easily right? Well, on the contrary, it turned out to be a lot harder than I had thought. It was harder in a sense that, I had visited England and stayed with family the pervious two times, so ideally, staying by myself in a new country was going to be hard. However, I think as the week progressed, I started to settle in slowly. I was going to make it a day by day commentary, but it is not that exciting so here is a run down of the events.
The first two days being alone in the house I was feeling pretty homesick and was wondering why I picked BCU. I moved in on Sunday and started the International Orientation on Monday. Monday morning, I was up early and pretty excited to get the week started. I made my way over to the Baker building, where we were to get information about the orientation week. As I walked up to the building, I saw about 100 international students trying to get into the building so they can get their orientation packets. I eventually made my way in and since I had registered online beforehand, I was out of there in about ten minutes. After registration there was nothing to do until noon, when we had free lunch! The rest of the day consist of tours and information sessions. I skipped out on evening activities, since I wasn’t feel well at all (mostly because of the weather change) and went to bed. The rest of the week was going to workshops and talks about various different topics that pertained to international students. Some were interesting, others weren’t since, some of the stuff was very similar to the states. Meanwhile, durning the evening, me and bunch of my friends made our way to the local pub called, “Hare of the Dog” also known as “hotdog”. Friday evening was the finale event at Burlington Hotel in the City Centre, where we celebrated a successful end of the International Orientation.
Really, to me the first week was all about getting sick, adjusting to the weather, adjusting to the English ways of doing things, learning the transportation system, trying to figure out what terms are appropriate, and meeting new people. The only thing I have found that I wish were different is the Baker cafeteria. The reason being, at Juniata College, where I did my undergrad, their cafeteria was known as Baker as well and let me tell you, the food wasn’t all that good so, every time I go to the Baker building its like going back to Baker at Juniata!
This past week was far more fun and interesting. Especially, because we got to attend actual social media events in Birmingham. I had always seen and heard about DIY hack days and coffee meet ups, but never attended one, until this week. Check out Stephen Croome on Birmingham Social Media Café and BCC DIY Explained if you haven’t so already.
It’s all happening
Posted by Jon Hickman in General & News on September 24th, 2009
Teaching for the MA Social Media begins next Wednesday. Some of our students who have traveled the furthest arrived last week, and yesterday enrollment began. We have a programme of induction that starts today. The social media intake will meet the rest of our postgraduate students with whom they will be sharing some teaching and, I hope a lot of interesting debate around contemporary media issues.
What we’re doing this week
Tomorrow we are sponsoring the Birmingham Social Media Café along with the MA Online Journalism class. The café describes itself as: “a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, chat, plot, scheme, and share.” This is a great opportunity for our students to start building a professional network here in Birmingham.
After that we are heading to the BCC DIY hack day (registration here). This event will give students an opportunity to get involved in a community project, continue their professional networking, and experience first hand some of the activism that Birmingham is becoming known for.
Students will meet in Baker Building Costa at 9:15am, we’re heading over to Perry Barr train station at 9:30am. If you;re late, just make your wy under your own steam. I suggest everyone who wants to come to Moseley afterward invests in a Daytripper ticket.
What happens then?
Classes start next week, and I’ll start stepping away from this blog a little. Our students will begin to take ownership of the blog, reporting on their findings. I’ll still be here, posting occasionally, but will mostly be blogging at Interactive Cultures. In addition to students, expect to hear more from my colleagues on the MA teaching team and updates on some of the research and knowledge transfer projects that are taking place at BCU.
We’ll also be out and about at various local events, for example we’re all attending Digital Districts on 14th October.
It’s been a great few months developing the course. We’ve generated a lot of interest since we started talking about it at WxWM. Thanks for your interest thus far. Stick with us, it’s just getting interesting.
Welcoming Jigar Patel to Birmingham
Posted by Jon Hickman in General & News on September 23rd, 2009
I met with Jigar Patel, one of our new intake, for a coffee this morning, and grabbed a quick chat with him about his plans for his year on the MA Social Media course.
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