This blog is one
This blog is one today. I started a year ago in order to consolidate some of the writing I was doing in various places around the ‘net. Suffice to say that’s happened. Or rather, I’ve ignored the other spaces and just write here instead.
My stats indicate I’m updating this space regularly enough (176 posts = twice a week) and getting a modest amount of comments (408 in total, about two per post). I have no idea what a good measure is for traffic but feedburner tells me I have about 100 subscribers to my RSS feed and 20 people subscribe via email. I was averaging about 30 unique visitors a day although lately (and especially since Sunday’s London Marathon) that’s jumped to circa 150-200 visitors a day all looking for information on this year’s Birmingham half-marathon. You’re all very welcome, do take a look around.
The top five posts that best represent what I hope this blog is about are below:
My Long Lost Family
On finding a whole new branch of my family. A podcast I made that I still struggle to listen to this without welling up. Some great Irish accents here.
Social Media’s Hidden Legacy
On Birmingham’s social media scene and what it says about the city.
Getting Birmingham Businesses Online
On what I do for work and how I’m trying to think it through.
Allotment Year One
On the stuff we grow in our allotment patch
Tour of Bournville
A series of posts on running with my clubmates at Bournville Harriers.
Thanks for all your contributions over the past year – Birmingham is a good place to be blogging in and about; a really strong sense of community. Hope you’ll stick with it as I enter year two.
(pic monroe’s dragonfly)
Links for April 25th through April 28th
Some links for you:
- Is social media marketing relevant to UK design and architecture companies? « – It turns out the short answer is yes. Useful rundown of benefits of using social media for this sector. Architecture is one of the two biggest components of Birmingham's Creative Industries (along with software). Hat-tip Lorna Parsons of Bryant Priest Newman
- A Birmingham scene – Multipack – Great discussion on whether Birmingham has a viable web development scene. Thoughtful contributions all round.
- Taking the Pain Out of Finding a Placement | Media Talent Bank – Media Talent Bank launches a section for placements. A really useful idea, especially given many students will opt for such placements in the summer while they wait for real work to pick up. BUT: this info shouldn't be behind a log-in section should it? Let's put it in an RSS feed and have it on the front page of Created in Birmingham. It would sit nicely beside the job vacancies info on CiB. I'm not sure what Media Talent Bank gains by making people log in.
- Twitter sucks and so do you. Probably – Rory Reid, Computing Expert – Technology Blog at CNET UK – From Febrauary but hadn't noticed this before: "Finally, Twitter is fast becoming the tech equivalent of a tabloid newspaper or celebrity gossip rag. There's no harm in that, people can read what they like. The problem is that genuinely intelligent friends of mine — people who scoff at OK!, Hello! and any other publication whose title ends in an exclamation mark — have begun following stars on Twitter, as if it's somehow different to following their antics in the gossip pages." Hat-tip Brian Homer.
- D’log :: blogging since 2000 » £44.5m boost to UK arts funding – D'log with a detailed run-down of the arts funding boost/cut – I can't keep up!
- £4m funding cut for Arts Council | Created in Birmingham – CiB picks up on the cuts to DCMS and their impact on the Arts Council. No word as yet on the impact on the West Midlands. RFOs will be unaffected it seems. Any more acronyms you need me to fit in…?
- Extenuating Circumstances – Digital Britain “Position Paper” – "A possibly idealistic, unrealistic but heartfelt position on the Digital Britain interim report in the style of a blog post. Bluntly: this is quite raw." Excellent post with some useful comments developing.
- Birmingham Forum – Indepth | THE DRUM – The following Birmingham marketing agency heads gathered to discuss the recession. Makes for interesting reading:
Dean Lovett, chief executive, McCann Erickson Birmingham
Paul Bramwell, managing director, Brilliant Media Birmingham
Steve Price, partner, Unsuitable/One Black Bear
Ollie Purdom, director, Pitch Consultants
Julia Willoughby, chief executive, Willoughby PR
Jacqui Lennon, managing director, WAA
Andy Walton, managing director, Golley Slater
John White, managing director, Madison Soho
Best Lunchtime Run Ever
View Lunchtime run in a larger map
As I continue to plod my way through Edinburgh Marathon training I’ve taken to doing a bit of running at lunchtimes (now that I at last work somewhere with shower facilities). I thought it worth sharing the route with you as it’s a fantastic, popular, traffic-free run with a few interesting sights along the way.
The start could be from anywhere in the city centre or Jewellery Quarter but, as the map indicates, I start from the B1 building opposite Spring Hill library. I enter the canal near Summer Row and then proceed towards the National Indoor Arena. You could cross here and continue down the Birmingham and Worcester canal but better by far to head up the Birmingham Mainline canal, the M6 motorway of the West Midlands canal system.
I say that because it’s dead straight, very wide and with a towpath on both sides. And it’s full of lunchtime runners. Most just go up and down but I do a loop round the Soho loop. This runs at the back of the prison and then comes out again on the Mainline canal where you can head straight back to base. The straightness of the canal really lends itself to some short sprinting if you’re so inclined. There are several bridges so it’s worth trying to push hard between them and then recover to the next, repeating until you run out of bridges.
In total the run is just over 5 miles. It would make a pleasant enough walk as well. If anyone fancies coming along with me one lunchtime just ask.
Links for April 21st through April 24th
Some links for you:
- Emily Bell: Channel 4’s quiet success story – "We can hope that over the coming months of horse trading over public service futures, the 4iP implementation is seen not as a potential saviour for C4, but as the kind of funding distribution for new content-driven services that enriches the cultural landscape."
- From Jamaica Row – Rebirth of the Bullring | Media Enterprise – Rachel Jenkins on the MA Media Enterprise does a bit of networking by visiting an exhibition of Pogus Caesar's work in Hockley. Worth a flick through this site as it also has quite a few useful profiles of the media types that come and visit the students.
- 4iP | Who is Accountable? Answers of a 4iP Proposal Form Please. – Looking for: "Ideas which are native to digital networks and help to enable an eco-system in which we help turn government, national and local, inside out and allow people not just to engage but to challenge and change."
- Birmingham Recycled Episode 3: Dave Harte : Birmingham Recycled – A podcast with me by some students at Birmingham City University. The site they're put together, Birmingham Recycled is really rather good as a round-up of various bits of green news around the city.
Links for April 16th through April 17th
Some links for you:
- Media Talent Bank | Tales of the Times – Graphic Design Freelancer Russell Hall shares his first-hand experiences of the current recession.
- Digital Marketing Masterclass – Eventbrite – Tuesday, May 12, 2009 from 7:00 AM – 10:00 AM. Event put on by Fullrange Media at Fazeley Studios. £99
- E-business adoption in the West Midlands 2008 « West Midlands Regional Observatory – Really interesting survey on adoption of IT by businesses in the West Midlands. Birmingham trailing it seems.
- Birmingham Central: Lack of investment in City's investment service? – "Locate in Birmingham needs to be banging the drum loudly for the city and with a large creative sector we need to be selling it in a way that shows we are a 21st century creative city."
Going Green presentation
On Saturday I presented my experience of being part of the Act on CO2 People Power campaign to a group of web development types who meet under the Multipack banner. The group have been meeting for about three years I think but recently have combined their informal meetings with a ‘Multipack Presents’ element. This month’s was called Going Green and I volunteered to talk about my experiences using a smart electricity meter and about what it felt like to be part of a PR campaign.
It was a fun hour with a nice bunch of people. They have beer and food! It was hosted at the rather nice studios of One Black Bear in Fazeley Studios.
My slides are below but if you need to hear what I was blabbing on about there’s a video also (bit dark though).
Links for April 14th through April 16th
Some links for you:
- 383 Project » BBC White City Interior Project – Fantastic write-up of 383 Project's interior design work with the BBC. More companies should be doing this kind of write-up – it's what a blog is for. A good read for design students as well I would have thought.
- Better ways to share information digitally « Observations – "The Observatory’s Population & Society Group is planning a seminar in the summer to investigate and discuss how research organisations in the West Midlands can get better at sharing information digitally. Do you have any thoughts on this?"
- Just 2% of British businesses using Twitter, 6% blogging, web stats show | The Blog Herald – "According to the latest web analysis from WebTrends, just two per cent (one in fifty) businesses in the UK are using Twitter for marketing, while six per cent are blogging or podcasting." – these figures sound good to me.
- BBC NEWS | Technology | Inside Games: Codemasters – Profile of Leamington based games company – Codemasters
Links for April 8th through April 14th
Some links for you:
- LDV blog hailed a communications success – Birmingham Post – Creative industries – Of course this story completely fails to actually include a link to said LDV blog which is: http://blog.ldv.com
- Councils back social media drive – “‘Tweety Hall’ will allow people to track their local councils and councillors in real time, and to find and follow them, or invite them to get involved in social media if they’re not already doing so.”
- Essential reading on digital engagement policy — Digital Engagement – Useful reading list of relevant government docs informing the digital engagement agenda.