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Actually, I struggled giving this post a title. I wanted to call it something like: ‘I wish local government communications people would stop self-aggrandising and give credit to their citizens instead’. There was lots of snow in and around Birmingham on Friday (Jan 18). There was a time when the resultant unfolding narrative of school closures and rush [...]

I actually have some pyjamas with Mr Grumpy on them. So it comes as some surprise to discover that former local councillor Martin Mullaney (Lib Dem, Moseley & Kings Heath) seems to know something about my nightwear of choice: @daveharte unfortunately you do have a reputation as a ‘Mr Grumpy blogger’. So this exchanges are [...]

Instead of my usual class today I took the students to an unconference (a first for almost all of them). This was the third outing of Hyperlocal Govcamp West Midlands which is “for people working or interested in Local Government in the West Midlands to get together for a few hours and talk about their [...]

The MA Social Media course I run at Birmingham City University has been accredited. It has a big tick from an organisation called Creative Skillset, a body that speaks on behalf of the media and creative industries in relation to skills issues. I’m most pleased about this. The course had its fair share of criticism [...]

I’ve been wondering exactly how many news stories UK Hyperlocal websites publish. Last month I had a meeting with Ofcom where I suggested that it might be a decent amount. So after a bit of research, outlined below, it looks like there is a news story published on a Hyperlocal website every three two minutes*. Here’s [...]

Here’s a podcast I put together from a conference I chaired today called ‘Social Media in the Public Sector‘. The students on the MA Social Media degree I lead had been doing podcasts last week (ably taught by Caroline Beavon) so I thought I best join in the fun. The conference was very much of [...]

 Social Media in the Public Sector [00:17:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Quite a while back now I used to participate in an informal gathering at my University called ‘Creative Industries Book Club‘. It was at a time when I was seconded elsewhere and wasn’t really part of the academic set up so it came as light relief to be discussing ideas rather than business cases. The [...]

I’ll try not to go on about it too much but as a follow-up to my previous post (about Teaching Social Media) I thought I’d share a video that one of my distance learning students put together as part of his engagement with the MA Social Media. I share it because it’s a good example [...]