Birmingham Post column - sporting data
Sometimes the column I write for the Birmingham Post materialises online - other times it doesn’t. When it doesn’t (not sure why it doesn’t) I’ll reproduce here (although newspaper columns are such a different tone to posts on blogs).
This one was a version of the presentation I gave at wxwm2 the other week:
‘Mileage data to Inspire’
Published Monday 6th July (hey, that was my birthday!).
“Years that end in odd numbers usually make for dull sporting summers as the Olympics and the major footballing tournaments only occupy the even numbered years. However, as well as annual tournaments such as Wimbledon we do have a World Athletics Championship and The Ashes to look forward to this summer.
But given how concerned the government are with obesity levels it’ll take more than the sight of a group of blokes throwing balls at each other to persuade a nation of sport-loving couch potatoes to do something about their own health and wellbeing
All the data tells us we’re fat and we’re getting fatter. In fact not only are we fat but our kids are fat and even our pets are fat. Given the state of the economy the only thing that isn’t fat is our wallets. So what’s the approach taken to deal with this? It’s simple – an advertising campaign to remind us how fat we are that goes out of its way to blame computer games and television as the main culprits.
I’m not denying that the Change for Life campaign hasn’t persuaded some people to get off their backside but there’s so much already happening that we could celebrate rather than just play a familiar blame game. Take running for example. On any random weekend there are about 50 organised amateur races happening around the UK with about 50,000 - 100,000 runners taking part. In total that’s up to a million kilometres covered. And that doesn’t even include all the people just running by themselves for training or those running around Sunday league football pitches.
Many runners use GPS watches or other devices to track routes and record mileage. Now imagine all that mileage data gathered on a single map – a map that instead of sending a dour message about our laziness would celebrate ordinary citizens’ everyday sporting activity. What a powerful message that would be that might inspire others to join in.
We’ve got an Olympics coming up in 2012 and so far the only mass participation angle seems to be focused around the Cultural Olympiad. Nothing wrong with that but amateur sport is something that gets overlooked too often. It’s a shame as it’s got the mass participation thing down to a tee in a way the arts can only dream about.
So why not badge up Sunday morning football games as ‘inspired by 2012’. Have every jogger blog, tweet or map their runs as part of a national celebration of sporting engagement leading up to 2012. A digital campaign that visualises mass participation could inspire us all to get off our backsides.”
Towards a Centre for Excellence in Digital Participation
So I tweeted an idea when I got to this part of the Digital Britain report on ‘Getting Britain Online’:
“[it will] will require provision of appropriate support including outreach, skills training, and demonstration of how people can get the most out of the digital revolution, delivered through tailored, local, community-based programmes building on existing networks”
And I thought that’s something I’m always being told Birmingham is ahead of the game at. Take a read of Be Vocal - there you’ll find plenty of examples of tailored, local, community-based. Why doesn’t Birmingham take a lead here, put a marker down? Not to presume a superiority and show everyone how it’s done but, just like the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice does (to which I have a connection and think is fab), provide a resource point for excellence to be nurtured, developed and made useful. That’s why it’s a centre FOR, rather than OF.
Now if you read Digital Britain it talks about Digital Participation in quite a specific way (and in doing so casts aside the much used term ‘media literacy‘). Participation would in effect be the responsibility of an organisation doing the equivalent job of Digital TV switchover and be charged with: “coordination and a clear and co-ordinated series of messages about the benefits [for being online]“. I’m thinking it’s gonna be a bit trickier than Digital TV switch-off which has an extremely compelling offer at its heart (”you won’t be able to watch TV as we’re going to switch off the analogue signal you know and love”).
So the ‘Centre’ wouldn’t be interested in leading any ad campaigns for getting online. Rather, it’s about thinking through that participation bit. Participate in what? with whom? to what end? I think it would do the following:
- Identify best practice
- Nurture digital champions
- R & D new engagement tools
- Outline useful strategies for engagement
- Show how this stuff works on the ground
It would be one way in which those charged with the participation stuff as Digital Britain describes it knew what good stuff looked like. It would give them insight, new tools, compelling stories.
In my mind it has a front door with a receptionist and long opening hours. I’m prepared to be swayed on that one but I’m not sure it should be tucked away on a campus (but I do think universities have a role here - at least one thinks this area worthy of study). Birmingham needs a big front door to digital participation or it does up until the point we’ve got everyone online and participating.
So I’ve had enough people now say, yeah, sounds interesting, let’s talk about it. I now plan to continue talking about it in a way that suggests everybody else has already agreed to it and it’ll be here before you know it. If you see me in the street I might mention it.
Oh and funding - not a clue at present but we’ll see….
Thoughts?
My Dad is definitely not on Twitter
About a year ago I was talking to some work colleagues about an event that was taking place about social media. “It’ll be full of the usual suspects,” I said. “But Dave,” they responded, “you are a usual suspect.”
I suspect that’s how I’m viewed - a usual suspect. Truth is I don’t actually attend that many events. Birmingham Social Media Cafe maybe from time to time but little else. In the last few weeks though I’m aware that I seem to be all over the place. I pitched up at West by West Midlands 2, I chaired a debate about cinema exhibition and most recently I’ve been explaining why my poor dead Dad (30 years gone this year) isn’t on twitter.
You can read elsewhere about the mindmap idea behind the event ‘My Dad’s on Twitter but he doesn’t know why’ at Fazeley Studios in Digbeth. I think I gave a rather dour speech about how Twitter seems to come with a whole set of unwritten rules that puts newcomers off and can be intimidating for organisations. Tolerance towards people’s mistakes was my request. Some useful points were made from the audience. One of them took me to task about my argument that digital doesn’t archive as well as analogue. Digital captures conversation, was his response and what a rich seam to mine that would prove to future historians.
The second half of my talk touched on the Internet of Things. No-one really picked up on this despite my fab example of GusandPenny, the tweeting cat flap. My argument here is simple. Once Twitter gets filled up with objects, rather than people, we’ll realise how dull we are in comparison and how our unwritten rules were naive at best. A Twitter of Things is coming I declared - I’m not sure anyone believed me.
An enjoyable evening overall, some sharp questions from an engaged audience and some drawing to boot.
Fazeley Studios Digital Festival continues throughout next week.
Fine but show me how the web can solve ‘real’ issues.
There’s a great story over at Pete Ashton’s blog about how his post on the use of street advertising by the Birmingham Rep got a response from the senior staff involved (of both the Rep and the advertising company) and resulted in a solution, an apology and even a donation to charity.
Now the title of this blog post is more to bait comment than suggest that the defacing of a work of art isn’t a ‘real’ issue but I think it might be less of an issue than the systematic decay of the streets where my Mom lives in Alum Rock. I did three things to try to get some movement on this. I wrote to the local councillors for the constituency, I made a request through fixmystreet.com and I blogged about it. The letter got a response to say it was being looked at, the fixmystreet.com request got acknowledged by streatcleansing@birmingham.gov.uk very quickly but with no progress two months later and the blog post got a single comment.
So what’s going on here? How do I work the web in such a way that produces the kind of swift action we saw over the Rep’s adverts?
wxwm2 - half a review
It’s only half a review of West by West Midlands 2 (hosted in the excellent Spotted Dog in Digbeth/Highgate) as I ducked out at about 9pm. But going by what I saw in the first half it gladdens my heart that Birmingham is fast developing a knack for these self-organising, quick and dirty events that help develop a strong bond amongst those with an interest in social media and its applications.
It’s appropriate that the only pic I could find of my contribution to the evening is the above blurry shot by Jon Bounds. For a start I’d rather not see a clearer picture of me wearing a running headband, singlet and, as you can see, my special running pants. Secondly, the evening was by its nature hazy and meandering, in fact that was its strength. The image captures the spirit then, and leaves the detail to linger in the memory.
But enough of the semiotic deconstruction. I pitched in with an idea for a Birmingham Un-marathon to celebrate mass sporting participation but not before instructing the crowd through some pre-race warm-up exercises. Went down well I think. Next up was Jon Hickman who reflected on the reactions to his MA Social Media proposed at the last wxwm but then expanded to discuss his worries over the relative cosiness of Birmingham’s social media scene. A randomly chosen question from the audience about the visibility of women in the social media scene produced a lively discussion which suggested that we shouldn’t get too wound up by the fact that men and women may talk about different things online but the underlying issues of equality and representation still need to be addressed.
The final talk I saw was from Dynamic Arts in relation to their future plans for Rhubarb Radio (who were covering the whole evening live). Some exciting developments there it seems, particularly around mobile applications and an expansion to FM.
There I left it, hopefully someone else will review part two. I had a blast but my non-social media life beckoned and I had to go water the cabbages on the allotment. Thanks for having me.
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)