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By dandavies23, April 18, 2010 3:05 pm

Following a meeting with Auro and Clément at the beginning of April, I managed to sort some dates to come down and cover activities at Village Underground. Before I came down it was important to have some social media networks more sorted.

Village Underground now has a Twitter Account, a YouTube channel, and a Flickr site. I’ve also been overhauling their Facebook and Myspace presence. At the simplest level this has meant using all the logos and backgrounds so branding is carried across all elements. It also means effectively pulling content from elsewhere and thinking about re-distribution.

Continue reading 'Village Underground’s Social Life'»

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By dandavies23, January 8, 2010 10:43 am

I’m currently working on game based around a kind-of psycho-geographic version of the ’six degrees of seperation’ idea. Basically, the game encourages players to (tenuously) link together Birmingham facts and myths. Here’s a version played on Google Wave before Christmas:

It was quite fun but as you can see it collapsed when we used Wave to discuss ‘the process’ of the game. And I couldn’t engage enough people in Wave to make it worthwhile.

It might be more appropriate to run it in Twitter but I think before I jump on there I want to work out how to get people understand how the game runs. I was thinking I might put some rules up either here or on #Brum site.

If it has a click through Wordpress page to I might be able to take the game to a second stage and prove or disprove the facts or myths, offering more background and links away from the focus of gameplay. This might be the journalism but the degree of proven truthfulness could be used as a points system of sorts.

Well there’s still a lot to work through… Would love to hear what you think of this idea, or if you have any strong opinions on the following questions then speak your brains below…

Is Twitter the best place to run the game?
Should I be wary of too many rules?
Any ideas how I can get more folk involved?
Should there be a live geo-tagging picture version – and might that get you extra points?
Is there anything we can use to graphically show the facts so it represents a load of spaghetti links?

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By admin, October 26, 2009 8:21 am

“Cycling to MAPS with new bike lights”

Was the first Tweet I sent out as I cycled up to Hare And Hounds, Kings Heath last night. My father-in-law had come round in the daytime and fixed my bike whilst I locked myself away in the study trying to get my head around Pixel Pipe. The up-hill pedal to the venue was an absolute pleasure. Nothing rattled for a change and I had brand new lights – one attached to my bike and another pinned to the strap of my camera bag – to guide my way.

I may have lost some of my cool by accidently leaving the camera bag flashing light on as I wandered up to the bar. But my mobile LED disco may have added further ambiance to Arc Vel’s superb set. The new solo project from the former (much missed) Grandscope member was aided by his own visuals, which according to another former Grandscope member Hydey, had taken a week and a half to pull together.

“Gutted only caught last song by Tour Eifel, quality electronica with home made visuals”

Arc Vel should have been second not first as the next act didn’t really compliment the shoegazing frug of Maps instead being a falsetto voiced navel-gazing guitar player called It Hugs Back… hmmm.

“Maps kick off with It Will Find You followed by Papercuts”

A strong start indeed, James Chapman has now employed ‘a Dane’ to add extra texture on tour. It sounds superb and the new material swims happily alongside the old. About five songs in Chapman speaks and it’s then that I realise that he’s pretty ratted.

“Maps (chap)man is smashed but septembers provide more than ample support” I Tweet.

And the fact I didn’t spot that predictive text made that message partially incoherent indicates my state too. It’s a funny situation actually that someone like Ozzy Osbourne can spend the best part of his music career off his face but live electronic acts should always be sober and serious whilst they prod away at a laptop. I blame Kraftwerk.

“At some point in the near future you’re going to choose between another pint or an album from Merch. How depressing is that?”

I Tweet before I head to the Merch store and find out that the new album is a tenner. It is signed though, and quality is worth paying for. Besides my freewheeling downhill cycle saves forking out on a taxi and is about 30 times more enjoyable.

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By admin, October 14, 2009 3:25 am

Suggested Logo by Alex Gamela

This is our first real meeting for#Brum a new hyperlocal news site for central Birmingham. We’re still very much in development at the moment and we’d really like involvement, help and suggestions from non-MA Online Journalism students.

It would be great if you could comment on the conversation we had, or you can also track and make suggestions at our #Brum Wiki

You can right click ’save target’ for the MP3 here or you can listen to it below.

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BTW We got off to a poor start by not recording the first five minutes!

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By dandavies23, October 4, 2009 9:19 pm

I recently headed off to the BBC to hear Nic Newman present his paper ‘The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism’. They recorded the session so you might want to keep an eye on Reuters site for a better recording.

You can right click ’save target’ for the MP3 here or listen below.

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The discussion took place in the chamber facing a picture of Lord Reith which the chair points out at the beginning. Some notes and live twittering to accompany this talk can be found at Caroline Beavon’s site. This is the post from Chiara Bolognini.