This is the first time in three months that I have decided to blog. There are many reasons for this but one of the most important is a rapid life transition. This site was specifically set up to track my progress through my MA in Online Journalism. So for a while after I found that I had essentially blogged myself into a corner.
Things have also changed for me geographically too. The week I submitted my final dissertation, my wife and I loaded several vanloads and transported ourselves (and an obscene amount of CD’s) to Manchester.
Of course, the process of gaining employment has been slower. I made a conscious decision whilst I was studying that I would stick to freelance for a while, do enough of that to keep me in reasonable comfort and only go for staff jobs that I really want. My wife often reminds me that this is a somewhat privileged place to be in.
So, I’ve been trying to find my footing in the Digital Manchester community – attending Social Media Surgeries and Cafes which have evolved in quite a different way to the Birmingham versions. These differences I will certainly mention and discuss in later posts. In the last few weeks I have begun to start working with the good people of Inside The M60. My progress here will also be written about soon.
I have carried work up North with me. The Birmingham City of Culture Social Media work continues not least because we engaged a sizeable amount of people during the campaign and it would be a shame to ‘disengage’ them. The Facebook and Twitter still continue to promote and celebrate the cultural delights that the city has to offer – large and small.
I’ve also begun to preach a bit of what I’ve practiced with a Visiting Lecturer role at Birmingham City University helping first year BA students understand the basics of journalism. Most recently I have also started to teach MA Magazine Journalism students of City University London how to complement their final printed production with an online presence.
If I’m honest, the most interesting full time jobs still seem to be in London and if I do find the right job maybe we’ll pack up and migrate there. For the moment however any London work is achievable due to my sister-in-law and Village Underground who have agreed to offer me a bed as long as I promise to occasionally “do something amazing” for them.
These current commutes have one definite advantage: long train journeys give me time to write. So at least once a week from now onwards I intend to reflect on what I’ve been doing. Track 23 is now on the rails…
On Monday Inside Out West Midlands broadcast their report on cycling around Birmingham which featured talking about my Birmingham Cycle Data site but also getting on my bike and checking out facilities for cyclists around the city. This road footage was inspired by my previous excursions with a Flip.
The BBC filming was an invaluable experience but for me it highlighted the difference between how you can allow a story to develop online compared with needing to have elements pre-defined when you start filming. My challenge for Inside Out was based around a FOI request and inquiry with City Council’s press office as to the amount of cycling improvements that had been made in the last few years. I then hit the road to see how the improvements had been installed.
Obviously, filming time is precious and to have a crew follow me round each improvement would have been expensive. The Inside Out package is about the state of cycling in the city, so just me peddling on my bike would be wouldn’t have answered the general question ‘Is Birmingham safe for cyclists?’. Instead this is a montage sequence with some on the spot conclusions at the end then plenty of context and ‘right to reply’ by the council.
I was pleased to see that my Belgrave Middleway coverage was used as a way to introduce but something my online footage allowed me to do was show the extent of the law breaking and to back that up with stats.
Within the confines of the TV programme you get an impression of what happened but you don’t get an in depth investigation. Furthermore, the point of Birmingham Cycle Data was to explore many cycle stories that affect Birmingham cyclists. It mainly using data visualisation to display how a question such as ‘Is Birmingham safe for cyclists’ is a complex one that can’t have a simple answer.
I’d love the opportunity to now take the council cycling improvements story to my website. Ideally I’d display them on a map to visualise the scale of what the council has installed and where. Maybe even gather footage and evidence of me and others tackling them. This in conjunction with the larger exposure of BBC 1 programme would build up a more detailed picture of cycling improvements in the city and make suggestions how they could be further improved.
For now though you’ll have to just put up with my talking ‘helmet hair’ head.
Putting the Created In Birmingham shop in the Bullring in the centre of Birmingham means that we’re proud of our art.
A bug bear I have about Birmingham is creativity occurs on the fringes of the city, and often this can make us appear self deprecating. It’s almost as if were embarrassed by our artists so we push them to the outskirts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m behind the redefined Eastside. In fact I wrote the brochure’s main copy. But where I struggled was working out how to make art accessible and appealing in description, without appearing to trivialise or belittle ‘the art.’ A picture paints a thousand words, I just wanted people to visit Eastside and make up their own minds. Hopefully, many will this weekend.
The great thing about CiB shop’s centrality is that people can check it out, with very little effort. If this shop was based in Digbeth, for example, they wouldn’t have a fraction of the footfall. Take a look at this large and diverse mix of people in this 30 minute sample (recorded by me at 11am on a Thursday).
Okay, Pete Ashton in particular acknowledges it’s “in a shopping centre” so there are a few pieces that might be too leftfield for this consumer-centric audience. But its strong centre-stage presence is great exposure for all artists adorning the walls and shelves. And intrinsically Created In Birmingham features independent artists creating original pieces.
Besides wouldn’t it be great if when the City Of Culture judges get off the train and the first place they pop into is this shop?
I’m fascinated by the capabilities of Geolocation so I decided as part of my multimedia portfolio I’d play around with some audio which was recorded on a Home Of Metal tour, hosted by Chris Phipps in March 2009.
For my MA Online Journalism assignment I chose to focus cycling, I tried to map some cycle data but then realised I was losing my audience. In the second phase I got back on track but still wanted to do good with my data. Especially when I noticed that my Birmingham Cycle Map had received over 1,100 hits.
If you’re a Hashbrum subscriber, or are a regular reader of this blog you may have noticed a recent obsession with cycling. The reason for this is it formed part of my MA Online Journalism Newsgathering Experimental assignment. Here it is, split into three parts.
Robin PC contacted me through Help Me Investigate. Robin suggested I shouldn’t just look at mapping data. He commented ‘The safe way to cycle is to “get in the way”’. I put Robin’s advice to the test, see how I got on:
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?
Just before Christmas, I was invited by Capsule to talk at their first KMKY event in association with Created In Birmingham.
I’ve just found the audio on my dictaphone today so thought I’d put my talk online for you. You can right click ‘save target’ for the MP3 here or you can listen to it below.
I was first on so Jon Bounds introduces the concept at the beginning.
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In addition to introducing ourselves we were asked ‘What would you do with a space like Vivid’. I decided what Birmingham was missing most of all was an informal meeting place for artistic creativity to flow. As it turned out there is one, but the fact that I didn’t know about it until the talk probably says more about the success of this ‘informal chit-chat’ night.
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