I’ve spent a lot of time developing the site and defining the brand over the summer, it’s still very much in development. In fact, one of the main advantages of working with Shambala was that they were open to new ideas and willing to help us develop, but naturally there was a degree of reciprocation with this relationship.

Shambala suggested Mashed Festivals (MF) offered media training to teenagers and taught them how to produce online content using mobile techniques. I wasn’t too keen to do this in the beginning as I wanted content on the MF site to be professionally captured from a team of journalists with different expertise. The best stuff for the site would be produced by my core team which would set the bench mark for the quality of the user generated content (UGC) – I was concerned the teenage training element would devalue this.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. With the cooperation of Shambala we sent out an invitation to all teen ticket members and cherry picked a small team of six girls and boys who were enthusiastic and talented to boot who became the MF Press Gang. Their final output which comprised 40 stories on the mobile optimised microsite is of such a high standard that I’m now moving away from the idea of curating unfocussed UGC altogether.

I still kept my professional core team who had a breadth of experience but were able to specialise and train in certain areas. I offered advice and assistance in photography, Juliet Spare advised on audio and Jon Kennard’s expertise lie in film and video. Caroline Beavon was in control of the process of collation and uploading.

Jon Kennard details his experience training for video with Hannah Lepper and Kyle Douglas here.

Both Iona Berry and Holly Game were studying photography at college. Iona brought her own camera and was pretty self-sufficient. We provided Holly with a camera and she needed a little more encouragement and guidance. I offered advice on what looked good online and stressed the importance of speed rather than spending days filtering and treating photos.

None of the teenagers had any experience in audio but wanted to learn so Juliet trained two members of the press gang. Josephine Gilbert learnt very quickly delivering perceptive interviews.

Piers Baker experimented with different media and with contributions from his girlfriend Phoebe and other members, delivered some excellent self contained packages.

Some of the best material came when the gang teamed up to combine skills. My favourite examples being the slideshows. Which included contributions from all the group.

My favourite experience was taking the Press Gang backstage for the first time, showing them how to gain access, secure interviews and find the person in charge! This resulted in a wealth of material and a superb interview.

I was very pleased the Press Gang didn’t just stick to one skill. Being competent in a few different fields is important for journalism overall these days and vital for Online Journalism.

This is the opposite of Foust and Hathaway:

“Not only can such interactivity increase the community’s interest in topics of importance, it also can increase the particular news organization’s standing in the community by providing a sense that it listens to its audience”(2005,13)

This was also confirmed with a post by Robin PC on the Help Me Investigate site. I realised that in pursuit of mashing-up available data, I had lost focus on why I was making the map. I responded to Robin’s post saying his comments would help my feature.

I took stock of my actions and put a summing up post on the HashBrum site. The purpose of this was to allow the public to see how I had reacted to various comments and what my plans were. I had to redesign the first post so that people visiting the site could navigate their own way.

“Because the Web can be either linear or non-linear, web journalists will have to understand both concepts and be skilled enough to present information in both forms.” (Stovall, Allyn and Bacon 2004, 42)

I cut the original post down to encourage contribution to the map still and provided a logo-link to SMIDSY.

“For the Web journalist it needs to be lateral. The journalist needs to ask ‘How can the story expand?’”(Stovall, Allyn and Bacon 2004, 63)

I decided to start gathering my own data and humanised my story by getting on my own bike, inspired by a feature in Guardian Society. I realised that an old bike that I inherited was perfectly adapted to snow conditions for reasons explained in the Audioboo. I was also playing with new technology having ordered an Android phone after Christmas. I attempted to take pictures from the journey and send them whilst cycling mobile via Pixelpipe and Tweetorium.

The idea was to not only give the story a human angle but also peak peoples’ interest. I teased Snow Bike on Twitter with links that lead to The Boo or pictures. In its raw form, this multimedia project lived on my blog. My bitly rating were pushed up as other people on Twitter including @benjibrum and @kevingilmartin retweeted it. I also commented on the Guardian website which produced traffic for my site as well.

I installed an application onto my phone called Sportsrunner which tracked my journeys. Although it was a sporting device that highlighted speed trials and personal bests, it did allow for comment notes section. I was therefore able to write a little about each track and mention any hazards I saw. I then transposed these hazards onto the map. I put up a post on HashBrum and also encouraged people on the Birmingham Cycling site to contribute if they could get the technology.

I bought a Kodak Zi8 and decided that I would test Robin PC’s claim that the best way to avoid an accident is make sure you are seen by motorists. He suggested cycling further away from the kerb, so I decided to put this to the test using a Flip Mount on my handlebars. I was on Snow Bike that day, which gave me something extra to talk about. I then edited the footage down and published it on YouTube. I also commented on a Podnosh post on Flip cameras which again drove some traffic to this site where I displayed the story alongside a map tracking my progress using VideMap. The story was fragmenting across platforms and I liked it.

“News, in other words, is no longer made up simply of a complete, self contained news item, but breaks into a series of primary reports (for example of updates as they unfold, or of various news items written from different perspectives) background information, discussion, commentary, and related and further information.” (Bruns 2005 218)

I tied various multimedia parts together on another HashBrum post, moving from mapping the stats to tracking my progress. I grabbed another perspective on safety and the kerb rule when I got my bike chain fixed. I then compiled my Robin PC footage together.

Find out how I finished my story but can’t stop pedalling in part three.

If you click through to Details beside each track, you can see I’ve written a short piece on each journey in my Notes section. These act as a summing up of my journey including any safety concerns I see. If you’d like to add your routes and comment on your experiences (and you have an Android or Smartphone) then this App should cost around £5.99. Once you’ve got it if you could let me know below and befriend me.

I’m also hoping to export this data and it will inform my next map based on experiences of people road cycling in Birmingham.

Find out about my first cyclemap here.