Watch the YouTube video

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This documentary of one man’s journey into the derelict Birmingham Battery building is one of the best YouTube films I’ve ever seen.  Not because of the production skills of creators Living Proof Films (great though they are), but because of the quite emotional narration.  You really do see inside the iconic building from the photographer’s perspective:

You begin to see the building as having a life of its own.  It has characteristics and charms, like a person does.  I must admit, I felt an attraction to the Birmingham Battery.

Although you do learn some things about the building whilst watching it, you are not left feeling you’ve been told all its facts and figures, instead you go on quite an intimate journey with the narrator and learn how he feels about the space.

Expressing a personal preference like this is far from a bad thing – buildings and spaces are not only special because of their architectural or scenic merit, they become special to people because of the responses they illicit or what happens within them.

For instance, many born and bred Brummies I know get quite nostalgic when walking past Snobs nightclub, a nondescript building which contained many a night of youthful abandon and coming-of-age episodes.  During a recent pub conversation no sooner had one person mentioned Snobs than everyone else enthusiastically chipped in with their stories.  It ended with plans to take a group trip there, to share more memories that walking through the nightclub might bring to mind. That’s the great thing about expressing your reactions to a shared space like that – others will be compelled to join in the conversation with their own tales about it.

Jon Bounds highlighted the importance of sharing personal stories about spaces when he created his Campaign for Real Heritage blue stickers, encouraging us to see that what we feel is important about a place holds as much value as the National Trust’s seal of approval, and should be duly marked:

‘…the real people have history too. It deserves recognition, YOUR history deserves a blue plaque.’

Ben Whitehouse spoke of creating a tour of alternative Birmingham landmarks, asking for suggestions of stories rather than traditional tourist spots.

I’d like to put together a list of places around the city (preferably the city centre) that hold personal resonances for people who’ve visited Birmingham, people who live, work and play here.

I’ve been running my own hyperlocal blog Digbeth is Good for just over a year now and, although it initially just contained local news, events and reviews, as my confidence grew it also unashamedly became my own personal journey through the area.  But I found readers reacted rather well to this, sometimes responding in kind with their own take on things.  For instance, an early post about Guardoggy prompted Bobbie Gardner to comment with her encounters of the dog.

So don’t be afraid to get personal with your site, and convey to readers your own reaction to the area as well as news and infomation about it.  You never know, it may encourage readers to chip in with their own stories and your site could become more than an information hub, it could be a place where a community feels free to express itself.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho0MYPW9YUs]

This documentary of one man’s journey into the derelict Birmingham Battery building is one of the best YouTube films I’ve ever seen.  Not because of the production skills of creators Living Proof Films (great though they are), but because of the quite emotional narration.  You really do see inside the iconic building from the photographer’s perspective:

You begin to see the building as having a life of its own.  It has characteristics and charms, like a person does.  I must admit, I felt an attraction to the Birmingham Battery.

Although you do learn some things about the building whilst watching it, you are not left feeling you’ve been told all its facts and figures, instead you go on quite an intimate journey with the narrator and learn how he feels about the space.

Expressing a personal preference like this is far from a bad thing – buildings and spaces are not only special because of their architectural or scenic merit, they become special to people because of the responses they illicit or what happens within them.

For instance, many born and bred Brummies I know get quite nostalgic when walking past Snobs nightclub, a nondescript building which contained many a night of youthful abandon and coming-of-age episodes.  During a recent pub conversation no sooner had one person mentioned Snobs than everyone else enthusiastically chipped in with their stories.  It ended with plans to take a group trip there, to share more memories that walking through the nightclub might bring to mind. That’s the great thing about expressing your reactions to a shared space like that – others will be compelled to join in the conversation with their own tales about it.

Jon Bounds highlighted the importance of sharing personal stories about spaces when he created his Campaign for Real Heritage blue stickers, encouraging us to see that what we feel is important about a place holds as much value as the National Trust’s seal of approval, and should be duly marked:

‘…the real people have history too. It deserves recognition, YOUR history deserves a blue plaque.’

Ben Whitehouse spoke of creating a tour of alternative Birmingham landmarks, asking for suggestions of stories rather than traditional tourist spots.

I’d like to put together a list of places around the city (preferably the city centre) that hold personal resonances for people who’ve visited Birmingham, people who live, work and play here.

I’ve been running my own hyperlocal blog Digbeth is Good for just over a year now and, although it initially just contained local news, events and reviews, as my confidence grew it also unashamedly became my own personal journey through the area.  But I found readers reacted rather well to this, sometimes responding in kind with their own take on things.  For instance, an early post about Guardoggy prompted Bobbie Gardner to comment with her encounters of the dog.

So don’t be afraid to get personal with your site, and convey to readers your own reaction to the area as well as news and infomation about it.  You never know, it may encourage readers to chip in with their own stories and your site could become more than an information hub, it could be a place where a community feels free to express itself.

One of my favourite books at the moment is called Watching the English, by Kate Fox. In it she puts forward some very persuasive generalisations about how we use our gardens, including the observation that we will wait for months for an opportune moment to speak to our neighbours in their front gardens rather than knock on their front doors.  This is certainly true for me – memories of a stint selling Avon door-to-door still bring me out in a cold sweat – and it holds true in Stoke-on-Trent, right through to her other observation that except when they are serving as a neutral space to chat about the weather and that awkward planning application you put in, front gardens are for show only.

Anyway, it was looking for a more succint reference to these observations that I stumbled across a new seam of hyperlocal blogging in Britain: the garden blogs. Starting off with the Patient Gardener’s Weblog from Worcestershire, the bloggers have formed a clear community across the country and share delightful photos, drawings, questions and observations. A look through the Patient Gardener’s blogroll quickly takes you as far as California and Nova Scotia, but of course many of you will prefer sticking to England and the chance to peer into some luscious hidden back gardens and allotments. You can even follow the journey of a novice bee-keeper.

There’s always a bit of a perception that blogging is for computer geeks or wannabe politic pundits, but the ease of blogging, linking and adding photography means that there are plenty of communities sharing their passions for each other and the rest of the world. If you’re wondering whether this applies to your hobbies and interests, have a browse round Wordpress’s Showcase section or Google blog search. (example). ‘Passion-blogging’ is also a great place to start if you’re not sure you have anything interesting enough to blog about. Regular, enthusiastic, reflective and useful blogging will always find an audience, especially if you make the effort to put friendly feelers out to other bloggers through comments and links to posts you enjoy. And as the gorgeous gardening blogs show, there’s no such thing as too hyperlocal.

Pretty photos courtesy of the Flickr community and Flickriver.

One of my favourite books at the moment is called Watching the English, by Kate Fox. In it she puts forward some very persuasive generalisations about how we use our gardens, including the observation that we will wait for months for an opportune moment to speak to our neighbours in their front gardens rather than knock on their front doors.  This is certainly true for me – memories of a stint selling Avon door-to-door still bring me out in a cold sweat – and it holds true in Stoke-on-Trent, right through to her other observation that except when they are serving as a neutral space to chat about the weather and that awkward planning application you put in, front gardens are for show only.

Anyway, it was looking for a more succint reference to these observations that I stumbled across a new seam of hyperlocal blogging in Britain: the garden blogs. Starting off with the Patient Gardener’s Weblog from Worcestershire, the bloggers have formed a clear community across the country and share delightful photos, drawings, questions and observations. A look through the Patient Gardener’s blogroll quickly takes you as far as California and Nova Scotia, but of course many of you will prefer sticking to England and the chance to peer into some luscious hidden back gardens and allotments. You can even follow the journey of a novice bee-keeper.

There’s always a bit of a perception that blogging is for computer geeks or wannabe politic pundits, but the ease of blogging, linking and adding photography means that there are plenty of communities sharing their passions for each other and the rest of the world. If you’re wondering whether this applies to your hobbies and interests, have a browse round WordPress’s Showcase section or Google blog search. (example). ‘Passion-blogging’ is also a great place to start if you’re not sure you have anything interesting enough to blog about. Regular, enthusiastic, reflective and useful blogging will always find an audience, especially if you make the effort to put friendly feelers out to other bloggers through comments and links to posts you enjoy. And as the gorgeous gardening blogs show, there’s no such thing as too hyperlocal.

Pretty photos courtesy of the Flickr community and Flickriver.

For untutored online adventurers like myself, Google has always been the gateway to exciting things. I always wanted to publish my own writing and when I was growing up it involved carving out a career in journalism. That’s a load of work experience, a degree, a load more work experience and then, if you’re very lucky, landing a job where you’ll actually be able to write something you’re vaguely interested in (I did manage to do so for a few years before packing it in to try and earn a living a little closer than 250 miles from home). Blogging tools cut out all those years of toil in one fell swoop. All you need is time, computer access and you are your own editor.

Google’s LocalGov day was a great insight into how the engineers use their own tools. For the hyperlocal blogger this is really useful. I don’t know who you are or what you want to do, but chances are a few of these powerful tools will help you do it really easily – and, of course, for free.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are going to be holding the first Talk About Local Unconference in Stoke-on-Trent on Saturday 3rd October. We are proud to announce that the Unconference is being hosted by Staffordshire University Faculty of Arts, Media & Design in the film theatre which is a very short walk from the railway station.

Directions to the campus can be found here

Stoke is easily accessible from most rail routes, the M6 and even canal.

The conference is not for you to come and be comatised by web 2.0 marketeers telling you how you can monetize 24/365 relationships or transition viral ROI it is for real people, running real hyperlocal sites to network with people who are doing the same thing.

The thing people say to us most when we are talking about Talk About Local (and you may have noticed we love to talk about it!) is ‘I didn’t know anyone else was doing this’  so we are giving you the chance to meet up with all the other people who you didn’t know were doing the same as you!

The format is going to be Unconference, fun, relaxed and informal.    As well and the unconference event, we will be holding social media surgeries where you can come along and speak to friendly developers and experts to get advice about your site or how to fix that niggling problem you just can’t seem to get your head around.

The best bit is it’s free! Yes FREE!

But there is no such thing as a free lunch I hear you cry.

Well actually there is because we will even feed you during the day!

Please click HERE and fill in our very simple pre registration form and we’ll add you to our mailing list, as soon as we have the venue confirmed we’ll drop you a mail with all the details.

As part of our roll out for the Talk About Local project we are going to be running some taster sessions around the West Midlands.  The sessions will be an introduction in to setting up your own online blog.

The sesions will comprise of:

• An introduction to blogging
• How hyperlocal sites can help you communicate better in your community
• Using blogging as a platform to help with community action and getting your voice heard
• Blogging platforms
• Setting up a blog

If you are interested in learing more about blogging and how to empower yourself online then please fill in THIS FORM

All we need from you is your name, E-mail address and location, so we can arrange a suitable location with our delivery partners UK online centres.  We need about 10 people in one location to make the sessions viable and they are only open to individuals and community groups (corporate training can be arranged).

Once we have enough interest in one area we will arrange a suitable date to run the session.

Jon Bounds is part of Birmingham’s wonderfully creative  social media scene.  He runs Birmingham It’s Not Shit and played an important part in the outstanding repurposing of a dreary council consultation in Big City Talk.

We talked about how we could make small hyperlocal stories visible on the national scene by aggregating them into a single feed.  And reducing the search cost for a journalist or someone who is interested but not ‘from these parts’.  So Jon has used Yahoo pipes to create user-customisable feeds from Birmingham’s local sites by tagging and searching.  So if you want a feed about arts in Birmingham you just enter arts as your keyword.  Jon describes it on his blog and talks through the process so you can do it yourself.   It is a prototype, but very good – have a play here but read Jon’s explanation first.  Let Jon know how it could be improved or if you have seen a better way of aggregating local feeds.

Hannah Waldram, a journalism graduate who grew up in Bournville, Birmingham, has gone live with a hyperlocal site for her home town.  Bournville Village provides ‘The latest news, pics and chat from the Cadbury community’, filling a gap currently left open by traditional media:

Bournville has no local newspaper and little going for it on the web – and tons of advertisers who would love to have their services published to the local community. Seems like a sure fire hit? Well it takes time and energy to set up – and it’s only little old me working on it at the mo – albeit with a web of friendly and supportive bloggers in Birmingham and plenty of other hyperlocal experts to take advice from.

However, Hannah has found the time to build up an insightful community blog.  Bournville Village has not only given a local perspective to the story of gunshots in the traditionally peaceful village, which has received some coverage in the Birmingham Mail, but has also shed light on the smaller stories of concern to villagers, such as a pump installation in the Row Heath Park pond to save its fish.

Bournville Village has some quite useful aggregation, with RSS feeds of Twitter mentions and Flickr photos on the site to link villagers up to online activity about their area.  Hannah is also working to take the pressure off ‘only little old me’ by building up a team of authors with different voices and views, and has already found a first recruit in the shape of Birmingham blogger Dave Harte.

….hyper-local, collaborative and aggregation seem to me to be key terms in the future of local journalism online. And I’m excited my home town Birmingham is pioneering such innovative and exceptional work.

Bournville Village is an interesting example of how traditional media training can be translated into creating an informative community site, and Hannah looks set to answer William Perrin’s question to site managers of ‘What would you do with a journalist?‘ by example.

Jack Wallington from loveclapham.com talks to TAL about building his site.

I’ve lived in Clapham for most of my adult life (so far!) and like most people running local sites, became disappointed at the quality of the local press and the lack of online representation for the vibrant Clapham community. LoveClapham.com was born!

Setting up the site was the easy part, involving a couple of weekends to set up Wordpress and create a design I was happy with. The hard work started with the creation of content and getting the local community involved.

One of my personal priorities was to help local shops, restaurants and bars survive the biggest recession we’ve ever known – it would be a terrible loss for the area to be overrun with just known brands. I don’t charge local businesses to promote things on the site as long as the residents benefit from it too. However, getting local businesses involved has been incredibly difficult. I’ve launched the Clapham Awards 2009 as an incentive to help awareness and to reward them.

Other things we’ve tackled in the site’s short life are reporting on major developments and raising awareness of a campaign by residents of Clapham Junction to stop oversized tower blocks. Clapham also has many large events throughout the year, like music festivals. Love Clapham provides a guide to all of these events including travel, nearby amenities etc.

Another thing I really wanted to do with the site was open up channels of communication. In London too many people have issues but don’t know how to deal with them. Top of my list of things to do was to meet and interview members of the local council and other important organisations. It’s too easy to criticise councils, but we’re lucky to have passionate councillors in Lambeth, I’d rather be a conduit to work with them than against them.

My top tips for setting up a local site are:

1. Design. Content is undoubtedly king, but I think it’s important to make the site look lively and exciting too. Not over the top, but although we’re discussing serious issues, it doesn’t mean a site has to look serious too.
2. Write about the area and local issues – find out what matters to other people and get them involved. Be fun with it, again, there will be serious issues, but local communities can be fun!
3. Make sure you’re listed in search engines like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! (there’s a lot more to search, but listing is the first step).
4. Tell all your friends about the site, and ask them to tell their friends.
5. The likes of Twitter and Facebook are indispensible at reaching out to people – starting a Twitter account or Facebook page isn’t enough though, you have to seek out and start conversations with people. I found Twitter the easiest, because you can search for your local area (e.g. “Clapham”) and then find people in the area that way.
6. Get out and about! I spent an entire weekend delivering hundreds of home printed leaflets to local businesses. You might not get a massive response, but at least it’s free.
7. Interview important local people. It’s relatively easy, but extremely high value content. It also opens up a dialogue with the organisation you’ve interviewed.
8. Local sites are fairly cheap, but there’s still a cost to buying a domain and hosting. I highly recommend adding Google Adsense to your site (https://www.google.com/adsense/). You can change the layout and colour so they don’t look too intrusive and while you won’t make your millions with them, you will cover the cost of hosting across the year.