Talk About Local Un-Conference 2010
We are pleased to announce that the Talk About Local Un-Conference 2010 will be held on Saturday 17 April at Old Broadcasting House in Leeds.  Old Broadcasting House is an excellent venue in Central Leeds, in the Civic Quarter just off the Ring Road.

We are delighted that this event will be in partnership with The Guardian’s Local initiative

As in Stoke-on-Trent in October, we will be using the Un-Conference format and we hope to have some of the very best hyperlocal publishers and special guests attending on the day.

After the success of the Pork Pie rounders, arranged by our own Nicky Getgood, there is a rumor that a skool sports day is being planned for one of the sessions, more than that we can’t yet announce, yet….

50 Tickets will be available on EventBrite from 1400 today (8 February)  with further tickets being made available after we have ensured that local bloggers in Yorkshire and the North East have got their tickets.

We will be publishing updates at http://talkaboutlocal.org and on Twitter @talkaboutlocal or you can search Twitter for TAL10 to see what other people are saying the Un-Conference Google Group is reopened for you to start discussing and planning what you hope to gain from the event.

Talk About Local Un-Awards
The glittering Talk About Local Un-Awards ceremony will take place on Saturday evening after the Un-Conference at a venue yet to be confirmed. As you will no doubt remember we were going to hold the Un-Awards in Birmingham earlier in the year, but after much procrastination and it being left on a low light we decided that it made logistical sense for us to hold it in conjunction with the Un-Conference.

Tickets for the the Un-Awards will be available on Eventbrite as soon as the venue is confirmed.

I wrote a piece on my hyperlocal Kings Cross site on how data from the London Data Store showed a puzzling rise in ambulance call outs to assaults.  In general crime is going down, but there was a strong upward trend in ambulances being called out to assault incidents. I asked people to check my data as I am not a statto.  I tried to get a comment out of the police, but they went quiet on me – as I run a lot of articles supporting the police this was irritating.

The local paper the Islington Gazette rang me having seen my article.  The Gazette had done some maths of their own and looked a the London Data Store site.  The Gazette covers the whole borough (an urban area about five miles square), my site just one ward (a mile long, half mile wide).  So the Gazette grew the story, got quotes from people across the borough and turned it into a bigger piece.  They did get a quote from the police, despite having a generally ‘granny scaring’ approach to covering local crime.  I am still waiting for the police to get back to me.  The Gazette in their traditional rather sad way managed to giv me a quote but no link to my original article and no mention of the plucky Kings Cross website that made the story in the first place.

I also emailed BBC local TV to see if they were interested.  I got the ‘it’s a bit too local to cover‘ (quote from email) response.  However if they look at the data for themselves they will see that the trends across the whole of London are sharply up.   Let’s wait and see.

Overall an interesting case study in how local data transparency can be used locally to bring some accountability to local public services and feed the mainstream traditional media.

UPDATE

Within minutes of posting this the police came back to me apologetically with a quote for the Kings Cross site and thanking me for my helpful quote in the Gazette (coincidence of timing I think).  Nonetheless they still went to the Gazette with a quote some time before me.

The government has one of the world’s biggest innovation funds for the future of local news – the so called independently funded news consortia or IFNC.   Pilots will run in Wales, Scotland and the Tyne Tees/Borders TV regions, hopefully embracing the full spectrum from hyperlocal to regional news.  I am on the panel to help select the winning bidders.   It is essential to get serious dialogues going between TV, radio, print and local independent web news media.   On Wednesday 3 February the Panel will be in Cardiff to meet bidders for the Wales pilot.

There will be a public meeting where the bidders do a show and tell and people can put questions. This will be at 1500-1600 in the Wales Millennium Centre, Bute Place, Cardiff Bay, CF10 5AL.

It would be great to see some of Wales independent web publishers there – whether you run a hyperlocal site or any other sort of news service. Your contribution will be vital to the future of news. It’s a public meeting so you can just turn up. I know that for those of you with day jobs this might be tricky – but there is rarely a time to suit everyone. If you need childcare or special access requirements to attend then drop a line to ifncpilots@culture.gsi.gov.uk and they will help you.

We shall also be in Newcastle and Glasgow in the next few days and it would be great to see web people there too:

• In Newcastle, the public meeting will take place on Friday 5 February, 3-4pm at Northern Film and Media, The Kiln, Hoult’s Yard, Walker Road, Newcastle NE6 1AB.
• In Glasgow, the public meeting will take place on Monday 8 February, 2-3pm at the Radisson Blu Hotel, 301 Argyle Street, G2 8DL.