Yesterday I was working at the second of two, day-long workshops for Retooled.  Retooled is a project begun by a group of ex-Rover MG employees who were made redundant when the company went bust 5 years ago and aims to become a resource for those facing or going through redundancy:

We believe the best advice is contained within real people’s experiences, not in official support packs. We also realised that no matter what your job or industry, lots of us do go through similar emotions when we’re made redundant.

Our aim is to grow Retooled into a really useful resource for anyone around the world who is going through redundancy, or who is supporting a friend or relative in this situation.

To work with the team on building the Retooled website, Antonio Gould and Lizzie Ostrom (who are producing the project on behalf of Maverick) pulled together a group of digital mentors to help with web development, graphic design, photography, content and social media.  I was their ‘social media person’, which just meant I introduced the group to some simple ways in which they can use the web to organise and communicate, with quite a few hyperlocal websites serving as examples of how to use easy social media tools to tell a community’s stories.

During yesterday’s session Retooled team member and ex-Rover employee Bob Oakley told us a particularly interesting story, about a quick-witted secretary who collected the names and details of everyone within her department before the factory closed for good.  The information she gathered effectively kept the community that had built up around her department connected and proved to be enormously useful – Bob himself said that he never would have found out he was entitled to an early pension (‘It was never announced’) unless someone he was in touch via the contact list had told him.

Community or ‘hyperlocal’ websites can be just as effective when based around communities of work as well as neighbourhoods, especially if the workplace that binds those people together is under threat.  Everyone on the Retooled team agreed that their network of contacts was invaluable to them when going through redundancy and looking for a new job.  A community website for the workplace could help keep that network intact after employment, and would be really useful in preventing isolation amongst workforces facing large-scale job losses.

Farnham Allotments

Try to feature some information and news about your local green spaces, be they parks, gardens or allotments.

Last August Clare White wrote a blog post that featured some of Britain’s garden blogs, such as the Patient Gardener’s Weblog from Worcestershire.  Are there any keen local gardeners that might like to contribute to your community site by writing about their hobby? If your neighbourhood has more than a few green-fingered residents you could build a feature around the best gardens in your area.

Oxford Road Community Garden

Are there any allotments near you?  These are thriving little communities in themselves and there are plenty websites out there if you’re looking for inspiration in writing about them.  Welsh Girl’s Allotment is one girl’s quite personal site ‘detailing my quest for an allotment, its cultivation and hopefully bountiful crops’, but there are allotment sites that serve their small communities, such as Farnham Allotments, which publishes news for all allotment holders – events such as a Growing Vegetables Winter Lecture and notices to advertise Free Horse Manure.

Is there a community garden in your area?  Perhaps one or some of the people involved in its development would like to chart its progress online.  Oxford Road Community Garden, a garden created with Section 106 money from local development, has a simple website with photos and posts that keeps everyone updated on latest news and activity and what’s growing on the site.

Talk about what’s going on in your local park.  Highbury Park Friends in Birmingham publish their newsletters and points of interest on their simple WordPress website, including the above charming film of the pond’s ducks.  Kings Cross Environment has a dedicated category for the local Bingfield Park, which features the hard-fought War on Squirrels.

Normand Park Trees, London W14

Is there a cause or campaign concerning your local green spaces your community website could help with? W14 & SW6 London held a campaign to Save Normand Park Trees from felling – website manager Annette posted a template preservation order request letter along with the relevant council officer’s name and email address, which made supporting the cause as simple as copying and pasting into an email.

Kingsley House Gardens

Another talk about local website for Kingsley House, set up by The Kingsley House Tenants Association to try and improve the  Bristol residential blocks, concentrates on the particularly sorry state of their council-maintained landscaped gardens.

Have a think about how you can include the local green patches and the people who help cultivate them into your community website, and if there’s anything you could do to help preserve, protect and develop them by talking about what they bring to the area in your online space.

As if I wasn’t already busy enough trying to capture what’s happening in Bournville on the hyperlocal website I edit, I’ve now committed to managing the website for my running club, Bournville Harriers. I though it worth sharing here how we work the online stuff, which makes a change from me boring on about the offline stuff.

At its core, our running club is about community. We meet a couple of times a week, we chat, we get out of breadth and stop chatting, we compare achievements, we moan about injuries, we even have a beer together if our personal fitness regimes allow. In some ways creating an online space to replicate that is fairly straightforward and our previous website had a forum that was pretty active at times.

But, as forums often do, it veered towards nitpicking and complaining, lacking that essential quality that the offline running culture has, ‘praise’. So in re-thinking our web presence it was a simple process of switching to a blogging platform and enabling comments (we’re a self-hosted wordpress blog with a very slightly tweaked free theme).

There was some feeling amongst club members that we’d end up having the sarcastic forum comments replicated on the blog comments but I doubted that since the dominant offline culture in the club involves congratulating people on their runs. The blog comes closer to replicating that, so when Mike Berry completed his seventh marathon in seven months he got some nice comments online as well as the usual slaps on the back on club night. Even the briefest of reports gets a nice response for our club members who run all over the UK. To date I’ve not had to moderate a single comment.

In shifting to a more web 2.0 platform we can also begin to plug in other resources that someone other than myself can manage. Our images are largely hosted on Flickr, our club records are a series of google docs maintained by our club chairman and our race/training calendar is on google calendar, easily updated by a range of club members.

One of the development areas for us to make better sense of our running data. When we compete in a race the organisers might produce a spreadsheet or a pdf file or sometimes even a Word document. We copy and paste and then put the results into a blog post (quite easy to do, just use Excel or google docs to cut and paste the data in, and then out of) but we lack a coherent way to make sense of every runner’s data as opposed to just the elite ones. Although if you are elite then UK Athletics take the trouble to record just about every run you do – take a look at the data for one of our quick women runners - every competitive run since she was 15.

So in using a range of free online tools we keep the central website fresh with new content. I may manage the thing that pulls all the elements together but there’s a whole team of us supporting the process and doing their bit – which is what being a part of any community is all about.

Dave Harte edits bournvillevillage.com and runs the MA Social Media at Birmningham City University

Parwich Primary School

Think about putting details and information about your local schools, doctors, dentists, etc. on your community website.  Parwich.org have a dedicated page for Parwich Primary School which includes term dates, whilst Bishopthorpe.net have a page for Bishopthorpe Medical Practice.

Bishopthorpe Medical Practice

This would be especially useful for newcomers or people thinking of moving to the area, who will want to quickly complete the tasks of finding a school for their children and registering the family with a local doctor and dentist.

Crumlin Swimming Pool Opening Times on Drimnagh is Good

Do you have access to local timetables that you could publish on your website?  Your readers would find it incredibly useful to access local opening times or travel information on their community website.

Drimnagh is Good have published the Crumlin Swimming Pool opening times and entry prices.  Leisure centres and sports class timetables are information local people will often be hunting for and appreciate being able to find in one, easily accessible place.  The Cricklade Bugle have posted the timetable of the Women’s Running Network, whilst The Moretonhampstead Hub have details of Satyananda Yoga Dartmoor classes.

Mayo Movie World on MayoToday.ie

Also think about your local cinemas, theatres, arts centres, etc.  Mayo Today have a dedicated cinema listings pages.

Local Travel on Bishopthorpe.net

Travel timetables are also good. Parwich.org have published an array of bus timetables for their readers, whilst Bishopthorpe.net have a dedicated Local Travel page, with information on forthcoming holiday services and service distruptions.

Do you live in an area that survives on just one or a handful of shops?  Think about publishing their opening times.  Everyone likes to know what bus or train to aim for, or that their trip out of the house won’t be a wasted journey, so see if you can include this information on your website and make it super-handy for local people!

PSNI Newcastle

Why not introduce your local Bobbies on the beat to your readers with a short post about them, much like Newcastle Rocks have done in this simple post, which includes details of the Newcastle PSNI station, Who’s Who and statistics on How They’re Doing.

Try reaching out to your local Safer Neighbourhood Team and asking if they’d like to send you locally relevant information to publish on your website to reach the community.  William Perrin often receives press releases and appeals from the Caledonian Ward Safer Neighbourhood’s Team, which he publishes largely unedited on the Kings Cross Environments website.

If the local police force recognize your site as a means through which they can talk with the local community, you could find this generates incredibly useful content for your website or, in the case of Tamworth Blog, some incredibly exciting content when the authors found themselves invited to accompany the police on an early morning drug raid as part of Operation Nemeses!!

Out of the Box exhibition

Try writing about any visual art that is on display in your area, such as in a local art gallery, museum or arts centre.  This could be a simple notice of a forthcoming art exhibition, as Ventnor Blog did with the Out of the Box photographic exhibition at Dimbola Lodge.

The Monolith

Or, if you or a contributor to your site visit the exhibition, why not take some photos and write about your perceptions and thoughts on the pieces?  You don’t need of be any kind of expert in art to have a reaction to it, I certainly wasn’t when I described a piece of abstract video art I saw in a Digbeth gallery as ‘Monolith Goes On Holiday’.

If you feel you need to know a bit more about the exhibition than is on the programme or factsheet, don’t be afraid to ask the gallery workers, they often enjoy the chance to have a conversation.

Sheep On The Road, Belfast

Of course, not all art will be tucked away in galleries or museums.  Are there any interesting or impressive pieces of public art where you live?  You could publish a picture with some information, which would delight readers who have often passed it and wondered what the story was behind it.  Alan in Belfast didn’t stop at just a write-up of one piece of public art in his city, but did a whole tour that took in various sculptures and cathedral spires.

Bishopthorpe War Memorial

Perhaps there’s a piece of public art that has historical significance, such as the local war memorial. Bishopthorpe.net wrote a lovely post about the recent cleaning of the Bishopthorpe War Memorial.  There is also a very touching post featuring the men on the war memorial and one’s life story.

As One: Welcome to Brum

It could be that there is art in your local area which is not really meant to be there at all – street artists have used Digbeth’s walls as a canvas, which made for a nice post about one of the most prolific culprits ‘As One’ on Created in Birmingham.

Take a look around your area and see what local art and sculpture you can feature on your website.  If you have local art galleries, museums and arts centres, see if they will put you on their press release list, so you are emailed information and images for forthcoming exhibitions. When you visit the shows, be sure to take your camera, pick up a factsheet and have a good long chat with the gallery workers to give your write-ups some serious insight. And don’t be afraid to talk about your personal interpretation – people like a human touch and even if they disagree with you, at least you’re starting a discussion on a local issue!

Check out the local council website for information on public art (Birmingham City Council have a dedicated web page), or give them a call to see if you can find out more.  If the artwork you’re reviewing is some graffiti or street art, try searching for the tag name to see if the artist have a website, blog or Flickr account.

Did you know 10 million people in the UK are still not using computers and the internet? Research is showing that ‘fear’ is the main thing stopping them from embracing the online world.

People who visit this website are digitally engaged and you may be working with people to get them more digitally engaged. Now is the ideal time to find someone who is scared and disconnected and help them overcome their fears.

Our partner UK online centres have launched the ‘Face your online fears’ campaign to support ‘Silver Surfers’ Day on Friday 21st May and we are working with them to promote their campaign.

This is probably one of the easiest campaigns you digitally connected bandwidth hogs can be involved in, all you need to do is, well, just what you do everyday, help people get on-line. The only thing different is if you haven’t already done so in your social media cafes & surgeries, just refocus a little bit and find someone over say 60 and help them overcome their fears.

UK online centres are running ‘Face your online fears’ events at 700 UK online centres across England so you could signpost your local UK online centre to people who would benefit or why not help them to get started at home or at your next SMC/S with the free ‘Face your online fears’ game which will give them an understanding of how to use a keyboard and mouse, online security, and even online shopping.

It’s really easy and they could even win a laptop. To find a centre running an event or play the game visit www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears

If you have a website you can use any of these banners on your website, either by right clicking on the image and select Save Image As (saving it to a directory on your website). You can then add the banner directly into your web page using your preferred content management system or HTML application such as dreamweaver.

Or, if you would rather just link to the image rather than save and upload it to your own server, we have provided a html link next to each image, this can be copied and pasted directly into the HTML of your web page.

	<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-rect-fyolf_anim.gif" alt="Face your online fears" width="180" height="150" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-rect-fyolf.png" alt="Face your online fears" width="180" height="150" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr_PassITOn_anim.gif" alt="Face your online fears" width="300" height="180" border="0" style="margin-right: 20px;" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-ukolc-ssd.jpg" alt="bFace your online fears" width="290" height="229" border="0" /></a>

<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-lboard-fyolf_anim.gif" alt="Face your online fears" width="728" height="90" border="0" /></a>

<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-lboard-fyolf.png" alt="Face your online fears" width="728" height="90" border="0" /></a>

<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-full-fyolf_anim.gif" alt="Face your online fears" width="468" height="60" border="0" /></a>

<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-full-fyolf.png" alt="Face your online fears" width="468" height="60" border="0" /></a>

<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-half-fyolf.png" alt="Face your online fears" width="234" height="60" border="0" /></a>

	<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-sky-fyolf_anim.gif" alt="Face your online fearsm" width="120" height="600" border="0" style="margin-right: 20px;" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/faceyouronlinefears"><img src="images/bnr-sky-fyolf.png" alt="Face your online fears" width="120" height="600" border="0" /></a>

Yes, I would. Really. And not just because I’m incredibly puerile and tickled by toilet humour (although that’s got something to do with it) but also because I think it has the potential to serve a useful purpose.

Map of #uksnow Tweets

Now you probably know about the map of #uksnow, which is created from data Twitter users contribute to – by tweeting their postcode, marks out of 10 for snowfall and adding the hashtag #uksnow and the odd twitpic. Or as Pete Ashton puts it in his post summarising the phenomenon:

‘…a load of people providing weather reports across the country in a standardised format that can automagically be turned into a live updating map.’

As Pete said, it’s a fun way of indulging in one of our Great British obsessions, the weather, on Twitter.

More hyperlocal obsessions, for the likes of William Perrin and others living in urban areas, are things like graffiti, fly tipping and dog poo. The latter is particularly nasty – it’s filthy, unsightly and downright dangerous when there are children about (Toxocariasis is no urban myth).

Unfortunately for William, there was an abundance of the stuff in his home of Kings Cross, yet he felt his local authority wasn’t really acknowledging there was a big problem or treating it terribly seriously. To try and make the issue hit home, William decided to rub the council’s brand in it. He fashioned little flags out of cocktail sticks and strips of paper with the council’s logo (‘Islington: a clean, safe and healthy borough’), stuck them in the dog poo and posted the resulting photos on his community website.

This was a very funny way of drawing attention to the problem, and an example of online community activism the talk about local team are particularly fond of quoting. But wouldn’t it be great if William had had some data to support his claims of the large scale of the problem? If his area showed up as big brown spot (sorry) on a live, updating UK map of poo? A visualisation of crowdsourced data that can say to local authorities, ‘there’s lots of poo on your patch’.

I think so. That’s why, whenever I pass a piece of poo on the street in future, I’ll tweet my postcode, marks out of 10 for general rankness and add the hashtag #ukpoo. Hell, I might even add a twitpic to boot.

Obviously, this idea will only work if it catches on and others start doing it too. It may be a little bit too gross and childish to become popular but if I’m honest, that’s a large part of its appeal to me and why I’ll be giving it a go to see what happens.

Many thanks to Ben Whitehouse for introducing me to two great examples of people using Google Street View for a virtual trip down Memory Lane.

The above film sees Dean Shareski (‘inspired by Doug Peterson, who was inpsired by ZeFrank that then inspired Stephen Downes and others’), using Google Street View to virtually return to his childhood home of Morden, Manitoba.  The landmarks quickly invoke old memories for David, who uses Google Maps Satellite View, Street View and old photographs to simply tell his tales of hockey playing, piano lessons, sunburn and exploration.

David finds the experience draws up ‘lots of fond memories’ and he encourages others to do the same:

‘I find it interesting to find out where people grew up and the spaces and places where they experienced childhood.’

ZeFrank's A Childhood Walk

ZeFrank found these stories just as interesting, so created the project A Childhood Walk to encourage readers to contribute their own.  The instructions are simple, and could easily be taken as the basis for something similar this side of the water:

1. Think of a walk that you would regularly take as a child; to a bus stop, to a friend’s house, along a paper route, along a trail through the woods.
2. Locate the beginning of that walk in Google Street View and move along the same route that you used to take.  If your walk is not available on Google Street View, just try to imagine yourself going on that walk.
3. From time to time stop and look around you and try to focus on what it feels like to take that walk.  If a memory of that moment comes to mind, write it down.  Take a screenshot of that picture.

The results are beautiful screenshots of mundane-looking places of personal importance to people, whose snippets of memories are quoted.  They tell us snapshot stories that are funny, sad and poignant.  Take the time to click through the slideshow if you can.

For a hyperlocal site, this method of returning to a place and telling the stories of the memories it holds has great potential.  Some local websites, such as the Kington Blackboard, find that people who have moved away visit the site to check-in on their old hometown and catch up on the local goings-on.  Stuart Herbert in South Wales told me that most of the people who have engaged with his Merthyr Road Project are people who grew up in that area but resettled elsewhere.

Having those ex-residents revisit the community and tell stories of their memories in this way could help them actively participate rather than merely watch from afar, and result in some lovely creative content for your hyperlocal website.