What is Talk About Local?

Talk About Local gives people the simple skills and support to find a powerful online voice for their community.  We draw inspiration from sites in places like Kings Cross, London, Stoke-on-Trent and Digbeth in Birmingham.  In those places people just got on with talking about their communities online to spread local information, campaign on local issues or tell positive stories about the places in which they live.  Talk About Local helps train and motivate people in their communities to find their own online voice for free.

We see many communities campaigning on local issues, organising themselves or just having fun talking about day to day stuff on the web.  Often a community with a good online voice has just been lucky enough to have a person there who can publish on the internet.  We want as many communities as possible to have these skills, for free as a public service by training people, mainly with the UK online centre network.  You can see a film of William talking about community sites to an audience at the Guardian.

How does Talk About Local work?

Talk About Local works with people in their communities to help them find a more powerful voice online.   To pass on the skills required to create and run local websites we either: train a trainer who is embedded in the community, or we work with local people to organise a session on the ground that the TAL team attend in person.  Sometimes we mix these up a bit if that is what a community wants.

Talk About Local then shows people how to use simple, free yet powerful platforms like wordpress.com or ning.com to express themselves.  We then stay in touch with and help people who have set up a site as their site grows.  We provide all sorts of aftercare – we have turned up at a fete and run a stall to sign people up, we support by email, skype, phone – whatever people find helpful.  We also have a website that provides hints, tips, training materials and helps people answer questions – you don’t have to have been through one of our sessions to use the site.

Any early examples of good local sites from Talk About Local?

Yes, we are delighted with early progress since the project started up in Summer 2009 – even though it usually takes months for a local site to find its feet, people we have helped in Kington, Herefordshire, West14, London and Washward Heath, Birmingham have already produced some great sites with promise.  Each site is very different in content, style and maturity and the team works to support the sites creators in different ways.  We shall feature more sites the project has created as they mature.

How do you find and train trainers on the ground?

Our main delivery partner is the UK online centre network which has a huge network of trainers embedded in deprived communities across England.  But we work with other partners – if you want to partner, drop us a line info@talkaboutlocal.org or via the contact form below.  Our payment and contracting terms are straightforward.  We usually train trainers remotely using Cisco Webex – anyone with a modern web browser can take part in a training session – you don’t need to have Webex yourself.  We use Webex because it saves everyone taking part a lot of travel time.

I want one of these websites in my community when can Talk About Local come and help me?

We have spent the last few months of 2009 trialling our approach in the West Midlands.  Talk about local trained dozens of people and is now ready to deliver across England.  If you want talk about local to run a session in your community, drop us a line via info@talkaboutlocal.org or the contact form below and we might be able to help.  If you are itching to get going right away, we can often help with a simple email pointing you to easy to use things on the web.

Look, I really want an online voice for communities i work with and am prepared to pay for it…

We welcome paying customers to support the free public service Talk About Local drop us a line via info@talkaboutlocal.org or the contact form below.  You can pay us to run Talk About Local sessions in places you specify – we don’t charge the people who attend.  We shall have a commercial page shortly talking through the type of solutions we can offer paying partners.  We are establishing commercial relationships with a number of public sector bodies and companies.

How is Talk About Local different from other ‘hyperlocal’ projects?

There are some great hyperlocal things going on out there – Talk About Local was behind the creation of a UK hyperlocal alliance.  The philosophy behind Talk About Local is ‘teach a man to fish…‘ We want to give people skills to publish for themselves on the web.  We think that the best hyperlocal platforms are those ‘owned’ by people in their communities.   So Talk About Local is more about people and public service than technology platforms and advertising.

Our unique funding model and enlightened investors (4IP, Screen West Midlands and Advantage West Midlands) allow us to empower people without having to seek a commercial return from people direct, nor from advertising on websites.  We think that the more content people produce about their communities online the more commercial platforms can thrive.

What if I already have a website for my community or local campaign?

Great, well done.  Are there things you have wanted to do with the site but have never been able to figure out?  For instance how to post up simple videos, how to run a petition or a poll or perhaps make a campaign you are running more effective? Then maybe we can help you and put you in touch with other people who run sites like yours .  Drop us a line via info@talkaboutlocal.org or the contact form below.  You can also follow us on Twitter @talkaboutlocal which we use to spread examples of good practice and other hyperlocal tit bits.

How can I help?

Talk About Local is about partnerships.  We are interested in working with anyone who is trying to promote community activism on the ground.  We are building relationships with a host of organisations at a national and local level.

Are you competing with newspapers?

No, not at all.  Good local sites are a boon to local papers, who can’t afford the density of journalists on the ground that a volunteer network supporting a good local website will have.  In Kings Cross for instance, the Islington Gazette regularly borrows or follows up on issues covered by the local website and runs them in the paper.  We are all happy with this relationship.  Also, we shall not be competing for advertising revenue.

Where is the money coming from?

The project is funded by 4IP, the web ventures arm of Channel4, Screen West Midlands and Advantage West Midlands.

Can I invest in Talk About Local?

Yes – we are building relationships with companies looking to invest in communities through their corporate social responsibility programmes, with Local Authorities and with Regional Development Agencies who are keen to invest in original internet content in their patch or to empower communities in a modern way.  If you are working in this area then we want to hear from you and figure out how we can work together.  Drop us a line via info@talkaboutlocal.org or the contact form below.

Who is behind Talk About Local?
I am William Perrin, a community activist with a background in Kings Cross, a deprived area of London.  I have used the internet there to support local campaigning and community cohesion.  I believe very firmly that the internet alone doesn’t change things – it is the action of people that gets things done.  The internet allows people to act more effectively with our elderly democratic structures and public services.  So I quit my job and set up Talk About Local.  You can find out more about my professional background on LinkedIn.

The talk about local team comprises Mike Rawlins, one of the founders of the marvellous PitsnPots website in Stoke-on-Trent, Nicky Getgood the founder of Digbeth is Good and Clare White, a community activist and web entrepreneur from Stoke-on-Trent.  We draw on a wide range of external expertise from other partners as needed.

Edit history – substantial revision early January 2010 to reflect first few months of running

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