We are proud to announce the inaugural #TAL UnAwards.  Shortly after the 2010 car of the year is announced by the motor industry, the best hyperlocal bloggers from the UK will be invited to #TAL UnAwards09, a no expense spent awards ceremony for the best hyperlocal blogs of 2009 in a venue to be confirmed in the Midlands.

This red possibly carpeted event, will be the highlight of the hyperlocal year with the much sought after awards being presented, not only will you get a badge to put on your award winning blog, but you may, if we get our act together, get a real proper award to take home or leave in the taxi back to the station.

The ill conceived plan for the unAwards goes something like this:

• Suggestions for award categories
• Nominations for each category
• Voting
• After some arbitrary time scale voting will close
• The Talk About Local Team will collate the votes*
• We present the awards**

So all that remains is for me to declare the suggestions for categories open, please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

*If it rains on any day when voting is open or we feel that we know better than the hyperlocal community we may apply the duckworth lewis scoring method to get the correct results.

**It may be possible to influence the results even at this late stage with bribes of alcohol for the TAL team***

***It won’t but we will take the bribes anyway.

That is probably the best thing I can say about this weekends event.

We were not really sure what to expect on Saturday morning, we had spent the whole of the last week planning the un-conference getting swhag from sponsors and working out the logistics of getting it all to Stoke-on-Trent. On Saturday morning once we had set up at the uni, we said well all we need now are people.  At 9am the first delegates started to arrive, at 9:30 there was a queue and the breakfast oatcakes had gone! By 10 we had about 50 people signed in, this was our personal success point, we had said all along if we get 50 or 60 people we’d be happy.  At 1030 there were still people arriving the room was getting pretty full and people were starting to organise the days sessions on the boards.

People! Photo Simon Perry

Post-it notes on the board with the days sessions on

The final delegate count was 88, which is fantastic number for our first event and the free lunch seemed to go down well.

In the afternoon Nicky did a session on games which culminated with a game of pork pie rounders, yes you read correctly PORK PIE rounders..

Pork Pie Rounders Picture Will Perrin

We are not sure that Nicky will be allowed in to Stoke-on-Trent again as she used the local Wrights pies for the game and this would be treated as sacrilege, but if we don’t tell anyone she might be ok…

There were too many sessions to mention here but some of the highlights were Andrew Stott speaking about data.gov, Nick Booth on Social Media Surgeries, Will Perrin on Talk About Local and the future of Hyperlocal blogging.

I personally got a lot from it, met up with some old friends made a lot of new friends and contacts and I hope that each delegate not only made some connections and contacts but also learnt something or shared something that will help others who are hyperlocal publishing.

Since the event a number of posts have been written and videos uploaded by people who attended so we thought we should try and list as many as we can here.

RaveCam

The #TAL09 rave cam, @franbury got feedback from people as they were leaving the Un-Conference

A full playlist of TAL09 Videos on YouTube can be viewed here

Twitter

26 pages of Twittery goodness can be seen here on Tweet Doc

If you prefer something a little more animated look at #tal09 on Visible Tweets

Flickr

A lot of delegates took pictures at the event and posted them to our Flickr pool.  If you took pictures please feel free to add them to the pool for us to share

There have been many blog posts about the un-conference most of which are linked in the comments below.  If you know of any posts that we haven’t  got a link to or have not had a pingback drop us a quick mail at the address below and we’ll sort it out.

Feel free to leave feedback here or drop us a mail to info[@]talkaboutlocal.org

We were awestruck to have some of the best hyperlocal web people signed up to attend the event.

Talk About Local Unconference 2009

Links

• Google Group
• Twitter
• Delicious

Timetable

• 0930 Registration opens in the Film Theatre Foyer
• Un-Conference planning, Networking & Coffee
• 1030 Welcome speech in the Film Theatre
• 1100 Morning Sessions
• 1300 Lunch (yes the free one)
• 1400 Afternoon Sessions
• 1600 Closing speeches & mutual back slapping
• 1700 Drinks & Networking in the Clayhanger Bar at the North Staffordshire Hotel (opposite the Rail Station)

Sponsors

Business Link, Media Trust, Ofcom and Cisco.

All the team are working away on different bits to make sure that Saturday is a huge success. We will have wireless connections in the venue for you to use, but due to the complexity of academic networks we will be using 3G routers throughout the building, so if you have your own mobile broadband you may wish to bring that with you.  If you do use our connections please play nice and don’t start streaming movies!   We will have a couple of cat5 connections for people who are presenting or running sessions to plug in to.

As Will has said previously, we are pretty awe struck with the names that have appeared on our delegate list. We have some of the best bloggers and social media people around turning up.   There is one ‘very’ special delegate, Andrew Stott who has signed up to come along and has offered to give a talk on data.gov.uk to say there was a certain amount of jaw dropping when we saw Andrew had signed up would be an under statement!

We have had an excellent response from sponsors and supporters who we would like to say a big thank you to (in no particular order):

Screen WM
OFCOM
Cisco
UK online centres
Business Link WM
4iP
Media Trust
Advantage West Midlands

For making the event possible.

We  have shwag for you, we have pads, pens, mouse mats (does anyone still use them?) mugs, a free copy of The Sentinel courtesy of Mike Sassi.    Interestingly we will be having a competition to win a serious prize provided by Media Trust as part of the Festival of Learning.  Nicky is busily working away at some questions for you to win a blog make over.

The prize will include, a trip to Talk About Local offices in Fazeley, a make over for your blog by some of the best social media practitioners in the UK,  lunch and some other goodies.

We won’t be able to stream the event but there will be a number of social reporters covering the event and we ask that delegates use #tal09 as your tag to appear in these feeds:
- Twitter
- delicious

You can also add photos to the TAL Flickr group and join in longer conversations at the Google Group.

If you have any questions about the event, need to check anything or just want a chat then drop us a mail at info[@]talkaboutlocal.org and we’ll get back to you.

We look forward to meeting you all on Saturday morning, or on Friday night if any of you are getting there early.