Tag Archive for Events

#TAL11 – unconference updates and the glittering #TAL11 unawards

March 23, 2011 4 comments

unconftable

We have some useful updates for next Saturday’s #TAL11 unconference for you, which are:

Sponsorship: Rightmoveplaces are sponsoring #TAL11 which is fab – we’ve enjoyed helping them out with their emerging hyperlocal product and it’s great they are helping us stage #TAL11 with the Guardian and the Cardiff School of Creative Industries who run the Atrium.  We may yet have some more sponsors….

#TAL11 Google Group: There is some great pre-unconference discussion and session suggesting happening in the event google group.  Topics so far include covering sport on hyperlocal sites, how to get started with a hyperlocal blog, experiments in Facebook and hyperlocals gaining access to council press offices.  Come and join in the conversation!

#TAL11 twitter and reporting: As usual, we’ll be tweeting and reporting throughout the day. Be sure to follow @talkaboutlocal and hashtag your unconference tweets #TAL11. We’d also be grateful if you could tag any blog posts, video, audio or photos of the event published online ‘TAL11′ so we can keep track, as we’ll be creating an archive of unconference content.

#TAL11 timings: Please get to the ATRiuM by 11.30am for the main unconference, which will carry on until 5.30pm. Refreshments and WiFi will be provided (the WiFi password will be released on the day, please notify us of any special requirements for food).  When the unconference ends at 5.30pm we’ll be heading straight to nearby bar The Gwdihw for post unconference drinks, chats and the glittering #TAL11 unawards (see below).

#TAL11 travel: Karen has collated some train times to/from Cardiff for central UK points (Birmingham, Manchester, London, Sheffield, Lancaster, Leeds).  Double check your trains with National Rail Enquiries before traveling.    The nearest rail station is Cardiff Queen Street but Cardiff Central Station is also within walking distance.

Click here for driving directions to ATRiuM. The postcode for ATRiuM (for a SatNav) is CF24 2FN.  There is a large NCP car park opposite ATRiuM Building on Adam Street.

#TAL11 accommodation: Those who want to stay in Cardiff on Friday and/or Saturday night would do well to check out cardiffandco.com, which has good listings and deals. The nearest good budget hotel is Ibis Cardiff, which is right next to ATRiuM.

So now the main points of unconference business are taken care of, here’s our Mike with some exciting #TAL11 unawards news…

tal10unawards

As is now almost a tradition at talk about local unconferences there will be the talk about local unawards again this year.  The tradition is that we reward excellence and endeavour but not with worldly goods – last year’s prizes included an oven glove and a broken walking stick.

Unbelievably, we have managed to do even less planning for these for #tal11 than we did in Leeds for #tal10, on our part that is quite a feat of disorganisation.

Last year we had a least come up with some ideas and been shopping for prizes. This year we have done none of the above – no ideas, no shopping, nothing.

prize-winning lolcat

We have a small kitty that we are going to sell* and all, yes ALL the money we get for our small kitty can be spent on prizes.

So…….

We’ll go shopping at Latif’s and buy some stuff and you do some crowd sourcing to come up with not only a few more categories but also the nominations for the prizes, then the judges will look at all the nominations and award prizes.

Categories we have carried forward from last year’s unawards are:

  • Overall winner
  • Best story/post
  • Best investigation/investigative reporting
  • Best community engagement
  • Best council coverage
  • Most innovative use of data

Remember we give away everything we buy, we take nothing back, so unless you get working you could end up with a prize by default. We have our eye on an inflatable ball pit and balls that is sold un-boxed – how much fun will that be to get home on the train while it is inflated?

Use the google group to go discuss.

*we won’t really sell the kitty, we may weigh it and then convert it’s weight in to a commodity and use the £ value of the commodity as the prize fund.

 

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#TAL10

April 21, 2010 3 comments

So that’s it all over and done with, for now at least.

#TAL10, our second un-conference had a lot to live up to after #TAL09 but again managed to surprise us with not only it’s popularity but also the quality of the people who attended and the sites that they run, that is before we start looking at their ideas for the future!

We had booked Old Broadcasting House in Leeds to capacity for the event and ended up with it about 3/4 full, the weather and lack of flights in to the UK were responsible for some of the non attendees. While others I’m sure decided not to attend as there were no food based sports like Pork Pie Rounders.

As expected the whole event was blogged by almost all of the attendees and reported on most accurately and efficiently by Sarah Hartley from the Guardian along with Hannah, John & Tom from the Guardian Local Blogs. Their reporting on the day can be seen here.

Michael Grimes also made notes on the sessions he attended during the day.

Journalism.co.uk also reported on the Un-Awards which were presented after the un-conference had closed. The Guardian also reported on the Un-Award winners here.

Un-Award winner Josh Haliday from SR2 Blog gives us his thoughts on the days events on his personal blog.

Philip John gives us his account over at JournalLocal as does Damian Radcliffe onDPC. The excellent Greener Leith report by Alistar Tibbitt and finally and by no means least Matt from My Tunstall writes

Twitter was, and still is, awash with the #TAL10 tag which link to many interesting posts which we have archived here.

Pictures are being uploaded to our Flickr Group.

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The Exchange: techy corner / knowledge sharing / geek garden

April 17, 2010 One comment

At one of the very first sessions of #tal10, @countculture pinned me with a pointed look. “Talk About Local need to do something to bring together the geeks and the non-geeks”. And as he is the man who made council websites a million times better, who was I to argue? Through the day, I made notes of many wonderful ideas but it does seem true that there is no one platform bringing them together and many tools are being built for one hyperlocal context that could easily be reused, adapted and improved in other settings. So, we’ll have a go…

The web is brimming with free resources, tools and communities working together to solve problems and build stuff.

With your help, this section of Talk About Local Labs will make links between the techy and the non-techy to share knowledge, help answer questions and think about suggestions for when a tool or data can help overcome a hyperlocal problem.

Although paid-for services are quite fairly being developed for the hyperlocal blogging community, at this stage the focus of this section is to ensure offline communities can make the most of the free, open web and the tools published under open licenses that many of us enjoy every day to make tasks like publishing, reporting potholes, collaborating or looking up council agendas quicker and easier.  In addition, we want to make sure that developments to free public data benefit all communities.

Many off-the-shelf resources that don’t need high-level technical skills can be found in our Step-by-Step and Quick Tips sections and we’re always looking for new ones to add.

This section, therefore, is for people to find out how to learn more advanced skills, or ask someone technically-minded for help. The  TAL team and anyone else working with offline communities can also use these resources to ‘translate’ community issues into the sorts of problems with parameters that developers love to get their teeth into. We don’t want to reinvent any wheels, so please use this very simple and friendly questionnaire to ensure we’re not missing anything that already exists, or if you prefer dive straight into the editable Google document of this page to add content.

The proposed sections so far follow and as this develops sections may move into separate pages, wikis, forum threads, tag lists or even some sort of magical developers’ garden that I haven’t even imagined yet.

Geek exchange
Ideas for bringing together geeks and non-geeks to make cool things happen in communities, plus networks and camps of developers looking for projects.
Social Media Surgeries | Friendly Geeks list on Twitter | data.gov.uk Local Data project | Speed-dating | Pimp my Geek | Scraperwiki

Web building step-by-step
Recommendations, tutorials and links to communities for people who want to move from free hosted platforms to self-hosting, installing plugins and into development.

Help
Where community problems get developed into programming/data problems that can be solved, or people post up requests. Also links to forums and tags where people are helping each other.
TAL10 Google Group | Lazyweb tag on Twitter | Friendly Geeks on Twitter |

Showcase and Ideas
Developers like to see their work used, so this will include things they have developed, or offers of things they would be willing to develop if enough people are going to make use of it.
A page of bright ideas | Openly Local council info widget |

hyperlocal labs

Sessions brewing for #TAL10 hyperlocal unconference

April 16, 2010 No comments

It’s the wonderful #TAL10 hyperlocal unconference tomorrow in Leeds.  I’m in the marvellous venue now that the Guardian helped us find – Old Broadcasting House – on the great venue wifi.  For details see of when and where see Nicky’s round up post.

There is a great discussion in the pre-event google group and i have distilled out a list of possible sessions here.  Remember though its an unconference so anything can happen: these sessions will only go ahead on the day if people want them to and volunteer to run them and some might get merged into others or drop out in the agenda setting session:
Can you make money with these things?
Promoting your site to local people
Is hyperlocal always geographic?
What did Brighton ever do for us?
Legal threats to your site – how to deal with them
Hyperlocal sites and the elections
Hperlocal as part of the national news mix – working with big media companies
Benchmarking your hyperlocal site – stats etc
Bringing out true local character
Reader research
Social media surgeries
Mix of content – how local is local?
Geek session – data and stuff
Hyperlocal news gathering
Geting started skills training and support
Wordpress and buddypress
Ning – don’t panic – alternate solutions
Impact of citizen led sites
What next for effective hyperlocal sites in their communities?

See you tomorrow or follow #TAL10 on twitter.

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Details Update for the #TAL10 Unconference and Unawards this Sat 17th April

April 14, 2010 One comment

#TAL10 Unawards prizes

Here’s a quick details update for the Unconference and Unawards this Saturday.  So book your train tickets, set your alarms, synchronize your watches…

#TAL10 Unconference

The Unconference is held at Old Broadcasting House in central Leeds, follow this link for location and parking details.

The TAL team will be at the venue from 9.00am, because we’re a hard-working bunch.  You’re welcome to join us and share in our early bird breakfast buffet.  The Unconference itself will kick off from 10.00am and things will roughly run as follows:

9.00am – Venue open for an early bird breakfast
10.00am – Introductions and session planning for the day
10.30am – 4 x session one’s
11.30pm – 4 x session two’s
12.30pm – Lunch! Nom.
1.30pm – 4 x session three’s
2.30pm – 4 x session four’s
3.30pm – Wrapping up
4.00pm – Guardian Leeds Beat Blogger John Baron will lead everyone on a guided tour to the Unawards venue, Chilli White, where you can enjoy a drinks in the bottom bar before the grand event that is…(drum roll)….

#TAL10 Unawards

The Unawards are from 6.00pm in the top bar at Chilli White, just behind the Corn Exchange in central Leeds.  We are busy musing over your nominations for winners right now, to decide who will receive the gorgeous prizes pictured above (courtesy of Latif’s Wholesale, Digbeth).  Let us know if you can think of some deserving winners for these precious things.

#TAL10 Friday night curry

As we’re starting early we’ll be staying in Leeds the Friday night before, as will a few others who are coming from far afield.  So if you’re around please join us for a warm-up curry.  We’ll be meeting at 7.00pm in Northbar (New Briggate, central Leeds) for a pint before sitting down to eat in Akbars at 8.30pm.

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