Tag Archive for #tal12

The #TAL12 Unaward winners

As is tradition with our unconferences, at the end of #TAL12 we held the much-awaited Unawards ceremony to mark the very best in hyperlocal innovation and excellence. Below is our list of winners, who were rewarded with some very special prizes purchased from Latifs (‘Where Choice Meets Price’). The winners will also receive a ‘#TAL12 Unaward winner’ badge for their websites. Watch John Popham’s video above to relive the Unawards fun!

#TAL12 collective memory

Photo by Ray Duffill
Photo by Ray Duffill

Photo by Ray Duffill

The Talk About Local team have just about recovered from what was a fantastic #TAL12 unconference on Saturday, thank you so much to everyone who came! It was an action-packed day full of interesting conversations and new ideas, ranging from a hyperlocal handbook to neighbourhood planning to a ‘Blogger vs Press Officer’ rematch between Mike Rawlins and Dan Slee (following Round One in 2010). Below is a list of links to posts and content that’s emerged from #TAL12. I’ll keep adding to the list as more is published.

  • #TAL12 on twitter – there were a fair few tweets hashtagged #tal12 on Saturday, so I’ve published a TweetReach report of them all.
  • Going Hyperlocal by Dave Briggs – Dave takes his inspiration from the Data Journalism Handbook to kick-start the Hyperlocal Handbook, ‘a project to document some of the useful things people need to know about when running their own local website.’ It’s open collaboration so please join in! Talk About Local are very pleased to be able to sponsor this initiative.
  • Richard Jones thoroughly enjoyed #TAL12, describing it as ‘a great day with lots of interesting discussions, ranging from the ethical dilemmas of reporting local crime, to fundamental questions about the sustainability of hyperlocal sites.’ He took the opportunity to do a quick show-and-tell of the new platform Pinwheel.

Location Location Geo-Location

hypARlocal

I rather unsuccessfully, due to network issues, ran a session on Geo-location, at #TAL12 on Saturday. Geo-location is the new project I am working on here at Talk About Local which is being funded by Nesta & Nominet Trust.

The Geo-location project or HypARlocal as it is known at TAL towers, is very short, it will be wrapped up by the end of July this year, is going to investigate geo-located content and what we can do with it.

With more and more people consuming their news on smart devices on the move rather than on desktop or static machines, it seems like and ideal time to investigate ways of improving the reach of Hyperlocal blogs and trying to target the content at people in relevant locations.

With your help we will take geo-located content from around 10 – 15 Hyperlocal blogs and feed it in to an Augmented Reality app for smart phones and Wikitude. These are two very different applications that were chosen to give us a good spread of the available technologies while we build our proof of concept platform.

If you run a WordPress blog, either hosted with WordPress or self hosted and want to be involved in this project please fill in the form below and I’ll be sure to get in contact with you.

Sadly, at this stage of the project we can only support WordPress blogs, we will look at working with other platforms as the project develops.

This is the first blog of many on Geo-location and Hyperlocal content.

The #TAL12 live blog!

Ahead of #TAL12 – meet our sponsors

When the the annual Talk About Local unconference opens its doors this Saturday, it will be the culmination of some hard work and planning which couldn’t happen without the generous support of our sponsors.

Ahead of the big day we invite you meet our sponsors. They will all be represented to participate and provide more information about their hyperlocal offerings on Saturday too.

In alphabetical order, here’s what they say:

Media Trust

media-trust-logo

Media Trust’s newsnet gives people the unique opportunity to connect, share and learn to tell their local story. newsnet is a UK wide community of community reporters and local storytellers, which gives them the tools, skills and connections to get more from their local news.

Through our newsnet beacon projects we will support a cross section of community radio stations, hyperlocal sites and local TV stations to demonstrate the variety and scope of this community. newsnet is open to anyone, but our beacons can access a higher level of support from us, from training opportunities to equipment. newsnet is about supporting, fostering and ensuring an even stronger hyperlocal community so find out how we can help tell your local story at http://newsnet.mediatrust.org/

NESTA

Nesta Logo

NESTA is a charity that supports innovation in the UK. Through our new innovation program Destination Local we intend to fund 10 proposals that develop and test prototype services for the next generation of hyperlocal media. In particular, we are looking for prototypes that make the most of mobile technologies to deliver geographically-relevant local media.

Our goal in funding the prototypes is to understand what new business models may be required, what types of service work well with audiences and the challenges and opportunities of using mobile technologies. Successful applications will be able to demonstrate how they help to understand these themes. You can hear more about Destination Local at the unconference or apply online – it’s a simple, straightforward form.

n0tice

n0ticelogo

n0tice.com is a community noticeboard, a platform that simply seeks to answer the question – what’s happening near you?

Released by Guardian Media Group, at its most straightforward, n0tice.com is a new version of a very old idea – a community noticeboard. Users can post reports, offers or events for everyone in their area to see or set up their own noticeboards – become ‘noticeboard owners’ with a complete tool kit for local/hyperlocal publishing. Visit the site at www.n0tice.com, twitter @n0tice, blog www.about.n0tice.com.

South Leeds Life

South Leeds Life

South Leeds Life does what it says on the tin. A group of people who live and work in South Leeds got together to start the blog. We aim to tell you about events and stories going on in South Leeds – Holbeck, Beeston, Cottingley, Hunslet, Belle Isle & Middleton and encourage local residents to file their own posts. This collaborative blog stands in South Leeds’ long tradition of welcoming people into its communities. We celebrate the diversity of our communities and value the contributions that people have brought to South Leeds from all over the world. Most of the articles on this site come from a large network of local people who send in information.

UCLan MADE

uclan_made

The #uclanMADE (Media and Digital Enterprise) project works to support creative, motivated communicators who want to start or grow digital news enterprises for civic, educational or commercial purposes. Winner of the inaugural International Press Institute’s News Innovation Contest sponsored by Google, we’re currently accepting applications for the first MADE:UK Startup Weekend from 14-17 June and a chance to join the MADE Hothouse. Links: http://uclanmade.blogspot.com Twitter: MADEupdates

* We also received generous donations from a handful of well-wishers we’ve contacted individually and would like to add a big thank you to everyone who has supported #tal12. If you still wish to pledge a donation, there’s still time to do so on the #TAL12  Eventbrite page.

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