2008
121 entries
- 10 things to ask yourself about your new web site home page layoutI’ve just been chatting to a friend of mine, Chris Garrett, about a new home page layout for his new venture - a video production company operating in the UK with international clients.
- 3form Shortlisted for a Webby!A nice start to the week - we’ve been shortlisted for a Webby award for the First Light Movies website.
- 5alist - Top five lists to share with your friendsAnother week another rapidly-deployed Web idea from Andrew Dubber and me (with a little help from Jason).
- 5alist upgradedAndrew and I spent a few hours on 5alist.com this week, and we now have some nice new features and tweaks.
- A great conversation with Shawn Morton from ProfilacticI’m not alone in thinking that Profilactic could be one of the big stories of 2008 - a service that lets you aggregate and manage all of the various feeds of information that you publish as a person and have them pulled together into a ‘lifestream’.
- A mixed bag weekThe last few days have been a mixed bag and I wanted to put something online about what I've been up to.
- A Webby Triple - One Nomination and Two HonoreesThe announcement of this year’s tranch of Webby winners is getting ever closer, and this year I’m feeling pretty great about having a triple decker trifle of awards cake.
- An advance preview of the new Redpoint Climbing Centre in BirminghamTonight was the unofficial preview night for particularly keen people to see what’s been going on at the new soon-to-be-opened Redpoint Climbing Centre in Birmingham’s Gun Quarter.
- Andrew Dubber does existI can confirm that Andrew Dubber does, in fact, exist.
- Why Andy Burnham’s plans for censoring websites with film-style age certificates won’t workHow would you feel if everything you tried to access on the internet were filtered for “unacceptable content” by government censors?
- Archive TV LaunchesI’ve been working with Cassie Leedham and Chris Garrett on the launch of a great new TV production company specialising in historical crime drama-documentaries based on true stories from newspaper and library archives.
- As promised… bikehuggerWe’re in a ‘want us to do stuff?’ mood so we head over to Bikehugger at the request of someone who left a message at sxswm and got an interview with a Bikehugger blogger.
- Ben made a wish and it came trueTo celebrate the launch of I So Wish, Dubber and I decided to grant a random wish that someone had made.
- Big City Plan public consultation - who’s in?It’s all been a bit quiet online about the Big City Plan for a while now.
- Birmingham Big City Plan - The VideoGiven away at the Big City Plan launch yesterday was a lovely little 5 minute video by Squint Opera.
- Birmingham Bloggers Meetup 2The Birmingham Bloggers Meetup events look set for great things.
- Birmingham Bloggers Meetup 3 - Coworking and a Social Media CafeLast night was the third of the Birmingham Bloggers Meetups, and it was an even bigger affair than the last two probably put together.
- Birmingham Bloggers Meetup Podcast and PhotosThursday night saw the first ever Birmingham Bloggers Meetup happen at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath. I made it down for the first hour or so, and it was a small, cosy event in nice surroundings. More photos here.
- Birmingham from the balcony one eveningI love living where I live - in the evenings we get fantastic views of the sky over Birmingham.
- 50+ Birmingham Twitter users you need to followTwitter has really taken off in Birmingham (UK) this year. Here’s a list of some of the people who are using it and I think you should be connecting with you if you haven’t already!
- Blog Action Day in BirminghamBlog Action Day is happening for the second time this year, and is an attempt to bring together bloggers from around the world to discuss a shared issue.
- Broadcast magazine feature on digital media in BirminghamI was interviewed a couple of weeks ago for a piece that Broadcast magazine have written on the state of the digital media scene in Birmingham, and it’s been published today.
- Clore begins
- I’m a Clore FellowI’ve been awarded a fellowship with the Clore Leadership Programme, and today I am off to London for a day-long event welcoming the twenty-two people who are this year’s group.
- Clore FellowshipClore Fellow 2008/09
- Clore Leadership ProgrammeA two year creative and cultural leadership programme.
- Common Purpose — The Entrepreneur’s GameYesterday I was playing a ‘dragon in the den’ at a Common Purpose event as part of their Navigator Programme on leadership development.
- Connect or Protect? How can we open up our ideas and keep them safe at the same time?My new company is registered!
- What other brands can learn from the Courvoisier Future 500Last week I was picked as one of the top 5 in the Future 500, which is sponsored by Courvoisier.
- Creative Republic is Open for Business!Creative Republic is now open for business, but what is it, and what’s it for?
- Creative Republic Launch Party and CharterLast night was the launch of Creative Republic and was a great evening.
- Creative Republic Launch VideoVideo from the launch of Creative Republic, with speeches from Helga Henry and Pete Ashton as well as shots from the night and a few interviews with Creative Republic board members.
- Dad’s OkayWe all had a bit of a scare last week.
- Day 1 - our summary - “it’s all about conversations”In a brief respite from the geekery, a few of us from SXSWM got together for a chat to summarise our first day.
- Does Birmingham need a Creative Director?I was in Design Week again this week. This time for an article on an idea that’s gaining some traction in Birmingham at the moment - should the city have a creative director?
- “Please don’t discount these voices” - accepting the Webby for First Light MoviesI’m in New York accepting a Webby award for the work that we did with First Light Movies - an organisation that enables young filmmaking all across the UK.
- Dorking at DorkbotWe went to the fantastic Dorkbot party and met up with the organisers.
- Emily has a photo blogWelcome to Emily, who has just joined us with her new blog at Emily Quinton Photography.
- Emily is being featured in Professional Photographer MagazineProfessional Photographer Magazine asked Emily to write a second piece for them, this time a “day in the life of” piece documenting her day spent shooting a wedding and then a multi-millionaire’s birthday party.
- Entering the Clore Leadership Programme with a Personal Organisation ChartIn brief - ever tried drawing a diagram of how you fit into your work environment?
- Follow our progress at SXSW Interactive on sxswm.comI’ve organised a group of digital media types from Birmingham to go to South By South-West (SXSW) interactive (SXSWi) with the support of Digital Central.
- From “Gold Rush” to “Good Rush” - Social Media gets ethical in 2008If 2007 was the year of the “Social Media Gold Rush”, 2008 is the year of the “Social Media Good Rush”.
- Getting a fix on SerendipityAs part of my Clore fellowship I have agreed to produce a Masters-equivalent piece of research around a particular area of ‘leadership’ that interests me.
- Give Powerpoint the Bullet. Do something interesting insteadYesterday I gave a talk at Birmingham City University’s Business School on the induction day for a new course - the MSc in Business Creation and Development.
- “Going to be a dad” on TwitterA cute new service for new Twitter soon-to-be dads: Goingtobeadad.com
- Guardian Innovation Awards ('MEGA') — Best Independent BlogJoint-winner of inaugural Guardian Innovation Awards ('MEGA') for Best Independent Blog — for Created in Birmingham
- Hello new blogger!Congratulations on starting a blog - nice to have you with us!
- Hello WorldToday is the first day of Birmingham’s Hello World conference being held at Millennium Point.
- How to make a Life FeedYou make yourself a Life Feed — a single RSS feed that combines all of those disparate bits and bobs of content that you’re busy making and puts them all in one place for easy consumption.
- How to recycle your old computer equipment in BirminghamI’ve been getting rid of lots of old computer equipment this week.
- Hypercontext“It’s Mr Neologism again” was the first reaction to another of my on-the-spur-of-the-moment word-coinings.
- I So WishA site all about users sharing 'wishes' and helping others to make them actually happen.
- I’m blogging for the Birmingham PostIn an interesting turn of events I was invited by Joanna Geary of the Birmingham Post to join their new blogging team.
- I’m blogging my new startupTo coincide with my thirtieth birthday I received the exciting news that I have just received £50,000 of seed funding for my new business idea.
- I’m TigBounder over at BINS has set up a game of ‘blog tig’ with the following rules.
- Introducing Odadeo - a new site for dadsFor Fathers’ Day 2008 I have launched the ‘private beta’ of new site that I’ve been working very hard on for the last three months.
- Introducing Tweetlet - twitter for pregnancyWouldn’t it be great if you could use Twitter to keep up to date with how your baby is developing during pregnancy?
- Is The Wire better than an MBA?I’ve been obsessed with a TV show called The Wire for the last few months.
- Jubilee Debt Campaign, BirminghamIntroducing a new blog for the Jubilee Debt Campaign in Birmingham.
- Let’s take the ideas in the Big City Plan and run with themIn the first of my video blog posts I was pretty amazed by one of the comments in particular that came back and it looks like we’ve spawned a project if I can find some people to collaborate with to make it happen (open invite).
- Making a music video in 5 hours for Film DashThis is a music video I made today for the track Ut Nos Vivicaret taken from Xela’s forthcoming album In Bocca Al Lupo, on our label Type.
- Mass intimacyIn a great write-up, Daneil W. E. Light talks about a collective sense of connectivity, opened secrecy and intimacy based around the idea of ‘we’ instead of ‘i’.
- Give your homepage a mini facelift in about 3 hours“The plumber’s tap always drips”, or so they say. The same is true of web consultancies.
- Minority Report interfaces will soon be realPretty amazing video of an experimental immersive human computer interface that has the feel of the famous Minority Report system, with music from Deaf Center on our own Type Records.
- My leadership development day on the cultural leadership programmeLeadership development day on the cultural leadership programme
- OdadeoA social site for dads, launched in a very early beta for Father's Day 2008.
- On turning 30 and thinking “so that was my twenties…”I’ve just turned 30.
- One of my images on the first Birmingham Journal of Literature and LanguageI’ve just received my complimentary copies of the first Birmingham Journal of Literature and Language, and on the cover is one of my images.
- Peter Broderick - “Float” CD and VinylPeter Broderick’s amazing debut album is now out, and my first copies arrived on my desk today.
- Podcast of The Big City Plan LaunchThe Big City Plan launched yesterday and I was there to see (and hear) it happen.
- Rationalise Your Online Identity with Profilactic and ClaimID“Identity” is a hard-to-pin-down concept, especially when it comes to your ‘online identity’ in a world of Facebook profiles, Twitter and what seems to be becoming ‘multiple online identity disorder’.
- Recession busting business modelsNesta asked some of their contacts what they thought were the best business areas to be working in to weather the storm of the recession, and they’ve used a Wordle to visualise the results.
- Sam Amidon at the Tin Angel, CoventrySam Amidon, the artists behind our favourite album of this year “All is Well” was doing a show over at The Tin Angel in Coventry.
- Snowladen BranchesI’ve been getting slow on processing my images - getting them off the camera and onto the internet.
- South by South West (Midlands)In short - a bunch of Birmingham digital media types are going to SXSW Interactive in Texas next week, and we are doing a ‘remote control blogging’ thing where you get to ask us to attend stuff and report back for you.
- “Surface Unsigned” - How not to score a PR own goal when criticised onlineSocial media enables anyone to be a critic of anyone else and to have their criticism heard by all online, which means we must all be careful about what we say and how we act online.
- SXSW BacklogOookay…. So it’s been a bit quiet around here since I came back from SXSW Interactive.
- SXSWi 2008 First ImpressionsI’ve spent a lot of my time recording my conversations with people at SXSWi and I’ll be posting a few of them here.
- Tagged Audio: An interview with Hugh Forrest from SXSWI have converted this recording to a ’static video’ and used Viddler to tag the timeline so that it is more searchable and scannable.
- Talking coworking, xml facial expressions and other randomness with Alex Hillman and othersSXSW is all about the conversations you have - Alex and others who drop in and out during our chat provide a great first one!
- The Big City Plan Charter - Any Questions?Today is the launch of The Big City Plan Charter, a document that puts down in writing some of the ‘big ideas’ that are under consideration for the future of Birmingham.
- “Thank you” to the Cultural Leadership ProgrammeThe Cultural Leadership Programme are generous sponsoring my Clore Fellowship, and they just released the news about the five of us that they are funding.
- The Art of Influence for the Arts CouncilPete and I presented at our first ‘double act’ speaking event today.
- The Big Picture - A huge photography project in the West MidlandsToday is the launch of The Big Picture.
- The Big Picture breaks a World Record (and generates a mini debate)It’s official - the West Midlands, UK has made the world’s biggest photo-montage according to the Guinness World Records officials.
- The Big PictureA web-art experiment to win the world record for the largest ever photo-montage - in fact it was the size of a football pitch.
- Top 5 in The Future 500I’ve been picked as one of the top 5 in the Observer newspaper’s Courvoisier The Future 500 list for 2008 (a bit of a mouthful!)
- The New Created in Birmingham DesignWe’ve spent some time rebuilding the Created in Birmingham site, updating the design, adding some extra features and generally adding improvements throughout.
- The “One week until Clore starts” brain-dumpMy Clore Fellowship starts in just over a week, and I’ve got lots of thoughts rolling around about what this means, and what I’ll be doing. So I’m thinking them through here… any ideas, let me know.
- The Post-SXSW Interactive “Brain Dump”Last night the crew from the SXSWM trip got together for what we were calling the ‘Post SXSW Brain Dump’ which is available as a 1 hr 15 min video on Bambuser.
- The pre-startup preparationI only found out on Friday that I’d been given that all important ‘yes’ on the seed funding to make this thing happen, but already I’ve been making some great progress as well as encountering some pretty tough obstacles to overcome.
- The SXSWM Gang is Back in TownWe’re variously getting over the jetlag, collating all of the information we gathered, sending emails and connecting online with the folks we met, trying to work out what to do with all of the ideas.
- Top 10 Usability Mistakes for Blogs - How Does Yours Rate?The prolific usability guru Jacob Nielsen has a handy post called “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes” and last night I thought I’d scope them out and see if I needed to make any changes to this site.
- TweetletA pregnancy twitter service that would direct-message you child development information in the first person
- Helios — Caesura
- Grouper — Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
- Koen Holtkamp — Field Rituals
- Peter Broderick — Float
- Peter Broderick — Home
- The Alps — III
- Xela — In Bocca Al Lupo
- Sylvain Chauveau — The Black Book of Capitalism
- Goldmund — The Malady Of Elegance
- University of Birmingham — School of Computer ScienceAdvising the School of Computer Science so that its research, curriculum and strategy line up with what industry needs.
- Video: Is the future of ‘online’ actually ‘offline’?With my head fried from the SXSW Interactive experience this is a short (1:47 min) video piece of me talking about how it’s the offline impact that social media can offer that will validate out use of these technologies.
- We Won a Webby Award!The First Light Movies website that we built at 3form has only gone and won a Webby Award!
- Web 2.0 or Blah 2.0?Here’s a summary of the talk Pete Ashton and I gave in which we attempted to explain what Web 2.0 is (or is not) and how it is relevant for small creative businesses.
- Webby Award Honoree (NetArt)Webby Award Honoree in the NetArt category — for The Big Picture
- Webby Award
- Webby Award Honoree (NetArt)Webby Award Honoree in the NetArt category — for Name in Lights
- What do the BBC leadership have to say about the future of Birmingham?In short - they’re investing in media production outside London and they see Birmingham as being important to delivering on that promise.
- What do you wish for in 2009?If you could wish for one thing in 2009, what would it be?
- What is accelerated serendipity for?In an attempt to break some of the backblog and to get me publishing more regularly, how about video for the format, and to start with how do you think we can make serendipity have real outcomes rather than just ‘nice ideas’ being generated?
- Where is the Creative and Cultural Web Traffic in Birmingham (Part 2)Finding out where web traffic in a city is, which are the important sites, which ones have loads of users, which ones have none is a difficult task for anyone who’s interested.
- Why are we podcasting instead of using text?Tom Scotney just put up an interesting blog post questioning the usefulness of the video and audio that we’ve been putting online.
- Why doesn’t Birmingham have wifi like Austin?A conversation with Pete Ashton at SXSW about Birmingham’s woefully inadequate and probably very expensive wifi solution, compared to the ‘everyone just make their connections free’ model that Austin has.
- Why “Power or Powerless”?I woke up this morning in New York - I’m here for the Webby Awards this evening, and to start the day I tuned into a debate that was happening courtesy of the Birmingham Post, back home in the UK.
- “Why South By Southwest?” VideoChris Kershaw from Ideas For Life has been following us on our SXSWM trip.
- WordcampUK comes to BirminghamGreat news for Birmingham’s ever-growing blogging and social media scene!
- Joint World Record — The Big PictureJoint World Record holder for The Big Picture 2008 (along with several thousand others)
- Yay for Created in Birmingham! A joint Guardian Media Innovation AwardWhat a nice way to start the week - Created in Birmingham has picked up some national interest and gone and hit the big-time with a big ‘ol compliment from the Guardian in the shape of a MEGA award nomination for Best Independent Blog.