web2.0

Are UK council websites embracing new technologies such as ‘web 2.0’ in order to engage with wider demographics - if so why

Posted April 24th, 2009

I had this question from a friend and thought I'd help her out. I often enjoy helping people with research.

Would appreciate your thoughts, and any case-studies too.

Web 2.0 in Edu - Strengths and Issues

Posted April 13th, 2008

I am chairing an Edu panel at Podcamp NYC April 26 with the title of "Web 2.0 in Edu - Strengths and Issues"

We have Hilary Mason and Joyce Bettencourt joining us and we are looking for another two or three academics/support/admin/manager types, hopefully people with some opposing views and in various roles within a large institution, or operating within strict IT policies, or cultures opposed to change.

The event is informal with the panel being an interactive conversation with the participants (audience), where we will dig into positive and negative experiences with the aim of sharing good practice.

If you are interested please do email me.

I have a head full of both issues and strengths but let's use this space for anything that immediately springs to your mind, in terms of the title. So what do you think the strengths are and what do you think the issues are? What can you share about this that I can take with me to NYC?

UPDATE : 18.04.06 - Christine Cavalier is also now joining us on the panel.

UPDATE : 18.04.08 - I was directed to a large collection of lWeb2.0 inks on shambles, which I have also listed here as some of these are so good I wanted to ensure they were in my site's database links tables (I can use them site-wise). In addition I will more than likely update this list from time to time.

Photo Credit

Chinwag Measuring Social Media

Posted February 19th, 2008

Yesterday I attended the Chinwag.com event “measuring social media” chaired by Jim Sterne of Web Analytics Association with a panel comprising of:

Alex Burmaster – European Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online

Alex did a fair amount of pitching to begin with, and to be frank didn’t really give too much insight into what Social Media actually is. He enthused a great deal on how Nielsen has tools for measuring online conversations but lacked any real solutions for the crowd, he warmed up towards the end.

Robin Grant – Client Services Director, 1000heads

Robin started reasonably well and enthused on the power of Social Media although again didn’t really give any big insights to what it actually is and how you can use it. Little too much assuming I thought, although certainly a fan of Social Media.

Will McInnes – MD, Nixon McInnes

Will was the “gem” on the panel for me, he told it straight by stating “humans are slow and computers are dumb” (or was it the other way around?). Anyway he was basically stating that we cannot measure conversations, you cannot apply numbers to people’s emotions and cannot readily understand a conversation with a metric. I have to agree to some extent. Read more on his blog

Ankur Shah – Co-founder, Techlightenment

This guy was also enthusing well and was also “bigging up” the use of their Socialistics programme, based on collection of data for analysis.

I’ll state up front that I didn’t learn anything new from this event, ok sure it was great to network and meet new people, and some old friends, but in terms of the panel content I learnt nothing.

Why is this?

I think this is two-fold, firstly I am neck-deep in Social Media myself, much of that stems from running a virtual company for 8 years, I have had to build virtual communities and use social tools to engage with that community. Therefore I know first-hand what is needed, what talents and skills are appropriate and what works or doesn’t work. I’d say I was just as knowledgeable as anyone on the panel, certainly in terms of experience.

Secondly, the panel assumed that everyone in the audience knew what Social Media is, how it operates, what you need to do to get it to work for you. However, given that the majority of the audience were in fact PR agencies, I can tell you I am convinced that not a great deal of people do actually know what Social Media is, or more specifically how it can operate and work. I don't mean that to sound arrogant, or expert-like, I'm just saying this is not new to mew.

One of most poignant questions of the evening was put by the Chair who asked “if you were given the job of Social Media Marketing Manager for Vauxhall, what’s the first thing you need to do?”. I immediately twittered this question and got the following answers:

@audio - Hi Chris, my first tool would be ears to listen. :)
Samantha_Grant at 18-02-2008 20:15

@audio demographics on target market and their media habits.
injenuity at 18-02-2008 20:07

@audio a thick skin?
GJD at 18-02-2008 20:02

@audio a super-high speed internet connection and great computer?
TamK at 18-02-2008 20:00

I like a lot of those tweets, and thank you for them because you proved my point. My answer to the question was simply “build a community and call them to action”.

It sounds simple when you look at it in print, but not one person mentioned that very important fact, in fact the very cornerstone of Social Media. Now regarding how to derive a metric from your community, I’m not sure about. Perhaps a call to action on a vote, an act, will in fact yield a metric. For example if 25% of my Social Media community act on a call to action, I do in fact have a metric, numbers, something for the CEO to consider. I know that’s not measuring engagement, connection, depth of experience, blah blah … but it is a number which CEOs “get”.

The dialogue went onto asking if we need an open source form of social media metrics, some kind of industry standard that we can all work towards, personally I’m not convinced of that either, but I could be persuaded.

I think to sum-up Social Media is currently a buzz-phrase, I’ve been socialising with my prospects for years, it’s not suddenly something new to me, though I understand it is for the traditional advertisers of this world. I also think that the strength of Social Media in terms of advertising will be the ability to extract highly detailed profiles of people in “the community”. Taking Facebook as an example, if the platform is sexy enough people will tell you “everything” about themselves.

Once we have highly detailed profiles of prospects we will be able to sell that data to be used to target individuals with specific information we know they will be pleased to hear about. This goes back to my argument around the Android Pocket Spy.

Of course the further we delve into asking our community to put forward detailed information about themselves the further down the privacy road we stumble.

Will you mind being profiled so deeply? Will you enjoy receiving targeted SMS notes about products in you geo area? It will come, believe me.

Web2.0 Halloween with Google Inclusion

Posted October 31st, 2007

Ok so I have had to “buy in” to Halloween this year, of course I did, I have a 14 month old daughter and a qualified school teacher for a partner, these type of activities are essential!

So we bought a pumpkin from the local Pumpkin Grotto (lovely sideline a local farm is laying on this year, rammed with the orange orbs and various other spooky delights), and whilst there I grabbed a set of pumpkin carving tools to go with it (great idea).

The carving kit came with a bunch of template which I strapped onto the said fruit ready for daddy to carve! As you can see the tools are comprehensive.

Carving was a piece of cake, well fruit actually, and surprising to me didn’t take that long at all. The conversation between me and Jo then went on to what to use for the candle, she wasn’t keen on a candle as there will be a group of babies, and a gaggle of mums, so she wanted it to be safe!

If you read my blog a fair amount you’ll probably know I like risk to an extent, I enjoy unpredictability and in this case I fancied a flickering candle inside the lovingly carved fruity.

However, pressure won over and cleverly Jo thought that my Google Light/Radio would be a great idea to use inside Peter Pumpkin.

Now this Google Light/Radio is actually my first gift from Google way back in the first year of entering their Adsense program, (yep they supply gifts if you earn well), and well, anyway I’ve always cherished my Google Clock Light Radio device which pulsates changing pastel shades.

In fact it's so neat it turns on off off depending on how you orient it through 90 degrees.

So there we have it, it turns out that we have a Peter Pumpkin of the Google Web2.0 variety, well the party will be social anyway, and of course have the web connection.

Made me chuckle so thought you might too.

ACHUB MediaCampBucks07 Summary

Posted October 28th, 2007

Well it has been well over a week and I’ve decided that now some time has passed I’d unload some of my thoughts into my blog, after all remember my blog is the same as you’d get from me in the pub, so join me in a drink while I mention my personal highlights.

The ACHUB MediaCampBucks07 was the first if its kind for Bucks, in fact the first of its kind for many areas in UK, the slant of this event was enabling an interface of sorts between people working in the commercial sector and academia, and you know what, we all certainly achieved that.

On the day we had three broad themes running:

• Education/Web2.0
• Audio & Music
• HR/Policy/Community

Therefore three sessions were running simultaneously in order that a variety of choice was constantly present for all the participants, it was a cracking atmosphere with everyone checking out the schedules posted-up on the session room doors, and deciding if the current topic was for them, or not.

The event started for me on Friday morning by collecting Kris Eliasson from Heathrow who was representing Sony Ericsson. This guy is an ex-student of mine who studied with Audiocourses.com the distance learning school I am CEO of. Kris started as a student and then became a Production Advisor for the school and then since those days we have become good friends, and this was the first time I got to shake his hand in real-life and move onto serious discussion about the future of mobile content distribution, was awesome.

The event also saw another ex-student of Audiocourses.com in Mike O’Hara who has gone on to make audio his main income stream having set up a thriving business around podcasting, again what a buzz to see these connections firing.

On the Friday evening many of us met up in a local venue for a couple of drinks and a chat, this was the first time most of us had met and it was a real buzz seeing the next character walk in and introduce themselves, finally putting a real face to names was amazing. Observing different groups of people with wide ranging backgrounds and jobs getting social together was a thrill.

I met some amazing people on the day too numerous to mention, you know who you are and how we interacted, and let me just say thanks so much for giving and sharing, YOU made the day a success, and I’m excited to see you again soon.

I want to personally thank a few people for making the day happen, firstly Asha Treacy for driving me to the venue first thing Saturday morning, (I had abandoned my car the evening before following 4 pints of beer). CJ for being very organised and “calling time” with 10 mins to go in the sessions, this was awesome and not planned, she just took control of that and I need to thank her for it, we needed that structure. Eaon Pritchard the talented Scott who put together the logo for MediaCampBucks07 and also came up trumps with some direction boards and banners (sponsored by Weapon7) which we placed around the campus, smart man is Eaon, though he did have me worried as he had been out on the pop the night before and was missing in action for a while. Mike for getting a serious Jam scene going on in the Glasshouse on Saturday evening, sadly I missed most of it but checked out the repeat on Ustream.tv.

ACHUB MediaCampBucks07 was a success without a doubt, we had about 60 participants throughout the day all told. I’m humbled by all of this and I feel a sense of something great, we have created a brand which has a sense of expectation attached to it, all the participants now know what to expect from an ACHUB event.

Looking to the future of the ACHUB we plan to have a virtual event take place in SecondLife before xmas, probably music heavy, and also plan to host another real-life event for some time in the new year which may be similar to MediaCamp, or may be something different completely, in fact if YOU have some ideas about that I want to hear from you, I’m keen on using the momentum we have with ACHUB to continue hosting has we have done since 06.

Just to conclude ACHUB exists in two places:

ACHUB Facebook
Wiki

Recently we have secured the domain ACHUB.ORG which will likely become the main portal before too long, and yes, with user accounts so you can participate with the content, after all it is YOURS, this is YOUR group, your brand, your dynamic to embrace and share.

As a closing statement I’d like you to continue the growth of the group by bringing someone in, a stranger someone “outside” of this web2.0, someone who needs it most.

I’m keeping this short but let me know your highlight of the weekend with a cheeky comment.

MediaCamp BUCKS 07 - you coming?

Posted September 27th, 2007

I would like to make you aware of event which may be of interest to you.

Media Camp Bucks 07
http://mediacampbucks.com.

This is a new-media event taking place Sat Oct 20, Buckinghamshire UK, hosted by a not-for-profit organisation of which I happen to be the Founder, known as the ACHUB. The organisation has been active in putting on new-media events, concerned with sharing knowledge, practise, resources and social networking tools.

So what is Mediacampbucks07?

It is an "unconference", a term which loosely implies that the participants themselves, i.e. YOU, run the day, YOU, interact and YOU, embrace the sessions. There is no "expert" talking to you for 40 minutes, the sessions are more like brain-storming sessions where you are encouraged to engage.

Bucks New Uni are kindly sponsoring this event to take place at the Technology Centre on the main High-Wycombe campus, and I cannot thank the University enough for this sponsorship, the facilities are great and it is a progressive move, and already the new-media community are buzzing about it,
people will be walking away back to industry having gained an awful lot.

Already many professionals have registered to attend and take part, including bloggers, web design companies, ad agencies, Internet TV people, SecondLifers, HR people and even Microsoft, and not just
Brits!

The best bit, it is GRATIS, not a penny required, well your lunch and drinks aside!

We have also secured some additional sponsorship including Chinwag (the UK's leading community media company for the new media industry, which will help pay for some goodness.

To register simply visit the mediacampbucks07 wiki and add your name, and if you fancy running a session add yourself to that too.

If you have any questions please do get in touch with me through email, more than happy to answer, if your business/institution is interested to sponsor do get in touch.

Cheers

Chris Hambly
http://mediacampbucks.com

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