Sarah Hartley

Responsive Web Design on the agenda
The Digital Editors’ Network (DEN) is hosting an event looking at RWD or to put it simply – design that works across a variety of devices – in Preston next month.
Introducing the session, the François Nel, Director of the Journalism Leaders Programme, says:
“Sure, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the approach to web design that intends to provide an optimal viewing experience — easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling — across a wide range of devices from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones. But we’ll also be thinking more laterally about what Responsive Design means.”

The free event includes an in-depth case study from MNA Digital development manager Mark Cadman and electronic editor Abigail Edge who led the team that charted the Express and Star and Shropshire Star’s route to responsive web design will be lifting the lid on that innovative project – and how their efforts have paid off.

#ResponsiveDEN Digital Editors Network Winter 2013 meetup is on Thursday 21 February from 12:45 PM to 6:30 PM at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. Tickets need to be booked here.

Crisis? Help at hand in York
Former BBC chief media spokesperson Donald Steel has been confirmed as the keynote speaker at a leading business event in York this spring, reports OneandOther.
Donald Steel was, for 11 years, the BBC’s chief media spokesperson, where he handled some of the most prominent media stories of the decade, from the murder of BBC presenter Jill Dando and a terrorist bomb attack on BBC Television Centre, to the Hutton Inquiry.

The evening lecture, Crisis Communications – an investment in company value, will be held at the Hospitium in York on Thursday 7th March 2013 at Museum Gardens. Tickets cost £15+VAT for IoD members and £25+VAT for non-members.Book at the IoD website.

Opportunities and challenges in Manchester
Insight Thirteen from Don’t Panic is a one-day seminar with lunch that takes place at The Studio, Lever Street in Manchester on Friday 25 January 2013 between 10am – 4.10pm.
The event will examine potential opportunities and challenges for 2013 and will feature leading industry speakers from the digital, marketing and communication arenas sharing their insights on trends they believe these sectors will see in the coming year. Each speaker will give a thirty-minute overview presentation and then join an interactive Q & A panel session.Tickets here.

‘I was wrong’
Journalism lecturer Richard Horsman proves he’s big enough to admit he may have been wrong in his initial assessment of the BBC Radio England which is due to launch from Leeds next week. He blogs:

This is going to be awkward. Not as awkward as the Mayans trying to explain away January, admittedly, but still difficult……….

Being away from ‘hubs of creativity’ should bring benefits. There’ll be less temptation to recycle guests, as has been known to happen with BBC Breakfast and Five Live coming out of the same building. Producers are more likely to rub shoulders with and pick up the concerns of real  50-summat C2DE local radio listeners in Leeds bus station or Kirkgate Market, the Beeb’s immediate neighbours, than they are in Costa Coffee amid the Disneyworld perfection of Media City. So I for one am prepared to give this version of Radio England a fair chance.

Let’s get together
The north’s digital events calendar gets back to work next week with Manchester’s Social Media Cafe on Tuesday and the north east’s Refresh Teesside on Wednesday. Update Mon 7 Jan: This event has been cancelled but will be back in February.

It’s all about the community running the community. It’s always about the people. That’s why the people who do the talks are from the community. They’re all giving back to each other and working together.

Refresh Teesside organiser James Mills explains what’s behind the networking event that’s approaching its first birthday – even though it’s nearly four years old! He explains more here at Betarocket.

Wednesday’s first event of 2013 includes a talk by Charlotte Considine about the Urban Pioneers project. Book your free ticket here.

Meanwhile Smc_Mcr goes informal with a ‘simple get-together, down at The Britons Protection from 6pm onwards on Tuesday 8 Jan. Details here.

Get Leeds reading
The Yorkshire Evening Post is going to run a three month long programme in conjunction with charity Beanstalk to help primary school children with their reading.

Features editor Jayne Dawson tells HoldtheFrontPage:  “There is nothing more vital in education than learning to read, but a distressing number of children in Leeds leave their primary school without this basic skill.”

Beanstalk CEO Sue Porto say it aims to recruit 40 new Reading Helpers to double the number of children supported in Leeds from 120 to 240 and aims to raise at least £40,000.

Starting the year with a look at what could be in store for the media in the north during 2013.

Picture from last month’s Bradford Animation Festival by the National Media Museum on Flickr.

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Good news for Media City?
Of course it was too much to hope for. I had thought we might get all the way into the new year without a knocking story about Media City appearing in the nationals but then this arrived from The Telegraph.

Now I don’t have any problem with the investigation into costs – although I personally don’t see why a single penny needs to be paid out to persuade people to move north when there’s so much talent already here – it’s a fair enough question to ask on behalf of us licence fee payers.

But what I did find startling was the quote attributed to the Angie Bray, a Conservative member of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee (bolding mine):

I can’t help feeling that Salford is an expensive box- ticking exercise. I absolutely understand that the BBC feels the need to demonstrate that they are not entirely London-centric but the fact is the programming from Salford is not as good and it is costing an awful lot of money.

Apart from showing a lack of understanding of long-term costs, where does the evidence for this ‘fact’ come from? How is the quality of programming gauged exactly? Whatever your view on the BBC’s new home, having MPs of any party making unexplained judgements of opinion on the quality of programming and presenting them as fact is something we should all be wary of.

Although I haven’t written so much about Media City recently, I remain an avid follower of all that happens there and I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a little rush of pride when the announcers say ‘produced in Salford’ or ‘going over to our Salford studio’. Now the site itself looks more established, as well as the general public being more aware thanks to the regular credits, here’s hoping the knocking stage of its evolution is now over.

New look websites and apps for many northern newspapers
Trinity Mirror, which runs the websites for many big city titles including the Manchester Evening News and The Journal is rolling out a new look and new functionality after a launch in Birmingham in October. The new versions reportedly include built-in live blog technology, better presentation of picture galleries and video, and a new hyperlocal section called In Your Area – more on that here.

Meanwhile, Johnston Press gets app-y with titles including The Yorkshire Post, The Sheffield Star and The Sunderland Echo. Developed by Pagesuite Ltd, all 18 titles will also launch Android versions which will work on devices including the new Amazon Kindle Fire, the Google Nexus 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.Alex Gubbay, Director Digital Platforms, said: “The range of more affordable tablet devices now available is expanding rapidly. Our new iPad and Android apps allow us to tap into this growing trend and learn how best to offer users the best from their local title in a more dynamic, convenient way.

The Skinny on its way to the north west
The crowded cultural sector of Manchester and Liverpool is just about to get even busier as Scottish publisher The Skinny prepares to set up shop. Currently seeking various editorial positions (including editor) the magazine will hope the independent stance which has made it a must-read for Edinburgh will travel across the border. Longtime followers of this blog might remember that we’ve been here before…….http://www.sarahhartley.me.uk/2010/04/19/no-skinny-for-manchester/

High praise for north east weekly paper
The Teesdale Mercury, ‘the voice of Teesdale since 1854′, newspaper found itself in line for praise by MPs discussing the future of he local press. It reports that Helen Goodman, Shadow Minister for Media and Communications, said: “Notwithstanding whatever marvellous local newspapers honourable members have, none could be better than the inestimable Teesdale Mercury.”

All change for The Guardian in the north
The irrepressible Martin Wainwright is today replaced by new Northern Editor Helen Pidd who takes on the mammoth task of walking in the outgoing Northern editor’s shoes. As anyone who has had the pleasure of working with, or even just following his writing knows, Martin will be a hard act to follow as a tireless champion of the north against the increasing London-centricity of the national media. He writes more here:

For most of my time, and during my 37 years at the Guardian which will finish at the end of March, my method has been to get as much about the north into the paper as possible. In recent years, that has changed with the move to digital-first and the chance to try new ways of coverage such as the Northerner. I have loved this, as a way of using the resources of the north to describe and discuss the north; more than 200 people have contributed posts in the 22 months since we changed from a weekly email to daily blogging.

A fond farewell to Martin – and a warm welcome to Helen for 2013.

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This morning over at The Northerner I posted details from a recent Freedom of Information request which gives more infomation about the number of people applying for jobs and MediaCityUK, those who were hired and the paygrades in place at the new home of the Beeb in the north.

To provide further transparency, I’ve also published the full document below.

The data referred to is also available in spreadsheet form via my data store page. Please do drop me a line in the comments below if you use this data elsewhere.

[scribd id=78336085 key=key-1wghrfooctk7tdabx4gn mode=list]

As I reported on The Guardian’s Organ Grinder blog today, the newsletter exercise to inform Salford residents about the BBC move to MediaCityUK is set to cost almost £10,000 over the year.

Is that value for money?

So far the comments have been from people who aren’t in receipt of the newsletters from BBC Outreach. I’d like to hear from anyone who has had one delivered to their door – did you find it useful? What do you hope to see in future issues?

Please feel free to contact me below or via email to sarahMancunianWay AT googlemail.com.

Adrian Slatcher reports from today’s ProDev Day.

I am at the John Dalton Building at MMU this afternoon for this year’s ProDev Day. Organised by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Business School this is a unique opportunity for students across all of the city’s HE institutions to find out about all the opportunities available in the fast growing digital sector in the North West.

For employers – and unique amongst this kind of event, employers are more in attendance than public agencies – it’s a golden opportunity to make some initial connections with the current crop of students. As David Edmundson-Bird, Director of Executive Programmes at the MMU Business School, recently said at the Social Media Cafe, by the time companies come to him each summer looking for the best digital talent in the region, that talent will already have found jobs.

With BBC – one of the attendees here – moving to New Media City, there’s a unique opportunity for NW based graduates and post-graduates to start their career in the region, without having to move to London or elsewhere.

Already a leading city for digital development, Manchester is uniquely placed to bring together both employers and potential employees. The digital sector is very varied and their are a wide range of companies in attendance from media sales to software development.

Last year’s event was a busy day for everyone and the wide range of companies and agencies who have given their time up to attend this event is a testimony both to the city’s wide-ranging digital sector and to the benefit that a sector specific careers fair such as this can bring.

More information on the day can be seen via Twitter, (#prodevday or follow @prodevday)or previous events are archived at their Youtube channel. This years event is being filmed by local production company Threedegreeswest and highlights from the day will put online in the next week or so.

Update: Here’s one of the presentations given today.

Manchester’s Social Media Cafe marks its second anniversary tonight – a milestone occasion as I wrote elsewhere yesterday.

For that PDA blogpost I talked to the three people most active in organising tonight’s event at BBC Club – here’s their complete answers to the questions put below.

Unfortunately work commitments will keep me from celebrating at the event tonight however, if anyone wants to submit a guest post from the proceedings, please do get in touch, email is SarahMancunianWay At Googlemail.com.

Have a great night all!

1. When and why did you get involved in the social media cafe?
Josh: I got involved with the Social Media Cafe at the first meeting which I heard about via Twitter. It was held during the first week that I’d moved to Manchester to start a new job in the digital sector and it seemed like a good place to get to meet the city’s digital community. The atmosphere was very friendly and I felt like I’d managed to make a number of positive connections.
Following that, I kept coming back and ran a session quite early on, sharing some knowledge I’d learned about using video and social media. I guess my persistence paid off, as I eventually become more involved with running the event, initially by maintaining the online community side of things at socialmediamanchester.net.

Julian: Originally got the idea for the Social Media Cafe after following a blog by @sizemore who is a screen writer. It was there that I hooked up with Martin. You can see the comments here it didn’t take long http://www.sizemore.co.uk/2008/10/06/one-door-closes/#comments
I felt that it was needed because it seemed that there was a lot of cool stuff being done in Manchester but there was no regular event for people to get together and discuss social media and technology at the time. It was then that I met you by coincidence.

Martin: It all started back in autumn 2008 at a time when Twitter was starting to gain a wider audience and new technologies like live video streaming were being experimented with by geeks, bloggers and reporters. I read a blog post by Mike Atherton, AKA Sizemore, about the Tuttle Club in London. This weekly Friday meetup of people involved in social media sounded great and I left a comment saying
that it was exactly the kind of thing I’d want to go to if it happened in Manchester. Julian Tait, who I’d never met, left a similar comment and Mike replied saying that if we wanted it we should build it.
A couple of meetings later, we’d assembled a group of like-minded people to help set up a Manchester Social Media Cafe. Typically for Manchester, we did it our own way. Rather than a Friday morning coffee
event, we chose to hold it in the evening do so that we could attract people whose day jobs wouldn’t allow them time off to hang out with a load of geeks. It’s not so true now but at the time the number of
people making a living from social media in Manchester was minuscule.
When 80 people turned up on the first night we knew we were onto something. It quickly became a focal point for like-minded people across the northwest whether they had a professional or personal interest in social media.

2. Why do you think it has lasted?
Josh: Despite a rapidly developing digital scene, I think the Social Media Cafe has endured because it’s a dynamic and changing event that keeps up with what the community wants it to do. Though there are a few of us who play a co-ordination role, it’s really up to the community as to what they want to hear about each month; every event, we ‘crowdsource’ the agenda which means we’ll always have something of interest to most people, and something that’s usually quite topical. For example, in the run-up to the last election, we had a talk from Openly Local, a project seeking to open up local election data. That spawned a piece of work by Trafford Council to apply those principles across all their data sets, which is something I’m really pleased to be able to point to as a tangible benefit from getting involved in the Social Media Cafe. This month, we have the team behind the Greater Manchester Police’s Twitter experiment, which created headlines all over the world.

Julian: There is a really nice supportive community that has developed around the Social Media Cafe and I think one reason why this has happened is that I think no-one has tried to take ownership of it. It can be what people want to make of it. I think the format of the event has been such that it reflects the diversity of its audience. This has come about through an evolution of its format from panel discussion through to unConference.

3.What’s your highlight from the past two years?
Josh: It’s tough to pick out a highlight, but something that’s stuck in my mind is the crowdsourced video that was made by Social Meida Cafe participants about their memories of Ceefax. A slightly obscure topic perhaps, but there were some great reminders how Teletext changed people’s lives, and the interactive element that was the message boards: one of the early examples of social media.

Julian: Over the last two years the highlights, for me have been some of the more left field presentations. From talks about Emoticons through Mertz Web and Literature. It also has been crucial to starting a number of initiatives such as the regularly attended Social Media Surgeries, Manchester Aggregator as well as being key in helping Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council releasing election data after Chris Taggart spoke at SMC.

Martin: I don’t really have one highlight but what I’m most proud of is how it’s helped all sorts of projects bloom across Manchester, from social media surgeries for businesses to transmedia storytelling projects.
Many more digital community events have sprung up since like we started and it’s great to have been there, helping Manchester’s digital scene develop in our own small way.

4. Has it had any impact on other parts of your life – new job perhaps?
Josh: Getting involved in the Social Media Cafe has been a great way to network with the local digital community, which has given me access to the skills and knowledge of some incredibly talented people. It’s been really useful to know who to call to solve a problem, who might be available for work or who might want to tender for a project that I’m working on. I also feel that the community is a really collaborative one that looks out for each other – and in a climate where jobs are hard to come by, and more people might lose their jobs, I feel that my future prospects are stronger by having been involved. By taking on the online community management aspect of the event, I also feel that I’ve developed new skills that I can market to future employers.

Julian: It has impacted in numerous ways. For a start Littlestar, my company was supporting the Social Media Cafe with equipment and time at the beginning and through it I came to work for FutureEverything. I have also met many people who I now regard as good friends through the Cafe it is after all a very sociable place

Martin: Social Media Cafe really signalled the start of a new chapter in my
life. The network of people I’ve met through it helped me move from a
job that had run its course for me to one directly involved in social
media and digital content. I’m not the only one though, seeing people
go away from talks feeling inspired and trying new things is really
rewarding.

5. What does the future hold for Manchester’s social media cafe – hopes or fears?
Josh: I think the Social Media Cafe has been an incredible catalyst, bringing together Manchester’s digital and creative community in a unique way. Our attendee list is so diverse every month – comms, PR, journalists, developers, designers, techies – and beyond – teachers, lecturers… I could go on. This has meant we’ve spawned some incredible collaboration and spinoff events, like the Social Media Surgeries, Connecting 2.0 Communities; and been involved in bringing people together to start projects like Inside the M60, the MadLab and the Manchester Aggregator.

However, this has meant that we’re competing for space in a slightly more crowded digital sphere! I feel though, that this has presented an opportunity and, over the last 12 months, I’ve been working with Julian and Martin to develop the online network. Social Media Manchester is centred around the Social Media Cafe, but is a place for everyone and anyone interested in social media to get together, collaborate and start new things. It takes the discussions and the collaboration that happen at the event and lets it happen online. We’re coming up to almost a 1,000 members, and I think this just demonstrates what a strong and enduring digital community that we have in Manchester.

Julian: I would hope that more people get involved with the running of the Cafe which I think will happen, the more people involved with the running the more representative and relevant it will be. It does take work to manage it, especially with finding venues and sourcing guest speakers.

Martin: Although social media is far more mainstream than it was two years ago and the novelty factor has gone, the event still draws big numbers each month and I can’t see it dying any time soon. It’s a good starting point for anyone wanting to get involved in the local scene. We might have to tweak the format but from time to time but it’s such a huge area, with lots to debate and explore that there’s sure to be a role for it for a long time to come. The only thing we’d like is more people to volunteer to help run the event. Julian, Josh and I are all
really busy, meaning that some months end up being organised a little more hurriedly than we’d like.

This struck me as a useful set of links to share – 50 Useful MediaCityUK, BBC North and Salford Quays Web Links.

It’s being added to all the time since Mark Whitfield posted it on LinkedIn and is reproduced here with Mark’s kind permission – check out his website www.markwhitfield.net to learn a little more about WEB technologies (DotNetNuke, ASP.NET, HTML, Java Script etc.)

Offical MediaCityUK
http://www.mediacityuk.co.uk/

BBC North Jobs
https://jobs.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc01.asp

Offical MediaCityUK Twitter
http://twitter.com/creatingacity

Offical MediaCityUK RSS Feed
http://www.mediacityuk.co.uk/the-latest/rss.htm

MediaCityUK Photographic Timeline Journal
http://www.mediacityuksalfordquays.net/mcuk.htm

About the Photographic Timeline Journal
http://www.luvthecity.com/salfordtimeline.aspx

SkyScraperCity Forum – Special Interest Thread
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=491532

This LinkedIn Group (1000+ Members)
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=79227

MediaCityUK:Blog
http://www.mediacityblog.com/

MediaCityUK:Blog Twitter
http://twitter.com/MediaCityUK

MediaCityUK Jobs
http://mediacityukjobs.com/

MediaCityUK Jobs Twitter
http://twitter.com/mediacityukjobs

MediaCityUK Jobs RSS Feed
http://www.ponyfish.com/feeds/60831IHorLGCt

BBC North
http://www.bbc.co.uk/jobs/north/

BBC North Jobs 2011 LinkedIn Group
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2746890

MediaCityUK 360 Movie Spin
http://www.360spin.co.uk/qtvr/mediacity/index.htm

Official MediaCityUK Flickr Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatingacity/sets/72157622557199941/

Timeline Journal MediaCityUK Flickr Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mediacityuk

Official MediaCityUK YouTube Movies
http://www.youtube.com/officialmediacityuk

Timeline Journal MediaCityUK YouTube Movies
http://www.mediacityuksalfordquays.net/Movies/MediaCityUK/tabid/181/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Peel MediaCityUK
http://www.peel.co.uk/group/mediacityuk

Creating a City MediaCityUK Twitter
http://twitter.com/creatingacity

The Pie Factory MediaCityUK
http://www.thepiefactory.co.uk/our-history/media-city-uk/

The Pie Factory MediaCityUK Twitter
http://twitter.com/thepiefactory

MediaCityUK Manchester Evening News Articles
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/search/hprsyq/10/1/publicationdate/1001/2010/mediacity

The Designer Outlet
http://www.lowryoutletmall.com/

The Lowry Centre
http://www.thelowry.com/

The Imperial War Museum North
http://north.iwm.org.uk/

The Quays
http://www.thequays.org.uk/

The Quays Twitter Feed
https://twitter.com/quayspartners

Visit Salford
http://www.visitsalford.info/

MediaCityUK and Quays Point Planning
http://www.salford.gov.uk/mediacity.htm

Ramada Hotel Salford Quays
http://www.ramadasalfordquays.com/

MediaCityUK Media Access Bureau
http://www.northernnet.co.uk/bureaus/mediacityuk-33

Salford Quays.ORG
http://salfordquays.org/news.php

ETAP Hotel Salford Quays
http://www.etaphotel.com/gb/hotel-6003-etap-hotel-etap-hotel-manchester-salford-qu/index.shtml

Merchant Quay
http://www.merchantsquay.org/

The Heart of Manchester
http://www.theheartofmanchester.co.uk/

The Quay Property Investment Salford Quays
http://www.quaypropertyinvestments.com/ukproperty/salfordquays/whyinvest.htm

MediaCityUK – NWDA
http://www.nwda.co.uk/areas-of-work/business/key-sectors/digital-and-creative/mediacityuk.aspx

The Quays on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salford_Quays

MediaCityUK on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaCity:UK

Manchester Docks on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salford_Docks

Restaurants in the Quays
http://www.restaurantsofmanchester.com/location-lowry.htm

Trams in the Quays
http://www.thetrams.co.uk/metrolink/stops/Salford_Quays

Salford Quays Software
http://www.insidertech.co.uk

Chris Kane – BBC Spaces
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/spacesandplaces/2010/03/mediacityuk_new_home_in_the_no.shtml

Web Aviation in the Quays
http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/gallery/v/salford-quays/

e-Architect of Salford Quays
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/manchester/salford_quays.htm

Hotels in the Quays
http://www.bedandbreakfasts.co.uk/propertysearch.asp?townCity=Salford

There was a good crowd at the April Social Media Cafe, particularly so, given that it was the day after the Bank Holiday, and, from speaking to a few people, quite a number of new faces. Taking place at the BBC again, the night was themed around the idea of “Hyperlocal” media – in other words, looking at different web-based projects that are focused on the area in which people live. In an age when not only the city-wide newspaper, but the district or very local paper is close to extinction, more and more people are looking at the web as way to deliver the kind of area-focused service that many of us still have an interest in.

Nigel Barlow, discussing the newly launched “Inside the M60″ project, and Richard Jones, talking about “Saddleworth News”, were in the first session. Over the corridor, I attended a vibrant discussion on “why aren’t there any decent UK-based podcasts” where we talked about why there seem so few podcasts (both tech-based and other niches) from UK sources, other than those attached to existing media.

After the break our guest speaker, appropriately in the week that the General Election was called, was talking about opening up local government data to more scrutiny. I was particularly interested in this, not just because I work in local government, but because back in 2002-3 I was probably the country’s only academic Researcher in e-Government, at Salford University. Back when e-Government was first mooted, it was quickly realised that a large amount of people’s interaction with the state were at a local rather than Whitehall level.

OpenlyLocal has been developed over the last year or so, primarily by Chris Taggart (@countculture) He was surprised when he began on the project that there was not even something as straightforward as a simple list of councils. His aim is to tackle the problem that was clearly there even in 2002 – creating some coherent model for local government information, even the basic stuff, in order that it can then be interrogated. Asked from the audience whether there were any good applications of this data yet, he admitted there weren’t. Taggart has set himself the daunting but admirable task of collating data – both electronically through scraping council websites, and manually where necessary – so that it may be used in the future. I had a real sense of deja vu, as surely this was what the centrally co-ordinated e-Government agenda was aiming for?
Interestingly, Taggart made the point that although his aims had been accountability and transparency, he’d now added efficiency to the list, as used correctly, by government departments, service providers or others this growing data set could lead to better and more efficient services.

It’s the first time for a while that the Social Media Cafe has had a guest speaker, and it provided a nice contrast to the more freeform discussions. As ever, many thanks to the organisers, for an engaging evening, ably hosted by first time compere, Josh, (aka @technicalfault).

What folllows are some notes and links from this week’s Multimedia Meets Radio conference in the Dutch town of Hilversum – it’s not intended as a full report, simply my take-aways.

An interesting event aimed at radio professionals and hosted in a town which gave the impression of having been a goldrush town in the era when radio was the emerging big media technology.

Some stunning remaining Deco buildings (including this former theatre I stayed at) hinted at a more glamorous era and a delegate visit to the present day Radio Netherlands Worldwide premises, still complete with sand-filled studio doors from the 1930s, was a reminder of just how enduring radio continues to be as a medium.

Being a complete radio junkie myself, it was a treat to be asked to speak there (about UGC and how The Guardian is making its news social) and have an opportunity to meet some truly passionate and forward-thinking practitioners.

Such as;

• Audioboo CEO Mark Rock, who gave a live demo during his talk but also, in effect, plenty of other live demos by interviewing anything that squeaked! Check out his full output here which includes a brief chat over lunch with me about councils’ access for those who wish to tweet meetings. Couple of news breaks – although audioboo is best known for its iPhone app, it will soon be available for Nokia and Android plus, there’s a nifty looking desktop app now in use which I’ll certainly be trying out soon.
• Freelance radio producer Kate Arkless Gray reminded everyone just how evocative audio can be with a presentation about the award-winning Save Our Sounds interactive map produced for the World Service. From the exotic to the humdrum, the sounds which capture just a glimpse of what every part of the world might sound like it just delightful. It’s a simple concept of crowd-sourcing clips and placing them on a map which you can see here. Although there’s some remarkable sounds (such as the ice break in Antarctica) it’s irresistible to look closer to home where I found the sound of the trams leaving St Peter’s in Manchester as well as a white van’s horn alarm from a car park in North Yorkshire.
• Apple, in a presentation which seemed intended to create as much intrigue as possible, gave a demo of the new site tools for publishers which will effectively give them greater control over the way their content is presented. The way they packaged their presentation with “confidential”, wouldn’t reveal any surnames on name tags, came equipped with their own mic packs and refused to speak about “the future” made the two presenters as interesting to watch as what they had to say.
• Update: 17.56: Just spotted that Justin King has uploaded the slides he did of the crowdsourced top ten social media tips too. See them here; newsleadermediaconsultancy.blogspot.com. Any more? come on in…..
• The BBC’s Mark Friend gave a very detailed presentation about various aspects of his work, but the most interesting point for me came out of his use of examples of unofficial mashups such as the addition of a slideshow to a Stoke football audio and the comedy show visuals embedded below. I’ve spoken and blogged on this before I know, but it fascinates me to see how the BBC reacts to the sort of activity where its content is uncoupled from the original context in this way. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tsgmuD6eDg]Previously I’ve pondered that the BBC maybe just tolerated this sort of thing, turned a corporate blind eye rather than come the heavy-handed authoritarian.
  But there was something in Friend’s descriptions, and obvious enthusiasm, that is making me think again. OK, the Beeb can never realistically stop people doing this, and they can even facilitate it in a more controlled way with projects such as R&D, but perhaps it really rather enjoys what people get up to with the content. After all, is the corporation’s credibility damaged by it in any way? Or could it actually be enhanced?

I wasn’t at all of the sessions at MMR10, so if you’ve also blogged from there, please do feel free to share links below.