Talking Digital

You’ve seen the video now read his words. One of the more diligent members of our team (Claire Davis) has taken the trouble to transcribe Lord Carter’s speech from the Digital Britain event in Birmingham on June 17th. We’ve uploaded the PDF file and it’s on Scribd, but if you think there’s another format you’d like it in let us know.

And if you’d like to have another look at the video then:

Lord Carter Speech, Digital Birmingham

I like the idea of this piece I’ve recently read in the Management Today newsletter.  Its written in very plain language and gives a good overview of how Ofcom are planning to set a pricing structure for Sky to release its best content to some of the local broadcasters.  The de-commissioning of analogue TV, to be replaced with digital (Birmingham will be totally switched over by 2011) will free up band width which local organisations can bid for (relatively cheaply at £25K ball park).  It has been argued that If local organisations are to benefit from this move, could they afford the production costs?  If Sky content was capped, and the local production companies could pick up high quality content on high demand programmes such as sporting events and films, they could put this together with their own high quality, locally targeted content and they may just have a fighting chance.  Digital Birmingham are involved with the City Councils plan to support the de-commissioning of analogue and encourage local businesses to explore how they could benefit.  If you would like to be kept informed please get in touch

The regional launch of the Digital Britain event in Birmingham on 17th June was a great success. We would like to thank everyone who took part (sponsors, delegates and the organisers themselves) both at the ICC and Unconference at Fazeley Studios.

Many thanks to the expert technical support from Aquila TV and Rhubarb Radio at both the ICC and Fazeley Studios.

Our special thanks go to Lord Carter and his team for their time and for making the events possible. And to the Technology Strategy Board for their valued input.

More » - A Digital Britain for Birmingham

I have recently returned from the USA, after visiting New York City for a week. We, obviously, didn’t watch television much during the holiday as we were too busy visiting as many tourist attractions as possible in the 168 hours that we had. But when we caught up with the headlines via CNN (UK news channels did not seem to be available) it was interesting to notice that every anchor, newsreader and journalist displayed their Twitter usernames, while reporting the daily news, ensuring the public could follow them to find out more.

I know Twitter is huge in the UK, but it is still up and coming i.e. a lot of people who use social networks like Facebook and MySpace are yet to make the move onto Twitter. However, across the Atlantic it is definitely second nature.

More » - Across the pond…..

The winners of the two brand new digital press awards were announced last night at the Midlands Media Awards dinner, organised by the  Press Club.  Huge congratulations go to Rhubarb Radio who wone the Birmingham City Council Digital Innovation Award, for their pioneering work in bringing volunteers from a whole variety of creative industries and social media groups to experiment with engaging both local and international audiences. 

The winner of the Online Campaign - People’s Choice Award (voted by the people) was wone deservedly by  the New Facebook - Black Country Version Group.  Donato Esposito who engineered the campaign, took a humerous stance at how Facebook’s new version could help raise the profile of local groups. 

Birmingham City Council and Digital Birmingham played a vital part in ensuring the press awards reflected the huge changes in traditional reporting and media activity over the past few years.  If you have any ideas how we can push the boundaries even further for next year, please let us know

Interesting to read that the Digital Britain Report has focussed on how it will help the video gaming industry maintain its lead over other countries by using the European grading system.  The Digital Britain report released on Tuesday by Lord Carter also outlines plans to review a tax relief for the industry.  One question, raised by Mary Mathiews of Blitz Games, to Lord Carter at the successful Digital Birmingham event yesterday, identified the possible difficulties the government may face in trying to identify exactly what ‘tax relief to promote the sustainable production of ‘culturally British videogames’ might mean.  Lord Carter inferred that key words were culture and British, but I guess to a city like Birmingham that could mean just about anything.  Richard Wray of the Guardian explores the piece further.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/jun/17/digital-britain-videogames

Today saw Lord Carter present the freshly unveiled Digital Britain report at the ICC in Birmingham city centre. A capacity audience heard Lord Carter explain the report in some detail, followed by a question and answer session. Lord Carter was keen to dispel what he saw as the media’s false portrayal of his Digital Britain Final Report, especially around the 50p tax on new copper telephone lines.

More » - Lord Carter unveils Digital Britain report in Brum

The afternoon of the Digital Britain Conference saw the group split into four two for a total of four sessions:

* ‘Content is King’, chaired by Marc Reeves, editor, Birmingham Post
* ‘Infrastructure for a Digital Britain’ chaired by Chris Price, director, Digital Birmingham
* ‘Staying ahead of the game’, chaired by Tom Loosemoore, head of 4IP, Channel 4
* ‘Empowering people for a digital age’, chaired by Stephen Dodson, director, DC10 PLus

Here are the summaries of the sessions that I went to, followed by the transcript of the live blog for the morning session, where Lord Carter and Paul Tilsley spoke. That session was chaired by Adrian Goldberg.

More » - Summary of Digital Britain live blog and panel sessions

Is access to the internet a human right? According to France’s constitutional court, it is. A recent case concerned the creation of a body tasked with enforcing copyright laws by cutting off serial pirates who repeatedly download illegally copied material. Warnings by email and then by letter are not enough: cutting off someone’s internet access requires approval from a judge. More » - Digital inclusion and human rights