Archive for September, 2009

Cllr Paul Tilsley, Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, started the ball rolling in June this year with his announcement of Birmingham’s new Digital District.  Now an event is on the annual calendar, well seminar to be exact, for policy makers and stakeholders from the city and the region to network with other European cities that have established their digital districts already.

The seminar, “Developing Birmingham’s Digital District”, has been organised by Birmingham City Council and Birmingham City University.  It is being held in association with Digital Birmingham, Hello Digital, West Midlands in Europe, Fazeley Studios and 2009 Year of Creativity and Innovation.  It takes place on 14th October.

To register for the event and to get all the information you will need, please visit our dedicated events page www.digitalbirmingham.co.uk/events/developing-birminghams-digital-district.

One of the MBA students we have had with us over the summer, Shveta Vohras, has developed a survey as part of her work which asks small to medium sized (SME) companies about their use of ICT.

The survey is intended to be answered by any SME, not just those in technology sectors. In general it asks the following questions:

• What types of ICT are in use by SMEs in this region?
• What prevents and facilitates the adoption and use of ICT amongst these firms?
• Where do SMEs acquire information on ICT related issues?

It’s not a long questionnaire, 15 minutes at most. We’d be most grateful if you could send the link on to any companies you know.

The short link to the survey is: http://bit.ly/ictsurvey

We’ll publish Shveta’s findings up here when we have them.

The BBC’s Breathing Spaces project was aimed at getting people out and about in nature as well as setting up projects to create their own Breathing Spaces.  Examples they gave were of putting up a bird feeder or taking part in the inaugural National Moth Night on 18th-19th September (we’re thinking of leaving the light on for them tonight).

Aston Hall - A Breathing Space which is local to the Digital Birmingham office

An extension of this is Open Air, which uses Google’s Gears browser add-on  to do some clever location finding gubbins.  So, if you go to the site it checks where it thinks you are and then tells you about the closest Breathing Spaces. It also provides a weather forecast for your area.

More - BBC Open Air: location aware Breathing Spaces

Everyone is different, DNA and fingerprints is the scientific evidence of this, emotions and reactions is hormonal proof. Nature versus nurture adds to the debate, is someone born a certain way or does where they live and how they are raised the real reason for their actions?

Digital Britain logo

Comparisons are difficult to make in any area of life, whether it be people, communities and in this case, countries. BIS and DCMS released the Digital Britain Full Report on 16th June 2009, now the Digital Britain forum enables the central government team responsible for delivering the report to challenge press stories, and peers queries about the details of the report and the way it will be implemented. A particularly interesting post appeared on Tuesday this week……

More - Can accurate digital comparisons ever be made?

As part of a six month campaign in partnership with the Birmingham Post we’re helping Café Licious in Rubery promote itself through social media and digital technologies. We’re not alone in thinking that local cafés can revitalise themselves by putting a bit of faith in digital (have a read of what Pete Ashton and Will Perrin say about it) and we’re hoping that the journey Café Licious go on can be a good example to cafés everywhere.

You can follow their progress on Twitter and in the Post but perhaps the best way to take an interest is to get yourself down there for some tasty food.

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