Archive for August, 2011

Following the success of the Hyperlocal Govcamp West Midlands in Walsall last year, the team have decided to hold this year’s event at Northgate House Conference Centre in Warwick. There is an Eventbrite page where you can sign up and attendance is free.

More – HyperWM – a local localgovcamp

Yesterday, Annette attended the Digital Inclusion Social Housing Forum which was held in Microsoft’s offices in London and hosted Digital Unite.The aim of the workshop was to work with social housing providers to identify how they could get their tenants online.

Annette gave a presentation to the group around things that Birmingham is already doing; the Windor Tower project, 4G network proposal and explained the benefits of Looking Local ie Birmingham’s Interactive Digital TV channel.

The forum talked about the barriers for people on low income and how some of these can be addressed by looking at different funding models ie PAYG/sponsored models. There was an appetite

for social housing providers to get together to procure services as a whole rather than individually to ensure that they get better value for their clients; which included procuring affordable digital equipment for the tenant and broadband access.

It was suggested that the next meeting be held in Birmingham and hosted by Digital Birmingham, dates will be posted shortly.

Following on from Simon’s blog about the Kindle Camp co-hosted by Digital Birmingham, Birmingham City Council’s web team and The New Optimists on 1st June 2011, Birmingham City Council has announced the pilot of a new digital publishing support service for local authors.

This pilot will now offer support to authors who want to publish their books digitally, either by converting their books to ebooks for them, or by teaching them

the skills to publish ebooks themselves. The first course in the pilot – ‘ebook in a day: Kindle publishing for beginners’ – will teach all the skills needed to convert a book into an e-book and publish it on Amazon.

‘ebook in a day: Kindle publishing for beginners’, will be held at Birmingham Central Library from 9:30am to 4pm on Saturday 24 September and cost £55.

For more information and how to book your place, please click here.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has named 65 towns and cities in which new local TV viagra lowest price services could be broadcast. With the first wave of licences due to be awarded next year, Birmingham will be putting it’s case forward  for why it should be one of the first to bid to enjoy the service.

Click here to read the full press release from TheBusinessDesk.com

We have a couple of updates on EU bids that the Digital Birmingham team have submitted in the last few months:

DISCOVER is through to next round!
Our proposal for the EU CIP Call 5 which looked at “Digital Inclusion Skills for Carers bringing Opportunities, Value and Excellence” has passed the first evaluation and is one of two bids being looked at favourably for funding.

Networking intelligent Cities for Energy Efficiency
The EUROCITIES NiCE FP7 proposal has been accepted and negotiations are now in progress. The project will directly support the delivery of the Green Digital Charter, of which Birmingham is a signatory. This will include development of a framework for reporting the ICT carbon footprint and including ICT related

carbon reductions as part of the Covenant of Mayors and learning exchanges with other cities.

Watch this space for further updates…