Archive for the ‘Digital Birmingham’ Category

Final preparations are underway, yes even at this time of the night, for the first Stakeholder event of 2012 – Birmingham: The Ticket to a Smart Connected City tomorrow.

The event aims to discuss the smart city agenda and key developments in Brum with interactive participation from the audience. Click here to view agenda.

Follow us on Twitter via #SmartBrum

We’ll also be streaming live (with special thanks to @civicolive), watch this space for the link up details!

I came across this event on the Birmingham.gov site yesterday where free bootcamps to help grow your business on the web  were being promoted.

The bootcamps are aimed at:

1) small businesses, freelancers, managers or those in marketing

2) entrepreneurs who has a website

3) anyone who is thinking about launching a website

and will teach you how to:

1) Get ranked on search engines

2) Leverage social media effectively

3) Start selling in key web marketplaces

4) Get the right ecommerce site affordably

These bootcamps have been put on courtesy of the Department of Business Innovation and Skills,  School for Startups, Yell (and others) to help small businesses in the UK and will be held nationally – the Birmingham event will be held on Thursday 19 January 2012.

Please click here for more information and to register.

Yesterday I came across an online article, thanks to one of our Board Members, where Birmingham was named #19 (out of a possible 45)  of top places to visit in the World, one spot ahead of Space can you believe!

The New York Times noted the city’s array of culinary treats, promoted by the ten-day Birmingham Food Fest which took place in 2011.

Click here to read the full article http://www.insidermedia.com/insider/midlands/64228-brum-makes-top-20-must-visit-destinations

Just before Christmas we had an email pop into our Digital Birmingham inbox. It was from somebody who is setting up their own business in Birmingham. They asked us

“I was wondering if Birmingham City Council has a comprehensive list of the city centre postcodes so I could easily upload this to the admin area of my website, so when the customer places an order this will be accepted/rejected depending on the postcode.”

On behalf of the Digital Birmingham team, Merry Christmas to all our colleagues and partners, we thank you for your continued support and commitment and we look forward to working with you further in 2012.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Click here to access DB’s third Quarterly Report for the months of  October to December 2011.

Again it’s been a busy three months with the submission of funding bids and we are pleased to confirm that we have secured and will be leading on the EU DISCOVER project which is about developing/enhancing the digital skills of formal and informal carers. Visit our project page for more info. http://www.digitalbirmingham.co.uk/projects/digital-skills-for-carers

The Birmingham Civic Dashboard has been live for a little less than two months now. We received quite a bit of publicity when we released it, and in the first few weeks had quite a few people commenting on it, using the Disqus commenting system on the site.

We had an early blog post from Dave Harte on the Bournville Village blog. This is gratifying, although I should also probably declare that Dave worked in Digital Birmingham on our open data stuff before returning to be course director at BCU.

So, I’ve been wondering why we haven’t seen more use of the Civic Dashboard by local bloggers. When myself and Matt, from Mudlark, were first putting the bid together for Nesta we thought that they would be the most likely people to talk about it and use it.

More – Using the Civic Dashboard

Or, O Hai! Kultcha, as one commenter referred to it.

Anyway, on Thursday 17th November I attended Hello Culture at Zellig in the Custard Factory. It was billed as a day “to explore how the cultural sector can exploit digital technology, innovation, knowledge and skills” and I had  a little speaking slot on a panel in the morning about social media and user generated content. More – Hello Culture

We think there is quite a lot of untapped expertise around social media from people who work in the public sector but who don’t actually get to use social media in their job.

So, we want to learn from public sector staff who regularly use social networking sites, in their spare time, such as Twitter and Facebook to inform a number of projects which will shape how public sector organisations use social media.

Initially this will focus on the NHS and the council, following an approach from Darren Wright at the Health and Wellbeing Partnership.

We want to understand how we can better engage with local residents and
get messages into communities using new technologies, and are looking for experts to help us create this approach.

You do not have to use Social Media as part of your work but we would like to look at your personal experience and find out what you can teach us about becoming more digitally engaged organisations. For more information email us here