Archive for the ‘Digital Birmingham’ Category

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.

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…

Over the past decade, and especially in the past five years, there have been a number of national schemes to help low income families with children to get online. The Computers for Pupils scheme started in 2006 and provided grants through local authorities. In Birmingham that money was increased by the voluntary donations to the Birmingham e-Learning Foundation made by recipients.

Over 20,000 families in Birmingham have received devices under the scheme.

Children with PDAs

More – Are all our children connected now?

Good to see the Birmingham Post report highlighting how important increasing broadband speeds is to securing business for Birmingham  http://bit.ly/opltYr  Digital Birmingham continues to strive to secure funding to move the project forward.

History provides many examples of great ‘Firsts’. Chuck Yeager – the first person to break the sound barrier by flying faster than the speed of sound; Neil Armstrong – the first man to walk on the moon; Sir Roger Bannister – the first man to break the 4-minute mile; Alexander Bell – first in the race to invent the telephone.

Now I’m not suggesting that taking the first tentative steps towards making Birmingham the first City in the UK to have a Citywide 4G wireless network is even close to flying to the moon, but having being heavily involved with developing the 4G proposal for Birmingham, it does fill me with immense excitement on the glimpse into the future that it holds.

The demand by consumers for data ‘on the go’ is now at an all time high and this demand will only continue to travel in one direction……UP. With more and more businesses and people  using smart phones and tablet devices, networks are struggling to meet the demand and 4G technology holds the potential to solve that problem. It also offers potential to enable services to be delivered in new and innovative ways; just imagine …virtual visits from your doctor, real time CCTV on public transport, live streaming of high definition video whilst commuting to work. More – Birmingham unveils it’s 4G plans!

The Saturday before last Digital Birmingham were involved in putting on Local Gov Camp on its return to Birmingham. Actually, my Gov Camp started on the Friday night when 20 or so ne’er do wells turned up early to have a drink in The Anchor followed by a curry at Manzils in Digbeth. Already, it was invigorating to be part of conversations between such committed people.

Local Gov Camp is is run using the unconference format. Here we don’t have any key note speakers, the attendees run their own sessions if they want to and the agenda is decided on the morning, based on people pitching the sessions they want to run.

More – Local Gov Camp

It’s been a busy three months for the DB team, see attached the first installment of our quarterly update April – June 2011.

The new Localism Bill is going to introduce some changes to Neighbourhood Planning through such things as the Community Right to Build and the encouragement of communities to own their own plans. With this will come some specific technology needs and Slider Studio will be holding a series of workshops next month to explore what these are and how they can be met.

The workshops will be a chance to:

• Discuss the emerging neighbourhood planning process

• Discover existing tools to prepare and review plans

• Imagine new tools to help you plan a neighbourhood

• Share your ideas and experiences in web and digital tools

More – Neighbourhood Planning Workshops