Following on from the Martha Lane Fox visit to Birmingham last week, I have attached the discussion notes from the parallel workshop that took place and findings shared with Martha Lane Fox. Any thoughts, please let us know and we can feed these in.
I have also included a short video clip where Martha Lane Fox talks about her role as Champion for Digital Inclusion.
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As part of the Martha Lane Fox visit to Birmingham, we ran a workshop to engage people working in digital inclusion with those in economic development and regeneration; staff promoting jobs and skills with those advising businesses and helping communities. The aim of the workshop was to examine the importance of the digital inclusion of citizens and businesses (i.e. their access, confidence and competence in using digital technologies) to enable economic recovery.
Catherine Marshall, Member of the Digital Inclusion Task Force who attended the workshop has kindly provided us with her reflections on the workshop:
As a member of Martha Lane Fox’s Digital Inclusion Task Force, I was delighted to be invited to attend the event hosted by Digital Birmingham Yesterday
Supported by an impressive turn out of delegates from Birmingham City Council and the surrounding Boroughs the event gave an invaluable opportunity to discuss some of the barriers that prevent those who are most socially excluded accessing digital technology, and explore what intervention or strategies need to be applied to overcome these difficulties.
As always, there is no one size fits all, and as Digital Inclusion is inextricably linked to Social Inclusion, understanding the complexities of the task at hand is as intricate as the solutions need to be.
All recognised the solutions needs to be applied at grass route level; and being provided with snap shots of on the ground work that is taking place, is always a constant confirmation of this, proving how being digitally connected dramatically improves peoples life chances and opportunities.
The event was incredibly positive, acknowledging that getting people on line is a matter of urgency, and the need to make an impact, by promoting social responsibility and the common goal, with the need to encourage pledges from all areas including the private sectors, to get on board and work together to close the digital divide.
As Martha concluded, “working together, there is an opportunity to achieve something really special”
It is clear that Digital Birmingham has the determination to make a real difference and achieve the ‘really special’ results it is looking for.
Catherine Marshall
Member of the Digital Inclusion Task Force
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From 2nd to 4th February 2010, the best Digital specialists from around Europe converged upon the RAI centre in Amsterdam for the Integrated Systems Europe 2010 event. Now in its 6th year, the ISE Show allows companies to showcase their hardware to audiences that over the three day event now is in excess of 25,000 attendees. The businesses vary from audio to visual hardware and in a visual format, from small format to large format screen.
The attendees also come from a wide spectrum of businesses, with the wish to see the best cutting-edge digital technology available and how the technology is used in a multitude of environments. Pebu represented Digital Birmingham at the event to look at the opportunities for project partners linked to innovations in digital signage particularly in connection to the digital events that we are delivering in autumn 2010.
Pebu have delivered cutting-edge technology before this event, at Hello Digital 2009 having a number of touch-screen technology pieces, including the Panasonic 103″ touch-screen, which at the time of the event was the World’s largest touch-screen.
The following Case Study highlights the key areas of the show and allows the partners of Pebu an insight into how these technologies will enhance the propositions that Pebu will look to deliver.
Jon Hickman is part of the Interactive Culture research team at Birmingham City University and is working with Digital Birmingham on the project outlined below. This post first appeared over at the Interactive Cultures blog.
I will be spending much of the coming year or so working with companies across Birmingham on social media and web-based projects. The project, which I am delivering on behalf of Digital Birmingham, is a small part of a much larger programme utilising Working Neighbourhood funds managed by Birmingham City Council. The project will work with sixteen organisations between now and March 2011, and will also lead to a number of events; I will of course also be looking for opportunities to develop some academic outputs from the project.
The project builds on our experiences in our recent project, the AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship in New Strategies for Radio and Music Organisations. I will be demonstrating simple uses of technologies that could make a difference to companies. We will prototype new ideas for our partners, using simple and accessible technologies that could help to make life easier, open up new opportunities, or speak to different audiences. The prototypes will be informed by our research and teaching activities within Birmingham School of Media.
If we are to believe the “slip ups” from Cabinet members about the date of the General Election, the 6th May 2010 is only three months away. Although many people will try, no-one can estimate who will be the country’s next Prime Minister and government party.
However, as time gets closer to the date in May, the three main parties are starting to release snippets of their manifestos to encourage would-be voters. The Conservative Party are no different…..
More - Digital Manifesto
As an avid magazine reader, I subscribe to one of the most popular women’s magazines in the country, Cosmopolitan. From month to month there are (in my opinion) always interesting articles about the three main subjects the magazine focuses on love, life and fashion.
However, this month’s edition had a report that really got my interest, as the focus appeared to be….technology!
I’ve just read an interesting article from the BBC site which makes reference to London’s attempt to free up some of the public sector data in order to see how people might use it. Birmingham is doing a similar project called Timely Information - but I hadn’t realised until now that 4ip Channel 4’s innovation fund are offering a £200,000 reward for the best of the ideas that come out of the mashup. If I were a hacker, that would give me another good reason to work into the small hours. And when you’re analysing the released datasets, why not check out the Council’s ‘Be Heard’ database. This is an online portal for all of the City’s consultation. Eg. what people want. Hackers, you have the data, and you also have a font of information from the public, on what services they need or would like to see developed. Check out the piece from the BCC here
As we nudge closer to 2010, here is a look back at some of the digital highlights from our 2009 work programme that we have been involved in with our partners and colleagues across the city. We look forward to a successful 2010 - Happy New Year.
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According to many recent news reports, the email will be defunct in 10 years as the growth of social networking sites and instant messaging increases ever rapidly. But is this really true? Will people actually stop using emails to communicate in their personal and professional lives?
Digital Birmingham is a Birmingham City Council initiative and part of a city wide strategic partnership of more than 30 public, private and voluntary organisations
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