Archive for the ‘Digital Business’ Category

Businesses in Birmingham, the Black Country and Solihull are invited to a FREE half day workshop, which will explore business opportunities from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Date – Wednesday 26th Jan 2011 – 9am for 9.30 start – finish 12.30

Venue – Birmingham Central Library Lecture Theatre, Chamberlain Square, B3 3HQ

To book your FREE place please contact Nicol Wagstaff at West Midlands Chambers LLP – 0121 607 1753 or n.wagstaff@wmchambers.co.uk see attached document for full details

london-2012-olympics-workshop

A lot of people seem to be using various free URL shortening methods to ensure their web pages fit into the character limits of various social media sites such as twitter.  Eg if you have a web page URL address that is huge – this limits the space left for you to create a powerful piece of copy to help readers continue on to your link.  Also if you’re printing leaflets or transferring your URL address onto paper format it’s quite difficult for the reader to transpose a long URL address without making errors.  Why not make it easy for them and shorten your URL For example  http://bit.ly/ is an easy way – paste your long URL into this site and it gives you a free short code.

However there is also another great function on the http://bit.ly/ site and this is when you sign up for a free account.  It allows you to track the clicks on to your URLs.  If you had a number of different publicity materials going out (email newsletter, email footer, printed leaflet, on the back of staff Tshirts) why not give them all a different bit.ly address and then at the end of your campaign you can see which of the different marketing comms. channels have been most successful.  In the old days this used to be done by a team of marketing assistants, newspapers, clipboards and guesswork – now it can be done almost instantainiously – and all free of charge.  Thank you Mr Bit.ly and others.

Birmingham’s Festivals and Initiatives Team are seeking to commission six new projects which will deliver bold and inspiring public participatory programmes as part of Say Hello for 2010/2011.

The projects will celebrate Birmingham’s digital and technological achievements by developing new collaborations to increase the presence of digital content and widen the engagement with online and offline users. It is intended that the commissions will create ground-breaking initiatives, using digital media along with other artforms or technology such as Dance, Music, Film, Visual Arts, Animation, Open Data, Gaming etc to assist in developing a more meaningful and sustainable engagement with new audiences.

If you have had experience of developing and delivering participatory work and engaging with a wide range of communities and young people, this is an excellent opportunity to provide high quality digital initiatives in the heart of neighbourhoods and communities; creating dialogue and interest in the arts from new audiences through creative digital interventions and improving visitor perceptions more..

Note, applications should arrive no later than 10am on Wednesday 9^th December 2010.

For successful applicants interviews will take place on Wednesday 15^th December 2010. The contract will commence in December and run between December 2010 and March 2011.

Invitation to Next Generation Business Event  – Connected Companies Make Money
Date: Monday 22 November, 2010
Time: 9.30 – 13.30 – FREE to attend with lunch included
Venue: International Convention Centre, Hall 4

Technology is developing rapidly. Nearly half of our waking hours are spent using media and communications. Broadband is the fourth utility and users’ bandwidth demand grows by 50% each year (Nielsen’s Law).  61% of 15-24 year-olds use social networking…

What is your company doing about this?

If you are a business in Birmingham or the West Midlands conurbation already using email, web sites and the internet and want to find out more about the Government’s approach to Next Generation Access and what this means to your business, then come along to this free morning session and find out how you can:

1) Make better use of technology
2) Obtain the business advantage of fast access
3) Access a global market place
4) Afford the faster connections to enable you to be competitive in a digital age

This event is sponsored by Digital Birmingham, Birmingham & Black Country City Region, Business Birmingham, who are concerned about the area’s digital infrastructure (Digital Districts) and the take-up of broadband by businesses.  They are convinced that future business growth will exploit technology and require increasing speed of connection.

To look at the programme and book online, please click here.

The worldwide audience for Birmingham’s Hello Digital week has affirmed it as a huge success and a reinforcement of Birmingham’s place on the world digital stage.

In a week which saw Birmingham recognised as one of the world’s ‘Smart21’ intelligent cities by the internationally-renowned Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), Hello Digital gave visitors from the public and private sector a small taste of what is possible with the smart application of digital technologies.

Hello Digital’s three main events – Beyond 2010, Hello Business and the Eurocities KSF Autumn conference – drew over 900 delegates to the International Convention Centre and the Custard Factory in Digbeth to hear keynote speakers including Ian Watmore, the Cabinet Office’s chief operating officer; Alex Hunter, ex-Virgin Media global head of online content; Neelie Kroes, the EU’s vice president and digital agenda commissioner; and Robert Bell, co-founder of the ICF.

To read the full press release, please click here.

SOS – Hackers urgently needed for trans-global ‘Hackathon’ – Birmingham in collaboration with Edmonton (Canada) and Seoul (Korea)!!

When? Wednesday 20th October 2010 – 14:00 to Thursday 21st October 14:00.  We know this announcement comes at short notice but you don’t get notice in a real emergency!

Where? Birmingham Science Park Aston Faraday Wharf, Holt Street. 

What will our hackathon be like?  It will be slightly different from most hackathons. As we work on our project, we will be sharing what we’re working on with Edmonton [Canada] and Seoul [Korea] as we ‘follow the sun’. 

We’re going to spend 24 hours trying to create the blueprint for an app design that can be used in cities all over the world. This will be an application that will help families prepare during a disaster and will list emergency muster points, emergency info, alerts during disasters, and what to do. It will cater for different scenarios: although floods or a Buncefield type explosion are both emergency situations, you don’t handle them the same way. The aim of this app  is to keep people safe, and we hope to come up with a guideline for how it should look – so that app designers around the world can pick up the guideline and run with it.

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

Launch 48

The aim of Launch48 is to bring together participants from different backgrounds and levels of experience in the web industry to think/plan/develop and launch one or multiple web apps in one weekend. It’s a frantic, energy fuelled, entrepreneurial event designed to engage all participants while offering the opportunity to learn and meet new people.

Launch 48 Birmingham will run between 12th and 14th of November 2010, at Birmingham Science Park Aston.

Launch48 Mini-Conference Birmingham runs from:

1 pm to 5 pm Friday the 12th of November, 2010

6 pm to 10 pm Friday the 12th of November, 2010
9 am to 9 pm Saturday the 13th of November, 2010
9 am to 9 pm Sunday the 14th of November, 2010

For more information, please click here.

6 October 2010 – Rich Mix, London E1

See IT in action demonstrates how councils and partners can use technology to transform the delivery of public services, improve outcomes, and help achieve more for less.

This is a free event, on Wednesday 6 October 2010, supported by Communities and Local Government, local authorities and civil society partners.

It is a must-attend day for all those who commission or manage local public services, who are looking to make their work more efficient, cheaper, and targeted at supporting those most in need. It is your opportunity to ensure you are ready, well informed and have the contacts necessary to meet the challenges facing those delivering today’s public services.

For more information and to register, please click here.

On Friday 8th October between 1pm and 4pm a workshop looking to attract interest in European Regional Development Funding will take place in the Chamberlain Room – Birmingham City Council House on Victoria Square.  Nick Bennett from Aston University is leading on this event with Science City.  This event will focus on Environmental and Energy Projects looking to exploit new technologies to reduce our carbon footprint.   Digital Birmingham is actively working on the green agenda with DEHEMS project and the Green Digital Charter and is seeking to be proactive in supoprting new projects.

More – European Funding for Low Carbon Emissions Projects