Archive for the ‘Digital City’ Category

A reminder to all that most of Birmingham will switch with the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. This will happen on the 7th and 21st of September 2011. For those who are already watching digital TV, you will need to retune your equipment on these dates.

For more information about the switchover, you can visit:

• Digital UK – 08456 505050 www.digitaluk.co.uk
• Switchover Help Scheme – 0800 40 85 900  www.helpscheme.co.uk

August saw worrying times for Birmingham. We had disturbances in the city centre and some of our residential areas and the tragic death of three young men in Winson Green.

It was a time when people were keen for information about what was, and often more importantly what wasn’t, happening. This meant that citizen journalists can feel pressured to write things up quickly and that can risk spreading misinformation and/or malicious rumours.

Now a variety of sources of information appeared as a result of the disturbances. In particular, there was Casey Rain’s Tumblr, which collated live reports and the Birmingham Riots 2011 – Live Updates Facebook page  which actively dispelled rumours about incidents.

I thought it would be interesting to look at how some of the city’s hyperlocal blogs had dealt with the situation. The examples below are the good ones that I found.

More – Birmingham Hyperlocal and civil disorder

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 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…

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.