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
Based on US statistics from the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) – their latest ‘broadband infographic’ details the connection between Broadband utilisation and the impact on the local economy, and in particular the beneficial effect this can have on job retention, creation and employment opportunities.
So, reiterating what Digital Birmingham has been saying for years:
The IIA appears to be America’s counterpart to Digital Birmingham, as it seeks to promote US public policies that support equal opportunity for universal broadband availability and adoption so that everyone, everywhere can seize the benefits of the Internet – from education to health care, employment to community building, civic engagement and beyond.
So, lets get all the US stats out of the way and I’d be really interested in finding out whether the UK has an equivalent body other than the Office of National Statistics (ONS) or West Midlands Regional Observatory, but in the meantime the Strategic Networks Group (SNG) has created a Digital Economy Index (DEi), which not surprisingly, the research shows that age and income have very significant impacts on how people use the Internet. The proprietary Digital Economy Index summarises how households use thirty distinct Internet activities. The higher the DEi, the more Internet activities a household engages in. The Digital Economy index progression from 1 to 10 (10 being highest) reflects the number of e-solutions being utilised – 10 being a household at 100% utlisation.
Utilisation is impacted by income and age – the lower a household income or the older the household, the lower its Internet utilisation. The differences (or divide) is most pronounced for those over 55 and those making less than $50,000.
So the digital divide is actually expanding as younger, higher income households best leverage e-solutions.
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.
Do you tag your location? A recent survey by Microsoft highlights the high percentage of people who still have safety concerns about giving the location of where they are. However the survey also shows that while the number of services which give you valuable information relative to where you are, such as weather or traffic info. grows, so will the number of people who realise its value. location-based-survey_usage_and_perceps_exec_sum
Safer Internet Day is organised by INSAFE in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. Each year hundreds of events are organised to raise awareness about online safety issues.
For more information about SID, how to get involved and set up your own event, please click here.
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.
We haven’t had a great deal of success with e-readers in Digital Birmingham it has to be admitted. A couple of years ago we decided to test out the Sony Reader. Unfortunately for us this purchase coincided with the city’s rollout of software that encrypted any USB drives plugged into its computers. A couple of ill-judged clicks later and we had an unusable device.
It took me weeks to work out how reset that darned thing.
This photo, Kindle 2: Electronic Paper Display, is copyright (c) 2009 Yutaka Tsutano and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license
A new Fab report has been released showing digital engagement with Arts & Culture. This is the first time this type of information has been collected in the UK. Well done to Arts & Business, Arts Council and MLA. Findings show that a whopping 53% of us have used the internet to engage with the arts and cultural sector in the last 12 months digital-engagement-with-arts-culture-nov-2010
Silver Surfers’ Day is the biggest, national campaign to promote use of digital technologies by older people. It is run by Digital Unite and was started in 2002, this is the ninth annual event.
On Silver Surfers’ Day Digital Unite support people and organisations all over the UK to open their doors and give local older people a taste of what the digital world has to offer them at a Silver Surfers’ Day Event.
Anyone can become an Event Holder – if you’re already working with older people, if you are passionate about supporting them to be digitally literate, then this is an event for you!
For more information and to find an event near you, please go to the Digital Unite webpage.
For the past week a sizeable contingent of people from the West Midlands have been in Austin, Texas for South by South West (SXSW), a large festival/trade show for all things interactive. Reports back indicate that the region was punching well above its weight in terms of its presence at the event.
And there’s a fantastic little site popped up to pull together all the content that has been produced while people are over there. Head over to Heart of Austin to see what has been going on
Digital Birmingham is a Birmingham City Council initiative and part of a city wide strategic partnership of more than 40 public, private and voluntary organisations
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