Posts Tagged ‘Birmingham’

The dates for the Birmingham Open Weekend 2010, part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, have been confirmed as 23 - 25 July 2010.

As part of Cultural Olympiad, Say Hello, Aston Pride, the BBC and Digital Birmingham will be on hand to showcase the Digital Time Capsule where you, the people of Birmingham, will be able to record and upload your memorable moment in the form of a video, an image and/or audio file etc.

Come and join the team in Victoria Square on Friday 23 July 2010 from 10am - 4pm and be a part of Birmimgham’s digital journey!

The Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery are monthly events held to help community and voluntary groups use the social web to benefit their organisations.

Digital Birmingham are pleased to announce that the next events are due to take place on:

7 July - at the Balsall Health Forum, The Tree Nursery, 82-89 St. Pauls Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham. B12 8LS  between 6.00pm and 7.30pm.

15 July -  at the Studio, 7 Cannon Street, off New Street, Birmingham. B2 5EP between 5.30pm and 7.00pm.

To sign up for either of these events, please click here.

The Aston Community Festival 2010 is a free for all event taking place on Sunday 27 June 2010 at Aston Villa Football Club, Witton Lane, Birmingham. B6 from 12pm - 7pm.

The event will host live music, a fun fair, food, face painters and much more.

For more information, please click here.

The Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery are monthly events held to help community and voluntary groups use the social web to benefit their organisations.

The next event will be on Tuesday June 8 at the Studio, 7 Cannon Street, off New Street (B2 5EP).

Digital Birmingham supports these surgeries and have in the past provided advise and support with social media issues.

If you belong to a Birmingham-based community or neighbourhood group or charity please come and join us. You can drop in any time between 5.30pm and 7pm.

To sign up for the event or for further information, please click here.

The surgeries are organised by volunteer members of the Birmingham Bloggers group. Surgeons work as friendly advisors giving informal one-to-one help to show you how to make the best of social media.

You can find out what normally happens at a Social Media Surgery here.

Officially launches on Thursday 13 May 2010!

It is a new Working Neighbourhood Fund/ Birmingham City Council project which aims to support the local small business community by making opportunities to supply the City Council, our suppliers and partner organisations more visibly.

When buying goods in future, Birmingham City Council Directorates will now be using this free web-based service to source goods and services that cannot be sourced from existing supplier contracts.

Businesses and suppliers can sign up and register for free for access to local contracts, support, networking events, seminars, and job opportunities, helping you to stay ahead, get noticed and more importantly win bigger and better contracts for your business.

Register at www.finditinbirmingham.com.

Our news feeds can be subscribed to by clicking on this link. We not only provide information about our own work, but also link to other website and news items from across the city, region and country.

If you want us to pick up on a digital news story of your own, please contact us on digital@birmingham.gov.uk and put NEWS in the subject title.

Recent news stories include:

National Digital Inclusion Champion in Birmingham
Majestic SEO secures investment partner
New rail hub exterior designed

The link to our news site is http://www.digitalbirmingham.co.uk/news. Happy reading!

Digital Birmingham are going to have a busy autumn with a real focus on digital technologies. As part of Birmingham’s Digital week of events 18 - 22 October, we are organising and bringing together linked events that will include the Eurocities Knowledge Society Forum, Beyond 2010, Birmingham City Council’s Local Government Day ‘Sharing Experiences and Shaping Public Service’, the Hello Digital business conference, and the Say Hello public programme.

These are all part of a wider Hello Digital programme of events and activities that is enabling the widest possible audience to engage with technologies and explore new opportunities and innovations.

We are currently scouting around for speakers and we thought it would be interesting to canvas suggestions from the public. If you’re reading this, then that’s you.  So, have you seen somebody speak who made you walk away buzzing with ideas? Is there somebody that you think would be ideal for any of the events that we are holding?

More - Crowdsourcing a conference

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

As the person within the team whose responsibility it is to carry out desk based research, I thought it is about time to share with you what I find, and find useful, regarding the digital agenda.

I am not an expert or even a researcher by trade - but I enjoy looking, have quite a lot of luck at finding useful material and my colleagues have cottoned on to this fact (and it is in my job description!).

More - Research - friend or foe?