Since leaving the BBC at the start of the month I’ve been working on an incredibly interesting project that is trying to build a huge photo album of the West Midlands* in 2008 - The Big Picture.

The Big Picture is a project for Arts Council West Midlands, being run by Audiences Central (who have employed me), and is in a very modern way based heavily on Flickr to hold and organise all the photos we’re gathering. The site - inthebigpicture.co.uk - has been put together by 3Form, and is doing a lot of clever stuff with the API, it can be used completely as a front end for Flickr and includes some smashing geotagging features.

It launches today, so go and have a look for yourself.

I’m working as Online Editor, which so far has included a lot of copywriting and decisions about how people might use the site, but I’m hoping to be able to work more off-site after launch as we’ve got some fun stuff planned for Facebook and other social media sites - and also in the real world too.

For launch week we’re out and about across the region - Wolverhampton today, ending in Brum on Friday afternoon, full details on the site - do drop by and say hello if you’re around.

*The West Midlands in this case includes Stoke, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester, Coventry and Warwickshire as well as the more traditional Birmingham and The Black Country.

I’m doing a little bit to help the Black County’s bid for £50 million of lottery funding - encouraging people to vote in The People’s £50 Million Lottery Giveaway. The idea is that there’s an online and telephone vote, and one of four projects gets all the dosh - I’ve mentioned that I don’t much like the system, but if it has to be this way I think the Black Country could really do with the money.

As well as the website programmes will be shown on ITV 3-7 December 2007. Details of telephone voting will be announced during programmes.

I’ve made a very simple facebook app, that places a ‘vote here‘ button on your profile, and a website badge that does likewise.

Unfortunately the voting process isn’t very easy, you have to register, confirm your email address and then vote. There also isn’t a running total, which doesn’t make the vote much fun. So, how to get a bit more interest? Any ideas? Is Lol-blackcountry the way forward?