Social media, consultancy, training and advice from a flâneur of the internets. Blogger, writer, broadcaster and runner of Birmingham: It's Not Shit.
January 4th, 2010

In the record books

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A real traditional Christmas present for the inquiring kiddie (or adult) is the Guinness Book of Records — I spent many an hour looking up the tallest and widest things in the World in years gone by — so it was great to see ‘my’ record in the new edition. For a huge portion of 2008 I ran the web side of ‘The Big Picture‘ an Audiences Central project, where we collected photographs from the people of the West Midlands. 12,896 were then turned in to the World’s Largest Photo Mosaic by artist, Helen Marshall on a huge platform at Millennium Point in Birmingham. You can see Lucy Moore (who submitted the photo chosen to be mosaic’d) standing on the finished article above (and see a lovely video of her reaction here).

While getting the World Record was the culmination of the project, the real point was to get people involved in artistic activities in some way — and it was hard work, but rewarding. The nature of the project, engaging with those who weren’t always confident online, meant a huge amount of community management and support, but the feeling of ownership that the participants came to have over the site and the project was worth every bit of the effort.

No doubt the largest social media project (in terms of engaged audience) that I’ve worked on, and it’s nice to be reminded of it.

Thanks to Jaki Booth for the photo and the spot. You can explore the mosaic online here.

February 28th, 2008

Wifi Networks detected in Birmingham So Far This Year

Since I’ve had my iPhone I’ve become interested in the names people give their wifi networks, the way that the phone brings them up for you as you walk around made that inevitable. So I took to writing them down – I found that I was interested in what it said about the thoughts of who set them up. ‘Secure’, ‘Home’, or peoples names – or those who cared so little they left the default on. I collected these ones here on my normal travels around Birmingham (UK) in January and February of 2008 – the larger ones in the ‘cloud’ do represent multiple networks with the same name, but I haven’t done that scientifically.

Wifi Networks detected in Birmingham So Far This Year

I think it works quite well as a poster – I uploaded the graphic to a cafepress store so I can buy one when I get some royalities of some of my other shops.

by Jon Bounds | Posted in my projects | View Comments | Tags: , , , ,
January 21st, 2008

The Big Picture

The Big Picture - BE IN IT

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.

by Jon Bounds | Posted in my projects, social media | View Comments | Tags: , ,
August 17th, 2007

Online video doesn’t just have to be diet coke and mints

The Tate have launched Tate Player a range of rare film and audio files from its archives online.  Artists in conversation as well as archive video pieces – including some classic Gilbert and George. Sadly not embedable, but fully RSSed up.

by Jon Bounds | Posted in social media | View Comments | Tags: ,













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