blogging

MPs and the blogosphere

POSTED IN blogging, Conferences & Talks, good practice | TAGS : blogging, blogging in organisations, conservative, Nadine Dorries, politics, Tom Watson 1 October 2008

I was invited along with a group of other local bloggers to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham this week. It’s part of the party’s plan to do more in the social media space — including the launch of a blogging platform ‘Blue Blogs‘ on their site. Head of New Media, the very affable, Rishi Saha sorted out passes and security clearance and I met him on Monday for a brief chat about what they were doing.

Apart from wandering around the Conference itself — think The Ideal Home Exhibition with less, but odder, stands and more press — I attended a number of fringe events about the Internet. The most interesting was run by The Freedom Association and was intended to be about “Freedom and The Internet”, it was really a good chance to see and hear the most famous right-wing bloggers talk amongst themselves. The panel was chaired by Iain Dale, and featured Guido Fawkes, Dizzy, Devils Kitchen and MP Nadine Dorries.

While all of the other bloggers on stage blog in what I would consider a conventional way — it’s their opinion, on their own chosen subjects, they handle comments, link to others and form part of a community — Nadine doesn’t.

Part of this comes from what I perceived as her lack of interest, she admitted not to reading other blogs “don’t have the time” and also doesn’t have comments on her blog — again in part due to lack of time. The other issue is what I would think a lot of other politicians suffer from, a lack of understanding.

Nadine’s blog is useful to her because of the speed and unmediated way it can get her opinion to those that matter — in her case journalists. That is a blog’s great strength on a “narrowcasting” level, although (in this instance at least) the same could be achieved by emailing the text to the people that are interested.

It was intimated that Nadine’s blog got her “in trouble with the Chief Whip” — something that she interpreted as her “honesty” being incompatible with high office. Her blog was even cited (in another panel session) as a reason more MPs don’t blog.

She’s “thinking of giving it up” — it isn’t proving worth the effort she’s spending on it (which considering she emails her “blogs” to someone to put them up for her isn’t too much).

So. Why don’t MPs blog?

POSTED IN del.icio.us | TAGS : blogging, Lloyd Davis, pr 22 July 2008

Lloyd Davis on why PR people have to think differently when dealing with bloggers – “I’m not thinking “I wonder what to write by the end of today to fill that page?” I’m thinking “How can I find enough time to write about all the things I’m excited about”" [link]

WordCamp UK Ticketing Goes Live

POSTED IN Conferences & Talks | TAGS : blogging, conference, wordcampuk, wordpress 26 June 2008

Tickets are now on sale (at £35 or £70 if you’re feeling philanthropic) for the two days of WordPress geekery that will be WordCamp UK. It’s to be held at The Studio (formerly the Orange Studio) just off New St in Birmingham. Saturday and Sunday 19th & 20thof July

I’ll be there, hanging around the “break out room” (or bar) for the most part, and so will around 100 or so or the UKs most passionate WordPress users. Here’s the event on upcoming.

I’m trying to organise some sort of social events around the weekend, an informal drinky-poos for those in town on the Friday and something more involved on the Saturday night. Any ideas or offers of help are welcome (email me or have a splurge on the wiki)

Bookmarks for 26th February through 28th February

POSTED IN del.icio.us, twitter | TAGS : , blogging, chat, communication, fun, geo, geotag, google, googletalk, im, law, mashup, media, news, nikon, photography, socialmedia, socialnetworking, twitter, web2.0, widget, work 28 February 2008

These are my links for 26th February through 28th February:

GeoPic II geotags your Nikon shots, saves on battery – Engadget –
ITN doctors footage – Apparently they dropped advertising into the background of Brits items? Dodgy
TweetVolume – see how often stuf gets twittered – a sort of "twitterfight"
press complaints commission to investigate media scraping of social media content –
Google Talkabout: Google Talk chatback – 'Guest' chat widget for people to connect with you via GoogleTalk – very clever for small blogs. untill someone invents GTalk spam

Broing Broing?

POSTED IN birminghamuk | TAGS : birminghamuk, blogging, ideas, meeting, pub, socialising 20 February 2008

The danger in hanging out with fun, creative, people who you don’t necessarily have anything in common with is that you come away with more ideas, and less time to “do” them in. Such is life, and such is what happens to me when I go to a Birmingham Bloggers meeting (I don’t hold with the social-media name thing, podcasting is audio-blogging, flickr-ing, photo-blogging, twittering, micro-blogging, Facebook-usage, life-blogging – blogging is good enough for me) – like last night.

Yesterdays was the second meeting, still defiantly agenda-less, but now with added-too-many-people-to-hold-one-conversation-with-ness. I met Danny Smith , Antonio Roberts, Dominic Fisher, Steve Gerrard, for the first time, OrangeJon, Kevin, Si Hammond, again, first time meets in the flesh with Mark Steadman (who I’ve been recording bits of podcast for), Joanna Geary, Donarto Esposito, second time in the same day (we’d been at a launch event) for Nick and Pete, I never seem to be able to get away from Stef these days and there were others I didn’t get a chance to chat to (the man behind D’log at the very least).

I spent a good twenty minutes trying to persuade Alex Hughes to podcast his cartooning – not with commentary, or visuals, just the sound of the pen scratching, the rubber rubbing, and him swearing when he made a mistake. I think it would be good.

I also decided exactly what needs to happen with my “what did that pub used to be called” web-app (which I doubt will ever get done – if you want to do it, it’s a wiki, with a geo-locatory/map interface and Apple ‘tim emachine’-style flow-back, and beer) and the name – pubtimelord.com.

Despite having had almost no sleep over the past week, I really enjoyed myself and Jules (who was initially a bit scared of it) did too. I found it more fun than the first meeting, but maybe less “useful” – do these things have to be useful? Should we have _horror_ and agenda? Or should we have a ‘turn’, or a ‘show and tell’ spot? Or even a quick (online obviously) discussion beforehand so we could all be thinking about the same topic?

It re-enforced my belief that Birmingham has a huge variety of writing/blogging/photo/drawing/nonsense-spouting talent– anyone fancy a little side project? The world is crying out for a Brum-centred (but not centric) BoingBoing – the UK knows what’s coolest and Brum knows that it aint all in London…