June 18th, 2009
Someone I did get to talk to at the Digital Britian was Will Perrin of Talk About Local — a new project to : ” give people in their communities a powerful online voice. We want to help people communicate and campaign more effectively and influence events in the places in which they live, work or play.”
Will is at the forefront of work in hyperlocal blogging, so I was interested in his view on how the report talked about local news as a priority worth paying for:
Listen here
There are podcasts of all speaches and panels and more interviews over at Rhubarb Radio.
June 17th, 2009
For a brief moment this morning I was going to be interviewing Lord Stephen Carter while he taxied between the Digital Britian Report Launch at the ICC and the Unconference at Fazeley Studios for Rhubarb Radio.
In the end it didn’t happen, the Minister wanted a break — that’s fair, and to be honest his speech was great in answering a lot of what I might have asked. But there were a few questions I’d lined up that he didn’t cover. Would you like to answer them:
Will digital conversation fundamentally change democracy, how will this report give us the tools to do that?
What will drive uptake by the digitally excluded — access to services or conversation. What’s in the report to drive conversational spaces rather than broadcasting or industry?
Reliance on DAB seems odd given than many businesses are pulling out — why not skip a failing generation of radio infrastructure?
In your speech you seemed disappointed in media coverage. What did you hope that they would cover?
What mechanisms do you think need to ensure impartial news from smaller organisations - where does regulation come from with so many interests in consortia?
June 16th, 2009
Tomorrow I’m going along to the Digital Britain event in Birmingham at the ICC: “the first opportunity for regional experts to review the report’s contents and to quiz Lord Carter directly on its recommendations.”
Rhubarb Radio are covering the event live, and I’ll be doing something (not sure what yet) as part of that coverage. So listen live from 10am (speeches start at 10:45).
If there are any burning questions that you come up with after reading the report, feel free to ask me and I’ll get the answers if I can (or at least ask the questions, you know what these political types are like).