Just one account of experiencing a tiny part of the amazing Late Shows, the Newcastle and Gateshead Museums At Night with added sparkly bits thanks to the various public, private and Third Sector organisations involved.
Week 20 proved to be one of the lighter weeks in number of posts, but there is more than one ‘must-read’ post amongst the nine submitted (unless I failed to spot any en route).
There was a bit of a work theme this week. Benjamin Welby’s post – Opportunity Knocks - announced that he has a new job, down in That London, working on what I what I consider to be probably the most excitingly challenging Web project in the UK at present. Good luck to Benjamin!
Kate drew a lovely picture in words with a carpenter’s pencil of her dad in Giz a Job. She shared a story from his past about her dad’s experience of getting a job when he left school, in the old days when getting a job could be less formal.
Ross Wigham, prompted by becoming an uncle for the first time, shared advice in Having babies that is based on his own experience. It is both a humorous and serious post about babies from a father’s perspective.
Feeding her baby in the middle of the night led Irena Souroup to contemplate the news and inspired her post For the Love of Brooks, an unusual view of Rebekah Brooks.
Carolyne Mitchell used her experience as a child and mother to channel Dr Seuss this week in her post Great day for blog, with apologies to Dr Seuss.
Dan Slee returned to childhood memories of a cartoon boy and his cat (who advised children to stay safe) and a more recent memory of a talk by Tom Watson as the starting point for his lively comms2point0 blog post: Charlie says here’s a history lesson to open up innovation in your organisation. Dan shares with us ‘The Management Innovation Refusal Timeline’ which puts in a more developed form an argument that many of us have employed in trying to persuade people to use and allow the use of social media.
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss was Simon Hope’s post on the same theme as underlies Dan’s, and very specifically aimed at local government people.
Matt Murray contributed a really useful blog on using the Camera+ app on an iPhone - Mobile photography with Camera+ app. His illustrates it with some of his own photographs, including a really nice one of Battersea Power Station. I have had Camera+ on my iPod Touch (which has a much worse camera than the iPhone) for ages and not used it much but Matt’s article revealed some things that I did not know so I will be
Finally, I returned to a colour theme as an online article about the use of colour when designing websites prompted me to write about something the author had forgotten, how not everyone can see: The Red and the Green.
I have already written the first of my Week 21 posts, about the first night of The Late Shows. The Late Shows are the Newcastle and Gateshead part of Museums At Night, a weekend in May when museums open late till 11pm. The Tyneside Late Shows included contemporary art, the performing arts, a tunnel, circus, a display of photographs in shipping containers, as well as museums. Perhaps the (entirely optional) Week 21 theme could be culture, or what our neighbourhoods are like in the evening,
You can join the Weekly Blog Club as an author (see the About page for the short guidance notes) at anytime, or you can be one of the welcome band of readers. Thank you to everyone who wrote or read posts this week,
For the Love of Brooks by Irena Souroup.
Opportunity Knocks by Benjamin Welby.
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss by Simon Hope.
The Red and the Green by Janet E Davis.
Charlie says here’s a history lesson to open up innovation in your organisation by Dan Slee on the comms2point0 blog.
Great day for blog, with apologies to Dr Seuss by Carolyne Mitchell.
Dan Slee, in comms2point0 guise, contributes to Week 20 a lively must-read post for organisations with people reluctant to let staff use social media as a work tool. He includes Charlie, mentions Prodigy, quotes Tom Watson and history.*
Charlie says heres a history lesson to open up innovation in your organisation by Dan Slee on the comms2point0 blog.
* What an unexpected combination! I fear that I may now get Prodigy’s Firestarter playing in my mind every time I see Tom Watson’s name…
Kate Bentham, for her Week 20 post, has shared wonderfully vivid word pictures of her dad and a glimpse into how getting a job used to work.
Probably not really a Weekly Blog Club sort of post, but in case people might be a little interested…
For her Week 16 post, Diane Sims has written about a topic that has been in the media a lot – the Titanic – but in her own, very distinctive way. She has combined physics and history to consider this famous ship and its people.
The Titanic: it’s not the watch, it’s the story by Diane Sims.
The themes had a very sibilant sound in the 14 posts for Week 15 of Weekly Blog Club. Social media, sociable enterprise, social history, and what could be described as social projects were strong themes this week. Much of the social nature actually related to work contexts. We happen to be building up quite a collection of advice and case studies of using digital media, and especially of the social aspects.
I will start with the sports section this week. Hannah Chia tackled the subject of the very eventful Oxford Cambridge Boat Race in The Boat Race: Two Boats & One Idiot by Hannah Chia. Peter McClymont shared memories of his childhood sport obsession – Subbuteo – in his post Only a game: “Flick to kick”.
My post - Memories of children’s television cartoons - prompted others to share their memories of television cartoons from when they were children. It is interesting to see how some remain the same for people up to about a decade apart in age.
Dan Slee uncovered a bit of the past that reminded him of how people had communicated differently in the days when the local newspaper was the key public communication medium at local area level: ‘this, children, is how people did protests before facebook.’
Irena Souroup used the medium of online to communicate her disgust at the news that a think tank had been counting the cost of bank holidays, and had concluded that each one costs the country £2.3 billion: The Centre for Economics and Business Bollocks.
Elaine Walton wrote a guest post on Janet Harkin’s blog this week about counting on a good number of her social media followers responding to her questionnaire: When your Social Media reach counts for something. Her points on using a social network in such a way should prove useful to many. Louise Brown shared her wonderfully organised approach to managing online information - Sifting the online wheat from the chaff - which was equally useful, and prompted us to think about whether we could be more efficient.
It was good to see a contribution in Week 15 from Al Smith since Weekly Blog Club was suggested and initiated partly to encourage him to write regularly. Al contributed a very interesting post - Tackling behaviour change - about Cannock Chase District Council’s approach to serious social problems and how they have been using social media in the campaign.
Kate Bentham’s post focused specifically on how she had developed communication between the council and families through Facebook: One Big Facebook Family. Some of the other Weekly Blog Members were particularly taken with her giving Curly Wurlies [other brands of chocolate bars are available] as incentives.
First-time contributor Ross Wigham introduced people to his patch – the glorious hidden jewel of a county, Northumberland – and shared how the county has been adopting online methods of communication: Using social media in the public sector.
An article about a woman’s research into which streets in Rome were named after women inspired me to write a post to suggest community projects about maps, linking past and present people with places: Gendered UK street maps? This attracted more comments than any of my other posts so far.
Travelling has been the original spark for a conversation on Twitter that two of the regular Weekly Blog Club bloggers followed up. It had involved #IslandGovCamp – and cake = and had caused the invention of the term ‘sociable enterprise’ (I think it was Mark Braggins who first suggested the term? And note: not the same as ‘social enterprise’). Phil Jewitt put forward his definition, and proposed extending the unconference spirit, in ‘Be’ in Social (and also may have mentioned cake). Mark explained a bit more about the Orkney connection, mentioned family history in passing, provided his definition of ‘sociable enterprise’ in A ‘Sociable’ Enterprise? (cake might have been mentioned again).
Finally, if you are based in Scotland, please read and respond to Lesley Thomson’s post: Anyone for teacamp? It sounds like a great idea.
If you want to join in the Weekly Blog Club, new contributors are welcome and should read our simple, basic rules on the About page (‘rules’ might be an exaggeration). If you do not already have a blog, we can help guide you a bit into setting one up. We aim to be friendly and supportive. Readers are also an important part of the club, and your positive comments and clicks on any ‘Like’ buttons available on posts are much appreciated.
The (entirely optional) theme for Week 16 could be:
Having suggested those three, I expect most will write about something entirely different – and at least three of them will coincidentally be on the same theme.
Janet
Sifting the online wheat from the chaff by Louise Brown.
The Boat Race: Two Boats & One Idiot by Hannah Chia.
Using social media in the public sector by Ross Wigham.
The Centre for Economics and Business Bollocks by Irena Souroup.
Memories of children’s television cartoons by Janet E Davis.
‘Be’ in Social by Phil Jewitt.
‘this, children, is how people did protests before facebook’ by Dan Slee.
Gendered UK street maps? by Janet E Davis.
One Big Facebook Family by Kate Bentham.
Anyone for teacamp? by Lesley Thomson.
When your Social Media reach counts for something guest blog by Elaine Walton on Janet Harkin‘s blog.
A ‘Sociable’ Enterprise? by Mark Braggins.
Mark Braggins’s Week 15 post will enlighten the uninitiated about the Weekly Blog Club. He also mentions the Island Govcamp, the possible (we hope ‘probable’) blogging, vlogging road trip to Island Govcamp, Orkney, family history and cake on his way to considering the definition of a ‘sociable’ enterprise.
Dan Slee has contributed his guest post on the comms2point0 website to Week 15 of Weekly Blog Club. His post includes a great newspaper photograph of a local demonstration from before the days of electronic social media, and considers how things have changed.
‘this, children, is how people did protests before facebook’ by Dan Slee.
An article about a woman researching the gender of street names in Rome and finding that under 5% were named after women (real or mythical) sparked off an idea.
Has any community done comprehensive research in the archives and created online maps and databases of streets, squares, alleys in a UK town or city? And what if there were lots of such projects?
This post has already gathered a lively set of comments, and more are welcome to join in the discussion, of course.
