The second part of just one account of a small part of the amazing Late Shows, part of Museums At Night, but done the Geordie way, with added party vibes (and the magical The LateShows glowsticks, don’t forget the glowsticks!)
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.
In Week 13 of Weekly Blog Club, Diane Sims has reported on the very latest trouble at t’Mill as well as continuing her fascinating story of saving this important local heritage.
Saving Newsome Mills part three: If you’re not on the list… by Diane Sims.
Although there are fewer posts to read this week (15 rather than last week’s 22), they are all, as ever, well worth reading. The (always optional) theme for Week 11 was women because the Weekly Blog Club week happened to start on International Women’s Day. Another main theme that emerged during the week was ‘just doing it’ – people sharing with us something that they had done for their community or friends, or for themselves instead of expecting others to do it for them.
Hannah Chia started the week with dragons, wasps and princes with her posts on a rugby match – Dragons 2s v Wasps 2s: Pseudo Match Report - and Prince Harry doing sporty things to connect with people: The Sporting Prince: Harry Charms on Diamond Jubilee Tour. Later in the week, she wrote about some footballers doing that thing where they roll about on the ground in agony one moment and look fine the next (with some great illustrations of such events): Naughty, Naughty Didier Drogba.
More sport nearly happened in Phil Jewitt’s post, but his plans being thwarted led to a thought-provoking post about aspirations to quality, especially for the public sector: More than a mission statement. Interesting ideas about public services and their use of digital technology came out of Matt Murray’s post about GovCamp Queensland: #GovCampQld – thoughts, people, tweets and links. Those who have attended UKGovCamp, ScotGovCamp or one of the LocalGovcamps in the UK will probably find Matt’s post a fascinating read.
In Wind turbines for dummies* Peter McClymont wrote about some of the issues that the most local of local authorities (parish councils) face when looking at planning applications, including not having the resources to obtain the impartial expert advice they need.
Others shared knowledge and advice freely this week, or wrote about having done so. Louise Brown shared a useful infographic about the new Facebook timeline style page that many will find useful: Understanding the new Facebook Page timelines for charities. Peter Olding gave an example of helping someone else to share information online in Taking back the Big Society. Those thinking of blogging or just starting to blog, could find Kate Bentham’s post, reflecting on her first weeks of blogging, encouraging and useful: A blog about blogging. Rob Stewart advised on how to avert the danger of one’s blog being insecure when using wifi in public places: Blogging securely with WordPress and SSL Part one. His post could help both new and experienced bloggers.
I hope that the other Weekly Blog Club writers will forgive me for picking out John Patterson’s post as the ‘must-read’ post of the week. From the comments by others that I have seen so far, I think many would agree that John’s post should inspire the rest of us to just do it, rather than hesitate and procrastinate: Train-ing to overcome.
Someone else with a great deal of determination wrote about getting on with doing it herself. Diane Sims produced Saving Newsome Mills (part two): The day the sun came out as her Week 11 post. Hopefully, there is at least one more part to this heritage story.
Irena Souroup wrote about her determined efforts to do handicrafts whilst on maternity leave in order to set herself goals, create a product, no matter how difficult and fiddly the process: The Smugness of Knitters.
Janet Harkin had content from a guest on her blog this week. In honour of International Women’s Day, she shared two lovely poems, one about being a woman, and one about watching a daughter dance: Lipstick by Mel Bradley and Chloe by Mel Bradley.
I was hoping to write a post about one historical woman whose life I am researching, but I ran out of time to write it (or anything else) in Week 11. Women’s History Month does not end until 31st March, however. To make amends for not writing a post this week, I offer you a link to a post I wrote a while ago about other women (some of you may have seen it before): World War 2: 1 woman.
Any ideas for the Week 12 (entirely optional) theme? Please add to comments on this post if you have suggestions. Tweet out if you want inspiration during the week and the Links – useful page has not led to anything that prompted a good idea. Someone usually responds within an hour or so with suggestions. My topic this week is likely to be about cultural data, or selling art, since I need to think about both of those this week.
Thank you again to the readers as well as writers. It is great to see more people ‘liking’ posts and following the blog. If you are someone thinking of writing, do check out the About page for how – and then just do it – write.
Janet
Summary of Week 11 posts
Dragons 2s v Wasps 2s: Pseudo Match Report by Hannah Chia.
The Sporting Prince: Harry Charms on Diamond Jubilee Tour by Hannah Chia.
Understanding the new Facebook Page timelines for charities by Louise Brown.
Saving Newsome Mills (part two): The day the sun came out by Diane Sims.
Lipstick by Mel Bradley (guest post on Janet Harkin‘s blog).
Chloe by Mel Bradley (guest post on Janet Harkin‘s blog).
More than a mission statement by Phil Jewitt.
#GovCampQld – thoughts, people, tweets and links by Matt Murray.
Taking back the Big Society by Peter Olding.
Naughty, Naughty Didier Drogba by Hannah Chia.
Wind turbines for dummies* by Peter McClymont.
A blog about blogging by Kate Bentham.
Train-ing to overcome by John Patterson.
Blogging securely with WordPress and SSL Part one by Rob Stewart.
Diane Sims continues the fascinating story of the saving of Newsome Mills in her Week 11 post. It is also the story of a very determined woman with a camera and a passion for a place.
Saving Newsome Mills (part two): The day the sun came out by Diane Sims.
There were lots of grand textile mills in the North of England, generally built to make woollen cloth in Yorkshire, and cotton in Lancashire (because the damp air West of the Pennines made it a bit easier to work with cotton).
Diane Sims leaves us on tenterhooks in the first part of her story about a woollen mill in Newsome that was built in the early 19th century and under threat of demolition 200 years later.
Janet E Davis writes about the loves that lasts longer than a supermarket valentine rose, and how intrinsic culture is to community.
Week 6 of Weekly Blog Club had a remarkable 15 contributions this week. This was remarkable because one regular was too ill to write one, many of the other regulars were dashing around the country attending unconferences and other events, and bad weather distracted most of the UK.
Several Weekly Blog Club bloggers attended the LocalGovCamp North West held at Preston on Saturday 4th February, and 1 or 2 of us followed some of it on live video then audio feeds. The Twitter Gritter was a topic that day, and Dan Slee picked up on it again for his Week 6 post. He pointed out that sometimes public sector people can deliver much better and cheaper services than any outside contractor (something I was arguing in heritage 20 years ago).
Mark Braggins got so much out of LocalGovCamp NW that he is spreading it over more than one post, and the first one just covers the journey and his first impressions of Preston and the unconference’s venue. I am sure that I am not the only one looking forward to his account of the sessions. Mark produces very readable and and enjoyable, as well as useful, reports of these events.
The third one to be inspired directly by LocalGovCamp NW was Peter Olding who picked up on the idea of local authorities using Flickr and went on to explain why he did not think using Creative Commons licences was the best idea. It will be interesting to see any responses to his post in Week 7.
Sadly, a couple of our writers have lost people recently about whom they cared. Phil Jewitt and Carolyne Mitchell took different approaches but both wrote movingly and beautifully about their losses. Both their posts are well worth reading.
Graham Budd tackled the rather awkward issue of publicly thanking a local authority for a specific piece of work in his neighbourhood when he also happens to be an employee of that council.
There were several posts that had very work-focused themes this week. Janet Harkin shared a tool for helping to prioritise work. Sarah Lay shared the main points from her presentation – ‘Magic Numbers: Measuring the Quality and Quantity of your Social Media Activity’ - at the Epic Social Media for the Public Sector conference in Exeter. Many could find this useful for thinking about an evaluation framework. Please note: towards the bottom of her post, Sarah also asks for people to take part in a survey – please participate if possible.
Continuing the work focus was Kate Bentham who was concerned about the consequences of third parties using out-of-date data from local government open data, especially childcare data. Kelly Quigley-Hicks was concerned that young people making career decisions did not see local government public relations as an attractive option, and wondered if local government PR needs some PR. Matt Murray wrote about the use of social media by local government in emergency situations (specifically, flooding in his area of Australia). I hope that some of the readers who are involved with local government communications aspects of emergency planning will share their thoughts and ideas with Matt. It would be a good thing to use blogging to help each other to help others across the world.
There was a mini culture theme this week. There was a musical topic from Andrew Beeken in his first post for Weekly Blog Club on the practicalities of recording MIDI to iPad (good to see a ‘How-To-Do’ amongst the posts). I blogged about the importance of everybody having access to the best of art, architecture and design in the UK (with a mention of how art schools have tended to produce rock and pop musicians).
Finally (and certainly not least), we had the romance of travel in two posts (the less pleasant aspects of travel were also mentioned in Mark Braggins‘s post). Louise Brown told us of romance on a Scottish island and how a telephone box there connected with an old black-and-white movie. Peter McClymont told us of a road trip he made in the United States, during which he encountered bison, bikers, and carhenge – truly the stuff of travel dreams for at least some of us.
Thank you to all the Week 6 participants for such interesting and highly readable posts. Week 7 could have the optional theme of love or romance. How many think of town halls and civic centres as romantic places? And yet so many get married in these buildings every year. Which public places do you love or consider romantic, from either a professional or personal viewpoint?
Janet
Stop the world, I want to get off for a while by Phil Jewitt.
Every thanks you ever wanted to post on Facebook (but were afraid to do so) by Graham Budd.
TWITTER GRITTER: Beware Inferior Private Sector Product by Dan Slee.
In Praise of the Priority Matrix by Janet Harkin.
Memories of a digital detox by Louise Brown.
High art for the masses by Janet E Davis.
Bill Anderson 1934-2012 by Carolyne Mitchell.
Epic Social Media for the Public Sector – South West by Sarah Lay.
A Danger of Open Data by Kate Bentham.
Does local government PR need some PR? by Kelly Quigley-Hicks.
Preston is a nice place. Oh, and Local Gov Camp North West (Part 1) by Mark Braggins.
Record MIDI to iPad by Andrew Beeken.
FlickR and the creative commons by Peter Olding.
Social media during the #bigwet January 2012 by Matt Murray.
Most awesome places in the world: number 1 in a series of… by Peter McClymont.
http://localgovcampnw.eventbrite.com/ (the original invite/ticketing)
http://topsy.com/localgovcampnw-estw.eventbrite.com/ – some tweets about the event.
http://johnpopham.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/celebration-2-0-and-localgovcamp-north-west/ – John Popham writing beforehand about what he will do at the event.
http://n0tice.com/report/2572/local-gov-camp-nw-updates – a collation of LocalGovCamp NW material by Sarah Hartley.
http://www.jadu.co.uk/localgovcamp – Page including material about various LocalGovCamps by one of LocalGovCamp North West’s sponsors.
http://tobyblume.posterous.com/reflections-on-local-gov-camp-new-blog-localg – Toby Blume’s reflections on the event.
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/bins-mags-shops-and-more-talk-about-local-at-localgovcampnw/ – blog post by Sarah Hartley – thoughts by Mike, Sarah and Karen of Talk About Local about the LocalGovCamp North West.
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk/lightning-talks/ - Andy Mabbett’s blog post about Lightning Talks at LocalGovCamp North West.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=8gGbirbrlMY – the Lightning Talks at the end.
Praising British creativity and arguing for continuing free entry at many museums and galleries are the key motifs in this Week 6 Weekly Blog Club post.
Radishes by La Grande Farmers Market, on Flickr.
Week 5 of Weekly Blog Club was another great week: 13 posts. There were two more new contributors, including our first one based in Australia. At least a couple of the posts were written as a result of Weekly Blog Club members communicating with each other to get inspiration. There were several mini-themes connecting posts together this week: meeting challenges; local government website content strategy; allotments; sense of place and community; and grass.
I started off the week with a short post that was a word snapshot of an urban scene and a brief reflection on preconceptions. Incidentally, the young man chose an appropriate dog costume: dalmations were trained as carriage dogs in the UK originally.
In our first post from Australia, Matt Murray made some predictions of what will happen in the web and social media world during 2012. Do read and discuss whether or not you agree with him.
Much nearer to home, our other first-time contributor Rachel Jane Snook wrote about setting goals and a cycling challenge in some of the UK’s loveliest landscape. Ian Curwen wrote about his fitness challenges and what he has achieved so far. The results of Weekly Blog Club participants rising to the challenge of writing regularly came in an end of January summary. Louise Brown highlighted a couple of those challenges in her Week 5 post about working from home.
Mark Braggins did not blog this week, apparently. At least, he said that he was not blogging in his post. He did mention UK Govcamp 2012, Twitter and Yammer at some length in his post about not blogging. Feedback indicates that all of us who read Mark’s unblog are looking forward to reading the three blog posts that he did not write. [Stop press! Mark has declared that he will blog this week (Week 6) - about LocalGovCamp North West, held in Preston on 4th February].
Carolyne Mitchell also wrote a post that was not the one that she intended to contribute in Week 5 (she still has another post on the burner), about the issues of local government website content and what should or should not be weeded out. This seemed especially relevant during the week when the beta of https://www.gov.uk/ was released into the wild (do take a look at that too, if you have not yet, and give them some constructive feedback).
Sarah Lay also wrote about website content strategy Week 5, with an interactive element (asking readers – especially those who work in local government – to participate in a quick survey that she and Carl Haggerty put together. Future interactive IRL (In Real Life) content was the focus of Kate Bentham‘s post about the forthcoming Shropshire Digital Festival (sounds lots of fun).
Peter McClymont wrote about the difference between urban and rural life, and how a five-minute walk can take so much longer in a village – and how one can get pulled into being a shopkeeper, even when it was not something one ever planned or envisaged doing. His post sat well alongside Diane Sims‘s about a sense of place. Diane’s post also covered entropy, radishes, archives, data, stories – and supply and demand (which fitted nicely also with Peter’s village shop issue).
The final two posts of the week – from Kelly Quigley-Hicks and Peter Olding both looked at Astroturf, but in very different ways. This was not coincidental. Kelly’s post had prompted Peter to remember something about which he could write a quick post.
Week 6 has already started, but if anyone has any suggestions for the optional theme for the week, do shout up or, more effectively, put your suggestion to @weeklyblogclub or as a comment on this page. We would be delighted to see more #ukgc12 reflections and any thoughts on the recent Benefits Camp or LocalGovCamp North West, but other topics are also great. If you are lacking in inspiration, tweet @weeklyblogclub and we will try to find something that sparks off an idea.
If anyone else wants to join in the collating and broadcasting as an administrator/editor/author of this Weekly Blog Club blog, do say. It is intended to be a shared blog. As ever, readers and their (constructive) comments are very welcome too.
Janet
Aren’t all artificial pitches Astroturf? by Peter Olding.
Astroturfing – keep off the fake grass by Kelly Quigley-Hicks
Knowing your place by Diane Sims.
The only man in the room: Exercise by Ian Curwen
“Where am I?”… by Peter McClymont.
Shropshire Digital Festival by Kate Bentham.
Answer me this…. by Sarah Lay.
I’m sticking up for the little guys by Carolyne Mitchell.
Why I shan’t be blogging this week by Mark Braggins.
What *is* on my mind? by Louise Brown.
A HardKnott Task by Rachel Jane Snook.
