Ross Wigham has written about the ITV television detective series Vera for his Week 17 post or, rather, he has written about the backdrop to most of it: Northumberland’s fabulous landscapes and seascapes. He also reveals that the series’ location was the result of many years of hard work.
Week 14 was a busy Weekly Blog Club week with 16 contributions, which should give plenty of reading for the Easter weekend [do skip down to the list of posts at this point if you wish].
I was unsure whether Dan Slee’s post - Auschwitz and Not Knowing Your Neighbour - should be in the bad, good or ugly category. He wrote movingly about a museum display that is clearly very good in communicating a very ugly human tragedy caused by some decidedly bad people.
Dan’s post received a good response on Twitter, as did Matt Murray’s Is that you Matthew? Memories of my grandmother. Matt’s was very firmly in the good category (even if it caused a tear in the eye) as he shared wonderful memories from his childhood of his grandmother and her house.
The appropriateness of the bad and ugly categories were more obvious in three posts. Hannah Chia wrote about some bad behaviour by boxers and footballers in: Why Danny Williams Has Got It Wrong About Dereck Chisora and Boys Behaving Badly: On Balotelli, Carroll & Reine. Peter Olding wrote about a name that was ugly because it did not work in a different medium (and could have been avoided): Check all media outputs before choosing a name.
Phil Jewitt in Out of sync or out of order? wrote about some of the rather ugly response to Sport Relief on Twitter, the bad habit that most of us have at times of making unnecessarily negative responses, and his colleague @gwilce‘s advice that good can come from making the extra effort to listen to the “timid, the polite, and the altogether reasonable people.”
The good of social media certainly came through in several posts this week. I was very taken with a video Matt Bond shared with us on Twitter and had to re-share that, together with another by the same artist and the iconic Bohemian Rhapsody video from my youth: Video DJing.
Louise Brown wrote a lovely post - Me and my Twitter - about lots of things that she has done and some of the people she has met through Twitter. Hopefully, it should prompt many to realise how social media enriches their lives. Elaine Walton wrote her first post for Weekly Blog Club asking How Social is My Social Media?
Mark Braggins’s post Keep taking the tablets should, perhaps, come with a warning: he find a particular new tablet very good and his engaging review ( or endorsement?) of it might persuade you that you need one. The Power of the Celebrity endorsement was on Janet Harkin’s mind this week and she explained about the drawing of Sir Ken Robinson on their company mug.
More digital goodness came as John Patterson wrote about the good ways of showing data about neighbourhoods, Building Blocks and MOSAIC Tiles, taking the same approach as a 19th century researcher on the (ugly) poverty in London.
Lesley Thomson shared a recipe for making digital goodness with a fine Scottish flavour in Recipe for success…how to cook up a day of public sector digital goodness (could substitute one or two ingredients to re-create elsewhere in the UK). I shared a few thoughts on how it would be good to encourage more women into technology: Needed: more women in tech.
More fun posts came from Kate Bentham who shared Confessions of a so called Wild Camper Part One; and love was also on the mind of Peter McClymont Mirabelle: love unrequited (a post that reminded me of warm smells in late summer).
Thank you again to all the readers as well as all the writers. There were yet more ‘Likes’ of posts this week, and quite a few comments on the various posts. If you want to join in, read our About page for the simple instructions.
The [entirely optional] theme for Week 15 of WeeklyBlog Club takes its inspiration from Easter: renewal, regeneration, or a new approach. Enjoy Easter, whether it is just a holiday or the most important religious festival of the year for you (or something in between). I miss Easter bonnets and being given a chocolate egg that, astonishingly, had my name written on it in icing.
Why Danny Williams Has Got It Wrong About Dereck Chisora by Hannah Chia.
Auschwitz and Not Knowing Your Neighbour by Dan Slee.
Out of sync or out of order? by Phil Jewitt.
Me and my Twitter by Louise Brown.
Boys Behaving Badly: On Balotelli, Carroll & Reine by Hannah Chia.
Keep taking the tablets by Mark Braggins.
Is that you Matthew? Memories of my grandmother by Matt Murray.
The Power of the Celebrity endorsement by Janet Harkin.
How Social is My Social Media? by Elaine Walton.
Confessions of a so called Wild Camper Part One by Kate Bentham.
Building Blocks and MOSAIC Tiles by John Patterson.
Recipe for success…how to cook up a day of public sector digital goodness by Lesley Thomson.
Check all media outputs before choosing a name by Peter Olding.
Another blog post to raise interesting questions – this time, by Kelly Quigley-Hicks. How do you persuade teenagers that public sector public relations work can be really interesting against the more obvious glamour of fashion?
Does local government PR need some PR? by Kelly Quigley-Hicks.
Kelly Quigley-Hicks contributes to Week 5 of Weekly Blog Club with a post about unethical, bad practices of astroturfing and sockpuppetry (with explanations for the uninitiated).
Astroturfing – keep off the fake grass by Kelly Quigley-Hicks
Kelly Quigley-Hicks reveals there are ways of categorising us all in the world of public relations. To which public do you belong?
This week’s media provided opportunities for Janet Harkin to show us very good examples of how putting messages in public spaces requires awareness of what is happening in the world – and a sense of timing.
Warning: when NOT to advertise | Give it some sparkle by Janet Harkin.
Kelly Quigley-Hicks, another newcomer to Weekly Blog Club, writes about how the public relations people are trying to define what public relations is in the 21st century:
