Bristol's Bid; "One of the most interesting projects"
July 21, 2006 Posted by fluffylogic in : Bristol , add a commentA Guardian writer, Michael Cross, who writes the Public Domain column wrote about the whole Digital Challenge bid yesterday. What was great to note was that he felt Bristol’s bid was ‘’ - which is cool, but I’d like to think that neither he nor the rest of the country ain’t seen anything yet…Bristol still has much more to show!
One of the most interesting projects is from Bristol city council, which says it is “activating e-participation as a driver for w ider social and economic change”….And there is just a chance that, despite the paltry funding, the winner really will become a national or even international exemplar. The Digital Challenge won’t get as many visitors as our other national grand project, the 2012 Olympics, but it may have longer-lasting consequences.
The full article is here.
ITV Local
July 18, 2006 Posted by carolhayward in : Digital Challenge, Bristol, Community Media, Media , add a commentYesterday (17th July), we had a presentation from ITV about ITV Local. ITV have been running a pilot for local TV in the Meridian area which covers quite a large chunk of southern England. They started in Brighton and Hastings about 8 months ago but have now expanded to cover about 12 cities/towns in the area. The BBC have been running a similar pilot in the Midlands for a similar period of time.
For the ITV pilot, the idea is that news items are collected for towns or neighbourhoods within the pilot area which runs alongside community generated content. There’s also weather, what’s on, forums and classified adverts. At the moment, people send in their content and ITV encode it but they’re aiming to make this simpler and a bit more like youtube. Unlike Youtube, material is checked for decency etc before publication.
Since the pilot started, around 400 videos have been uploaded, 75,000 people looked at the site during June and as many people watched during the day (12-6pm) as in the evening (6-12midnight).
Unfortunately at the moment, ITV Local works best with Microsoft products and doesn’t work well on Macs or on Mozilla but there are plans to tackle this.
There are other areas that are still being worked out - eg licences for the community generated content (which will possibly be creative commons) and what aspects to charge for which I’m sure will be resolved before ITV Local is rolled out around the rest of the country. We are hoping to hear in the next few weeks what the timetable will be for our area but once this issues are overcome, I felt this was a very positive opportunity that could work well alongside our other digital challenge activities.
Bristol Named Region's Leading Digital City
July 13, 2006 Posted by Clare in : Digital Challenge, Bristol City Council , 2 comments
In case you didn’t hear the news yesterday either through the webcast or at the Momentum Group meeting, Bristol is through to the next round of the Digital Challenge. This is from the press release that was issued yesterday below:
+++ Bristol Named Region’s Leading Digital City…And One of UK’s Top Ten +++
Bristol has today been named the region’s top digital city after being named amongst the ten national finalists in the government’s Digital Challenge.
Angela Smith MP announced all the winners and finalists at a ceremony broadcast live on the web today (Wednesday, July 12th 2006)
A successful and wide-ranging partnership of Bristol businesses, community groups and city council representatives called ‘Connecting Bristol’ have worked together to bid for the final £7 million prize. Winning the regional stage will mean a prize of £120,000 enable the partnership to continue to the final stage of the challenge.
The Digital Challenge seeks bids which develop digital access to services, breaks down barriers to the use of IT and widens the use of IT among all groups of the community.
Leader of Bristol City Council, Cllr Barbara Janke, says: “We are delighted that our bid has been recognised as the best vision for the region.
“The £120,000 prize will enable us to develop our bid further; to look at new ways of using new and existing technologies and connections to improve services and opportunities for our local communities, particularly the most disadvantaged.
“We want to bridge the digital divide in the region and ensure that we improve the use of IT by people with limited access. We also want to improve the take-up of online services by people with little IT knowledge.”
Bristol is already one of the top European locations for wi-fi network provision, digital technology research and development, creative industries and online service delivery, public consultation and democratic engagement.
The city has been awarded Science City status by the government and has been named European City of eDemocracy. Bristol’s City Learning Centres are at the forefront of national developments in digital resources for learning.
