Bristol Competes for Honours in the NOMINET Best Practice Challenge
July 7, 2008 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : e-democracy, Bristol, Bristol City Council, Innovation, News, Awards, Connecting Bristol , 1 comment so farYou can wait a lifetime to be nominated for an award… and then two come along at the same time.
The NOMINET Best Practice Challenge is a competition that recognises British organisations, groups or individuals who have embraced the challenge of making the Internet a secure, open, accessible or diverse experience for all.
Connecting Bristol and Bristol City Council’s e-Democracy site, AskBristol are both on the NOMINET shortlist in the Open Internet category.
The competition will be tough with both mySociety’s Petition Downing Street site and the Open University’s Open Learn competing for honours in the same category. But the team will be there on Wednesday evening to hear the results. Wish us luck!
Virtual Farmers Market - Join us on 29th May to Help Develep Bristol's NESTA Big Green Challenge Bid
May 19, 2008 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : Bristol, Innovation, Events, Environment, Green ICT, Food, Bids , 10 comments
VIRTUAL FARMERS MARKET PROPOSAL
The food we eat makes a significant contribution to climate change, accounting for 31% of our greenhouse gas emissions (EU 2007). If we are to stand a realistic chance of preventing runaway global warming, it is time to rethink our agricultural systems. This project seeks to go beyond the popular concept of “food miles” to consider the complete life-cycle of food – from field to plate. A sustainable local food system will address emissions by engaging the communities of the Bristol city-region, from the farmers and allotment associations, to the consumer, to local government, academics and community groups…
Open Collaboration Session
Date: 29th May
Time: 2.30-5pm (followed by networking opportunity)
Location: Connecting Bristol, First Floor, 11-19 Wine Street, Bristol BS1 2PH MAP
Purpose:
Bristol’s bid to create a Virtual Farmer’s Market (VFM) has won through to the next stage of the NESTA Big Green Challenge competition. Well done Matt Fortnam of University of Bristol for taking the proposal this far!
Read a PDF summary of the bid here - Virtual Farmers Market Sumary
The timescale is, of course, very short. A final bid must be made to NESTA by 9th June. We are working with local food consultants F3 and Ed Mitchell to further develop the bid and will be holding an open collaboration session on 29th May to achieve the following,
- Generate innovative ideas that will help to build and sustain a Bristol virtual food community
- Provide feedback on the draft VFM bid
- Identify links with other local food projects and organisations and agree priorities and opportunities for the VFM
- Sign-up organisations and individuals to support the VFM bid and start to build the community that will support and champion the project
Registration
The Open Collaboration Session is an opportunity for anyone who is interested in this proposal to join-in. Please join us at this session. We welcome your input. Just confirm your attendance by registering HERE
We look forward to meeting you
Introduction and the Festival of Ideas
May 6, 2008 Posted by Jeff in : Bristol, Innovation, e-society, Festival of Ideas, Guest Bloggers, Deaf Awareness , add a commentHi everyone and welcome to the first vlog in this series - Jeff McWhinney here - I am the MD of a social enterprise, Significan’t (Sign if I can’t), which assists all those of you out there who are manually challenged, unable to use sign language 
especially those providing a front line public service enabling them to engage with a qualified sign language interpreter through a video link within minutes and communicate with their deaf customers. Occasionally you may find my written English a bit ‘odd’ or strange - my first language is British Sign Language (BSL) and it has a different grammatical structure than that for English. It has been said that it is closer to the spoken languages native to India. That is why I am using a vlog (video blog) as well as this written transcript.
In this vlog I will be covering issues that deaf people face everyday in the hope that this group of people are better understood and therefore catered for as this week is the national Deaf Awareness Week. I will also cover innovation and all the latest with regard to the positive human impact that innovation has achieved.
Today, lets go to the Festival of Ideas event organised by Innovation Exchange (www.innovation-exchange.org) for social enterpreneurs (people like me!) facilitated by Innovation Exchange. A participant has uploaded a video clip which can be seen on YouTube and reproduced below:
Slivers of Time
January 29, 2008 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : Bristol, Innovation, Skills, jobs, Flexible Working , add a commentWe at Connecting Bristol have been banging on about the potential of Slivers of Time, Homeshoring and other forms of ultra-flexible working for quite some time now.
The idea is to create a new type of employment market place, which gives far more control to employees about where and when they work and at the same time helps employers run their businesses effectively.
The Guardian has picked-up on Slivers of Time with a feature aimed at graduates appearing in this week end’s Work section.
You can read it here
