In partnership with BT and Citizens Online we are offering basic Internet courses around Bristol for people aged 55 and over, as well as adults who have a disability. Please complete this form and we will contact you with details of courses which may be suitable for you.

Marius Jennings

A new three-year initiative in Bristol will help local people access the internet, learn new skills and find out more about computers and technology. The project, called Get IT Together, is focused on helping older people and individuals with disabilities gain basic IT skills. Sessions are tailored towards the learners’ own personal interests and are delivered by friendly, approachable tutors.

Project Coordinator Marius Jennings is working in partnership with other charities, libraries, schools, community groups and agencies to see that basic IT courses are available throughout the city, with the aim of breaking down barriers to  learning, strengthening community relations and helping residents become more digitally included.

Marius is based at Bristol City Council’s digital agency Connecting Bristol. Should you be interested in attending a course, or becoming a volunteer tutor, please write to Get IT Together, Room 404, The Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS1 5TR.  Alternatively contact Marius on 07785 462568 or email marius.jennings@citizensonline.org.uk

As part of their Media Policy Project series the London School of Economics have released a policy brief on the current state of digital inclusion.

The authors suggest that although there is improvement, there is an entrenched digital underclass emerging particularly amongst those with lower education levels and no employment. These individuals are the most likely to rely most on government services, and as these services become “digital by default”, this will leave many struggling to access essential support.  The report questions the current focus on provision of infrastructure, suggesting that other criteria such as quality of access, skills, motivations and effective, sustainable use should all become elements of the inclusion picture.

The Bear Pit has long suffered with a reputation as a less than convivial public space. The Bear Pit Improvement Group have been working hard to challenge this and are begining to see the results.

BBC Magazines staff plant up beds in the Bear Pitt

Connecting Bristol played its own small part in the story, enabling free to access wifi in the area so that people might be encouraged to head there to grab a coffee and check their email in their lunch hour, or a break during a shopping trip. Some of the other members of the group have planted flower beds or held events to draw people in and show the space being used positively.

There have been quite a few positive comments left on Qype about the work that’s gone into the Bear Pit, if you have a comment or suggestion they would love to hear it. You could even join the Facebook group and get involved in some of the work.

Do you have an idea on how to make your local area a better place to live using technology? Do you want to win the chance for your idea to be turned into reality and win up to £3000 in prizes?

DotGovLabs are organising a competition to stimulate collaboration between public services, entrepreneurs and communities to develop innovative ways of using technology to improve their neighbourhoods.

Here are the two sub-challenges in the competition;

• Help people help each other in your neighbourhood
• Make it easier for you to report issues to your council

To submit your idea and for more information: Go to http://bit.ly/submityouridea

Go ON Give an Hour is set to be the UK’s biggest digital inclusion campaign to date. On the 30 October the clocks go back and everyone in Britain has an extra hour; rather than staying in bed, the aim is to get the 30 million people who use the internet everyday to use this hour to transform someone’s life by showing them the wonders of the web.

This will be followed by a week of taster sessions (largely run by UK online centres), which internet beginners can attend if they can’t find someone to help them and want to try it out.

The campaign will run from 22 October – 6 November; for more information visit the RaceOnline website.

There are lots of places all across the country offering computer and internet courses for beginners. UK Online Centres and Raceonline have mapped some of these training activities currently offered in Bristol.

The services, facilities and courses available vary but most places have staff and volunteers to help people of all ages take their first steps. The webpage also has contact details for all the training centres so you can check what they are able to provide the sort of training you need.

There was quite a buzz on Nelson Street at lunchtime today. Office staff, midday shoppers and the City’s artistic hipsters were all mixing together watching the incredible pieces of street art emerging as part of the See No Evil project. The project has seen more than twenty internationally renowned artists take up residency in Bristol city centre as part of a free, three day long arts and music event.

See No Evil will culminate on Saturday 20th August in a Block Party curated by local crew Team Love, celebrating the best of Bristol’s art and music culture with live street painting, bands and DJ’s, cartoon drawing, screen printing, a pop up barber shop and fancy dress emporium, street theatre and street dressing with a mini garden area stretching along the length of Nelson Street.

You can watch the works in development through a timelapse photography feed, or see the impressive range of styles and subjects through the flickr group.

***UPDATE****

The project was captured on video as it developed;

A lot has been made of the role of ICT’s and Social Media in the recent urban unrest. Some called for blanket bans, while others saw the opportunity to promote a positive community response. One of these positive responses is the De Loot London site which is aimed at encouraging consumers to use their spending power to help rebuild the local businesses damaged during the rioting.

Many companies have transformed their department by the use of digital media. Not only marketers have begun to work with new tools but also managers across all types of business have employed new software and social networks in order to benefit from them.

Digital media jobs are available in various fields from banking (RBS, RSA insurance) to fine art (for example DeviantArt and ArtFinder). Sometimes there is a recognisable career path from entry level positions to senior ones where some require highly specialized training and a vocational experience. In Bristol there is a digital creative community made by advertising agencies and small start ups that are requiring a considerable amount of workforce specialized in programming, design and marketing. As Adzuna reports, 143 jobs in the sector are available in Bristol from Web designer to SEO and PPC jobs

These are some of the most typical digital jobs:

1. Social Media Manager is the individual in an organization trusted with monitoring, contributing to, filtering, measuring and otherwise guiding the social media presence of a brand, product, individual or corporation. The role is similar to that of a community manager on a website forum or public relations representative. Social media managers are often found in the marketing and public relations departments of large organizations and are constantly up to date with the newest evolutions of social networks
2. Web analyst is in charge of analyzing costs and benefits associated with web development and product marketing. This includes making decisions based on the allocaton of staff and equipment associated with web development and deployment of websites. Someone who can come in and provide insights to companies who have massive amounts of clickstream data, insights that will be used to drive actions which have a reasonable chance of success when measured by key site outcome metrics (Revenue, Conversion Rate, Customer Satisfaction, Bounce Rate).
3. SEO manager takes on a variety of different roles and will need a wide array of skills. One of the main priorities of an SEO manager will be organic search engine optimization. Areas of importance include keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, domain name selection, overall marketing and promotion and more. Digging up important keywords and key phrases and utilizing them in the correct fashion remains a priority. A SEO manager will need to obtain partnerships and support within the niche or industry, find high-ranking websites willing to link back to the company site, offer services and collaboration with other webmasters and participate in various other strategies to help build links to the site.
4. Web Designer is fully responsible for the layout, visual appearance and usability of the company website, ensuring that brand continuity is maintained. It has to be constantly up to date with new software and must sometime be able to meet short deadlines.
5. Web Developer is the individual in charge of producing the architecture of the website. Nowadays it exists a wide range of programming codes such as Python, PHP, Dijango, Javascript and new, cutting-edge technologies like HTML5. A web developer must be able to translate functions communicated by words into code.
6. Pay Per Click manager develops advertising and search engine campaigns, then track and analyze those campaigns. They also make recommendations to their company and clients on how to improve campaigns, or find new spots to utilize them. This role requires strong writing skills, a knowledge and experience with SEO, and digital advertising platform such as Google Adwords and Bing Advertising.
7. Digital Media Planner is a part of the advertising and public relations team of an agency or in-house marketing department. The media planner selects and acquires media time and space to advertise products over a range of website that are watched by the consumers of the products.
8. User experience manager takes ownership of a constant stream of highly complex, highly strategic cross-platform user-centred interactive design projects . This role combines thought leadership, strategic direction and planning, client relationship management and development of the agency’s user experience team. Main duties are the website testing and the writing of reports to improve conversion and usability.
9. Ecommerce manager is responsible for overseeing and managing employees who create, implement and perform continuous maintenance on a company’s web systems. To accomplish this, an e-commerce manager must develop a plan that is in line with a company’s overall mission statement to sell products or services online. As more and more businesses implement online ordering systems, the e-commerce manager role is becoming an integral part of a company’s success.

<<<<Guest blog by Carlo Pandian, of Adzuna >>>>>>