The seminar will give a comprehensive overview of how to use online ‘new media’ channels to fulfil an organisation’s potential and will show you how to incorporate new thinking into your strategic communications – making the web work hard for you - whether your organisation is in the corporate, community, charity or public sector.

New Media specialists will examine how to;

• utilise the exciting opportunities available to execute effective marketing campaigns.
• use online media to achieve your organisation’s vision.
• help you understand new terminology in order to get results.
• develop an e-marketing strategy: this is now seen as the fastest, most efficient and low cost method of marketing to clients: it allows flexibility, measurability and will drive traffic to your web site, delivering strong messages to targeted groups of clients.
• make e-commerce work to achieve maximum sales.
• understand the power of online video communications.

Whatever the marketing and communications needs for the future of your organisation, this seminar will give you the knowledge to pursue them with more understanding and effectiveness.

Date: Wednesday 21st May
Venue: Watershed, 1 Canons Rd, Bristol BS1 5TX www.watershed.co.uk
Booking: events@businesswest.co.uk
Price: £10
Time: 0900-1200

Presenters: Ray Buckler (Sitemakers), Kevin Redpath (Redpath Productions), Nicky Robertson (Mendip Media)

This role requires a dynamic individual who can maximize the potential of digital inclusion to tackle social exclusion. They will provide strong leadership and will work with a network of local partners.

The post holder will work strategically to promote the programme and identify new projects, new opportunities, new partnerships and new funding streams as well as supervising the work of the project’s Outreach worker. The successful candidate will demonstrate the experience and ability to:

• Develop strategic understanding of the use of ICT and digital media in promoting social inclusion
• Work jointly with the local community and a range of partners across the public, private and third sectors
• Be entrepreneurial and persuasive – able to enthuse people and build interest in ICT locally
• Able to conduct research and produce clear, concise plans, records and reports

The post holder will work from the Knowle West Media Centre, an internationally recognised neighbourhood-based digital media centre with a strong focus on grassroots community engagement and the environment.

This post is offered as a fixed term contract and funding is currently in place until 2011. The application form and job details are available from the Citizens Online website.

Hi 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:

Jeff is the former Chief Executive of the British Deaf Association, Guardian Public Servant of the Year runner-up and now manages a video technology company called Significan’t, which he founded.

Significan’t uses real-time video conferencing to virtually link deaf staff and customers with British Sign language interpreters.

As Jeff explained in 2006, “There are about 275 registered BSL interpreters in the UK and around 70,000 BSL users. You just have to look at the numbers to realise that if a local authority or health trust sees a deaf person who is in urgent need and needs to communicate with them, they can’t do it straight away. There is usually a six-week wait to get a BSL interpreter to help sort out an urgent issue. What usually happens is that a deaf person will take their hearing child out of school to interpret for them if they have a crisis with their GP, for example. You can have the situation where a deaf person is being told they have a terminal illness and their child is interpreting for them.”

During Deaf Awareness Week, organisations working with deaf people across the country are inviting everyone to ‘Look At Me’. The theme aims to improve understanding of the different types of deafness by highlighting the many different methods of communication used by deaf, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people, such as sign language and lipreading.

Jeff will be adding a BSL version of his posts to the blog. We look forward to Jeff’s thoughts on how video streaming and other digital channels can help make the world a more inclusive, efficient and fun place for everyone.

It is also apt that Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA is chairing the event. It was Matthew, in his former Cabinet office role, who dreamt-up the idea of the Digital Challenge… from which the DC10plus is now born.

Amongst the all-star line-up of speakers are the new Digital Inclusion Minister, the Rt. Hon. Paul Murphy MP and the Minister for Schools, Jim Knight MP.

Our very own Stephen Dodson will be presenting the DC10’s vision and programme. Stephen is an excellent conference speaker and we are expecting great things from him. Emma Aqusita of Bristol’s Knowle West Media Centre has worked hard to create a dynamic afternoon workshop, which promises to be very hands-on.

Public-i will be webcasting the event. So if you are unable to attend, you will be able to see the key speeches on the DC10plus website. David Wilcox will also be acting as a raporteur during the conference and workshops, capturing less formal video interviews with speakers and delegates in order to find out what people really think about digital inclusion.

The Connecting Bristol Team will be there in strength, as both Kevin and I are attending. We also look forward to catching-up with some South West friends from COSMIC and Bristol Wireless.

The DC10 sees this event as the start of a conversation about Digital Inclusion. Please join the debate.

They have followed up on the success of sites like FixMyStreet, HearFromYourMP, NotApathetic, WriteToThem and TheyWorkForYou with a new website.

The idea behind Groups Near You is that it makes it easier for people who run sites with a local component to get a regular, local feed of information about what local online groups there are that people could join if they wanted to meet their neighbours online.

The site is one of the newest from My Society but nevertheless the first Bristol groups have already begun to appear.

Green Bristol piloted a project with funding from Community at Heart in the New Deal for Communities area (Barton Hill, Redfield, Lawrence Hill, The Dings). They were awarded funding recently from Community at Heart to commission an independent evaluation of the pilot. Conrad Peberdy, former Director of BEST (Bristol East Side Traders) carried out the evaluation. The report is now available for download.

But we’ve done this. Countless studies, submissions and expert opinions have shown us the inherent benefits of Internet access. There is clear awareness and evidence at all levels of public, private and government sectors of the benefits it can provide. But, since when did we want to eat our vegetables just because mum said they were good for us?
Eventually, the more we talked to people, the clearer things became and the answer pretty simple. I remember talking to a grandmother in the central western town of Gilgandra, New South Wales (population roughly 3000), about how we wanted to bring affordable, quality Internet access to the town and all she was interested in was receiving e-mails with pictures of her new grandson, not a word about any medical diagnosis over web cam. A local olive oil producer wanted help to put his products on e-bay and develop an e-commerce site so he could sell his produce in the “big smoke”. These examples were repeated over and over again in every town we visited.
During our research period we made some amazing friends, and the myKP Community project for us very quickly became about what it should have from the beginning, not technology, not about the delivery platform but about its application, about the content not the possibilities and most importantly about, people.
Have I lost you yet? This is where we interact, what do you think, are people the most important thing about the Internet?

And now we welcome our new Guest Blogger, George Kaloudis.

Officially George Kaloudis’s position at myKP, Australia’s leading community Wi-Fi provider, is Director of Stuff. As his title suggests, George gets his hands dirty on pretty much every aspect of myKP’s operation.

George describes himself as, “absolutely passionate about what we do, a rebel with a cause.” George has spent close to 15 years in telecommunications in strategic positions for global carriers and service providers, building, developing relationships and implementing key infrastructure across Asia, USA… and Australia of course; anything from the deployment of billion dollar multi continent submarine cable systems to peering agreements with Google.

George declares, “I love what I do and I am keen to start a revolution” and he asks “… are you with me?” As he says, “there is nothing as powerful as an idea who’s time has come” (Victor Hugo).