Yesterday saw us host the first in a whole series of Social Media Surgeries we’re involved in around Wolverhampton.

It took place in an area of the north east of the city called Low Hill. It was set up and managed like all other social media surgeries except instead of being supported by just one organisation, it’s being supported by a partnership of public sector organisations from across the city that includes council departments and housing  associations.

The thinking behind this means we’re able to support a more diverse mix of people to benefit their communities and improve civic engagement across the city with input from lots of different areas.

Yesterday’s event was really well attended and, with support of “surgeons” from our public sector partners, were able to help:

• A Community Association and Tenants and Residents groups set up and manage Facebook pages.
• LNP safety coordinators and police officers who wanted some help with Twitter.
• A church group who needed WordPress advice.

One attendee on returning back to work even declared it the “best social media surgery ever“. I’m not sure we’re impartial enough to be the judge of that but I’m sure looking forward to the next one in Low Hill and the others due to be arranged across the city.

After working with Yorkshire Film Archive to redesign their website in 2011, they asked us to work with them on another exciting project. Memory Bank is a resource which draws together a collection of video clips shot over 60 years held by the Yorkshire Film Archive. The clips were chosen to support ‘reminiscence therapy’, the idea being that watching video from when they were younger helps older people remember the past. The primary aim of the project is to help trigger forgotten memories, although we’ve also found it’s a really interesting insight into how people have lived, loved and played for the last 6 decades.

With a wealth of experience working with video from the previous YFA website, Substrakt was ideally suited to build Memory Bank.

We aimed to create a clean and functional website which would easily allow users to purchase DVDs or download content whilst also learning about what else Memory Bank has to offer.

The site has been designed to make it as easy as possible for users to browse the available content using a simple but effective filtering system to search for content based on theme, time period or a specific keyword.

Substrakt also developed the brand for the project alongside producing printed material including the booklet design and artwork which accompany the Memory Bank DVDs.

Built using Drupal, the website is extremely flexible and scalable for any future expansion, and there are many customisation options integrated across the site.

Visit the site at memory-bank.org

From 31st July to 9th September Erasmus Darwin House will be going free entry. We want to attract as many visitors as possible to experience the genius of Erasmus Darwin so for the first time and for this limited period only we will be throwing the doors open to all at no charge!

Charges will still apply for our one off events and please remember that as a small charitable organisation we rely on generous donations from the public – and if you can Gift Aid your donations they mean even more!

Normal museum opening times will apply – Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 5pm with last admission at 4.30pm.

So spread the word far and wide!

Video by Punk Zebra for BLFLeaders

Birmingham Leadership Foundation helps new and aspiring leaders to emerge. They connect emerging leaders with established leaders to help them learn from each other’s experience.

They organise networking events, training and connect existing leadership development projects to encourage the next generation of leaders in Birmingham to develop – leaders who reflect the city’s demography. These could be:

• A young person aged 16–30 with the ideas, ambition and spark to make an improvement to the lives of others in their local community.
• A person who is proactive in their community.
• A chief executive or senior manager of a private company or public sector organisation who wants to work with, and support, the local community but lacks the know how and contacts.

Nick and I ran a social media surgery at the Foundation’s first Monday Masterclass last month. We’ll be working with the young leaders at the upcoming Masterclasses, sharing social media skills to help them get out there, network, collaborate and make things happen.

We’re also helping the Foundation team with their social media strategy and to further develop their own social media skills.

So you’ve got a Drupal table that consists of checkboxes and you want to have a ‘Check All’ feature?

Simply add the following line into the first array item of the $header array:

theme(‘table_select_header_cell’)

And that’s all there is to it!

So you’ve got a Drupal table that consists of checkboxes and you want to have a ‘Check All’ feature?

Simply add the following line into the first array item of the $header array:

theme(‘table_select_header_cell’)

And that’s all there is to it!

Karl Wilding and I have worked together on social media and the implications of the web for civic activity since 2007.  He’s head of Policy and Research and NCVO (I’m on the advisory board of NCVO) and a very clever/prescient man.

Here he talks for Guardian Voluntary Sector Network about what open data means for charities – much of it is also useful/true for local government.

We were approached by tableware designer Fenella Smith last month to work on her new brand book and print material. Fenella designs her collections and the ceramics are produced in Stoke-on-Trent with Cornish Clay. She wanted her Summer 2012 book to reflect the hand-made attributes and to reinforce the products’ Made in England qualities.

When launching the first collection Fenella focused on the stories behind each range and the inspirations for the designs. As the brand has established, we felt the books needed another angle to evolve and new stories to tell. During our chats with Fenella we soon realised process was a key element in her work, something we were keen to focus on. We wanted to imitate the handcrafted individualities of the products so began researching traditional typographic processes, looking at letterpress and delicate hand drawn fonts.

I found the whole stages of production really intriguing; from the hand thrown shapes, to the slip cast and firing – so we began exploring directions in which we could share this process and use as a narrative throughout the book, encouraging the reader to follow. We asked Fenella to break it down into 7 simple steps which would run through the spreads after a small introduction from herself on the first piece of transparency.

Using illustration to create shelves for the cut-out products to sit upon, we married the lifestyle photography together with hand drawn text and the informal narrative to give the book an intimate feel. The result was a 20x20cm saddle stitched brochure, that made its debut with the new collection at the Pulse London design show early June.

Sometimes the difference we make is looking at things with fresh eyes.  It seems to me that that is what Mark Horvath plans to do when he visits Britain to gather and share stories of homelessness here.

He’s crowdsourcing funds in the USA for a project to spend a month in the uk helping homeless people tell their stories. British Airways have donated the flights and others are helping.  I’ve been watching Mark’s work and he comes withe the blessing of Beth Kanter. The video explain what a difference traveling can make for him.  As he says on his blog…

The first signs of a serious homelessness crisis in England’s towns and cities are emerging, with increases in rough sleeping, street drinking, crime and antisocial behavior as a result of swingeing cuts to hostel and housing services. Charities have warned that official figures showing a 14% rise in people classed as homeless are just the “tip of the iceberg”, because they fail to capture huge numbers who have been displaced from their home and are living with friends, in hostels or on the streets. For 10 days early July Invisible People will tour the UK helping homeless people and homeless services tell their story.

A generous donor will be matching every donation up to $3,000 so your donations will be doubled.  Join us, be the one helping tell how the story turns out for so many of our homeless friends in the UK.

If you want to donate here is his chipin account:

Sue Beardsmore spoke to a class of primary school children in Birchfield, asking the children to tell her what they think of school, the city of Birmingham and what they hope to do when they grow up.

Sue tabulated the answers into a spreadsheet and I’ve had a quick play at visualising one question in the text data: “what do you think school is for?”

Here’s the result (click the link to view the image at full size). I used a word tree in Many Eyes to choose a starting keyword, in this case “learn”, and then view the children’s answers in context to the keyword.

I really like the word tree format (say over a word cloud) as a way to understand context of the text I’m interested in.

Do you need some help making sense of your data? Talk to us.

We are very excited to announce confirmation of a successful grant application from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This £37,500 grant will enable the museum to continue the refurbishment of the exhibition rooms in this beautiful grade 1 listed building, and tops up the £60,000 needed.

The project was started back in 2008 with the £100,000 redisplay of the Parlour and Study being undertaken in 2009 with the help of HLF, Staffordshire Environmental Fund and local organisations Swinfen Broun and Conduit Lands Trusts. This second phase will complete the revamp with the final room, the Inventions Room, being brought up to date. Alison Wallis, manager of the museum, says “We’re so excited to have been granted the money once again. Since we completed the 2009 refurb the Inventions Room has looked very plain and in need of an update. We really hope this will make the subject more accessible to a wider range of visitors”.

The room will include more interactive models of Darwin’s inventions including a canal barge lift, flushing toilet, steering mechanism and the speaking machine seen in the museums introductory video presented by Adam Hart-Davis. Alison said “many visitors enquire about the speaking machine but since there is very little written down about this particular invention we’ve never had one in the House, however, we hope that by Christmas our visitors will be able to have a go at making the machine speak”.

The museum has chosen Vertigo Creative as the designers for the second time running in order to keep the style the same. Director, Rhodri Thomas, says “Everyone at Vertigo is looking forward to working with the good folks of the Erasmus Darwin House Museum again. When we were developing the displays in 2008, the trustees were very open to innovative ideas as well as being very well informed of new techniques being used in museums around the world. Together we created an exciting, educational environment that can compare to any larger, national institutions. I’m confident that with the Inventions Room project this year, we will reunite a winning team!”

Over the coming months staff at Erasmus Darwin House will be busy working on this project which includes three new temporary contract jobs, Project Manager, Education Assistant and Marketing Officer, who will help to bring the inventions of Darwin to life. They aim for the new room to be open some time during October so watch this space!

All vacancies are now closed to applications.

Earlier this week Max, Nick and I went to the New Optimists Forum - Future Foods, We’re were there in a professional capacity Social reporting from the evening to get and overview of the event online as it happened. This was Max’s first outing as a social reporter and talking to him afterwards reminded me how tiring I found it when I first started live blogging events. So I asked him afterwards what 3 tips we could have given him before we went into the session to make it easier.  These were his responses;

1. Don’t be complacent.

Max thought it was going to be easier than it actually was ad didn’t expect to be quite so tired afterwards - It’s not an easy thing trying to record what is going on, keeping track of the sometimes multiple conversation and listening for a perfect sound bite to capture on camera.

2. Make sure your laptop is not too big.

Turning up with all the tools you’d need for a social reporting job as a *mobile” social reporter is easier if you have a lighter laptop. We had audio recorders, flip cameras, a stills camera and our laptops with us – spare batteries, spare chargers and a mi-fi – lugging that around

3. Don’t delete anything.

Max admitted afterwards that the thing he found hardest was listening and picking out the “best” bits. He said he would start writing something and then something else interested would start to be discussed so he’s scrap it and start again. He realised he could have just kept it all. He could have bullet pointed all interesting points and not worried about going into too much detail – if he’d wanted to elaborate further he could have grabbed the attendees for a video clip, getting them to reiterate the relevant points they’d made.

Social reporting is all about getting a flavour of an event, an overview of proceedings not precise minutes - it can be used at all kinds of events from large conferences to smaller neighbourhood meetings and everything inbetween.  It’s a skill we teach in our aptly named “Social Reporter Training” packages where we look at the tools to use and the “how to” of social reporting and while we already teach “Don’t delete anything I think I’ll be adding the rest of Max’s tips  into the next session we host.

We are looking for a full-time CodeIgniter developer to join our web and software development team at Adhere.

Applicants should demonstrate good skills and experience using the CodeIgniter PHP framework.

Knowledge of any of the following would also be an advantage: JavaScript, jQuery, Backbone.js, CSS, server administration, Drupal, Magento.

Please send your CV and cover letter explaining why you are perfect for our team to info@theadherecreative.com.

For more information or an informal conversation about this opportunity, call us on 0121 224 7361 and ask for Wayne or Ed.

Suitably-qualified undergraduate or graduate students seeking short-term placements or internships are also welcome to call us about this role.
We are always open to offering permanent/full-time roles to students who impress during placements.

We are looking for a full-time CodeIgniter developer to join our web and software development team at Adhere.

Applicants should demonstrate good skills and experience using the CodeIgniter PHP framework.

Knowledge of any of the following would also be an advantage: JavaScript, jQuery, Backbone.js, CSS, server administration, Drupal, Magento.

Please send your CV and cover letter explaining why you are perfect for our team to info@theadherecreative.com.

For more information or an informal conversation about this opportunity, call us on 0121 224 7361 and ask for Wayne or Ed.

Suitably-qualified undergraduate or graduate students seeking short-term placements or internships are also welcome to call us about this role.
We are always open to offering permanent/full-time roles to students who impress during placements.

This video is shot by the Lorna Prescott – who’s the surgery manager for the enormously successful Dudley Social Media surgery -  and she’s talking to Coral Musgrave who organised last night’s first social media surgery in Bearwood. It is wonderful to see surgeries seeding with people who run one helping others develop there’s – and all working along the keep it simple lines that started with the recipe.  Lorna (of Dudley CVS)  learnt this from her first surgery:

• Never underestimate the power of sharing knowledge, skills and experience (crucial in community development practice)
• Social media surgeries are to help active citizens to join the massive conversation which is taking place on the internet
• Social media surgeries are not basic IT training – we can signpost to adult learning for that
• Individuals working in the public sector, voluntary sector and involved in community groups are willing to give their time

Well done and lets hope those organisations come back for more help in Bearwood. Can I make one suggestion Coral?  Put some more dates in – so people who are enthused can book to come to another.

May I also say it’s a top notch piece of social reporting. Lorna came to one of our social reporter training programmes a year of more ago - and is a natural in the business of keeping things relaxed, simple, and get them online quickly.

We are looking for a new full-time team member to join our development team at Adhere.

Strong PHP skills and good spelling are essential, as is experience in at least one (preferably two) of the following:

• Drupal v.6
• Magento
• CodeIgniter
• MySQL
• WordPress

Knowledge of any of the following would also be an advantage: JavaScript, jQuery, Backbone.js, CSS, server administration.

We offer an attractive working environment, the chance to work as part of a dynamic and well-motivated team, the opportunity to learn and develop new skills.

The most important thing is you need to be passionate, excited and eager to learn and work within our team.

Salary £18 – £24k per annum depending on skills and experience.

Interest applicants please send a CV and cover letter explaining why you are perfect for our team to info@theadherecreative.com

We are looking for a new full-time team member to join our development team at Adhere.

Strong PHP skills and good spelling are essential, as is experience in at least one (preferably two) of the following:

• Drupal v.6
• Magento
• CodeIgniter
• MySQL
• WordPress

Knowledge of any of the following would also be an advantage: JavaScript, jQuery, Backbone.js, CSS, server administration.

We offer an attractive working environment, the chance to work as part of a dynamic and well-motivated team, the opportunity to learn and develop new skills.

The most important thing is you need to be passionate, excited and eager to learn and work within our team.

Salary £18 – £24k per annum depending on skills and experience.

Interest applicants please send a CV and cover letter explaining why you are perfect for our team to info@theadherecreative.com

Better late than never… I’ve been meaning to do a little post on a recent midlands art project – Papergirl Birmingham. Born in Berlin back in 2006 the project aspires to broaden the public consciousness of artists, providing them with a wider, more liberal venue to exhibit their work – bringing art to the streets. Since then the project has spread global and with the super hard work of Kate Grundy, it happened in Birmingham with Brummies taking to their bicycles!

I met Kate late last year and got involved with the project, giving Papergirl Birmingham an identity. Reminiscing in my early 90s childhood I got a bit excited with a Spirograph as a I crazily doodled wheels of a new breed of Pashley cycle. The designs had a nostalgic charm and it really reinforced the idea of bring art to the streets.

Submissions to the project were open from late 2011 and anybody could enter their work, regardless of its medium. The idea was to collect, exhibit and then distribute artwork on mass to an unsuspecting public, on bicycles! Opening the art world up to folk who may not have considered it before.

“Papergirl is a global project that aims to open the art world into the urban streets of everyday life. It is an intervention seeking to surprise people and to heartily upturn the notable predictability of day to day life.”

Throughout April an empty unit in the Mailbox turned into a creative hub thanks to the 48 Sheet project with workshops, events, music and even a bar! Within that space Papergirl Birmingham was supported, with a platform to showcase all the works, in preparation for the distribution. The launch on the 24th April welcomed all us creative folk to indulge in free tea, cake and activities (including a ‘doodle desk, OHP fondling and Spirograph mastering’), bicycles were welcomed also. Twas a super fun evening, I really do love stuff like this in Brum as it’s a great opportunity to meet likeminded illustrators and it was really interesting to see the variety of submissions too, including a few Substrakt’rs!

Saturday 28th April was distribution day, I couldn’t make it down for the ride but Ryan was there on his single speed, despite the typical British grey skies! Great project, even if I am a little biased. Nice one Birmingham.

Hype around Pinterest has grown out of all proportion, I’ve wanted to look at some actual numbers for a while and Shopify helpfully released some a few days ago.  Shopify are an ecommerce provider so their figures relate specifically to how Pinterest is effecting ecommerce stores. Social media experts have been falling over themselves telling online retailers to get on pinterest; do Shopify’s figures back what they are saying?

Have a look at this: http://www.shopify.com/infographics/pinterest

It’s a very nice infographic, and if you take the messages at face value and don’t think too hard about the numbers you’d be forgiven for thinking that Pinterest was on the verge of single-handedly revolutionising ecommerce:

“Third most popular social network in the world!”

“Sales from pinterest have QUADRUPLED!”

“Userbase has risen by 145%!”

All true enough, but is it really worth your average business devoting any real effort to Pinterest?

Let’s dig in to those numbers a bit further shall we?

From Shopify’s own April data, 3,879 ecommerce stores had some content pinned on Pinterest, this generated 262,943 visits, so on average each store that was pinned received 68 visits. Not 68 uniques mind, 68 visits. Wow. I can hardly contain my apathy.

Still, that’s 68 free visits, right? Well maybe, if you’ve got lucky and people are pinning your content spontaneously then great, but if you’ve put in any time pushing Pinterest or creating Pinterest specific content then you’ve paid for those 68 visits.

But, I hear you say, is it good quality traffic? For any ecommerce store the measure of traffic quality is conversion rate.

262,943 visits generated 320 sales, so the conversion rate from Pinterest across Shopify stores is a whopping 0.12%

We don’t know what the conversion rate from other traffic sources on Shopify stores is to make a fair comparison, but I have an online store that converts organic traffic at about 4% and PPC traffic at just over 9%.  At a conversion rate of 0.12% you need a hell of a lot of Pinterest traffic to stand a reasonable chance of making a sale.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an attack on Pinterest, I quite like it, it’s a cool idea, but it’s of very limited use for directly driving sales. It may have it’s place in branding but if you want sales don’t spend any time or money on it.

Hype around Pinterest has grown out of all proportion, I’ve wanted to look at some actual numbers for a while and Shopify helpfully released some a few days ago.  Shopify are an ecommerce provider so their figures relate specifically to how Pinterest is effecting ecommerce stores. Social media experts have been falling over themselves telling online retailers to get on pinterest; do Shopify’s figures back what they are saying?

Have a look at this: http://www.shopify.com/infographics/pinterest

It’s a very nice infographic, and if you take the messages at face value and don’t think too hard about the numbers you’d be forgiven for thinking that Pinterest was on the verge of single-handedly revolutionising ecommerce:

“Third most popular social network in the world!”

“Sales from pinterest have QUADRUPLED!”

“Userbase has risen by 145%!”

All true enough, but is it really worth your average business devoting any real effort to Pinterest?

Let’s dig in to those numbers a bit further shall we?

From Shopify’s own April data, 3,879 ecommerce stores had some content pinned on Pinterest, this generated 262,943 visits, so on average each store that was pinned received 68 visits. Not 68 uniques mind, 68 visits. Wow. I can hardly contain my apathy.

Still, that’s 68 free visits, right? Well maybe, if you’ve got lucky and people are pinning your content spontaneously then great, but if you’ve put in any time pushing Pinterest or creating Pinterest specific content then you’ve paid for those 68 visits.

But, I hear you say, is it good quality traffic? For any ecommerce store the measure of traffic quality is conversion rate.

262,943 visits generated 320 sales, so the conversion rate from Pinterest across Shopify stores is a whopping 0.12%

We don’t know what the conversion rate from other traffic sources on Shopify stores is to make a fair comparison, but I have an online store that converts organic traffic at about 4% and PPC traffic at just over 9%.  At a conversion rate of 0.12% you need a hell of a lot of Pinterest traffic to stand a reasonable chance of making a sale.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an attack on Pinterest, I quite like it, it’s a cool idea, but it’s of very limited use for directly driving sales. It may have it’s place in branding but if you want sales don’t spend any time or money on it.