Teesside Cougars scoring goals with n0tice
Posted: November 20, 2012 Filed under: Features | Tags: teesside cougars Comments Off
This week we go both Teesside and Sateside to bring you the scoring n0ticeboard of the American Football Team The Teesside Cougars which is run by line back Rob Lyndsay!
Hi Rob, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your involvement with Teesside Cougars?
I’m 22 and studying FDA Journalism at Teesside University. I play line back for the Teesside Cougars.
Tell us what makes American football so great?
My dad played line back when he was at school and college. I enjoy keeping myself fit, so the exercise side of the sport is brilliant.
Also there’s the buzz you get from playing a game. People say its a wimps version of rugby but with American Football because you have the pads and protective gear you hit a lot harder!
What makes Teesside Cougars so awesome?
The social aspect; you fit straight in no one makes you feel awkward if you need help with positioning and techniques. Everyone is happy to help.
What element of n0tice do you find most useful and why?
I find the reports useful. Plus you just get local and regional news from everyone whether they are a journalist or not.
Going forward, how do you see yourself developing you usage of n0tice? How will it suit your needs?
The more I get used to it, the more I will use it. I’m learning how to write different stories and different styles to keep it fresh and interesting.
Have you got an interesting n0ticeboard or seen one that you would like to have featured? Get in touch! Email karen@n0tice.com @n0tice
How do you want to celebrate or change your High Street?
Posted: October 23, 2012 Filed under: Features | Tags: celebrate, change, myhighstreet, n0tice 1 Comment »Last week we launched a campaign across communities in the UK and asked them to get involved in documenting how they would like to celebrate or change their High Street. The British High Street is on the decline and every week we hear reports about how the face of our local shops are changing.
As a nation we are very passionate about our High Street and what it means to us as your reports highstreet.n0tice.com show!
If you would like to take part in the campaign all you have to do is take a photo of your High Street, upload it to n0tice, twitter, or instagram, put your location and tag it #myhighstreet and either #celebrate or #change. It’s that simple!
Let’s have a look at how you want to Change and Celebrate your High Street.
Here’s a building we #celebrate in Uckfield and which is due to #change – #myhighstreet
To #celebrate Hoxton Street and the Turkish community in East London #myhighstreet #epicure #N1
#myhighstreet we have pandas in Edinburgh but no babies yet…#change – Photo by pmstephen
Thank you to everyone who is taking part in the #myhighstreet project so far! Let’s continue to build a picture of our High Streets and shout about why we should celebrate then and how we want to change them too.
You can follow us on twitter: n0tice
Featured n0tice member: Mike Rawlins
Posted: October 9, 2012 Filed under: Features | Tags: hyperlocal, n0tice, noticeboard, users Comments Off
This week our featured n0tice member is Mike Rawlins. Mike shares his hints and tips for new n0tice users.
Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background please?
Hello! I’m Mike I have been messing around on the Internet for the best part of 20 years now. I’ve been blogging on various sites about all manner of things since about 1999. My particular interest has been mobile photography and I’ve been posting pictures from my phone since 2004. When I’m not uploading pictures or writing I work for Talk About Local where I am working on Geolocation & Augmented Reality projects and looking at how this technology can be leveraged & used as a pubic service.
You are one of the early adopters of n0tice. What advice would you give people who are thinking of starting their own n0ticboard?
Do it, it is very simple to upload things while you are out and about with the mobile app of if you are at your desk using the website. People often think, ‘why do I need this’ or ‘what should I post’, my answer to that is you probably don’t ‘need’ it but it is fun, why not post a picture of that cool bit of street art you pass every day on your way to the office, or even if it is something that annoys you like bad parking. That is on a very personal level but if you are more civic minded then you could start a community n0ticeboard and post all the events and notices that get stuck on the traditional noticeboards where you live, put a 21 century layer on to a centuries old communication platform.
What element of n0tice do you find most useful and why? The reports, events or offers?
I use n0tice mainly for reports, I have posted the occasional event that I have seen but I do tend to use it just as another way of posting content that I want to share.
Going forward, how do you see yourself developing you usage of n0tice? How will it suit your needs?
I’m not sure quite how I’ll change or develop my usage just yet, I’d like to run a community noticeboard but the area where I live is very well covered with local websites so I’d be doing something that is already being done but I am trying to get the local site owners to try n0tice. n0tice is still developing as a platform so as that changes I’m sure the way I use it may change, right now I’m happy to just post things.
Follow us on twitter @n0tice
Tell people what’s happening near you!
Posted: September 25, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Comments OffAs well as using your online n0ticeboard for updating local reports and news, did you know that you can also tell people about your events?
This is what Vino from Pub Mapping has done.
This Thursday 27th September Vino is organising a n0tice meetup for launching his pub mapping project in London – and you are invited!
Live blog your night out0n n0tice, have a few beers, make new friends and get to know more about pub mapping. Check it out!
And you and can do the same for your events. It’s really simple.
Pick a location of your event, give it a name, a date and time, description, and add a link and a photograph if you have them. That’s it!
Tell everyone about your events and get them n0ticed!
We are on twitter @n0tice and Facebook too.
Pub mapping on n0tice – Join the crowd mapping project for pubs!
Posted: September 18, 2012 Filed under: Features | Tags: crowdmapping, crowdsourcing, n0tice, pubmap, vin Comments Off
Today it’s our pleasure to introduce you to pubmap! This is the brain child of n0tice member Vino who is charging the way in a project that involves, you guessed it, pubs and maps! This sounds like a great to way to combine some of life’s pleasures; pubs, discovery, sharing and of course it appeals to our tech side; mapping!
We asked Vino to tell us more about his idea
Since I live in West London, and it’s hard to find a fun, non-gentrified pub round here, the idea of mapping pubs is to promote uniqueness in pubs and hopefully slow their transformation into the expensive, identikit, boring things that they’ve become round here. Another motivation for me is that I’m pretty new to the area so still finding my feet and can see the use of a resource to find genuinely fun and friendly places.
How do you see pubmap developing?
Pubmaps are basically an antidote to things like more traditional pub review website, which to me are focusing on the wrong thing. They seem more interested in telling you which pubs serve the best pumpkin risottos than telling you where the most fun places with the most fun people are. I want a kind of guide to pubs that I remember from growing up in Wolverhampton and Birmingham and my student days in east London. These kind of pubs had character, were slightly dingy, not too expensive, crowded on a weekend night, and where you enjoy a drink, meet new people, both old and young.
Photo by David Holt
What appeals to you in using the n0tice platform for pubmap?
n0tice seems ideal for mapping pubs because it’s a social network that grounds itself in the community and the people who use it. A well built noticeboard can strengthen communities around good pubs, halt their decline, draw more people into them and get people off their sofas and out into the world. Maybe I’m getting a little bit too optimistic with that last point, but good pubs all seem to close and I’d like to help stop that. n0tice seems to offer potential to actually do something rather than talking about it.
We understand you are looking for someone to work on pubmap with you and help get it off the ground?
I’d love to work with someone else; anyone with an interest in people and keen to explore as much of London as they can!
I’m also organising a meet up at the Durell Arms from 8pm on 27th September. It’s an open invitation for anyone who would like to meet up, have a chat about pubmap and of course have a few drinks too!
Thank you Vino!
If creating a map of the great pubs in your area, sharing it’s stories and let’s face it, having a lot of fun doing it, sounds up your street, then get in touch with Vino and also watch this space for news and developments!
Follow n0tice on twitter: @n0tice
Updated iPhone app with new features
Posted: September 11, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: iPhone app, n0tice, noticeboard Comments OffWe’ve been working hard behind the scene to bring you version 1.3 of the n0tice iPhone app!
A number of key bugs that you have reported to us have been addressed, including;
* The speed of upload has been increased to make it faster to post reports with images
* Uploading when not on WiFi has been made more reliable
* It no longer crashes intermittently when interacting with the side menu
* The pull to refresh bar always tucks back under after a pull down now
* When you move around between uses of the app, your report feed will not refresh automatically to show you new reports near where you now are (if you have current location enabled in the menu).
* You can now adjust the radius for your current location menu entry
* We’ve improved the detecting of web links in the reports, and updates, and pulling them out into links for you to tap
* We’ve fixed a number of small user interface rendering issues
* We’ve also done a number of user interface improvements to make it easier to read and use
Download it today and share what’s going on in your area!
Find n0tice on Twitter: @n0tice
Featured n0ticeboard: Surfing
Posted: September 4, 2012 Filed under: Features Comments Off
Ellie Nordon runs a n0ticeboard all about surfing and bodyboarding. Karen Strunks finds out more
Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
I’m a digital busy-body who absorbs more information than I could ever edit or process. I’m a social media addict and news junkie who likes to get in the sea as much as possible.
There’s more of us juxtaposition digital-loving surfers in existence than you’d imagine… Even Kelly Slater has a twitter account.
I have a few other n0ticeboards as well as surfing.n0tice.com, like craft.n0tice.com and summer.n0tice.com.
Why did you chose n0tice to share items about surfing and bodyboarding?
Surfing covers a multitude of sins – sport, lifestyle and culture – all of which can be neatly covered by a platform as diverse as n0tice.
Every country with a coastline ends up producing people who can’t function without the sea, myself included. I think if a scientist actually cared enough to research us, they’d find us salt-deficient.
N0tice is perfect for reaching those clusters of salt-deficient surf-lovers all over the world with short snippets, tit-bits and photographs – it’s like a digital poking device. It’s also a fantastic place to get inspired and share.
What are your favourite things about surfing and boarding?
Surf in Boucan Canot by Jean-Marc Astesana
I grew up in a surfing household – my dad surfed and used to tell us bedtime stories about his far-flung surfing adventures as a teenager – and so unsurprisingly it oozed into my brothers and I.
To us sea-dwellers, surfing feels like The Big Secret which only we really understand. I mean, other people can admire it from afar – like an enthusiastic step-parent – but can never really understand its true magic.
I love that it is so far reaching – old and young, rich and poor, hippie or yuppie. I love that being in the water, be it on wooden bellyboards or stand-up short and longboards, makes you forget everything that’s happening on land. It’s connecting with nature on a grand scale (man).
It also, fantastically, means the word ‘dude’ is not completely out-of-bounds.
What are your top tips for people who are new to n0tice?
To any aspiring n0ticers I’d say, firstly, follow loads of inspirational n0ticeboards, just anything that takes your fancy, so long as surfing’s one of them… There’s so much out there from hard news to yarn bombing and street art.
Then once you’ve found a niche – something that interests you – start posting. It’s pretty intuitive, but it only works if you care about what you’re sharing. Boring will always be boring.
Then get interactive – share, recommend or comment on stuff you like, stuff you don’t like, or stuff that makes you smile. Sharing makes the world go round, after all (dude).
If you see a n0tice board that you think should be featured, get in touch with karen@n0tice.com. Follow n0tice on twitter! @n0tice
Featured n0ticeboard: Deeside
Posted: August 28, 2012 Filed under: Features | Tags: deeside, hyperlocal, n0tice, noticeboard Comments OffJonathan Sheppard runs the Deeside n0ticeboard which is part of the wider hyperlocal scene in the area. Karen Strunks finds out more.
Hi Jonathan, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
I live quite literally on the on the Border between England and Wales, close to a village called Hawarden or Penarlâg in Welsh which is in Flintshire, famous for Emma, Lady Hamilton – Lord Nelson`s mistress, Prime Minister Gladstone, Michael Owen,and Hawarden Airport, which serves the huge Airbus factory,where they make the wings for the A380 super jumbo at neighboring Broughton site.
The village sits within the conurbation of Deeside, which as the name suggests, describes a group of small towns and villages sat alongside the river Dee. The demographic is quite diverse for north Wales, given the proximity to the English border. Around 14% of the of the community are Welsh speakers, and there is a really strong sense of community and belonging.
I currently work with tourism based businesses at a very “local” level, exploring ways to develop and embed social media within businesses for the greater good of the local economy; it’s really about developing a strong sense of place and provenance. I guess what sets me apart from ubiquitous “all in one digital agency or marketer” is that I specialise in the one area, tourism, in particularly independent hotels. It’s where I’ve spent 20 odd years working in various corporate managerial roles from hotel manager to regional management and national sales & marketing roles.
I had a yearning or a calling to “go it alone”. Actually, I grew terribly bored of corporate life, and wanted combine three passions of mine; hospitality, technology and media (not to be confused with social media!) and shape them into a small business. It’s hard work but hugely rewarding.
Prior to working in the hospitality industry I worked for the Daily Telegraph in Manchester, not because i had any particular skill, my father was a journalist and photographer for national newspapers, and 25 years ago newspaper succession planning usually revolved around the family “line”. For years, even when i was working in my full time roles, I was heavily involved with the family run sports and news media agency based in Stockport. You could say that media, in various formats, has been in the blood since the day I was born.
Why did you set up Deeside on n0tice, and who is involved in it?
I moved back to the area around two years ago and quickly became aware of the need for a community driven platform that dug a little deeper into the issues that are effecting all of us on a day-to-day basis. “Local” newspapers, while doing a fantastic job, are stretched to a point whereby relevant local news content seems to be shrinking, and its my view that they have become a little “hamstrung” when it comes to positivity challenging the county council`s decision makers.
The Deeside n0tice board is part of a wider hyperlocal project that I’ve started. It’s a collaboration with a small web design company and creative writer, the aim is to develop a destination site for the Deeside area that focuses on local news and sport, local Government issues, arts & culture & events, high street Regeneration, employment opportunities, digital inclusion, as well as assisting small business`s get online. The n0tice board was set up to support the wider project.
How does n0tice help support the work you are doing within your community?
Our wider project is split in to two distinct areas, one being real-time content, namely news, while pretty much everything else sits under “other”. This content, by design, is more static, so the original idea with n0tice was to test news content locally and see what the levels of engagement were around each story we posted. The ease of use and simplicity and baked in analytics has been ideal for this. We’ve had some really positive feedback about the news resource, even though we haven’t written any original stories, its been a case of curating what`s already out there from around 10-12 sources.
We are in the middle of what I would call a “natural pause” phase with n0tice at the moment, simply so we can develop our other social media assets in line with the wider project and of course develop the main hyperlocal site, going forward the aim then to do is embed the n0tice element into main blog, as well as use n0tice to crowd source our events page.
What are the three best things about Deeside?
Deeside is a bit of a misnomer in terms of a destination or location. It’s a collective of villages and small towns that all have their own unique identity of course, however there is so such opportunity to make a difference in the community on many levels. It makes this project really exciting. Also being just 45 minutes from Liverpool and around the same from Manchester while we have the wonderful city of Chester on our doorstep makes it a fantastic location to live as we get the best of both worlds.
We have easy access to bustling cities or beautiful countryside and the coast. There`s a great sense of community. Having lived in many places in the UK I was really conscious of how many times complete strangers greeted me with a friendly “good morning”, its n0ticable! If anybody from our community would like to get involved you can find me on twitter @6csocial
If you see a n0tice board that you think should be featured, get in touch with karen@n0tice.com. Follow n0tice on twitter! @n0tice
Featured noticeboard: Politics In Brum scrutinises all things politics in Birmingham
Posted: July 24, 2012 Filed under: Features | Tags: birmingham, n0tice, noticeboard, politics, politics in brum Comments Off
Pauline Geoghegan runs the Politics In Brum n0tice board. Politics In Brum aims to scrutinise Birmingham City Council, its elected Councillors, and all things political in Birmingham City. Karen Strunks found out more.
Why did you set up Politics in Brum?
I set up Politics In Brum to attempt to hold the city council, politicians and decision makers to account in Birmingham. Our local press is hard pressed to cover all municipal issues in detail. I attend full council meetings, planning and scrutiny, and I have also reported live election results from both the election count and the elected mayor referendum. I provide a social media ‘bridge’ between citizens and those who purport to represent them. I have developed good relationships will politicians of all spectrums local councillors and MPs.
What do you hope to achieve with your Politics in Brum n0tice board?
In an era where trust in political institutions has broken down, I am hoping to broker a new relationship. Having worked for an MP and been politically engaged through community politics, I know that those old ways of doing things aren’t fit for purpose in this digital age. Politics In Brum engages people online but also uses face to face events to reach out beyond those who are already digitally included. For example, during the elected mayor campaign I ran four neutral public debates in community settings; a library, a sixth form college and an arts centre.
I was immediately convinced that n0tice is the perfect platform for Politics In Brum since I can utilise it for writing reports, publicising events linking to twitter and through to other social media platforms. Being able to find events, photos news and reports relating to specific geographic locations ie to Birmingham, is very appealing.
Politics In Brum covers the Birmingham area – can you tell us the best things about the city?
Undoubtedly the best thing about Birmingham is its people; diverse, friendly and creative. This city is alive with energy and ideas. Right now the pressing need to create jobs for our young people. Opportunity and hope are the words on everyone’s lips.
* You can find Politics In Brum’s n0tice board here. You can follow them on twitter @politicsinbrum, and a new website is coming soon!
If you see a n0tice board that you think should be featured, get in touch with karen@n0tice.com. Follow n0tice on twitter! @n0tice
Bridport noticeboard becomes focus for flood coverage
Posted: July 10, 2012 Filed under: Features | Tags: bridport, flooding, floods, hyperlocal, n0tice, noticeboard, rain, weather Comments Off
Stephen Banks photo by Henley Bailey
Bridport in Dorset is one of those places in the UK badly hit by torrential rain, Stephen Banks AKA the DorsetScouser used his noticeboard to let people know what was happening and ended up becoming the focus for the town’s flood coverage. His images have been promoted by ITV, the site has had tens of thousands of views and received picture contributions from across the town. Karen Strunks found out more
Tell us how you used the Bridport n0tice board to report the floods
The noticeboard has been set up for eight months now, so it was already relatively established and I was confident that n0tice.com would be the best way to share all sorts of media, in the event of a big news story. Experiments with embedding images, video and tweets all worked really well to create a media-rich news report which could link together different reports from different sources. One day, I accidentally pasted the link to a tweet and, to my surprise and delight, n0tice automatically generated a nicely designed tweet box.
I was actually out of Bridport when the first few news reports started coming in – my colleage at Watershed PR, Sara, said that I should get out of bed and start reporting on Bridport n0tice. I was awake, just away from my computer! Jonathan got the ball rolling with some excellent tweets, which can be seen at the bottom of this report. He had reported on floods in Bridport when he was working for the BBC, but he tells me that he’d never seen anything like this before – the situation was getting worse by the minute with rising water and spreading areas of flooding.
Bridport Floods by Charlie Ward
The Bridport n0tice board attracted other contributors. How do you think this happened and how did it enhance the reportage of the flood?
Like myself, there seem to be quite a few local people who are interested in reporting news as it happens. I think it is in everyone’s interest to try and help people out in times of need, so people exposed to Bridport n0tice wanted to help out. I’ve already sat down with a few people and chatted with them on how n0tice works and the basic mechanic of putting something on there.
Alongside the massive traffic to the page was a huge influx of new locals visiting the Bridport n0tice Facebook page. Updates on here directed people to the relevant reports on n0tice (the flooding as it happened, the day after cleanup report and Beaminster Tunnel closing). Most people interacting with the Facebook page were posting their own content, which I then curated and re-posted onto n0tice, but a few, such as Tim Harrap and Josh Kelly, contributed their own updates. It was handy for them to do that, but a little training may be required, as Josh was initially posting new reports for every image, rather than updating the main report. But overall, the reporting was enhanced by others contributing.
How did ITV get involved?
Bridport n0tice contributor Charlie Ward had his photos published on ITV Meridian’s website; I’m not sure if these were pushed by the n0tice report, but the first image was certainly the one that I remember most, as it was quite early in the day and shows the picture in Burton Bradstock pretty well.
Your n0ticeboard had over 20,000 page views in 24 hours. What do you think this tells us about the importance of responsive hyperlocal news?
The sheer volume of visits did take me by surprise, but we at Watershed PR know that there is an enormous hunger for local news information when a big event happens. Whilst the big international news entities such as ITV and BBC were focusing on Devon (which had flooding, but not as bad or as widespread as Dorset) and obviously had a large number of people looking at their stories, Bridport’s hyperlocal n0tice page had a different sort of success, with a very large number of local people looking at tailored local news. The great thing about using n0tice and the connected Facebook page is that I could be agile, finding the very latest photos and videos in seconds, rather than being a large media group which I’ve found can sometimes be quite slow moving. Although it was time consuming, I had complete control over what was put on the n0tice page, and a few simple search terms on Twitter and keeping an eye out on local friends’ Facebook pages was all I needed to get the ball rolling with accurate, quick and impacting reporting.
Watershed isn’t in the business of trying to compete with local media – they’re essential for many of our clients to get news stories out there. But local news reporting is something we’re passionate about. n0tice seems to be a great platform and we really hope that more people nationally (and internationally) pick it up and run with it.
You can see Bridport’s n0ticeboard here and read more about the background to it here. If you see a n0tice board that you think should be featured, get in touch with karen@n0tice.com
