Welsh community site Tongwynlais is using n0tice in conjunction with WordPress plug-in Timely to curate user events listings.
Speaking at a recent Out of Hours Hyperlocal event hosted on Google +, the site’s publisher explained how the plug-in works with the contributions from the public, open space of the noticeboard at http://tongwynlais.n0tice.com.
The resulting selection of events shows at the site’s events section in this impressive calendar format which can also be filtered by categories and tags.
Learn more about how that was created with the video below which was archived from the event – the relevant section starts at 50 minutes.
There’s more about using n0tice for an events calendar here at the n0tice.org toolbox site which includes other ‘howto’ articles and ideas for publishers.
We kick off 2013 with news of a new local website on n0tice which seeks to cover the Stourbridge area in the Midlands. It’s creator Abigail Edge tells us more about why she’s set up Stourbridge.n0tice.com.
Firstly, I asked her to tell us a little about her passions and interests
I grew up in Stourbridge, in the Midlands, but only recently moved back to the area after more than ten years living away in London, Bristol, Plymouth and Leeds. I’m a journalist and web editor currently working at Midland News Association (though Stourbridge.n0tice.com is a personal project). Previously I was online editor of ThisisBristol.co.uk and also managed Northcliffe Digital’s Local People sites in the South West, which is what sparked my interest in hyperlocal news.
My favourite things are going to gigs and festivals, rambling around the countryside and exploring new places – last summer I spent three weeks backpacking around Sri Lanka. I’m a member of my local running club and am currently attempting to learn photography and Spanish, all to varying levels of success. I’m also a self-confessed social media fiend – you can find me on Twitter @abigailedge or WordPress www.abigailedge.co.uk.
Why did you set it up and who is involved?
I set up the noticeboard to create an online community space for people living in and around Stourbridge – somewhere they can share news, events, photos and anything else of interest. It’s early days and at the moment it’s just me running it, but once the word spreads I’d like to see more people involved.
Tell us the three best things about Stourbridge
The noticeboard covers Stourbridge and the surrounding area, including Wordsley, Wollaston, Dudley, Hagley and Norton. It’s a relatively small town with a population of around 55,000 but there’s a lot that goes on. The best three things… ?
– Birmingham, the UK’s second city, is just 30 minutes away by train but Stourbridge is also surrounded by some really beautiful countryside, from the rolling Clent Hills to Kinver Edge with its rock houses carved into the woodland sandstone ridge.
– It’s got a deep-set arty, bohemian streak and a thriving local music scene. Cult bands The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin all hail from Stourbridge, making the town something of a Mecca for NME readers in the late eighties/early nighties!
– Stourbridge people are friendly and down to earth, while the town itself has some great real ale pubs and independent shops. My favourites are The Duke William on Coventry Street and Scary Canary Clothing in Victoria Passage (scarycanaryclothing.co.uk).
What do hope to achieve with the noticeboard?
I’d like to see people using Stourbridge.n0tice.com to highlight the best of Stourbridge, whether it’s to share a great photo or to let people know about events, offers and news in the town. I’d especially like to see local venues, clubs, businesses and community groups getting involved. And I’d like to get everyone using the #n0ticestourbridge hashtag on Twitter and Instagram! Essentially it’s a public space that’s open to everyone – how it develops really depends on how people decide to use it.
* Visit the Stourbridge noticeboard here. Are you doing something with n0tice that you’d like to share? Whether it’s a hyperlocal, a mapping project or maybe a photography challenge we’d love to hear about it. Contact me via the comments below or via the email Sarah@n0tice.com.
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.
Jonathan 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
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
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.
Our latest featured noticeboard comes from a familiar figure in the world of hyperlocal publishing Simon Perry. Best known for his work over many years in providing news and information to people on the Isle of Wight, his noticeboard www.Hyperlocal.n0tice.comfinds a way to share some of that that experience.
He tells me more.
Firstly, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your interests……..
I run OnTheWight (or VentnorBlog as it was previously known) with Sally (my wife), a hyperlocal site focused on the Isle of Wight.
We’re big believers in the need for transparency at all levels, including local government. Online resources give us all an opportunity, like never before, of helping the public learn about who is making what decisions about they way they live their lives.
Oh … and I recently started a bee-keeping course
Why did you set it up and who is involved? The idea was a quick and simple-to-use collection of nuggets of information of interest and relevance to other hyperlocals. Who’s posting? Currently just us, because we haven’t had the time to get anyone else on board yet. More than happy for people to get in touch if they’re interested in being involved.
Does the noticeboard covers certain geography?
We’re not fixed to a location, but we fix each posting to the location that is central to the story we’re covering.
What do hope to achieve with the noticeboard? Hyperlocals are usually so fixed on their own areas and sites – because they take such a lot of effort to run – it’d be great if people found it useful as a bit of a touchstone to help us all looks beyond our own versions of local.
* Visit the hyperlocal noticeboard at www.hyperlocal.n0tice.com. If you’ve a story to share on this blog or would like to have your noticeboard featured here, please drop me an email sarah@n0tice.com.
A £1 million programme is being announced today to “understand and stimulate the development of a UK hyperlocal media sector”.
It is being led by Nesta and the Technology Strategy Board and the n0tice.com team is very pleased to be a hyperlocal partner in what must be the biggest UK initiative of its kind to identify the technologies, business models, content opportunities and challenges in this space.
The n0tice.com team is joining forces with Talk About Local for an unconference event – and you’re all invited!
For the uninitiated, an unconference is a meet-up with no set agenda – the participants sort that bit out at the start of the day. But what we do know in advance is that there will be thought-provoking presentations and sessions about all sorts of local publishing issues.
But, the most important bit is the opportunity to meet the people who’ve already made n0tice.com such a vibrant and friendly place.
So, book out your diary now for #TAL12.
* #TAL12 will be held on Saturday 28 April in central Birmingham. Tickets will be available soon and there’s more information on the Talk About Local blog.
I spoke to journalism.co.uk‘s Sarah Marshall earlier this week for this podcast about so-lo-mo. We were joined by Northcliffe’s Lee Williams to talk about how the world of social, local and mobile tools and technologies is impacting on the way people interact with news, revenues and hyperlocal publishing. More on that here.
In the second of our regular series of features finding out more about our noticeboard owners, we talk to Sean Brady, a hyperlocal publisher who has created formby.n0tice.com .
He tells us more about the attractions of his area and left us thinking he’s possibly our first ‘net weaver’.
First we asked Sean to introduce himself……….. I’m a retired HE lecturer in Education Studies. I became involved in TV production as a student and spent the rest of my life teaching students to use all of the ‘New Media’ from chalkboards to computers.
I became involved in several EU funded Teacher Education projects with Universities across Europe. I have been involved with politics since the mid 1970′s with Labour and the Greens. I’ve been a parliamentary candidate on several occasions, the Bootle By-Election in 1991 saw the end of the SDP. I’ve recently retired from Formby Parish Councillor where I served as an Independent from 2003.
Why did you set it up the noticeboard and who is involved? As a committed local blogger I responded to the invitation to try it out. I’m a individual blogger and I used the site to engage with the local electorate when I was a Councillor. I have continued to blog as an active resident in Formby. I have invited several significant others in the Community to join in the formby.n0tice.com development process. The blog is formbyfirst.org.uk
Tell us the three best things about Formby Formby is a coastal dormitory town north of Liverpool. There are 9500+ dwellings and around 25000+ residents. The town is bordered by the sea to the west and agricultural land on each of the other compass points. It has a very clear sense of place because of it’s geography. The centre is known as the village by the residents.
The best things about Formby are the sea, sand dunes and pinewoods; red squirrels in the pinewoods run by the National Trust; and the quality and variety of housing. Formby is the home to many local football celebrities
What do hope to achieve with the noticeboard? To provide a service to my local community and to integrate it effectively into my blog and vice versa. I could go on about trying to support and build social capital and ‘net weaving’ but I won’t….
Want to see your noticeboard featured here? Drop me a line to sarah@n0tice.com.
Welsh community site Tongwynlais is using n0tice in conjunction with WordPress plug-in Timely to curate user events listings.
We kick off 2013 with news of a new local website on n0tice which seeks to cover the Stourbridge area in the Midlands. It’s creator Abigail Edge tells us more about why she’s set up Stourbridge.n0tice.com.
In the second of our regular series of features finding out more about our noticeboard owners, we talk to Sean Brady, a hyperlocal publisher who has created formby.n0tice.com .