Ask Manchester
- 30 Aug 06, 09:16 AM
There’s a very active Manchester community over on Livejournal that is basically a help-all for people in Manchester, coming to Manchester or just passing through.
The whole community revolves around people helping other people with their Manchester questions and queries.
Questions like “Does anyone know where I can buy an affordable bed frame and mattress and have it delivered quickly in South Manchester?” or “Are there any Stitch 'n' Bitch groups in Manchester?”
It doesn’t take long for the friendly replies to start appearing, there was a Stitch and Bitch session due to start last weekend (wonder how it went), and a number of suggestions and comment about bed suppliers.
Better still, ‘count_libido’ asked if there were any groups in Manchester who meet up to see films and talk about comics, music, films and the like. It appears that there isn’t, but now it seems that the blogging commuinty could be starting up one of their own.
At the time of writing the latest posting comes from ‘i_am_the_others’ who asks about living in West Didsbury – “(I) have been told by a number of people that its "studenty but nice". I was just wondering how true this is and how it comepares to other "studenty" places” – the answers roll in from people best placed to answer such a question. As to what they’ve said, you’re best taking a look yourself!
The Pride of Manchester
- 26 Aug 06, 08:02 AM
As Manchester Pride 2006 gets into its full swing, it’s worth having a look at The Dangerous Man who describes himself thus: “Jay is 21, and lives in central Manchester UK and is a frequenter of Manchester's gay scene.”
There are some pictures on there of the Village all set up ready for the festivities. Sadly it looks like Jay will be too absorbed in all the fun and games of the weekend to post much – he put up a ‘back in 24 hours’ sign, but we can look forward to his comments, observations and pictures when all the excitement has died down.
On the Blog Trail for a Night Out
- 25 Aug 06, 10:44 AM
It's the first Friday of this blog's life (can we say that?) and we thought we'd use that as an excuse to showcase some of the blogs that help point people on their way out at the weekend.
I followed a link from manchizzle to mancubist who has lots of gig reviews (including one this week of the Spinto Band at Urbis) but, sadly, nothing about stuff going on this weekend. Mancubist had a link to spinneyhead who had a link to Listen To Manchester - and that's where we ended up. I'm not going to steal their thunder so you'll have to click the link if you want to see what 5 gigs they've got listed for tonight.
And if you're the planning ahead type (of course you are!)Whathappenedlastnight has the news that Peruvia, a bit of a blast from Manchester's clubbing past, will be back on the 2nd of September. I went to Peruvia for New Years Eve back when it was, if I remember correctly, in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe it was in Stockport. Well, it was New Years so you can't expect me to remember ALL the details.
Is there somewhere you usually go to find stuff to do at the weekend? Drop us a URL and let us know about it. Happy weekend!
Photos in a Haystack
- 24 Aug 06, 04:52 PM
I've been spending some time looking at photos tagged with Manchester on flickr. Lot's of time - there are 72,130 of them and that doesn't even take into account photos that have been tagged with the name of one of the nine boroughs.
So how does Manchester compare to rival cities? Liverpool has 33,178 and Birmingham, always the source of much lively debate on the BBC Manchester message board, has just 48,635 photos.
What does it mean? Probably not a whole lot other than that there are loads of people taking snaps of Manchester and the surrounding area. So many, in fact, that we're faced with a rather large haystack and need some help sifting through it.
If you've published photos on flickr (or another photo sharing site) and want to help us find them, please tag them with bbcmanchesterblog or send us a link.
Our favourite so far? This shot by Jane, who we mentioned in an earlier post, of light and an anonymous figure filling the void between the curved walls of the Central Library and Town Hall.
Starting a Conversation
- 24 Aug 06, 02:16 PM
We've started to get emails and some comments on the blog from people who are interested in finding out more about this project. We're aware that the email address seems to be bouncing - it works internally, honest! Someone is fixing that right now so if you've been emailing please try again in a bit.
We've also noticed a few posts about this blog, starting with fairy tales for a digital age - thanks for being first. Spineyhead also reached out and linked to us - even after we failed to link to him in our first day online. Friends now mate?
Manchizzle, who recently organised a blog meet for Manchester bloggers (wish we'd known about it!) helped us get an awkward question out of the way early by saying:
For this, they will not be paid - well, not in anything but traffic and bragging rights (I can hear a few people snickering already about this being a clever way for the Beeb to land themselves some free, fresh, local content). But there's no denying that this could be an opportunity for some bloggers to increase their audience...
You aren't the first person to ask if this is just about the BBC getting some free content and we've put a lot of thought into this. It's true that some of the content from participants will appear on this blog and, perhaps, be used on the BBC Manchester Where I Live site or on-air. We could do this, so long as it fell within the normal "fair use" clauses of copyright law, without asking anyone. But that's not what this is all about. It's about building relationships with people who are, or who want to, create stuff and publish it online. We want to help participants build their own audiences and make their efforts self-sustainable.
With those goals in mind, we'd be happy, if asked, to show participants how to sign up for google adsense, amazon associates or other sources of blog revenue. It also means that rather than lifting participant's content wholesale or grabbing entire posts/videos/podcasts, instead we'll be excerpting bits and wrapping some editorial around it to encourage our audiences to visit the source. It's more of a showcase for the participants - which is why we said in the first post here that the BBC won't actually own anything: not the infrastructure used by participants or their content.
As you say in your post, this might just be an opportunity for *some* bloggers to get a bit of promotion and traffic out of the BBC. We hope that's exactly what it is. Thanks Manchizzle for giving us the opportunity to discuss that issue early on. Do feel free to comment below on our response!
Getting on the 43 Bus blog
- 24 Aug 06, 07:45 AM
If you’re looking for a good example of the kind of blogger we’re after, you won’t go far wrong taking a look at Geoff’s website ‘43’.
The 43 is a bus that runs between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Airport. Geoff makes observations about the things he sees as well as contemplating life as a Manchester commuter. His little drawings are an added delight.
The great thing about this blog is that no matter what Geoff writes about, he’s never that far from the orange glow of the number 43.
We're Looking for Your Manchester Content
- 23 Aug 06, 04:26 PM
As we mentioned in the first post, we're hoping to build relationships between BBC Manchester and people who are using, or want to use, the internet to create and publish some great content about Manchester. We reckon the best way to find potential participants is to open our eyes and ears to what's already online.
Our first stop was Britblog, a blog aggregator that lists UK based blogs according to their location, has 109 blogs listed for Manchester. Whilst, at first glance, it looks like some of those are spam blogs and others are long ago forgotten efforts, there are some promising looking blogs here. We've bookmarked the page and will start working our way through them over the coming days and weeks.
We're also using technorati to search for mentions of Manchester - which, rather dauntingly, there were over 1000 of yesterday - as well as mentions of any of Greater Manchester's nine boroughs.
That's a lot of potential blogs to look at already so we're using an RSS aggregator to subscribe to feeds from any blogs we decide to keep a better eye on.
I've also been looking around the photo sharing site flickr and have come across some excellent local photographers, for example Jane, whose photostream is full of beautiful shots, often taken in hazy light conditions, of South Manchester as well as other areas in and around Greater Manchester. If you have photos on flickr that you'd like us to see you can either email us with a URL to your photo stream or tag your photos with "bbcmanchesterblog" and we'll find them.
In future, we'll also be looking at other photosharing, podcasting and video sharing sites.
You can help us find good Manchester related content - blogs, photos, videos, podcasts, whatever - by posting links in the comments below or emailing us. Those links can be to content you've created, stuff you've enjoyed finding yourself, or ideas for content you'd like to create and publish online if you had the chance to learn how to do so. We're looking forward to your tips!
BBC Manchester Blog
- 23 Aug 06, 03:47 PM
One of the things we thought we'd do at the start of this blog was explain exactly what it is we're trying to accomplish. For years, the BBC has been looking at ways to engage more directly with it's audiences. We've promoted email addresses on air and asked for photo submissions, we've stuck comment forms on the bottom of articles, we've spend countless hours building message boards and community platforms, our staff have reviewed and approved millions upon millions of messages - and what have we learned? That all this is expensive business.
In the past, whenever the BBC has sought to do something with user generated content we've built new platforms, taken on the role of managing all the content that floods in, asserted some rights over that content (although not ownership in the vast majority of cases) and, some would argue, exposed the BBC to legal and moral risks. Furthermore, doing things in the old way had a bit of a sting in the tail - if a service really took off, and sometimes they did, the BBC would actually face increased costs because our services often don't scale well.
This project is an experiment in doing things a bit differently. Rather than building platforms, we want to help people create their own stuff on existing third party (non-BBC) platforms. Instead of contributors sending us content members of staff here at the BBC sifting through that content in a bid to find the good bits, we're simply going to ask contributors to tell us where they're publishing their content online and we'll keep an eye on it. The BBC won't claim any rights over the content and won't own anything.
What?!
Here's the plan in a nutshell:
- We're looking for one or two participants in each each of the ten boroughs of Manchester
- We'll organise a series of workshops for participants. During the first we'll talk participants through the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and talk about about the BBC's production values. Then we'll ask participants what sort or content (text, photos, video, audio?) they might want to create and we'll match them up with a BBC member of staff with production experience in that area.
- Participants will then be shown existing 3rd party, that is non-BBC, websites that will enable them to publish their content online.
- BBC Manchester blog staff will then subscribe to the RSS feeds of each participant and keep an eye on what they publish. We'll always link to the front page of their content, so long as they don't break the BBC's editorial guidelines, and when they publish something we think deserves to be highlighted we'll do so in the main body of the BBC Manchester blog.
Here's what everyone will get out of it:
- The participants will get access to production advice and bespoke tutorials on creating and publishing content online using the tools of their choice. When their content is highlighted, they'll get (hopefully!) a burst of traffic from the BBC Manchester website. We'll do everything we can to help participants make their participation self-financing but won't be offering payment.
- BBC Manchester will have the opportunity to build relationships with users/content contributors in a much more sustainable way in the past.
- The BBC Manchester blog will act as a showcase for the project and, in particular, the best content that's been produced by contributors and highlighted by the BBC. This will be a "one stop shop" for BBC Manchester journalists who may want to read out content on-air, contact contributors for background information about a story, reuse a gig review on the website, or even ask a participant to go on Northwest Tonight (our regional TV news) to explain something they've covered online.
Would you like to get involved? If you've already got a blog, profile on a social networking site, flickr account, etc then let us know where to find it by sending an email to manchester.blog(at)bbc.co.uk
Robin and Richard
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
