New events for Nottingham: Web 2.0 Surgery and MediaCampNottingham

This week I took part in two events which proves what I’ve posted previously that Nottingham is starting to come to the table as a serious centre for all things digital.

Web 2.0 Surgery

Wednesday 25th March was the inaugural Web 2.0 surgery, which just by coincidence was the same date as the one in Birmingham which  has been running for a year or so, although the organisers are unaware of their co-existance – great ideas happening in syncronicity.

Eight experts including myself gathered in the Cape Bar, and around a dozen people seeking expertise.  Despite the slightly intermitant wifi, we were able to impart a bit of knowledge and learn ourselves.  I spoke to everyone from new-starts setting up a web optimisation business, to a lawyer trying to blog without being contentious, to a guy trying to social networking the virtues of drain clearage, to an affiliate site owner looking for a change in direction.

I enjoyed the surgery, I hope I helped a little bit in addressing those little problems in e-marketing strategy and blogging.  I’ll be at the next one on:

Thursday April 23rd, 6.30pm, Cape Bar, Victoria St Nottingham.

Please let us know what you think of the events – is the location good for you?  Would working hours time be better?  How could we promote the event to the wider business community?  Advice in the comments please!

MediaCampNottingham, May 9th and 10th 2009

I’m really excited about this one.  The first ever event of its kind, MediaCampNottingham will land in town On Sat May 9th and I’m helping organise it. It’s based on the MediaCamp model that’s been running for a while now in London.  It’s an innovative UnConference exploring the latest digital trends in:

• Web design and development
• Communications, branding, advertising and PR
• Arts, media and culture
• Games and virtual worlds
• Digital media, blogging and social media.

It’s FREE and anyone can get involved.

It’s an UnConference for knowledge-sharing and collaboration where you set the agenda.  MediaCampNottingham is for digital media professionals wanting to share and expand their knowledge, or businesses or social enterprises who are curious about the digital phenomenon and want to learn more.  This event is for you to share, explore, challenge and grow your abilities in digital media.   Learn about audio and video podcasting, blogging, web marketing, graphics, email campaigns, Second Life, Twitter and other social media tools. Whether you’re a veteran or just getting started, MediaCamp is for YOU.

For more info and to sign-up, visit the MediaCampNottingham wiki.  We are also looking for sponsors who could contribute towards the cost of lunch and refreshments in exchange for promotion on the website and at the event, or could contribute relevant promotional goodies for our giveaway bags.  If you can help, please contact Caron from PCM Creative.

Ada Lovelace Day

And while I’m here…

I totally missed blogging about Ada Lovelace Day as I didn’t find out until the day was upon us!   It’s an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. There’s a brilliant interview with Ada herself (in a Doctor Who style time machine style) here.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was actually a local Nottingham woman, the daughter of wild 19th century poet Lord Byron, whose mother drew her into an opposite path, and she became a great scientist and technologist of her day, a rare achievement for a woman.  She worked on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine - the predecessor of the computer.

There are many great women in technology now, but probably not enough (apparently only 2% of Physics professors at universities are women) – and the lack of women in the games industry is well-catalogue.  Helen Whitehead thinks women are now excelling the field in communication technologies – particularly social media.  I think we’ve a way to come but it’s great when women are able to celebrate our achievements and spur each other on.

The revival of Girl Geeks Dinners in Nottingham is another example of both how Nottingham is getting more digital and humanistically connected and I’m looking forward to going along to meet some other girls working in the web and technology sector.  Sure beats the usual women’s networking for too many arts & crafts, life coaches and reiki healing ladies…

Redefining innovation at iFestival and Nott Tuesday

Innovation has been the big buzzword of this decade – apparently, start-ups to international corporations will thrive or fail based on how much they innovate – yet in another decade this activity might just have been called ‘enterprise’, ‘doing stuff’ or ‘trial and error’.   However, from my own research into disruptive innovation in the creative industries (due to be published by NESTA in May), I uncovered a wealth of people doing and thinking differently about how they framed – and later reframed – their business offer in the market through new business or production models. Perhaps this is what Schumpeter called “creative destruction” and reinvention rather than innovation – which is perhaps a too broad and yet too narrow term.

iFestival

Yet Regional Development Agencies love their innovation – with whole teams and programmes dedicated to the intangible verb.  Yesterday I went to East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA)’s iFestival – a celebration of ideas and inspiration from the region and a few bigger ideas too.

I tagged along to the second half and heard Luke Johnson, Chair of Channel 4, talk about his legacy as a food entrepreneur (Pizza Express, Strada and Giraffe to name but three) – and avoiding mentioned the inevitable  impending collapse and inter-broadcaster bunfights between C4 and others.  Johnson believed his success lay in taking the core roots of a succeeding entrepreneur and developing these into a corporate model of chains and franchises – entrepreneurs just got too bored after opening a few stores.

There was much talk from Johnson and the panel on the importance of youth and education – most innovators generated their great ideas in their 20s, when they will take risks (and have little to lose).  There was worry that too much reliance on age could see Britain like Japan – where conservative 50-somethings rule roost and resist change or new ideas.   Those who won’t take risks have low expectation and live in fear of the unexpected – and nowadays, the unexpected is almost to be expected.

What happened next almost defied belief; delegates were invited into a medieval street – resplete with musicians, a juggler (trading under the name ‘the Fluid Druid’, apparently) wenches and people dressed as giant emus (not sure why) – to enter the ‘Last Business Standing’ competition where businesses were encouraged to – over the din – compete to deliver the best pitch to the streets filled with regional business advisors.

From my own days working in the public sector, it’s easy to knock their efforts at doing something different (dare I say innovative) – but this event was odd, inducing smirks and giggles, but definitely memorable – though not necessarily for all the right reasons.  The discomfort from the black-suited middle age gents, mainly from traditional industries like manufacturing, and the incongrous medieval fayre to me ranks alongside the very bizarre snake dancers entertainment at Creative Clusters 2007 as one of those moments of unadulterated perplexion.

Nott Tuesday

Head somewhat fried, it was reassuring to head over in the evening to the second meeting of Nott Tuesday, the new network of high-tech and digital businesses, to hear two interesting speakers, Doug Ashby, IT business entrepreneur discussed “retirement at 45, heaven or hell?”.  If you were a small business owner into the number crunching of boom, bust, boom, boom zero to hero startup his account of the trials and errors of IT startup was no doubt interesting.

Ian Lockwood then gave a quick introduction to the Nottingham Fibre project, as a call to arms for Lace Market tech co’s to unite in the fight for faster broadband.  I’ve blogged about this project recently under its previous name, Ultraband.

The quality of chat this evening was undoubtedly higher and more innovative than at iFestival where I seemed to get emeshed in a very boring gentlemen’s musings on innovation in hole digging technologies for fibre optics companies.  Great chat with the ever idea-ful CJ from PCM Creative who intends to set up Nottingham’s first Media Camp in the spring – I hope to get on board with making that happen.

And Martin Wright who is hosting Nottingham’s first web 2.0 surgery on March 26th – a way of getting businesses and organisation to get some hands on help on “getting” all this complex web stuff (something the great social media tribe in Birmingham have been pioneering for a while) – and ditto I’ve signed up as an expert for that so hope to see some Notts folk there.

I was revived by the energy and ideas in the room and willingness to get on and do and make change;  it really seems tha now is the hour  for Nottingham businesses to get connected, linked in, and use social media to change the business and community landscape for the better – and now its needed more than ever.

So all this innovation seemed to be happily happening of its own accord, without a label, or if it did have one, it would probably read “people talking about interesting stuff and getting on and doing it” – which is the closed definition of innovation you’re likely to find.