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…

Social networking tips for creative freelancers and media

Last week I gave a talk in Manchester as part of the DMEX training programme I’m working on which upskills ‘traditional’ (strange term in itself!) media professionals from TV, radio and film to work in digital environments through a series of work placements, mentoring, an online network (email me if you’d like an invite to join), a collaboration project (we’re currently making a machinima film) and a series of workshops.

This one was on the mixed subjects of pitching (with Stuart Nolan from Hex Induction), multi-platform commissioning (with Mario Dubois from BBC Multiplatform) and I gave a presentation of using social media for benefiting your freelance business.  (The full write-up of the event is available on the DMEX Ning website – email me if you’d like an invite to join).

Here’s my presentation with some videos and links to case studies:

Dmex 04 02 09 Blogging And Social Networking

View more presentations from susioneill. (tags: social media)

It was a fun, practical session with a lively group where I did a lot of “show and tell” and created a live blog post to show how easy it is to get going with publishing and connecting your ideas to the wider business community.  I’ll no doubt be writing more on this subject soon, but some key points to take away:

All networks are social

Online networks are much the same as real world networks, you need to feed your network and nurture it for it to bloom, but online networking, rather than just time-wasting, is like the telephone and email – just another new form of conversation so treat it as that – immediate and rich with an equal mix of great ideas and bullshit.

Start with the end in mind

Decide on your goals in advance.  It could be to gain profile because you’re new to freelancing or new in town – in this case a frequency strategy of short but high volume “presence” on blogs and other social networks is effective.  You may want to position yourself as an expert – you’ll then need to define your subject and think of carefully crafted links, comments and posts that define your specialism.  Maybe you want to use social networks to further your own knowledge – in which case you’ll do this by becoming a ’super connector’ giving advice and ideas to others in return for a piece of theirs.

Have fun and value your time

I’ve just started to use the rather excellent CreativePro Office (it’s free and let’s you track projects, milestones, invoices and time spend on projects) and now I monitor how much time I spend as part of my business development on Twitter, RSS and Facebook.  Decide on your goals and don’t let social networking impact on your workload – it takes a while to “work” for you in terms of bringing in work, so I prefer a little but often frequency to avoid internet addiction.  Keep it light and make it fun – you could make deeper relationships between you and your prospective clients, collaborators and peers.

I noticed my old colleague Dave Harte also did a talk recently on social media for business success, so check that out too – he has some interesting complimentary examples.

Hi to everyone I met at the seminar, it was great for me to help other people get a bit de-mystified and fired-up as to the why and how of social media for business.  If you’d like me to give a talk for your group or business on social media, please get in touch.

How can the small business learn to trust digital providers?

Ebusiness club

I went to an excellent breakfast briefing workshop yesterday in Nottingham which was part the Ebusiness Club events.  Converting Website Visitors was expertly presented by Ian Lockwood who gave us an action-packed romp in 90 minutes through techniques to measure your web traffic (including some nifty tricks on A-B and other types of testing in Google Analytics) and using strong techniques of copywriting, sales offers and content strategies  to upsell your casual browsers to paying e-customers.

Ian recommends to test and test again – you need to know your benchmark to know how you’re succeeding, make big bold changes and be prepared to go with the results – what works for you may not work for your customers.  The quality of ideas and information definitely made it worth the early start, when I’m not usually much of an early riser

The event was packed out with 150 local professionals, some digital specialists like myself and Susan Hallam looking to qualify or augment our knowledge, mainly other small business owners keen to get ahead in all things digital.

I had an intriguing conversation with a lady who ran a social health sector consultancy.  She said she spent twelve days last year in Ebusiness Club and other web training events.  I asked if she was trading online, “No, I do all this blogging and other stuff but it has no benefit – I get all my work from professional bodies and word of mouth.”

She said she wanted to know about web so she could manage her own website development and understand how to contract services like designers, developers and copywriters to do it the right way because she couldn’t trust those she had worked with to do things correctly, and without knowing the knowledge on best practice she couldn’t be sure she was getting the standard of work she needed.  “In my industry I have to be accredited and achieve specific qualifications and standards.  In the web industry, there are no standards.”

Web specialists – the 21st century used car salesmen?

Initially this conversation perplexed me.  Why spend so much time at your expense on something so peripheral to your business when there are affordable professionals out there like myself who can do it for you?  Or indeed, why have a website if it causes such a headache?

It strikes me as a control thing – small business owners often want to be in charge of and understand every aspect of their business – and in theory so they should, but as she noted, she would trust an accountant with her finances as that’s what they are trained and accredited to do.

Yet her viewpoint also alluded to some shockingly low standards from the “web shops” (i.e. sole and small business web designers) in Nottingham out there which harken back to the ‘bad ol days’ of pretty, non-functional, non-editable designs which were commonplace when I started in the industry in 2000.  Yet small businesses cannot afford the many specialist or bigger digital or full-service agencies that do provide quality work in the city.

What’s the solution? A serious professional body for digital professional with high, univeral membership standards?  Unlikely to have much impact or change hearts and minds unless it was nationally established.  How do we as digital professionals build trust whilst empowering our clients with knowledge they can take away and learn from?

Are we in danger of becoming the user car salesmen of the 21st century?

How can we develop an effective and trusted digital consultancy service?

I’ve no instant solutions.  But this does pose a major challenge for me; I’m currently developing a product-based service for small business to empower business owners with the solutions they need to grow their business online.  As a non-designer, non-programmer, non-SEO specialist, I’ve no vested interest in commissioning an expensive website that little meets the business’s needs, as an agency or web shop may.  (Why pay when WordPress or Yahoo! Stores will solve over 50% of business’s needs affordably?)

Yet the challenge to date, and it’s changed only incrementally since I first dipped my toe in this type of consulting in 2003, is that small business’s are still only inclined to pay for ’stuff’ (like a shiny new website or brochure) rather than time and money saving advice, and those most in need of help probably don’t yet realise they have a problem.  They’re probably not even online yet, or don’t realise how under-performing their website – let alone their total digital presence – is.

One man at the event said “it’s all very good advice, but I don’t have time to do all of this.”

And that’s where a digital consultancy can come in – to give you the skills and roadmap as to where you need to go, so like our social health specialist you know how to ask the right questions and get the right results when you are ready to commission external services, or work with your digital consultant to get the results you deserve.  And give yourself a 12-day shortcut

I’m looking for guinea pigs to test my new business digital consultancy package which I will launch in the spring, if you’re interested in trying it out please drop me a line, email susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk, tel: 07981 222799.  I’ll be doing one consultancy for free and three others at a nominal cost with business who can give me some feedback to get the formula of services right.

And if you’re an independent web designer or developer, particularly if you’re based in or near Nottingham, I’d love to hear from you to see if we can work together to create better quality services.