Posts Tagged ‘events’

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Scotland’s first GovCamp

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

A quick note for those involved in working with government in Scotland, particularly in digital engagement. The end of July will see Scotland’s first GovCamp.

There’s no agenda as yet – in the tradition of GovCamps, we’ll be setting that on the day, but there will no doubt be a strong Web 2.0 and social media theme.

The Informatics Forum in Edinburgh will provide an inspiring space for discussion and engagement, the sharing of experiences and creation of new ideas.

You can find out more, and book your free place for the event, at http://scotgovcamp.eventbrite.com

Also read this preview of the event by Improvement Service reporter David Friel.

Thanks to Lesley Thomson, from the Scottish Government, for getting the ball rolling.

EDIT – the event now has an official site at http://scotgovcamp.wordpress.com

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Blogging against Disablism Day 2010

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2010Saturday 1st May is Blogging Against Disablism Day:

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

Diary of a Goldfish

For this event last year I wrote a piece entitled Defining Disablism which proved popular and sparked some good discussions.

I’m still undecided on what I will cover this year, and indeed may wait until the day before finally committing. It will certainly have a web focus. Watch this space! (update – didn’t get a chance to do this on the day but pulling something together now and will post soon!)

Visit the Diary of a Goldfish site to see a list of other bloggers taking part in the day, as well as links to posts from previous years.

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Creating a dynamite campaign

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Today I found myself in the opulent surroundings of Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel for a breakfast seminar, run by Precedent, on creating dynamite campaigns. The following are some of my notes.

The seminar was lead by John Campbell and Mark Baillie, and John began by considering the good, the bad and the ugly. Examples of good campaigns included:

  • Coca-Cola’s 80s/90s “Can’t Beat the Feeling” adverts – a tune that many of us still recognise today and an excellent example of strong branding.
  • The University of Birmingham’s Circle of Influence campaign to raise £60 million. Astonishingly, they’ve already reached the £50m mark, combining online strategies with a more traditional print campaign.
  • Drinkaware’s drink diary, which allows you to monitor your drinking and compare with friends, adding a social element to the mix. You can even download a phone app. I couldn’t help thinking this could backfire though – imagine people using the diary to compare how much they could drink in a week and actually trying to beat each other!
  • Volkswagen’s Fun Theory website, featuring various viral videos aimed at making people change their behaviour for the better:

John notes that common factors to all of these successes were creativity and innovation.

More on creating dynamite content

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Working in a Wired World – a talk by Euan Semple

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Euan Semple (image from BCS website)

Euan Semple (image via BCS)

Tonight I went along to the Informatics Forum in Edinburgh to listen to an inspiring talk by Euan Semple on how social media can make organisations more effective. I furiously scribbled reams of notes on a few scraps of paper and have reconstructed them here as best I could. Apologies to Euan if I have misquoted or misinterpreted any of his points. The talk was organised by the Edinburgh branch of the British Computer Society.

During Euan’s time at the BBC, he pioneered the use of weblogs, wikis and online forums to enable staff to work more collaboratively. Now an independent advisor on social computing, his insights help bring a clarity of thought to what is, for many, a brave new world.

My summary of Euan’s talk

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Accessibility and social media – my presentation

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Those of you who read my overview of accessibility and social media back in June know that I spoke about the subject at the ScotWeb2 unconference. Liz Ayzan, from LGEO Research, has kindly posted a section of my talk to YouTube (also available via Liz’s blog post about the event). I thought (in keeping with the very theme of the talk) that I should offer a text alternative of that video. A full summary of the talk can still be found on my original overview (as linked above).

View the video and read the transcript of my presentation

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Event review – Web 2.0 in Libraries, Edinburgh, 2nd July 2009

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
National Library of Scotland - image courtesy of yellow book ltd

The National Library of Scotland - image courtesy of yellow book ltd*

I avoided today’s heatwave by sitting in the relatively cool setting of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh for an event put on by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland (CILIPS) – Enterprise, engagement and new communications: Web 2.0 in the Library.

I decided to live-tweet the event (or the morning session, at least, as my N95, which I was using as a modem, ran out of battery during the lunch break). Accordingly, here’s my coverage of the event. I used the hashtag #web2libraryevent so you can also see the Twitter results for that term.

Read the rest of my coverage of the Web 2.0 in Libraries event

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Event review – Accessibility breakfast @ User Vision Edinburgh, 15th June 2009

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I’ve just come back from a very interesting breakfast event at the local office of User Experience consultants User Vision. Led by accessibility consultant Mark Palmer, the session looked at issues around testing with disabled users, and presented some of the surprising results from such testing.
More about the breakfast event

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Event review – Web 2.0 in the Public Sector, 16/04/09

Monday, April 27th, 2009

On Thursday 16th April, various public sector web types converged upon the Scotsman Hotel on Edinburgh’s North Bridge for a Web 2.0 event, hosted by The Gate.

The day was an interesting and varied one, mixing high-level summaries of web 2.0 technologies with plenty of real-world examples and discussions of the opportunities, and challenges, presented by this brave new(ish) world.

The presentations from the day can be found at http://nondev.com/web_seminar – below is just a brief summary…
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Stripping (my CSS) for web standards

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Today is CSS Naked Day.

The idea is simple – websites all over the world are stripping off their CSS for a day, leaving their sites naked and unstyled. If those sites have been designed well, according to web standards, the sites will still appear in logical order with all content perfectly accessible.

Checking a site with CSS turned off is a great way of detecting possible problems. Many assistive technologies ignore CSS, for example, so over-reliance on styling can lead to problems.

For example, imagine you use CSS to call up a background image. But then imagine that background image is actually an image of content (for example, when people put contact details on the background image of their Twitter page). Without CSS, you won’t see that image, but have you provided an alternative?

Website without CSS

The Pretty Simple website without CSS - less pretty, more simple

CSS Naked Day is a great way of flagging up the need for good web standards, and in that spirit I will be shedding my CSS over at www.prettysimple.co.uk. (EDIT: CSS now back on – it was getting too cold!)

Some fellow CSS naturists

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Report from Scottish Public Sector Barcamp 27th March

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Microsoft Offices at Waverley Gate

Microsoft Offices, Edinburgh

At 5pm last Friday, dozens of like-minded web enthusiasts gathered at the Microsoft offices at Waverley Gate, Edinburgh, for a Scottish Public Sector Barcamp meetup. On the agenda was everything from Web 2.0 and social media to the credit crunch and website rationalisation, and we only had two hours to put the world to rights.
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