BhamPostJoanna: In the Serious Games West Midlands panel - will be at Chill for 6pm. Then W.Mids party afterwards for a bit...
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Joanna
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Stef
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Exporting the West Midlands
Ruth
Seeing as I’m here in Texas as part of a West Midlands contingent, it was funny to stumble across this pub on my first trip into Austin. Is Shakespeare our region’s most exportable brand? Answers on a postcard/blogpost. I’m going to start a list.
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SXSWi 2008: Saturday first impressions
Dom Murphy
First impressions stepping into the convention centre — where the bulk of SXSWi activity takes place — was of overwhelming excitement. Registration was fast and easy and after getting the event catalogue I realised some tough decisions needed to be made. With so much on offer to see and do I wasn't sure where to start.
I came to SXSWi with a goal to discover new technologies which could help TAK! in the future as well as examine whether graphic / interface design excellence is a lost art. Over the past year or two I've gotten quite bored with the state of the web and how design can appear so cheap in comparission to other creative mediums (ie: print, motion etc.) So at SXSWi I wanted to find out whether the internet today (and tomorrow) is more about content and social networking than unsability and interesting design.
Upfront my opinion is that the very best sites should do everything. Visually they should stand out from the competition, work well and be feature rich. Not wanting to blow my own trumpet but TAK!'s community site StickerNation covered a lot of bases — where great content sat within a visually inspiring look and feel; still today we get a lot of emails thanking us for doing that project and how it inspired them to get involved in street art or web design.
The first talk I went to was Design is in the Details by Naz Hamid from Weightshift. I caught the 2nd half and although Naz didn't cover any new ground, he did reaffirm the design process and made me feel better that people out there do strive for good design online.
The next panel I checked was the How to Rawk SXSW — a fun primer to the festival with a good bunch of speakers.
After that I decided to get some food and see if I can find a cheap iPhone and small gifts for loved ones. I forgot how big this place is, and an hour was spent walking a couple of blocks and discovering nothing but eateries and roads. I did stroll past the Childrens Museum which looked pretty cool. Nice characters!
On return I proceeded to check out Ellis Labs' presentation of version 2 of Expression Engine. I've not heard of Expression Engine before but a quick check of the internet during the SXSW Rawks panel I realised it was a session worth investigating. Expression Engine is a well priced CMS which seems to be both powerful and desincentric. What they presented literally blew me away. Of all the features on display the sheer innovation in the interface was the thing which impressed me the most. Shit was shown that I didn't even think was possible. From the reaction from the more technically minded, it would seem the CMS itself is very good behind the scenes being fast, scalable and customisable. It's something TAK! will definately look at for certain projects.
After that conference I got stopped by a chap from Utterz who took my photo and interviewed me. Straight after that my good friend Ben Hostler from Beef spotted me — he's at SXSWi representing Bristol on a very similar thing to myself and the West Midlands Massive. At this point we both realised our 3.30pm panels were starting and I quickly rushed to check Great Design Hurts. Unfortunately the room was full and so I ended up missing the talk which I wanted to see most (shit). The talk seemed to tackle the question which I have come here to research. From the pre-talk blurb — great design does hurt and doing something new and different is scary, but worth it. From what I gather all the talks will be available to download afterwards - so all is not lost!
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My photos: Burgers!
Pete
Pete Ashton posted a photo:
The Southbysouth West Midlands posse take in the Fuddruckers burger emporium. Fantastic!
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Texas here we come
Ruth
Is there an unwritten rule that says, ‘the day before you’re about to go on a trip - your workload will explode’? There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of days you are away from the office and the length of your to-do list.
However, this time around I shouldn’t be too far from my office, albeit a virtual one, despite being nearly 5,000 miles away. I’m lucky enough to be heading to Texas tomorrow for SXSW Interactive, thanks to support from Digital Central. A group of us are heading over to live and breath interactive media for the next five days, make some valuable contacts and share our experiences with the digital media community back in the West Midlands. My reason for going is to learn more about this fantastic festival , make some valuable contacts and spread the word about the Digital Media and Film Event taking place in Birmingham this October, which I’m project managing. I can’t wait. All I need to do now is attempt to clear the to-do list, pack by bags and find my passport!
I’ll be posting my thoughts and SXSW experiences on this blog, and you can find out more about what we’re all up to at www.sxswm.com. More news on the Digital Media and Film Event to come very soon.
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del.icio.us: Islamic Homeschool Diary: Earthquake continued…
Joanna
Many of the quakes in the UK are clustered around an enormous block of rock known as the Midlands Microcraton. This is an ancient, Precambrian (older than 590 million years) feature that runs up through Birmingham towards the Potteries.
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Keep Austin Weird
Dave
By way of an aside: I realise I once gave a presentation in 2004 in which I talked about Austin, Texas as an example of a place that was doing interesting stuff around developing creative communities. In particular it developed an unofficial 'Keep Austin Weird' tagline for itself. I think I was making the case for the West Midlands to take an equally leftfield approach. The full presentation is too long and dull to post here so I've pulled out the four relevant slides. Also (and better than my slides) here's some reading for you. One academic, one useful piece of journalism:
- Andy Pratt from London School of Economics on 'Digital Places'. Jump to the Austin case study on page 23.
- 2003 Austin Chronicle article
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Talking Art and Bacon Butties
Ruth
I’ve just come back from a brilliant committee meeting for the Cure Leukaemia Art Auction 2008. This is an event I got involved with officially last year (thanks to an introduction by Susan McNally). It was launced in 2006 to raise funds for Birmingham’s world class leukeamia centre by holding an annual auction of work donated by artists (the majority of whom are from Birmingham and the West Midlands). Its a great event, and last year raised over £17,000 which was used to both commission new art work for the Centre, and fund research and treatments for patients. As well as being involved in a fantastic project which leads to real benefits, it great to be part of an enthusiastic and proactive committee. Especially when our chair, Ian Allen, so kindly provides us with bacon butties.
This year’s event is on 20 May, I’ll post more details soon.
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Stef Lewandowski: South by South West (Midlands)
Stef
In short - a bunch of Birmingham digital media types are going to SXSW Interactive in Texas next week, and we are doing a ‘remote control blogging’ thing where you get to ask us to attend stuff and report back for you. Last year I went to the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas - the [...]
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Shared in Google Reader: Bring on Birmingham's elected mayor
Stef
It is no great secret that I am in favour of Britain's major cities being run by a directly elected mayor.
The old committee system, which lasted in local government for more than 100 years, was a recipe for compromise and slow decision making. The cabinet and leader system, which we have now, was an improvement but is by no means effective enough for a city with international ambitions like Birmingham.
It wasn't that long ago that some Labour councillors across the West Midlands fought against the cabinet-leader system on the grounds that they didn't want to promote the cult of leadership. So much better, they reasoned, to stick with swollen and time-consuming committees where even the doziest backbenchers could feel important under the delusion that they were exercising some power.
Two of the reasons usually put forward against elected mayors - that they are too powerful and cannot be removed from office for a four-year period after being elected - are actually arguments in favour of mayors. Birmingham needs a powerful leader, guaranteed power for four years, with the ability to hire and fire his cabinet at will.
But the most compelling reason of all for switching to the mayoral system is the ease with which the incumbent can be thrown out of office if the people decide he or she is not up to the job. The buck stops with the individual in a mayoral system and Birmingham's 750,000 electors would get a direct say in who should govern them.
Contrast that with the present arrangements. Who elected Mike Whitby city council leader? Well, it certainly wasn't a majority of the people of Birmingham.
When he was re-elected in Harborne ward in 2006, Whitby managed to get 3,200 votes - slightly less than 50 per cent, given that other candidates polled a total of 3,429 votes. He was elected leader of the 43-strong Conservative group, because there were no other candidates. As Conservative leader, he automatically became leader of the city council under arrangements approved by the local authority's controlling Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition.
Whitby, as it happens, has made a reasonable fist of being council leader. His administration has delivered better housing, schools and social services and is beginning to push forward on the regeneration front.
But supposing he was useless. How could Birmingham get rid of him? We've had poor council leaders before, who have managed to cling on to office because their colleagues couldn't decide who should replace them. We've had good council leaders before who've spent most of their period in office seeing off plots from colleagues to oust them.
An elected mayor would bring welcome stability to council politics and would also re-ignite public interest in the question of who runs Birmingham. Bring it on.
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Dave
daveharte: back from Malmaison after meeting the SXSW west midlands group
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Videos: Saying ‘Hello SXSW’ from West Midlands UK
Stef
A group from the West Midlands, UK is heading over for SXSWi - this is us saying hi!
Realtime blogging/publishing at our site: http://www.sxswm.com
By aeioux
Tags : sxsw, sxswintroduction, sxswm
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del.icio.us: Quake rocks Britain | The Register
Joanna
Impressively, within ten minutes of the tremors, CSEM (EMSC), the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, revealed the cause: a 5.4 magnitude quake with an epicentre 10 miles north east of Lincoln, in the East Midlands.
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tumblr: The Big Picture - West Midlands » Reach for the sky
Joanna
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tumblr: Creative Britain - Some West Midlands highlights
Stef
Creative Britain - Some West Midlands highlights:
Creative Britainis the culmination of the government’s lengthy consultation on the Creative Economy programme. For my West Midlands readers I thought it might be useful to summarise what’s in it for us:
- Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company are named as two of the organisations committed to providing some of the planned 5,000 formal apprenticeships a year by 2013.
- Under ‘commitment 5’ (“We will encourage employers and skills providers to set up…
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Shared in Google Reader: Creative Britain - Some West Midlands highlights
Stef
Creative Britain is the culmination of the government's lengthy consultation on the Creative Economy programme. For my West Midlands readers I thought it might be useful to summarise what's in it for us:- Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company are named as two of the organisations committed to providing some of the planned 5,000 formal apprenticeships a year by 2013.
- Under 'commitment 5' ("We will encourage employers and skills providers to set up ground-breaking new innovative places of learning") the recently announced Eastside Arts Academy gets a mention as does Birmingham City University's newly acquired Skillset Media Academy status.
- There's mention of a 'Birmingham International Film Festival' (it must mean this) as something which will be better linked in to London's creative festivals and other key events around the country (Animex being the only other one explicitly mentioned)
- Digital Central gets name-checked (as do other initiatives in the South East and South West) as an useful example of a sub-regional innovation network ("these networks are particularly important at regional and sub-regional level in the fast moving world of new media")
- The West Midlands is one of five regions that will establish a 'regional beacon' for the Creative Industries. Their job will be:
- raising awareness to ensure that the sector knows what is available and how to access it
- forging links with specialised providers and mentors
- developing and disseminating best practice in meeting the needs of the sector
- assessing the effectiveness of support for the creative industries by collecting and analysing data - The document has an emphasis on investment rather than support and with that there's specific acknowledgement of the good work done by the Advantage Creative Fund.
I plan to postI've now posted a digest of the whole document. On the whole there's not an awful lot in here that we didn't already know about. This gives some initiatives a bit of a government rubber stamp I guess. -
Pownce: joannageary: Looking for bloggers in the West Midlands, UK to join…
Joanna
Looking for bloggers in the West Midlands, UK to join The Birmingham Post blogging team. Interested? Email me! joanna_geary@mrn.co.uk
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From The Midlands With Love
Dom Murphy
From the Midlands with Love: not a Bond movie remade into a bleak drama by Shane Meadows, but a showcase of the finest graphic art and illustration coming out of the West Midlands.
- Media Content Lab (part of Birmingham City University) felt that too much of the design world’s attention is focused on a handful of London companies, so decided to do something about it. We put together a postcard book featuring the artwork of graphic designers, illustrators, web designers and character designers based in the West Midlands.
The best computer artists from across the region were invited to submit their work before a final selection of the top designs were chosen to go into the book.
"We felt that too many of the big publishing companies and advertising agencies were ignoring the Midlands", said Media Content Lab’s Suzanne Neal. "So we decided to put something together that would show them there is real talent here!"
The postcard book is due to be sent to over 100 of the country’s top PR, marketing and advertising agencies as well as publishing companies and reputable agents at the end of January '08.
We have a postcard in the pack (hence this news post) image below. The project is a nice idea and hope it raises awareness of the talent within the region.
If you want a free pack of postcards please send an A5 stamped addressed envelope to:
- TAK!
From Midlands With Love
118 Custard Factory
Birmingham
B9 4AA
- Media Content Lab (part of Birmingham City University) felt that too much of the design world’s attention is focused on a handful of London companies, so decided to do something about it. We put together a postcard book featuring the artwork of graphic designers, illustrators, web designers and character designers based in the West Midlands.
