Blogging – Page 11 – Dave Briggs

New website, with added blog

May 29, 2012

Hello!

If you can see this, it means that Kind of Digital’s new website is now live. We’ve given things a new look, and have organised the content a bit better, to give folk visiting the site some kind of idea about what we actually do.

A bigger change is that my blog, DavePress, is now incorporated into the main Kind of Digital site, and indeed DavePress now is no more. It’s a bit of a wrench, as I’ve been writing on that site since 2008, but the time has come where I needed to focus on the thing which is meant to be where I’m making some money.

In other words, I don’t think people generally associate the helpful things I post on my blog with Kind of Digital, the business through which I earn a living. Maybe I’m over thinking things, but at least having just one website to update will make my life easier.

Don’t worry if you are a DavePress subscriber though – we’ve moved you all over automagically. Likewise, all the links out there to posts in the DavePress archives will redirect to the appropriate posts here. It ought to be seamless. Still, if you spot anything janky, do let me know.

This move, enabling me to focus on this website alone, will also mean some more interesting things in terms of exploring good practice in digital engagement. So, expect more handy guides, video interviews with people doing awesome stuff, web chats and webinars. I’m looking forward to it, and hopefully you are too!

What I’ve been reading

March 21, 2012

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

Tales of the city: the rise of the local blog – "In its daily blogposts, Spitalfields Life aims to portray the full colour of life in London's East End. But who is the mysterious 'Gentle Author' behind this extraordinary work of social history?"
Apache Cordova – "Apache Cordova is a platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript."
Building Community in your Area? There’s a Handbook for that! – "The Community Organizers Handbook is the one-stop-shop for tips, tricks and how-tos for organizing local communities."
User experience design on new.shropshire.gov.uk – Project WIP – "Our aim is to provide the user with best experience we can possibly give them allowing them to do what they want quickly and easily."
When is an ‘official’ Twitter account not an official Twitter account? | Puffbox.com – "Much consternation in certain political circles this afternoon, as Boris Johnson renames his Twitter account… and takes a quarter of a million people's details over to his election campaign HQ."
The problem with digital politics – "If the major parties get their act together, the next election could be a very interesting time indeed for technology-watchers."
@LiamStacey9 : Tangential Ramblings – "Online hate is a big problem. Children, adults, celebrities and people outside of the public eye are all victims. The trouble is: those that dole out the abuse don’t seem to be the sorts of people who care."

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

What is blogging?

August 11, 2011

Haven’t published one of these in a while, so here’s a quick guide about blogging. PDF over on the Kind of Digital site if you can’t see the embed below.

Enjoy!

What is blogging?

View more documents from Kind of Digital

What I’ve been reading

July 14, 2011

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

The Case Against Online Participation and Government As A Platform – "the question is: should we just give up and consider open government and government 2.0 an interesting, nice-to-have, but hard-to-sustain development, and perhaps let it die?"
Social media for social care: how Monmouthshire foster carers support each other with Yammer – helen reynolds – Nice little case study.
Huffington Post UK: What does it add? – Good stuff on the rather underwhelming launch of HuffPo UK – which has been rather overshadowed by other media news this week.
Epic | Mobile learning – Epic's mobile learning stuff looks really interesting.
Home :: PetitionYourCouncil.com – MySociety makes local e-petitions more findable.

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

The digital press office

July 11, 2011

One innovation in the way that local councils communicate is the developments of digital press offices, or newsrooms.

There are two elements to these, I think. The first is having a digital savvy communications team, who get the growing importance of online new sources and the need for mixed media; as well as the increasingly realtime nature of news reporting. This tends to be the result of already existing inspiration in the team or through training.

The second is having the means to deliver on this, often through an online platform. Some examples of these include Birmingham, Shropshire, and Leeds who all have separate microsites for their digital newsrooms. I hear that Warwickshire have one in development that is close to release.

Often these site are using a lightweight, flexible publishing system like WordPress, rather than being a part of the corporate content management system (CMS). Why is this? I suspect there are several reasons:

Speed – using a tool like WordPress you can circumnavigate some of the process and workflow associated with a big enterprise CMS and get messages live as soon as you need them
Flexibility – WordPress and tools like it can handle pretty much any content you throw at it, whether text, images, audio, video
Conversation – the inbuilt commenting engine in WordPress means you can have a discussion with journalists and other media outlets – again, not the sort of thing that happens often on a corporate CMS

One way that such a platform can be used is to develop online news releases, rather than the more static traditional variety. Rather than sending out a PDF or Word document to journalists, the release can b published online, and the link sent out to people – so if there are any amendments made, the latest version is always the one that’s out there.

Photos, videos, related links and documents to download can all be embedded in there as well, so everyone has all the available media resources to work with as well.

What’s more, this way of doing things ensures a bit of visibility, and findability too. Rather than sending your release to the list of people you know, which is obviously pretty finite, by making it searchable online, many different people are likely to find it, and make use of it, whether they are newspapers or hyperlocal bloggers or whoever.

If you’re interested in developing a digital press office, or newsroom, at your organisation, do get in touch!

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