Saturday was Nottingham’s first MediaCamp (and certainly the first media-related Unconference I’ve known in the city), and I only feel like I’ve just recovered!
This post attempts to pool together everyone’s impressions and online experiences I can gather into a Collective Memory, taking the model suggested by Chris Unitt from Birmingham who attended to talk about the phenomenal success (and jealously, in the case of The Spectator’s Melanie Phillips) of Created in Birmingham.
It’s a work in progress – if you want to add more thoughts or links please do so on the MediaCampNottingham wiki collective memory page or in the comments below and I’ll update this post in a few weeks.
What was MediaCampNottingham?
A semi-structured unconference that lets disparate people from the business and community come together to talk about using media for commercial or social gain. Spanning the themes of Technology, Media, and Culture – we saw in total about 40 people attend throughout the day from a happy mix of backgrounds – a city councillor, a lecturers, theatre practitioners, an Arts Council rep mixed with video bloggers, web developers, brand consultants and a whole range of geek – and non-geek – from the city’s diggerati, plus a few out-of-town guest blogging celebs like Jo Geary from The Times and legendary citizen journalistic Documentally. Georgian micro-complex Lace Market House provided a lovely atmosphere for the, ususally, productive exchanges and a good atmosphere that wasn’t too ‘tech-brow’, where people could share a lively debate.
Anyone could sign up for a session – some were carefully structured presentation of research (like my session on online music for independent music entrepreneurs based on 6 months of academic research. Presentation here, though doesn’t make too much sense with the text!), others more a spontaneous round table coffee and a chat.
Digital Britain Unconference
We were also lucky enough to time our event with the Digital Britain Unconference week, where a whole load of citizen groups from around the UK got together to (largely) challenge and re-shape Lord Carter’s Interim Report. I ran this epic 3 hour session, which ranged from absurd and lively debate (like @documentally’s vision of no longer needing the BBC for Wimbledon as in the future we will install micro-cameras in the tennis balls to direct your own coverage), to some serious gauntlet laying in terms of what we could do to make Nottingham a better city for digital connectivity, and the digital industries.
Interestingly, Nottingham raised many of the same issues as West Midlands Unconference – namely the report should be addressing needs of smaller business and the community, not just corporates, and we need a more ambitious target for both up and download speed connectivity nationally for Britain to stay competitiive.
Here’s a PDF of the response submitted: digital britain unconference mediacamp nottingham
And you can view it online on the Digital Britain Unconference wiki.
Your responses to MediaCampNottingham:
The Twitter Stream for the day was of course lively, from both attendees and virtual onlookers, my favs: @NeilRostance is euphoric, and @Gillogs fears the ‘Geeklter’
Plenty of video responses – here Caron wraps up the day with everyone’s verbal ‘Tweet’ summarising the day, then Drew Davies’ Fear of Projection in complete – a fatanstic one man theatre piece where a junior lecturer realises his projector is talking back to him, before all manner of strangeness ensues…definitely CHECK.THIS. OUT. @documentally and @philcampbell meet the lady of the church for lunch.
Blogs write-ups:
Camilla from Green Light Copywriting writes about Applied Creativity – finding some inspiration surrounded by a strange and interesting collection of techno fanatics.
Jed from Rock Star PR blogs mid-morning on the day (but doh! we need to re-do that Kubla Khan-esque video interview!)
Final thoughts
The day got me seriously thinking again about the power of collaborative innovation to get things moving – particularly in these times with cash shrinking everywhere. We were able to get everyone here and do the event on the basis of goodwill, and keep it free. And, thanks to the debate stemming form Chris Unitt’s session on Created in Birmingham, I’ve now found other collaborators to revive an old idea of setting up some kind of blog based network for creative Nottingham – more on this in a month or so.
Do we need cash to change things in Nottingham? It helps, but not necessarily. Do we need to connect more? Definitely yes, but a face-to-face is better than a social networked way sometimes. Structure and purpose are good. The challenge for me, particularly post Digital Britain, will be seeing how our ideas can filter up to the relevant big businesses and public bodies and get them to listen and talk with us, not TO us, a little more.
Thanks to:
Nick from Lace Market House for the free loan of the beautiful bulding, great serviced office (with exciting co-work space plans afoot I eagerly look forward to hearing more about), Excell Solutions for providing sponsorship for creche and other stuff, Caron from PCM Creative for setting it in motion, and pretty much organising everything! BIG thanks! Lucy, Ged, Babu, Edward and anyone else I’m forgetting on the steering group and volunteers on the day. THAAANKs.
What have I missed?
Add your blogs/links/thought in comments or MediaCampNottingham wiki collective memory page- I will update this post in a few weeks.
What next?
Who’s game for MediaCamp 10 or possibly late 2009? What should we do differently? How can we get more people (and more diverse people) along (to speak and attend?) How can we raise some sponsorship cash (if we need it?)
Questions/answers in comments please!
