Lee Jordan – Midlands Web Developer Web Development, Photography, Media Production, Social Media Collaboration and Marketing
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Walsall Council Social Media
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Communities Black Country » Walsall
I love the bubbling Social Media scene in Walsall and wider Black Country region, there are a lot of highly talented visionaries in our bostin towns (and in the case of Wolverhampton, cities) chipping away at building a digitally connected community in the Black Country. None more so than Walsall Council who are using Social Media sites, the likes of Twitter and Flickr, to reach out to the electorate and engage at a time when harsh choices are being made about budgets and public services.
Much kudos to Dan Slee (see his blog post on the day here), PR and Social Media Guru at Walsall Council for getting in touch and inviting our flickr community into the inner sanctum of the council chambers to photograph. Together we managed to round up a small bunch of local photographers and Dan took us on a guided tour of some of the things in the Council House you wouldn’t realise were there! A highly sucessful day, leading to further collaboration and I think a great use of Social Media to calm the Modus Vivendi that often exists between local goverment and taxpayers.
Walsall Council tweet from @WalsallCouncil, often link in their tweets to the Walsall flickr group to highlight a picture of the day from any of the groups growing membership. The Council use Twitter to triage complaints, inform the public of events happening in the town and sometimes just have a chat with the local Twittorati!
What amazes me is the range and skills of the people involved in Walsall’s digital future, for example I discovered an amazing online hyperlocal news hub dedicated to Walsall and the surrounding areas called The Yam Yam. With a major network upgrade coming from BT 21cn soon, that’ll place fibre optics under our streets, Walsall could just be one of the places you might, just might not want to dismiss as a place to set up a digital online business!
Posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009
Thanks, Lee.
I’m constantly amazed at how digitally connected Walsall is becoming and how some amazing things are taking shape.
What fascinates me is that things can start off with half an idea and with the creativity and energy of others can become something really unexpected and exciting.
What amazes me is that bigger cities are lagging behind in the kind of activity we in Walsall are experiencing. They are news aggregator-less where we have The Yam Yam.
They don’t even have a #hyperlocal whereas we have several and counting.
I’m keen to see the Council event not just as a one off but as a regular thing.
Step forward yourself for your role in this. You’ve really picked the baton up with your work with the excellent Flickr community. Hats off. Seriously.
You had a very central role in the Council House Flickr meet and I’m looking forward to the others that will follow ; )
Absolutely Dan, we’ve never had the level of sophistication in the tools as we have today and hyperlocal I think is the next big thing for the web. Plus there’s a critical mass of people connecting with each other on a local level, it’s all very exciting.
It’s odd it wasn’t more than 10 years ago we’d be boasting about how we could email someone in New Zealand, now it’s all switched around towards localisation and we’re more likely to move in local circles.
New years resolution, more flickrmeets :)
Good point about e-mailing New Zealand 10 years ago. It was amazing but now its incredible to connect with people nearby.
Good resolution for Flickr meets too.
12 months ago I saw a presentation by Nick Booth (aka @podnosh on Twitter) about how journalism was dead and within five years there would be five blogs about allotments in Walsall alone.
I was sceptical at the time. But could see the possibility . Now as time ticks on I can see it being more than a wild forecast.
(By the way, would never call myself a guru. I’m a keen enthusiast as you are fascinated by this stuff. But as time goes on and I learn more I realise I know less and less ; ) )
It could all be a sign that people are more interested in the closer to home grass roots now, the gritty concerns than the blue sky. I guess journalisim evolves into this new way of doing things, that it’s much more two way than publishing has been in the past, it’s highly democratizing a bit like Indymedia only bigger. The mainstream or nationals could be losing both relevancy and immediacy at a local level.
Yet it’s everyone in the mix, regardless and I love that.
It’ll be interesting to see how localisation takes off on the web and in general, over the next 5 years or so. Farm shops I’ve always thought could use the web, perhaps some allotment, farm shop mashup alliance is coming soon :)
Farm shop blog. Or allotments. I like it. I do. I really do. Just wish I had a farm now to do it with…
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