introduction: social media & lgbt youth project

I am about to commence a social media project in conjunction with LGBT Youth North West, a regional body supporting LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) young people and LGBT Youth organisations. The project will be segmented into three key areas:

• Blog and integration with a variety of other social networking sites – Development of a blog / forum to inform people about LGBT Youth North West as well as giving a voice to the young people involved. Allowing them to contribute features/articles and make comments.
• Video – Production of video ‘advertisements’ to promote LGBT Youth North West, as well as associated groups Lesbian & Gay Youth Manchester and LIK:T. As well as ad hoc filming of events, interviews etc.
• Audio – Conducting and recording interviews across five generations regarding their experiences being a LGBT young person. The idea is to create a set of oral histories that can then be distributed as podcasts. There will also be the ongoing recording of ‘vox pops’ to assist with generating content for the blog.

A key facet of the project will be a process of engagement and consultation with the young people. In addition to ongoing training with those involved with the running of LGBT Youth North West and the sustaining the project in the long term.

Image c/o Bernt Rostad licensed under Creative Commons.

a blog to remember

As mentioned in earlier posts as part of the MA Social Media programme we have been undertaking community projects with organisations within Greater Manchester. In this case this has meant working closely with the St Ann’s Hospice in order to promote their major fundraising event of the year, the Manchester Midnight Walk.

As part of this ongoing project we have started a blog to chronicle the run up to the event on the 2nd of July 2010. The platform chosen to do this is Posterous. This helps provide a simple and easy to use blogging platform, and a system that can be used to maintain the blog once our involvement has come to an end.

Another advantage to using Posterous is that it means the hospice’s staff, fundraisers, patients and supporters can also contribute quickly and easily to the blog by sending posts via e-mail. These posts are sent directly to Posterous and can then be moderated before being published on the site. Hopefully this will help create a community of advocates for St Ann’s and the Manchester Midnight Walk.

Google analytics will be used to monitor and track traffic and referrals to the blog. It is hoped this information can then be used to improve the blog as the project moves forward and to gain increased views.

geekery – part five

I think I may already own an iPad… if all I need are the components above!

Image c/o Rego – twitter.com/w3bdesign licensed under Creative Commons.

a right royal mobile phone fail

New Year, time for a new mobile phone or so I thought instead today I endured my own Carol Beer moment. Being the cautious type I have always mitigated the risk of huge mobile phone bills by sticking to pay as you go. However looking to upgrade my handset this time around I have decided to take the plunge and get hooked up to a contract – I must start to realise I am no longer in my improvised student days. My trip to the 02 store however was less than fruitful and all because of one address, two computer systems and two postcodes.

The size of my apartment building means that there are two postcodes depending upon your flat number. This has been a problem in the past however I have managed to receive post, pay bills and be located as when needs be… until it came to 02’s system for setting up new contracts. We tried multiple combinations of apartment numbers, building numbers and postcode’s but to no avail.

A call to the o2 ‘command centre’ and it appears the address is not registered with Royal Mail (a later check on their website and this doesn’t appear to be the case) – the system on which o2 rely on for it’s address data, which makes perfect sense… you don’t want people saying they live in Chako Paul City after all!

What about a manual override I hear you cry, because as fantastic as such systems are they can’t always account for all variables i.e. the human factor. Well… computer says no!!! Leaving my only option as updating my bank details… as I think moving house might be a little extreme on this occasion.

Image c/o benjibot licensed under Creative Commons.

all presenting and correct

Here is the presentation we delivered this week for our research module (I have slightly tweaked this version for being posted online) – which focused on our community project with St Ann’s Hospice. It was our first piece of assessment and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to be pleased with the results.

talking heads

We have been practicing audio recording today to get ready for the production of our individual social media projects (more about that another time). We got to grips quite easily with the Marantz recorder and microphone – quickly being able to hit the streets to look for some willing volunteers to speak to and most importantly to record (easier said than done).

Once back at the edit suite we put together a rough cut of some of the clips in Audition. Here are the results, which I have uploaded to AudioBoo – asking the probing question What’s the worst thing about students?

Ideally if we had had a little more time today we would have worked more on leveling out the balance across the entire track. Though all in all it worked out well considering we were just experimenting.

Image c/o Nic’s Event’s licensed under Creative Commons.

the death of powerpoint?

We are presenting the initial overview of our community project for St Ann’s Hospice this week. For the occasion we have put together a PowerPoint (well technically a Keynote) presentation.

In the past I have endured some horrific presentations therefore I hope we have got the balance between content and composition correct. It also got me thinking about what alternative tools are out there that can be used for the same purpose. I had a look and came across Prezi.

I was really excited by the potential of Prezi which offers an online system for creating ‘zooming presentations’ – see this example about the pedagogy of blogging. It enables to create presentations that are visualising interesting but also seem to be very conducive to showing relationships and flows of data or ideas.

Hopefully our more traditional presentation will work this time, however Prezi is certainly a tool I will consider using in the future.

Image c/o HikingArtist.com licensed under Creative Commons.

social media stars

Social media… the final frontier!!!

As I have previously blogged I am currently undertaking a social media related community project on behalf of St Ann’s Hospice. Today we met with some members of the St Ann’s team to discuss how to move the project forward and the areas we are going to be focusing on.

It was agreed that our project will be centred around the promotion of the Manchester Midnight Walk 2010, for which the theme is ‘A Night to Remember’ and becoming a St Ann’s Hospice star.

As a result of the meeting it was decided that the project will split into three key areas;

- Social media education

- Social media campaign – conducted across a variety of platforms YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc.

- Social media evaluation – split between accessing the social media ‘training’ and the promotion of the Manchester Midnight Walk

The next stage is to produce a detailed timetable for all the proposed activities and to ensure all parties involved are briefed and engaged accordingly. As the team moves forward I hope to chronicle some of activities and findings here which will provide some insights into the use of social media for charity campaigns and fundraising.

NOTE: For more information about taking part in the Manchester Midnight Walk read my post at rainycitytales.wordpress.com

Image c/o nasa1fan/MSFC licensed under Creative Commons.

geekery – part four

In homage to the adverse weather conditions in the UK today meet a snow Dalek… or take a look at my attempt to start getting to grips with some video editing in iMovie (and the white stuff in Manchester) >>>

Image c/o thebadastronomer licensed under Creative Commons.

i spy

As you will have seen from previous posts I have been learning about different types of research methods. One such method that has been utilised across many disciplines within academic research is that of observation.

Therefore as part of my learning journey I undertook a series of observations at a place I regularly visit. The observations were undertaken at matches played at Old Trafford during December 2010. As expected there were activities observed that you could have potentially assumed would take place prior to this exercise. These included:

- Singing / chanting – Focused on certain players mostly Rooney and ex-MUFC player Eric Cantona. As well as a lot being focused on the ‘enemy’ Manchester City FC, Leeds United and Liverpool FC – despite the fact none of these teams were being played during the period of observation.

- Swearing – which was far more prevalent than would be expected in other environments.

- Eating and drinking – both before and during the match many supporters were consuming food and drink (including alcoholic drinks) bought from the concessions within the stadium. However it was observed that some fans had brought with them packed lunches and flasks.

- Supporters shouting abuse at opposition players and MUFC players alike. As well as the referee.

- Supporters trying to provide advice to players and the manager from the stands.

- Match analysis and running commentaries being given by fans to each other. Including reminiscing about matches played a number of years ago.

However the two most interesting observations surrounded the impact of the media and technology on the experience of attending a football match.

Firstly it was observed that when controversial or key moment of the match took place other supporters sat nearby turned their backs on the pitch to try to watch the incident being replayed on the televisions located in the hospitality boxes located behind their seats.

The second interesting observation was the volume of people using mobile telephones during halftime for making calls, texting and going online. I also logged onto Twitter during this period to see how many people were tweeting about the matches and many supporters both at the match or elsewhere were posting comments/messages.

From this it can be seen how the technique of observation allows the researcher to get a deep understanding of a particular behavior or activity. However researchers need to be aware of some the disadvantages which include the impact of researcher bias, the time consuming nature of this form of research and the reliability of the outputs (see Brown).

Main image c/o toksuede licensed under Creative Commons.