Make Manchester Proud

March 18th, 2009

Yesterday was a day of firsts for me; TV shows, meeting the Mayor, being told to ‘go on go on’ by a genuine Irish person…

All of these momentous events were down to the launch of the Make Manchester Proud Campaign which is part of the Dublin-based Niall Mellon Township Trust.

The charity is searching for 70 Mancunians to travel with 1,000 Irish volunteers to South Africa to build houses in Townships and we helped them to launch this at a very busy event yesterday at the Midland Hotel.

The TV appearance was on the Channel M Breakfast show, thankfully at that hour of the day it wasn’t me but Charlie O’Kelly of the charity who chatted with the presenters on the red sofa.

Meeting the Mayor came later as she came along to the event, green St Patrick’s Day hair and all,  to show her support for the charity. We were also joined by City and Ireland keeper Shay Given who was a good sport and merrily posed with a hard hat and shovel.

Being St Patrick’s Day the ‘go on go on’ was an offer of alcohol but given that I was signing in the ‘dignitaries of the city’ at the time I politely refused.

The launch event was such a success that I have really high hopes of the people of Manchester to make this charity a success and if the support we’ve had so far is anything to go by I’m sure I won’t be disappointed.

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Leeds Girl Geek Dinner – part 2

March 12th, 2009

After all the excitement and all the planning – we ended up having to miss the big event in Leeds tonight.

The team over at Democracy Towers has all been putting in lots of effort into the media launch of the charity we’re working with – five days and counting – so it’s a case of all hands on deck.

So, if you want the inside story on the latest Leeds GGD then catch up with @lindabroughton a good friend who heads up NTI Leeds at Old Broadcasting House.

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iPod’s first words

March 12th, 2009

Yesterday Apple released a new iPod shuffle, and it talks.

No really, apparently it’s just too little to have a screen (it’s smaller than an AA battery), and this is why rather than showing you what’s playing, it tells you.

How clever is that? What I’m coming to learn though, as I become acquainted with my new MacBook, is that the whole damn operation is just clever. Not in a geeky showy-offy way either, in an actual, practical useful clever way.

Why trawl through loads of windows on your desktop when you could swing the cursor into the corner and get them to line up neatly? Why change all the settings on each of your iPhone functions separately when you could have them gathered together under one button?

When I read the stories about the new shuffle though it dawned on me that perhaps Apple are too clever for their own good. A couple of years ago I got a lovely shiny 80GB iPod classic as a present and it’s still going strong. So I’m reluctant to get an iPhone (I have a phone too you see) and I definitely don’t need a shuffle.

I’m sure there are a few people who’ll throw their old non-talking shuffle aside and rush out to buy the new one, but to the rest of us the old one’s still working fine thanks very much.

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Facebook ‘Temporarily’ Loses Your Photo’s

March 12th, 2009

You may have noticed over the weekend that some of your photos on Facebook were replaced with a “question mark” graphic.

You were not alone; the hard drive failure causing this disruption affected 10-15% of the photos uploaded. It may come as no surprise but Facebook is not only the number 1 social network in the UK, but also the largest photo hosting site with over 10 billion photos.

Don’t Panic: Facebook has reassured users that the photos will be restored early next week.

Facebook has cut a smart move using its blog to reassure its users. Especially when issues such as this arise, users want to vent their anger somewhere and be kept in the loop as to what’s happening with ‘their’ content. Facebook doesn’t respond to comments directly but at least they are keeping users up-to-date with a personal touch.

Apparently ‘Evan, an engineer, is working alongside Doug Beaver, Myles Uyema and the rest of the photo storage team to restore your photos as quickly as possible.’

Thanks Evan, Doug and Myles, keep up the good work.

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Leeds Girl Geek Dinner

March 12th, 2009

Charlie and I are both looking forwards to Leeds Girl Geek Dinner tonight. I really like the community over the Pennines, and it’s nice of them to make us Manchester lasses feel like part of the group.

The speakers tonight are Lucy Wurstlin, new Digital Commissioning Manager for 4iP in Yorkshire and Humber and Emma Mcgrattan Senior VP of Engineering at Ingres.

The Girl Geek concept was founded by Sarah Blow in 2005 out of frustration about being one of the only females attending technical events. The concept has expanded around the world and now brings together female geeks at all levels of geekdom together to share ideas over a glass of wine.

There are still some places left if you fancy coming to the event from 6 – 9pm at the Loft in Leeds – if you can’t make it then check back tomorrow and I’ll share the news!

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Journo for a day

March 9th, 2009

Last Thursday I spent the day as a newshound at the Manchester Evening News.

Democracy had bid for the pleasure at Twestival last month and I was the lucky recipient of a day as a journalist with self confessed Blogger, journalist, foodie and social media junky Sarah Hartley.

I met Sarah bright and early at Urbis to take a peak at Channel M‘s Breakfast Show. I was amazed by the levels of calm in the studio; that was until we popped down to the gallery and heard what was going on behind the scenes and in everyone’s ears.

Following a quick dash across the city I met the very charming people at the Newsdesk then headed out to meet journalist Chris Osuh at the County Court.

After a morning learning about court reporting I returned for the 12.30 conference where the editors of each section share their stories for the next day’s paper.

Dianne Bourne of The Diary Page then injected some glamour into the day as the three of us went out for a lovely lunch at San Carlo (apparently a celeb favourite although sadly I didn’t spot any).

Back to it and a whistle-stop tour of the important people of the Newsroom including Business and Sports editors as well as the Sub Editors.

What struck me most was the way the whole newsroom is getting involved in providing online content alongside putting together a paper which is published three times a day.

Quick stop at the 4pm conference then off to the spectacular Great John Street Hotel with Dianne to meet Debbie Rush (Corrie’s Anna Windass) and her lovely family for a Mother’s Day feature.

The cakes that formed part of the afternoon-tea themed interview sustained me until 7.30, and 12 hours after I’d met Sarah I’d definitely got the full picture of life at the MEN.

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Katie Brunt: Guest blogger

March 5th, 2009

Last summer, I scored a placement at Democracy PR – and while all my fellow students were serving in bars, traveling the world or lazing about – I was learning what it was like to work for a small agency intent on changing the world of PR.

Returning to Man Met was a bit of a culture shock, but I’ve been keeping in touch with the team and when Jen asked if I’d do a little guest blogging I jumped at the chance. After spending most of my time blogging about what I had for tea, sharing some of my research about social media and digital with you guys is a big step up.

So, I’m just about to complete my degree in advertising and brand management whilst writing a paper all about online communities which I will present to some social media big wigs in a few months time (I’ll keep you posted, let me know if you want a copy) until then, i promise to share with you lots of the online discoveries I make.

Talk soon

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Facebook changes – why we’re interested

March 5th, 2009

Yesterday Facebook announced a series of updates that will go live next Wednesday.

To most users they will help to further customise their FB experience, but to PR professionals working in the social media space, they have the potential to make a huge difference.

OK so, quick round up of the changes if you don’t know about them yet!

The homepage will put the news feed at the centre of the page and new features include a filter as well as a sidebar that highlights the most popular topics and links that are currently being discussed by your friends. And with something close to Twitter envy, the news feed will now be updated in real-time as opposed to the old feed which was only updated a few times per hour.

Now, onto the interesting stuff. The big news for brand communicators is the changes to Facebook Pages. Fan Pages have previously been a bit left out of the FB social community thing unable to tap into the viral element of the site.

The new style pages work a lot more like regular user profiles so that everybody on the site will have the same type of presence making it easier for brands to feel like part of the online community. Status updates will now appear in news feeds alongside those of friends.

This is important – it allows brands to use their FB profile to be both social and promotional which could potentially help in making social media activity more measurable.

Those of you who have a fan page – you’ve a week before it is republished using the new style – so it might be worth editing the info and getting ready for the relaunch – you’ve got 6 days and counting!

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Speak to a geek

March 3rd, 2009

Last Friday I found myself in the headquarters of the MDDA (Manchester Digital Development Agency, although I will agree that it sounds like a Bond baddy benevolent trust).

I was there to meet a couple of the chaps involved with ‘Speak to a geek’ – an event created to help charity organisations look at ways to use social media and the internet to develop communities beyond their existing website.

Social media and digital communications are becoming increasingly important to the charity sector – they offer a low cost option to reach out to a much wider audience and it was great to see more than 15 charities turn up for the event, ready to pick the brains of the “Geeks” on everything from WordPress and Twitter to RSS feeds and google apps.

Our own work for the Niall Mellon Township Trust project, will be using many of the social media channels open to us alongside more traditional PR tactics and with a pre-launch event due to take place on the 17 March 2009 (yes – that’s St Patrick’s Day) we’re quickly getting our plans up and running.

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Social engagement of charities

March 1st, 2009

This week, we heard that a project we’ve been looking at for a while was about to be signed off.

The Niall Mellon Township Trust, one of Ireland’s most well know and respected charities, has confirmed it plans to launch in the UK – and has chosen Manchester as its first destination.

The Trust, est 2002, produces quality social housing for impoverished communities in the townships of South Africa. In year 1, they completed 150 homes – in total, they’ve completed 11,000 homes and have big plans for the future.

The charity operates year round in SA, but twice a year, thousands of volunteers take part in the Building Blitz, a week long building project that, in 2008, produced 253 new homes.

Social engagement will form a big part of the charity launch and ongoing campaign to build awareness in Manchester and then the UK.

Anyone who wants to get involved in the project can get in touch with me at jennifer.ogrady@democracypr.com.

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