Tweets and news from the first Talk About Local unconference to take place in Cardiff, Wales – looking at issues around local publishing 2011

This article titled “Talk About Local Unconference 2011 gets under way in Cardiff” was written by Hannah Waldram, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 2nd April 2011 13.53 UTC Community publishers met in Cardiff today to talk about issues surrounding promoting your local area online. The first Talk About Local Unconference to take place in Wales, roughly 80 people met at the Atrium in Adamsdown for a day of tea, coffee, tweeting and sessions on all issues which affect local bloggers. Sessions, organised ad hoc in an ‘unconference’ style, looked at hyperlocal bloggers and councils, elections, law, issues around content, making money and supporting each other in a community were all discussed throughout the day. Attendees included Twitterers, bloggers, web publishers, photographers and anyone with an interest in producing content online about a place important to them – travelling from Edinburgh, Leeds, Isle of Wight, London and across the UK. Session topics were pitched and then posted onto a day schedule to run throughout the day. Networking and chatting among hyperlocal publishers will continue into the evening at Gwdihw Cafe Bar. The event was supported by Guardian Local and Rightmove. We’ve been tweeting from the event today along with others on Twitter using the hashtag #TAL11. Scroll down this Storify to follow tweets from the beginning of the day. Also see this live blog from Talk About Local here. If you went to the unconference or have any comments about it – feel free to leave them in the comment box below.

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Are you a Local blogger?  On April 2nd Cardiff is to host an Unconference event for Talk about Local. Including hyperlocal sites such as Splott Online.

This article titled “Talk About Local Unconference to take place in Cardiff” was written by Hannah Waldram, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 28th February 2011 13.11 UTC Cardiff people with a passion for promoting their local area are invited to the first Talk About Local unconference to be held in Wales. The event invites bloggers, Twitterers, web publishers, photographers – anyone who publishes online about a place important to them – for networking, sharing ideas, thrashing out problems and debating issues around local blogging. This time Guardian Local is teaming up with the lovely folk at Talk About Local to hold the first event in the city – which is free. Make sure you put Saturday 2 April at the Atrium in your diary and sign up for your ticket online here. Don’t worry if you see you’re on a waiting list – tickets are released in batches depending on demand so just add you’re name to the list. The ‘unconference’ style of the event means there’s no formal programme or set schedule – attendees can pitch discussion topics or session ideas and then dip in and out of workshops as they please throughout the day. They’ll be some food and time for chatting – and we usually decamp to a local pub afterwards for drinks, more chatting, and maybe even another round of the celebrated Talk About Local unawards. We hope to see a really good representation from the Welsh blogosphere there – and especially all the great hyperlocal sites which have been developing in Cardiff. We’ve a got a public RSS feed of the Cardiff hyperlocals we follow – including Splott Online, Llandaff News, My Whitchurch, Living Mags, and We Are Cardiff, among others – but you can also leave details of your site in the comments section below. Hyperlocal doesn’t have to be a local news website either – if you run a local food blog, arts and culture Twitter feed, photography group – whatever it is about – there’s so much everyone can share by coming together. Even if you don’t publish content on the web anywhere and you’re just interested in the hyperlocal scene or you’d like to publish online and would like some support it’d be great to see you there. William Perrin, the founder of Talk About Local, said: “It’s great to be coming to Cardiff. Talk About Local loves to help people share their passion for writing or publishing about places that are important to them. “Some marevllous places in Wales are celebrated online by outstanding writers and prhotographers and with Guardian Local and the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries we want to provide a chance for people to get together at the Atrium on 2 April. “We also welcome along people new to blogging or publishing online or tweeting but want to find a voice online.” The last Talk About Local unconference held in conjunction with Guardian Local was in Leeds last year – we ran a liveblog from the event here.

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I've just heard about the British weather photographer of the year competition and decided to enter myself. This provided me with a nice opportunity to look back through my photographs of the summer on Flickr to see if I could find something appropriate. I browsed through my pictures of rain and a few summer seaside scenes and then lost a bit of confidence. I have pictures of light, pictures of scenes affected by weather but nothing I could really call specifically "weather photography". My thoughts turned to extreme weather – tornadoes, floods, ice storms etc but I don't seem to have witnessed many of those recently, not with a handy camera ready anyway. Then it occurred to me I was being far too literal in my interpretation of the competition requirements:

…to find the best amateur photographer of the British elements. Judged by top professionals and experts in the field of photography and weather, 12 finalists will be chosen for the flair, technique and originality they use in capturing British weather.

I've got it down to two photographs that might fit the bill here, the first is a picture of sunlight shining through gaps in the clouds over the sea near the Worms Head, Gower, South Wales. If you click through and look at the large or original sized photo I think it looks quite stunning, and it was quite an unusual weather pattern to observe for me, even if it might happen in such places more regularly than I imagine. 

The second picture I'm considering is one of the dried up lake bed during an extended period of drought.

The patterns made by the drying out process in the mud make interesting shapes, and this one looks a bit like a map of Australia, a country where drought is a more familiar problem than southern Britain.

Whichever I decide, (suggestions?) or maybe I can submit both, you can have a chance to vote for me if you feel like it there, but probably more likely and preferable anyway, would be to enter one of your own weather photographs in which case do please leave your link in the comments below.

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I’ve just read a message on the ukcider community email list which warrants a response on the meta level about how online communities can be a fantastic resource for research and tapping into a multitude of volunteer information and advice, but only when approached in the right way. Journalists are usually the worst culprits, depending on the domain, and PHD candidates can be a bit single minded too, but anybody could fall into a similar trap and end up disappointed so I’ll try to provide an explanation of how to communicate with online communities and how not to do it. First the quote: I joined this newsgroup because i have an interest in making cider … and I have found the advice gained very useful. ..the other reason for joining is that I have just completed a book about cider (I am a photographer) When I first joined, two years ago, I posted on here, explaining that I was doing a book and wondered if anyone could help (with suggestions for good people to visit and shoot)…. I was looking for interesting producers, pubs, orchards etc all over the country. I didn’t receive a single reply from anyone on this group to that message and had to do all my own research. The key is to think of an online community as an ongoing conversation. It isn’t just a noticeboard where you can put up a post card for passers by. So you need to ease yourself in gradually, rather than with a fanfare and grand announcement. After a brief introductory post, you may receive a welcome or two, or you may be completely ignored. That’s a random and normal response so there’s no point in getting offended. A group of people is incapable collectively of being “rude” by not responding to any particular individual, and people naturally are more inclined to reply to others that they have already got to know to some extent. So don’t get downhearted in the first few days (or weeks depending on the pace) after joining a new community. Keep on joining in occasional conversations whenever you have something useful to say and after a period people will begin to notice you. Then when they do start to reply it will be as if to somebody they have already been talking to, because they have. Unfortunately though, some people just never seem to get this, and they continue to try and turn every group conversation into a 1-to-1, often appending the suggestion to reply off-list as well, which can be interpreted as somewhat selfish. Should you expect an online community to go away and do all your research for you just because you have deigned to post a request? Most people would not have such expectations but from time to time, such is the good nature of people in general, it will actually happen, and stories about how easily online communities can be mined, picked, deployed and harvested add fuel to the reputation. As the ‘owner’ of a lively googlegroup I even get people trying to save themselves the bother of even joining, hoping I will ask their research questions for them and then pass on all the answers. If they come from a print media or broadcasting background they often demand a telephone interview, thinking that simply dropping their phone number into an email is enough to drive information and resources in their direction.

Posted by Andy Roberts How Not To Use Online Communities