Isy Suttie, Channel 4 Peep Show star and future Formula 1 driver Jon Lancaster get behind 7 Wonders in 7 Days

Our social media fundraising project 7 Wonders in 7 Days continues to gain momentum with comedienne Isy Suttie who plays Dobby on Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show and future Formula 1 driver Jon Lancaster participating in a second social network powered Q&A for the project tomorrow.

The celebs are involved in a Twitter Q&A delivered in association with YoungMinds, one of the charities Real Fresh TV founder Chi-chi Ekweozor is aiming to raise £777,000 for through a globe criss-crossing trip to see the new 7 wonders of the world in 7 days in October.

YoungMinds ambassador and Renault Series racing driver Jon Lancaster will be joining Chi-chi and her social media team on Twitter between 2pm and 3pm tomorrow to answer people’s questions about life in the fast lane.  Isy Suttie will be connecting over email, sharing her enthusiasm for the charity.

YoungMinds is the UK’s only charity dedicated to improving the mental health of young people.

With Chi-chi’s help all day tomorrow, they are asking people to name 7 things that make life easier and 7 things that make life difficult. To join in, tweet your response between 10am and 5pm, including the Twitter hashtag #7w7d.

Jon Lancaster, YoungMinds ambassador and Renault Series racing driver who is tipped to be one of the UK’s new Formula 1 racing drivers said:

“As an ambassador for YoungMinds I am aware that there is much more that can be done for the young people that have mental health problems.  Chi-chi’s fundraising project to visit the seven new wonders of the world is an ambitious and inspiring project which will help raise vital funds for this important charity.”

The Twitter Q&A follows the successful Facebook Q&A for Diabetes UK, a UK first. Diabetes UK is another charity being supported through the 7 Wonders in 7 Days project.  Read more about the Facebook Q&A for Diabetes UK.

Both social media events have been organised to raise awareness of the competition to join Chi-chi on the trip in October.

She is looking for seven lucky people to join her on a never-been-done-before trip to see the new seven wonders of the world in 7 days.

The new seven wonders of the world are the Taj Mahal in India, Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, Chichen Itza in Mexico, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, Machu Picchu in Peru and Petra in Jordan.

She is asking applicants to create a 60 second YouTube video about what you’d give as a dream donation to one of the seven charities and why.   For an example, here’s a recent video entry.

Each lucky Travel Companion wins a three day holiday to one of the new seven wonders of the world.

Find out more about the project and the Twitter Q&A.

To hear more from Jon Lancaster (@Lancaster4F1 on Twitter) and Isy Suttie (@IsySuttie on Twitter), join @7wondersin7days on Twitter tomorrow from 10am to 5pm.

Image Credit: The Electric, Birmingham ; f1prospects.com

Related posts:

1. Real Fresh TV hosts the UK’s first Facebook Q&A tomorrow, Join Us!
2. Using Twitter to Raise Money for Charity AKA Social Media For Social Good – #smc_mcr
3. Landmine Charity MAG Kicks Off Ambitious Poetry Prize Using Social Media

Just a short blog post to test fixing a problem with the blog!

Please bear with us.

Related posts:

1. On being platform-agnostic

Brendan Dawes, creative director of digital design company magneticNorth shows off the new VisitManchester.com on his Apple iPad

Here comes that promised blog post about the launch of the new and improved VisitManchester.com.

I had the pleasure of attending the launch of the new VisitManchester.com website in the rather salubrious settings of the Portico Library last week.

VisitManchester.com is the destination website for Manchester, managed by Marketing Manchester the tourist board for the city.

The Portico Library is a subscription library focused on 19th century literature housed in a Grade II* neo-classical listed building on Mosley Street, Manchester city centre.

It is absolutely gorgeous inside.

Opened in 1806, one of the secretaries of the library was Peter Mark Roget who began his famous Thesaurus there.

I joined over a hundred guests invited to this exclusive preview event of the new destination site for Manchester, dubbed in the press release as, “a first stage in a brand new approach to the digital promotion of the city”.

We were hosted by Nick Johnson, chairman of Marketing Manchester, Shaun Fensom, chairman of Manchester Digital, the trade association for the region’s digital and marketing industry and Brendan Dawes, creative director of the digital design company behind the new incarnation of the website, magnetic North, who presided over a presentation and panel discussion about the new site.

It’s not often one gets invited to the launch of a website and one got the impression that no expense had been spared to make us feel welcome: there was great food from Heathcotes, the celebrated Manchester restaurant at the end.

My belated thanks to the team at Marketing Manchester for a lovely evening.

Here’s a great summary video of the event for those that couldn’t attend.  A short clip of a demo of the site on an iPad I captured with Brendan is embedded below.

During the Q&A session with the audience after Brendan’s impressive presentation, I asked the panel what was being offered to web developers who might want to use the ‘Manchester API’ launched as part of the new website.

The “Application Programming Interface for the city”, touted in the event’s press release as “the heart of the progressive strategy and one that in effect listens to the web and collects together relevant information from social media feeds and other sources about what to do and discover in Manchester”, appeared to be a collection of cleverly sourced content about Manchester on the social web.

Fresh content about Manchester from Twitter feeds, Vimeo and YouTube videos and Flickr pictures are presented to visitors on the new VisitManchester.com in a visually engaging river of news that puts a new spin on aggregating social media content.

You can view this feature in action on the site by clicking on the ‘Manchester Now’ link in the top right hand corner of visitmanchester.com.

As the press release continues, the Manchester API “has been named ‘FABRIC’ in tribute to the city’s past”.

In addition, the site presents tourist information about the city alongside helpful features like ‘Nearby hotels’ for whatever information you are viewing, all wrapped in an ingenious design that keeps the user’s visit contained on a single page.

You can also Save Content you view on the site without having to log in.  Try it.

The answer from the panel was that the Manchester API is not currently available in this release but will be in coming months.

At present, the site is populated using carefully curated social media from around the web.

Whilst this was a bit of an anti-climax, I don’t think this it is necessarily a bad thing as allowing any old content tagged ‘Manchester’ to show up on the site would be a very bad idea during a local derby, for example!

In response, I suggested the creation of a Manchester tourism-specific hashtag.

This would ensure that content populating the stream of social media content in the site’s background would at least relate to specific information delivered on the site.

It could also potentially resolve issues with sourcing content from users.

Otherwise it would appear that information delivered by the Manchester API is nothing more than content a savvy web user can easily find themselves through a basic search on Twitter or Flickr or YouTube.

Having said all that, I came away very impressed by the new VisitManchester.com website.  I’ve visited it again since the launch and feel it justifies some of the hyperbole used in the press release!

Here’s a short video of Brendan demoing the site on his Apple iPad.  Neat!

Here’s another write up about the event by Nigel Barlow, co-founder of Inside The M60, Manchester’s new hyper local website.

What do you think?  Where you there?  Any suggestions for a hashtag for Manchester tourism?

Related posts:

1. Smile, it’s Monday. Mobile Monday Manchester launches with a bang
2. Manchester Social Media Surgery welcomes Crain’s Manchester Business
3. Record Turnout for Free Social Media Surgery for Manchester Businesses

Following requests from attendees of Real Fresh TV’s Social Media Starter Course, I’m pleased to announce we’ll now be offering a Social Media Monitoring Training Course.

Full course details to follow in the next blog post!

Related posts:

1. Social Media Monitoring Training Course Overview
2. Practical Marketing Training: The Learning Social Media By Doing Course
3. 3 Key Takeaways from the Introduction to Social Media for Media Professionals Training Course

The funny things people say…

To mark the six month anniversary of the Manchester Social Media Surgery, I’ve compiled 5 great questions asked by attendees that highlight objections businesses have to using social media like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for marketing.

Social Media Surgery events are free monthly events that help Manchester businesses embrace the social media revolution in order to grow and market their companies.

Each Manchester Social Media Surgery offers real life advice and case studies from an experienced panel of digital and social media marketers who discuss social media projects and issues presented by the audience.

The first, organised rather hastily by myself in November 2009, took place the next month at Manchester Metropolitan University’s business incubator, Innospace.

Despite the almost non-existent promotion, companies that attended included Prospects, the official graduate careers service, highlighting the value businesses saw in attending.

Since that first event, the events have blossomed with attendees ranging from managers at IT and web development firms, letting agencies(!) and Greater Manchester weekly business paper, Crains Manchester Business, as reported last month.

Here come 5 great questions put to our Social Media Surgeons at recent events:

1. “I’d rather be outside than being sat at my computer all day doing social media. What are other people like about this?”

A fantastic question posed by an attendee from non profit Actors Centre at the May Manchester Social Media Surgery event.

It highlights the concern that the real expense with social media marketing, time, outweighs the benefits.

Thankfully the esteemed panel of Surgeons at the event put paid to this:

Matt Hackett, (@mattorchard on Twitter) Manager, Digital & Marketing Recruitment Team at Orchard answered:

“Twitter is actually a really good tool for marketing to people’s pockets, a lot of people use mobile phones to access Twitter.”

Nigel Barlow, (@nigelbarlow on Twitter) Freelance journalist and co-founder of hyper-local news site for Manchester, Inside the M60 continued:

“Compared to how things were when I started in business, we are actually living in constant information overload. Twitter and Facebook are tools that allow you to control all that information.”

Katie Moffat, (@katiemoffat on Twitter) Social media consultant, organiser of Manchester Twestival and Manchester Digital council member and trainer for e-consultancy went on to explain:

“…it’s your choice of who you accept connections from on Twitter or Facebook. Making connections with people in business is human, we are social beings. Social media makes it easier to make those connections with real people that live in different geographical locations around the world.”

2.”How do you make people view something? Why does one video get more views than another?”

Another question from the May Manchester Social Media Surgery.

Katie Moffat answered:

“The reason why people would view a video or follow a person is about ‘added value’. This can mean a myriad of things, being funny, sharing information etc.”

Sarah Hartley, (@foodiesarah on Twitter) Local launch editor for The Guardian and esteemed food blogger added that:

“Political blogs were given a legitimacy during the recent elections with lots of political bloggers being invited as pundits on TV shows”.

Matt Hackett concludes:

“social media allows you to have a live and constant update about what you do and what you have done. It’s an update on the one-off ‘user testimonial’.”

3. “Any suggestions on the best way to manage our social media activity? I have succeeded in connecting our facebook page with Twitter, how would I then link this in with our website?”

This question was asked at the April Manchester Social Media Surgery.

The answer was that it depends on the underlying technology powering the website.

As I answered then:

“If your website is using the hosted version of a blogging platform like WordPress you can set it up to send a tweet to Twitter and post an update to your Facebook page every time you write a blog post.”

4. What is the difference between a Facebook Group and Facebook Page?

Answered by Bruce Thomas of social media agency, Modern English at the March Manchester Social Media Surgery:

Facebook Groups are best for lobbying – Pros: can mass mail people. Cons: Cannot view groups outside Facebook.

Fan Pages are best for companies/entities – Pros: viewable outside Facebook. Cons: Cannot mass mail ‘fans’.

5. How do you use social media to extend the reach of the organisation?

Asked at the February Manchester Social Media Surgery by a representative from Chetham’s School of Music.

Answered by Adrian Slatcher, (@adrianslatcher on Twitter) Senior Digital Development officer, Manchester Digital Development Agency, MDDA:

“Chethams should be considering using social media to connect groups, alumni, friends and supporters going forward.

Look at creating the content now and plan for a long term process of using social media tools for outreach. Facebook a potentially very helpful tool for Chethams, for example.”

Dave Mee (@davemee on Twitter), director of digital interactive solutions company, Tandot and co-founder of community hackspace, Manchester Digital Laboratory added:

“It’s also about trying to guide and connect people from the various different networks who associate with Chethams. It would be interesting to see how people move on from the Facebook page to the Flickr or YouTube page, for instance.”

And that’s it!

What would you like to see more of at the Social Media Surgery? Please take a minute to fill our short online survey. Thanks!

The next Manchester Social Media Surgery is on Tuesday 8th June from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at the offices of the Manchester Digital Development Agency, MDDA, Lower Ground Floor, 117-119 Portland Street, Manchester M1 6ED.

Sign up to attend.

Here’s a 12 second video from the May Manchester Social Media Surgery.

Related posts:

1. Record Turnout for Free Social Media Surgery for Manchester Businesses
2. Your Burning Questions Wanted: Using Twitter for Marketing
3. Real Fresh TV’s Monthly Social Media Events Guide – June

Chi-chi Ekweozor meets Ruth Badger the most famous star of popular BBC show The Apprentice

I’ve been on the excellent LEAD programme at the University of Salford’s Salford Business School since September last year.

LEAD is a leadership development programme developed and piloted by Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) in conjunction with the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA).

Since its inception in 2004, over 150 businesses have benefited from the programme which combines personal development of the owner-manager with support and development of the business itself.

The LEAD programme: crucial help for overcoming the Busy Fool syndrome

As someone who has suffered from the tendency to be a ‘busy fool’, the LEAD programme has been instrumental in helping me really nail down what my business Real Fresh TV is good at and what it is positioned to be really successful at doing: helping people how to grow and market their businesses on sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

If you’ve never come across the ‘busy fool’ syndrome, it’s explained very well on the delightful TheBusyFool.com:

“Busy Fool – the sort of person that people love to come to with their ideas, so you find yourself running about trying to do far too much all at the same time.”

The LEAD programme takes an integrated approach in developing the owner-manager and the business.

Over the last 8 months, I’ve benefited from peer support from Action Learning, one to one business coaching and master classes where I learn from successful entrepreneurs and industry experts.

I’ve received invaluable face-to-face training from nationally recognised experts like:

• Professor Malcolm McDonald, world-renowned marketing guru
• Gerry Pennell, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the London 2012 Olympic Games
• Arun Singh OBE, acclaimed corporate speaker and international lawyer

Ruth Badger delivers Sales Training master class for LEAD

Most recently, I’ve had the pleasure of being trained on how to sell by the most famous apprentice on the BBC’s BAFTA-award winning show, The Apprentice, Ruth Badger.

Ruth’s sales master class for LEAD, titled Selling ‘Badger Style’ was an inspiring 4 hour session that took in her personal story as a business woman before and after she became the 2006 runner-up in the second series of popular BBC show, The Apprentice.

From the moment I walked into the venue, I was impressed by Ruth and her business partner Julie Hughes’ personal touch.  Julie handed me a personalised copy of the day’s training material and then I was greeted with a warm handshake from Ruth Badger herself.

It was the “Chi-chi… that’s a nice name to have at the weekends.  What’s your name during the week?” that got me.  I was so stunned I tweeted it!

Just shaken Ruth Badger’s hand, impressed by her confident charm. Having fun at @salfordbizsch. #theapprentice  #lead -@realfreshtv

Settling into the master class itself, Ruth and Julie, there as part of the Ruth Badger Academy, were a spirited double act, taking turns to share practical advice on the sales process, placing particular emphasis on the qualities of a good sales person.

The two have over 30 years experience in delivering business training between them and met when both worked at the business that Ruth quit her job at to go on the Apprentice.  Julie was the HR director at that business.

3 Things You May Not Know about Ruth Badger

Did you know:

• Ruth Badger gave up a job as a sales director of a £22 million company to go on The Apprentice
• She left schools with 3Es at GCSE
• She won an FA Cup Winners’ medal with Arsenal Ladies Football Club

As a ‘Super Sub’ at Harlow Town Ladies Football Club, I’m particularly impressed by the last point.  I played in the Women’s FA for one year during my industrial placement in Harlow whilst studying Electronic Engineering at the University of York.

One of the most impressive things about the master class was finding out how personable Ruth was.

I only caught some of the later episodes of the second series of the Apprentice; having started Real Fresh TV the year it was first aired, I didn’t have a lot of time for TV!  Like a lot of people I was under the impression that Ruth was the ‘Ruthless Badger’ in real life.

She’s actually really personable and one of her many personal stories and anecdotes brought this to life: she’s still contacted by one of her clients in an early job as a mortgage advisor who wants her to manage his mortgage package, 12 years on.

She and Julie trained us about how “sales is about you”.  They focused on the power of understanding the 3 Ws: Who you are, What you provide and What makes you different.

Ruth Badger has 3 companies: Ruth Badger Consultancy, Ruth Badger Academy and a new training company focusing on the HR industry that I can’t recall the name of.  She specialises in saving business going bust.

Apprentice aficionados will recall she went on to present Badger or Bust, a TV show for Sky One that was shown in 6 countries.  In it she uses her sales expertise to help businesses about to go bust.

Recently her business helped a company that was haemorrhaging £70,000 a month.  It’s now a multi-million pound company.  She says she only charged £15,000.

Several times during the master class, Ruth emphasised that she’s not a good sales person: “I just give you what you need”.  She shared that a recent business she trained saw a 45% increase in conversions from their sales team.

What makes a good sales person?

85% attitude, 15% knowledge apparently.  No skill involved!

The most important attribute is active listening skills.  Ruth and Julie demonstrated this through some fascinating interactive exercises during the session.

They impressed the importance of listening on all 47 attendees:

“As the customer what they want.  Get as much info as you can so you can use it.  Listen for the triggers for sale: they are giving you the reason to close.”

People buy people.  Sell YOU not the product

I can’t do the master class enough justice in this blog post, came away very inspired and refreshed.

I’d highly recommend the training delivered by Ruth Badger Academy.  After a morning with Ruth, you are enthused by her passion, no nonsense and straight talking manner and love of life and business.

At the end she shared that she had been nervous of meeting us!  Unbelievable.

As a fellow Salford resident, I was touched by her parting shot:

“You are the most important people in this region”.

Couldn’t agree more.

I’ve put together my 8 favourite quotes from the master class.  Hope it gives you a flavour of Ruth Badger the person:

8 Memorable Ruth Badger Quotes

1. I’ve got my own terminology; there should be a book of Ruth.
2. If you want to be all things to all men, you are not a business.  You are all things to all men.
3. You are always consumers who go to work.  What you have to sell is YOU not the product.
4. I’ve never closed a deal in my life, the customer does.
5. If they haven’t got the affordability, flush it.
6. Have you got a sore bum?  You’re sat on the fence, aren’t you?
7. People who say ‘quite’ a lot lack conviction.
8. Use clear communications: Maybe – Quite – Probably – all mean NO!

The woman is a genius!  Her master class was one of the most interesting training sessions I’ve attended in my working life.

And here’s a reminder of Ruth on The Apprentice:

What do you think?  Do any of Ruth Badger truisms ring true for you?  Where you there?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Leave me a comment.

Related posts:

1. The Small Business Guide to Effective Social Media Marketing
2. Get the Influence at UK’s first Social Media Manager training programme
3. Influence, UK’s first Social Media Manager training programme launches in Manchester

Excitement is building ahead of next month’s Social Media Surgery.

The theme of the popular monthly informal networking event that attempts to help Manchester businesses embrace the social media revolution in order to grow their company is ‘Is Twitter any good for marketing’.

Taking place on the second Tuesday of every month at Innospace (Manchester Metropolitan University’s business incubator) on Chorlton Street between 5-7.30pm, Manchester Social Media Surgery events offer real life advice and case studies from an experienced panel of digital and social media marketers who discuss social media projects and issues presented by the audience.

The April 13 event is employing a Dragons’ Den format with up to £5,000 worth of expertise and knowledge in the form of advice from the experienced panel.

Social Media Surgeons at the event include:
Simon Wharton of search engine specialists, PushON
Adrian Slatcher from Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA)
Louise Bolotin freelance journalist who has worked for the BBC among others
Bruce Thomas from social media agency Modern English

The evening will be chaired by Jon Clements from PR firm Staniforth.

There will also be an opportunity to hear how a company that has received advice from the Surgery has fared.

Manchester Social Media Surgery events are organised on a voluntary basis by myself (Chi-chi Ekweozor, director of Real Fresh TV, the social media training and implementation consultancy) as part of the outreach work of the popular Social Media Cafe Manchester network.

The Dragon Dens format for the April event is already attracting interest, as evidenced by the comments about the event on regional media and marketing portal How-Do.co.uk.

Here’s the first, rather acerbic comment:

“I guess you get what you pay for hey? OK, so it’s a nice idea but what client is going to go to this thinking that it is nothing more than a lion’s den of new fangled “experts” teaching them a load of common sense.”

Thankfully, in true social media style, previous attendees of the Social Media Surgery piled on to comment on the article and defend the events.  Read the rest of the comments at How-Do.co.uk.   Manchester business weekly Crains have also profiled the Social Media Surgery and business reporter Samrana Hussain will be attending the April event.

Questions on using Twitter for marketing  can be submitted to the panel here prior to the event.

I asked Rick Guttridge, Managing Director of Smoking Gun PR, the newly launched Manchester PR firm what he thought of the Surgery and this is what he had to say:

“Social media is a vital tool for any business and learning how best to use it strategically can be challenging. For SME’s in particular, social media appeals as many tools are free but they must be prepared to invest enough man hours into making it work.”

Dave Mee, Design Director of TANDOT, co-director of MadLab the popular collaborative community hackspace in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and a regular surgeon at the events considers the surgery a valuable resource for organisations to learn from established practitioners in the area and learn valuable lessons from their peers.

He adds:

“The informal nature of the event encourages openness amongst people coming to grips with a new medium, as well as discovering it’s not as alien as it may at first seem.

Core web properties are adopting the rebalance that communicative platforms have brought through social media, and future organisational success will be predicated on how well they can adapt to embrace and play well in this area.”

Attendees to past Social Media Surgery events range from Prospects, the UK’s official graduate website, Chetham’s School of Music and small businesses and non profits like Heaven-Spa.co.uk and artistic network Sustainable Theatre.

Regular attendee Jordan Wilson recently commented on the value of the Social Media Surgery after attending similar events of questionable quality(!):

“As social media is now THE ‘buzz’ word, it seems every man and his dog is trying to climb aboard but many have no clue why, how or what they need it for. I have recently attended various business workshops/networking sessions and have had the same outcome in most. For those who haven’t already embraced social media in a logical and practical way for them and their business, there is a surge of people adopting any type of social network medium they can get their hands on, without any thought into suitability or what they want it to achieve.

There are now a few workshops dealing with this problem and actually providing people new to SM with a very helpful beginners guide. Instead of just jumping onto the confused bandwagon, they give people a chance to really understand SM and therefore be able to tailor it and use it to its full potential for their own area and objectives.

A few cropping to mind are:
Manchester Social Media Surgery – #mansms – Free (Free tea/coffee & biscuits too!!)”

Read on for more of Jordan’s insightful comments.

Refreshments at the April Social Media Surgery event is sponsored by Euroffice, the UK’s leading office supplies company.

To attend, sign up here.  You can also submit a question on using Twitter for marketing.

What do you think?  Would you find such an event useful?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Manchester Social Media Surgery welcomes Crain’s Manchester Business
2. Record Turnout for Free Social Media Surgery for Manchester Businesses
3. Free Social Media Surgery for Manchester Businesses in October

T-shirt: Mark Wigan creation on sale at NOISE Lab

I really enjoyed last Thursday’s launch of the NOISE Lab, a ‘guerilla arts pop up store’ nestled opposite the Orange Shop and next to Boots the Chemists right on the Great Manchester High Street aka Market Street.

Situated in the former Shelly’s footwear outlet, next to Schuh and in prime shopping centre real estate, this incredibly bold 6 month long ‘experiment’ is born out of the national NOISEFestival.com project, an online community where young creatives in film, music, visual arts and many other creative disciplines develop and showcase their (first, in many cases) online portfolio.

With NOISE Lab, these extremely talented young people can sell their unique, one-off creations in a real shop on a real high street!  From the NOISE Lab website:

Supported by Manchester City Council the NOISE Free Arts Lab takes over an empty retail premises on the city’s busiest shopping hotspots. This free and innovative space:

• Offers creative folk aged 30 and under, registered on www.NOISEfestival.com to sell original work such as clothes, CDs, jewellery, ceramics, photographs and accessories
• Licenses work from artists registered on www.NOISEfestival.com, to produce a line of exclusive NOISE prints, postcards, t-shirts, bags and other printed items which will be on sale – which means if you haven’t got the backing to get a product on the shelves NOISE will help in get your stuff out there.

And there’s more, a Cafe, to be precise. From the NOISE Lab website:

Not just content with taking NOISE all retail, there’s even a Caf in the Lab for you to kick back, have a brew and take a minute out your busy day.

There’s also Free Wi-Fi on offer, which makes The Cafe the ideal spot for you set up your own meetings (minus the suits and spreadsheets), blog, tweet or revise.

The Cafe staff have been recruited through catering and hospitality courses at The Manchester College and through the ‘Back to Work’ courses that works with people who have recently been made unemployed that want to get back to work.

Here’s a quick NOISE Lab walkthrough video taken at the launch on Thursday night:

I’ve written about NOISEfestival in the past, covering their Creative Futures event at Manchester Town Hall in November 2008, and it’s great to see that through NOISE Lab, Manchester has taken the bold step to do something as audacious as this at a time when many would least expect or perhaps even advise it.

At a Leadership Lab event for the city’s arts and cultural sector last Tuesday, I actually heard about a similar project being planned spearheaded for the Birmingham Bullring shopping centre by the Created in Birmingham team and am quietly chuffed that Manchester got in first!

Anyway, back to Thursday night’s event.

The NOISE Lab launch, curated by Manchester visual arts supremo Barney Doodlebug and opened by the leader of Manchester City Council, Sir Richard Leese, was a convivial affair.

Uniquely Mancunian with musicians like Elbow’s Guy Garvey and jazz saxophonist and hip hop artist Soweto Kinch mingling with uber creatives like Contact Theatre’s CEO and former rapper with Outkast and The Roots, Baba Israel and graffiti wunderkinds like Andrew Tunney (behind the sadly no more seminal graffiti session cum monthly Contact meetup, Sketch City), it was perhaps the most interesting event I’ve ever been to in a former shoe shop of which I have fond memories!

I filmed a couple more videos at the event with my trusty Flip Mino HD video camera.

The first is the last 5 minutes of Sir Richard Leese’s opening speech.

I’ve never heard him before and met him briefly whilst chatting to Manchester Knowledge Capital’s Coral Grainger and Manchester City Council’s Head of Cultural Strategy, Lyn Barbour who I know from Real Fresh TV’s early beginnings when she was director of the sadly missed Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS).

I enjoyed Sir Richard Leese’s very pragmatic view on the NOISE Lab being an experiment that had a future beyond being a ‘recession/empty shop project’ if it proved successful.

Here comes the video..!

What I really enjoy about every NOISE event I go to is the real sense of community and openness to collaboration evident in the way things are doing at NOISE.

The NOISE Lab launch was no different.  Here’s a very brief video interview I filmed with an up and coming Manchester-based video blogger and singer songwriter at the launch called Thallie.

Protege of record producer Johnny Jay “acclaimed King of the Manc remixers in the early ’90′s”, she combines comedy writing for an aspiring R&B diva alter-ego with writing and performing her own songs, soon to be released on was the Manchester-based Modern English label.

I’ve asked the Modern English gang to come down to the Social Media Cafe Manchester event on Tuesday at which I happen to be sharing a long-awaited update to 7 Wonders in 7 days, my social media powered round-the-world charity fundraising trip.

I think the social media scene in Manchester has a lot to learn from their energy and ingenuity!

What do you think?  Where you at the NOISE Lab launch?  Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Related posts:

1. The Case for Manchester Open Data City and the Joys of Courting Corporate Philanthropy
2. Jotta, online community for artists and creatives – Social Media for the arts?
3. A Day in The Life of A Digital Native – NOISEfestival

You have to wait 10 weeks for a blog post and then two tumble out in two days!

As I shared in the last post, I’ve been pushing hard on a number of fronts over the last few weeks but this is one result I’m really pleased about.

I found out over the weekend that the bid I entered for Manchester to host WordCamp UK 2010 has been accepted, beating Portsmouth’s strong offer.

This can only mean one thing:

WordCamp UK 2010 is happening in Manchester!

WordCamp UK is the informal annual gathering of WordPress publishers, designers and developers based in the United Kingdom, held at a different location around the country each year.

Those of you tracking the #wordcampuk hashtag on Twitter will know this is old news but I thought I’d blog it anyway, a couple of days after the fact.  Have been crazy busy this week, is all.

Why Did I try to bring WordCamp UK to Manchester?

Well, I attended my first WordCamp UK conference this year in Cardiff and was blown away by the passion, enthusiasm and support espoused by the WordPress community in the UK over 2 days in July.

This is actually my second attempt at bringing WordCamp UK to Manchester.

I joined the WordCamp UK mailing list in late 2008 because I heard about the opportunity to bid for Manchester to host the conference in 2009.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a venue arranged in time and settled instead for helping Cardiff organise the 2009 conference, helping to draft the Sponsor Pack for the event.

I’ve been a fan of WordPress for quite a while and consider it to be the de facto platform of choice for social media powered websites so I’m thrilled to be part of the team bringing WordCamp UK 2010 to Manchester.  I can’t wait to make this third WordCamp UK the best yet.

Many thanks to the brilliant people who made Manchester’s successful bid possible.

Here come some ebullient thank-yous:

David Edmundson-Bird‘s kind and generous help in procuring use of Manchester Metropolitan University Business School‘s Aytoun Building for the UK WordPress community for the duration of WordCamp UK 2010: Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 July 2010.  Thanks again for all your help David.

Barbara Hunter of Visit Manchester (Greater Manchester Tourist Board) who was instrumental in putting together a beautiful bid document.  Thank you Barbara.

Adrian Slatcher, Alan Holding and many others at the Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) who supported our bid.

We couldn’t have done it without you.

It’s great to see all the great write-ups coming in about this exciting news.

Big thanks to Tony Scott for the excellent overview of the result.

Tony ‘herds’ the UK WordPress fan boys and girls on the WordCamp UK mailing list.  Sign up here if you’re interested in all things WordCamp UK.

There was also a really cool article on How Do, the Greater Manchester online media and marketing magazine.

Would You Like to help Organise WordCamp UK 2010?

I’m going to be working with a group of people who kindly offered their support with organising the conference next July.  Many of these individuals are on the WordCamp UK mailing list but a few are also from the wider digital community in Manchester.

If you’d like to be involved in the planning for WordCamp UK 2010 please pipe up in the comments and I’ll be in touch.

Bring on July 2010!

WordCamp UK 2010 happens in Manchester the week after the FIFA 2010 World Cup Final )

You can now flag your intent to attend on Upcoming.

Related posts:

1. Free Ticket Giveaway: WordCamp UK, 18-19 July, 2009
2. Free WordCamp UK 2009 Ticket Giveaway: We have a winner!
3. b.TWEEN09 and WordCamp UK – The Media and Web Conference Season begins

Another momentous month has flown by.

Amongst a raft of new project developments for Real Fresh TV (more on this on the soon-to-be unveiled new website!), a number of significant developments have taken place in the burgeoning social media industry relating to charity fundraising I feel I most post about.

Regular readers will be aware that I am quite involved in 7 Wonders in 7 Days, a social media-powered round-the-world fundraising trip aiming to raise £777,000 for 7 charities.

The trip, now supporting Comic Relief through the Sport Relief 2010 campaign, now happens in October 2010 and is developing into a number of different social media campaigns for each of the charities involved.

The 7 charities are:

• Alzheimer’s Research Trust
• Diabetes UK
• Open Doors
• Young Minds
• British Red Cross
• Sport Relief 2010
• Feed The Minds

But I must talk about the almost concluded ‘Summer of Social Good’ initiative by popular tech blog Mashable.

The well-designed initiative kicked off in early June with the lofty aim of co-ordinating a massive online charity fundraising campaign for a number of US charities: Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong, WWF, Oxfam America and The Humane Society.

According to the Summer of Social Good website:

Summer of Social Good is the first large scale online charitable campaign to raise funds through the power of Social Media and the Internet. The goal is to use the power of “Social Influence” via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs and other online media to raise an unprecedented amount for our fund benefiting The Humane Society, Livestrong, Oxfam America and WWF from June 1st until August 28th, 2009.

The campaign winds down today with a Social Good Conference, “a one-day educational event celebrating the finale of the Summer of Social Good charitable campaign.”

Mashable’s Summer of Social Good seems to have attracted a lot of support with a number of interesting uses of social media metrics as a starting point for motivating donations.

The United Nations Environmental Programme‘s offer to plant a tree for each new follower of the @UNEPandYou Twitter account on World Environment Day in June is one such example.

Another is Ford’s Social Action Month which saw them offering to donate $1 per view for their Fiesta Movement Agent videos.

These and similar initiatives point to a new way of encouraging donations from people on social networking sites.  They double up as a neat way to connect companies with their corporate social responsibility goals via social media.

Keep an eye on the Summer of Social Good website for news on the follow up to its remarkable campaign. There are already a number of ways to keep supporting the campaign.

And if you’re mulling over a social media powered charity fundraising campaign, don’t miss this insightful list of tips for raising funds for charity using social media.

What say you?  Can you see this happening in the UK?  And how soon?

Related posts:

1. Real Fresh TV hosts the UK’s first Facebook Q&A tomorrow, Join Us!
2. Job: Sponsorship Manager, 7 Wonders in 7 Days
3. Isy Suttie from Channel 4’s Peep Show and future Formula 1 Star Jon Lancaster join our Twitter Q&A for Charity