“It would be great to see #ldnbeta concept (or some other iteration) picked up and used to drive the conversation — not just here, but on people’s own blogs, on Twitter, face-to-face, everywhere – exploring and advocating new opportunities for social media in London.”
In hindsight I should have focused on that point a lot more heavily in the first post.
I don’t want to “own” or even lead this.
I’m just an ideas guy, with more vision and commentary than I know what to do with, but when it comes to the tech side, as well as design, contacts, etc, I don’t have a lot to offer — whereas other people do, and I’m hoping we can all be more assertive with our own own special gifts to build something truly, originally London’s.
I may not be London’s biggest fan but I have a hard time living here without wanting to help make it better, without doing something to be really proud of.
There seems to be a need and an opportunity for more collaborative development in London’s online social sphere (if I’m wrong — and I genuinely suspect that maybe I am, and I’m just embarrassing myself, *gulp* — please correct me).
There seems to be a lot of outspoken blogging and tweeting about City Hall and the LTC, a lot about the London Free Press and A Channel and CTV — not to mention all the “opinions” about Rogers, Bell, etc…
But if we’re such experts on how what those institutions should do, let’s look at how much time and energy do we spend trying to improve London’s social web?
I mean, ya we all work away on our own thing — in the same way that everyone at all the organizations we always complain about are doing their own jobs, not looking at the big picture, where they could really do some good — but are we doing enough?
I definitely don’t mean to diminish PodCamp London, The Meetup, Dan Brown promoting London blogs via LFPress, Greg Fowler’s weekly ‘Online London‘ posts, BlogLDN, London Photo Walk, LondonCommons (I’m sure there are more I’m missing — comments are open…) and anyone who has ever made an extra effort to respond and link to other London bloggers… probably more I’m missing…
What I’m saying is we could have more of that — more momentum, more convergence… and let’s not forget, more tension and conflict. I’d guess the best way to get that is to get more people following, blogging, and commenting.
So then, if someone wants to start a blog in London, where do they go first?
How accessible is London’s blogosphere to non-bloggers (aka, virtually everybody… potential readers, customers, etc)?
How fast and easily will they be able to follow the breadcrumbs to what they should be reading, watching, listening to, following, emulating and interacting with?
How fast and easily can they find you and the people you follow — the conversations that matter to you?
I realize I’m probably being too self-righteous, but I feel there’s a need and an opportunity and I worry I’m not doing enough and this is the only way I know how to contribute (until I learn from these mistakes).
Am I wrong?
Is there a better way?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
If someone wants to start they should just start. Jump in and go! Grab a wordpress.com or hell even blogger account and start posting.
I can’t tell you how many people, back when podcasting was young, would tell me that they have a few shows recorded and they just want to wait until the sound is perfect to release. I’d almost blow my top at that. The point isn’t about perfection, it’s about getting it out there and starting a conversation. Even if it’s about your spelling and grammer!
Their next step should be coming out to a meetup, or a podcamp, or even just inviting a local blogger they admire for a coffee (better yet beer, it always works!).
I agree with Bill. Anyone with even the smallest desire to blog (or whatever) should just jump into with everything they’ve got. Blog as much as you can, comment on other blogs, and participate in places like this one (HI), and the others you linked to in this post. It won’t work for everyone and there might be a lot of failures and giving up, but not much is lost by trying.
Also, maybe us established people can come up with concrete suggestions to improve the local “scene”, partly by making this sort of thing easier. Would collaborating on some sort of meta-blog, with a guide to the local digital landscape, serve any purpose? Or just be redundant with existing sites?
It took me about a year to find where all the real action was in London. That was without Twitter — but the reason I wasn’t on Twitter was because I didn’t know anyone else on it.
I think any guide is ultimately useless in itself but the process of collaboratin on it (and arguing about it) is a great way to vitalize the social media scene.
So should we set up an install of Wordpress MU for folks to use? It’s got some cool social things in the back end. I’m more then happy to move BlogLDN to it as the master blog and let folks set up their own http://XXX.blogldn.com site!
Ya — I’m really fascinated to see what would happen with a multi-user setup.
… of course, getting into running a platform for other people create their own content on, they start to rely on it and that comes with its own challenges: more accountability and liability, etc.
I think if we did it it, we would have to start thinking of operating it as some kind of legal entity (whether for-profit or non-profit).
I’m all-for trying it though to see what happens. At the very least it might nudge a few London organizations to adopt it — or at least a more open, ‘Web 2.0′ attitude — and that’s exactly what I’d love to see happen.
e.g. I noticed some universities using WPMu and even a couple using BuddyPress now. I might do a post linking to those here soon.
does anyone have any comments on any of the current London based projects that have tried to get people integrated with one another but have not really succeeded on the level that may have originally been envisioned?