I went to WordPress London meetup number #7 last night, hosted by Headshift at their office near Shad Thames, along the south bank of the Thames, east of Tower Bridge. Nice to have something on the East side for once, although south of the river, I wouldn’t normally mention the general location but for Londoners, having different travel options is essential and I was pleased to be able to exit the Transport For London system at a zone 2 tube station, Bermondsey. WordPress London is not really a mainly social gathering like some of the bloggers meetups, it’s a business learning event and last night there were three sections, each packed with fast moving presentations full of detail, actionable insights and deeply understood data. First up, a round up of news from the world of WordPress from Chris Adams of Headshift with a peek at the new drag and drop file upload interface for WordPress 3.3, out very soon. There was also a heads up for the ManageWP service launched this month, a service which I use myself and would also heartily recommend for anybody who maintains more than one self-hosted WordPress installation, in fact it’s brilliant if you have dozens or more. WordPress London Meetup Then David Bain delivered a comprehensive briefing about SEO for WordPress, including an outline of a hub and spoke structure for content based on using pages for the main parts of a site, supported by posts All based around keyword targeting, which, while possibly on it’s way to becoming somewhat old-school, is after all what search engine optimisation is all about. One or two plugin tips to be followed up there. Finally, Keith Devon a WordPress developer explained how and why to use WordPress Custom Post Types. Custom post types are not types of posts at all, but other types of content alongside of posts or pages. The example given was that of a real estate property rental site, for which the element “Property” needed to be a thing of itself, with it’s own display template in the theme, neither a post nor a page but with it’s own “add Property” section within the dashboard. This gave me some great ideas for how I might have designed one or two of my existing sites much better had the concept been around a few years ago. Keith showed us how to implement custom post types by dropping in chunks of code into functions.php “because it’s easier” but discussion from the audience suggests that using specialised plugins for the purpose may be the way to go if you want to be able to keep your site up to date with new software releases. Time for some brief discussions and an optional visit to a Samuel Smiths pub afterwards, so I walked back along the south bank and over London Bridge back to dry land. Hashtag: #WPLDN Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogWordPress London #7
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
WordPress London #7
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/11/18/wordpress-london-7
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November 18 2011, 2:31am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
London Bloggers – Heather Cowper
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/09/02/london-bloggers-%E2%80%93-heather-cowper
London Bloggers Meetup last night featured a talk by Heather Cowper from Heather and Her Travels about travel blogging in general, and in particular How travel bloggers make money from their blogs.
An interesting and thorough presentation, but the thing that intrigued me was the makeup of the attendees at this long established London Bloggers meetup. Very few reconisable faces amongst the eighty odd people there at The Long Acre, and if you got the chance to talk to anybody, for the most part they turned out not to be bloggers at all but people from corporate marketing departments and even one so called “blogging consultant” who doesn’t blog and never did! Have the real bloggers left the building, content to post their valuable unique content into Facebook Twitter and Google Plus (or just reshare others) or is it just because it’s August, the silly season?
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLondon Bloggers – Heather Cowper
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September 2 2011, 4:53pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/6103208335/
AndyRobertsPhotos
London Bloggers
September 1 2011, 12:15pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
London Bloggers – Heather Cowper
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/08/24/london-bloggers-heather-cowper
London Bloggers Meetup last night featured a talk by Heather Cowper from Heather and Her Travels about travel blogging in general, and in particular How travel bloggers make money from their blogs.An interesting and thorough presentation, but the thing that intrigued me was the makeup of the attendees at this long established London Bloggers meetup. Very few reconisable faces amongst the eighty odd people there at The Long Acre, and if you got the chance to talk to anybody, for the most part they turned out not to be bloggers at all but people from corporate marketing departments and even one so called “blogging consultant” who doesn’t blog and never did!Have the real bloggers left the building, content to post their valuable unique content into Facebook Twitter and Google Plus (or just reshare others) or is it just because it’s August, the silly season? Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLondon Bloggers – Heather CowperRelated posts:London BloggersLondon Bloggers new venue, competition and pubsLondon Bloggers presentations
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August 24 2011, 4:52am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Talk About Local Unconference 2011 gets under way in Cardiff
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.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogTalk About Local Unconference 2011 gets under way in Cardiff
Related posts:Talk About Local Unconference to take place in Cardiff Pub of the year award goes to a London local for first time Why would councils want to exclude bloggers and tweeters?
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April 2 2011, 3:00pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Aggregators: if we can’t beat them, let’s join them
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/28/aggregators-if-we-cant-beat-them-letsjoin-them
Arianna Huffington’s sale of her website The Huffington Post to AOL shows there’s still money to be made from content aggregators if you know what you’re doing.
This article titled “Aggregators: if we can’t beat them, let’s join them” was written by Dan Sabbagh, for The Guardian on Monday 28th March 2011 06.00 UTC Arianna Huffington’s sale of the website that bears her name has not been without controversy; there are plenty who say she made a fortune from the sale to AOL on the back of aggregating other people’s content and exploiting bloggers who contributed for no pay and none of the highly rated equity. It is easy, of course, to argue that it isn’t fair, and, in addition, that life isn’t fair either. But it is also worth bearing in mind that this is the nature of the internet too. Facebook, for example, isn’t offering to share the advertising revenue it generates with the half a billion people who supply profiles (although come to think of it, income from one’s own site might be somewhat disappointing). Why should it? The skill is corralling so many people in one place, not in writing a Facebook profile. Whatever next? ITV paying viewers to watch the final of Dancing on Ice so they can get more advertising revenue? It’s not like there is any skill in watching telly after all. Meanwhile, the open nature of so much web content means that traditional boundaries of authorial ownership – they’re my words not yours – have been pretty much erased. It’s so easy, for example, to scrape a blog’s RSS feed and post the headline and teaser on another site. Newspapers, meanwhile, cheerfully copy tweets wholesale (one of mine on the merits of Rebecca Ferguson once made the Sunday Mirror) – while in the era of the live blog it has become not just possible, but increasingly common for media organisations to cite tweets from reporters employed by rivals. Think about it like that for a second and the scenario looks scary if you are part of an established news organisation – there is nothing to stop two blokes in a bedroom with BBC News and al-Jazeera on, and a fast eye for what else is popping up online, from coming up with their own “Libya live blog”. On this thinking, all that is preventing professional news sites being ripped off is copyright law, which is meant to stop other people copying and pasting sizeable quantities of text. Mind you, there are plenty of celebrity news sites that come perilously close to nicking whatever they see in the morning’s tabloids and running it as their own. Huffington – visiting the Guardian last week – also argued that there is a distinction to be made between professional journalists and bloggers. This isn’t necessarily a distinction of quality (because there are so many good bloggers out there) – rather the difference is between those who are paid to report professionally, and bloggers who are not. A handful of bloggers, of course, generate enough money to make the jump into full-time writing, but most can’t. Which is also the other reason why there aren’t two blokes in every third bedroom running their own Libya live blog – there isn’t enough money for a regular supply of biscuits and whatever else daily life requires. In truth, come to think of it, even those who write for traditional newspapers wouldn’t be able to make a living on the pay-per-click model. As Matt Wells notes in the cover feature, live blogs with no single author account for 9% of traffic to guardian.co.uk in March. The hit-driven nature of internet content means that a handful of stories and subjects dominate rankings, and by implication dominate online revenues. Paying writers on the basis of the traffic they get would turn a newspaper into a record company, where a handful of the artists are rich, and the rest become social workers in three years’ time. Aggregation, in short, is necessary to survive all round. Before the internet, there were generations of newspaper interviewees who were never paid for their contribution. Now the game is different – about providing destinations for people to share and discover news and content. And if Arianna Huffington was good at that, then it is wise not to complain, but probably to try and copy her.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAggregators: if we can’t beat them, let’s join them
Related posts:Olympic Games 2012 medal haul will beat Beijing, promises UK Sport iPad 2 queues start 33 hours early as demand expected to beat supply London Bloggers
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March 28 2011, 5:01am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Why would councils want to exclude bloggers and tweeters?
Can you be a blogger and respectable at the same time? I hope not.
This article titled “Why would councils want to exclude bloggers and tweeters?” was written by Dave Hill, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 11th March 2011 15.00 UTC Local government minister Bob Neill MP (Con) recently wrote to local authorities as follows: “Bloggers, tweeters, residents with their own websites and users of Facebook and YouTube are increasingly a part of the modern world, blurring the lines between professional journalists and the public. There are recent stories about people being ejected from council meetings for blogging, tweeting or filming. This potentially is at odds with the fundamentals of democracy, and I want to encourage all councils to take a welcoming approach to those who want to bring local news stories to a wider audience.” Excellent advice. But some councils have been slow to get the message. These notably include the famous Tory “easyCouncil” of Barnet in north London, whose leader Lynne Hillan told the Barnet Times: “The current advice according to the constitution does not allow filming in the council chamber … The only thing we will do is consider responsible media requests, and they are the only thing we would allow at this stage … I do not think we would consider a request from bloggers. Only respectable media would be considered.” The statement raises an array of questions. What defines some parts of the media as “respectable” and “responsible” and others not? Who does the category “blogger” include? Can you be a blogger and respectable at the same time? I’ve a hunch that Councillor Hillan had a certain person in mind. His name is Roger Tichborne, publisher of a blog called Barnet Eye. The Eye campaigns tirelessly against her administration. Its author’s greatest triumph was successfully complaining that a Tory colleague – the quite astounding Brian Coleman – had breached the council’s code of conduct by sending him an abusive email. Tichborne networks with fellow local online citizen journalists – some of theme dissident Barnet Tories – in one of London’s best-blogged boroughs. Following Hillan’s remarks he attended a council committee meeting as a member of the public and filmed it until another Tory councillor ticked him off, unimpressed by the unrespectable blogger’s protesting that he had legal opinion on his side. But the law shouldn’t need to be dragged into this. Neither should those increasingly meaningless distinctions between citizen journalists and the professional media, not least because plenty of the latter are far less “respectable” or “responsible” than plenty of the former. Little love may be lost between Tichborne and the Tories responsible for emptying his bins, but Barnet town hall should still welcome him. It should welcome anyone prepared to sit through deliberations in its democratic chambers and convey these to a wider public either live or later and whether by blogging, tweeting, audio recording, filming or standing on a street corner waving semaphore flags. So should every town hall in the land. In recent weeks public galleries in London and elsewhere have been filled with hecklers ritually denouncing Labour councils in particular for passing on “Tory cuts” in their budgets. Many of the outraged were ignorant, boring and stuffed with cost-free piety, but at least they were there. Mostly, those galleries are close to empty. The same often goes for the press seats. Councils slammed for publishing their own freesheets often plead that their local papers take little notice of what they do. Often, they have a point. Citizen journalists can help to fill the void. Councils wary of licensing the amateur hordes should look to the top tier of local government in the capital. At London’s City Hall, the Thames-side glass bauble that contains London’s mayors, the main debating chamber enshrines in its very seating plan the non-recognition of any amateur-professional distinction. There is no special section for the press. Instead, anyone at all – the Guardian, Mayorwatch, Adam Beinkov, CyberBoris a school student on an educational trip – can liveblog or tweet, and lots of people do. Still photography is discouraged after the first 20 minutes of each session and the use of flash banned, but in both cases the restraints are simply to prevent noise and other distractions. All proceedings are webcast, but if I wanted to point my digicam at Boris Johnson or the assembly members I’d be as free to do so as BBC London’s camera crews so long as I created no disturbance. I’m told a simple principle applies: “It’s a public meeting. It should be public.” Town halls should take Bob Neill’s advice, and do the same. Who knows, the more open their policies, the more numerous, civil, varied and well-informed those in their public galleries might become, to the benefit of the voters they serve. How could they lose?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogWhy would councils want to exclude bloggers and tweeters?
Related posts:London Bloggers Flu bloggers validated London Bloggers new venue, competition and pubs
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March 11 2011, 9:25am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Talk About Local Unconference to take place in Cardiff
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.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogTalk About Local Unconference to take place in Cardiff
Related posts:Pub of the year award goes to a London local for first time Ferry between Ilfracombe and Swansea, Minehead and Penarth by 2008 Online Learning and Collaboration event
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February 28 2011, 8:34am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Theatre Blogger: 52 Venues in 52 weeks
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2010/10/01/theatre-blogger-52-venues-in-52-weeks
One way of standing out from the crowd is to commit yourself to a challenge that takes place over a period of time, and then blog about it every step of the way. In the film “Julie and Julia” a struggling writer who loves to cook decides to try out every single recipe from her hero’s recipe book, every night for a year: Risking her marriage, her job, and her cats’ well-being, she has signed on for a deranged assignment. 365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen. How far will it go? – The Julie/Julia Project Favourite Theatre Blogger It’s in a similar vein to this that one of the theatre bloggers in London has embarked on a challenge called “52 weeks, 52 fringe venues”. I couldn’t name more than a handful of London fringe theatre venues myself, so I subscribed at once in order to learn more about the wider scene. I’m also recommending the blog on which the challenge is published – “Distant Aggravation” as my choice for favourite theatre blogger in Theatre Blogger Week. Corinne Furness, who writes Distant Aggravation describes herself as a “writer and theatre maker” and has also written a post on Blogging by Numbers : On Why It’s Time To Listen (or a love letter to theatre bloggers)
Theatre Blogger Week Theatre Blogger Week is an idea from MusicalVerse which is due to take place for the first year on 25th October 2010, open to theatre bloggers world wide and tracked on the Theatre Blogger Week Wiki page.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogTheatre Blogger: 52 Venues in 52 weeks
Related posts:Blogger Appreciation Day on LinkedIn London Bloggers New Year Theatre Breaks
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October 1 2010, 6:54am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_e5d-4zQJg
December 24 2008, 2:15pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3134044788/
Andyrob
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
December 24 2008, 2:04pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3133218173/
Andyrob
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
December 24 2008, 2:01pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3134036724/
Andyrob
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
December 24 2008, 1:59pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3133210901/
Andyrob
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
December 24 2008, 1:57pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3133208743/
Andyrob
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
December 24 2008, 1:55pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3133206799/
Andyrob
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
December 24 2008, 1:54pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/3133205107/
Andyrob
London Bloggers Wine Tasting
December 24 2008, 1:53pm | Comments »
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