On the road with talk about local

Hello!

Thought I'd forgotten how to blog? No waaaaay!

I've just been a busy bee.

And I've been covering some miles with talk about local delivering workshops and helping people get up and running with their own hyperlocal community websites. I've been to Liverpool and Acton in London (which I haven't blogged about), but I am going to tell you about the Redruth and Walthamstow sessions that me and Nicky covered.

Redruth. It's waaaay down in the corner there and it meant quite a long journey. Probably about 7 hours from door to door for both of us, so this workshop involved an overnight stay.

We were really lucky and found a great 2 bed apartment to stay in and it worked out a great price at only £80 for both of us for the one night. If you are ever down that way, check out the Penrose Apartments. 

As soon as we arrived I did a little video tour....

We grabbed a bite to eat in the evening, which wasn't as easy as it sounds as a lot of places were closed in the town centre or didn't do food or didn't cater for wheat/gluten free (for me), but eventually we found a cosy corner in a cafe area inside a cinema. 

We had a relatively early night as we had our workshop early the next morning with Questions and Answers CIC. And you can check out Nicky's blog post about it over on the talk about local site.

We had a great turn out of about 18 people from various organisation around the area who were all keen to get cracking with creating their new Wordpress websites. 

I see me and Nicky as a Wordpress tag-team on our training sessions! Nicky demonstrating what can be done and how to do it, and I address the raised hands and answer any tech/help queries as we go along. Perfect!

Nicky talking about her hyperlocal website Digbeth Is Good

                                       

After the session I took the opportunity to get some Vox Pops and asked people what they thought of the session. 

And you can check out what everyone had to say in the video below. It was worth the long journey and the overnight stay! :)



And a couple of Saturday's ago we hit The Mill in Walthamstow! 

11.30 - 3.30 Website development

The Mill is a hub for the local community. It runs classes and courses, it has a library, it has a poetry night, and a reading group. There's tons on offer for the people in the area.

I was rather taken with this Awesome Rhino!

And they had a great art exhibition on. This is call Shrine of the Times and it's made out of junk food and drink containers. 

And they also had local artists displaying their work themed around LOVE! I took a video.

Sorry, you are going to have to tilt your head to the left to watch it! ;D



This was the first all female workshop we had run! No one planned it that way, it's just the way it happened to work out. Everyone was in good spirits and the session went really well.

On the first Saturday in Feb the talk about local team headed to Local Gov Camp NW in Preston for the day. and we all contributed to a round-up blog post of that day. A very inspiring day, cut a tiny bit short because of the snow. 

Tomorrow I'm off to Manchester to the Digital Editor Network event , Monday I'm off to Liverpool for a talk about local workshop, and Wednesday in Stoke On Trent for another workshop! 

Oh, and while I'm at it, it's the Birmingham Social Media Cafe this Friday! @birminghamsmc

Yay! I blogged :) 

Say hello on Twitter: @karenstrunks