I had a great reason to get glammed up last week - The Midlands Media Awards!
I can't believe this is the 4th year I've attended the event, the first time was in 2009 when I was finding my feet with my photography career and had just started the 4am Project.
And a big Thank You to Birmingham Airport for inviting me as their guest. It was great to see the team again and I was over the moon with having (I think!) the best seat in the house!
Cost: Free! And we'll be providing tea/coffee/drinks and lunch to keep you going! Get your ticket here.
Who: Are you a hyperlocal blogger? A community activist? A journalist? A local government employee? Interested in ways to talk about your community and issues online. Want to meet like minded people? Then this is for you!
What's an unconference? An unconference has no set agenda for the day, until the day itself. Attendees come along and at the beginning of the day there's the opportunity to pitch and idea for discussion. Then the idea gets allocated a room and a time slot and attendees go to the sessions they want to go to. It's a very fluid day in that if you don't want to stay in the session you are in, then you are free to wander in/out of other sessions too - there might be two sessions on at the same time - so you can catch a bit of both!
It's a relaxed, informal day and we will all be going for drinkies afterwards!
And not only that.....! There will be the talk about local unawards!
This is where expense spared prizes are given out to members of the community who have done outstanding work during the year. This is not to be missed!
Check out the unawards from last year. Some worthy prize winners, not forgetting the awesome *ahem* prizes. (I won a Michael Jackson alarm clock in 2010!)
You can connect with talkaboutlocal on twitter @talkaboutlocal
I was invited to the Birmingham Mail's Your Communities day along with some other local bloggers. The Birmingham Mail have been working along side community bloggers in Birmingham for a while now. They have established a good working relationship with the bloggers and feature the hyper local blog updates on their Your Communities page, and weekly in the Tuesday edition of their newspaper.
The event was held the the Birmingham Mail's offices in Fort Dunlop (where I cut my teeth as a photographer), and we were given a tour, got to meet some of the staff behind the paper and swap some hyper local blogging social media tips.
A worthwhile day and it was great to meet the people behind some of the other hyper local bloggers in Birmingham!
Imagining I'm at the Empire State Building's Observation Deck :)
Millennium Point's 10th Birthday Party
I got an invitation to Millennium Point's 10th Birthday party! I've never been to a building's birthday party before! Of course MP is more than just a building, it is home to a huuuge cinema, and the Birmingham Science Museum and Think Tank.
I felt like I was 10 again! There were clowns, and cakes, and birthday cards and candy floss, and food and drinks, and clever science experiments involving flames.
The Weasley Twins from Harry Potter made an appearance.
Tall, colourful people!
Birmingham Vintage Festival
I missed the first Bham Vintage Festival so was keen to make it along to the second one. It didn't disappoint with some fabulous stalls selling all sorts of delicious vintageness. I wish I had taken more photos, but you can check out their website and see who there's and what's on offer. There's going to be another event coming up, so if vintage is your thing, you'll love it!
I picked up a vintage lady in red broach
Debra gave me a 'tattoo'! Red of course. It stayed on for nearly a week!
Social Media Training
St Basil's is a Birmingham charity that help young homeless people and they needed some guidance on how to make the best use out of free social media tools to help the people they work with, and engage with communities online as well as raise their profile.
I did a fair bit of research before me and Nicky held the workshop on how other charity and homeless groups are using social media and found some outstanding examples, but my overall observation is that the USA is really embracing social media to talk about what they are doing, sharing stories, making connections, offering help and resources, more so than the UK.
St Basil's head office is actually in an old church!
Career interview
Sharon Howard from the 'Day in the life of a busy girl blog' asked to interview me about my creative career, and you can read all about it here!
I answered questions such as:
How did you get into your career? What are the challenges? What's you favourite thing about your work? What advice you would give to others? I hope you enjoy the read!
I've taken quite a few photos of the Selfridges building over the years (the one below is my personal fav) and so I was asked about what I thought about Lonely Planet's comment (it was a bit silly) and what do I think of the building (I like it). Well, I said a bit more than that, but you get the gist!
The 'peanut with acne' - much more beautiful that that in reality!
Last, but not least! The best meal in a restaurant this year
I've got to rave about this place. After a lot of moans this year about eating out and gluten free choices I have finally found somewhere that has wowed me!
They had a really great gluten free menu. I chose the slow cooked pork, sweet potato fries and spicy coleslaw. I haven't enjoyed a meal out so much for a long time! It's really made me want to go back (and it very rare that a restaurant will make me want to do that!), and I've booked a table for my birthday (I can't wait!)
And that's brought the best of September to a close! Whew!
What's in store of October?
I'm glad you asked!
Last weekend I went to Ludlow to Storycamp. It was a day long event organised by Nicky that was based around digital story telling. Why tell stories, how to tell stories, what social media tools can be used, the fun, the ethics, it was all covered! There's a brilliant round up of the day over on the Storycamp blog. Thank you for a great day Nicky!
This weekend I'm off to the Women's Institute's Tech Fest day with talk about local to do some social reporting. This will be my first encounter with the WI, so I'm looking forward to meeting some of the ladies.
AND...
...in case I haven't mentioned it before.... ;)
It's going to be my 40TH Birthday soon! On the 15th October. I wanted to have a party, but I haven't had the chance to really think about it properly or plan anything. I should have started working on it bit by bit at the beginning on the year. But I will be spending the day with my two favourite people in the whole wide world, my mum and my best friend and I know it's going to be a good one!
Do I have to grow up when I'm 40? I hope not. I have absolutely no intention of that! :)
September was undoubtedly my busiest month this year and I want to capture a record of it just in case my memory fades on me.
A lot of them deserve their own blog posts really, and I'd like to think I'll go back and cover some of them in more detail but hey, it's October already. A brand new month to fill!
There were lots of highlights and here are a few of them.
I also managed to meet up with my Tweety Friends before the big walk.
I met up with @getgood and we went to a cool bar that had beds!
And of course I was drawn to this Tweety Friend cushion. Twitter mad? Me? ;)
And I finally got to meet a long time twitter friend Elizabeth @realityminus3 We enjoyed a hearty Wagamam's dinner, drinks and a great chat! A lovely evening.
I got an invite for a trip along Birmingham's canals from BCU's Press Office. It was like a net working event, only on a canal boat, with drinkies and nibbles. Despite living in Birmingham for quite a while now, I'd only ever been on one canal boat trip many years ago, so I thought it time for another one. It was a lovely evening, with lots of new and interesting people to meet such a media peeps and lecturers.
It was a huge conference with a lot of key note talks to cover and speakers to interview. It was interesting to see how much output, as a team, we were able to deliver across all the mediums.
A post conference glass of wine with @getgood (she pops up everywhere!) and @clarewhite. Belles of social media reporting ;)
Long weekend in Palma with my mum
Three nights away with my mum @createdineire and taking on the Palma Live Challenge set by bmibaby. I love these types of social media and travel collaborations. bmibaby asked their friends and followers what I should see in Palma and set my itinerary. I reported live on my adventure. I've gathered all my updates in one handy blog post here, and my Palma review is live on bmibaby's blog too!
Bed Jumping in the bloggers room at @horizonte24 hotel. It's a must! ;)
Metapod Kaleidoscope Course - Day 1 of 5 days
This is a course run by Fierce Earth and Helga Henry is my mentor! It's a bit of a change to have a mentor (I like it!) as it's normally me doing mini mentoring sessions with folks that ask for my help.
It’s aimed at senior leaders in selected businesses to focus on commercial skills and business growth in a way that is congruent with your artistic and cultural development.
It's named Kaleidoscope as it helps to change your perception/view of y our business. I think that's right. Anyway, it's certainly worked after only 1 day of the 5 day course (there's 2 x 2 days coming up in November). It's not very often I talk 'business' and plans with anyone. I have an idea, figure out what I want, make a plan, and go for it, very generally speaking.
Already I can feel my perspective changing, and I must admit, it feels a little unsettling. It's thrown me a little. Before the course I had a set road ahead, and now I'm questioning it (which isn't a bad thing at all); Am I
on the right road? Am I working as efficiently towards my goals as I thought? Is there another way, a better way? What can I remove from my life/business? What's superfluous? What can I add? And although I do feel a little unsettled, I'm going with it, accepting these new feelings, being open to change and getting excited about what will happen next!
We got crafy on the course. Always a winner!
Whoops, I've run out of blogging steam tonight! I think I'm going to have to break this post up in to a few parts. There's a lot of pack in! :)
