Last night I had the pleasure of going to the NMK Beer and Innovation 2: User Generated Content event. Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC Global News Division and Paul Youlten, Founder of Yellowikis.org, gave plenty of food for the audience to chew on, whilst our very own New Media Awards judge Jo Twist, brought her own experiences as the chair.

Much of the evening was centred on new issues for media companies that have arisen in the last year thanks to a greater democratisation of technology and internet usage. But, as interesting as this all was, the highlight for me was meeting with people who are working and setting up new businesses in new media and technology at the moment. I shall take the liberty to list them here:

• Yellowikis - Yellow Pages meets Wikipedia, all set up by a fifteen year old and her dad.
• JigsawUK - a community and business resource for the growth of British digital media (which sounds a bit dull, but have a look at all the spangly new projects they have listed in their internet section alone. It feels like 1999 all over again.
• WebKitchen - a new start-up being run by Peter Nixey
• Chinwag - with their recently launched a jobs website, and who already appear to have been nominated for a New Media Award.
• It was also good to see folks from UpMyStreet - where would most home owners and movers be without them these days?

We shall be keeping an eye on you all.

A minimalist animation designed to illustrate the brutality of armed conflict, this web program is strangely distressing and calm at the same time. As a calendar races through the dates since the beginning of the war in Iraq, small red ‘explosions’ appear and fade across a simple map of Iraq, symbolising the alarming frequency of deaths amongst the coalition forces. At times, particularly during 2004, the pure white background becomes awash with red. It is a shame the program does not mark Iraqi deaths as well, but it is still an important testament to the loss caused during the campaign.

Mobile phone owners on the 3 network are now able to access local government information on their mobiles, according to Public Technology.

Local authority services provided by DigiTV’s Looking Local are accessible via 3’s mobile phones, including:

• Reporting broken street lighting, graffiti, fly tipping and missed rubbish collections – on the spot
• Finding out opening times of local facilities - like the leisure centre, library or recycling depot
• Sending an email to the council
• Get Citizens Advice information
• Booking a GP appointment (South Yorks only)
• Checking the status of a housing benefit claim (South Yorks only)

3 custumers who pay for internet access, can connect to DigiTV by selecting a link on the “Today at 3″ webpage displayed on their handset. Regular charges apply.

With more than 3.2 million customers on the 3G network and eighty Local Authorities using DigiTV, this new partnership has the potential to have a significant impact. But that will ultimately depend on the customer/citizen.

A Southampton University survey has found 61 percent of UK government web sites do not comply with international HTML standards, which can cause problems for blind and partially-sighted readers, Computing reported yesterday.

In the United States, bloggers are protected by the First Amendment. NetworkWorld reports:

The Federal Election Commission, by a vote of 6-0, declared Monday that the First Amendment does indeed apply to bloggers who write about politics.

But it is quite a different story for Iranian bloggers. . . Wired News gives an eye-openig report on Iran’s blogging community, Weblogistan:

“On his last visit to Iran, Canadian-based blogger Hossein Derakhshan was detained and interrogated, then forced to sign a letter of apology for his blog writings before being allowed to leave the country. Compared to others, Derakhshan is lucky…”

The European Commission launched “Debate Europe” yesterday – an online discussion forum on the future of Europe in 20 languages. The forum is part of the European government’s call for a “period of reflection” following the rejection of the proposed Constitutional Treaty by voters in France and the Netherlands. It is open to all citizens, and feedback will be incorporated into a Commission report.

The forum has been broken down into three broad themes (for now):

Europe’s economic and social development

Feeling towards Europe and the European Union’s tasks

Europe’s borders and its role in the world

The forum is quite easy to use – if you want to comment, you click on “add a comment”. You must enter a name, though some have used nom-de-plumes like Peter Pan (my apologies, Peter, if that is your given name). There is the option of filling out other personal data including gender, age bracket, city and country of origin, and profession, which is published with the comment. Beware – if you decide to include your email address it means that anyone who reads your comment can email you directly.

Response in just one day is off to a strong start – 743 comments in 16 languages. The Dutch and French have especially taken to sharing their views – if only I, as an English speaker, could read them.

That is the one thing that seems counter-productive about the forum – you can only debate with those people who share the same language. It’s great that the EC has a multilingual team to read all these comments for the final report. But for the rest of us, our only option is laboriously putting comments into Babblefish.

Disucssion participants have already brought this issue to the moderators.
“The Moderator” posted a response:
Q: Will we tell you what is going on in other language channels?
A: If possible, yes. It is impossible to translate it all though. We will try to give you an idea every now and then what other people are discussing.

After a quick read through of the English forum, the comments seem intelligent and thoughtful. I’ve gathered a sampling of excerpts just to wet your appetite…

K Pharck (Poland) wrote:

I have not yet found any place on the Internet to educate me on the basics, such as the language of debate. Not only “EU for Dummies” style, but also advanced, up to the bureaucratic lingo level. Is anyone at compulsory education level ready to participate? Where are the citizen education programs?

Dr M Rogers (Newport, UK) wrote about research and development:

Peoples may struggle, nations may go to war, but researchers have crossed frontiers and worked to gether in the interests of all humanity since the dawn of the Renaissance (Hello Mr. Erasmus, so do you have a visa to lecture in Belgium? NO, well, sorry… the EU open market and free flow of goods and services hasn’t QUITE got to you yet….) SO please let the EU get on with this side of life….
PS. I hear Irish will become a language of the EU - anyone ever asked about Welsh or did Mr Kinnock not have the time to promote his home country?

Paul Vanhecke (Austria) wrote:

I never understood why one should negociate to join. Just accept and fulfil the rules and then you can join. Now it looks more as a big turkish bazar with each country having its own exceptions. Sorry but I was a big favourite and defender of Europe. Now I became very pessimistic, especially when realising what kind of amateurs we have in Brussels.

Christian Treczoks (Germany) responded to the EC’s query:

The EU has brought many benefits such as the single market, consumer protection, food safety, etc. Should the EU continue to develop, for example, an area of justice, freedom and security?

He addresses each part in turn, but my personal favourite was:

“Food Safety: For years now, the EU has successfully protected us from too straight bananas.”

The blogger who writes Baghdad Burning is in the running for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson book award, reported The Guardian today. The 26-year-old Iraqi woman, who writes under the pseudonym Riverbend, has been blogging about life in Iraq since 2003. The first year’s posts were published in hard copy by Marion Boyars in the UK last year as a biography/memoir. Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq is now up for the £30,000 literary prize.

Response from bloggers to Riverbend’s longlisting for the book award has been positive:

Disjointed Ruminations (Austin, Texas)

While I was quite shocked initially due to the industry’s tight reign on literary propriety and genres, with the creation of online books and such, I am not surprised that blogs are being looked at in a new light these days. I’m very excited to see what else is recognized; a merging of blog readers and book readers could be an exciting thing.

The Nether-World (London)

I really like her blog and I hope it wins.

Baghdad Burning has already won the third place Lettre Ulyeese prize for Reportage. A sample of congratulations from the blogosphere:

Magpie (United Kingdom)

Her work at Baghdad Burning combines a shrewd analysis of current events in Iraq with an eye for the details of what ‘normal’ life has been like for Baghdadis since the invasion. When something happens in Iraq, we always look first to Riverbend to see if she’s posted about it yet.

Olive Branch Optimism (Perth, Australia)

I have said it once, and I will say it again. This girl is brilliant.

Wampum (United States)

…this is a book worth giving. Not just as a blogger’s gift to a semi- or non-neterite relative or lover, but to the boards of school districts, because this is the real deal, the real banned in the land of the free literature that every high school English Lit teacher could be putting in the hands of her (and his) students. If only to teach English.

Democracy for California (United States)

Her commanding gift for observation, her intelligence and her extraordinary language skills make her account of the life of a normal Iraqi family … one of the most uniquely critical documents of life in this abused country under the conditions of the war and the US military occupation. Bravo Riverbend!

Milfuegos (unknown)

Gua, gua, as they say in Iraq. More power to you, Riverbend.

Truth About Iraqis (unknown)

I’ve said it before - that one young Iraqi woman makes the rest of us look like upstarts. … Allow me to take this space and express my heartfelt congratulations and steadfast appreciation for all you have done for your people and your country.

Coventry City Council has launched a new community messaging system called StreetTV, PublicTechnology.net reported today.

Large, colour LED screens will be attached to lampposts in three areas of the city including Holyhead Road, Jubilee Crescent and the Butts, and serve as electronic bulletin boards that will broadcast information and advertisements.

During major incidents, the council and its partners – the police and fire departments, for example – can broadcast important messages and information to citizens on the street. Major incidents hopefully will not occur every day with the introduction of the messaging system, so on a day to day basis, the signs will broadcast healthy living and crime awareness announcements, as well as traffic updates (more banal, but probably the most useful). And sporting event updates will be also be provided for those sports fans who couldn’t make to a pub or turn on a car radio.

The screens were provided free of charge from Streetbroadcast. The council has been granted 50 minutes of free airtime every hour; the other 10 minutes are reserved for advertising.

Examples of the message boards on the Streetbroadcast website look pretty snazzy. Hopefully they won’t cause more traffic slow downs or accidents by distracting drivers with flashy, moving ads.

Geoffrey Robinson, Labour MP of Coventry North West and chairman of the New Statesman magazine, expressed his concern over the potential dangers the message boards pose of distracting motorists.

“They would be worse than hand-held phones,” Robinson said.

The signs should definitely not be on motorways, Robinson said, but his overall feeling on the matter was: “We don’t need them in Coventry.”

Today, I lost my iPod virginity. I’ve held out for a long time, hauling around my clunky, held-shut-with-a-rubber-band portable CD player. But for my birthday this year, I got a very tiny, very shiny iPod Nano.

I’ve had it for a few days, a little intimidated by the daunting task of actually putting music on it. Last night I took the plunge and loaded one whole album on it – U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Nicely ironic, I know – the very first song that came out of those little white ear buds was the very song that catapulted the iPod to its sexy stardom.

This morning’s 30-minute commute was my inaugural iPod experience. As I stepped out the door into the sunshine, Bono certainly added a bounce to my step. But, I was very self-conscious about the white wires running from my coat pocket, like I was hooked up to some Matrix-y life-support machine.

Overall, I enjoyed being able to enliven the daily trudge down the street, through the cemetery, into the tube station, the obnoxiously slow ride on the District line. I especially didn’t mind my daily brush with death navigating the utter chaos that is Victoria station. Normally, the clash of people rushing to work with the confused tourists with roller bags is enough to make me scream. But today, I floated right through.

I admit I missed the sing-song of the birds in the cemetery. I didn’t buy a newspaper on my way into tube. I didn’t say “Bless you” to the man who sneezed on the train because I didn’t know if it would seem weird that I had noticed even thought I had earphones on.

It’s disturbing how much the iPod changes how we interact with our surroundings and each other. On the train, I didn’t realise two twentysomething male iPod owners were friends until one prepared to get off. Ear buds still securely fastened, the two exchanged a slide-and-grip handshake and barely-verbal goodbye.

It sure was nice to drown out the automated “Mind the gap” announcements, but I wonder… what else has been lost?

Specialised diplomas for 14- to 19-year-olds are on the horizon – including one for IT. Expected to be ready for teaching in September 2008, the diploma is in the first stages of development. e-Skills UK is asking IT managers to give their input on the IT education programme.

Employers are being asked to give input on:

1. The key skills young people leaving school should have mastered
2. How work experience can be made beneficial for both students and employers
3. The appropriate balance between technical and business knowledge, and additional learning (It’s been suggested a two-thirds, one-third split for 16 to 19-year-olds.)
4. If candidates should have to achieve a minimum standard in all areas of study

You can access the full questionnaire on the e-Skills UK website.

I took a moment to ask our own IT manager, Kathryn Corrick, to share her thoughts on the subject:

1. “The key skill, I feel, is being able to communicate with your colleagues,” Corrick said.

This ability is much more important than acutal knowledge of how a computer works or programming languages, she said, because often the solution to “IT” problems is easily identified in conversation. While it is not always true, there is a presumption that IT people do not possess social skills, and Corrick said that the IT education programme should somehow help those students who need to improve their communication skills. Corrick suggested incorporating presentations as part of the cirriculum, but otherwise left such decisions to the education experts.

2. When it comes to work experience, “observation is just as important as doing,” Corrick said.
Work experience, should last a minimum of two weeks, but no more than four. From an employers perspective it should be done when students are at least 16, although the difference in maturity levels between 16 and 19-year-olds will determine what tasks can be given to the student, Corrick said.
3. “Companies don’t do technology for technology’s sake,” Corrick said. “Companies use and develop technology because it makes the company money or is part of the core business strategy.”

So a balanced education programme that includes classes in business would give students a broader understanding of how the business world works, which Corrick said is valued by the employer and helps the student put their work in context.

4. “If these skills are all ‘key’, then obviously there should be a minimum standard for them,” Corrick said.

Based on past experience with interns and job applicants, Corrick has noticed a severe lack of comprehension of basic English and Maths skills. Graduates should be able to spell, use grammar and punctuation correctly, type… not to much to ask, really.

As for technical skills, Corrick would expect any IT employee to have a reasonable understanding of basic software, expecially Microsoft Excel. (Though broadly speaking, she feels everyone should be able to use a spreadsheet.) When it comes to online technologies, leaving students should understand codes like CSS, HTML or PHP, rather than relying on software like Dreamweaver or Front Page that are not used in all workplaces.