Out With A Bang

For many a reason, Sarah Hartley and I have found ourselves wandering along similar paths of late.

Which is why I read her latest blog piece with interest… and, to be honest, admiration.

Because there is a very fine line that we all have to walk here; on the one hand trying to keep up with the London Twitterati whilst at the same time trying to work out what difference any of us can actually make with regard to communities that desperately need to find a voice.

It is a line that Sarah managed to tread with a fine sense of balance as she juggled her way between the £1.40 conference at Reuters one day; a social media surgery in Leeds the next.

Whether I’ll be able to follow suit is another matter…

Here’s the piece…

http://sarahhartley.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/musings-on-the-week-a-north-south-social-media-divide/

… the comments that follow are well worth a read too… I suspect for North/South you could suggest inside M25/outside M25; even after 15 years in Norfolk, I’ve still to discover where Norwich sits in the great North-South debate. I do know, however, that it is well outside the M25… we don’t do dual carriageways.

Why Sarah’s thoughts struck such a chord isn’t hard to fathom; last Monday I was in Stoke; delivering a lecture to the kids at Staffs University before enjoying an Indian buffet meal with Mike Rawlins, of TalkAboutLocal and www.pitsnpots.co.uk fame.

On Thursday, me our Ian and Harry Harrold met up in Norwich to plot our next moves; on Friday I was in Newcastle; having lunch with Peter Atkinson MP; talking through the kind of issues that his constituents face in rural Northumberland; be it in terms of broadband connectivity, brand placement, etc, etc…

And, yes, I am going there with a business hat on; I have got a product to promote; a service to sell.

Here’s www.addiply.com on www.pitsnpots.co.uk and, of course, Northumberland is suddenly very dear to our hearts as we partner up with TrinityMirror’s ‘Your Place’ platform and offer hyper-local advertising space across their 20-odd sites at a fiver a throw…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

… so, we’re not a charity; I have a commercial reason to be stopping in the Quality Hotel in Hanley of a night; to be playing mine host in the Northern Counties Club on Hood St.

And I wasn’t there pumping out the virtues of Twitter; I know what Twitter can do – you whack a #ncfc tag onto any Norwich City related football tweet and you’re delivering me free content on www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity – among our ‘#ncfc’ community can be found Ed Balls MP, BBC Radio Norfolk marketing their digital audio wares and – as of last night – City skipper @GrantHoltyFooty

Whether he’s the real McCoy, we’ve still to establish – the feeling this morning was that it was a fake.

But the point is that we’re publishing conversations of interest and relevance that help make MyFootballWriter a more sustainable editorial platform; that tag isn’t there for one day only; it doesn’t disappear off into the ether somewhere – it has a practical purpose.

It delivers me fresh content. That’s free. Whilst I’m sat in a curry house in Stoke.

And this, for me, is what Sarah is driving at… out there, outside the ‘Beltway’, what practical difference can these new tools at our disposal make on the streets of Leeds, of Norwich and of Stoke?

Or rather, in her words…

‘What do the views of a bunch of always-on wired meeja professionals in London have to do with delivering news and information services to people working in tough but essential spheres such as the mental health sector, or living in areas where broadband access is still an aspiration not a reality?

… but all in all, for me at least, it was an afternoon inside the echo chamber, the reverberations of which will probably not even reach Islington, let alone Leeds…’

For those who don’t know their Stoke, there is a very real possibility that Stoke Central could return the first BNP MP at the next general election. Of the nine BNP councillors that sit on Stoke City Council, six come from within that Parliamentary constituency.

Should Stoke Central return a BNP MP, you can imagine the level of outrage that will follow in the talking shops and coffee houses of Islington.

It is, you suspect, one reason why Will Perrin, TalkAboutLocal and 4iP are now out there on the ground in Stoke; using Mike and his experiences on the frontline with www.pitsnpots.co.uk to galvanise new community start-ups; to nurture the kind of grass-roots debates that need to happen… out there; where the metal really meets the meat.

And if www.addiply.com can somehow help the like of www.pitsnpots.co.uk to become a ‘not-for-loss’ model; that our offer of a 90% revenue return can help sustain the level of street debate that is desperately needed within these set-upon communities then great…

I’d far rather have a night at the Quality Hotel, Hanley, selling my wares there than mixing with the greater and the good in the heart of London town.

I don’t know where, say, the Media140 roadshow is heading next; I think it was Sydney last time out… they have some wind in their sails; they’re re-shaping our meeja future. Smart people; bright minds.

Good luck to them.

OK, here’s a challenge for them. Why not have the next UK Media140 event in a Stoke?

Or a Leeds? Or a Burnley? Or a Norwich? Or a Wigan? Or a Hexham?

And not charge.

I’ll speak. And I suspect Sarah will. And Mike.

Let’s see if we can’t actually start to make a difference. Where it really matters.

On those streets that aren’t paved with new meeja gold.