Author Archives: Jon Hickman

About Jon Hickman

Jon researches and publishes work on digital culture and creative industries, specifically exploring social media. This work is applied to his role as the Degree Leader for Web & New Media within our undergraduate programmes, and his teaching on the MA Social Media. His industry experience in new media also makes him a key member of our knowledge transfer team.

Ikonic Social Media

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I recently had an informal meeting with Ikon, Birmingham’s contemporary arts gallery, where we discussed how they can use social media effectively. Many galleries, museums, and other attractions have profiles in a number of social networks and Ikon is no exception. The main social media activity from Ikon is on and where they have developed a fairly active following. The Twitter account is particularly interesting when used to live blog from a series of talks. Encouraged by this initial success (which has come relatively easily), Ikon are keen to push forward and develop a more comprehensive social media strategy. I asked Ikon three key questions, and discussed a number of solutions for them. Ikon are keen for you to add more in the comments below.

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Meanwhile on the MA Social Media Blog…

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The School of Media’s new suite of MA programmes start this September. Several of the programmes have their heart in the work of Interactive Cultures or the research interests of team members. The MA Music Industry starts in September 2010, but we have had a major hand in the development of MA Social Media & MA Creative Industries and Cultural Policy.

A key feature of the learning experience on the MA Social Media is a research blog. I started this blog off with a few entries (some of which run parallel to but provide a different take on posts made to this blog) but our first intake of postgraduate students have now started contributing to the blog. The first two student contributions were made yesterday, and there will be plenty more to follow so do add the blog to your RSS reader. So, Ladies & Gentleman so say hello to Leland Strott and Jigar Patel.

Friday Round Table: iPhones

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The Interactive Cultures team discuss their iPhones: can we keep the conversation on track without descending into a “why we love Apple” love-in?

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Our podcast is top pick on iTunesU

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We’re pretty pleased with ourselves today. The Interactive Cultures podcast has been selected for global recognition on Apple’s education content service, iTunesU. Apple scan iTunes U content for podcasts that have relevance to a worldwide audience, and post them as star items on the iTunesU homepage. So now we’re happily sitting alongside eight other items from a number of well known institutions including Oxford and the Open University. We continue to publish content here on our own podcast feed. This will feature content before it hits iTunesU. To find more about the rest of BCU you might want to investigate the full range of content we publish.

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Social Media at 52 degrees north

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Marlon Parker
Marlon Parker addresses the Black Country Social Media Café

Last month I spent two days in the company of South African social media academic Marlon Parker. Regular readers will remember Marlon from his guest post several months ago. The purpose of the visit was to share thoughts and ideas in the field of social media, and to discuss social media education. We were fortunate that the visit coincided with a number of social media events in Birmingham, which meant I could give Marlon a real flavour of what we do in the West Midlands and I could introduce him to as many contacts as possible in a few short days. So what does an academic and social entrepreneur from Cape Town make of the social media activity in Birmingham? And what could we learn from him? The answer is: “a lot”.
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How to stop being embarrassed by your website commissioning

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Birmingham City Council has come into criticism this week over the development of it’s new birmingham.gov.uk website. The coverage and the chatter on the topic got me thinking: how could public sector organisations commission these big projects in a way that might prevent embarrassing questions? Could large scale public web projects be done in a more innovative way? Here’s what I came up with.
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IP Law & Digital Britain

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Andrew Dubber discusses intellectual property law in response to the Digital Britain Report at the West Midlands Digital Britain Unconference. Audio courtesy of Rhubarb Radio.

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A Digital Britain for a Digital Birmingham

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On Tuesday 16th June the Government published the Digital Britain report. The report outlines the direction of policy in several areas of digital media from infrastructure to digital literacy. On the following day Birmingham held the first in a series of regional debates on the report. The event was organised by Digital Birmingham, part of Birmingham City Council, and featured a keynote address by Lord Stephen Carter who oversaw the writing of the report. Parallel to this “official” event, a 2nd Digital Britain Unconference was held at Fazeley Studios. Lord Carter also attended this event where he spent some time taking questions from the floor.

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Un-Convention Salford 2009

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Music as Culture
Nick Webber, Jez Collins, Andrew Dubber, talk music as culture at Un-Convention Salford

We recently attended Un-Convention Salford 2009. Organised by AHRC KTF partner Fat Northener, Un-convention is a not for profit grassroots led music conference for DIY and Independent music makers and companies. Born in 2008 as an alternative to Manchester’s mainstream In The City event, it has already inspired Un-Conventions in Belfast and Swansea and future events in Glasgow, London, Barcelona and Reykjavík. This year’s UK national event in Salford featured a range of key musicians, bands and industry personnel.

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