January: Entertainment blog Manchester Confidential launched a new website – behind a paywall.
The doomed venture was dropped a few months later when it became clear that insufficient numbers of subscribers were willing to pay.

February: OK, not properly Manchester but it’s impact has been felt further afield.Hard to believe that Saddleworth News has only been in existence since February with its detailed coverage of the Phil Woolas case later in the year and the launch of the web-TV channel it’s quickly become part of the media landscape.

March: Concentrating on all things Manchester, InsidetheM60 launched just a month later with the general election soon raising its profile into an everyday experience for news hungry Mancunians.

April: The Manchester Egg found fame on the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog. after being hawked round many a bar.

May: Elections, elections, elections. What more can I say – the blogosphere went into overdrive, plus Marketing Manchester released this funky map of Manchester’s digital scene. Sadly the link for this blog is still incorrect but even so, a great interactive.

June: The MEN’s most prolific blogger, David Ottewell stirred up a controversy which even went international with his  comments about hyperlocal blogs at a time when the movement towards local news publishing continued to gain confidence across the UK.

July: Bloggers aplenty were rewarded with Manchester hosting the Wordcamp UK unconference in the city.

August: Mixing food with micro-blogging, GastroClub_Manchester burst onto the scene with exotic menus and displays of gastronomy. My only regret is not having yet been able to make one of the events…..there’s a New Year’s Resolution to be made if ever there was one.

September: Could it really be the case that there wasn’t much blogging in September? It seemed so to me but please feel free to put me right on this point…….to make up for it, I’m going to cheat and get a mention in for Beards of Manchester. This crowdsourced charity calender actually launched in October – and it’s in the shops now!

October: The year’s most unlikely social media success came from the police. Greater Manchester Police’s innovative use of Twitter proved to be controversial in some quarters but I think ultimately brought a greater understanding of police work in the city.

November: Manchester’s intrepid frog bloggers made it to Costa Rica to bring a series of posts from a sloth sanctuary. It’s all true – come on, I couldn’t make it up!

December: Good to see Manchester-based blogger, photographer and multimedia journalist Ciara Leeming get recognition for her work being featured on the BBC News viewfinder blog.

Those listed are just my one pick per month personal favourites – I could have continued with plenty more examples such as the the fifth annual Manchester Blog Awards held in October. (Well done to both
LoveLevenshulme and Fat Roland On Electronica on both being named as blog of the year. Full list of winners here.)

All that remains for this year is to wish all those who read and contribute to this blog a very Happy New Year!
Thanks especially due to guest bloggers David Hartley, Peter Barton and the ever-present Adrian Slatcher for their support throughout the year.

If you’d like to contribute to keeping the traffic flowing on The Mancunian Way by blogging on an occasional, or regular, basis in 2011, please get in touch either via the comments below or by email to SarahMancunianWay at Googlemail.com.

Spotted at Piccadilly station near the toilets.

Impossible to cover everything that happened there so this is a few notes and thoughts from the part of the day I was involved in – the unconference sessions where I joined a strand about digital storytelling.

I spoke briefly about the challenges for professional story tellers such as journalists in a landscape where everyone can, and does, tell stories using social media. I was followed by the Collette Curry from Manchester Metropolitan University who gave a fascinating talk about her work with artificial intelligence.

AI for storytelling?
Collette has been working with chatbots which use AI to stimulate an intelligent conversation making it possible to explore stories in a new way. Take a look at Inanimate Alice for one example of what’s possible.

The unconference format meant the sessions ran simultaneously so I was unable to catch the others which included my husband Julian Hartley and his colleague Steve Devine who talked about mixing museum culture with networked culture; Prof Keith Brown on 3D printing; Mike Cook on changing everyday objects with electronics and Suhail Khan on whether Seseme Street provided a new model for making and creating work for the arts.

I did catch the end of the talk by Dr Erica Wright from MIRIAD about curating art galleries in Second Life. As someone who gave up on SL a few years ago, it was interesting to see how things have been developing and to hear about plans to make SL available on the web. No more clunky downloads or avatar manipulation could well give the early virtual world a new lease of life…..

The rest of the day involved lots of geekery and amazing gadgets courtesy of MadLab, tons of energy and a heap of ideas. As people post their own summaries of the day, I’ll attempt to round up the links here for a fuller view of the event so please do let me know if you blog about it.

More images from the day at my Flickr stream here.

Update: Inside the M60 blog has written about the event here.

Navigating MediaCity
and talking of MediaCity there’s a special event on next week to consider the opportunities it will yield for businesses and individuals living and working across the north of England
Navigating MediaCityUK is on Thursday 2 December from 6pm-9pm at Waterside Arts Centre.Tickets are £10 and are available from Waterside Arts Centre box office on 0161 912 5616, 10am-5pm Monday to Saturday.
Further information and updates: http://www.creativeindustriestrafford.org

Happy fourth birthday, Techcelerate
The technology network that has brought together some of the digital technology with its investment and support community, celebrated four years of knowledge sharing onTuesday 23rd November.
Manoj Ranaweera, founder of Techcelerate said:

“When we held our first event in November 2006, I had no idea that it would turn into a thriving and trusted network for tech entrepreneurs and their companies. I was simply trying to find few tech entrepreneurs to learn from without having to travel to London often. Today our community is over 1850, made up of tech entrepreneurs, senior managers of technology companies, investors, deal makers and service providers all united to create an ecosystem for UK’s tech community. We are also trying to put the North West on the world’s tech map as a place to set up and grow global tech businesses.”

For further information about Techcelerate and its next event visit www.techcelerate.org.

Launch of Business Week
The new title from the MEN sounded like an opportunity for a new approach in the sector following the demise of Crain’s in the city. I was unable to get my hands on a print copy and so had a look online and found this digital edition. Commenters on HowDo have been typically forthright on both sides of the divide: For: “It’s a good product and congrats to the team for getting something fresh to the market.”
Against: “..can’t see many boardroom doors swinging open, unless it’s to hand over a press release for printing unchanged, in full.”
Which camp do you fall in?

Re-branding of Wythenshawe
I’m late to this post from PR Media Blog but wanted to sneak it in anyway. A fascinating sounding event which considered the Wythenshawe area as a ‘brand’: “The brand needs to shift from industrial estates to what it is today.”

That’s all for now – don’t forget if you’ve got any Manchester media news to share you can contact me via the comments below or via email to SarahMancunianWay AT GoogleMail.com.

Table of school admissions for Manchester

in a weekend edition too!
(h/t Simon Rogers)
If you want to update your knowledge of Manchester’s current data challenges and opportunities, don’t forget there’s the Open Data Manchester Google group.

Is that value for money?

So far the comments have been from people who aren’t in receipt of the newsletters from BBC Outreach. I’d like to hear from anyone who has had one delivered to their door – did you find it useful? What do you hope to see in future issues?

Please feel free to contact me below or via email to sarahMancunianWay AT googlemail.com.

Hipster goaties. Black rimmed spectacles. iPads. The usual signifiers of new media are dotted around the room, but outnumbered by suits and men of a certain age. This year’s Media Festival at the Palace theatre sees an old media model – lots of BBC, lots of corporate sponsors and venture capitalists – but a very new media programme. If in the past “convergence” was a theme it seems that there’s no question about it now. The key themes of today and tomorrow are all about the new media environment. This morning’s main session has the provocative title “The Gameification of Everything” and the main BBC contributions to the next two days are about new models of commissioning and the development of their new iPTV platform “Youview.”

Many of the breakout sessions are focussed on different digital business models. Yet, there’s not obviously a big presence from Manchester new media companies here, as the linkages between the big broadcasters and the more grass roots content companies are still not as strong as they ought to be.

Obviously the driver for this convergence is the BBC’s forthcoming move to Salford – and the almost glacial speed at which the commissioners and the large broadcasters start thinking out of the box. Watching the recent BBC4 drama about the birth of Coronation Street, one was struck by how broadcast TV in the early 60s, particularly the great ITV franchises such as Granada, were creative entrepreneurs. It’s been a long time since TV and radio were innovators in that way – however innovative their TV models were – so its fascinating at a conference such as this to see how new and old media will rub up against each other.

I’m looking forward to a couple of days of exciting conversations – and the programme is certainly a challenging one. Julie Meyer, Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital, has begun the plenary by talking through the changes over the last few years – less money is around, but funders are looking at doing much more with less, with the new business models allow companies to do so. Like all conferences there are some familiar tropes, and I felt nicely reassured that we’ve already had the Clay Shirky reference. New media has its cliches just as much as old media.

Follow on Twitter at #theMF10.

Manchester has been a great place to be this year if you’ve an interest in digital arts. We’ve had two brilliant festivals, in FutureEverything and Abandon Normal Devices, and in the traditional surroundings of Manchester Art Gallery Rafael Lozeno Hemmer’s “Recorders” exhibition has wowed audiences.

However, if digital daunts you, or if you’re just looking to learn, experience and participate in using digital technology then Play Space at the Contact Theatre on 4th December is a golden opportunity to get your digits dirty.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been working with Contact Theatre, in my capacity as a Digital Development Officer at MDDA, to help put together a whole day of performances, installations, workshops and experiences – including an unconference strand where anyone can pitch in their own ideas, find out where art and digital collide, and meet new friends and collaborators.

It follows on from the PlayEverything event that took place in May, as part of FutureEverything – and we’re expanding on the programme from that day, and making sure there’s plenty of time during the day for participants to help explore their own interests and ideas.

It’s going to be a fantastic day, and the highlights are too many to mention. But whether you are a dancer, performer, writer, musician, technologist, or just someone who likes to experience new and interesting opportunities, Play Space is going to be much more than a day for “playing”. What we hope is that the day will help people develop their own ideas and start picking up on digital technologies to use in their own work.

I’m organising the Unconference and we’re kicking off with a number of conversations about curation, storytelling, creative technologies and open data – and how they can help the arts get digital.

The day is free, with funding from Manchester City Council and the Manchester Beacon for Public Engagement, and offers a unique to chance to end the year with an indoor festival of digital dynamism. Come along with an open mind and you’ll hopefully have a great time.

Registration is online now.

I’m particularly looking forward to the one-to-one of a wearable film, and the opportunity to be part of Albino Mosquito‘s virtual identity installation in Space 2.

And it reveals how the Manchester-based organsiation, which aims to help get a community reporter for every street corner, has had a busy year expanding into other parts of the UK  and is now looking internationally.

In the concluding page, chair Bernard Leach says:
” The last year has been an important one in that we have now become an organisation with a national profile by working closely with partner organisations ranging from Housing Associations in London and the West Midland, a residential care home in Blackpool, refugee communities in Sheffield, a Seaside Voices project with four coastal resorts and a bespoke digital inclusion project now aiming to develop community reporters across Europe with partners from Italy, Spain, Turkey, Germany and Hungary.”

Taking things a bit closer to home, chief executive Gary Copitch mailed the annual report to interested people saying:

“We have done some great activity over the year including working with Housing Associations and the Police as well as undertaken consultations with residents in Lower Broughton in Salford. The report also highlights our work to develop community reporters in Owton Manor in Hartlepool and Preston.”

See the full report via this link.