Foursquare. It’s the latest hottest thing to blog, tweet and generally foam about.

Unfortunately, over-excited use of Foursquare can often simply annoy your Twitter followers. Who cares if you’ve just checked-in at “Don’s pizzeria” or if you’re Mayor of “[hipsterrific bar]“?

The real value in Foursquare is not just tweeting where you are, or when you’re Mayor or whether you’ve got the badge that says you’ve been out drinking every night for the last five days (maybe you need to check in at your local AA club).

Foursquare is primarily a popular platform for helping you keep track of your friends and get recommendations about good and interesting places to hang out from people you know and trust. When you go to Don’s Pizzeria, tell me why and what you’re doing there. Leave a tip to recommend something (or to remind me to avoid the kebab).

Here’s my top three tips for making Foursquare useful:

(and, influence people, in a sense):

1. Login to your Foursquare account on the web, click Settings and turn-off the default options to send tweets whenever you check-in, become Mayor or unlock a badge.

Don’t worry, you can turn these on per check-in. This will stop you losing Twitter followers, bored of incessant check-ins at home, work and the train station.

2. Check-in and add a note each time you do. What are you doing there? What’s good? Are you available to hang out? Many people will get your live Foursquare check-ins through Twitter too (if they don’t have Push-type notifications on iPhone etc). So tweet these, if they’re useful.

Again, avoid tweeting mundane places unless you’re looking to hang out with people or at an event. Adding a hashtag helps with the latter.

3. Leave tips. Not cash, but those little notes you can add to places from the Foursquare app. When others check-in, one of the tips pops-up which can help someone make a decision about what to do, where to go or what to have.  Ostensibly, tips are positive things, but I have no hesitation in pasting a place if it deserves it.

Saving tips that you find when you check-in and browsing nearby tips also means you build-up a collection of “to do’s” that are worth going through on a boring Sunday afternoon.

Winning over your friends

As you become more active on Foursquare, you’ll begin to add up a list of friends. The more users that join, the easier it becomes to find other people and use Foursquare as a way of organising social activities. In Manchester, for example, I find skimming my Foursquare friends list over lunchtime a good way of finding out where other people are and if they’re available to grab a bite to eat.

Of course, you can always check-in “off the grid” if you want a bit of privacy.

And yes, it is interesting to know who’s the Mayor of a venue. You become a Mayor being by the user to check-in most frequently over the last two months. If a friend is a Mayor, this is a signal to me that he or she goes there lots and, in a sense, endorses it as a venue for whatever goes on there. Checking-in at a venue without actually being there, or really making use of it, is probably somewhat misleading and won’t win me over as your friend.

Alternatively…

Foursquare is by no means the only location-based social recommendations app out there. I myself was (and still am) an advocate of others, like Gowalla, that frankly have a sexier design and ask users to crowdsource locations, rather than simply buy up a local directory a starting point.

Unfortunately, there is a degree of critical mass with Foursquare that goes with the relentless adoration lauded on it by Mashable. This means most of my friends and colleagues have naturally gravitated towards it as a network and that, in turn, makes it more useful for me, to find out what’s going on where. There are methods of checking-in on multiple networks, however I have yet to try these out myself.

In conclusion…

Remember, Foursquare is all about recommending local places and things to do. This sort of stuff can add value to what your followers see on your Twitter time line, but if you tweet about it too much, it can really turn people off.

So check it out and, if you know me, add me as a friend.

It’s great that we have a mix of new and re-elected council members, meaning that we have a blend of experience and fresh input. My intention is to use the discussion I posted on my blog the week before as a starting point for my actions on the council. In the spirit of openness, collaboration and events, I hope to use this channel to keep members updated as well as come along to a range of digital community meetups to meet people directly.

With that in mind, I’ve been keen to go out and about and fly the flag for MD in my new role. Over the last two weeks I’ve been out with FutureEverything volunteers, at the Creative Times relaunch (featuring  Phil Jeffs) as well as sticking my head into Manchester SEO meetup. This week, we also held the regular Social Media Cafe where regular attendees Tim Dobson and Richard Hudson also made themselves known as council members. It’s been great to keep in touch with what’s going on and introduce myself to people in my new role.

I also set up the @McrDig twitter account (unfortunately, ‘ManchesterDigital’ is too long to be used as an account handle!). We’re using this to engage with the community and share news, in addition to our usual weekly emails (do you get these?). It’s regularly monitored, so just tweet @McrDig to get in touch, ask questions or get something promoted. We’re also using and monitoring the #McrDig hashtag for relevant content.

It’s worth touching upon my thoughts about the AGM itself. The formal report, drawn up by last year’s council, is available on the website. In the future, however, I will be aiming to arrange for the meeting to be live-blogged and more accessible ‘outside the room’. There was a fair bit of chat on Twitter and it would be great to be able to include some of the feedback from that in future plans as well as allow the meeting to be engaged with, erm, digitally.

This also means getting the paperwork out ahead of the meeting and putting any resolutions out for comment beforehand, like I tried to do with the Google Wave for the joint statement to the new coalition government. To aid with this sort of approach, Phil has set us up a Basecamp account so the council can more easily keep in touch.

I’d also ultimately like to see MD move towards a model of electronic voting, but this carries a number of questions that are worth exploring with the community. I’ve had experience of implementing this at a previous charity but it was not without its flaws and the process must be subject to scrutiny. Still, it is not impossible nor uncommon and I think it’s an ideal way to let more members help set the direction for the organisation.

All of this, I hope, will add up to a more inclusive approach to our main democratic meeting of the year. It will build on the themes of openness, collaborate and better events, but I hope people see the digital engagement elements as additional to attending the meeting in person. There’s a lot to be said for coming along, meeting other members and questioning the council and chair in person. I hope that by promoting it well in advance and engaging people with the content, we’ll be able to make it a more useful event for the membership to turn up to.

Our first council meeting is now set for the start of July and I hope we can put together a calendar of our events over the coming year. If you have any ideas, get in touch. We’re already working to identify the range of groups across Manchester and the north-west that we should be talking to, in addition to those with whom we already have a relationship. I also hope that we’ll look at what we can offer by way of support in order to focus on our core aim of making Manchester and the north west an even better place for digital business.

Update 2: one of the items on tonight’s (unannounced) agenda is a memorandum to government by Manchester Digital. Here’s the proposed spiel. If you want to discuss it before the meeting, check out this public Google Wave I’ve set up.

Update 3: I’ve been elected! Here’s the full list.

Next week, I’ll be making a bid for the Manchester Digital council, the 12-member governing body for the Manchester Digital Association.

But how many of you have actually heard of – or from – Manchester Digital?

In their own words, Manchester Digital “is the independent trade association for the thriving digital sector in the North West of England”.

I believe it is essential to have a strong, representative and campaigning trade association that is relevant to everyone in the “digital sector”. That includes big digital business, SMEs, microbusinesses and freelancers. But it also includes the network of digital user groups and interest groups that are a vast, but often hidden part of the north west digital community.

So far, it seems that Manchester Digital has not been successful in representing the full diversity of digital sector which has evolved in Manchester.

If Manchester Digital does truly seek to represent the rapidly changing digital sector then it must change with it. If I’m elected to the council, I will work to massively improve Manchester Digital’s external communications and bring about a more collaborative approach to its work.

It’s important for Manchester Digital to better represent everyone because of their unique relationship with bodies like the Manchester Digital Development Agency, local and regional authorities and because of their national representative role. These bodies help set policy on digital business in the north west and are sources of potential funding for digital activities and it’s essential that they get to hear about everything that goes on in the diverse digital sector.

Electing me will bring lessons I’ve learned from helping organise the successful Social Media Café events to Manchester Digital. The events are free, run entirely by volunteers and are now the lynchpin of a network with over 550 members. To me, this suggests that successful networks don’t require paid-for staff to run them.

Previous relevant experience includes being elected a trustee for three years of a large membership-led charity with a turnover of £5 million, including serving as chair of trustees for a year. Since then, I’ve worked in digital communications, primarily in the public sector in both technical and non-technical roles.

I believe opening up Manchester Digital’s communications, connecting with existing digital communities in the north west and building a series of free events are the keys to expanding membership, promoting collaboration and, most importantly, making Manchester Digital more relevant to all of the digital sector it seeks to represent.

In that spirit, I’m opening up my manifesto to you.

Your thoughts and comments on this blog post will help shape what I put forward in my meagre 100-word statement for election. More importantly, I hope it will start a discussion around the role and the future of Manchester Digital which, if elected, I will take forward as my agenda for you on the council.

I want your advice and suggestions around the following themes. I have thoughts of my own around each, which I will be happy to discuss in the comments.

Openness

• How can we improve Manchester Digital’s communications?
• Do you have a clear idea of who Manchester Digital are, and who they’re for?
• What are the benefits of Manchester Digital to members and the wider digital community?

Community

• Do you feel part of a Manchester Digital community?
• What communities could Manchester Digital plug-in to, support or help create with its influence?
• Should Manchester Digital represent you?

Events

• Have you attended any Manchester Digital or MD-supported events?
• What sort of events could Manchester Digital put on, or support through other networks?
• Would a regular Manchester Digital meetup add to, or detract from/conflict with other types of meetup that already exist?
• Are you aware that the Big Chip awards are run by Manchester Digital?

Feedback and comment on any other aspect of Manchester Digital that you feel should be in my manifesto would be more than welcome.

The deadline for nominations is 5pm, 13 May so get posting and tell me what you think needs to change so that Manchester Digital can represent everyone it should.

Many of you may have heard the news that Ning, the providers of this community’s social network, is intending to phase out their ‘free’ service, in favour of paid-for options. Jason Rosenthal, their newly appointed Chief Executive, said, in a staff memo:

Cross-posted from the Social Media Manchester network on Ning.

“In an age when not only the city-wide newspaper, but the district or very local paper is close to extinction, more and more people are looking at the web as way to deliver the kind of area-focused service that many of us still have an interest in.”

“With local newspapers shrinking and ITV local news set to be scrapped in its current format by 2013, PR’s better keep abreast of hyperlocal channels if they want to keep their clients connected to local communities.”

Posted via email from Manchester Mix

The Manchester Mark I - first stored program digital computer (c. 1949).

It seems I’m spending increasingly more of my free time at that brilliant space known as the Manchester Digital Laboratory. Last Wednesday night, the, erm, Madlab played host to a meeting of North West Digital Communities (NWDC), and I went along to fly the flag for the Social Media Café.

NWDC is a forum that brings together the leaders of digital communities in the north west, with the aim of improve the local digital community by sharing resources and pooling ideas.

These communities are incredibly diverse, representing a wide-range of tech interests; technology users groups; communications and small business. It’s also true to say that there is huge overlap and many people involved in one of the communities will be involved in at least one other. Colleagues from Geekup, Madlab, Manchester Free Software, Manchester BSD group and others were all in attendance.

One of the things discussed at the meeting though was NWDC’s lack of ‘visibility’. Though collectively representing easily hundreds of members, groups don’t know that they’re part of a wider community. This means it’s harder to know about other events happening locally in a similar sphere and can potentially lead to overlap or new groups being created when getting involved with existing communities could provide access to an instant pool of interested individuals.

Groups at NWDC also have one huge thing in common – many people who attend are freelancers, small businesses owners or employees,  or social enterprises. To some extent, this sets it apart from larger trade bodies like Manchester Digital (who are of course NWDC members but operate in a different way).

With better profile and visibility, NWDC could act as a collective voice for these groups who are often under-represented when it comes to influencing the local digital business community within which they operate. Larger businesses are potentially able to allocate time and resources to influencing change, through membership of Manchester Digital particularly. Small businesses and freelancers might find that more difficult to justify, particularly when any sort of paid-for membership often demands tangible value for their return on investment.

This is definitely a view with which I personally strongly agree. Amongst those who were able to attend, it seemed there was also a clear enthusiasm for improving the profile of NWDC, by cross-promoting it to their groups and exploring how it can better serve its members through its collective membership, bearing in mind the above.

One of the first steps will be to better implement and publicise a shared calendar of events. Development of a common, open-source platform for user groups in the region (and beyond) is also being explored. These volunteer-led activities from a group made up totally of volunteers with a passion for the region, for region and for digital are a very obvious example of ‘return on investment’.

Finally, many of us this week are longingly/jealously reading tweets emanating from Austin, Texas; attending the NWDC meeting reminded me of the diversity of talent that we have in Manchester, which makes it a natural destination for anyone interested in digital technology, communications and enterprise.

Perhaps we don’t need a glitzy festival of music and digital innovation – we’re surrounded by our own constant and limitless supply of both! We are, perhaps cringingly, our own continuous  Northwest by North…

Do you have any ideas about how North West Digital Communities could raise its profile? Want to get more involved or hear about what it does? Leave a comment below and visit their website to sign-up for email notifications.

“collect similar opinions in one place making them more likely to be found by people and companies”.

It seems to do this primarily by browsing Twitter and picking up on feelings and emotions expressed about a whole range of topics. This is interesting, as it can flag up when positives or negatives are expressed about a brand, service or individual, making monitoring easier and identifying trends. Unfortunately, it’s well-known that people are more likely to express a negative opinion than a positive one, so whether Amplicate accounts for this is unclear.

The service also appears to pick up and tweet positive or negative trends automatically – which is why this afternoon, it had picked up on the trend that people “hate democracy“. Along with this sentiment, the service generates a landing page (screengrab) that offers the option of agreeing with this statement and even automatically generating badges for blogs and website with an “I hate democracy” motif.

Whilst it is true that even former Prime Minster Winston Churchill proclaimed democracy the least, worst option (more or less), I wonder how much the Amplicate owners want to associate themselves with this statement. It’s telling though that one of the opinions that (automatically) contributed to this feeling was “Chinese democracy sucks”. But, on closer inspection, this tweet is actually about the Guns N’ Roses album (or song) Chinese Democracy (if you’d also never heard of it, there’s a clip below from Wikipedia.).

(484 KB)
Listen on posterous

Will we ever get to a point when an algorithm can analyse a tweet in such detail, and deduce an overall opinion? I think so, but until then, picking out keywords from Twitter is an imprecise – and fraught-ridden – method for proclaiming popular opinion. Something PR firms would be well-advised to steer clear of.

What do you think? Would you use a service like Amplicate to track your brand, or is it simply too full of noise? Leave a comment below.

Posted via email from @technicalfault

12 January 2010 – A double-decker bus, carrying commuters from the centre of Manchester, was the subject of a possible arson attack during this evening’s rush hour.

Listen to Interview on AudioBoo Listen to Interview (MP3)

Posted via email from Manchester Mix

The website links to a page describing the teams at the BBC’s existing facility in Manchester, New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road. It’s illustrated by a small thumbnail of the building at night, with the BBC sign lit-up. I couldn’t help but think I’d seen that picture before.

Not surprisingly, I had – because I’d taken the photo.

Clip of BBC Jobs North page showing unattributed image

Sometime in January 2009, during the wave of protests about the BBC’s coverage of the situation in Gaza, I’d gone down to take photos of the protestors. I uploaded them to Flickr and, exceptionally, decided to license them under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license. The license permits display, distribution and the creation of derivative work with the sole proviso that the author must be attributed.

A small price to pay for free imagery that could no doubt be used by a number of independent media who were covering the protests.

It is ironic then that the BBC – or, rather, a lazy designer/developer – simply skimmed Google Images or Flickr for ‘Creative Commons‘ images and decided to crop-and-drop the image straight into their page design, without a second thought to attributing the author. I would have even been pacified by an alt-tag that stated the origin and license of the image, but instead, it simply reads “BBC Oxford road” [sic].

The BBC is an organisation with access to vast news-gathering and photography resources and a budget to furnish most News articles with a pricey-but-pointless Getty Images thumbnail. So, why then resort to basically stealing a photograph? It turns out that this is not an isolated occurrence. Fellow photographer Adam Foster reminded me of the time they used a copyrighted image of the skyline of Birmingham in broadcast.

I’m a big supporter of the Creative Commons licensing movement, shown by my selective use of it, but I can’t help feeling extremely annoyed when someone takes a CC-licensed image and assumes that it is ‘free-to-do-anything-with’ rather than just ‘free-to-use-appropriately’. It seems the attitude of the BBC is more of the former, reinforced by their own rights-grabbing terms and conditions for sharing content (thanks Gill Moore).

I’ll be honest, it’s hardly a striking picture and not something I’d expect to ever earn anything from or see in an exhibition, but the principle of the matter is that the BBC should be far more aware of what is appropriate when using images or other media licensed using Creative Commons. Here’s a handy BBC News article introducing the concept.

Other parts of the BBC have taken a more progressive approach to Creative Commons, but it’s clear that there’s a strong need across the organisation for more training on how to use Creative Commons-licensed materials appropriately. For an organisation that so jealously circumscribes the licenses around its own material, it should make serious efforts to respect the licenses of other material it wants to use.

Through the website technical fault (!) feedback form, I have notified the BBC of this issue and I hope to receive an apology, along with attribution – but I have also asked what steps they are going to take to ensure that everyone understands the rights and responsibilities associated with using Creative Commons-licensed material. I’ll update this post as more comes in.

Have you had the BBC or other media organisation misuse your photos or other material licensed under Creative Commons? Let me know in the comments.

Update 12 January, 3pm: the image has been removed from the website, but I’ve heard nothing following my feedback form. I asked them what steps they would take to avoid this in the future.