FlickR and the creative commons.

This blog is in response to a Dan Slee blog of a couple of weeks ago. For those who don't know him, Dan is a much respected Local Gov figure and his blogs are always worth a read. He has earned this respect by me and a lot of other people across the country for his knowledge and understanding of Local Gov, content strategies and Social Media. In his blog he listed 20 things he learnt at the recent UKGovCamp and such is the power of the man, many other people have followed his lead and done their list of twenty things as well. In Dan's list I agree with 19 of the things. However there is one thing I do disagree with. Dan stated that he wished for a council to put all their photographs on Flickr under its Creative Commons licence. Sorry mate but I don't agree with that.

Correction, I cannot find the original blog post where Dan made his comment… I'm not even sure that it was Dan that said that now, apologies if it wasn't you Dan. If anyone can find the original source then please let me know. Anyway as the bolg is already written and with less than 30mins till #weeklyblogpost's have to be in, here's the blog anyway.

Two thing are in issue here, FlickR and the creative commons licence. I've never been a fan of the FlickR website. I really don't like that way they organise and display their photos. Their groups system means the name of the photographer gets lost along the line. If I see a nice photograph I want to know who took it so I can look out for more of their work. I've got a few photographs on their myself from my days when I helped out at the Bournemouth Aviation Museum, but for my general photography I am in the process of writing my own photo gallery to host my photos in the way I want.

I won't be releasing any of my photos under a creative commons licence for all and everybody to use. I have had requests in the past for permission to use my photographs on websites and magazines and I have been more than happy to grant this permission. But I've still retained control over my photographs. It has taken my time and money to produce those photographs why should I be expected to just give them away.

It the same with photographs taken by Councils to which Dan is referring to. Someone at that council has obviously taken a great deal of time and public money to produced a set of photographs. Time and money spent going out to get take the photographs and all the editing and so forth done back in the office. This is something that most councils won't do. In these times of cuts, corporate photos libraries are an extravagance that many are not willing to invest in. To my mind it would be very hard to create a business case that could justify the huge outlay for little reward that a corporate photo library created by a council would involve, Unless of course the council tries to sell those photographs, to try to recoup some of the huge costs. But of course they will then be competing with the professional photography market.

My local newspaper, and I'm sure other around the country, has made a big thing about its collection of photograph. You have been able to have copies of Echo photographs for many years. Indeed many years ago when my brothers appeared in photographs in the newspaper my mum went down to their offices and ordered copies of those photographs. Buying of photographs was never hugely publicised, not like it is these days. Newspapers are now in the situation where people expect their websites to cover the news stories. Take the example when certain national papers introduced a fee for anyone reading their articles online. The decision came under some negative comments from users expecting everything for free.

Anyway, back to the Echo. Having their articles on the website must mean that their sales of the printed paper is going down and so it seems that they are pushing there photography side much more than they used to. They are also producing more books, based on their huge back catalogue of photos. A catalogue that they would not have had if they released photographs on creative commons licensing years ago. Whilst I don't know if the photographs have saved the paper, I‘m sure it is helping.

My views on copyright theft has hardened since I've been talking to my sister-in-law, who is a published author and have been planning my own detective series based in Bournemouth. I aim to spend a long time planning and writing these books and I am not going to give them away. I've even heard comments from people about the price of e-books, kindle books etc But there is no printing and shipping costs, so why aren't they next to nothing to buy? Well the author still spend many hours writing it, paying an editor to edit it. Agency costs etc. You can't expect them to give it away after that.

I digress, back to photographs. Ian Hislop made what I consider a very important statement to the Leeveson inquiry into Journalism. I can't remember the exact words so this isn't a direct quote. But he said something like 'We live in a society now that expects everything for free, that's why we have no film industry to speak of and a bad music industry'. Would flooding the market with free photographs help the professional photography business?

I'm reminded of an article I once read about the flower markets in the Netherlands. Growers selling their flowers for export all over Europe. I see Dutch registered Lorries nearly every day in Bournemouth, supplying the local florists. In the article the reporter asks about what happened to all the flowers that don't get sold. Surely they get donated to a local Hospital or the like. Certainly not was the reply, they just get destroyed, sounds harsh but that's business. If people knew that flowers were being delivered each day to the hospital for free, no-one would buy flowers for their sick friend and relatives in that hospital. If they gave them away it would instantly kill their own business and put them out of wok. Which would end up meaning that nobody would have flowers.

Aren't all artificial pitches Astroturf?

Something I learnt the other day. Astroturf is a brand name for one make of artificial pitch. I learnt this when chatting to a leisure centre about their website. Their artificial pitches are not Astroturf ones and so cannot use the name Astroturf on their website. This will of course mean they loose out on hits to their website, loose out on bookings for their artificial pitches and thus loose money. Why, because so many people think Astroturf is just another name for an artificial pitch and will Google Astroturf when trying to find an artificial pitch to play on and so they might never discover their local leisure centres artificial pitches..

Rhod Gilbert and Becky Betts

Whilst I don’t know the full story or what they are proposing but I have read headlines in the media about proposed changes to BBC Local Radio. Now I do hope it doesn’t affect Local Radio too much. I’ve only just re-discovered Local Radio thanks to the internet.

Used to listen to my local station a lot as a child, but became less interested in their Middle of the Road music. There was other stations with output more directed at late teenagers. And I of course I was restricted to just one station. BBC Radio Solent in my case. I of course always listen to their football coverage, especially when travelling home by car from an AFC Bournemouth home game.

Nowadays things have changed due to the internet and digital TV. Via the web you can listen to any BBC radio station, anywhere in the country. This opens up many more programmes. However you’ll need to do a bit of research to find out when the best programmes are. Unless you buy copies of the Radio Times from every area around the country,

I have two favourites at the moment.

Saturday 11am BBC Radio Wales - The Rhod Gilbert show.
I love Rhod Gilbert and love his off-beat programme. Very funny.

Sunday 9am BBC Radio Norfolk – Treasure Quest
Do you remember the Treasure Hunt with Anneke Rice, well this is BBC Radio Norfolk’s version. A huge following from ranging from ‘The People of Norfolk’ as often the over excitable Norfolk ‘Anneka’ (Becky Betts) calls everyone, to people as far away as Tenerife and Canada. Being from Hampshire I think I’m one of the more ‘local’ non-locals is that makes sense. They have a facebook group which we all discuss the clues and the programmes (social media in use there – great stuff). I’ve learnt more about Norfolk. A place I have family and as a result visit a lot. So overall it’s a jolly fun way to spend a Sunday morning.

What to write about (#weeklyblogpost week 3)

Those who have followed my blog over many years might be surprised by me suddenly starting to blog again and with strange subject matter to… please let me explain.

There was a conversation amongst my twitter friends about blogging and how it was difficult to maintain the enthusiasm to blog and was anyone reading them anyway. It was my old mate Dan Slee that suggested that we form a weekly blog club. We would all blog once a week and submit it to the blog club for all to read. The idea quickly spread and there are many of us who are now members.

So now I have three sets of readers of my blog. Well I think I may have more than three people reading this but sometimes I do wonder. ;)

First group are all my regular readers who have know me for years. Second group are mostly the people who I have know on twitter for a while, who know me but not as well as the first group. Then of course there are people who have only just met me through the blog club.

I like the idea of the blog club but don’t want to alienate my regulars. Do my new friends want to read about how I eat too much carbs on Monday and made myself ill. I think it was that, I must have forgotten that I’m a diabetic. Of course there are just getting a first impression of me.

Similarly do regular readers want to hear my rants on social media stuff…. Maybe but I’m sure they want to hear about how I am etc.

Or maybe I’m trying to please all the people all the time. I should just stick to blogging what I like and hope that all of you find something of interest at some point… maybe.

Twitter bringing the world together?

When I first started using Twitter, I soon got very bored of it. This was in the very early days of it before it became a bit more mainstream. I wasn’t following many people and I wasn’t being followed back. I gave up.

Then went to a conference and met up with some guys from Stratford-upon-Avon council who were raving about Twitter. I gave it another go. I followed them. They followed me back. I saw they had followers from other councils and so my network increased. I now have two accounts, (one normal and one for my beer friends) and I'm loving it..

But I do feel that I may not be making the most of it. The people I follow and follow me all have something in common with me. Either we both work for Councils, or we both love technology, or both have a love of aircraft, trains, buses or beer. And all on them are UK based.

When I was younger I had a pen-friend in the Netherlands, we used to chat about things in our respective countries. OK we were both aircraft buffs as well, but I hope you get my point. I was learning about other cultures etc. Twitter is used all over the world. There are many people from many different backgrounds and cultures but yet I still have only followers who are like me in some way. I'd be interested in know the break down of your twitter followers. Do you play "safe" like me or take the plunge and try and make friends with people from lands far, far away

Open letter to the National Trust

This is my first blog for the #weeklyblogclub on twitter. More of which later.

I thought I’d start with an open letter to the National Trust. I love the National Trust and think they have some of the bestest places in the whole country. However I do have a problem with the membership fees. Let me explain

I used to be a member of the NT. I join under their get 12 months for the price of 9 offer, which they still have for direct debit membership. So an initial £62.63 (current price) was paid). However the next year the price went up to the full amount (currently £83.50). Now I do not begrudge paying this amount for myself and my fiancée to become members of the NT. However it is a lot of money to fork out in the one month the membership is due. Especially as my membership was due in December. With Christmas as all that it was a tight month money wise anyway. So unfortunately I did have to eventually cancel my membership.

Since then I have spoken to a couple of people in the National Trust about doing some sort of quarterly direct debit. I already pay for a few magazine subscriptions this way and the National Trust already have a direct debit system in place but this is only paying annually rather than quarterly. However I appreciate that there are issues with a quarterly direct debit scheme. Extra admin and the possibility that people will only pay for the two quarters covering the summer months and cancel their membership for the winter months. So I have though of a solution.

People joining the National Trust pay for their first years membership up front. For me and my fiancée that’s £62.63. Then in 12 months time, people can opt to go on to either half-yearly or quarterly direct debit payments. Thus ensuring people don’t just join for six months at a time as they pay for the first year up front. Also in the case of half-yearly payments it could be done that the first of these payments comes out in the autumn. Thus ensuring that in order for people to make the most of this money they have to join for the next 6-months as well. National Trust get extra members like myself with not much admin overheads. Everyone’s a winner?

Historic Churches of Great Britain

It started a few years ago. Travelling round the country in search of aircraft and trains etc like I do. I was noticing old churches more and more. Some very grand others modest but still pleasing on the eye.

Later on Sue and I stayed at the Travelodge at Fourwentways in Cambridgeshire. Not to be repeated as there was too many boys racers racing round the local roads during the late evening. However during the early evening I got bored and went out for a drive taking my camera with me. I stumbled across a rather pretty looking church, St Mary’s at Little Abington. Looking across the fields I say another church. Drove round and it was another St Mary’s this time at Great Abington. These were the first churches I had photographed. More were to follow.

It took me a while to get the idea of going into the churches and seeing what was inside. This opened up a whole new chapter. The objects, the symbols the history. Most churches have a guide to them written by a local historian. I started to collect them and so far have four box files full of them. Books on churches were soon bought and given to me as Christmas and Birthday presents. Sue will say I have far too many of these.

I built a website to display my photographs of the churches I had visited. Thanks to Ordnance Survey (referred to an OS from now on) I added mapping to it. I know that other mapping products are available but I have a great deal of respect for the OS and think their mapping is second to none. Having spent 35 years with OS Landranger maps I’m more than brand loyal.

The website is powered by an Access database and to date I’ve visited about 100 churches in about 10 or so different counties. Then I thought it would be good to at least add in a reference in the database to the churches listed in all my books. It was frustrating to read up about a church after I’d been there and realise that I’d missed something interesting. So a second database was added, ‘churches not yet visited’. I built little admin pages so that I could update each database and move a church from not visited to visited after I had visited each one. I then had a quest to add more and more churches into the not visited databse with a view of maybe added them to the website. Maybe letting people comment on the church and so adding to the information I had on them. So when I do visit I knew what to look our for.

Chatting to our GIS team at work, they pointed me to the OS Open Data site. In OS’s Vector Map District mapping is a category called ‘Places of Worship’ Data is free and available on CD or download. I started to download each grid square and process in to fit into my database. Plus I ordered the CD with all the data on it. Again this was totally free.

The data comes in ESRI shape files, specialist GIS software was needed to extract the data. SQL queries written to just select the Place of Worship. My website if split down into Counties and I wanted the OS data to also have counties. Again OS Open Data came to the rescue. Boundary Line data having a ‘Counties’ element. However. I could do an entire blog on the issue of counties. In fact I do plan to add something to the website to explain why I chose the counties I did. Many an hour was spend getting counties sorted. Basically I’ve gone for a mostly pre-1974 county map. I had no idea of any Welsh or Scottish Counties, so plenty of research and the like went into them. It was a long process sorting out Counties. Parts of Essex being now in Greater London. Should City of Bristol be on its own? Are people aware of the area that Middlesex used to cover, or do they think of it as just London? Birmingham? Again and entry on its own or part of a county.. or just West Midlands? I settled on the latter in that case.

Now with OS boundary line data they use current ‘Counties’, So Bournemouth being a unitary authority isn’t in the Dorset. Indeed many parts of the country aren’t in any ‘County’ area on the OS boundary line data. So I had to bring in Borough/Parish data to give me some idea as to where the churches were, Again this was free data from the OS.

So I ended up with text files with Co-ordinates of each place of worship with some County data and some borough data. So far this had taken several weeks to sort out, working a couple of hours each day.

As I wanted each ‘Place of Worship’ to have at least which county it is in. started processing the borough/parish information on all those not in a ‘County’. I turned to Wikipedia for help. On ever town/parish/borough page I looked at had something along the lines of ‘This place was in the historic county of whatever. Or ‘For ceremonial purpose This place is in the county of Whatever. Wikipedia was invaluable in helping me fill the missing gaps in my which county is that place in list. That took another couple of weeks looking up stuff, checking maps and doing find replaces on the text files. Quite a chore but so pleased when it was finished. .

One last thing I could now add before uploading the data to the database. Each download was one OS grid .E.g. SZ, TH etc. I had the Easting and Northing co-ordinates of each location and so I could create an OS grid reference for each Place of Worship. E.g. SZ 347623 . This I thought would be useful to put on the site. However I did make the mistake of rounding down all value, Means my 4th and 6th digits might be one out. Oh well, People should still be able to find the church on a Landranger map or sat nav – hopefully!

So I now had, Co-ordinates (Easting / Northing) Grid ref and County for every Place of Worship in Great Britain or so I thought.

I uploaded the files to my database. Came to over 23,000 places of worship. Built a test page in my site, hidden at the moment, to show each county with churches marked on an OS map. Was pleased with the efforts until I zoomed in. None of the Bournemouth Town Centre Places of Worship were marked. I know that they are there I can see two of them from my office window. Christchurch Priory wasn’t marked, Romsey Abbey, not marked. Blimey even Westminster Abbey didn’t make it onto the Ordnance Survey Places of Worship List. Are you going to tell William and Kate that or shall I? So the OS data as a very good starter for 10 but is no way complete.

So I first wrote an admin page that added Places of Worship to the list. It’s a simple OS map that you can click on where each one is. Its basically very similar to the code I have on the Work website for people to report graffiti etc and have a map where they can click on the location of the graffiti etc. This is fine and I’ve added loads but its going to take time.

I also want to start populating the database with place names and dedications. To help me I’ve written another web page which displays a Place of Worship that I have no place/dedication data for in my database plotted on an OS map. The map gives a useful hint to its town/city/village etc. For dedication I have a link to geograph.org.uk. This is a website that people are uploading photos to and they are trying to get a photo from ever 100m grid square in the UK. My link is to the square my unknown church is in and more often than not, someone has already photographed it, uploaded it to geograph.co.uk and tagged it with the churches dedication. Bingo, I can then add that data to the database. .Again I’m about two weeks into that and I’ve not finished Dorset yet.

In chatting to the GIS people above, we talked about the site becoming one where users can update it. Add data etc. I’ve thought about this a bit but wasn’t fully committed to it. I know it works for geograph and wikipedia but could I do something like that? Also I don’t want to loose the fact that this is my website of the churches I have visited with my photos on it. However, it will take me years to complete the project and so getting other people involved is a must.

I had a twitter chat to my good friends Stuart Harrison (@pezholio) and Andy Mabbett (@pigsonthewing) about this project and they pointed me to

a) openplaques.org. It being similar to what I want to do but with Blue plaques around the world. I have been hugely inspired by that site. It is so much what I want to do.
b) They also pointed me to openstreemap.org as they will have ‘Place of Worship’ data on it.
c) Also going back to Wikipedia, some Places of Worship will have their own Wiki page. I could bring that info into my site…

My head was spinning at all of this, the same excited feeling I get at the unconfrences that the three of us attend. Being bombarded with brilliant ideas. Great stuff.

One thing I love about the blue plaques website is the way they link to photographs, The users upload their photos to flickr and then use a special tag which the site picks up. Thus the site can add photographs with not much work from the admin and the user is still in control of the photos. Brilliant, must learn how to do that.

I’ve never looked at Openstreetmaps that much. That is also on my must learn how to do list. Also learning about how to link to and extract info from Wikipedia is another skill I need to do. I’ve got a bit of a head start on that as I have created and updated a few wikipedia pages, but need to learn more. Much more.

So I’m really excited about using all of the above to push my project forward and dare I say it, make it into something epic. The possibilities are defiantly there.

One final note on 'Big Society' and how I think the above fits into it. Now I when I say Big Society I'm not talking about the stuff Cameron bangs on about. People going to work in Libraries for nothing and all that. People like Stuart Harrison were talking Big Society long before Cameron jumped on the band wagon and is trying to make it his version of it. Here is how I feel the Big Society should be and how the above fits into it. For this project I’ve had help from Ordnance Survey, Wikipedia, geograph.org.uk and getting inspiration from openplaques.org. In return I’ve added data to openplaques.org. Will be adding photos later. Probably get more involved in Wikipedia and as to where my journey with openstreetmaps.org will take me, who knows? To me this is ‘Big Society’. Person A helps person B, Person B helps person C, Person C helps Person A and Person D. Person D helps.. well you get the picture, we all help each other, Open Data, Free Data and we all benefit.

Dealing with Diabetes

This might be a one off blog or the title of a new one. Thinking about archiving all my previous postings (well they are on peterandsusan.co.uk. and starting a new blog entitled 'Dealing with Diabities'. Not sure how much info I can blog about though. I have been inspired by a blog by a diabetic.

Now those who know me and haven't seen my tweets or facebook status then this is news to you. Here's what happened.

During a routine health check for Life assurance, my urine had to be tested for various things. The nurse dipped the paper into the cup and immediately said, "oh I see a problem, are you a diabetic?".

"er, no", I said.

"oh, well your sugar level is high, you'll have to get it checked out with the doctor".

So I did. Phoned today for the results of the blood test. Receptionist rang back.

"Doctor has looked at your results, he wants you to come to the diabetic clinic on Monday week."

Right I thought, so I have diabetes then...

"Cant make it then", I said.

"well its very important that you come".

"No sorry, anything sooner" well if its diabetes I want to know about it.

Got an appointment next Tuesday. When hopefully I get more information. Details of what I need to do. Apart from eat better and exercise more etc.

and what is this Diabetic Clinic... is it like Alcoholics Anonymous? My name is Peter and I had a Mars bar yesterday.

Hopefully answers to these and lots more questions next week. In the mean time the internet is my main source of information. What did we do before we it was invented. Seems it not going to be too bad if I make changes to my life style now. As long as its Type 2 diabetes. Type 1, sounds bad with all those injections etc.. I hope its Type 2 I've got... but again I'll have to wait a week until I know...

Its going to be a long week.

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UKGovCamp 2010

Writing this blog whilst on the train to work on a cold Monday morning. Normally I'll still be quite dead to the world and running on auto-pilot. But this morning I have a strange buzz about me. The reason for the buzz was an event I went to on Saturday. UKGovCamp was billed as an un-conference and it certainly lived up to its billing. With most conferences you attend, you are given a fixed agenda before hand. You can see exactly what you are going to get out of it and which part of the day you could have a quiet nap in whilst you wait for the bit you are really interested in. We'll this is not like that at all. To start off all delegates were given the opportunity to 'host a session' and talk about some aspect of Local Gov web that interested them or they were having issues with and wanted to chat about it with others that have been or are going through the same stuff. Talks about the future were also discussed. The session leaders then added their sessions to the agenda (post it notes stuck on the wall to you and me ) and off we went. You picked a session you wanted to attend off you went. Laptop in hand so we could tweet about the session, record notes etc. The sessions I went to were

Local Gov Web group - Hosted by Jan from Lancashire Council, seems she was just starting on the Web 2.0 route and was daunted by the road ahead and trying to persude the council that it was correct was to go. Hopefully the advise we gave her was useful.

Then off to one about gov data, but wasn't quite what I expected so off I went and joined one on social Internal Comms, not really my area but interesting to hear that other councils can make a good go at social internal comms.

Goggle Wave - I made a point of attending this session as I feel I should know more about it, but don't. Didn't get as much out of this as I hoped. The session leader was obviously a fan of Google Wave. Another thought it was 'crap', where as most were in the middle. Yes it can be useful but it's too complicated to use, and if us geeks are having trouble with it then what chance have normal people got of using it.

Then off to a session where Michele from Cambridgeshire talked about one of their project to help communities in the north of the county, where there is high unemployment, those that are in employment are in low paid agricultural work. The project is trying to connect communities on-line and raise the status of the area. Interesting stuff.

Finally, how to made Local Gov Web more exciting. Hosted by Liz from Camden Council, who is the most passionate person about Local Gov web of anyone I've ever met. Her enthusiast was infectious. A lively debate ensured about the rights and wrongs of page design, reaching out to the local community etc. It was great to see that others think like me and are facing and have overcome similar issues. We all agreed that the SOCITM reports are good but only look at one aspect of Local Gov Web, data, but don't look at design at all.

To me there were also two other sessions that were equally as important as those mentions about. Lunch and in the pub after the event. Now I know that those of you who know me well will think that I like the former due to food and the latter due to beer, especially as I now write my Beer Blog. But no its wasn't like that. Lunch time I chatted with two guys who I've tweeted with before but never met and we has a great conversation and the ideas for projects I got from them were great. Ideas that I can also use in my other capacity as webmaster for the Bournemouth Aviation Museum. Many thanks to Dan from Walsall and Al from Newcastle. Great stuff.

The evening session in the pub was good. Finally caught up with Sarah from Derbyshire, who again I tweet with but never met, together with Dan and Al again there was more inspitring stuff and just a generally chin wag about council stuff. The beer was nice, Doom Bar (4% ABV) from the Sharps Brewery in Cornwall. A 'perfectly balanced and complex blend of succulent dried fruit, lightly roasted malty notes and a subtle yet assertive bitterness' , so says their head brewer. I agree this, well nice beer, subtle yet assertive bitterness.

But that's not the end of it. Not by a long way and maybe that's what's giving me a slight buzz. I know that when I get to work there will be messages tweeted about the event, blogs written, photos and videos published etc. And those excellent conversations we had on Saturday will continue. I'm sure you are like me and after a conference think of some question you wish you could put to someone at the event. Well I have such questions and now, thanks to the way the event was set up, with blogs, twitter and its own website I can ask those questions, so the conversations will go on and that I what I think I'll gain most from this event. The networking side, cementing friendships I already had on twitter and meeting new people. There is a great community spirit in the group. Thanks to all who organised and took part in the event.