blog.

I attended an event this morning, organised by Bristol Media in partnership with Bristol City Council, to discuss the plans for the complete redevelopment of the Bristol City Council website and content management system.

Primarily the event was organised as an informal discussion surrounding the future of the website and the council’s wider digital offer.

The need to consult with the local digital community on their plans at an early stage was highlighted by Peter Holt (BCC’s Service Director of Communications) who recited a story about the disaster that Birmingham City Council faced when they unveiled their new website to a group of external web developers who proceeded to pull it to pieces and then create something better in the space of 48 hours!

After an overview of some of the issues with the existing platform, the vision for the new site and the plans for some data portals for public access to information, we were split into three separate discussion groups.

The sessions were set up to discuss “What ideas do we have for quick wins, and how best can we create an open environment where the local digital community can contribute to the site’s longer-term utilisation and exploitation?”.

Although in the introduction BCC highlighted that they required feedback on things such as the navigation for the site; social media and an enhanced user experience. The feeling within our group was generally that we needed more information from BCC, about who the site is for; the objectives for the site; the results from their usability audits and their findings from Google Analytics, so that we can begin to discuss and define how things such as blogs and widgets will be beneficial.

There were also many questions raised about the ‘open environment’ and how this will work if the platform BCC decide to use isn’t Open Source?

Obviously for us, we want to continue working on sites such as Go Places Do Things and 1 Big Database, where members of the council can be creative and have (almost) free reign over the content on the site, but with far more integration and information sharing between other BCC digital projects, including the new website.

I feel that the event was a step in the right direction for the council and by bringing the digital community together for a common cause they will have access not only to the best digital agencies in Bristol but access to a wealth of ideas and experience. The key now is how they use this information to move forward!

YouTube is 5 years old!

No, we couldn’t believe it either. Hasn’t it always been around? Whether it’s for watching music videos (which we’re now allowed to do again), prison inmates dancing to Thriller in unison or just for giggles, YouTube has well and truly ingrained itself into our lives. And with TV broadcasters such as Channel 4 enabling users to view their 4OD content  through the channel, it continues to pioneer the way for free video content online. Even if the newspapers are all looking to start charging!

Happy birthday YouTube! Here’s to another 5 years...

Keeping abreast of SEO news is just one of the many things we try to keep tabs on here at Focus Towers.  Mumblings and grumblings about Google's latest update - termed the "Dewey Update" after a blog post from Matt Cutts - have been growing over the past few weeks.

Has this affected your site rankings?

I'd be really interested to get any feedback from anyone affected by this latest change.

Links
Surviving the Dewey Update 
Dewey Discussion
Spanish SEO commentary
Useful tool comparing searches across disparate data centres

We've just read Jay Adelson's piece regarding the democratisation of information, care of the internet's burgeoning blogging community.  He describes the situation well - the way we assimilate knowledge is changing due to the proliferation of 'news' outlets (we're all increasing coming across information regarding new technologies from independent blogs and not from conventional news sites). 

Despite this explosion of information I think the power still lies with Google.  You can only access a fraction of what is out there without a search engine and the rules that govern SEO are constantly being rewritten.  Which really means that those complying with Google's latest guidelines get the largest amount of traffic.

So after a bit of head scratching, articulating and discussion in the office, we're pleased to announce the launch of our new blog, which we hope will give you all a bit more of an insight into all things Focus New Media - what we're up to, what we like and don't like and some of our thoughts and opinions on things that are going on in the world.

Technically, the blog hasn't been an issue. Most of the chat's that we had centered on the sort of things that we want to publish. It's tricky - stuff needs to be relevant and of interest but with that personal and informal touch. So we decided to keep our news page for announcements, project wins and company developments - and our blog for a bit of playground gossip.

Whilst we're hoping for the whole FNM team to come on and have their say, there will be four main contributors to the blog. Amy, our account exec, will have plenty to say about us, all the work we're doing for various charities and the world in general. Account manager Lisa will no doubt be filling us in on all the networking events she manages to invite herself to. And myself, MD Simon, who's rantings may range from Google's latest products to the search for decent offices in Bristol. The fourth contributor we hope will be you - through our 'comments' facility you'll be able to give us your thoughts as well.

So fingers crossed you'll find our blog a bit different and that it fulfills it's purpose - letting you have a sneaky peek at us 'behind the scenes'. Please do get in touch with your comments, we'd love to hear from you.