Fusion View

As some of you may know, I’ve been involved in a community blog, in my local area, Dulwich OnView, which is the blog of the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery. We were invited to give a presentation on our strategy and volunteer strategy at a conference for the museums and heritage sector last week. This is my report from that event (which is also appearing on Dulwich OnView):

You may have caught The Virtual Revolution on BBC last Saturday night, which gave on overview of the way that social media has been changing our society and culture. According to the programme, 18 million people in the UK read blogs - that is about a third of the UK’s general population of 61 million. Blogs, social networks, Twitter and the like are now pretty much mainstream and and it’s not just businesses who need to adapt to these new ways of communicating. Museums, galleries, libraries and the heritage sector are more keen than ever to find out how to use these tools to engage with their visitors and users.

Which is where the Social Web Conference, organised by the UKOLN comes in. They are part of the University of Bath and are “A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities” and last Friday, they held a conference about Web 2.0 and social media for the heritage sector at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Marieke Guy, UKOLN’s research officer and organiser of this cutting edge conference invited our editorial team to give a presentation to the delegates about Dulwich OnView. It was a further opportunity to showcase our “online magazine” to the heritage sector as an example of how blogging is being used to raise the profile of the Gallery and build an online community around the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery, the charitable group that raises money and supports the work of the Gallery.

I was first up and outlined the strategy and context behind Dulwich OnView. One of the aims of the Friends is to invite more people to join as members and to encourage a diverse range of people to come along to Gallery and Friends events. The Friends put on a lot of events - films, talks, concerts and more - and the Gallery of course arranges many exhibitions with with associated art classes.

But Dulwich OnView, the Friends’ blog covers more than just these events and includes articles, videos and photo-stories about loads of arts, culture and music in Dulwich and South East London. Why? Well, we reckon that if you’re interested in all those things, you’re going to be the kind of person who’s going to enjoy Dulwich Picture Gallery - but you may not have initially thought of yourself as a “Gallery type” because, maybe, you’d never heard of the Gallery or it seems a bit too posh or stuffy and serious and is not for you. On Dulwich OnView, we hope that our readers can see that people involved in the Gallery and the Friends are just like anyone else who enjoys arts and culture in the local area and that you’ll be tempted to check out Gallery exhibitions and Friends’ events as a result.

We’ve been really lucky in attracting writers, photographers and filmmakers as well as wine experts, historians and just ordinary folk who love arts or the local area to contribute articles to the blog and to become part of the regular Dulwich OnView team - all on a voluntary basis. What this shows is that the Friends and Gallery are becoming more and more part of the local community through this blog as much as the local community becoming more aware of what the Gallery and Friends have to offer!

So how do we do it? How do we manage a team of volunteers on no budget at all and with no central office space? Next up was Angie Macdonald, web designer and Dulwich OnView trainer and editorial co-ordinator. She explained how we devised and set up a virtual system, working entirely online, to allow our bloggers and editorial team to be self-managed. There’s no “boss” although there are a handful of us who help co-ordinate the team. We all contribute a range of multimedia items about whatever we feel like (in keeping with the mission of the blog: “celebrating people and culture in the Dulwich area”). To avoid duplication of content and chaos, we note down what we’re going to post on the blog on an online editorial schedule hosted on Google Docs which our regular team can all have access to from any computer. There is a library of “how-to” online manuals which explain how to upload posts to the blog, how to add photos to our Flickr site and also sets out procedures and policies for our rota of editors. One of our team is in fact now in Belgium for her day job but can continue her role as one of our editors due to this virtual system we’ve set up! But we’re more than an online team - those of us who are around in South London meet up once every 4-6 weeks in the local pub for a drink and a catch up as well as to discuss future article ideas and plans for Dulwich OnView.

Freelance writer and museums consultant Steve Slack picked up on this theme and told the conference how his involvement in Dulwich OnView has led to some good friendships with people on the team, as well as offering opportunities to meet loads more locally through covering local events and interviewing people in the area for the blog. Articles on Dulwich OnView range from art to fitness, dancing to allotments, tattoos to wheelie bins - as well as events put on by the Friends and the Gallery. But being a blog, our posts publicising Gallery events don’t offer the usual PR blurb but we give them a quirky twist - for example, an opera themed event inspired a blog post with a special opera themed recipe for our readers.

Ingrid Beazley, former Chair of the Friends and e-learning project developer at Dulwich Picture Gallery, acts as our liaison with the Gallery and Friends. She rounded off our session with some stats that show how Dulwich OnView is having an impact on drawing more people online to the Gallery. Most of the organisations we have written about link to us from their websites. 53% of our incoming traffic comes from these local supporters. Although 98% of people visiting DOV are not searching for Dulwich Picture Gallery, 33% of onward clicks go to the DPG website, mainly to exhibitions and events pages. The Gallery links to DOV in places and 14% of our incoming traffic comes from mainly their events pages as people click through to find out more from the enhancing articles written by locals. DOV is the 9th largest driver of web traffic to the DPG website.

As to how much of that translates measurably to new Friends memberships or extra tickets bought for events and exhibitions is difficult to say at this stage as there is no system in place as yet that specifically tots that up. However, we reckon that increased web traffic to the Gallery’s main website via Dulwich OnView can only mean increased awareness of the Gallery within the local community and that can only be a good thing.

One last thing I should stress. Blogging and social media may be making headlines right now but they in no way supercede traditional marketing, which continues to play a key role for heritage organisations. Kate Knowles and her marketing team at the Gallery reach a very wide range of people through traditional media such as the BBC, broadsheets and other national and international outlets. Dulwich OnView complements their activities by making connections with a different community, especially those people who might not initially think of themselves as Gallery going types.

We are all thrilled that this blog that began as an idea over drinks among local neighbours has managed to have this small but significant impact for the Gallery and the Friends - and continues to impress the heritage sector: Dulwich OnView has been showcased at conferences in Iceland, Montreal and London and will also be featured later this year at the Museums and the Web 2010 conference in Denver, Colorado.

If you’d like to find out more or to join our team of regular contributors and editors, or if you just have the occasional article or multimedia story you’d like to submit, please email our Acting Editor via dulwichonview[at]googlemail.com (substituting @ for [at]). We’d love you to become part of our community!

Further articles about DOV:

Dulwich OnView in Iceland

Dulwich OnView in Montreal

A Museum Blog By The Community For The Community

The British Malaysian Society put on a great event the other evening at Jom Makan, just off Trafalgar Square, for the talk that I gave with my co-author Silvia Cambie on using social media for business. There was a good crowd there - a mix of Malaysians and British folk ranging from representatives from the Malaysian High Commission, Malaysian students and British and Malaysian business owners and solo professionals. Silvia spoke about the use of social media by global business, giving examples from multinational companies and also international associations. Changing gear, I focused on small business and solo professionals who use blogging and social networks, throwing in a mix of Malaysian and British case studies.

Here are some pics from the evening:

There were some interesting questions and also a good discussion after our formal presentation. To give you a flavour of the issues of interest, here are my notes on two of the questions that people wanted to discuss further:

How useful is Twitter for business use?

In Silvia’s response to this question, she gave some examples of how Twitter can be used to encourage delegates at a conference to participate in the discussions through Twitter - she is implementing this strategy for one of her clients, the European Commission, at an event coming up soon. The Twitter comments and conversations can be collected through tactical use of hashtags (a way of attributing a common keyword to a Twitter conversation eg including “#leweb” in your “tweet” to reference the Le Web conference will enable it to be collated via a search of that hashtag) after the event and analysed/ reviewed by European Commission ministers.

For small businesses or individuals, I suggested that Twitter is also a good way in every day usage to make an initial contact with people who may be tweeting on topics you are interested in and this contact can then be followed up by email, for example. It’s a good way as well to ask questions and invite opinions, especially if you are researching an issue eg for an article or a book. You can also raise your profile and expertise if you tweet about your speaking engagements and projects you may be working on as well as engaging in discussions on topics of relevance for your industry.

Can you make money using social media?

Silvia highlighted that sales of virtual items on the Chinese social network QQ brought in revenue for the owners of that network. There are ways to monetize social media through such innovations but it is a matter of identifying the right market and products that can be sold in this way.

I offered the counter view that the value of social media is not necessarily in direct sales but rather in creating networking opportunities. It falls in the ball park of sending out mail shots and newsletter or taking clients out to lunch or coming along to networking events such as that night’s events where you might learn something useful for your business and also meet some interesting contacts. There may not be direct monetary value but the value comes through making contacts and building relationships with them.

Thanks …..

And as a last word, Silvia and I would like to thank Haliza, Louise and Zehan as well as the other committee members of the BMS for inviting us and for organising such a pleasant evening!

I’ve been invited to speak at the British Malaysian Society on Thursday 21 January, along with my co-author Silvia Cambie, on how to use social media to boost your business and networking. We’ll be discussing some Malaysian, UK and other international case studies showing how businesses are currently using blogging, social networks and Twitter for their business purposes.

If you’re interested in finding out more about social media for business - or would just like to meet up with some cross-cultural British and Malaysians, please do come along. There’ll be some Malaysian food, too, as it’s held at a Malaysian restaurant!

The details are below:

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Christianity built some amazing churches and cathedrals in this country and it’s these places we tend to visit when we tour the UK. But the myths and legends of pre-Christian Britain are also fascinating, though sometimes overlooked. Traces of this mysterious time remain around the UK in the form of standing stones, the most famous of which is Stonehenge. I remember reading an excellent book Albion, a guide to legendary Britain which evoked this mythological landscape brilliantly. Unfortunately, this title is out of print but you could try The Enchanted Land: Myths and Legends of Britain’s Landscape
- its blurb says: “Ancient folklore is bursting with tales of the land; legends revolving around its hills and mountains, caves and hollows, and springs and wells. Such stories tell of how these physical features first came into being - be it to hide an errant knight or the direct result of a local giant’s feral rage. These tales add a richness and depth to local history throughout the land, and the repeated appearances of monsters, fairies, ogres and spirits make them a delight for all ages.”

These ancient customs and beliefs went underground for 2,000 years when Christianity came to dominate and the people who practiced the old ways of worship came to be known as pagans. The word pagan is derived from the Latin paganus, meaning country dweller but somehow became associated with all who were non-Christians, with an implied negative meaning.

Now, it looks like more and more people in the West are turning back to the ancient animist religion, drawn by its focus on nature and the earth and all its bounties, according to this BBC report:

My favourite legend, I think, is the story that brings together Christianity and the ancient pagan religion at one of the most sacred spots of ancient Britain, Glastonbury. Joseph of Arimathea is supposed to have brought the young boy Jesus to the UK. After the crucifixion, Joseph apparently brought the Holy Grail back to Glastonbury and buried it there. In pre-Christian folklore, Glastonbury is Avalon, and the entrance to the Underworld. Glastonbury is also bound together with Arthur , a pre-Christian mythic hero who was Christianised into the one we know today with the round table and the knights, and the quest of the Holy Grail (a magic cauldron in the ancient myth). It’s all a bit of a muddle but that’s part of it’s fascination for me - the themes of a messianic figure, resurrection and return and a quest for a holy vessel blur across pagan and Christian boundaries and underline for me our very human need for spiritual renewal whatever religous form that need ultimately takes.

Posted via web from Fusion View Lifestream

I’ve blogged a lot in the last few years about the decline of the publishing industry and how that is making it tough for novelists - especially new and budding ones - to get their works published in the traditional book market. But here’s some good news. Apparently, the one area for writers that’s booming is playwriting. According to The Guardian, “The amount of new writing produced by mainstream, subsidised theatre has more than doubled in the last six years. Many of these plays have opened in large theatres, with impressive ticket sales.”

So if you’ve been having a hard time getting your novel accepted by book publishers, maybe now’s the time to switch to writing plays.

I wonder how easy it would be for a novelist to change genres so radically. I think I’m a novelist to the core - or at least, a prose writer to the core - but I’ve also had a go at writing plays. At one time, I absolutely loved Tennessee Williams. I saw as many Williams’s plays as I could on the London stage as well as on film. I read them all and devoured biographies and letters. It was probably as much the drama and tragedy in his own life that drew me to him as his plays themselves. So, inspired by the poetry of his American South, I picked up my pen in drizzly, ol’ London and tried my hand at playwriting.

It’s quite a differenet discipline from novel writing, with the focus on dialogue and creating the drama, tension and story through the interaction of spoken language. I loved the challenge but I’m not sure I was any good at it. My stage directions were much too verbose - rather like the descriptive narrative passages you get between the dialogie in novels, strangely enough! And I included way too much detail about motivation and back story in each bit of dialogue rather than trusting that the actor and director to put their interpretation into what I had written.

Also, I found it a challenge constraining the story to a few, tight locations over a short period of time - Williams’s plays all take place in a house or apartment, building up a sense of claustrophobia - as I wanted to caper around all over the place and over a long time span, rather like a movie or the novels that I eventually published (which take place in London and several locations across Malaysia, over a time span of 10 years and more).

I had no idea how I would try to get the play publicly performed, even assuming that I managed to polish up the incompleted first draft into any semblance of readiness. Whereas there are books like The Writers Handbook and The Writers and Artists Yearbook that tell you how to get your article, story or book published in print media, it didn’t seem so easy to find out how you go about submitting a play to whoever you needed to get it to in order for it to start it’s journey towards performance. To be honest, I didn’t actually investigate it very deeply as I knew that playwriting was nowhere near a strength of mine!

I wonder also how easily a novelist would adapt to the teamsport that is theatre. We’re used to being The Author, the sole creator of the story, the sole writer of the words. Some novelists have a really hard time accepting feedback from their editors even once their manuscript has got past the various hurdles and been accepted for publication. How much more difficult would we find it taking in feedback from the director, the producer, the actors and more! And working on rewrite after rewrite - and having to face your precious words changed or improvised upon during the rehearsal process ….! Would we adapt and enjoy the creative or collaboration or would we flounce off in a huff?

I’ve never been put to the test in that way so I don’t know how I would deal with it. I hope of course that I’d rise to the team occasion. But would I?

What do you think? Have you written plays or switched between playwriting and novel writing? I’d love to hear how you handle that team side of things!

Photo: thanks to Gil Searcy from flickr.com (CCL)

via news.bbc.co.uk

We are so relieved that we hadn’t planned to travel anywhere this holiday season - the whole of the UK is frozen and it seems that the Continent and the north east of the USA are also locked in the weather’s icy grip. I’ve been watching the news reports of all those people stuck at airports and also traumatised by the Eurostar breakdowns (reported as due to the “wrong sort of snow” by Channel 4) - ooh, I really feel for them. What a hideous way to start the Xmas festivities!

We’re planning to spend the next few days snug at home. We have a full fridge and freezer, lots of wine and chocolate as well as a stack of books and DVDs. I’ve brought down some duvets and knitted rugs to the living room so we can sprawl on the sofas cosily. I also plan to catch up with some blogging and social networking on my cute little netbook - which I’ve worked out how to use while lying down!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season - and to those who are trying to travel to friends and family: the very best of luck for getting to your destination as soon as possible!

Posted via web from Fusion View Lifestream

Every so often, at Xmas time, a friend of ours who lives in New Zealand sends us the latest Topp Twins CD. What Twins? The Topp Twins. They are, well, twins who do a double act of country music and comedy and they are absolutely hillarious - and absolutely talented.

This year, our friend sent us the DVD of their movie, a documentary covering their 30 years in entertainment. If I was to give the elevator pitch to who they are, it would go something like this: yodelling, lesbian country & western comedy twins from New Zealand who are also activists for nuclear disarmament, lesbian & gay rights, Maori land rights and cancer awareness and whose act includes “characters” such as a couple of hard-drinking men’s men, society ladies and holiday camp leaders.

Yeah. Kinda difficult to categorise…

But they seem to have the knack to unite their diverse audience of rednecks, high society types, farm folk and city lesbians and gays and are considered NZ’s national treasures.

I think it’s a combination of their toe-tapping music, hilarious performances and warm, affectionate good humour even when touching on political subjects - and their ability to carry their audience along with them so that everyone is just so busy having a good time, they forget the differences that might divide them. But you can analyse it till the cows come home: at the end of the day, I reckon it’s because they are simply a hoot! See for yourself in the following videos:

The Yodelling Song

The Spoon Song

They have an official channel on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ToppTwins

So, thanks, Trisha, for this year’s fab Xmas present!