tensixtyone » manchester

Manchester Open Street Map Party

Andrew Williams — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:16:38 +0000

This weekend (25th to 26th of October) CloudMade will be hosting a Open Street Map mapping party in Manchester at the Marbella Cafe. The weekend will consist of walking the streets on the east side of Manchester, friendly banter and a few pints. Everyone is welcome from hardcore experts to the complete newbies.

The day starts at 10:00am with a introduction and a simple overview of how to map your data, then we’ll head out and meet back at the Marbella Cafe for lunch, then head out again for the afternoon and concluding in drinks in a local watering hole.

Check out the wiki and Upcoming for more details. Hope to see you all there!

Marbella Café
2nd Floor
Sunshine Studios
52-54 Newton St
Manchester
M1 1ED

A (brief) introduction to BBC Backstage

Andrew Williams — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:16:59 +0000

Tuesday night was a slightly reorganised Manchester Free Software, due to a small admin and booking error. It was decided to keep the talk on the 22nd as Ian Forrester had already agreed to the date. Really, the date change didn’t matter to the crowd that turned out, some interesting people from various areas, I also spotted one of the Folly guys in the crowd as well.

Ian Forrester was, up until recently, BBC Backstage, that was until a new member of staff started recently. Backstage is the “freen and open” side of the BBC, spearheading the production of open APIs, free content, and sharing within the BBC. For a media company this may be strange, but due to the “unique way the BBC is funded” we almost have a right to the production content of the BBC to be free and open to all UK license fee payers. As described by Ian, Backstage are at the forefront of new media in the BBC, keeping a eye on new “Web 2.0″ trends and trying to adapt existing data and services to acheive new levels of interaction with the mass public.

Ian described a time where anyone syndicating BBC News stories were instantly sent a C&D order. After stern warnings internally from Ashley Highfield via the Ariel magazine the BBC decided to change its ways an allow access to the services of the BBC by the general public via APIs, and Backstage was born.

Overall, Ian’s insight into the inner workings of the BBC explained alot. He mentioned the Backstage Wild West servers where anyone within the BBC is allowed to use space for any purpose, subverting the already existing Siemens infrastructure. While I was discussing this with Simon this morning he noted that it shows there are key problems within the BBC if a group has to circumvent the normal operating proceedures to carry out their work.

For all those who missed Ian on Tuesday, he’ll be speaking at Geekup Liverpool on 29th July, signup on Upcoming and check it out.

*Edit*

Ian’s video is now available on the BBC Backstage blog.

Local LUGs

Andrew Williams — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:37:00 +0000

As part of a new year resolution (of a sort), I’ve decided to become more involved in the Linux community and one of the big stepping stones is the local LUGs. While ManLUG is active and quite easy to attend and keep up to speed with, some of the smaller local ones have fell into decline over the last few years. I guess a major issue is that we have such a well respected LUG within a few miles, Manchester LUG has been formed since 1994 and theres people in that group who have helped with major milestones in Linux (such as the MCC Interim releases). So today, I posted on the Liverpool LUG mailing list in a attempt to stirr up some action. Hopefully in the next few days we can get something organised, even if its just a pub meet it’ll be better than nothing.