Geek speak

by Lotte Agten, Christina Schraml

AstroTurfing – a way of advertising or promoting a product, service, or idea, but designed to mask its origins and create the impression of being spontaneous and popular.

Champions: to get conversations started in an online community, a group of enthusiast people is needed to get things moving by posting stuff, interacting, and helping each other: the champions!

Northern Digitals, a casual meetup for digital-creatives in Manchester

by Robert Ruggiero, Wilson Sherwin, Linus Vanhellemont
and contributions from Lotte Agten

A brief history

Toward the end of 2008, Matt Booth had had enough. Tired of comparisons to London, Booth seized the opportunity to create what Manchester was desperately missing: a casual meetup for digital-creatives in Manchester.

Using twitter and Meetup, it took all of fifteen minutes to sow the seeds of what would become Northern Digitals. With no expectations, agendas, or even nametags, the first meeting consisted of about 40 designers, developers and freelancers gathering at a quiet pub in the Northern Quarter.

Twitter Followers Network Map

by Robert Ruggiero, @blobot

The data for this network map was obtained via Twitter.

We used arandom sample of 100 followers from each of the three networks: CING, Northern Digitals, Social Media Cafe. The overwhelming majority choose to list a location on their Twitter profiles. This informationwas extracted and visualised on the map. Locations within the UK were left as indicated on the follower’s profiles, in a few international cases, we chose to group them by country.

Identity is a contentious issue, even on the internet, hence the overlapping of locations (England and the UK, or Lancashire and North England).

√ Cool ha !? (Feel free to comment in a constructive way)

“Hi, we are POLIS 2010/2011” aka Colofon

“2011#mcr digital creatives analog blog” and “mcrdigipaper” are part of a research project for POLIS 2010/2011

POLIS 2010/2011 is:

Lotte Agten
Ashley Allen
Valentin Dellieu
Kaija-Luisa Kurik
Valérie Lecocq
Robbert Ruggiero  @blobot
Olivia Sandri
Maria-Valerie Schegk  @valerie_schegk
Wilson Sherwin
Christina Schraml
Martina Schwab  @00mascha
Linus Vanhellemont  @Lyneus
Jeroen Van Looy
Andreas Wagner  @whysthatso

Graphics

Valentin Dellieu

Editing

Ashley Allen
Wilson Sherwin

Graphic design & maps

Robbert Ruggiero  @blobot
Martina Schwab  @00mascha

Blog design & engineering

Jeroen Van Looy
Andreas Wagner  @whysthatso

About POLIS

Polis MMU Research Project 2011

Joint M.A. European Urban Cultures

Estonian Academy of Arts
Manchester Metropolitan University
Tilburg University
Vrije Universiteit Brussel

www.polismaster.eu

@mcrpolis2011

Preamble

By Steven Flower

At the start of every calendar year a team of international students studying on the MA in European Urban Cultures*, visits Manchester to explore the linkage between the cultural and creative economy and urban regeneration. Over a period of three months, the students take in a set list of facts and figures, failures and success stories of culture led regeneration strategies in North West England, before moving over to Tallin, Estonia to complete the formal side of their Masters degree.

This has been taking place for the past 15 years, resulting in a rich body of evidence and research.  When the course started, the study of cultural and creative industries was still emerging from the margins.  Equally, there was also no Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, amongst others. Together with Dr Katie Milestone and Dr Robert Grimm, we felt the “set-list” had started to miss some of the exciting and emerging dynamics of Manchester.

Are social media so…cial?

by Valentin Dellieu

The common sense argues now that ICT are really challenging the way to encounter and to keep in touch with people.  Is it so true?  There is of course no black or white answer but some reflexion to have and to keep in mind.  Debates are diverse and hard to be solved regarding the way those media are now part of our daily life.

But whose daily life?

Meet you at the MadLab

by Ashley Allen

On a cold Tuesday night in February, looking for something interesting, and unique to do in Manchester, I stumbled into “MadLab” where a graphic-novel meet-up was underway. After shyly refusing some delicious looking pizza and taking in the minimalist white concrete, and comiccrazed atmosphere, I started to ponder all the potentials this practically hidden gem in the Northern Quarter, could offer.

The Manchester Digital Laboratory, affectionately known as “Mad-Lab” is a non-profit community hub which caters to ‘creative-types’ and technology-enthusiasts by providing a meet-up space for people to come together, share skills, and ideas.

MCR map

by Martina Schwab, @00mascha

Some of Manchesters digital creatives hotspots

Tweets, geeks, chats? CING!

by Maria-Valerie Schegk, @valerie_schegk
and contributions from Olivia Sandri, Christina Schraml

How does the theory of Richard Florida’s creative class work in practice? How do digital creatives in Manchester intermingle? How important are face-to-face meetups like CING (Creative Industry Networking Group) in the time of Twitter and Facebook? Speaking with Phil Northall, co-organizer of CING, one of the biggest monthly meetups for creative digitals in Manchester, helps us get to the bottom of these questions: