Sunderland Voluntary Sector Youth Forum

Sunderland Community BarCamp

On Monday I had the privilege of co-ordinating Sunderland’s first Community Barcamp.  It was a chance for the community to join with techies to discuss how to use technology to help communities.

for more see sunderlandcommunitybarcamp.wordpress.com

Sunderland has challenged us to help.

Sunderland Digital Challenge is asking those of us activie in the community or blogging online to help with its TV project.

Here’s what they have sent out:

Can you help us develop SunTV?

When we asked you about the Digital Challenge competition, you told us that you wanted ‘TV channels’ for Sunderland. ‘SunTV’ was the name given in the Digital Challenge bid for new internet-based television and video services.

We have developed some ideas about what the new services might look like, but we’d like to know what you think before we go further with the project.

We are developing ideas around

· Community news

· Discussions

· ‘What’s On’ in the community

· Amateur and Professional Video

· Information and interactive services

· Supported by an equipment loan pool – cameras, camcorders, laptops

And making it available in early 2009,

· On Sky and Virgin TV, and next generation Freeview boxes as ‘clever teletext’ (like http://www.digitv.gov.uk/digitv/cds/LookingLocal/Netgem/screen.html?id=49005 )

· On the internet as VideoBlogs (like http://www.kingscrosstv.org/ )

· On Virgin as ‘On Demand’ video (like http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/dtv/ondemand/index.html)

· On screens in Electronic Village Halls (like http://www.fug4life.com/Breaking%20News2.JPG http://www.ccn.uk.net/news/Images/Harrowplasma.jpg )

· Through Sunderland.gov.uk and Community of Interest websites (www.sunderland.gov.uk/coi)

· Grouped and organized by where it came from and what it’s about

We’d like to know from you

· What you think of our ideas

· What sort of content you’d like to see

· What you think we should call it

· If you would like to contribute news, events etc

· Anything you think we’ll have to bear in mind in developing all this

· How we might run the services

We’d particularly like to hear from

· Web users

· People with Sky or Virgin TV (but no web)

As well as

· EVH co-ordinators

· COI website managers

· Community bloggers

Find out more at www.sunderland.gov.uk/digitalchallenge

Send your thoughts back to us at graham.jordan@sunderland.gov.uk

Well, what do you reckon – worthwhile?  what you’d be interested in?  Feed your views back here (let’s have a discussion) or feed back to the Sunderland team.