Mediacamp Nottingham Uncovered

A great start to the day with breakfast at Hungry Pumpkin with other attendees prepping themselves for the day at Mediacamp Nottingham 4.

Sue Beckingham’s talk on Using Social Media to create a Personal Learning Network provided some great insight on the tools available and how to use them to best effect. I’m definitely going to be looking at the use of Posterous and WordPress to create private blogs for personal use.

Sue mentioned The Conversation Prism which is not only a beautiful data visualisation but a great way to find new tools and services.

Sue also included The Geosocial Universe showing the amount of mobile devices and the number of users on popular services.

Sylwiva Presley joined the event via Skype from Oxford to discuss the issues around children having access to Facebook. With some very interesting statistics she raised concerns over our attitudes to how children behave online:

In the US:

• Of the 20 million minors actively on Facebook last year, 7.5 million (one third) were younger than 13 and not supposed to be using the site.
• More than 5 million were under 10 using their accounts unsupervised
• One million children were harassed, threatened or otherwise bullied on the site

Sylwia also recommend a TED talk by Adora Svitak on how adults can learn from children.

Lunch break was good fun with everyone getting to grips with the tamales from Rico Mexican Kitchen. The sun shone and we all got some fresh air.

Mark Spofforth from Lovefre.sh gave a very personal account of the story behind Lovefresh. A demo of the apps gave everyone a taste for finding more local produce. Discussion around the use of the word checkin was interesting as they are using it in a different way. Also interesting to hear their struggle with web standards on mobiles for using features like the camera and microphone.

Very interesting talk on Digital Inclusion by Matthew, discussed the DAIN project and their new venture Das4Life. Some great work going on to help those without skills, knowledge or access to technology. Interesting to hear stories of 70 year olds getting to grips with digital cameras. Concerning that some choose to exclude themselves and almost end up opting out, but why should they have to adapt?

The day was rounded off with a stunning performance from Linda Harrison. She’s pretty much everywhere on the internet so find her on Youtube, iTunes and Bambuser.

See all Instagram photo’s from the event thanks to Instagreat.

And damnit, still didn’t go to see the Fibrecamp studio.

Updated (22 May 2011) :

Photos on Flickr from Paul Mellors

Unexhaustive list of MCN4 attendees on Twitter