I’m really thrilled to pass on the news that Created in Birmingham has been announced as the winner of the Best UK Blog at the 2008 Weblog Awards! A huge thanks to everyone who voted, I’m chuffed to bits that Birmingham is setting the standard for innovative and constructive ways of using the internet!
What’s more, the campaign around the voting has been brilliant, with more and more people chatting, networking, tagging, twittering and commenting. The beauty of CiB is that it is all about interacting, about dialogue, a social tool for constructing something positive and tangible in the real world.
Hopefully it signifies a shift away from this horrible adversarial blogging style, where ‘commentators’ post up their vitriolic opinions which are then followed by hundreds of comments from people who enjoy picking fights. Yes, Melanie Phillips, I do mean you.
The thing that really excites me is that CiB will have a whole new community of readers and contributors so the hope is that it will go from strength to strength, and in turn, so will creative activities around Birmingham. It makes such a huge difference to me to feel like I’m a part of something so exciting. Like so many ventures, it’s really the sum of its parts, so the onus is now on us to get involved. Yes, that means you as well.
To get you started, please have a read of this CiB blog post about how to use RSS feeds. If you don’t already use them it is well worth having a look at, I use my Apple Mail program to access my feeds, and in the past I’ve used the Firefox Web Brower but there are many other methods, just choose one to suit you. The CiB post also has links to a number of excellent Birmingham Blogs which you may find useful. Oh, and don’t forget to add me too!