checking out the plantings from the first conker event with jon ofarrell

pictures from the conkertu.com local feb event.

Let the train take the strain! - get our wifi ready greenbus next saturday morning!

Winding up for the last week now and more people appear to be signing up which is great.   If your travelling down to conkers do consider taking the train to tamworth station as we have made some transport arrangements for you.   We will have the free greenbus outside the train station and leaving for conkers at 8:45am (so don’t be late) and the bus will make a trip back around later on in the day.    Do let us know if you do intend to travel in this way.

Either drop me or emma an email and let us know.

emma@conkertu.com
phil@conkertu.com

ConkerTU Line Up

08.45 The Green Bus departs Tamworth Station GPS & WIFI enabled journey into the Forest

09.30 Meet, greet & tweet over caffeine fuelled infusions @ Waterside, Conkers!

10.15 Conkerchoo or saunter over to the Discovery Centre, Conkers

10.30 Green Voice of Britain, Piper Terrett officially opens ConkerTU

11.00 Sustainable communities panel, including Penney Poyzer & Julian Dobson

12.00 Musical interlude, from celtic folk fiddler, Sian Phillips

12.30 Voyage of Discovery - extended lunch to explore Conkers & tweet with Millie, the owl!

02.00 Rural Energy explain how Conkers’ new Biomass heating system works

03.00 Hyperlocal pecha kucha, a quick fired contrast and compare, session with Q&A
including Nottngham Eco House, Lammas Project, Ibstock does Climate Change,
Self help housing

04.00 Summing up and thanks

05.00 The Green Bus returns to Tamworth Station - Bon Voyage!

In addition to the above there will screenings of various Buy Nothing Day and Climate Change media in the Discovery Hall, with a further last minute surprise to be confirmed!

Transport from Tamworth Station via thegreenbus.co.uk

for those travelling down by train we have a bus organized via thegreenbus company that probably takes a more countryside route than the m42 above.  conkers is roughly ten miles away from tamworth station.

Tamworth railway station is located where the Cross Country Route passes over the West Coast Main Line, in the United Kingdom, although there is no rail link between the two lines. There are four platforms: platforms 1 and 2 on the low level (the West Coast Main Line) and platforms 3 and 4 on the high level (on the Cross Country Route)

Please let emma@conkertu.com or phil@conkertu.com if you are travelling in on the train and your expected time of arrival we really hope to have everyone arrive around similar times so we can get everyone on in one go.   the bus will also take people back at the end of the day - ideally all in one go also.

role of honor and sponsor update.

two and half weeks to go | need you to register else you will not get in for free - http://tweetvite.com/event/conkers - you can use either you twitter or facebook login details.  it is totally secure.  if you have neither drop us an email at phil@conkertu.com or emma@conkertu.com and we will get you added manually.



i know emma is absolutely running around like a mad person in between all the work she already does to make this happen.   i thought i would fill you in a bit with sponsors we have had so far and a bit of ‘call for action’ for other bits of sponsoring we still require to make it go smoothly.

Firstly however those that have stepped up to the plate and helped us out.

* 2 years domain name sponsorship from @freshties and @lesant

* £60 in cash from @pjb_58 to get the tumblr custom theme sliced up

* celtic folk fiddler @sianphillips has waived her significant gig fee, not only to play for us on the day, but also donating her Brynach y Mynach track for free use in our video edit of the lammas project video

* of Cae Mabon fame @ericmaddern has donated a recording of his ‘Buy Nothing Day’ anthem “Shop and Buy” for free!

* waived the directory and networking fees @richardbeldon enabling us to promote conkertu to local businesses free of charge - good on yer mate!

But we still need your help on pushing through and finding some more sponsoring - i’ll be putting some link locations in the sidebar as people help us out with sponsoring and they will get a link through to their website - we will do this for each event and you can sure that the website will be getting a lot of coverage when we start to contact *all* the newspapers in the local area.  we also hope you see this as a positive local move for tweetups in general and our locality.

We are looking for the following help and sponsoring for the following items.

* a food sponsor (a £400 sponsor is required) will provide local produce for all in attendance.

* a targeted Facebook campaign for those in the locality and engaged into the issues we are covering.  we will also record a video of us setting this up so others can learn how to do this (a £400 sponsor is required)

* we are looking for £23 for a years 10 pro credits for widgetbox - this will allow us some neater embeds for our website so you can find information easier.

and not crucial (because we will find a way) but would be fantastic if we can unload my stress of sorting out some level of redundancy to the internet connectivity on the day.

* a data tariff sponsor for our t-mobile sim cards for data - we are building a small grid of about 5 connections so we need £15 per 3gb sim card - looking for separate sponsors for those.  we will use this for our mobile wifi cloud that we will provide for you - so rural here we tested all the other networks first and t-mobile seems to be the best at conkers (so looking for a £75 sponsor)

* we have the wifi units from the ammoboxproject that were sponsored by cradlepoint but we need four more usb dongles to make it happen - we have one but we need more.  £40 each from ebay (so looking for a £160 sponsor in total or per usb dongle £40)

Also are also setting up twitter micropayment methods on the website and we will be posting a video demonstrating how you can help make small donations that will go into the conkertu pot very simply towards this and other events for next year from the comfort of your twitter account - every donation will be listed on the website with a simple text from you.

Jon OFarrell-Ibstock Current Chair and web-wrench for Ibstock does Climate Change

Bio: Jonathan O’Farrell - @Ibstock_does
… well in this case it was a cycle holiday, but it could well be tree planting, cooking, gardening.

I believe sustainability is about the everyday, even, yes, repetitive actions - as well as great leaps forward, seismic shifts and heroism. If I have learnt anything about ‘saving the planet’ since 1987 it’s to get things dome we sometimes need to re-invent ourselves a bit, whilst staying true to our inner ‘ethical’ drivers … see, I’m up with the kids doing this funky Twitter thang!

Possibly useful factoid #1:
If you planted a 60 c.m. Oak at the beginning of the National Forest in the Winter of 1992/93 it could well be now 6 metres tall (in good soil!)

Possibly useful factoid #2: IBSTOCK (n.)
Anything used to make a noise on a corrugated iron wall or clinker-built fence by dragging it along the surface while walking past it - a sort of latter-day app. if you will.

Another confirmed contributor to the conkertu event on the 28th of November

We would love you to nominate conkertu!

we just heard about this and we know that we do not stand a chance in hell of being in the higher sections as some of the awesome eco and green sites already out there but we do intend to make sure that our project/presence is known around the web in the hope like others to drive more people/traffic to our tweetups and ultimately the content that is shared at each one.  we would love you to nominate us for something and we have to give props and a hattip to the green web awards in general.  maybe 2010 will see us get some awards - we can live in hope! ;0

phil campbell (@philcampbell)

Penney Poyzer attending conker tweetup

Penney Poyzer and husband Gil Schalom co-own the Nottingham ecohome. The first radical eco retrofit of a Victorian house in the UK.

Penney is an author, broadcaster, special adviser and lecturer covering a broad spectrum of green issues. Gil is a green architect and NHER SAP assessor specialising in low carbon design for both new build and retrofit - including listed buildings.

They started ‘recycling’ their house 10 years ago and their pioneering project has been acknowledged as the  UK’s benchmark for domestic low carbon retrofit. The house has gone from an energy rating of G to an A. They live their with their daughter Jasmine aged 3 and Puzzle their cat.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

52 plays

we have been very lucky to be allowed to use this track for ‘buy nothing day’ and our conker tweetup project on the 28th of November.  entitled ‘shop and buy’ we want to thank Eric Maddern again for allowing access to it.  i’m sure people are feeling the lyrics in this! :)

Get on the bus, Gus!

Woop woop for all you public transport devotees out there!  In the true spirit of Buy Nothing Day The Green Bus Company has agreed to provide us with a totally free service from Tamworth Station to Conkers and back for the ConkerTU launch on Saturday 28th November.

Remember that Tamworth Station has excellent North-South and East-West connections on Virgin, London Midland and Cross Country trains, making ConkerTU incredibly easy to get to.

But The Green Bus is no ordinary bus, not only is it green, but it is WIFI and GPS enabled so all you live event bloggers out there can start tweeting from the minute you get off the train!  How’s that for a digitial diversion?!

Combined with the superb package that The Peel Hotel in Tamworth have offered to all our ConkerTU guests, I am beginning to feel disappointed that I don’t have further to travel myself!

Phil intends to hook up with Michael at The Green Bus Company in the very near future, so we can get you some footage to show just how cool your journey to and from ConkerTU is going to be.  In the meantime, I am nearing an outcome with the car-sharing arrangements and hope to have yet more accommodation options, ideally within walking distance of Conkers, for these guests also.

As ever, big thanks to Jonathan O’Farrell of @Ibstock_does and @RichardBeldon ofLets Go Local for all the additional hints, tips and pointers towards useful local contacts.  Judging by these guys’ enthusiasm, I have to say you’re in for a hearty welcome in the Heart of the Forest!

Emma, Zerocredit_UK

International Day of Climate Action Today - 350.org

fantastic to see the power of the internet to effect change on a massive scale.

350.org is an international campaign to support a clear and bold solution to the climate crisis: reducing the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million. The 350 goal has become a symbol of climate action around the world. This October 24, 2009, over 5,200 events are planned in more than 180 countries for the 350 International Day of Climate Action. From the melting snows of Mt. Everest to the sinking beaches of the Maldives, people will gather to send a message to world leaders: 350!

They have a twitter account and lots of great photos over on flickr

Discounted Accommodation @ The Peel Hotel, Tamworth for those travelling to the conkers tweetup

http://www.thepeelaldergate.co.uk/

Just had some fantastic news for those coming down the evening before for conkers tweetup, we managed to get some really nice discounts on the rooms at the peel hotel in tamworth - they even have wifi too! - if you would like to make a booking you just need to mention conkers for the reduced accommodation rate.

Give them a call on 01827 67676 or email them enquiries@thepeelhotel.com

Single room
£45.00 including Breakfast and Vat at the standard rate, standard tariff £60.00

Double room
£55.00 including Breakfast and Vat at the standard rate, standard tariff £70.00

Twin room
£60.00 including Breakfast and Vat at the standard rate, standard tariff £80.00

Family room
£70.00 including Breakfast and Vat at the standard rate, standard tariff £90.00

conkers - a great fibre provider?

morning.  i have been exploring options for internet connectivity over the last few weeks for conkers that have ranged from bonding broadband connections in an office in ashby and firing them over radio waves to conkers to exploring the locality to see if anyone else has anything substantial.   we found a company next to conkers that indeed has a fibre connection of 10mbit.  we are talking with them directly and their IT team to see if anything can be done to share us a few meg for the day and radio that over to the two sites at waterside and the discovery side.   i’m not sure how possible that is.   but something i want to explore.

What this process has exposed to me however is the amount of buildings and companies that would truly benefit from talking with each other with conkers being the hub for it.  for instance, the yha hostel, moira furnace, the caravan park, the business park and a whole road full of housing just over a field or two could have access to super super fast internet via wifi - you could have a really professional local radio station and hook up farms and bakeries and have a realtime food service.  the scope is massive.  it just needs that initial feed to make it work.

I really hope you will support our efforts by signing up, for free over on http://tweetvite.com/event/conkers or http://conkerstweetup.eventbrite.com

phil (@philcampbell)

working with geo-location and flickr for conkers event

As part of the conkertu project i want to use conkers as an example of adding additional ambient context/content to a project by geo-tagging photos and then attaching media (video/audio/textual) posts to that location.  i have been using flickIT on my iphone to take snaps and geotag them as i walked around parts of conkers.

One of the problems with this on flickr is that they use yahoo maps (as they got bought out by yahoo) and the maps have NO detail of the area whatsoever.  I was suggested to use bing maps but we will probably use google maps as we already have some codebases for working with geo media and gmaps to import our already geo positioned photos.

One of the biggest problems with geo media is that an area can get messy very quickly so we will be looking at various techniques to splinter down the areas dependant on zoom level and combining media types together for a region.  we will also try and keep an archive of those event periods so you can pull up the content for each event.

Exciting stuff thou.