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

pictures from the conkertu.com local feb event.

ConkerTU Local - events schedule

All day:

soft play; gaming zone; youth bus; 12.00-5.30: amphitheatre gig

Presentations @ 10-00-11.30 & 2.30-4.00:

hyperlocal Leics online

Moira Fire Station

Overseal Online

SDDC Digital

Community Cooperative

Derbyshire Police (am only)

Gerry the Ranger @ Conkers (pm only)

What’s on in our Forest

Break-out sessions @ 11.30-1.00 & 4.00-5.30:

local councillors & representatives

Another 25 Tickets Added Due to Demand.

We have added another twenty five tickets to the event.  We still have some more capacity possible outside of the tickets we have left up on the site but we might have to start moving furniture around! - things progressing nicely.  have a few conker video pieces and ideas i would like to post.

guess you were wondering…

… what we were up to…

Well, silence is golden because we’ve been working our butts off to bring you the very best of hyperlocal communities in action at our next ConkerTU on Saturday 16th January.

Whilst we’ve all been tweeting and blogging merrily away, a rather nice bunch of local Forest Community folk have been campaigning like mad to keep their local fire station open. You may have noticed the odd retweet for @MoiraonFire or the mighty @Hedgewytch’s convulsions at how fit all the fire fighters at the last ConkerTU were!

Anyway, at our launch we created http://moirafirestation.posterous.com/ for our local activists and they loved it so much that yet more Parish and Town Councillors have signed up for a session with the “conkertu kid”, Phil Campbell. Indeed, Moira’s very own IT suite is being specially opened for the occasion on Tuesday night.

Another key finding during the launch was learning about the vast number of great local projects, attractions and community groups which just aren’t hooked up with one another. Conkers is right at a Local Authority boundary you see, so you can imagine how delighted we were when General Manager, Steve said yes, let’s bring everyone here.

We’ll be posting more precise details over the next couple of weeks, but ConkerTU Local will give you the choice of attending either a morning or afternoon session as we’d like to involve as many folk as possible. A lot of local groups will be presenting their work and ideas, so we can start to capture some feedback about the success and popularity of these and build some truly sustainable action from the event.

We’re working on a creche and teen zone so as to occupy our favourite little diversions and there may be some up and coming local bands in the amphitheatre too!

What’s more, vegetal inclusion was such a success at the last ConkerTU that we’ve decided to continue the tradition with: “get your jacket, you’ve pulled!” - in this instance more of the yummy Red Leicester from those lovely farmers over at Sparkenhoe to serve with any potato Steve can bake!

For anyone keen to hang out for an evening in the Forest, Donisthorpe Parish is inviting people to a traditional Wassail in and around the orchard, which was such a feature of discussion at the ConkerTU launch.

That’s all for now!

Emma

Vegetal Inclusion for the Conker Tweetup!

original photo from here by valjk | creative commons license

How would your carrot like to tweet up with my potato for a bit of potage bonne forme?  Closet Chef, Steve @visitconkers is offering to Ready Steady Cook a dish for our delight, if we can bring a veggie for @philcampbell to twitpic whilst I compose an ode to the Cauldron of ConkerTU!

Seriously though, we can only campaign effectively if we nurture our sense of fun, so why not infect ConkerTU with a little laughter?  What better gift can we share on Buy Nothing Day than the soulfood of a shared creation to nourish our zero-carbon thoughts?

If you’re new to this site, forgive us!  Steve, Phil and I have been working on ConkerTU for little more than a month.  Sharing sustainable lifestyles is a mission for us – I think you’ll save money, Steve believes you’ll save the planet and Phil knows he can connect people who want to share ideas.

Maybe we are ideallists, but we’ve done this at short notice because we think it needs to happen now.  There are too many arguments about the economy and climate change to make easy sense of it, yet each have folk we can rely on in a crisis and sustainability helps us to strengthen such networks.

Whilst “vegetal inclusion” is the jokey banter of a tired team, there is a certain poetry in the promordial soup of new beginnings. To take part in our light relilef, you will need to bring a home or locally grown vegetable – that’s it – except to say that we do have alternative sustenance for the less adventurous amongst you!

by emma (@zerocredit_uk)

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!

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.

ConkerTU: Launch Day - 28th November 2009

quick link signup
if you do not have a twitter/facebook account use http://conkerstweetup.eventbrite.com or http://tweetvite.com/event/conkers if you do! - you must sign up to be able to get entrance to conkers on the day as other things are happening around the centre.

Thank you for your interest in ConkerTU, the most  inclusive and sustainable Tweetup venture yet!   As a potential contributor and / or partner in either the launch or the programme, we’d like to keep you informed of progress.  However, this update is more newsletter, than confirmed itinerary.

Our twitter hashtag for all of these events will be #conkertu

Launch:  ConkerTU,  Theme: Property
Saturday 28^th November 2009 (International Buy Nothing Day)

Launch will be a discreet event for a maximum of approximately 100 attendees + 25 contributors.

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

09.30
Tweet & Greet: registration & coffee at Conkers Waterside

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
Fuel for the future: Biomass, Rawdon Room

13.00
Voyage of Discovery - extended lunch to explore Conkers & tweet with Millie the owl - lunch and live music in the pavilion, tree planting expedition, discover conkers

also at 13:00 - forest community pressure group creating a web presence.

15.00
Hyperlocal pecha kucha, a quick fired contrast and compare, session with Q&A
including Nottingham Eco House, Lammas Project, Ibstock does Climate Change,
Self help housing

16.00
Fibre in the Forest, Rawdon Room

16:20
Forest Community Pressure Group feedback, Rawdon Room

17.00
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!

Lunch will be provided by ConkerTU

Launch Tweetinvites can be found at: http://tweetvite.com/event/conkers

Eventbrite tickets at: http://conkerstweetup.eventbrite.com

Some pre-event media: