Great evening at Menu Gordon Jones

24 May

It was my birthday this week, so to celebrate we went to Menu Gordon Jones in Bearflat, Bath. Its had some fantastic reviews since it opened in

The meal started with a fantastic cauliflower soup, served with beautifully fresh warm bread presented in brown paper bags, clipped together at the top. This was followed by a dish with seagull egg and asparagus, really yummy and not something I’d tried before!

The fish course was sea bass which will always be a winner in my book – I love sea bass, but to try it served with black pudding was quite different and made it a far more exciting dish.

This was followed with a meat course of slow-cooked venison, which, as another diner commented, had almost the texture of liver it was so tender. Served on a bed of creamy mashed potato, this was pretty much perfection.

Before dessert we were served a sweetcorn sorbet, which was dulcified with a berry compote. It was great to try the sorbet, but for me it wasn’t quite refreshing enough ahead of the heavy (but heavenly) salted chocolate torte that followed.

All in all, we had a really fabulous evening and the surprise menu didn’t fail to excite the taste buds. I’d love to go back again, apparently the ingredients change every day as Chef cooks seasonal produce which is bought locally.

Seagull egg for dinner? Don't mind if I do!

Seagull egg for dinner? Don't mind if I do!

Sensory technology in use at Three Ways School

15 May

Yesterday I visited Luke Woodbury at Three Ways School in Bath. Three Ways School caters for 165 children aged from 3 – 19 years of age with a wide range of Special Educational Needs.

I mentioned Luke in a previous blog post about the SPARKies awards – he had won an award for the best use of technology having impressed judges with the work he was doing in the Three Ways sensory lab.

Luke is a programmer with a background in music, but has now turned his skills to teaching and is developing material aimed at enhancing teaching and engaging students with the curriculum.

Luke gave us a tour of the sensory lab and showed us some of the lessons he has developed content for – from bringing Jack and the Beanstalk to life to creating peaceful under-the-sea scenes, Luke’s passion and creativity are immediately apparent.

What Luke needs now is some voluntary help from the local community. He could do with people with design skills to help him polish some of the material he has already developed, and also to create new content for lessons.

You can read more about Luke and watch videos of work he has done with the students on his website, and if you feel that you could get involved and help him out I know he’d be thrilled to hear from you.

 

The SPARKies awards

22 Mar

Last night I ran Bath’s first tech awards – the SPARKies!

The ceremony was held at Komedia in Bath, and I had a month to put it together. We had over 100 award entries across 11 categories, and nearly 300 people attended the ceremony – so sorting out the table plan was possibly the hardest thing I have ever organised!

We had some fantastic winners (and really good runners up too) – with Picochip stealing the show by winning three categories. A highlight from the evening for me was the winner of our category for ‘the use of technology for doing good’ – which went to Luke Woodbury at Three Ways School. Luke is a programmer and he runs the sensory lab at the school, working with children with disabilities to enhance their learning experiences.

The awards were great fun with live drawing by Nat Al-Tahhan, comedy by the fantastic Jarred Christmas and our little mascot Sprk-12 popping up all over the place. The staff at Komedia were fantastic and everyone who attended seemed to have a great time.

Heres to next year and The SPARKies 2013!

Sprk-12 popped up throughout the night!

Getting involved with Bath’s first Digital Festival

16 Mar

March has been very exciting – and busy – as I’ve been part of the team helping to put together Bath’s first Digital Festival.

The Festival is a collection of around thirty different events, taking place at venues across the city from 15th – 25th March. From coding sessions for school children through to a hack day, and from international digital entertainment conference X Media Lab to the inaugural event of Bath’s new debating society, there really is something for everyone.

I have been putting together the SPARKies awards ceremony (as part of Bath Spark) which has been eye opening. Working in PR, my previous experience of awards ceremonies has all been in a sector which loves to blow its own trumpet. The SPARKies, on the other hand, recognise excellence in the digital sector which is much quieter about its achievements and some of the entries are really fantastic.

The whole week has been put together and curated by the amazing Mike Ellis, Founder of Thirty8 Digital. In 2011 he founded The Big M conference in Bath, and every month he runs BathCamp, so taking on the Festival as well as all of that deserves applause.

If you would like to know a bit more about the Festival and the events taking place, have a look at the website designed by Bath’s very own fantastic web design company Storm Consultancy.

Marcomms and science: speaking to the Guardian

6 Feb

I have been interviewed by the Guardian again recently, this time about getting the outcomes of research heard in the media. I focused on the work I do with scientists and engineers, making often very complex research comprehensible to a lay audience without ‘dumbing it down’.

To see the full piece, visit the Guardian website here.

I’m starting a company!

3 Jan

In December I made the decision to go part-time at the University of Bath and to spend my spare time starting up a PR and marketing company.

It has been a busy few months – I’ve chosen a name, ‘Pepper’, mainly because it is easy to spell and say, and was one of the few names which wasn’t already taken for a communications company.

I found a fantastic accountant – Robin Harper in Bristol – who has made the whole process of registering as a limited company very straightforward. Now I am working on a website with Storm Consultancy, and the fantastic Rik Penny at Ripe Digital has sorted me out with great business cards.

Now I am just getting started with my first client – Bath Digital Festival. Its going to be an interesting first project as this is the first year for the Festival, so the whole team will be learning as we go along, but I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in.

Oh – and if you need any PR or marketing, do get in touch!

Plotting stakeholders

14 Dec

I did a little project last night, plotting the stakeholders of an organisation in Bath. I thought it might be of interest to companies locally (and it looked quite pretty) so I’ve posted it up here.

Do you know exactly who your stakeholders are? Do you revisit your organisation’s understanding of its stakeholder regularly? Do you regularly communicate with your stakeholders, and if so, how?

Simple stakeholder mapping for a Bath-based organisation (Click to enlarge)

Simple stakeholder mapping for a Bath-based organisation (Click to enlarge)

Bath with a visiting American

4 Dec

Last weekend I was excited to host my good University friend Savannah here in Bath during a whistle-stop tour in which she was visiting people across the country on a one-week trip from New York.

Obviously I wanted to make sure the best bit of her holiday was the part spent here in the lovely city of Bath, but she wasn’t going to make that easy for me having visited twice before and ‘done’ all the typical sights and museums.

Savannah and I in Bath

Savannah and I in Bath

Its funny how having a visitor can make you look at things differently isn’t it? I was somewhat keen to stay away from the Christmas market, having felt that it was full of touristy tat and overpriced rubbish, but Savannah was keen so we had a look around and I must say I was pleasantly surprised at how many nice Christmas gifts we were able to get for a fairly reasonable price. I guess, though, that we were pretty lucky in missing the masses of crowds that generally make the market unbearable.

After a visit to the market we went to the Spa, which I was really keen to do having only been once before. Unfortunately Savannah had come to the UK via Reykjavik in Iceland, where she bathed in natural, open air hot springs, somewhat putting our baths to shame!

Sally Lunn's - where the welcome is always warm and the buns always tasty.

Sally Lunn's - where the welcome is always warm and the buns always tasty.

My newly negative feel about the baths was further exacerbated by a very crowded rooftop Royal Bath, lots of sand and dirt in the downstairs Minerva Bath, and a ridiculous locker system that seemed to be utterly confusing everyone. The lifts between floors were really slow so we ended up plodding up and down the stairs, freezing cold, trying to find the different pools. In all, it didn’t feel like an up-market, relaxing experience and I was pretty disappointed.

However Sally Lunn’s redeemed the day with a very warm welcome, a suitably old and impressive mini-museum, and lovely fresh cream teas. It was just what we needed as the day grew dark.

Our day was completed with a fun evening out, starting with cocktails at Door 34, followed by a visit to my favourite venue of the moment, the chic and lovely Opium where I got to introduce Savannah to some of my lovely Bath friends. All in all we had a great day – and as its now my turn I better get saving for my tickets to New York!

Evaluating networks: Twitter activity of 1994 Group universities

28 Sep

Hi there! I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the different social networks I work with. I’m interested in how I can determine how effective my networks are in reaching my target audiences, and how I can use evaluation to improve my communications through these channels.

Evaluation is a constant headache for anyone working in marketing or communications, with the evaluation of social networks possibly the hardest to carry out.

And as increasingly more time and resource is put into online communications, proving that the investment is effective is essential.

Soon, as press officers, we’ll be asked to justify our decision to focus on these communication channels, and we have to be ahead of the game and ready to demonstrate the value of our online networks.

I had some time on my hands so I decided to follow the lead of Brian Kelly, who recently wrote a great blog post on the Twitter use of Russell Group universities. I have replicated his analysis for the 1994 Group, to see what I think of this method of evaluation. I’ve only used Klout so far (as it took forever), but I’ll try to do a PeerIndex comparison soon.

Klout measures influence online by analysing Twitter metrics, giving you a Klout Score.  The Klout website explains each score with the following:

  • The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1-100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence.
  • Amplification Probability is how much you influence people. When you post a message, how many people respond to it or spread it further? If people often act upon your content you have a high Amplification score.
  • The True Reach is the number of people you influence. Klout filters out spam and bots and focuses on the people who are acting on your content. When you post a message, these people tend to respond or share it.
  • Network Influence indicates the influence of the people in your True Reach. How often do top Influencers share and respond to your content? When they do so, they are increasing your Network score.

For the purpose of this I’m taking the word of the company and assuming that Klout really does what it says it does. Although a critique of each of these evaluation services might make an interesting blog post some day…

So here are the results (ordered alphabetically):

 

1994 Group university's Twitter Klout scores

1994 Group university's Twitter Klout scores

         (Admin update (4/12/11): Due to a glitch I was unable to produce a score for Queen Mary at the time this table was created. I’ve been informed that the current Klout score for Queen Mary, University of London is 49. Its true reach is 946; amplification probability is 15 and network influence is 19. http://klout.com/#/QMUL - thanks to Emma Lowry for letting me know.)

Where there isn’t a huge budget and a couple of spare staff, tools like Klout offer a quick insight to how social networks might be performing. However, while a score based on an evaluation of Twitter metrics can look appealing, these tools certainly have limitations.

While your Klout score might be able to show how many opportunities for influence you have within your network, you can’t assume that every tweet you post is read by your complete ‘true reach’, or even that your ‘true reach’ represents the target audience you want to communicate with. Likewise, while tweets might be read, if the purpose of your communications is to elicit a response you need to carry out further analysis to determine whether the reader acted upon the information you shared with them.

For that, a much more sophisticated evaluation is required, along with a much larger budget and much more time.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, and if you have any ideas for evaluating social networks then I’m all ears. What are other press officers doing to determine how effective their communications through these channels are, and how are you using the results of your evaluation?

Things to do in Bath on a rainy weekend

20 Sep

My little sister came to visit me over the weekend, and it poured with rain the whole time. That got me thinking about things to do in Bath when its raining – as although we’ve have the summer from hell I seem to have still managed to spend most of it outdoors in the city’s many parks and near the canal and river.

So I did what I always resort to doing at times of trouble… I asked Twitter. On Sunday morning I tweeted my request and was inundated with replies in seconds.

As a result, my sister and I had a great time visiting the Fashion Museum, which had a collection of wedding dresses on display to celebrate this year’s royal ceremonies. We also dressed up in corsets and crinoline, which made us both rather glad to be 21st century girls. Yep, you might get a waistline to die for, but I nearly suffocated in the process!

Anyway, as there were loads of great replies to my desperate Twitter plea, I thought I would pop them in a blog post so that everyone else can share them too. And please do add more in the comments box – unless we get an Indian summer I’m going to need your suggestions!

My sister trying on a corset and crinoline at Bath Fashion Museum.

My sister trying on a corset and crinoline at Bath Fashion Museum.

Top of the list of recommendations was the Fashion Museum, which as I mentioned was a great way to pass an hour or so, and has dressing up items for adults and kids, and changing seasonal displays. Definitely more one for the girls, I don’t think my boyfriend would have appreciated it quite as much as my sister! Thanks to Colin, Sarah, Ian and Katie for the great suggestion.

Sally Lunn’s museum was suggested by Liz and we called in here to try Bath Buns after visiting the Fashion Museum. Its free to get in to the museum if you have a drink, or 30p otherwise and worth a look around. I can’t say I was overly ecstatic about my bun, but certainly worth trying it once.

Thanks to Mike who suggested the Holburne Museum – I was lucky enough to get invited to the opening of the Holburne following its extension and refit, and it is definitely a great idea for a rainy day. Entry is free, although personally I’d recommend factoring in a coffee break elsewhere as I found the cafe hugely overpriced and pretentious.

Mike also suggested the Herschel Museum of Astronomy – which, as anyone following me on twitter will know, is right up my street! Unfortunately I didn’t think my sister would be quite as enthralled by the discovery of Uranus, but at a very reasonable £5 entry this is definitely at the top of my list of places to visit and I’m hoping to get there very soon.

Juturna suggested visiting the Victoria Art Gallery, which is apparently now also open on Sundays. I must admit I have walked past many times without paying much attention to this gallery. Well, thanks to Jaturna I will now make sure I visit soon – maybe next time its raining in Bath!

Katie mentioned the American Museum, which I have visited once although on such a hot day that I spent most of my visit in the beautiful gardens. I think its worth going for the Marilyn Monroe exhibition alone, although you’ll have to be quick as it ends on October 30. The museum was ok, I don’t have any particular interest in American culture or history, and was hoping that Claverton Manor itself would be less adapted as I do like looking around stately homes, but if you do have a thing for American artefacts then this is the place for you!

Other suggestions included the Jane Austin museum, Number 1 Royal Crescent and of course there are the Roman Baths and Thermae Bath Spa, both of which will make a dent in your wallet (although Bath residents get discounts).

I hope that helps anyone looking for something to do over the winter in Bath. Do you have any other suggestions?

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