I kicked off proceedings with a blog moaning about my personal education experience which suggests that the problems start early and are in education as a whole; It includes an epic response from my university lecturer Roy. The next post was From David Edmundson-Bird, Director of Executive Programmes at Manchester Metropolitan University. He tries to get to the heart of what digital education really is for. Is it to teach software or is it to develop the person? Next we hear from Ian Wareing, Project co-ordinator at Vision + Media. Ian looks at the way people are taught. He advocates the gamification of learning. Then Christina McDermott, Web Editor at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts writes about how maybe this time, the educators should try learning something.

Some great stuff so far and much more to come. What are your thoughts on Digital Education? Are you a recruiter or do you employ people to work in your business? Do the people you interview have the right skills? Let us know in the comments below.

There are still tickets left for the digital education debate next Monday if you’d like to rant In Real Life.

The post Digital Marketing Guest blogs at #TheFeed appeared first on PushON Ltd.

We’ll also have a series of guest posts from people within the industry explaining how they see ‘digital education’.  I thought I’d kick off the ranting. Read my blog “What digital education?” over at The Feed’s website.

The event takes place in Manchester City centre in Revolution on Oxford Road on the 10th October. Come for beers, food (It’s half price on Monday’s) and hopefully, some shouting.

The last one was a sellout, so grab your tickets here. 

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Thursday the 22nd September is the Manchester Wired City Reconnected event. From 6pm in ‘The Cafe’ on Manchester Science Park. This aims to be a relaxed networking event with over 60+ business owners.

Also on Thursday there’s a CIM event: Meet the Editors. Discussing what media needs from PR and marketing professionals.

Friday 11-1 is a Pitching for new business event on Portland Street.
Stuff coming up in the next few weeks that you might want to book in for now:

City Camp Manchester, looking at how to improve Manchester
SASCon mini conference is the warm up for the full Search, Analytics and Social conference and tickets are on sale now.

The post Events this week appeared first on PushON Ltd.

CING is on tonight, talking social media in the Cornerhouse

Tuesday is the newly refreshed SMC_MCR taking a debate panel style like our very own events: The Feed. With PushON generally being a fan of the argumentative format, I’m off as their representative for the evening. Here was my mid riot write up about social media use in the riots to get a feel for my views.  New recruit Michael also seems to have a lot to say on the #Ilovemcr anti riot campaign.

Thursday is not only Northern Digitals at Barcelona Bar, it’s the launch of a Star Trek exhibition at the Generation Pop Gallery. Not work related, but interesting all the same. Well, to me at least. Thursday is also the leaving doo of twitter favourite @ILoveEdna as he buggers off to Bristol for uni. It’ll just be a casual catch up and drinks in Common.

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Android Manchester Meetup is on  Tonight at Madlab. Talking Custom UI components. If you’re a beginner or expert, all are welcome.

HAC: Manchester is at Madlab on Wednesday from 7 until 9pm and is a chance for you to work on any geeky projects that you might have brewing.

Northern Digitals’ sell-out speaker events BLAB have their 8th date on Thursday. As ever, it’s sold out but has a waiting list you might want to join… Go, see what all of the fuss is about! This time round speakers include Ian Wharton and Studio Output at The Deaf Institute from 6pm.

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Hackney community clean up team

Watching the scenes unfold on BBC news 24 and Sky of rioting across London, Birmingham and Liverpool last night was an interesting experience when coupled with social media.

The BBC were keen to bring social sites into the equation early on, reporting that the riots may have been organized via Twitter, Facebook et al. One reporter saying “people are clearly using their phones, but we can’t get close enough to see whether they’re using twitter or just texting”. BlackBerry messenger (BBM) was also targeted by reporters.

It’s certainly a case here of don’t blame the tool. Although smartphones and social networks give more channels to use to immobilise for destruction, it also does the opposite and we’ve seen some heart-warming counter ‘attacks’ that have mobilized through channels on the web, and an overwhelming sense of community.

RIM have said they will be ‘assisting authorities’ to catch rioters that use BBM and Police are looking into arresting people inciting violence through Twitter. These people can be and will be traced. A Facebook event set up to start rioting in Manchester was reported by countless people and declined by hundreds more. It’s likely that something can be done about the 20 or so people who had accepted the event. People were keeping a look out for any untoward behaviour and during the evening several untoward accounts and message board posts were reported to the teams that run Greater Manchester’s various and active Police Twitter accounts.

Uninformed reporting from BBC News and an interview on BBC 5 Live were fanning the flames of rioting in Manchester. Manchester, known for it’s strong twitter community clubbed together and aided by a few dedicated community reporters, confirmed to @BBCNews that nothing was going on pretty much anywhere in Manchester. A core few were insisting that people stop spreading rumours and kept level headed. @GMPolice stepped in themselves to confirm reports were incorrect:

“BBC reports of rioting/disturbances in Greater Manchester inaccurate. No rioting whatsoever, no major disturbances. All quiet at moment.”

Rumours where spread about tigers being released, rioting where it wasn’t, shops that don’t even exist being looted. People were wildly speculating, facts were not being checked and arguments arose about political beliefs, but that’s just everyday twitter banter. It was comforting to know that overall there were an army of people using twitter counteracting these claims with facts and calmly dousing the flames of any rumours.

One of the most radical movements emanating from social media was @riotcleanup and the hashtag #riotcleanup has imobalised communities to clean up the streets after the riots, and it looks as though the majority of work has been sorted by 11am the today using it’s band of over 38,000 followers.

It’s not about the tools we use, it’s about how they’re used.

The post The good, the bad and the ugly: Social media and the riots appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Monday: Madlab are running a Clojure evening 7- 9pm. Clojure is a dynamic programming language that targets the Java Virtual Machine. (Apparently) If you know what that last sentence even means, then this might be for you.

Tuesday: There’s a Geek Up at Rain Bar. Get there from 6pm onwards to network and knowledge hare with other creative/tech type geeks.

Thursday: Back to Madlab for  XP Manchester, to discuss eXtreme Programming, test driven development and Kanban. 6:30pm – 9.

If we’ve missed anything that could be of interest to creative and digital businesses, let Rebecca know on info@pushon.co.uk

The post Events this week appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Tonight: Manchester Google technology user group – At Madlab from 7

Thursday: Northern Digitals is on again at The Northern from 6pm so you can chat to other people in the digital industry. CING are running a summer BBQ at the Mark Addy. It’s £10 but you get food and drink.

Friday: Freelance Friday at Madlab. You pay them a fiver and you get the chance to chat to other freelancers, use the wifi and free buffet.

Saturday and Sunday: Leedshack is on… in Leeds if you fancy some mega geek action. Apparently, it’s the largest UK hackday outside of London.

The post Industry Events this week appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The post Danny's Song for #PushONPrizes appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Our first prize of Handerpants and Breakfast for the office was won by Dave Ashworth at Return On Digital who knew that The reg plate of the Back to the Future Delorean was OUTATIME

Second prize was a Kindle, won my Roy Chilvers at The University of Salford who knew that the picture was of Magibon, the internet meme sensation, rather than Simon Wharton, as Richard Hall thought it was

Third prize a Star Wars clock won by Iwan Roberts who knew that the brush sculpture in Manchester was by George Wylie.

Unlike Dom Hodgson, who just got mad:

Fourth prize goes to Alex Moss who knew that PushON got slaughtered by KMP Digita 21-2 in the #creative League. This question crashed our website! After a lunchtime of panic we got back up… good to test the servers. Also got compared to twitter. I suppose we should have given our host some Handerpants.

Fifth prize Dan Donald knew about Common Bar’s Moroccan chick pea soup… He wins a super awesome MAGNET!

6th question, Well the answer was Tina and the winner is Anna Vigelahn, congrats! She wins wine and a Not Pad. (Photos on their way)

7th question is awesome. A song from Danny. The question was what was he holding, the answer was an angry bird. This is Chris Marsh from Melbourne receiving the prize of doughnuts and the angry bird on behalf of Luan. She’d left for the day but they promised not to eat all the doughnuts…….yeah right.

8th Question is the LAST ONE! The answer was that Jordan studied Brand Advertising and Brand Management. The winner is Rick Webb who won beer for his office and glow in the dark toilet roll

Thanks to all who entered, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did

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