I should not avoid my blog....

I was actually looking for a picture of Lydia for this site and came across this from a couple of years ago. It's a recording from a business webinar from the International Association of Virtual Assistants.

"Lydia Bates of What She Said talks about the basics of business blogging: Where business blogging came from, how it's developing, and most importantly what separates blogging for business from blogging for pleasure.

Lydia also looks at the characteristics of some good business blogs, and the 7 types of business blog you don't want to end up with.

And finally find out why blogging can be so tough when it looks so easy -- and why so many blogs fail."

Some great stuff here - maybe I should listen to her a bit more often. 

Singing Glowing Pumpkins, T-Shirts Printing and Electronic Jewellery the chance for a tour around the Liverpool maker space - Who could ask for more. 

Liverpool loves it's maker spaces and are always seeking opportunities to show it off, so this opportunity to find out how to make electronic jewellery and Singing Pumpkins, is the perfect chance to go and have a look around. It will also give you the time to ask about all the other goodies that they have their, whether it be the 3D printing or laser cutting; or maybe even the vinyl cutter.

Will this Crafts Council initiative give you the making bug? We think so.  

Just a quick post as time is short but I'd love to offer you the opportunity to win one of 5 free passes to Thinking Digital Manchester - taking place on Monday 10th and Tuesday 11th October in Manchester.

As you'll have seen from my posting here Thinking Digital is a gripping, communal journey for those curious about “what’s next?” Their gatherings combine the world-class quality of an international conference with game changing speakers. It doesn't get much better than that and only a short trip down the M62.

The Guardian describes Thinking Digital as the "UK's TED" to give you a sense of the quality and range of speakers we're bringing to Manchester on 10 & 11 October. Twitter Vice-President Bruce Daisley describes Thinking Digital as "a reminder of what conferences used to be like, full of inspiration, stimulation and with an exceptional line-up across the day."

FACT LIverpool will be launching a new project and app this coming Wednesday with what sounds like some sort of transactional app utilising digital currency and real live people. The A Moeda project, an experiment which will attempt to send digital coins on a journey around the world using cutting edge technology.

A MOEDA presents a model where humans are vehicles for coins, and coins are vehicles for humans.

If you haven't seen it yet then do check out Joomla.com

Joomla have launched a brand new service in collaboration with Siteground that is going to see it going head to head against WordPress.com - For the unfamiliar, WordPress.com is different from the self hosted WordPress.org CMS that you can download to your server and set up. 

Joomla.com is going to allow people to set up websites for free so they can expereince the delights of Joomla in a extremely similar way that people do at the moment with Wordpress.com. 

 If you are starting out in business or just want to start a personal blog then do give Joomla.com a try and let me know how you get on.

 We're really looking forward to Joomla 4

As time has gone by - I just started using Joomla as 2.5 came in and there have been a lot of changes since then.  Most notably is the one touch upgrade system - again in a very similar way to the way that Wordpress has developed. The one touch system will upgrade your version of Joomla as new improvements and security fixes are approved.

The mechanism for updating components has also improved. In times gone by having to upload them via FTP could be a little troubling but now the one system that tells you the administrator what components are out of date and again being able to do that one click upgrade really helps smooth the process for inexperienced users and experienced alike. 

This one system for upgrading components and the insistence of Joomla itself that developers build in the process for using this one click upgrade really helps give admins the ability to upgrade and walk away and concentrate on bigger issues.

So Joomla is definitely heading on the right direction and can be seen from the graph below (the orange segment) it still has a long way to catch up on WordPress but long may she reign. 

 You can check out the North West Joomla User group here  

The Snowflake Trail returns for a third year on 1 December 2016 and Open Culture CIC and Liverpool BID Company are once again seeking proposals from artists and creative organisations to design and decorate fibreglass snowflakes to form part of the trail.

Call out for Inspiring event

Ignite Liverpool are looking for inspiring speakers for it's next event in November.

Ignite are a Grassroots community organisation who organise and present a quarterly events where members of the community are invited to present on a subject they are passionate about. 

If there was a collective noun for freelancers it would be Jelly, a Jelly of freelancers. Jelly Liverpool is a regular coworking opportunity for Digital freelancers and I am one of those digital freelancers that attends regularly... In fact I help organise it.  

TedxLiverpool have a special author event happening this Thursday, 7th September at Unit 51 in Baltic Creative as they welcome Dan Lyons, the former Technology Editor at Newsweek Magazine, a magazine writer at the top of his profession.

The Liverpool Ehealth Cluster produces a monthly newsletter featuring opportunities for people in the Digital and Health sector. As we love this project and indeed won the first Health Care Hackathon we always reproduce the e-Health cluster news here.