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I’m really pleased to let you know about a project I’ve been working on the the past month or so.

I attended an Alpha Course at Riverside Church last year. In the process of trying to get some information on the church I visited their website, but was really disappointed by how out of date and broken it was.

After finishing the Alpha Course, Gail and I decided to settle down in Riverside. We’ve been taken to their heart and they’re a great bunch of sincere, Bible reading, evangelical Christians. We’ve made some great friends and the place feels like home

I’m keen to help them out anyway that I can, so I offered to make a new website for them. At first I was going to go down the simple iWeb route, but after mulling it over for a while I had a meeting with the leadership team and suggest a more socially interactive site.

They were excited by this and for the past 4 or 5 weeks I’ve been developing www.riversidegospel.org

It’s the only site of it’s kind in Glasgow, possibly even further afield. We’re pretty excited by the potential it offers, particularly for those who can’t get to a church or don’t fancy the idea of going to church.

We’ve been recording the services and releasing them on the site and as a podcast. You can find it here on iTunes. (If you look carefully you may even see my name on the list of speakers, plus I’m preaching my first sermon this Sunday.)

It would be great to see you guys on the new site. Plus, if you just want to anonymously browse the site and get a feel for what a real, live, 21st C evangelical church is actually like, please feel free.

I’d love to hear what you think.

BBC News link

Ok, if Tesco want to sell bread and milk cheaper than Morrisons, that’s good for consumers. That’s competition and it can save consumers money.

But if the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV want to join forces and launch an on-demand video service that will allow consumers to download video content to consume when it suits them, does the fact that they’re not in competition with each other matter if consumers are getting a good service? I wouldn’t have thought so.

The Competition Commission disagrees and says that consumers would only benefit if the broadcasters are in competition with each other. So, the project has been halted. No on-demand video service for you.

As the broadcasters said in a joint statement;

“the real losers from this decision are British consumers”.

Please also refer to these links;

http://twitter.com/themediaisdying

http://twitter.com/mediaisthriving

I’m down in Chatham, Kent, today for the Kent Reliance Building Society’s AGM. I’m not a member of the mutual, however, their Chief Executive, Mike Lazenby, invited Podcastmatters Ltd to attend and podcast from the proceedings.

KRBS have been on the go for over 100 years, this was their 120th AGM, and the unkind among us would wonder if some of their members have been with them since their inception. I’m not sure there was anyone in the room at the Commissioner’s House under the age of 50 who wasn’t a KRBS employee. Obviously, anyone under the age of 65 would probably have been at work and thus unable to attend.

What’s interesting is the split in opinion on technology among the membership. The 61 year old Vice Chairman confessed that he’s not that into computers but that his wife is on Facebook. Mike Lazenby related an experience of when he was on the phone to a customer who told him that they were just about to go online and do some banking. This customer was 83 years old. Conversely, one member stood up during the meeting proudly proclaimed that they get all their news from newspapers and do not own a single piece of electronic technology. They did, however, concede to owning a telephone.

So, while it’s clear their target audience - ie. the mutual’s membership - may not be in the normal new media consuming demographic, that hasn’t stopped KRBS looking ahead to the future and wishing to have some quality new media content to offer their membership, along with more traditional communication methods, such as brochures and printed news letters.

Lazenby was very bold in his assertion that much of the current financial crisis is being exacerbated by old media’s newspapers and TV/radio broadcasts. He’s passionate about the fact that new media - podcasts, YouTube channels etc - can significantly redress the balance and promote a much more healthier and positive spin on the state of the country’s finances.

The overall vibe I captured in the audio that will be edited and released as the KRBS podcast is that communication is king, being able to talk directly to your customers is essential and that being transparent and authentic is indispensable. New media for old people?

Delighted to see another of our social networks getting props from Ning

1. decent laptop (I carry a MacBook Pro at all times)
2. large capacity, small format external hard drive
3. selection of USB cables
4. camera - a mobile phone camera is ideal (even the iPhone is acceptable)
5. small video camera
6. notebook to keep track of what you’ve been working on/people you’ve spoken to
7. USB modem to upload content on the go
8. spare memory cards/USB thumb drives
9. business cards
10. digital audio recorder

Bannatynes Health Clubs? Do a quick Google blog search and you’ll see hardly any reference ever to them. There are a couple of links that point to discussion forums, but the posts in question have been removed. Granted, it would appear those discussions were of a negative nature towards the company.

In this day and age of public conversations it strikes me as odd that there aren’t any heathy, open discussions about Bannatynes on any on-line forum, blog or otherwise.

The purpose of this post is to provide content for the high number of hits this blog gets for the search term ‘“mark hunter” banntynes’. I’d hate to have nothing to offer.