Professional Practice

Professional Practice Report

In the last ten years of producing local content whether for thisisull.com, hyperfruit.net, BBC Radio Humberside or various print publications and fanzines, there is one constant. Professional practice, the way you work, is governed by your communication and interaction with clients, fellow professionals, colleagues and team members.

Professional Practice is about how you present yourself online and off-line to your potential customer base. I have learned through experience that Hull is a very difficult place to sell anything new. There’s a popular saying, ‘If you can sell in Hull then you can sell anywhere’ and it has a ring of truth about it.

In any other city a company such as Thisisull Ltd, who was back in 2003, at the forefront of local UGC publishing and reaching out to local businesses with online advertising opportunities would ten years later be a thriving business with the support of the city and partnerships with local media. Instead it is seen as a poor relation outmoded and old.

Yet once again here in 2012 it is almost certainly at the forefront of a new publishing mobile service for the city of Hull. It is my hope to be able to use my organisational, collaborative, interpersonal, transferable and presentation skills to bring this new technology to the fore and give it every chance to succeed.

Hull is very much set in its ways and doesn’t appear to embrace change very well. Despite saying they want to be at the cutting edge of technology and to drive innovation and entrepreneurship in the city, when it comes to basic communication and sharing of information it remains somewhere in the Dark Ages.

Despite these drawbacks to successfully engaging in business I remain convinced that the right person and right approach could turn Hull into that innovative entrepreneurial hub it aspires to be.

Funding

So to see me best placed for when this change happens, or better still be ahead of the curve, I have been attending and contributing to business events at the WTCHH at the invitation of Lindsay West. I am also signed up to a news feed that deals primarily with funding organisations and have created a separate folder in to which this info goes. I can see that the only way to survive in the creative industry, is to become aware of the many different pots of funding that are out there, and learn how best to frame your organisation to make full use of them.

Everyone I have spoken to, working within the Arts sector, has said that they spend over 50% of their time, chasing funding pots to sustain their projects and initiatives on an annual basis. The recent government cuts to the Arts Budget have increased the competition and the criteria for these funding strands have become more stringent. The old days of funding a project to its conclusion for its own sake for some funding bodies are gone. Match funding although not a new concept now may comes with a proviso that the applicant must be able to present a clear strategy of how the monies will be recouped by the funder over a set period of time. This kind of pseudo equity model was discussed and explored at the recent Screen Yorkshire debate at WTCHH. I am also aware of the appearance of various phillanthropical equity based, and community driven funding models for entrepreneurs, start ups and SMEs online.

Very recently I have been working with ThisisUll Ltd on a funding application for NESTA Destination Local. The brief is to create a marketable hyperlocal mobile platform. I studied the videos from other applicants fro,m across the country. I was surprised to see a number of large companies with multiple portfolios bidding for this money. I was also interested to see how other groups up and down the country interpreted the concept of hyperlocal.

Regardless to whether the bid is successful or not ThisisUll already have a prototype location based mobile App. for the forthcoming Literature Festival. I plan to implement elements (where cost allows) of the mobile marketing strategy I wrote for the NESTA bid to promote Humbermouth 2012 events. HRGE (Hard Rhymes and Great Exclamations) is now freely available on the Apple store and on Android.

DeeList Media

I set up the company Deelist Media to offer video production services to business clients. The company trading as a branch of Young Enterprise has completed and received payment for only one job so far. At the beginning I set a target of at least having worked with three clients by the end of the trading year. Although that has not happened I have learned a huge amount and continue to learn about how to best represent and put the name Deelist Media into the minds of potential clients.

I have benefitted and learned from business advisors and clients about best practice in pitching for work and for putting together online proposals. The main thing I have come to realize through these that the only way to survive as a creative industry is to become aware of the many different pots of funding that are out there and how best to place yourself so you can make use of them.

I am also attending Hull Bizweek 2012 and approached organizer John Gilbert of Eskimo Soup (I note they currently have three vacancies) about DeeList Media attending the local events in a journalistic capacity. I have managed to secure three places at the annual business event in June.

It has not all been success. I learned an important lesson when DeeList failed to secure the online product event work from Pinnacle Solutions. I arranged with the client he’d have a proposal by Friday and in actual fact it wasn’t until Monday the proposal reached him. After seeking advice from my a few selected contacts I sent the proposal within an email not on an attached document and the last flaw in my process was that I didn’t include a thorough list of pricing options for the client to choose from, just a flat price.

The next challenge for DeeList Media will be when we officially leave the cushion of Young Enterprise and become a genuine concern with all the business ephemera tax insurance that comes with. I am currently looking at the Social Enterprise route and the different things that could mean. I am also interested in exploring the idea of DeeList Media being a partnership.

As a company we are still in our infancy and have much to learn however I firmly believe that DeeList will pick up some interesting clients by the end of the year and am looking forward to working more on exploring ideas and developing the company.

Professional Practice Project

After a number of false starts with the professional practice content creation strand including a number of worthy but ambitious ideas including:

Interactive events system management platform

An audio project inspired by the work of visiting speaker Lizzie Hughes

I have decided to submit my recent involvement in putting together a written bid for the NESTA Destination Local funding. I was asked by the Editor of community website Thisisull to help them explore the concept of hyperlocal and how it might be applied to mobile technology. Using my experience of working on Hull’s first hyperlocal Hyperfruit.net I was well placed to help them not only meet the written demands of the multifaceted application process but to also film and edit a video within a very tight timeframe to support their bid. I have been asked to join the team as Digital Media Journalist to create content for the forthcoming mobile App. I feel that although it has taken along time I am finally living up to the course title of Interactive Media.

In school my professional practice has been informed by the visiting speaker series I have attended five in the last two months and have documented each one o my blog and using hyperfruit.net. I have made a point at each of the speaker sessions to involve myself in the debate and I am particularly pleased that I have managed to pull out something from each that is can be scaled to fit a journalism subject area.

I picked up the draft version of the school magazine ARTICLE and on asking how I could have something included in the publication have sent the following about my involvement in the BBC Radio 4 Listening Project for inclusion in the publication due out week May 21.

Using my BBC contacts through my role as PR and Press for Glimmer 2011, and the connections made through reading the papers and other local connections, I have managed to once again find myself on air May 21st. This time to promote the forthcoming degree show: to talk about the fundraiser and the more important question, what is next after graduation? I hope to still be attached to the Art School and I am considering the M.A. two year research program with some teaching/mentoring role incorporated.

During the Summer I will be working as part of a team on a film project with Andrew Knight from the Hull Trawlermen’s Memorial Commission. I see myself taking the lead with this project. I wish to explore thoroughly the ideas and themes identified by the client and produce something that I will proud to show at the House of the Commons in September. Alan Johnson will announce the move to raise funds from shareholders and industry to create a permanent memorial to those who lost their lives at sea; it is paramount that our work not only reflects the grave nature but also respects the memory of those who died working on the Hull trawlers. My Listening Project connection has given me a way in to possible first person interviews with relatives from the trawler community.

It will be very interesting to see from the team dynamic and interaction how DeeList Media might serve as a business resource that retains strong links with the Art School, supports the DMJ/IM courses and could be moulded into a resource for new media students to be part of in as yet an unspecified capacity. It’s my old adage and my most repeated one, ‘ just get involved.’

In the media world promotion is crucial and self-promotion is an everyday activity.

I have been active on social media sites Facebook and Twitter as myself, as DeeList Media and when working on Client Project as Glimmer or Hull Film. I am also signed up to various media forums including MediaWomenUK. It is very useful for new practitioners to ask questions about pay rates, contacts, media law, publishing vehicles, and best practice. I am also active on LinkedIn and have uploaded a functional CV to make the most of the opportunities the service provides. The number of genuine professionals, who have added me to their network including some local BBC reporters and presenters, has surprised me. I am forging new relations with similar SMEs and can use them as a sounding board when it comes to questions about business. I also belong to the local LinkedIn group Platform Expos where I stay abreast of local business community discussions and also with the national group. I am signed up to various job sites and stay abreast of new developments in the industry, through word of mouth, reading blogs attending events and consuming traditional print publications The Guardian and The Times and the local publications.

I have built up an extensive black book of contacts and have taken every opportunity to put myself to the forefront, hand out my cards, and talk about me the company and what we do at every turn.

Moving, as I seem to be into content creation for mobile Applications, I have been looking at industry practice in terms of putting together a successful marketing strategy for bringing a new App. to the attention of the masses.

Below is an Application Marketing Strategy that I produced for the NESTA Bid for Destination Local.

Marketing Strategy (excerpt)

I have worked with my fellow students. Working closely with Ahmad during the Hullness film I discovered that we could work together and bring a project to a successful conclusion. I aided him with sourcing contributors for his ‘Democracy’ themed Client Project. He has in turn taken the lead on gathering up student interviews and acting as a buffer between me and the rest of the degree show group.

I have once more taken a lead in terms of how our strand fits into the bigger picture of the degree show planning, implementation and delivery. I have been very active on the basecamp platform responding to and feeding back to questions suggestions.