Wanted: Senior Developer (Birmingham), Senior Designer (London)

Okay, we’re recruiting once more. We’re looking to expand our teams in Birmingham and in London.

Senior Web Developer (Birmingham)
We’re looking for another credible developer to join our team. Made is a LAMP based operation, so we’re looking for someone with OOP PHP5 skills, preferably experience with a framework like Zend, Symfony or Sapphire. You’ll be interested in standards and HTML5 of course, but we’re looking for an architect, not a WordPress hacker (some incidental WordPress hacking is fine). We want someone who is able to talk credibly about their craft, so as well as being a good developer, you’ll be able to talk convincingly about cloud-hosting, scalability, accessibility, penetration testing, compliance and data protection. All areas you’ll get plenty of experience with at Made.

We’ll consider candidates with two years plus experience. Good computer science degree preferred. Competitive salary and benefits based upon experience level. Opportunity to work on high-profile projects, where your work will be used by millions not thousands. Good team spirit. Excellent coffee. Monthly massage. Beer.

Senior Digital Designer (London)
We’re looking for a senior digital designer to work from our London office (Angel, Islington). A grid-orientated typographer, yes, but we’re looking for more than that: Someone with strong conceptual and visualisation skills, someone comfortable in pitch scenarios. Someone who can hack out a design in Photoshop from nowhere, fast. Also desirable:

• Understanding of User Experience and user-centred interaction design (wireframing, usability etc.)
• Understanding of the brand process
• Some HTML, animation or Flash skills
• Ability to rationalise and justify your design decisions
• Ability to talk about ‘engagement’ and ‘social influence’ with enthusiasm whilst maintaining a straight face

At least two year’s work experience in an agency required. We’ll supply a steady stream of interesting clients and briefs. We’re working out the coffee. No massage in London, sorry.

To Apply…
Both roles competitive with experience and location. Email a CV and URLs to work@mademedia.co.uk. Developers should consider sending code samples, Designers a PDF portfolio or similar. Sorry, no agencies. Really.

Glyndebourne website nominated for a BIMA

We were very pleased to hear that we’ve been nominated for a British Interactive Marketing Award.

We’re in the Arts & Culture category for the website we built for Glyndebourne, which is very gratifying indeed – we’ve built up a lot of expertise in performing arts websites and this was a project that really allowed us to flex our muscles. See our previous post on was involved.

So thanks to the judges and, most importantly, thanks very much to our client. Our fingers are crossed for the awards in November.

September studio snapshot

It’s been a while since the last update, so let’s have a quick look around the studios and see what’s going on.

Arts

We’re currently working on new websites for large theatres, concert halls and arts venues the length and breadth of the country. There’ll be plenty of site launches over the next couple of months, so we’ll save the name-dropping until then.

This work is mostly for new clients, but we’re really pleased to have been retained by some long-standing clients too.

Broadcast

We’re also working on a handful of projects for major UK broadcasters (naming no names). These take a variety of forms; from interactive programme-support websites to online-only projects. We’re also providing the technology for shows that will take interactivity a step further by engaging audiences via their mobile phones, iPads and laptops during the show.

Social media

Meanwhile, the social media team are managing content on the Dancing for the Games and West Midlands Dance websites as well as feeding into several of projects run by the development teams.

We’re also about to start rolling out a Social Media Analytics service to clients, having tested it in-house for a while. We’ll open that up to others soon too (get in touch if you’d like a preview).

And all sorts of other things

Tim was in Luxembourg the other week discussing our contribution to the European Digital Mathematics Library – a €5m pan-European project that brings universities and public institutions together around some head-twistingly complicated maths.

Chris ran a session for Livity as part of the Google Digital Expert project. Meanwhile, Carl’s been busy extending his terrifyingly good pitch:win ratio – he’s now up to 8 out of 8.

Of course, while all of this is going on, the usual process of tenders, proposals and pitches continues and it looks like there’s some more great work on the horizon. We’re also checking out some bigger premises in London, submitting work for awards and there’s a rumour that a new version of our own website will finally launch… one day. Definitely this year. Probably.

Are you a freelancer?

We’re working on a lot of great projects at the moment and we’re looking to increase our pool of freelancers, particularly in the following areas:

• LAMP developers. OOP PHP, especially Silverstripe and Symfony, but we’ll chat to .Net freelancers too.
• Designers. Conceptual Photoshop jockeys with an understanding of digtal.
• Front-end Developers. Cutters of standards-compliant, semantic HTML and CSS.

Please email work@mademedia.co.uk with a link to your portfolio and your day rate. No agencies or recruitment websites please. Seriously this time.

Breathe The Beat

We recently developed and launched the website for Breathe The Beat, a digital dance project led by DanceXchange and featuring Salah, an internationally renowned hip hop artist with a huge online following.

Breathe The Beat is part of the Outdoor Dance Programme – a major strand of Dancing for the Games which aims to connect people with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games through dance.

Dance tutorials are being released regularly through the website and, next month, a competition will be launched with prizes up for grabs including the chance to meet the man himself and see him perform.

The site features image and video galleries, a news feed (with additional links pulled in from Twitter and relevant blogs) and an events map that will show off the upcoming roadshow. All of this activity is pulled into the homepage to give visitors an immediate sense of the project’s vibrancy. When the competition launches the site will allow people to submit their own videos too.

There’s already plenty of content on Breathe The Beat with more to come, so have a look around. You can also follow the project on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

A lucky few were fortunate enough to catch an impromptu performance by Salah in Birmingham city centre while he was taking a break from filming the tutorials. It didn’t take long for a crowd to gather:

Notes from the Arts Marketing Association Conference 2011

Last week I attended my first Arts Marketing Association Conference, held this year in Glasgow at the Royal Concert Hall.

A big group of us travelled up from Birmingham, meeting up with other friends from around the country. In the photo below (taken just after breakfast on day one) you’ll spot folks from Birmingham Hippodrome, Dancexchange, The Rep and Artichoke with others from BCMG and The RSC just out of shot.

Join me after the pic for my notes from some of the sessions.

Day One

Jerry Yoshitomi

These days there’s more art and less education about art. That means arts marketers are trying to get audiences to attend things they don’t know much about. In that sense, their job is about mitigating the audience’s risk. Jerry illiustrated the principle with a few case studies:

• Oregon Humanities do a series called Think & Drink
• Mostly Mozart – shorter shows, time for a drink
• BAN6 at YBCA had an opening party (rather than a reception) which carried on later and featured live music, cocktails and DJs to appeal to a younger demographic

How about giving a credit to people who leave halfway through to allow them to come back and try something else? What about offering a money back guarantee? Maybe try selling sections of the show separately (ie with triple bills of work). The last one caused a bit of a stir in the audience, which was good.

Some other bits and pieces:

• Taste is socially transmitted
• What are you doing to help your audiences talk to each other?
• Audiences can be reached at various stages of an experience: Before -> During -> After -> Omnipresent

Sarah Gee and Kate Sanderson, Indigo

Sarah and Kate’s session was titled ‘Reviewing Your Marketing Campaign Strategy – a marketing health check’ and it was probably the most practical and useful session I attended.

However, rather than regurgitate my notes, they’ve been good enough to make their presentation and a host of other resources available here so I’ll just point you towards that. Check out the resources section of their website for more case studies too.

Mark Robinson, Director, Thinking Practice

Mark has kindly uploaded his slides along with a few notes scribbled during other sessions.

The main thing I took away from his talk was the idea of performing three strategic (as opposed to random) acts of kindness. He acknowledged an element of cynicism in this but I think that’s fine – if doing a good thing also makes sound business/mission sense then there’s all the more reason to do it. From our point of view there are a couple of things we do that would fit snugly into this bracket.

(Photo by craftscotland)

Day Two

The second day was really all about having conversations with people, so you’ll have to excuse the lack of notes from any sessions.

Jane Finnis and Seb Chan expanded on the day’s opening keynote session in an interesting and quite wide-ranging session (with some nice words said about the mobile site we built for Warwick Arts Centre too).

It was also a pleasure to meet and talk with Rohan Gunatillake (Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab), Antony Pickthall (Liverpool Biennial) and Sarah Hunt (National Theatre) who hosted the round table sessions I attended.

Russell Willis Taylor brought things to an end in fine style with a final keynote session that was as drily amusing as it was authoritative and thought-provoking.

To sum up

Congrats to the folks at the AMA for organising a good conference, hello to everyone I met (I’ve got a lot of post-conference following up to do) and thanks to everyone who said nice things about us unprompted. Glasgow was great, too.

If you want some more notes to devour, check out these:

• Morning keynotes livestreamed by Envirodigital – day one and day two
• Notes from the AMA’s guest bloggers
• Choice #amaconf tweets collated by Get AmbITion – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
• On a related note, see Taras Young – On Virtually Being There
• AMA video round table notes from Alex Fleming (I presume) at Lyric Hammersmith
• I understand some notes are due on the Cultural Tweeters blog imminently

One final thought that occurred to me on the train home: all those arts marketers and nobody once tried to sell me a ticket to anything…

Notes from the Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture event

I was at the mac yesterday for a (deep breath…) Digital Capacity and Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture Digital Day event.

The fund was announced in June by Arts Council England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the NESTA. £500,000 is available for projects that harness digital technologies to connect with wider audiences and explore new ways of working. The Arts Council website has the official info.

Yesterday was a chance to hear more from the funders, ask a few questions and meet others who might be interested in applying.

My notes

Richard Russell, Director, Strategic Partnerships at Arts Council England explained that there are three ongoing things:

• The Digital Opportunities Programme, research and evidence from which will be released soon
• A partnership with BBC Academy
• The Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture

These three form the foundations of the Arts Council’s emerging digital vision which currently involves:

• Arts organisations creating imaginative, digital content that can attract audiences. Currently 4% of organisations have created content that is primarily digital and is a destination in its own right – they want to see that number rise
• Generating greater digital capacity, especially in terms of marketing, organisational development, production and distribution
• Attracting investment from other parts of the the tech and media sectors
• Larger, more diverse audience experiences. For example, involving people who have limited physical access to art

We were told that ACE’s strategic funding will particularly look at digital but this vision will apply across their funding programmes.

There was also a mention of the forthcoming digital innovation and development programme. The latest on this is that there will be £20m over four years, covering capacity building, skills, content development and R&D.

Hasan Bakhshi, Director, Creative Industries for Policy and Research at NESTA, was up next. His slides are here:

He explained that this fund was established to plug a perceived gap in funding and stressed that although £500k isn’t a huge amount of money they have big ambitions. They’re looking to fund five to ten projects but haven’t set too many restrictions on applications – they want variety, but they’ll react to the kinds of bids they receive.

They want to fund a range of projects – incremental/radical, big/small, geographically diverse and over a spread of art forms. They’re looking to support knowledge and learning, not particular art forms.

• Collaboration will be an important factor in any applications.
• Arts organisations will lead applications but must have a technology partner
• Partnership is (strongly) encouraged between tech-savvy organisations and those that are further behind on this
• AHRC will team applicants up with research partners

The round-table discussions

After lunch I was asked to chair a discussion around user generated content and social media. With quite a broad topic to address the conversation flowed back and forth nicely, with a few key themes emerging.

Most of the discussion centred on audience engagement and improving the artistic and creative aspects of work. When I asked if anyone around the table was interested in pursuing new business models through social media there was a general consensus that people were interested, but had little idea what that sort of thing might look like.

We discussed proprietary and open source platforms and formats and moved on to talk about how, more often than not, an emphasis is put on the technology and tools available and not so much advice, guidance or training is given on how to engage with and involve online communities (irrespective of the platforms/online spaces they inhabit).

Plenty of fodder for R&D work, then.

Links

• Notes by Jason Hall – overview of themes and ACE Digital R&D Fund
• Notes by Rachel Coldicutt
• The hashtag for the event was #digicaparts
• Video from the Bristol event
• Slides from presenters at these events around the country are going on ACE’s Slideshare account

Digital Days, Tessitura and AMA

A few of us are getting out and about this week.

Jake and Jeremy have jetted over to Orlando for the Tessitura conference. Not only is Made Media on board as a sponsor, but Jake’s been asked to present there too.

He’ll be presenting something rather special we’ve been developing for our latest Tessitura-using client, Sage Gateshead. It’s impressive stuff, and I can say that because I’ve had nothing to do with it.

So while they’re enjoying Orlando, the rest of us can follow along on the hashtag #TLCC2011. They’d better bring back something nice for us.

Meanwhile, I’m at the MAC today to hear more about the Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture that ACE and NESTA have put together. I’ve also been asked to chair a discussion in the afternoon on ‘user generated content and social media’ which sounds like it’ll be right up my street.

Then tomorrow I’m off to Glasgow for the Arts Marketing Association’s annual conference. I’ve not been to one of those before so I’m looking forward to catching some interesting sessions and seeing plenty of friendly faces. If time permits I’ll write up some notes from that and share them here. There’s a hashtag for that one too at #amadigital.

If you’re going to be at any of those then come say hi.

Two months in

Ian and I started work Made at the beginning of May, establishing a dedicated social media team here. It’s early days for us yet, but I thought I’d explain a little about what we’ve done here so far to give a feel for the kind of work we do.

Some ongoing work

We brought some work with us – both blog-focussed projects that aim to connect and inform creative communities:

• West Midlands Dance is a valuable resource for the region’s dance sector and is supported by the Arts Council.
• Created in Birmingham is a very popular arts and culture blog locally. Currently run out of the goodness of our hearts, we’re working up some interesting plans to develop the site further.

Some new work

We’ve recently become responsible for the editorial content and some of the social media activity for Dancing for the Games, which is part of the West Midlands Culture Programme for London 2012. With the Olympics just a little over a year away activity around this programme is about to start ramping up.

Ian oversaw the production of an iPad app that’s been made to accompany a high-profile touring exhibition. The app has only been installed on iPads that are built into the exhibition’s display cases, it’s not on general release. We’ll do a proper write-up of this project at some point.

Ian’s also been busy coordinating a usability test that will inform a website redesign for for one of Made’s existing clients. We had our test subjects in the other day, learnt an awful lot from them and are now compiling a report that will inform ongoing work.

Meanwhile, Birmingham Hippodrome asked me to go to Boston to see Cirque Eloize perform a spectacular show called iD which is coming to the UK later this year. As well as producing some copy about the show I shot a couple of very simple videos, one of which has racked up 450,000 views in just two weeks. Result.

A couple of smaller jobs: The Guardian asked us to write a round-up of Birmingham’s summer arts events and I manned a liveblog for an event held by Birmingham Ormiston Academy.

More generally, we’re just finalising some packages of social media services that we’ll be offering to clients to make sure they have access to the levels of support that they need.

Getting out and about

I was asked to speak to quite a few groups of people:

• a CIPR WM meeting focussed on bloggers and blogging
• Using Film in Education, a regional seminar organised by Film: 21st Century Literacy
• some students of Fashion Retail Management at BCU
• a group of creative industries entrepreneurs on the Metapod: Be Effective course.

I also attended Open Culture 2011, The Power of Online Video, a social media-themed meeting of the Midlands Federation of Museums and Art Galleries, Transmedia London and Hacks/Hackers.

There was a fantastic turnout at our final Birmingham Social Media Cafe too. We’ve passed the reins for that over to Karen Strunks and we wish her all the very best with it.

Upcoming

We’re just kicking off an amazing new project which, as well as being a significant web development project, has a great deal of social interaction baked into the core mechanism. It’s exactly the kind of project that that I’d hoped we’d get the chance to work on. More to come on this.

Meetings with some thoroughly interesting people and organisations have lead to some equally interesting briefs, with more on the way. Proposals have been sent and we’re hoping for more to announce soon.

Finally, it’s been a long time coming, but the launch of the new Made Media website isn’t too far off now. We’ve been helping to supply some of the copy for the site, including writing lots of lovely case studies.

So that’s what we’ve been doing

If you think we might be able to work with you on something, just let us know.

We’re recruiting a front end web developer

Yes, we’re recruiting. Again. Sorry, we’re not any more.

This position has now been filled.

Please don’t get in touch to ask about it but maybe follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to be first to hear about future vacancies. Cheers.
—————————-

Front End Web Developer
CSS, HTML5, JavaScript and an eye for design
Birmingham or London Office
Competitive salary based upon experience
Benefits include pension & health plans

We’re looking for a full-time Front End Developer to join us. Working within a team, your role will be to deliver projects for a range of national clients.

You should be a craftsperson who takes pride in your work. You’ll have a passion for delivering high quality work to specific deadlines and an ability to deal with pressure. An organised and creative approach is key as you will be working on multiple projects at any given time. We’d like you to be an enthusiastic learner.

The role requires:

• Meticulous attention to detail
• A passion for learning
• An obsession with emerging web technologies
• An understanding of grid systems and typography preferable
• An ability to write pragmatic, well thought-out CSS for large project websites
• Javascript jQuery skills preferable

The job will entail:

• Building website front-ends and other digital interfaces, using CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript
• Attention to detail
• Project update meetings with clients

Candidates should have experience in the following:

• CSS 3
• HTML5
• XHTML 1.0
• JavaScript
• Adobe CS
• Knowledge of Flash, CSS Edit and Textmate would also be helpful

To apply

Applicants should provide a link to their online portfolio or examples of their work. Shortlisted candidates will be asked in for an interview. Please send a CV and online portfolio to jobs@mademedia.co.uk.

No agencies (don’t take it personally).

Notes from OpenCulture 2011

On Wednesday I attended day two of OpenCulture 2011, otherwise known as the UK and International Collections Management Conference from the Collections Trust.

Collection management is a very broad topic, so a conference on the subject is likely to range quite widely. However, I’d been attracted by how the programme leaned quite strongly towards the digital side of things.

Owen Stephens has made good notes of all the talks so I’ll restrict myself to some thoughts on a few of the sessions I found most relevant.

The Killer App for Culture, Bill Thompson

I’ve seen Bill talk a few times and he’s always good value. Here, he was putting digital technology in context, saying that despite talk of a ‘digital age’ the analogue, organic world we live in isn’t about to entirely disappear.

I liked his observation that, with digital technology now so pervasive, we’ve moved to a point where organisations, rather than granting rare access to technology, are now more likely to limit peoples’ access to it – something that ‘may be justified but must be justifiable’.

The killer app for museums? Bill didn’t claim to know but he suggested that it might be Linked Data in all it’s machine-readable, shareable glory. Having such a foundation in place is key to future development. His vision for the future? One might be ‘an ace dataset with a nice museum attached’.

Hacking Arts and Culture, panel

There’s been a spate of hack days taking place over the past year or so. This was a session to introduce the concept to the other delegates and share a little about what has and hasn’t worked.

Linda Ellis from Wolverhampton Arts & Museums said that WAG Hack Day had been a good way to meet local developers outside of the usual tender process. It had enabled them to get feedback on their data and exposure to new ideas.

Rachel Coldicutt showed a video of Culture Hack Day (spot the guys from Made) and explained how these events provide a space for people to collaborate, make things and ‘move more quickly together’. She also had some tips for attracting good developers.

John Coburn’s experience reinforced that of the other panel members. In particular, he said that the Culture Grid Hack Day they ran in Newcastle has proven valuable for starting some new conversations and relationships.

A few people flagged up this (ongoing) conversation on broadening hack days.

Looking to the Future, Mia Ridge

Mia’s presentation complemented Bill’s from earlier in the day. She highlight some case studies that might suggest a way forward. Her slides are here.

Mia has a strong interest in crowdsourced projects and I found myself nodding along when she stated how important it is to show participants the impact of their contributions.

A nod to a few others

Laura Scott from Google talked about their Art Project in an extended version of Amit Sood’s TED talk, the session from the various funding bodies was very useful and everything was kept together in fine style by Nick Poole.

Thanks, then, to the organisers for a thought-provoking day and hello to all the people I met.

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