A couple of years ago I bought the domain www.bimedia.org in order to have a non-BCN email address from which to send press releases about events like BiFest and the launch of West Yorkshire Bi Group. It seemed like a good idea to have a news source email address to differentiate things from the magazine and so forth, though I wasn't entirely sure what I would do with it after advertising the couple of things immediately before me at the time.
Two years on and I've just decided to renew the domain name. It's a blooming good URL - google bimedia and naturally it gets highly ranked. But also the project of a bi news source is starting to come good. The URL now takes you to a bi news Wordpress site, but that was still a bit too much of an isolated addition to the bi web.
I've been trying for some time to work out how that news feed could fairly-seamlessly and easily be integrated into people's web pages. That way instead of being a news site off on its own, BiMedia could keep lots of bi web pages looking fresh and up-to-date with the latest news about events and more. But the php coding was just way beyond my lapsed-programmer skills.
All that has now changed though - so here's to a three-year experiment in hosting a bi news site and encouraging people involved in the UK bi community to take up content editor accounts to get as much news from the bi movement on there as quickly as we can - and syndicated onto bi web pages automatically through the magic of RSS. Manchester Bis and BCN have already got the feed; I hope other bi sites will pick it up soon too.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Monday, 24 September 2007
Bi Day
Happy Celebrate Bisexuality Day, dear reader. Last year I was running round frantically making a Manchester BiFest happen to mark the occasion. This year I'm not doing anything - just not enough hours in the month - but the Scottish lot have a special event on with Bi Flag coloured cocktails which I definitely want the recipe for to use in future!
One of the things I'd tried doing a lot in the past was getting the various Bi Day events around the globe to link up, at the simple level of having a shared poster or something that we could each print off in our own countries with messages of solidarity from other bis around the world and what they were going to be up to by way of marking the date. "Greetings from Manchester where we will be holding a day of workshops for bi, bicurious and bifriendly folks in the local LGBT community centre" and such. Sadly, though I floated it the last few years on international lists, it seems to be one of those "just me then" things.
Maybe I'll get all fired up again next year. Or more likely 2009.
One of the things I'd tried doing a lot in the past was getting the various Bi Day events around the globe to link up, at the simple level of having a shared poster or something that we could each print off in our own countries with messages of solidarity from other bis around the world and what they were going to be up to by way of marking the date. "Greetings from Manchester where we will be holding a day of workshops for bi, bicurious and bifriendly folks in the local LGBT community centre" and such. Sadly, though I floated it the last few years on international lists, it seems to be one of those "just me then" things.
Maybe I'll get all fired up again next year. Or more likely 2009.
Friday, 21 September 2007
Student Outreach, again
Tonight was the annual "end of freshers week" LGBT society bash at the local university. This one was better organised than the previous couple I'd been to, though once again the PA system was bust.
The bi stall signed up a dozen or so prospective new recruits. The difficulty with student recruitment is twofold: first we're not a student group so don't meet in a nice familiar place on campus; second most bi stuff in the city is on Tuesdays, and so are the student LGBT meetings. We tried tackling that problem a few years ago, moving the night BiPhoria met on - from Thursdays to Tuesdays. Within a year the uni groups which had been meeting on Thursdays at the time moved to also being on a Tuesday.
Our other problem with recruits at the student event is that we wind up running a community group stall in the midst of a bunch of nightclubs offering free membership to new students; you can never be entirely sure whether someone is giving you their email address because they want to tackle bisexual invisibility or because they think they'll get a free keyring and allowed in to an imaginary club cheap on a Saturday night.
The bi stall signed up a dozen or so prospective new recruits. The difficulty with student recruitment is twofold: first we're not a student group so don't meet in a nice familiar place on campus; second most bi stuff in the city is on Tuesdays, and so are the student LGBT meetings. We tried tackling that problem a few years ago, moving the night BiPhoria met on - from Thursdays to Tuesdays. Within a year the uni groups which had been meeting on Thursdays at the time moved to also being on a Tuesday.
Our other problem with recruits at the student event is that we wind up running a community group stall in the midst of a bunch of nightclubs offering free membership to new students; you can never be entirely sure whether someone is giving you their email address because they want to tackle bisexual invisibility or because they think they'll get a free keyring and allowed in to an imaginary club cheap on a Saturday night.
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Pride
Well, that was Manchester Pride, and this year we were bi-rates with many a shivered timber and wanton rolling of our arrs. There was a decent rate of traffic to the bi stall in the exhibition area too, though it's often a case there of giving people basic bi info at Pride and never seeing them again. Last year we gave out reams of paper and I don't think the local bi group saw a single new member out of it; but then again, a bit of paper telling you that it's ok and you're not the only one is all some people need.
Last year we were the BRA which suited those who wanted a strong image who were nervous about being out, while this year's Bi-rates were a bit more glam... I think we could have a lot of fun by playing on the "Pride is no longer political" and "Bisexuals are apolitical" themes. Who's for a year of waving placards on a Pride march with slogans like "bisexuals demand cake"?
Last year we were the BRA which suited those who wanted a strong image who were nervous about being out, while this year's Bi-rates were a bit more glam... I think we could have a lot of fun by playing on the "Pride is no longer political" and "Bisexuals are apolitical" themes. Who's for a year of waving placards on a Pride march with slogans like "bisexuals demand cake"?
Tuesday, 10 July 2007
Sunday, 8 July 2007
Bit of a wash-out
The 2007 Student Pride event wasn't all it might have been; one more cynical wag than I suggested there were as many people running stalls in the exhibition area as there were students attending the event, and certainly as stall holders we were press-ganged into going to the panel debates and presentations in order to pad out some quite empty rooms.
Perhaps it's part of the general student politics problem - however good a group, campaign or society is, three years on the competent original team have graduated and moved on. For those of us outside student politics this is a source of great frustration but also a great lesson in that when student groups screw things up, screw us over, or indeed do really good things - three years later we have to remember that this is a different bunch of people now when thinking about working or not working with them. You create a bad reputation for your group and it will live on after you.
Perhaps it's part of the general student politics problem - however good a group, campaign or society is, three years on the competent original team have graduated and moved on. For those of us outside student politics this is a source of great frustration but also a great lesson in that when student groups screw things up, screw us over, or indeed do really good things - three years later we have to remember that this is a different bunch of people now when thinking about working or not working with them. You create a bad reputation for your group and it will live on after you.
Friday, 15 June 2007
Inky Paws
Tomorrow is the Student Pride event in Manchester. I've been busy making inky things ready for it.
First, some flyers in a somewhat Kaffequeeria / zinester alternative scene style, advertising both BiFest Manchester, BiFest Sheffield, and BiCon. They are essentially a re-make of the 2004 BiCon "Choose Both" cards on the other side. This may be controversial, as at an NUS LGBT event a few years ago the design got heckled strongly by one participant because of the line "choose to steal lesbian energy and give it to men". This was declared to be horribly offensive (whereas all the other stereotypes and weird crap spoken about bisexuals included in the artwork was fine, then?) and meant that people would be put off going to the event. Perhaps for the complainant this was true, but nonetheless it proved to be the best attended BiCon outstripping even the 2000 International BiCon, and unlike any other bi event propaganda, she remembered it two years later. Which, in marketing terms, is I think a fair definition of success.
Eager print-monkey work also means tomorrow I get to unveil the first batch of the Lobby Stonewall To Be More Bi-Inclusive "tackling ........ invisibility" postcards.
Yes, rather than just bitch about it in this blog and in the pages of BCN and the Delga newsletter, the time has come to Do Something. So a clever (if I say so myself) postcard design has been quickly knocked up, and with the added twist that lobbying by postcard is exactly how Stonewall tell us lobbying for change is best done. It mayn't achieve anything, or then again it might just get a goodly few postcards mailed in and give Britain's biggest LGb lobbying and equality organisation a bit of a shot across the bows.
Here goes...
First, some flyers in a somewhat Kaffequeeria / zinester alternative scene style, advertising both BiFest Manchester, BiFest Sheffield, and BiCon. They are essentially a re-make of the 2004 BiCon "Choose Both" cards on the other side. This may be controversial, as at an NUS LGBT event a few years ago the design got heckled strongly by one participant because of the line "choose to steal lesbian energy and give it to men". This was declared to be horribly offensive (whereas all the other stereotypes and weird crap spoken about bisexuals included in the artwork was fine, then?) and meant that people would be put off going to the event. Perhaps for the complainant this was true, but nonetheless it proved to be the best attended BiCon outstripping even the 2000 International BiCon, and unlike any other bi event propaganda, she remembered it two years later. Which, in marketing terms, is I think a fair definition of success.
Eager print-monkey work also means tomorrow I get to unveil the first batch of the Lobby Stonewall To Be More Bi-Inclusive "tackling ........ invisibility" postcards.
Yes, rather than just bitch about it in this blog and in the pages of BCN and the Delga newsletter, the time has come to Do Something. So a clever (if I say so myself) postcard design has been quickly knocked up, and with the added twist that lobbying by postcard is exactly how Stonewall tell us lobbying for change is best done. It mayn't achieve anything, or then again it might just get a goodly few postcards mailed in and give Britain's biggest LGb lobbying and equality organisation a bit of a shot across the bows.
Here goes...
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Making a journal of record...
The amazing thing about BCN is how much bloody stuff is in it.
I've caught a few moaning minnies in the past complaining that it's only 12 pages long most issues. But we notch up the best part of 1,000 words a page, perhap 8-9,000 an issue. The g3's and Diva's of this world would spread that out over many more pages, and fill a lot of the difference with advertising (cynics would say this then leaves them in hock to their advertisers so they can't always say what needs to be said about the gay scene).
I've caught a few moaning minnies in the past complaining that it's only 12 pages long most issues. But we notch up the best part of 1,000 words a page, perhap 8-9,000 an issue. The g3's and Diva's of this world would spread that out over many more pages, and fill a lot of the difference with advertising (cynics would say this then leaves them in hock to their advertisers so they can't always say what needs to be said about the gay scene).
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