Recently in The Big Debate Category

In the run up to The Big Debate: Are our young leaders our green saviours?, Professor Richard Green - director of the Institute for Energy Research and Policy at the University of Birmingham - discusses the challenges faced by those which aim to keep energy supplies secure and limit the damage we do to the environment

Energy has been in the news a lot recently - price rises, climate change and power cuts have all featured, along with wind farms and nuclear power.

No consumer wants high energy prices, nobody wants to damage the environment, and no one wants to turn a switch and find that there's no power, but there are few decisions we can make about energy that do not run the risk of making one of these things worse.

Aside from other measures, if generating discussion was an aim for The Big Debate then you could call it a success.

If you missed out on the event at the time then you can still watch it on this Bambuser channel. Live-blogged transcripts of the debate are also available on The Birmingham Post courtesy of Pete Ashton and on my own personal blog.

While the debate was going on, the emergent back channels for discussion were recognised, with Pete's live-blogging projected on a screen behind the panel. His chat featured some of the discussion taking place via Twitter and the relevant tweets can be seen on Summize.

So much for the live reporting of the debate. I often find the value in these things comes after the event itself when people get a chance to digest what they've heard, discuss things with others and put down their own thoughts.

And so, over this afternoon and this evening blog posts have cropped up in response to the debate.

David Harte used his Birmingham Post blog to opine that, as far as social media is concerned, useful or useless' is a more pertinent question than 'more power or more powerless'.

Nick Booth gave a round-up of several others with some of his own input on the issue of the digital divide.

Stef Lewandowski started writing a comment under Nick's post which turned into a bog post of his own. Following events in New York, he found the debate unfocussed. He referred to the notion of 'usefulness' and would welcome a discussion on the 'why' of digital media.

Jon Bounds also picked up on the issue of the digital divide and sees much more room for discussion there. He's critical of two of the panel and identifies topics that were skirted over, that of privacy in particular.

Jason Norris considered many of the topics raised, saying "perhaps the Digital Revolution has redistributed the power, but to both parties".

A couple of quick points were made by Simon Howes and Russ L. The former points out why it's ironic that BBC and BT representatives were sat side-by-side discussing on-demand services. The latter claiming that there wasn't much new said.

Adding some variety, cartoonist Alex Hughes was there and made a few sketches of the panel.

Finally, after reading what everyone else has said, I made some notes of my own on my blog. You can see that by clicking Chris Unitt.

If you've put down your thoughts about the debate somewhere then please link to them in the comments. Not got a blog to air your views on? The comments are waiting for you too.

The summary:

• The Big Debate is today, 12.30pm to 2.30pm at the ICC.


• You can still register to attend.


• The debate will be shown live here.


• The debate will be live-blogged here.


• You can comment in the chat-box here or by using the #bigdebate Twitter hashtag

The Big Debate takes place at the ICC at lunchtime (well, 12.30pm to 2.30pm) today. From what I hear the big, shiny 'places strictly limited' button has done it's work, meaning there are plenty of spare places available. If you can make it, take a sec to register and pop on down.

Although the debate is taking place in the middle of the working day there's actually more opportunity to see it and get involved than in previous years and that's down to, yup, online interactivity.

Joanna Geary has applied the kind of thinking and innovation that's got her noticed in journalism circles and, as a result the debate will be broadcast live on Bambuser (a natty little video service) and Pete Ashton will be live-blogging (making notes/commenting about the debate live) using a service called CoverItLive. You can follow this here on the Birmingham Post site.

So that's the broadcasting covered, what of the interactivity? Well, people can comment on the Bambuser site in a chat-box next to the video. Also, for those that use Twitter (essentially a groovy online text messaging service) Pete will be monitoring any messages that include '#bigdebate'.

Noteworthy Bambuser comments and #bigdebate tweets will be fed into CoverItLive which, as well as being on this website, will also be projected on a screen behind the panel.

So, bearing in mind the panel are expected to be largely technophile and this is a debate about the pros and cons of digital ('more power or more powerless?') a few cynical voices from the audience might be needed to prevent a huge back-slapping sesh. I do appreciate that it'll be digital interactivity giving voice to such cyncism, though.

At the moment the message from Birmingham's digital media early adopters seems to be that online media of all sorts can be used to help improve society. Blogs can give the disenfranchised a voice and tie together communities; the Big City Plan could be developed publicly via a wiki; free wi-fi access across the city would drive business...

These may all be valuable things that should be pursued and there's nothing wrong with racing ahead. However, I see more value in the less sexy work of bringing those lagging behind up to speed. With this in mind I was pleasantly surprised to see the content of Digital Birmingham's current 'Get Into Digital' campaign.

As Digital Birmingham's about page says:

We want to help citizens, communities and businesses in Birmingham to use digital technologies more widely and in new ways, whilst recognising differing interests and varying skill levels

It's the last part of that statement that I like.

The campaign recognises that some people (in fact, I'd go so far as to say many people) haven't got a clue about digital technology and seeks to bring those people into the fold.

A series of courses and lessons are taking places in libraries across the city on easy, non-threatening, basic topics like 'how to set up an email account' and 'how to trace your family tree' - the kind of thing people might have a personal motivation for learning about.

At the same time, within the digital bubble, conversations are starting about how the early adopters can use their skills and knowledge to help people, communities and so on. They would do well to heed this example and consider the language and level of what they're pitching - talking about blogs, memes, social media, feeds, wikis, metadata and taking pride in describing it all as geeky will inevitably alienate people and send them running in the opposite direction.

It's about getting out of the bubble, using your audience's language, seeing what people need and finding ways to achieve that. It's not about jargon or pushing the latest fascinating thing you've found.

Digital Birmingham come in for a bit of stick - birminghamfiz? No RSS feed for their news? - but here I think they're to be congratulated because it's initiatives like this that will help to address the widening digital literacy gap.

Although I'm generally a fan of new digital shenanigans I appreciate that it's not all fun and games for everyone. For example, I accept that it's possible to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available online.

At a conference on digital media I attended earlier this year, a delegate asked the panel despairingly "how do you deal with information overload?" The term 'infobesity' was used, adding a nice, quasi-medical twist.

The panel pointed out that this isn't a new problem. How many books are printed every year? How many films are released? How many TV shows are broadcast over how many channels every evening?

Germaine Greer is now posting over on the New Generation Arts blog and gives a similar answer to this question:

"Communication overload was around long before we had digital technology. We've had to pick our way through too much information for a generation."

So there's a sense that there is 'too much' information out there but it's nothing to get stressed about. That's good to know, but we still need a way to manage the unmanageable. How do we do that?

Without thinking about it consciously, we've each developed systems to navigate through high volumes of irrelevancy and dross. Our systems may use guides, reviews, recommendations, experimentation and dumb luck. These systems can apply to news, books, TV, film, music... and the internet.

For example, we trust in search engines to bring us the information we need. Friends tell us about websites or email links to things we might like. Bookmarking service like del.ici.ous can be used to save and share links to websites

Large communities gather on sites such as Digg and Reddit to sift through articles, promoting the best. Stumbleupon caters for the experimentation/dumb luck end of the internet browsing market.

Increasingly, trusted curators are doing the digging so others don't have to. Many blogs (such as the one I run, Created in Birmingham) do this job, as does Mahalo, a human-powered search engine.

It's true there's a lot out there but it's nothing to worry about, honestly.

Details of the panel for The Big Debate, taking place at the ICC on 9 June from 12.30 to 14.30, are available on the Big Debate website. What struck me is that, of the five people involved, only one comes from a small, digitally-minded company (and even then a relatively old one).

The other organisations represented are BT, Trinity-Mirror and the BBC (twice, including the Chair). All large, blue-chippers that are being compelled to develop their existing business models to incorporate the effects of the recent digital explosion.

My question is, are they best placed to lead a discussion about the direction of this brave new digital world?

I hope you will indulge me in a little experiment.

Below is a mind map. It was created for free using a site called bubbl.us and is a brainstorm of what, when tidied up a bit, may be my speech for Monday's Big Debate panel.

Is the digital age eroding our national right to queue? Chris Poolman and Keir Williams, creators of the Digital is Dangerous campaign, present their "political manifesto" explaining why the information revolution is not all it's cracked up to be.

Paul Bradshaw, lecturer in journalism and new media at Birmingham City University and author of the Online Journalism Blog, argues an online future is bright.

Digital. Hm. Zero. One. Zero. One. One. Zero... That's one way of looking at it. Here's another: Footage of aeroplanes hitting the Twin Towers. One. A series of blogs detailing survivors of the Asian tsunami and information about rescue efforts. Zero. One. A mobile phone image of the tube tunnel on July 7, 2005. One. One. A Facebook group communicating information about the Virginia Tech shootings. Zero. Zero. One. Text messages about the Chinese earthquake. One. Zero. One.

Welcome to The Big Debate blog.

Over the next ten days I hope it will spark discussion on the future of digital technology and the impact it has on our lives.

Whether it be communication, entertainment, education, politics or commerce, there seems very little in life that has not been touched by the rapid development of these new tools.