Boilerhouse welcomes Wendy Silcock as Associate Director, Corporate & Public Affairs. Wendy will take charge of the Boilerhouse corporate affairs client portfolio and oversee the development of a package of corporate communications services and channels that our recent acquisition of The Information Daily (eGovMonitor) now allows Boilerhouse Communications to offer clients.
For eleven years, from 1997 to 2008, Wendy was Director, Media Relations for BP plc. She is a lifelong Chelsea FC supporter and despite having an admirably down to earth, no nonsense approach to corporate and public affairs seems to be "looking forward" to Euro 2012!
Boilerhouse delivered a live webcast from the Park Plaza County Hall Hotel in central London as part of The Information Daily Financial Transaction Tax programme. The webcast lasted just over 90 minutes (11:30-13:00) Fifteen Boilerhouse staff were involved during the WebCast. A crew of three were handling web matters, moderating social media and pushing direct email promotion of the event from our Birmingham studio while the Boilerhouse WebTV crew, three directors and six staff were in London making it happen. Boilerhouse director Shamit Ghosh chaired the round-table which included Kay Swinburne a former investment banker and currently Conservative MEP for Wales (now serving on the European Parliament Economics and Monetary Affairs Committee); Andrew Tyrie MP, Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee; Lord Liddle, Chairman, Policy Network and Labour’s front bench spokesperson on Europe in the House of Lords and a panel of City experts which included Iain Anderson Director and Chief Corporate Counsel at Cicero, the financial sector communications consultancy and John Chown a principal in tax advisers Chown Dewhurst LLP.
Boilerhouse and The Information Daily have been jointly responsible for all aspects of the programme and events series. Boilerhouse services include event planning, strategy and logistics; branding and graphic design; recruiting speakers; design, develop, build and host the microsite ; commissioning and production of original content for the site; pre-event video content including interviews with MEPs filmed in Bruxelles; aggregation of existing content for the Tobin Tax site; promotion of the event and the six month programme; direct email campaign; live social media during the event, three month social media campaign before during and after the event; designing and publishing web ads ; webcasting; production of the post webcast video and the 9 minute summary version; video interviews with stakeholders and speakers; on-going commissioning and creation of content for the website.
We are a one stop shop for this sort of thing said Vicky Sargent Boilerhouse customer services director. Providing all the services on an integrated platform and guaranteeing access to the 17,500 European policy makers who take the Information Daily News Alerts means that we offer a uniquely powerful corporate communications package.
Eva Quigley © Boilerhouse Communications 2012
The Boilerhouse WebTV team headed up by lead reporter and anchorwoman Eva Quigley (left) is off to Bruxelles to record a raft of interviews with MEPs talking about the proposed financial transaction tax (Tobin Tax). The series of six, seven-minute, webTV features has been commissioned by InformationDaily.TV who will be showing the series on their Tobin Tax website during April and May. The European Union audio visual unit are facilitating the two day filming. "They have been fantastically helpful" says Boilerhouse WebTV Director of Photography David Stanley.
Boilerhouse Communications has launched a microsite to host the international debate on the Tobin tax. The site is part of a wider communications initiative lasting six months developed and hosted by Boilerhouse on behalf of the Centre For Policy Studies which will include a webcast roundtable event later in April. Boilerhouse is providing the communications strategy, branding, design, media relations, promotions, sponsorship activity, social media support, Web TV, site build and hosting for the initiative. The site will be live for a minimum of six months hosting live discussion, editorial and social media platforms and an archive of related material.
Birmingham based startup, Settle, are revolutionising payments and taking on Paypal and other, US based startups, such as Square.
Birmingham will be the first City in the world to trial a new free app that allows people to send payments via a mobile phone.
Settle is the creation of technology entrepreneurs Will Grant and Steffan Aquarone. It allows people to people to load money onto their phones and send payments to anyone for free. Merchants using the system to receive payments in shops (or taxis) don't get any fees either and get charged just 2% if they want to transfer their Settle balance out to their everyday bank account.
“At the moment, the world of online payments is clumsy and tiresome. And although things are starting to happen in mobile payments, most of it just sounds like a 'credit card on your phone’,” says Steffan. “We think the time is right for something completely different, something truly online and mobile that's a pleasure to use and which costs nothing to send and receive payments.”
Interestingly, mobile money systems are already widely used in developing countries in Africa and Asia, where access to traditional banking services is severely limited. But Steffan thinks there is big demand for mobile payments systems across the wealth spectrum.
“Early adopter smartphone users in the UK like the idea of being able to pay for things with their phones rather than cash or cards. But in some parts of the world – and the UK – people on lower incomes are losing out to poor and over-priced access to banking and finance,” he commented.
Will explained further: “Our intention is to encourage people to use Settle instead of cash. But the big vision is one day to link up with mobile payments systems in other countries to make it easier to send money around the world without incurring fees – maybe even liberate micro-credit markets to allow UK users with plenty of balance in their Settle accounts to invest in developing-world businesses.”
Settle has already successfully passed operational and security testing and will be made available to the public for the first time across Birmingham at the end of April (30th).
Obviously, Settle has competitors in the mobile payments space. Near Field Communications technology is taking off in a massive way, especially with the debut of Google Wallet and the possibility of Apple developing its own NFC-equipped iPhones. For now, Settle is at the leading edge of mobile payments, and there's no phone waving here.
Boilerhouse Web TV Anchor Woman. © Boilerhouse Media 2012
Boilerhouse Media has launched a Web TV production arm - Boilerhouse Web TV - producing web TV features for our clients. The service includes every aspect of web TV programme production from concepts and scripting through production and publishing to audience building and social media. This service, when added to the Boilerhouse event webcasting service, completes the full array of moving image client services provided, in-house, by Boilerhouse Media.
Two different Boilerhouse clients will launch their Web TV service with Boilerhouse Web TV programmes in early April. Both programmes will be hosted by Boilerhouse Web TV resident anchor woman (picture left). Watch this space.
Welcome to Ross Hayes who joins Boilerhouse Media as a Social Media Wizard. Ross will split his time between running social media programmes for The Information Daily and developing and running social media programmes for Boilerhouse clients. Before joining Boilerhouse Ross had established his own social media marketing agency and it was his entrepreneurial drive as much as his skills with social media that made us want to talk to him. Ross was born in Solihull, studied Sound and Multimedia Technology at Birmingham City University (he still has to hand in his dissertation on Future Trends in Social Media) and plays a number of musical instruments and basketball.
Having a dedicated Social Media specialist as part of the Boilerhouse integrated communications offering means that we can offer clients a complete, dedicated, social media service said Vicky Sargent Boilerhouse client services director. Over the next couple of months Ross will be building a full team to support this part of our offering.
David Stanley Head of Video © Boilerhouse Media 2012
Welcome David Stanley who has joined the Boilerhouse Film Unit as Head of Video. David was born and brought up in Birmingham and studied Film and Drama at University of Wales, Bangor. David has been working with us a freelancer for more than 6 months completing web video projects for the Institute of Biomedical Science, Centre for Policy Studies and a whole raft of news and opinion interviews for www.theInformationDaily.com David will be our chief editor as well as sharing cameraman duties. His arrival completes the Boilerhouse web video offering. We are, once again, able to offer every stage of web video production in-house. The Boilerhouse Film Unit offers consultancy, training, programme development and concepts as well as all stages of production from scripting and filming to uploading the finished video. As web video becomes more and more an essential part of the communications mix, having a single supplier to make both videos and the websites that deliver the videos to the client's stakeholders makes for quicker, more efficient, more cost effective communications solutions for Boilerhouse Media clients
eGov Monitor Round Tables
Boilerhouse Media will partner The Information Daily (formerly eGov Monitor) and the Transition Institute in presenting a series of three, webcast, roundtables during Summer and Autumn 2012. These events will explore key issues and challenges around the commissioning of services and establishing new models of delivery that incorporate social value by the public sector. Register for NewsLetter
Boilerhouse will provide the branding; design, build and host a dedicated website for the series; promote the events through social media, the web and other digital comms; provide the webcasting at each of the three events and capture & disseminate the event content through web-video, audio and print channels.
The Transition Institute is an independent centre for research and collaboration, founded by NESTA and Social Enterprise London, designed to support people and organisations forming new models of public service delivery that maximise social value and innovation. This includes the creation of social enterprises and community interest companies, and the integration of social value within public service delivery through more traditional means.
The architecture of public services in the UK is in transition. This presents an unrivalled opportunity to transform public services for the better. The Transition Institute supports a network of organisations and individuals at the cutting edge of forming new and exceptional public services that deliver real social value.
The Information Daily (formerly eGov Monitor) for senior policy and decision makers from the public as well as the private sector and other key influencers - offers a daily online package of essential reading to senior policy and decision makers; a daily news alert service designed to provide senior managers with insight and analysis of the key issues of the day.
Award winning author Jim Crace © Andrew Bainbridge
From time to time Boilerhouse Media invites contemporary thinkers to share their ideas with an invited audience (sustained with food and drink) at a venue of note. Past events in the Boilerhouse Voices series have seen triple BAFTA winning, BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson talking at the Hook Norton Brewery on whether war in Iraq and Afghanistan had made the world "A Safer Place" and twice Oscar nominated film director Mike Figgis (TimeCode, Leaving Las Vegas) talking to an audience at the School of Jewellery in Birmingham unpicking the idea of "Morality in Hollywood"
We are delighted to announce that The Information Daily (formerly eGov Monitor) will sponsor the multi-award winning writer Jim Crace as the next speaker at Boilerhouse Voices. Jim Crace has twice won the Whitbread Award and been shortlisted once for the Whitbread and the Booker prizes. He was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and the David Highham Prize for Fiction. In the USA he has been awarded National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters E.M Forster Award. Jim Crace will be speaking to our guests in the Atrium at The Studio in central Birmingham on 26th April 2012 The title of his address will be "Can Things Only Get Worse"
