The site is still very much active across the network so please remember to post photo’s into the flickr group, upload videos and email us on our youtube account and we will stick it into our favourites.

Also invite your mates onto Ning and get chatting about any Volunteering events or happenings that are coming up. Why not even create a discussion! you’ll love it!

If you hadn’t noticed over the past week MyTurf had been unfortunately down. This was due to the hosting and money matters, yet it seems without choice hosting has been chosen for me and MyTurf is live..once again…hurrah!

On a positive note however, MyTurf, after great dismay and pushing has now been suported by the BVSC . You can check it out here : “volunteers-connect-online-with-myturf”

Also podnosh have featured us about our video saying “Very good looking site at myturf designed as a means of coordinating volunteer effort in teh city. I’ll be interested to see how/if it works”

http://www.podnosh.com/blog/2008/05/09/myturfbirminghamstudents/

Cheers

MyTurf

Right so my first blog!

One could say a daunting experience but that’s not very positive is it? So MyTurf, whats it all about? MyTurf.org.uk is the creation of 2 media and communication students at Birmingham City University, one of them being myself (Stephen Pink) and my partner in crime Adam Stewart. Every year our course runs a production event and the theme this year was volunteering. After the students initial shock (as i think everyone was expecting something “funky” and “cool”) we were introduced to some organisations like the British Legion and the Special Constabulary who told us some personal stories and what they do etc!

Anyway! SO the next thing as specialists was all groups to go off and work out what they were going to do. As mentioned there’s only 2 of us (cant think why!), me and Adam got together and had a brain storming meeting accompanied by Paul Bradshaw our lecturer. We were all agreed that we didn’t want to just create and run a website for the whole event as it would be neither creatively advantageous for either of us and be somewhat predictable. Also the site iproduce.org was created last year and was a perfect platform for other groups to use.

Thus MyTurf.org.uk was created we see it as a online volunteering portal/gateway! The idea is through other sites such as ning.com, twitter.com, youtube.com, facebook.com and xfruits.com to get people involved in vounteering using these sites through Myturf. As i am not really the most technically minded out the 2 i would try and explain all of these services one by one but I’m going to assume that you either already know what these sites are for or GO LOOK YOURSELF and join, use, interact etc!

So What does Mr Pink do? Well out the 2 I’m not the most technically advanced Adam is the whizz kid BUT where i do prosper is the power of networking and being a full on people person! We had a look at local services that Birmingham has to do with volunteering and we looked at the BVSC. So i went to go visit them to share what we wanted to do and how we can help each other. I met up with a guy called Nathan Cadogen who was very helpful and had a really good conversation, he was really energetic and forthcoming with ideas. He introduced me to the youthactionnetwork.org which is a local site for young volunteers.

Where am i now? In the process of getting MyTurf.org.uk known and used! Im learning getting people interested isnt that easy when theyre not too sure who you are and what your doing.  Im quite confident that once i finally get to see Youth Action Network they’ll be sold and eager to work with us. We cheekily have been asking all our friends on facebook to sign up to the ning site and after reading this i’d be very happy if you did too!

See ya soon!