About

I began this blog in March 2006 whilst Editor & Web Manager at NMK, a professional network for digital media practitioners operated out of the University of Westminster, as we couldn’t get a blog added to the main website. The blog was created as an adjunct to a series of events I’d founded in autumn 2005 and ran for UK start ups, agencies and other digital thinkers and doers who were excited about the possibilities opened up by the web’s revival post-dotcom crash, and which was inspired by a blog post by Tom Coates, and a comment from James Governor. There’s a list of those events, and other events and conferences I initiated and inputted to at NMK here.

Over a series of themed discussion evenings (listed above) with speakers from many interesting upcoming start ups as well as companies like Skype, The Guardian, Microsoft, the BBC and Last FM, the series hinged on the question of how the technology and creative hub that was London (and the UK more broadly) could benefit more from this changed climate. With our unique fusion of skills and ingenuity, what were the opportunities at hand, and why should Silicon Valley grab all the headlines – and VC funding – yet again?

Those events were informed by an ethos of community-mindedness and an understanding of the power of collaborative exchange that blossomed around that time. Moving to be Digital Editor & Events Manager at Chinwag late in 2006, I continued this journey for a longstanding UK digital practitioners’ community, bringing together new online resources (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc) in a brand new website along with their established digital marketing and usability email discussion lists, and founding the Chinwag Live events series. Some of my Chinwag research and events are blogged here.

Then at the end of 2008 it was onto CIMA, where as their first Community Manager I led the build and launch of the online community CIMAsphere for CIMA’s global alumnus of 195,000 members, students and the broader business and academic audience. In turn, I established its engagement policy and activities on other social media channels, twinned with embedding social media capability more broadly in the organisation, educating and empowering staff in all departments and at all levels to listen to and engage with stakeholders across the board. This resulted in staff worldwide adopting digital activities and roles: as moderators in the forums and on our external social media channels, as curators of realtime Q&A events, as professionals using Twitter to report events and exchange views, and as thought leaders in the blogs. I also co-organised a conference for CIMA on Enterprise 2.0, held at Microsoft London (videos here). My blogging here became less frequent, but I did manage a few posts.

Since 2011 I’ve been a freelance digital media consultant, advising and delivering on a number of fronts: digital strategy, digital marketing & communications (incl. website content, social, email, apps, and SEO), community & social media engagement, and digital industry event planning & management. My clients include media, start-up, educational and cultural organisations.

In addition to consulting, I’m part of the team (on a volunteer basis) for the Open Plaques initiative, a contributor-powered service which is working to crowdsource data and information about historical plaques from the 950+ organisations we’ve identified so far who put up plaques in the UK and globally. The data is made available in an open, geolocated (where possible) and shareable format for others to re-use and build upon. More on that here.

I’m also a Fellow of the RSA and in 2010 I secured seed funding support from the RSA Catalyst Fund for Open Plaques to run an event that would support the further development of our website as an open source community supporting learning and engagement with both history and our sense of place. We ran the event successfully and relaunched the site in 2011 with new contributor-focused facilities.

In 2012 I started studying part-time for an MA in Digital Heritage at the University of Leicester.

I may some day revive this blog, or start another one… If you want to contact me, drop a note to dmolloyinbox (at) googlemail (dot) com

Obligatory disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and not those of any employer or organisation.