Birthdays are natures way of telling you to eat more cake.
Marvellous, but what exactly does a slice of carrot cake have to say about local government?
Actually, quite a lot. So do mixtapes as a session heard at the excellent Localgovcamp Yorkshire and Humberside revealed.
Why? Two things. First, because it’s all about messing about on a project in your own time so you can learn by your mistakes.
Second, it’s about doing something in a fun, interesting, creative way.
Why Cake? As a wheeze I built a cake blog based on a rash of pictures of cake tweeted by friends from Twitter. It taught me how to crowdsource, how to use WordPress and where a decent piece of carrot cake can be found in the charming Shropshire village of Ludlow (At the Green Cafe since you were wondering. The review is here.) Stuart Harrison (@pezholio on Twitter) then raised the bar with a beer blog.
The excellent Sarah Lay picked up the baton and created a cake map. She got to know about Googlemaps as a result.
Mixtapes? Same principle. A tweet by Sarah sparked a series of blogs, a Flickr group and a Tumblr site. Why? Because mixtapes even in a digital world spark happy memories of 
taping the top 40 and crafting a tape to say ‘thank you!’ or even ‘actually, I quite fancy you.’
There was even a mixtape built by song contributions at the barcamp built with the help of Janet Davis (@janetedavis).
So what do cakes and tapes teach? In short, go away and experiment in your own time. You can learn. You can do fun things. Then you can transfer some of those ideas to your day job.
Amongst web developers, there is a useful saying: ‘fail forward.’ If you are going to fail, make sure you learn something about it so you can take things just that bit further next time. Messing about on a scheme allows you to do just that, risk free.
Links: Nice ideas that have emerged by messing around…
- Mixtape Flickr group: Take a picture of mixtapes. There is art here.
- Mixtape Tumblr site: where mixtapes ideas are shared.
- Cake reviews: The Twitter stream of the blog of the cake map @mmmmmmcake
- Cake blog www.mmmmmmcake.wordpress.com. Nice places to eat a slice of Victoria sponge.
- Beer blog www.mmmmmmbeer.tumblr.com Look, this is art. I HAVE to drink another pint, okay?
- The United Cakedom map: Really good if you are looking for good places to eat cake in Nova Scotia or the United Kingdom. Zoom in. Click on a tea cup and search to see if there is a good place for cakeage near you…
Leave a comment