In 2008, Yaz El-Hakim, Hugh Bassett-Jones and Dominic Northcott, all staff at the University of Winchester, had a vision for “the best, most comprehensive, most intuitive and free of charge directory for anyone wanting to take part in any extreme or adrenaline sports anywhere in the country.” . Facing stiff  competition from others at the University of Winchester, Super Fun Days Out was one of only two successful businesses in the November 2008 rounds for new business start-ups, and the funding has been put to good use.  Read more.

In April 2009, I checked over the website and gave the guys some advice on how it could become more interactive, and the potential for using social media to encourage repeat visitors! In July 2009, I was asked, along with Helen Owten, to come on board as social media strategist, with a particular responsibility for Twitter (at that time standing at 11 followers), setting up a blog (which is gradually coming to life), and bookmarking through sites such as a Delicious (which is still really awaiting its turn!), whilst Helen was responsible for Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. I’m really enjoying the challenge of being more structured in my approach to a blog, and looking for ways to encourage engagement… and using that knowledge in improving my other social media strategies!

Read more:

• Super Fun Days Out website / adrenablog
• Super Fun Days Out Twitter (623 followers and rising!)
• Super Fun Days Out Delicious
• Super Fun Days Out YouTube
• Super Fun Days Out Facebook
• Hugh Bassett-Jones website (Hugh undertakes all the web development)

“The potential impact of blended learning on the learning and teaching experience of staff and students at Winchester”

Already had a number of good discussions, and have ideas, plus been picked up more on the ALK-C 2009, especially via Twitter and Elluminate, picking up tips and presentations from CrowdVine, but obviously a lot of the role is going to be prioritising as new technologies roll towards us!

I would LOVE to know (and crowd-source!) your tops tips for this, what’s worth investing time in, and seems to pay off for the students (and yourselves), and what you’d put to one side. I’ve watched the arguments rage about “is the VLE dead”… I use Twitter and blogging extensively, and so want to investigate learning applications for this, but also think Wikis, etc. have great potential! THOUGHTS?!

http://delicious.com/drbexl

http://delicious.com/sfdo

How do we do this? Everything on Digg — from news to videos to images — is submitted by our community (that would be you). Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If your submission rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see.

And it doesn’t stop there. Because Digg is all about sharing and discovery, there’s a conversation that happens around the content. We’re here to promote that conversation and provide tools for our community to discuss the topics that they’re passionate about. By looking at information through the lens of the collective community on Digg, you’ll always find something interesting and unique. We’re committed to giving every piece of content on the web an equal shot at being the next big thing.”

http://digg.com/users/drbexl

Reddit is fairly high on my list of bookmarking sites to properly get the hang of, as I only added one link to one poster site, and quadrupled my traffic on that day – deserving of further investigation!

http://www.reddit.com/user/drbexl/

StumbleUpon uses / ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages that friends and like-minded stumblers () have recommended. This helps you discover great content you probably wouldn’t find using a search engine.”

http://drbexl.stumbleupon.com/public/