Development Directorate Website Communications Officer - Birmingham City Council
November 2003 - August 2008
Birmingham, United Kingdom
I was employed within the Communications Group of Birmingham City Council’s Development Management Service, with primary responsibility for the content on http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/transport for the Implementation of Electronic Government project of the Highways and Transportation Strategy service, also with some responsibility for content from the Planning and Regeneration service. This all-round role involved meeting with managers in the various teams to persuade them of the importance of a good web presence (both for the city and for the public at large), creating, receiving, and editing content turning technical service area text into engaging web copy, and producing graphics and photographs.
Sometimes I originated content myself, such as during the statutory public enquiry for a major road project, when I acted in the capacity of a journalist attending the enquiry and reporting back on the site a summary of the day's proceedings as part of the communications and engagement campaign for the project.
It was also during this period when I started creating experimental content, specifically creating versions of key pages using the Widgit Software symbol-supported language system; this work was well received by both members of the client community and in the precursor to the annual SocITM Better Connected report for that year.