Chi-chi Ekweozor, 30, who lives in Salford, aims to raise £777,000 for seven charities, setting off on September 9, 2009.

Earlier this year, Chi-chi, who is the director of east Manchester-based Internet TV and social media consultancy, Real Fresh TV, had just returned from her grandmother’s funeral in Nigeria, and read an article in magazine about a challenge to see the new seven wonders of the world in seven days. And so the idea was born!

Money raised from the super-speed global trip will see an education foundation in Nigeria set up in her grandmother’s name, the Jessie Ekweozor Foundation. The other six charities to benefit are: Alzheimer’s Research Trust, Diabetes UK, Open Doors, British Red Cross, Young Minds and Feed The Minds.

Chi-chi said: “The idea came about after I was moved to tears watching Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire programme in April. I saw an elderly man caring for his elderly wife who suffers from Alzheimer’s and the memories of what my Gran went through before she died came flooding back. I know it’s a massive physical challenge to see all seven wonders in seven days: I will be crossing multiple time zones in that time but I’m willing to do it if it raises money and awareness for the seven charities I’ve chosen.”

So far, Chi-chi, a keen musician, has set about raising awareness of her challenge, setting up a blog at www.7wondersin7days.com and has already arranged a launch evening and charity auction.

The challenge will be launched on June 25 with a charity auction at the Living Room in Manchester.  Award-winning cellist and pioneer of contemporary music Peter Gregson will also be performing at the event. Peter won the prestigious Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland award in November 2008 and recently performed at the ClassicalFM Live concert at a sold out Royal Albert Hall.

Much of the awareness and promotion for 7 Wonders in 7 Days has been done using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, where it is easy to get the message out. The trip was inspired in part by journalist and blogger Paul Smith’s successful Twitchhiker challenge in February where he traveled from Newcastle upon Tyne to Stewart Island in New Zealand relying solely on transport donations from people on Twitter.

The seven modern wonders of the world are: Chichen Itza in Mexico, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, the Colosseum in Rome, Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu in Peru, Petra in Jordan and Taj Mahal in India.

Further information

If anyone or any companies would like to donate an auction prize and have their names associated with this feat, they should contact Chi-chi at chichi@7wondersin7days.com or call 0161 918 6739.

Anyone who wants to attend the launch event at the Living Room on Thursday, June 25 can buy a ticket for £4, all of which goes towards funding the trip. Thomas Cook Manchester are working with Chi-chi to plan the trip and estimated the journey to cost just under £7000. To buy a ticket: http://7wondersin7dayscharitytweetup.eventbrite.com/

Twitter is a social networking site that is seeing a huge surge in interest thanks to both its adoption by celebrities like Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry and the fact that it is frequently breaking news before the mainstream media  – recent examples include the Hudson River plane crash and the Mumbai bombings.  It allows users to connect with others and build a network by sending and receiving short messages called tweets.

Here’s more information on what Twitter is, or watch a video explaining Twitter in plain language.

The Manchester Twestival which is sponsored by digital communications agency Code Computer Love and is taking place at The Living Room, will bring together users of Twitter for an evening social event that will include a charity auction.  All money raised by Twestival globally will be donated to charity:water, a charity that works to bring safe and clean drinking water to those in developing countries.

Commenting on Manchester Twestival, organiser Katie Moffat said, “Personally I’m not aware of any other event that has been held simultaneously across the world in this way.  No one working on Twestival  is getting paid, everyone is fitting in the organisation of the events around their jobs and other commitments; to me, the enthusiasm and dedication to make every city Twestival a success, is a clear demonstration of the power a social network like Twitter has to mobilise a group of people into action

“In Manchester, we’ve had a fantastic response from individuals wanting to help and I’d also like to say a big thank you to the team at Code Computerlove who are sponsoring the event.  Thanks to them we can put on a great night and be sure that every penny made goes straight to charity.”

The Manchester Twestival will be held on February 12 from 6.30pm at the Living Room, Deansgate.  Tickets are available on http://www.amiando.com/twestivalmanchester.  You can get all the updates at the website http://manchester.twestival.com or via @MancTwester on Twitter.

More information

For further information please contact Katie Moffat on 07590 122203 or email katie@kmmedia.co.uk

The one-day seminar explored how creating art is changing around us, featuring insights from arts organisations and mavericks that are leading the way in developing new content using the latest technologies.

Media from the event

• Photos from this event on Flickr
• A Twitter Search of tweets tagged with #ambitiondcr

Video Interviews with the Key Speakers

Live blog archive

Please note, this blog archive is in reverse upside down wrong way round order. Please read from the bottom of the page and scroll up. Ta. :)

5.55pm

The event is closing by showing the 1 minutes videos made in 1 hour during the Let’s Go Global workshop. We’ll have them online in a few days.

5.30pm

Some comments from the closing roundtable discussion.

Listen to people ask you are broadcasting. Make the conversation two-way not one way.

Twitter is a good place to start using social networking. You can get a sense of what people are doing, and find links to other things you are interested in.

Mentioned loudmouthman’s presentation about social networks.

Get a better mobile phone that can gain access to mobile broadband and access social networking and online media tools.

Try to get ‘personalities’ in your organisations using these tools, and don’t blog as a ‘faceless’ organisation. People respond to other people, not to ‘organisations’.

Make time to get started with these tools, have a play with them, and get a bit confident using them.

5.20pm

CJ mentioned the Equity booklet New Media Deals, which she recommends arts organisations read and learn from.

5.10pm

CJ taking about ways to use social media in arts organisations, such as meet the cast videos, behind the scenes photos, exhibition slideshows, a showreel, embedded music players on your website, and so on. Again, see the presentation on Slideshare.net for full list.

5pm

CJ is talking about some online media services, such as Mippin, ShoZu, Flickr and others. See the presentation on Slideshare.net for the links.

The workshop is running a little late. Just finding out what is happening with the closing roundtable talk.

4.40pm

CJ uses two mobile phones. One just as a regular phone, and the other to update blogs, take photos and other online activities.

You can use services like Twitter, Swarmteams, Facebook, Friendfeed and Spinvox to keep your audiences updated on what you’re doing.

Practical sessions now in the workshop using Swarmteams to keep a team updated on each others activities.

4.30pm

CJ is talking about some of the benefits of using social media for arts organisations, such as sharing media across organisations, building communities, audience research, and engaging with the audience.

CJ recommends watching the commoncraft video Social Media in Plain English.

4.25pm

The presentation from the PCM Creative workshop is available at Slideshare.net.

4.20pm

Caron ‘CJ’ Lyon from PCM Creative is giving the second session of her workshop.

You can find her on most social networks as pcmcreative.

She is a from a theatre stage management background, and is now working to develop ways for arts organisations and creatives to take advantage of social media tools. She is now the ‘virtual stage manager’ at the Pilot Theatre.

4pm

The event is still going on. People are in workshops, which is why it’s quiet on this blog. Things should pick up again in about 20 minutes.

2.50pm

OK. Thanks, Christian. Lots of stuff there for people to play with and find out how they can use.

The seminar is now breaking out into two workshops where Let’s Go Global will show people how to make a 1 minute film on 1 hour, and Caron ‘CJ’ Lyon from PCM Creative is taking about mobile media. We are not live streaming the workshops.

Live video and blog will be back at around 4.40pm. See you later.

2.45pm

Lots of people using social media to create stuff and collaborate using cheap kit which enables them to communicate across vast distances.

Talking about more tools – 12seconds.tv which lets you capture 12 seconds on video about anything. Seesmic is another ‘micro-blogging’ video platform – he used it to record the aftermath of a car crash and how a few minutes after he uploaded it he had people who followed him on Twitter offer him a car to rent, because they ‘knew’ from being online.

2.40pm

Christian pointed out that many people like the way mobile phone cameras are less intrusive than ‘professional’ video cameras and allow more intimate and ‘real’ content to made. Some of his work is showing people how they can create that kind of ‘informal’ content.

Showing a video of a scientists telling a story about the £20,000 metorite that killed a dog.

2.35pm

Telling story about when he did a report in Iraq which he put it out as a podcast. This enabled many more people to see his work. One of them was the organisation RedEye who asked him to do more work. Through that he got work from the United Nations.

2.30pm

Christian stressing that arts organisations must include their audience, and there is loads of ways to do that now. Loads of live video streaming tools available.

When the Gordon Brown speech was taking place, it opened people’s eyes to how news could be got out without 30 second delays and so on.

2.25pm

Talking about Phreadz, which can be used to show all your online activity over time.

Viddler. Another video platform that has a more professional look and feel than YouTube.

Qik. Telling a story about bumping into Tony Benn at a train station who told him that journalists should move to the internet. Christian recorded that on Qik. Wouldn’t have been able to until recently.

2.15pm

WordPress. He uses it to power his website, as it allows him to engage with the people who go to his website via comments, RSS feeds, etc. It cost him very little money to set up and use.

Flickr. As a photographer it’s useful as it helps to raise his profile, he can find out what photos people like and don’t like, and why. http://www.flickr.com/people/christianpayne/

YouTube. The comments people leave about his videos can be nasty. However, most of the eyes of the world are on YouTube, so it makes sense to put your stuff on it. Told a story about a guy coming to install his fireplace who told him that his house was at the centre of a UFO hotspot, and how he filmed that and put it on YouTube. Lots of people watched it.

Have a look at TubeMogul as it can help you send video to lots of different platforms.

2pm

Christian Payne (aka Documentally) is a freelance photographer who also specialises in New Media. If you are on Twitter, add him @Documentally.

He is going to talk about some of the platforms he uses, some of the tools he uses. He wants people to look at the stuff he’s doing and think about how they can do something with the same stuff.

Our offline / online / mobile worlds are becoming one.

He has a main hub for what he does – ourmaninside.com. His website and his blog brings a lot of content and has helped to make him a name in social media. People send him stuff to talk about and review and so on. He was recently involved in some work for UK government and Reuters to use social media at a Gordon Brown. conference.

Hardware you need to do this stuff.

Mobile phone. He used the Nokia N95 and the video is amazing – he can stream live video to the internet, tell people what he’s doing via Twitter and so on. Was very useful for the Gordon Brown work with @sizemore and Illico.

Put a up a slide with the names of lots of social media services on it. If anyone says they are a social media expert they may need to think again as they’re so much stuff to get your head around.

Services he using the most include Qik, WordPress, Flickr, Twitter, etc.

The most important platform to him is Twitter as he can keep in contact with all the people following him and that he is following on Twitter, it is a way for clients to find him, give him work, meet up for coffee and live blog what’s happening as it happens.

1.50pm

Lunch is wrapping up. Very nice hot pot and veggie lasange.

Speaking next is Christian Payne.

1pm

Adrian thanking Hugh for the talk. Lunch coming up. We should be back at around 1.45pm.

12.55pm

Want to know more? Check out www.machinimafordummies.com and www.machiniplex.com.

12.50pm

Machinima is great for making movies quick and for having another creative route to do stuff. Some downers – can still cost a bit of money, you can be a little restricted in the range of animation you can use to express the character’s actions, and it is getting a bit harder to differentiate your movies from the thousands that go on the internet every day. Lots of noise out there, so think about marketing your movie.

Machinima is well known in the gaming community, which tend to be very tech savyy.

12.45pm

Hugh has just recorded some action in WoW and is now about to edit it using iMovie ‘06. He directed his friend to do things like run past the camera on their horse, roar a bit and walk off camera. Hugh has those clips and is editing them.

12.40pm

Hugh also showed another machinima called Byron, a personal project which is a film of a Bryon poem.

Hugh is now about to make a machinima live, using software called MovieStorm and the game World of Warcraft, and a friend on his in another part of the UK.

12.35pm

Hugh showed the machinima Stealth that was put together in 24 hours that was used to campaign against European legislation about file sharing, and raise awareness amongst the gaming community. The point was that something that reached thousands of people could be created very quickly at low cost.

12.30pm

Hugh showed his movie Bloodspell, a 90 minute fantasy adventure movie that he made alone on a small budget that was hugely popular and would have cost around $40m to make something similar in Hollywood.

Hugh made point that arts organisations can use machinima to enage with people who may not normally be exposed to the ‘arts’.

12.25pm

Hugh has been involved in machinima since 1997, founded machinima.com and has lots of experience in this stuff.

Showing some examples, such as Eschaton, Red vs Blue, the South Park World of Warcraft episode.

12.20pm

Machinima came out of people playing computer games and then learning how to make movies using them. Really kicked off when computer games become ‘proper’ 3d around 1996, with games like Doom. Also, games would let you record the video clips of you playing the game.

This allowed people a low cost way to make 3d movies, without needing to spend lots of money on a professional 3d software application.

Hugh is playing a film taking the mickey out of Tomb Raider, which was made using the game Half Life 2.

12.15pm

OK. Next up is Hugh Hancock who’s going to be talking about Machinima.

Adrian announcing slight change to schedule. Hugh till 1pm then after lunch it’s Christian Payne.

12 noon

Thanks, Marcus.

Coffee time. We’ll be back live streaming at around 1pm. Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Don’t forget to tweet, add photos to the Flickr page and tell other people what we’re doing – in particular arts organisations. Send them to manchesterdda.com/live. Thanks!

11.50am

Questions

How have you embedded digital content creation in your team of four in the Theatre?

You don’t have to do it all yourself. Actors can set up Facebook groups, etc. Make best use of easy to use technology – content management systems for website, easy to use photo sharing and video upload websites.

Collaborations with young people – how much do you use tools like wikis to create work?

Most young people have mobiles. Pilot use SMS to communicate with young people. Marcus gave example of school who created a YouTube video response as part of school project in response to a project they are doing. Marcus says arts organisations should relax a little about the ‘diluting’ of their corporate branding when other people make online stuff in relation to their work. The level of collaboration depends on the project – some would use blogs, some use wikis, etc.

11.45am

Marcus showed a film that they made in two days with young people as part of getintotheatre.org.

11.40am

Marcus making a point that ‘collaboration’ means different things to different age groups. To some people, it means meeting online to develop a management document, to others it means working together to do something creative.

11.35am

Question asked about different levels of engagement? Has using these tools brought more people to Pilot? Marcus stated that they Pilot started with a Facebook group in July 2007. Through using that and other social networks they have doubled the number visits to their main website in 12 months.

Marcus is showing off We Feel Fine.

11.25am

It’s important for arts organisations to take advantage of all these tools in order to develop themselves and engage with the audience.

Marcus is talking about some of their other projects, such as a wiki called The Rat Kings that allowed people to develop a story collaboratively. He showed the Pilot Theatre’s Wikipedia entry and others.

11.20am

Marcus talking about how they developed a production where the set design used MySpace pages as backdrops.

Now walking around a space in Second Life they created. Marcus is talking about how useful Second Life is to show off their productions, and do innovative things like fly around theatres to access different photo galleries, stills from productions and posters, and so on. Marcus pointed out that the cost of making the Second Life space was about £1000 in total, including the ‘rent’ of the space.

11.15am

Marcus making point that because these tools allow collaboration with people worldwide, arts organisations can have board members across the world, and communicate via video conferencing, etc.

Marcus is talking about the Online Strategy that has been developed for the Pilot Theatre, which shows how they will use social networking tools to engage with the audience, publicise productions, etc.

11.10am

Marcus is making the point that using social networks enables arts organisations to connect directly to the audience.

Also, the genie is out of the bottle in the sense that it is now easier to do things like stream live video online. The key part to understand is these online activities are still a joint, social experience for the audience.

11.05am

Marcus has made clear is he is not a techie. Telling a story about meeting the head of Pixar on a bus, who told him that technology does not lead productions, and if the technology is not there to meet their stories, they build it. Marcus has found this inspriational when developing theatre productions.

Marcus is telling attendees to go artswebtraining.com where they can find all the materials to do with his talk.

Show of hands for people who have bough online, sold online, created and uploaded digital content. About 75% of audience of 50 put their hands up.

11am

OK. Thanks Vito.

Next speaker is Marcus Romer from Pilot Theatre, a national touring theatre company resident at York Theatre Royal. They created the award winning  Lord of the Flies, Beautiful Thing, East is East, Rumble Fish , Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads, Looking for JJ, Fungus the Bogeyman and the IIFA Bollywood Awards Opening Sequence.

Marcus is going to talk aout the Pilot’s approach to using digital technology.

10.55am

Questions

Does this add anything to the creative process?

Using a social network does have an impact on the production on the film, but not a large part – its main impact was getting people to understand how a film is made, and making more people aware of the movie. It allowed another way to connect the filmmakers to the audience.

Did this influence the kind of film made?

It liberated the work. The casting process was exciting to do this way. You find things on the way you hadn’t thought of, leading to character changes, etc.

10.50am

Vito is playing the trailer for the Faintheart movie.

The locations of where the movie will be screened are being decided through the use of an online ‘heartmap’. People mark their location on a map and if over a 100 people want the movie to show where they are, that is where the movie will be screened.

10.45am

As well as people keeping video blogs, competitions were run on MySpace so that people could come and visit the filming sets and find out how movies are made.

More excerpts from video diaries are playing.

A competition was run on MySpace for bands to get their music on the soundtrack to the movie and also appear in the film. Five were shortlisted and the MySpace community voted on the winners. A band called Eastern Front from Ipswich won.

10.40am

As well as Vito keeping an online video diary of the production of the film, the actors also kept their own video diaries. This was good for the actors, as through the publicity surrounding the production of Faintheart, they were able to get other auditions and other work.

10.35am

We are aware of the problems with the sound and doing our best to fix them. May have to wait for next speaker to get fixed. Apologies.

10.25am

When the winning movie idea was picked, the casting sessions were then carried out online, with actors submitting video auditions online. There were about 250 auditions.

Some key parts of the script were put to the MySpace community for them to edit collaboratively.

10.20am

Faintheart is the world’s first ‘user generated’ movie. Users asked to upload short film less than 15 minutes to MySpace, top 12 filmmakers selected by MySpace, Vertigo Films and Film 4. The top 12 pitched to a judging panel.

10.15am

First speaker is Viti Rocco, winner of the MySpace Movie Mash-up. He’ll be talking about how his movie Faintheart was created through an online community.

10.05am

Adrian Slatcher is giving an introduction to the day and welcoming everyone. Housekeeping and all that. No coffee on the carpet, please!

This event is part of the AmbITion project – go to getambition.com to find out more.

Phil Birchenall has helped to organised the day. Thanks, Phil.

10am

Hello. We’ve just set up the gear and eveything appears to be working. Hoping it don’t go wrong as first time we’ve attempted this.

The feed from the Twitter Search appears not to be coming through, so if you want to see what people are twittering about this, please go to the Twitter Search results for #ambitiondcr.

People are filing in. Here we go.

Rainy City Stories employs the latest open-source technology to publish new writing set in the city of Manchester. It uses a Google map of the city to organise stories linked to particular places. Readers can click on a place marked by the little cloud icon to read a piece of writing associated with that spot.

The website goes live October 9 as part of the 2008 Manchester Literature Festival. To start things off, they’ve commissioned works from some of the city’s best and brightest authors including Jackie Kay, Mike Duff, Nicholas Royle and Rajeev Balasubramanyam. We will be publishing more commissioned work in 2009, and expanding our site to include audio and video readings and illustrations to accompany the words.

After the site launches, anyone will be able to submit their own short stories, poems or bits of memoir for inclusion on our literary map of the city. We’re expecting work from some of the students in Manchester’s prestigious writing schools, from the city’s talented pool of literary bloggers and from people who might not have had an outlet for their writing before.  For more information about how to send us writing, please visit the Rainy City Stories website.

A series of related writing workshops and a live literature event featuring some of the Rainy City Stories writers will be part of the 2009 Manchester Literature Festival. The project is funded by Arts Council England.

You can also follow Rainy City Stories on Twitter.