Projects 2013 > "Little j" Hyper Local News > Journal
Eventually the beta version of Little J was ready and we set up in the Aberafon Shopping Centre in Port Talbot to show it to people and find out more about how people would use it.
Through the 5 hours in the shopping centre we had a varied mixture of people come up wanting to know more, some happy to just chat through the idea and others wanting to sit down and use it for real. Rachel, Mike, Ken and Andy from the Port Talbot Magnet set up their newsroom and were busy taking stories from people for the first print version of the Magnet. They helped people use Little J to submit their stories and also logged into the Local J version so they could collate the stories coming in. From the Friends of Margam Park to a rock climbing scout, and from beach festivals to Captain Beany's bean n' fork walk for charity – Little J captured all the stories of the day.
Feedback from community was incredible, with people really happy to hear that they could start getting involved with the Magnet and help to get a printed edition back into the shops. The Magnet journalist's also got to grips with their version and had plenty of great ideas to make it even more useful for them.
We're leaving the Little J site up online for a week whilst the journalists collate all the stories needed for their print edition. The plan is then to take it down whilst we make the next round of updates and then we'll launch again once they're ready. If you want to create an account you can do so now at www.littlej.org and we'll email you again when version 1.1 is ready.
We'd like to thank the Rachel, Mike, Ken, Andy from the Magnet for making it such a successful day. Also the great Martin Coote for putting together the print edition live in the middle of the shopping centre (even with screaming kids and a fashion show going on around him). And not forgetting Justin, Sara, Emma and Andy from Cardiff University who really got people involved and talking about Little J.
Posted by Paul Davies