Saving Bletchley Park
Page 14
My mother was a Bletchley Park girl during the War. Good luck with all you are doing. Keep that history alive!
Charles Nove, 4 February 2009, 23:56
Given that last year, we are trying to raise public awareness of WW1 & WW2 and through different displays and exhibitions with the ‘speak to and learn from the veterans’ I think that it is an important part of our history that has got to be kept. Also, it may make the gov’t re-think where our money goes and actually put it into something useful for a change.
BabsnRay, 4 February 2009, 17:15
Flabbergasted is right, I can’t believe a site like BP isn’t already protected. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I’ve signed of course and will be passing the details on.
Sheryl La Bouchardiere, 4 February 2009, 15:07
Just saw the piece in the online Telegraph, and immediately signed up. Here in Boston MA, the Museum of Science has a small display dedicated to BP . . . it’s of such international importance. Good luck!
Richard, 16 February 2009, 22:12
Is there any way for those of us in America to help? I could send money, but is there a more tangible way to help? I noticed the petition is only available to British Citizens . . . As a former student of World War II, and as a current employee of a technology company – I’ve long known of Bletchley Park. In fact, in my last working visit to London, I specifically took an afternoon to visit Bletchley – even bought a souviner mug with “enigma” on it!
Let us know . . .
Yours,
A.J. Murray, FSA Scot
A.J. Murray, 16 February 2009, 19:57
I absolutely and entirely agree with you Sue, but you are dealing with a government who lack integrity and have only a superficial interest in anything ‘British’. We are witnessing the destruction of our national heritage and culture, we’re on a downhill spin and I doubt that nay amount of protests and petitions by genuine, caring British people will make nay difference.
David Mills, 16 February 2009, 19:08
The Fry effect
As time went on, I was getting more comfortable with Twitter and experimenting with various ideas about how to get people excited about Bletchley Park. I developed a routine: I would find influential people through Twitter, chat to them about Bletchley Park and how fab it was, encourage them to visit, and then put them in touch with Kelsey Griffin at Bletchley, who would organise the visit.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@Dave_Gorman are you watching Enigma on BBC1? Are you interested in helping to save Bletchley Park? Be great to have you on board.
10:49 PM – 8 Feb 09
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@Schofe ru watching Enigma on BBC1? Bletchley Park needs ur help. Www.savingbletchleypark.org 4 details. Not a joke but may take ur mind off
11:47 PM – 8 Feb 09
I can see from my tweets at the time that I was tweeting lots of people, trying to get them interested in the campaign. As more and more people were starting to use Twitter, I was trying to catch them before they had too many people following and tweeting at them and my voice got lost in the “crowd”.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@mrskutcher Hi! Did you know that the world’s 1st programmable computer was built at Bletchley Park: www.savingbletchleypark.org
12:48 AM – 6 Feb 09
Meanwhile, the “Fry effect” had meant that traffic to my Saving Bletchley Park blog had increased dramatically.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
Wednesday was a fab day 4 saving #bpark >1k sigs on petition, 8k hits on my blog, lots of offers help + no.1 RT on Twitter! Thx all!
9:55 AM – 6 Feb 09
Stephen Fry’s tweets and support meant that the number of signatures for the “Save Bletchley Park” 10 Downing Street petition had gone up by over 1,400; it was now in 5th place. I was really hoping that it would come 1st and get enough signatures to warrant a response from the government.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
1.4k sigs on #bpark petition since last Tuesday, now in 5th place, well done everyone :) Can we get 2 4th place? 2k more needed!
11:52 PM – 7 Feb 09
Encouraged by our social media trip to Bletchley in January and now the amazing response to Stephen Fry’s tweets, people at Bletchley Park were starting to understand that social media really was a way of bringing in and engaging with a whole new audience. Simon, Kelsey and I worked well together, and social media was proving useful for all of us. We were in touch several times a day to discuss where we were with various issues. Whenever I was given a tip off from either of them about some particular aspect of the campaign needing attention, I would rally the troops online.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
267/367 voted in support of MK council contribution to @bletchleypark http://tinyurl.com/dyz3hx (via @kirtle) #bpark
4:55 PM – 12 Feb 09
Kelsey and I also set up a Facebook group and encouraged people to start populating it.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
#bpark facebook group now up and running: http://bit.ly/2V57 do join and tell ur friends, thx :)
12:32 AM – 8 Feb 09
Kelsey Griffin
8 February 2009 at 01:28
Dr Sue Black, founder of BCSWomen, is truly one of the most incredibly ardent supporters the Trust has ever had. I cannot thank her enough for her ongoing support and the attention she has generated. K x
The Flickr group that Christian Payne had set up was proving popular, too. It was great that everyone taking photos of Bletchley Park could hashtag them and make them available to others wanting to see what Bletchley Park was like, and also to showcase all the amazing exhibits on display there.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
Remember to upload ur #bpark pics to the Flickr group http://bit.ly/Cipi and if uv never been, have a look and c what ur missing!
1:28 AM – 8 Feb 09
I set up a LinkedIn group called Saving Bletchley Park. It seemed like another good avenue for finding people and giving them the opportunity to interact with the campaign online. With LinkedIn being a more professional networking site, I thought we might be able to get through to people in the tech industry and maybe even find some tech companies who would be able to support Bletchley Park either by direct financial sponsorship or by holding conferences or events there.
Meanwhile, I was excited to be attending my first “Twestival” – Twitter Festival. In just a couple of months, Twitter had changed my life. I had met lots of really interesting people online, and I was excited to be going to Twestival; it was an opportunity to finally meet some of them “In Real Life” (IRL) for the first time. The first Twestival of 2009 was held in Shoreditch. It was freezing cold and snowing, but I was so excited about attending that I hardly felt it. I joined the end of a long queue waiting in the snow.
After I had been standing there for a few minutes, I spotted Rory Cellan-Jones walking past me and the rest of the queue to the front. He got a few good-natured boos and jeers from the crowd.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
FURY as Rory Cellan-Jones JUMPS the queue at LDNtwestival. For shame! (via @DailyWail)
7:41 PM – 12 Feb 09
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@lindiop thx. Yes I can only just use my thumb to send tweets! Only about 50 people ahead of me now.
7:42 PM – 12 Feb 09
While I was in the queue I was, of course, constantly checking Twitter – luckily I got to the front of the queue before my fingers became frostbitten! I was given a label and a black felt tip pen and asked to write my Twitter ID on it and stick it on myself. I did so, and then walked into a large room full of people chatting to each other. I got myself a (free) beer and looked around. How on earth was I going to find the
people that I knew online?
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@GianninaRossini hey! Great to meet u! :)
8:37 PM – 12 Feb 09
I needn’t have worried. Giannina Rossini (@GianninaRossini) saw me almost immediately and came over to say hello – we were following each other on Twitter and she recognised my Twitter ID. We had a great chat about tech education and then joined in another discussion with @digitalmaverick and @eyebeams, two other tech educationalists. What a great start. I’d arrived having met hardly anyone there in person, and within five minutes I’d already had an interesting discussion with three people who were as passionate as I was about tech education in the UK. After a while, I bumped into Jemima Gibbons (@Jemimag), who I’d actually met at a women in tech talk at Google’s Victoria offices a couple of years previously. Jemima introduced me to her friends @anniemole and@utku and another interesting discussion ensued. I had another (free) beer and thought to myself: This is wonderful. All of these people, brought together by Twitter, chatting and sharing ideas . . . I was having a great time. Twitter, I realised, was becoming my lifeblood – my main source of information, humour and friendship, as well as my primary campaign weapon.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@DavidLammyMP Hi David, any chance that u cud pop in @bletchleypark on the way? I’m sure they’d luv 2cu :) savingbletchleypark.org #bpark
2:09 PM – 26 Feb 09
Just the two of me
I think it was Mike Sizemore who first introduced me to Tuttle, a social media meetup that took place in London every Friday morning on The Mall, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). It was a wonderful place to go to meet up with the Twitterati of London. I started going every week, if possible, so that I could meet new people involved in tech, startups and social media. It gave me lots of ideas for courses and events in my department at the University of Westminster – I always wanted to be ahead of the curve. It was also a source of inspiration for the Save Bletchley Park campaign.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@tom_watson hey Tom, ru going to b @bletchleypark tomorrow for the first @StationX? Coolest place on the planet to b tomorrow #bpark
10:45 AM – 15 Feb 09
Christian Payne had the great idea of setting up a similar regular meetup at Bletchley Park to give people from the local community who were interested in social media somewhere to meet and chat. Not only would they benefit from meeting, but Bletchley, being the host, would benefit from the attention it would get from people who were tech and social media-savvy – the local influencers. It was a genius idea.
The first “Station X” was held on 16th February 2009. About 30 people turned up, all of whom were interested in social media and Bletchley Park and wanted to see the place for themselves. Kelsey Griffin, Clare Unwin (@bparkevents) and Lin Jones (@Linjones) from the Bletchley Park and The National Museum of Computing came along to chat to people. There were also several members of staff from The Open University, which is just down the road, as well as people like Lee Martin (@HighKeyLee) and Benjamin Read (@Bookpirate) – people from very diverse backgrounds, but all with an interest in social media, geekery and Bletchley Park.
Everyone chatted for a while in Hut 4, the Bletchley Park canteen/café, and then we all had a tour of the Park which included the Colossus rebuild and The National Museum of Computing. It was great to see everyone so animated and excited about its history, artefacts and ambience. It really reinforced my feeling that to get people to truly understand what a wonderful place Bletchley Park is, you need to get them there to see it for themselves.
Station X itself was actually a small room at the top of the Mansion House which was being used by the local Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society. It’s a really tiny room with just a couple of chairs and radio equipment and was set up by MI6 in 1939 as a secret UK Foreign Office covert radio station run by Charles Emery. Christian made a short video about it, called “Inside Station X”, and posted it on Vimeo.
The first Station X social media café was a really positive experience. Christian had taken the great idea of Tuttle, which brought together early social media adopters, and set it up in a location that everyone would feel a strong connection to because of its important place in geek history. It was, as Mike had said earlier, “the geek Mecca”. Everyone left buzzing with excitement about what they had seen and heard.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
Wow! I went over 1000 followers today . . . thanku all :) If ur interested in savingbletchleypark.org do follow
@bletchleypark 2 #bpark
8:10 PM – 16 Feb 09
I carried on promoting Bletchley Park on Twitter and pointing people towards my blog and the Bletchley Park website so that they could read all about the history, the museum and the campaign. Through Tuttle, I was starting to meet lots of interesting people, such as Bill Thompson from the BBC Archives. I’d hoped he would be interested in Bletchley Park and Station X, and I was delighted to find that in fact he was; he has been a massive supporter. I also tweeted Bryan Glick, who was editor of Computer Weekly, asking him if he would run a feature on Bletchley Park.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@bryanglick fancy having a feature on Bletchley Park #bpark? See savingbletchleypark.org for details of campaign
4:36PM – 19 Feb 09
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@billt in case u haven’t seen it @StationX has just started at #bpark social media cafe
3:31 PM – 19 Feb 09
Other influential people that I tried to recruit to the campaign at that time included Alastair Campbell, former Labour government spin doctor; Gyles Brandreth, comedian; Maggie Philbin, TV technology reporter and geek icon; and Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@campbellclaret Hi Alastair, can u help save Bletchley Park? Www.savingbletchleypark.org any ideas or advice gratefully received #bpark
11:46 PM – 20 Feb 09
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@gylesONESHOW hi Gyles. Do u have any ideas for www.savingbletchleypark.org ? Have u visited there? #bpark
11:58 PM – 20 Feb 09
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@maggiephilbin great 2 hear that ur interested in www.savingbletchleypark.org was thinking about getting in touch with u about it :) #bpark
1:48 PM – 21 Feb 09
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
@Padmasree Hi there. Would Cisco be interested in helping to Save Bletchley Park? See www.savingbletchleypark.org and #bpark
7:41 PM – 21 Feb 09
Not all of my attempts to contact key influencers this way met with success, but Maggie Philbin responded to my tweet saying that she was interested, and we arranged to meet at Tuttle the following week. By the time we met in person, we had chatted quite a bit on Twitter, so I think we both felt that we knew each other a bit. The following Friday, I spotted Maggie soon after I walked into the ICA. I went over and started talking to her about Bletchley Park. She seemed a bit less friendly in person than she did online, which was unexpected. We discussed the possibility of her being part of a group of people I wanted to get up to Bletchley for a visit on the Enigma Reunion Day, with the aim of recording interviews with some of the veterans that had worked there. Maggie seemed very distracted, and when our conversation ended I went to get a drink, feeling surprised and a little disappointed. After about five minutes, though, Maggie came over and told me why she’d been behaving so oddly. It turns out that ten minutes before our conversation, she had spoken to someone else who had looked like me; when Maggie had asked if she was me, she had said yes. So before I had arrived, Maggie had already had a conversation with someone pretending to be @Dr_Black. We still talk about it now when we meet up – it was very strange! (And a good reminder that as positive a force as T
witter is, misunderstandings can happen.)
Things were improving at Bletchley. Visitor numbers were rising and Kelsey was sure that was due at least partly to Twitter.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
RT @bletchleypark: Fab day today! Around 500 visitors! I am certain that this is down to Twitter! Please keep spreading the word! #BPark
21 Feb 09
I was continuing to find great uses for Twitter in my life as well as for the campaign. One revelatory day was a grey Sunday in February 2009. Paul, Leah and I had gone to Brighton and were on the beach, feeling a bit peckish. We decided that we wanted fish and chips for dinner, but there were so many fish and chip shops in Brighton. It was hard to know which to choose, but after a few indecisive minutes I thought, Hang on! I can ask people on Twitter, I’m sure someone will have a recommendation . . .
I tweeted, asking if anyone knew where the best fish and chip shop was in Brighton, and waited to see if I would get a response . . .
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
Anyone know where best sit down fish and chip place is near Brighton pier? We r getting hungry :)
5:37 PM – 22 Feb 09
Within just a few minutes I had several responses, a couple of them mentioning the same chip shop which, as it turned out was just a couple of hundred metres away. Result! We had a fabulous meal there. I tweeted a photo of my meal and ended up having a hilarious conversation with fellow Twitterers, featuring lots of silly fish puns.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
My 5 year old daughter says we r all naughty old people (on Twitter) :)
7:12 PM – 22 Feb 09
Pretty much every day I would tweet asking people to sign the “Save Bletchley Park” petition. As we left the chip shop I checked it again to see how many people had signed, and I was happy to discover that numbers had gone up quite a bit.