First is Ammo Magazine. This cute and colourful little thing is packed with illustration and designer/ artist interviews.

Ammo also accepts submissions, so if you think your work would fit in on the pages of this small but perfectly formed publication, take a look at their submissions page.

This book from Creative Birmingham profiles the 30 shortlisted nominations and 6 winners from the Invisible City Awards. Categories included ‘Things that made me think’, ‘Things that made me smile’, ‘Things that taught me something’, ‘Things that make me proud’, ‘Business things’, and ‘Cultural things’.

Created in Birmingham was up for ‘Things that make me proud’, which is nice, but unfortunately we lost out to Tomorrow People.

This publication for Hello Digital retells ‘stories from a digital city’, with plenty of glossy photos of Birmingham – current and future – along with articles from a range of industry specialists and experts.

This tasteful and nicely designed programme is from the 2010 Supersonic Festival, featuring all the events, activities and artists who performed across the weekend.

While we’re on the topic of festivals, The Independent Festivals Group launched a publication earlier this month, celebrating the cultural value of Birmingham’s independent festivals.

Included in the group are Bass Festival, Birmingham Book Festival, Birmingham International Jazz and Blues Festival, Fierce Festival, Flatpack Festival, Rhubarb Rhubarb and Supersonic Festival.

This publication can be downloaded for free here, and makes for quite an interesting read – Redefining Culture – Birmingham’s Independent Festivals

featuring the rap/stand up stylings of Doc Brown and the wonderful Holly Walsh live on stage, as well as a selection of the newest and funniest videos from the web in glorious high resolution

It’s part of the Birmingham Comedy Festival (which is currently ongoing) as well as being sponsored by Hello Digital.

Tickets are £6, get them from the Electric Cinema website or, more realistically given the time, on the door. I’ll be going along, maybe see you there.

There’s a little more info on Dice Productions’ blog – they’re organising things and will be premiering their new video.

I was more than chuffed with how it all went.  Three times as many teams entered than I had cautiously hoped for and the quality of the films was astounding.

I’ve rounded up links to all the films on the Film Dash website and I really do recommend checking them out, they’re all under 5 minutes so it won’t take that long.

The judging panel (which didn’t include myself, thankfully) picked a winner and that is the excellent ‘Dunkirk’ by Team TTV:

Dunkirk from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.

There’s a very good chance I’ll be organising something again next year.  Details to be confirmed/dreamt up later, but it was too fun not to do again.  If you want to get on the Film Dash mailing list just email ‘SUBSCRIBE’ to filmdash@gmail.com.

As a result there’s plenty of stuff (reports from conference sessions, short interviews with speakers, photos and a liveblog) to browse through on the Hello Digital blog.

Personally, I very much enjoyed the whole thing, but that kind of feedback won’t necessarily make for a better event next year.  So, it’s good to see the organisers are already soliciting feedback via their blog.

If you’ve got any gripes, suggestions or requests for more of the same (I thought the calibre of speakers was particularly good) then let them know in the comments on their blog.  Or here if you like, and I’ll pass comments on.

To get you started, I’d ask for:

• The programme (or some of it, or at the very least the dates) to be announced earlier
• Better (and open) wireless internet provision
• Conference sessions to be streamed live to the internet
• More fringe/evening events to be provided/encouraged

Hello World is:

Birmingham’s international digital media conference, held at Millennium Point from October 23-24 as part of the Hello Digital festival

Tickets at the talks are free but, given the calibre of some of the speakers (impressive bods from Flickr, Pixar, Channel 4 and so on), really will need to be booked online pretty sharpish.

Here’s the line-up.

Thursday 23 Oct:

• 9.30am – Gaming Gets Serious
• 11.15am – Doing Business in a Digital World
• 2pm – Digital Content Creation and Distribution

Friday 24 Oct:

• 10am – 4iP Regional Launch
• 11.45am – Digital Debate: Do or Die? Coping With Convergence in the Digital Age
• 1pm – “Talent 2 Market”- Developing the Skills of the Creative and Media Sector
• 2.30pm – In Conversation with Heather Champ, Director of Community at Flickr
• 3.45pm – In Conversation with Michal Makarewicz, Pixar Animation Studios

It’s been put together by talented localers Made Media, Maverick, Fluid & Stef Lewandowski.

There’s a flurry of good film-related stuff going on at the moment and now Screen WM have just launched this year’s digishorts too:

the annual short film production scheme that offers new and emerging filmmaking talent the chance to develop and produce a short film with support and a budget from Screen WM

You’ve got until Monday 10 Nov to get your short film ideas in.  A shortlist of 25 ideas will be developed before the final 6 go to production.  Go to the digishorts website to grab an application form.

There are going to be roadshows about the West Mids with

a spectacular one day event in Birmingham on Saturday 25^th October as part of Hello Digital which will include discussions, screenings and possibly the chance to pitch your project to a panel of industry experts

Which sounds jolly.

*Gratuitous plug alert*

While we’re on the subject of short films, Film Dash is a 48-hour film challenge happening 17-19 October.  I’m running it but it’ll be great, honest, and anyone’s welcome to enter.  Here’s the Film Dash website.