If you're into your social networking you've probably heard of Foursquare. It's a location-based application for your smartphone that allows you to 'check in' to bars, clubs, restaurants and other venues. Once you're there you can see who else is around, leave tips on what to try and read other people's recommendations as well as unlocking badges and winning the chance to receive special discounts.

A team of creatives in Cheltenham are harnessing the power of Foursquare to create a massive fox and hounds style treasure hunt that spans the width and breadth of Cheltenham. Participants (the hounds) will follow a trail of clues to a series of venues around the town, picking up goodies along the way. The team with the most amount of check-ins will win glory and prizes and everyone taking part will eventually discover a secret end location for a party.

To find out more details and to register to take part please visit http://www.foursquarestival.co.uk. You can also follow the team on Twitter or join them on Facebook.

There's some major changes about to take place right the way across the Boom network. The whole site's getting a major redesign and word on the street is it's going to look amazing.

As part of this overhaul we're looking for a local designer to redesign our banner. It can be in any style you want at all - the only stipulation is that it has to say 'Cheltenham' somewhere in the design and be 596 pixels wide by 181 pixels high.

It'll be a great chance to get your work seen and a great way for us to show off some home grown talent. If we get sent plenty (fingers crossed) we'll select the best ones and use them on a rotation basis. If you've got any questions please give us a shout, and send your entries in to cheltenham@creativeboom.co.uk

Cheers me dears!

It's cheap as chips and features a fat line-up of amazing folk music, but there's only 200 tickets so you should move quickly if you want to get involved!

Even better, it's all in aid of two awesome charities - Global Footsteps and Friends of Nowder.

To find out more about the line-up, the venue and the fantastic causes your ticket will be benefiting, please visit http://barnonthefarm.moonfruit.com.

WHEN: Saturday 10th July 12-9pm

WHERE: Montpellier Gardens

WHY: To party!

Following the success of Cheltenham Carnival earlier this year, Cheltenham Borough Council has joined forces with the Cheltenham Music Festival and the Cheltenham Stronger Communities Partnership to put on a whole afternoon of fiesta-shaped activities.

Entertaiment includes live music from some great local bands and performers, dance troupes from across the town, stalls from voluntary organisations, arts and crafts, fun fair and children's village.  The community are invited to picnic with the kids, have a drink and enjoy a wide selection of global cuisine. They will also be running sports activities including the fabulous and very popular O2 rugby arena where you will find a host of international rugby stars.

Click here for more information, and if you take any photos please send them our way!

Foursquarestival

Foxes & Hounds, getting local companies involved with Foursquare and putting Cheltenham on the creative map!

"Foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that
rewards you for doing interesting things.  The aim is to build things to not only help
you keep up with the places your friends go, but encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your town, city or village in new ways." - Foursquare

A team of creatives in Cheltenham is harnessing the power of Foursquare to create a unique participatory event – Foursquarestival. Players will compete in a foxhunt that will lead them around points of artistic and cultural significance in the town, visiting independent traders along the way and finally finishing at a secret party location.

The Foursquarestival team will prepare for the event by adding a series of tips and clues to a pre-determined set of locations. This will also involve liaising with local businesses to secure their involvement and make them aware of the promotional opportunities that can come from Foursquarestival and from Foursquare itself.

On the event day participants (the ‘hounds’) will have to locate a series of ‘foxes’ – each one will provide a clue as to the location of the next. Each fox will stay at their location for a certain amount of time before moving on. If the hounds turn up and the fox isn't there, the manager/owner will hand over a clue or there will be a notification on the door that the fox has moved to a new location.

The aims of Foursquarestival

• To enhance perceptions of Cheltenham as a town which has great opportunities for creative activity.
• To support local independent traders and increase footfall to their businesses.
• To test the potential of Foursquare as an application that can be used for event management.
• To give each team member a chance to add a significant and unique piece of work to their respective portfolios.
• To create an event template which can be presented to brands or organisations looking to capitalize on Foursquare’s growing popularity

To find out more about this awesome event you can scope out http://www.foursquarestival.co.uk or follow them on Twitter.

Are you into beer, pizza and CAP Theorem?

If you know what we're on about, then this could be the perfect event for you. A NOSQL summer is an international series of events aimed at exploring those burning questions about databases, distributes systems and NOSQL. Check out their website for more details, and to find a selection of papers to download that will be discussed at the first meeting.

WHEN: Friday June 25th, 7pm

WHERE: The Exmouth Arms

WHY: To explore nosql and what it means from the comfort of a beer garden. Event organiser Rich Mehta is hoping the group will become a regular opportunity to talk about all things tech in an informal setting (aka a beer garden).

The event is being organised by Rich Mehta. If you'd like more details we're sure he wouldn't mind if you follow him on Twitter.

(Image from Mccun934 via Flickr)

Gloucestershire - More than just some pretty farms

Go Gloucestershire! The South West Top 100 Creative Companies list is now out for 2010, and once again we've managed to hold our own against the big guns (by which I mostly mean Bristol, who pretty much dominate the list). It's great to see creative agencies from Gloucestershire really making their mark and continuing to grow despite the challenging financial times that have faced many companies since the dreaded recession hit.

A MASSIVE well done and a big pile of props go to the following teams for making the list:

Factor 3 Applied Creativity

Mosaique Design Consultants

Oomph Agency Services

Montpellier Marketing Communications Group

The Target Marketing Group Limited

Hurray! Lets hear it for Gloucestershire creativity!

(Image by Spiro via Flickr)

SoGlos.com – The online magazine for Gloucestershire - beat off stiff competition from South West Media Awards finalists BBC Bristol, Northcliffe’s This is Bristol and DMGT’s Tiverton People to win the coveted Website of the Year Award 2010.

Representing Gloucestershire’s only finalist in the search for the south west’s best website, SoGlos.com was praised for being a ‘good role model for others’, with judges drawing upon the online magazine’s 70,000 monthly readers, 14,500 weekly email newsletter subscribers and foundation of high quality journalism married with technical innovation at the awards ceremony held in Weston-super-Mare on Thursday 10 June 2010.

SoGlos.com co-founder and editor Michelle Byrne said: ‘This prestigious award win is testament to our small but dedicated team’s work over the past three years – and we’re particularly thrilled to be victorious as we were representing Gloucestershire against media giants including the BBC, Northcliffe and DMGT.’

The online magazine achieved another success in May 2010, when it was named Best eBusiness in the Cheltenham Business Pride Business Excellence Awards for ‘becoming the online resource for Gloucestershire’.

The award-winning SoGlos.com is proud to have been associated with Creative Boom Cheltenham since its inception, and can be visited at www.soglos.com.

Congratulations to James and Michelle from the team at Creative Boom Cheltenham - we love your site for all the useful information it holds and you definitely deserve the win. Nice one!

Everyone loves a good list....

Cheltenham seems to be turning into a bit of a hotspot for digital happenings (this is definitely a good thing by the way). We've got Digitalks, the Cheltenham Social Media Cafe, tweetups, meetups and a whole host of other technological and social activity for us to get our teeth into.

It's really satisfying to see the town sitting up and taking notice of all the great tech talent we've got knocking around. And now we've even got our own web start-up, gearing up for launch next week. Get ready, theListbook.com is about to land.

If you're anything like me you may have a bit of a geeky passion for writing lists as well as finding them absolutely essential for organising your workload. Creative types have a bit of a reputation for disorganisation, and there's nothing like a good list to help you keep a handle on all those clients and projects.

The listbook already been touted as the next big thing and is a great place to store your lists, whether you're using them to get organised or just spilling your brains on your favourite topics. You can also browse lists submitted by other users to get creative inspiration on stacks of different topics.

Check out their blog for more information, and you can also find them on Twitter and Facebook. We're definitely looking forward to seeing what creative lists people come up with as well as writing some of our own!

We love science. All the explosions and learning and things. Can't go wrong with a nice bit of science...

This week the Times Cheltenham Science Festival gets under way. It starts on the 9th and runs until the 13th, so we thought this week we'd give you our pick of the festival for each day. After creativity and science are like, sisters. Right?

WEDNESDAY: The Plight of the Humble Bee. Town Hall, 12.30pm - 1.30pm. £6 (fiver concessions). Wins for having the talk with the cutest title, and also for being about bees. Find out why the bee population is declining, why this matters and what we can do to help.

THURSDAY: Dark Matter. Town Hall, 4.30-5.30pm. £6 (£5) Ever wanted to know more about the elusive matter that could threaten our very existence?* Well, now you can. Guaranteed super interesting.

* May not threaten our very existence.

FRIDAY: Performance Under Pressure: Stressed Out?!. Town Hall 6.30 - 7.30pm. £8 (£7) This talk looks v useful for creative type, expecially freelancers. who struggle to balance their workload. Speakers will be discussing  the adrenaline buzz of working to tight deadlines and coping mechanisms for when it all gets too much.

SATURDAY: The Decadent Use Of Drugs Town Hall, 2.30-3.30pm. £7 (£6) A chance to see the awesome Professor David Nutt, who was so rudely sacked by the government for providing scientifically reasoned advice regarding recreational drug use. He'll be exploring drug use throughout the ages alongside a trained risk expert. Sounds epic.

SUNDAY: Lasers Town Hall 12.15-1.15pm. £7 (£6) It's a talk about lasers. Enough said really.

For more details on anything science related, visit http://cheltenhamfestivals.com/science

Hope you all have a fantastic time at the Science Fest and learn lots of new things. If ya take any photos or spot anyone famous be sure to let us know!