Stuff I have bookmarked for January 7th through January 10th:
- iGov – The Atlantic (January/February 2009) – How geeks are opening up government on the Web
- 21st Century Learning: The Art of Building Virtual Communities – "The burning question for many of us trying to establish educational CoPs is how to design a VLC that is compelling enough that it will compete successfully for the attention of busy educators? Because communities of practice are voluntary, to be successful over time they need the ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value to attract and engage members. This is easier said than done."
- Instant mash: empowering communities through the web – "From virtual worlds, to CoPs and 'mash-ups' – Kent County Council is using all of these to promote knowledge management."
- 10 Best Intranets of 2009 (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) – "Intranets are getting more strategic, with increased collaboration support. Team size is growing by 12% per year, and platforms are becoming integrated, with a strong showing for SharePoint. Improving usability increased use by 106% on average. "
- Anecdote: Trends that will affect enterprise collaboration – "Here are six major trends that will encourage leaders to take action and help their organisations to be even more collaborative."
Hi Dave, useful links thanks
The stuff about Kent council – mash ups for the local community – made me think about how they could integrate information held by the community sector. Kent is on my patch as ICT Champion and I know the local voluntary sector people are looking at their information resources, so I will see whether this provides an opportunity to connect them and share in the support form Microsoft.
Then I read the stuff about intranets and realised – not for the first time – that a lot of people active in the voluntary and community sector really need someone to create an intranet for the sector. SForget the technology it's just that there's a need for someone to create a focus using authorised resources, safe forums, relevant contacts, etc. All based on common values and 'regulated' or 'moderated' by aq trusted person for common benefit.
Of course this isn't a technical problem – the real challenge will be creating a coherent platform for a completely fragmented organisation – although that's probably how it feels when you start building an intranet for a rapidly changing multinational organsation.
So I'm going to see how Kent's project may help move the need for a new kind of community intranet. And we've got one or two similar projects on the go in SCIP and this has helped me connect them in a slightly different way.
Have a good week
Mark