Month: September 2009

Let’s predict the lottery!

I rather enjoyed the Derren Brown stuff this week around predicting the lottery numbers. It was enjoyable and entertaining, and anyone expecting anything approaching seriousness was always going to be disappointed.

But what of averaging out the views of the many to predict randomness?

I’ve set up Let’s predict the lottery! to do just that. Enter your favourite lottery number picks, and on Saturday 19th September, I’ll buy a ticket using the average numbers of all those who contribute.

We won’t win, of course. It’s a load of nonsense. But if, if, we do, I’ll think of something fun and good to do with the lolly. Which won’t involve keeping it myself.

I promise.

Bookmarks for September 2nd through September 6th

Stuff I have bookmarked for September 2nd through September 6th:

  • How to Keep WordPress Secure – The official word on preventing your WP site getting hacked.
  • The Ugliest Website in the World – “Craigslist is willing to do the basic, boring stuff again and again and again. It thinks long-term. It puts people first. It trusts them. And millions of people trust it back and use it every day to find love and cars and stuff. Craigslist, the anti-brand, is one of the biggest brands of the 21st Century.”
  • Idea Management – Innovation Management – Crowdsourcing – Suggestion Box – Customer Feedback – “IdeaScale enables companies to build communities based on the simple model of crowdsourcing. It begins with an idea posted to your IdeaScale portal by a user. Each idea is then expanded by voting and comments from the community.”
  • A Fond Farewell to Nomad – “As of 06 November 2009, after six highly successful years Nomad will be ceasing its activity to promote mobile and flexible working in the public sector.”

Co-creating an open declaration on public services 2.0

An email from my friend Paul Johnston – he’s a Cisco public sector specialist and is behind the rather neat Connected Republic site – alerts me to EUPS 2.0 initiative. Here’s how it is explained:

Every two years, EU Ministers gather to agree on a Ministerial Declaration on e-government, which is the main European strategic document. This is usually accompanied by an Industry declaration.

We feel the urge to add an open declaration, collaboratively built and endorsed by EU citizens who share the view that the web is transforming our society and our governments. We feel e-government policies in Europe could learn from the open, meritocratic, transparent and user-driven culture of the web. We also feel that current web citizens should engage more positively with government to help designing a strategy which is genuinely difficult to adopt in the traditional culture of public administration.

We trust that if we manage to deliver quality of insight and quantity of endorsement, we will present this declaration officially at the EU ministerial conference on e-government, in Malmo on November 2009.

The open declaration is being collaboratively edited using the MixedInk tool, which to my shame I am yet to have a proper play with.

Check out the blog, and the Google Group too. I’ll be keeping my eye on this, a potentially really interesting initiative.

Load more posts!