We Love Local Government, an anonymously written group blog by a bunch of people working in the sector, has closed its doors. How sad!
It was a great resource, providing support, advice and amusement for all those working for councils during an incredibly difficult time.
Those behind it have decided to move onto other things, which is fine – they’ve done their bit!
Hopefully what they have done is to further advance the cause of blogging in the public sector in the UK. That simple act of publishing stories, ideas, experiences, views and opinions is still incredibly powerful, and yet one that still isn’t being effectively used at scale.
My hope is that some of those who followed We Love Local Government now start their own blogs, writing about what they do, why they do it and how it’s changing – developing the support network and adding to the conversation.
It’s my hope that they choose to do so publicly, under their own names too. I understand why WLLG was anonymous, but I passionately believe that being open about your identity as a blogger is best in the long term.
In the meantime, there are loads of people blogging about public service issues, and many of them are aggregated at Public Sector Blogs. Go take a look.
I also hope that others gain confidence and take up the challenge.
This is literally the beginning of radical reform in local government, the previous few years were nothing compared to what is ahead and we need those voices to share their stories, show the passion and be proud of what they do.
Carl
I heartily concurr, Dave.
It’s also an interesting challenge to lay down to people to take up blogging themselves. In the three years I’ve been doing it I’ve learned far, far more than I’ve given away for free and for gratis on my own blog.
The barrier for many people is having the time and technical ability to build a blog and the audience.
One of the reasons for starting the @comms2point0 blog was to do and share and most importantly provide a platform for other comms people without the time, technical ability to build a blog or audience.
That’s ticking away fine in it’s corner of the digital landscape.
Every year after localgovcamp there’s an explosion of content captured in a posterous (well done for doing this, Mr B!).
But I wonder if there’s mileage in a similar posterous idea building on the Public Sector Bloggers idea…