Site Stuff

Hello world!

I know, I know. It seems like I start a new blog every 5 minutes. But this is different. This time, I’m staying put.

The whole FEconnect thing didn’t work for me, in the end. This was a big shame, because the blog proved pretty popular quite quickly. But what I realised was that there wasn’t any FE content on there. When I thought about it more, I realised there probably never would be. I’m better writing generally about web 2.0 and social media, how it can be applied to community building and online collaboration, without the added hassle of tying it into a specific sector.

So, DavePress. Non-sector specific. It’s just about me, and what I think, what I am interested in. I’m hoping that all the people who read LGNewMedia, FEconnect, and the various other bits I have done will tune in here and find stuff that will interest them. I’m sure they will.

The blog is still being built, but I will start adding content from now. Hope it’s useful.

Success!

Well, I was successful in my interview. So, from sometime in October, I will be a Change Manager at the Information Authority. My role is going to be a really exciting one:

Establishing, supporting and maintaining communities of providers and data users to support the development and management of information and data standards for the FE sector…

Provide online and face-to-face facilitation to enable and then manage the process of defining, assessing and agreeing changes to the information standards

It’s my first paid role in community facilitation, and probably the closest I have ever come to having a job about which I am truly passionate. Exciting times.

Of course, I’ll be leaving the local government sector, which raises a question about the future of LGNewMedia, which has always had an obvious lg focus – even down to the name and URL.

I’m going to be starting a new blog, with a focus on the further education sector. The content will still be quite similar to that here: the social media and web 2.0 news will still be popping up, for example, and much of the stuff about community building can be applied to any sector.

The new blog will be called FEconnect, which is already mostly built, though there are a few jobs still to do. The feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/feconnect so please subscribe to receive updates as soon as the blog starts for real.

So where does that leave LGNewMedia? Well, I will certainly leave it up here until the domain expires, at which point I will probably archive all the posts at my personal and historical blog. That is unless there is someone out there in local government who fancies taking it over. I would be happy to continue to pay for the hosting and the domain in the future if there is someone who’ll take the time to regularly update the blog. You would be getting a well established blog with a number of regular readers by RSS and visitors to the site.

I’ll keep maintaining LGSearch myself, and will continue to coordinate the localgovglossary so it would only really be the blog that you would be responsible for.

If you are interested, please drop me a line at dave@change2.org. Thanks!

Success!

Well, I was successful in my interview. So, from sometime in October, I will be a Change Manager at the Information Authority. My role is going to be a really exciting one:

Establishing, supporting and maintaining communities of providers and data users to support the development and management of information and data standards for the FE sector…

Provide online and face-to-face facilitation to enable and then manage the process of defining, assessing and agreeing changes to the information standards

It’s my first paid role in community facilitation, and probably the closest I have ever come to having a job about which I am truly passionate. Exciting times.

Of course, I’ll be leaving the local government sector, which raises a question about the future of this blog, which has always had an obvious lg focus – even down to the name and URL.

I’m going to be starting a new blog, with a focus on the further education sector. The content will still be quite similar to that here: the social media and web 2.0 news will still be popping up, for example, and much of the stuff about community building can be applied to any sector.

The new blog will be called FEconnect, which is already mostly built, though there are a few jobs still to do. The feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/feconnect so please subscribe to receive updates as soon as the blog starts for real.

So where does that leave LGNewMedia? Well, I will certainly leave it up here until the domain expires, at which point I will probably archive all the posts at my personal and historical blog. That is unless there is someone out there in local government who fancies taking it over. I would be happy to continue to pay for the hosting and the domain in the future if there is someone who’ll take the time to regularly update the blog. You would be getting a well established blog with a number of regular readers by RSS and visitors to the site.

I’ll keep maintaining LGSearch myself, and will continue to coordinate the localgovglossary so it would only really be the blog that you would be responsible for.

If you are interested, please drop me a line at dave@change2.org. Thanks!

Change2

Change2

For a while I have been wanting to put all the bits of work I do on social media into a little basket, just to organise it and let people know that the same person is behind them all.

Google Apps

In addition to that, I have been playing about with Google Apps and wanting to find an excuse to start using it.

So, I merged these two and set up Change2 on Google Apps. My experience of Google Apps has been good so far, despite some trouble with putting a basic site together with Page Creator. What I have looks ok, and I have set up a blog on WordPress.com to cover the other bits.

Another role of Change2 is to publicise the fact that I am willing and able to help anyone out with social media type web stuff, and am happy to give my time up to charities, community organisations or any other non-profit organisations.

Tags:

What’s the point?

…of this blog? To be honest, it’s turned into a bit of a mess. It’s useful to have if only because it makes a handy archive of all the various bits and pieces I have written since I started blogging in 2004.

But just recently it feels like the things I am writing about here don’t have much context to them. After all, I cover the social media and web 2.0 stuff over on LGNewMedia these days, freeware and other software stuff I post about on Free as in Beer or Living Without Microsoft. Book stuff really belongs on Palimpsest, any writing I do will soon be headed in the direction of The Interruption and I’ll be selling my soul and my wares at MediaZilla.

So why continue with this blog?

Well, apart from the historical interest, it might be nice to have a ‘hub’, around which all my online activities are centred. So, I have changed the layout here to start off with a static page, rather than the blog entries, which lists all my sites and the stuff I’m working on, along with some contact details. The blog is then just a click away.

I doubt too many more posts will be added here, maybe the occasional personal note that really doesn’t belong elsewhere. But it will still serve a good purpose as my homepage, which I can easily direct people to.

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