An online notebook
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An online notebook
This Saturday sees the latest LocalGovCamp, in York. It’s going to be a great day. Learning Pool are pleased to be helping out with a bit of sponsorship, and Breda and I will be in attendance. It’s funny to think…
One of the things I like about Google is the way they try and inject a bit of humour into what they do. Being funny is a key part of internet culture, and Google’s occasional light-heartedness is a welcome break…
Now, this is small but kinda neat. If you want to show someone how cool Google Docs is, or actually work on a document with someone who uses the service, without them needing to have a Google account, you now…
Being part of something big is really nice sometimes. Take being on the Learning Pool team, for example. Now, quite a few people read this blog, and my gibbering on Twitter – but really, relative to the number of councils…
OK, so I said I probably wasn’t going to get an iPad. On Friday I bought one. I admit it: I’m pathetic. My thing with the iPad before I got it was that I wasn’t sure where it really fitted…
All Aboard the Great Yorkshire & Humber LocalGovCamp Train! Departing from: The National Railway Museum in York (only 2hrs from London) Departure date: Saturday 12 June 2010 For tickets and more information: www.localgovcamp-yh.co.uk This first LocalGovCamp under the new Coalition…
Am reading an excellent book at the moment – Open Leadership by Charlene Li. Fans of dead-tree web 2.0 reading will be familiar with Groundswell, which Li co-authored and was chock-full of interesting case studies – mostly from the US…
…is the title of a startlingly well written and interesting paper from Anthony Zacharzewski of the Democratic Society. Download it here (PDF warning).
Warwickshire County Council‘s approach to open government and IT strategy is impressive. Check out their IT strategy blog, where they detail their use of the cloud, for example, and their open data site. Great stuff, and good to see it…
Chris Elliott, Head of Transformation at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council and High Peak Borough Council shows how to make the most of a joint chief executive, how to bring services together to save costs and how to best spread best…
Gillian Hibberd, Corporate Director for People, Policy and Communications, talks through how their change process was planned and supported, and how staff were engaged. OD is aligning structure to objectives – form following function. Many orgs struggle to easily define…
Melanie Wood and Catherine Griffiths from Birmingham City Council talk about how to take £450m out of the budget, addressing the workforce implications and creating new ways of working. Birmingham is the largest local authority in Europe – £3.4b revenue…
Duncan Brown, Director of the Institute for Employment Studies, provides some lessons from research, what works in practice and pitfalls to avoid. How many major reorganisations have we all been through? Lots and lots, it would seem. Not many seem…
Andrew Hancox, Director of Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands introduces the day. The money really does seem to be running out in local government Leaked CLG memo – 40% reductions. Leaders and managers need to consider how their organisations operate.…
I’m at the IDeA-organised ‘Designing a fit for the future organisation‘ event today, in Birmingham. It’s all about organisational redesign and development, and how councils can help meet the challenges they face by changing the way they work. There are…
Over the past few years, a number of events have happened which could loosely be described as ‘GovCamps’ – taking the barcamp idea of open space style ‘unconferences’ and governmentising it a bit. Starting with Jeremy’s efforts in 2008, we…
Silver Surfers’ Day is coming up on the 21st May. Organised by Digital Unite and supported by UK online centres, among others, it’s a national campaign to highlight the opportunities the internet offers people in later life. As a part…
There’s been a lot of talk recently about Facebook and their privacy issues, as well as their perceived attempts to ‘take over the web’ through their ‘like’ buttons and other integrations with their platform. As a result, quite a few…
In case you didn’t know…
Great set of slides explaining the issues around the publishing of public data online, by Chris Taggart. Open Data & The Rewards of Failure View more presentations from countculture.