Instruments of torture

Nicely put by Gerry McGovern: Over the years I have been struck by how awfully designed internal systems are. Most internal tools I come across are more like instruments of torture than the drivers of efficiency they are supposed to…

Using social media in learning

A question was asked in the social media community of practice (various levels of authentication required) about using web 2.0 technology to support learning. I couldn’t help myself… Blogging Using blogs to record and share learning is a really nice…

Using a PC

I’ve had a pretty settled tech line-up for a while, which works really well for me. Essentially – 24” iMac on the desktop, MacBook Air for the portable and an iPhone for the really portable. The iMac is fine for…

Some recent reading

As well as blogs, tweets and reports that are published online, I spend quite a bit of time reading books too. They are often great for the bigger picture stuff which requires a bit of thought and chewing over. Here’s…

Project managers’ localgovcamp today

The latest in the seemingly unstoppable movement of localgovcamps is happening today, in Cheltenham. It’s subject specific, and is going to be all about project management and that sort of thing. Great work by the team at Cheltenham Borough Council…

Net2 Cambridge

I had a lovely time on Saturday at Barcamb, a techie unconference in Cambridge. Quite a bit techier, actually, than I’m used to – but that offered a different perspective on things, which was rather nice. It also meant catching…

Jos Creese new Socitm President

Hampshire County Council’s Head of IT Jos Creese is the President of Socitm for the next 12 months, and if this quote is anything to go by, he seems an ideal man for the job: IT professionals must carve out a…

DavePress podcast 2 – Andrew Beeken

In the second DavePress podcast I chat to Andrew Beeken of the City of Lincoln Council about the new open data site he has just launched, data.lincoln.gov.uk. [audio:] If you can’t, or don’t want to, use the flash player, you can download the .mp3…

Opportunities for serendipity

Excellent stuff from Andrew McAfee: I think serendipity is part of what underlies Metcalfe’s Law and a big part of the explanation for Eric Raymond’s insight that ‘given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.’ Knowledge workers and their organizations should be doing…

Enterprise mashups

Quite a few people – at least those that read this blog and others like it – are comfortable with the idea of mashups, the activity of taking data from one source, and combining it with one or more others…

Transformed by You evaluation

I wrote about the Transformed by You project, run jointly between Kent and Medway Councils, here. By all accounts it was a great event, and thanks to the great social reporting efforts of David Wilcox, we can all get a…

Mobile opportunities

I had an enjoyable day yesterday at TechCrunch Europe‘s GeeknRolla event – a conference for techy startups. There was lots of discussion about what the next big thing might be (no-one really knows) and how to get funding from venture…

Recruit the internet-savvy

The Telegraph had an interesting article this week: MI5 dumps spies who can’t use Facebook and Twitter: Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Parliamentary subcommittee on counter-terrorism, told the Daily Mail: “As terrorism changes, counter-terrorism officers have to adapt to keep…

Connected Generation 2010

Connected Generation 2010 is, in the words of chief cheerleader Tim Davies: …a one-day conference exploring youth engagement and technology in 2010. Based on feedback from participants at recent training events, and on the positive response to the Beyond Twitter…

Why you can’t work at work

Jason Fried of 37 Signals (the guys who make cool software like Basecamp and Highrise, and the great books Rework and Getting Real) talks on this video on why interruptions are the enemy of getting stuff done.