WordPress for local government

WordPress, the open source content management system that I use here on this blog, is growing in its utilisation across government. It took root a bit quicker in central government, with the Number 10 site, Defra, Wales Office and the…

Ideapad S205

For the last couple of months I’ve been playing around with a Lenovo Ideapad S205. It’s a slightly bigger than a netbook machine that runs Windows 7. I’ve been a pretty dedicated Mac user for the last five years or…

Some recent dead tree reading

Now and again I find time to read books about work-related stuff. Here are three I have been tucking into recently. John Naughton is a hero of mine. His weekly column in The Observer is required reading, and A Brief History…

Covering events with Kind of Digital

One bit of work we’ve been doing a fair bit of at Kind of Digital is putting events on the web. One example is the seminar that took place in Leeds yesterday, run by Local Government Yorkshire and Humber. The…

Lloyd on GovCamp

The group blog collecting people’s thoughts is really good reading. Lloyd hits the nail on the head here: We do it this way because it works and because we’ve seen the alternative really fail big time again and again.  Because…

My 20 GovCamp 2012 thoughts

I had an exhausting time at GovCamp this weekend. We had lots of people. There were lots of discussions. There was much tweeting. Many photos were taken. Lots of blogging has happened. Dan Slee had the fab idea of just…

A new (additional!) job

Just before Christmas, I received the very excellent news that I have been taken up on my offer to become a trustee of Community Lincs, a local community development charity here in Lincolnshire. I’m delighted, because it’s going to give…

Why senior managers need to lead online

I wrote a thing for the Guardian’s Public Leaders’ Network: The explosion in online innovation throughout public services is seeing more and more activity taking place on the net, whether via interactive websites, or mobile applications. Networks such as Twitter…

New Zealand government social media guidance

More examples of advice and guidance on using social media tools in government, this time from New Zealand. The first bit is the High Level Guidance, described as helping: organisations when they are trying to decide if they should use…