Dave Briggs

Monday, 14 June, 2010

Websites I love: Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg There are a lot of people who still see the internet as being something that is purely the domain of right-wing lunatics and porn fiends, which is of course a shame. The internet has created, or at least helped to create some wonderful things.

One of those wonderful things is Project Gutenberg, a website which makes available out-of-copyright books for reading on electronic devices. Started in 1971, where texts had to be typed into a mainframe computer by hand, the project boasted 30,000 books by the end of 2009.

Books are made available in a number of formats, one of which is always plain text to ensure it can display on more or less any device. Other formats include HTML and also some of the popular e-reader formats like .mobi and .epub.

Reading off a proper computer monitor is a bit of a nightmare, which is why using Gutenberg’s texts with an e-reader works so well. For me, getting the books onto the Kindle is just a case of plugging the Kindle in and copying the files across to it from my Mac – it takes seconds. Formatting is always pretty good, and it’s a great way of carrying round loads of great books to read, for nothing.

So if you’re ever struggling for great examples of people coming together to do Good Things using the web, don’t forget Project Gutenberg!

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Sunday, 13 June, 2010

Rounding up LocalGovCamp YH

LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber was a great day, superbly organised by Ken Eastwood, Kevin Campbell-Wright, Melanie Reid and a host of helpers. It was by a mile the least involved I have ever been in one of these events and, to be honest, my enjoyment of it was considerably increased as a result – as was everyone else’s, I should think.

The photos can be found here – or within the whole localgovcamp stream here. I – and hopefully others! – will link to coverage in the group on UKGovCamp.

Partly this was because I could actually attend and take part in some sessions! My thoughts on them follow.

Ken Eastwood

Photo of Ken Eastwood by Kevin Campbell-Wright

1. Digital vision

This session was introduced by Martin Cantor of Barnsley Council, and was based around a paper circulated via the LocalGovCamp Huddle workspace (I’ve emailed Martin to ask if I can post it up here too). The vision starts with:

In a world where:

everyone knows what the internet has to offer

everyone is comfortable using the internet

the internet is easily available everywhere people go

the things people want are available online

online activity is simple

then we have a truly digital world. In this world, the technology will be not just ubiquitous, but invisible and taken for granted, just as electricity now is.

In other words, we have to acknowledge that technology is changing the way we work, play, travel, shop, socialise and learn. A debate ensued about various aspects of this vision, including questions around what the role of government is with regard to overseeing and indeed implementing the vision.

2. Enterprise 2.0

Photo of the agenda by Ingrid Koehler

A session I ran jointly with Ken Eastwood of Barnsley Council. I introduced the session and the concept of Enterprise 2.0 which effectively just means social software behind the firewall.The points I made to frame the session were that

The interesting thing about this technology isn’t the technology but the cultural and organisational implications of using it
How can organisations effectively engage with outside groups like citizens and stakeholders when the people inside that organisation don’t talk to each other?
(Almost) all intranets are crap

Ken led us through Barnsley’s soon to be launched ‘Buzz’ platform, based on SocialText, where staff will be encouraged to connect with one another, discuss work and non-work related issues and generally break down silos. It looks great, and I’m looking forward to hearing the success stories to come from it.

Again, a discussion then took place, with loads of interesting insights shared and questions asked. One significant area of debate was around the role of IT in all this – interestingly Barnsley have gone with the hosted, SaaS version of SocialText as opposed to getting it installed on in-house IT infrastructure (this strikes me as sensible, and a more service-oriented approach to IT purchasing will be a key element of cost savings and generally doing this better in this area in the future).

The other interesting point was that although deploying enterprise 2.0 is a technology project, it shouldn’t be led by technologists. A successful implementation technologically speaking might mean that everything works, but not that people are actually using it. So, leave the plumbing to the techies, but keep the strategy and direction in the hands of those within the business.

3. Informal online engagement

Photo of me by Ingrid Koehler

A session led by me around Central Bedfordshire’s Let’s Talk Central project, which Learning Pool worked on. I did a brief – entirely unprepared – talk about the background to the project and giving my views on consultation activity before opening things up to questions and discussions.

Essentially my point was that a lot of local government engagement and consultation work is incredibly dull and not the sort of thing that would really encourage residents to take part. With Let’s Talk Central, the focus was always on keeping it high level, and just finding out how people feel about stuff. Obviously there is still a place for in depth research, surveys, focus groups and that sort of thing, but it doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all and councils shouldn’t be afraid of keeping things informal.

4. Get over yourself

This was an interesting session, led by Emma Langman of Progression Partnership. It was essentially a discussion session about leadership, where Emma posed some questions and things to think about to the group. Some robust discussion then took place and I think there may have been some confusion about the purpose of the session – Emma certainly didn’t claim to have any answers or solutions, which I think may have frustrated some of those who attended hoping for some revelations.

I do think that this is a subject that needs discussing though. The challenges faced in the public sector will necessitate a change in organisational culture and that has to be set from those at the top, which will mean a shift from traditional command and control style leadership to a more flexible open approach, such as that described by Charlene Li in her recent book. Indeed this is the type of leadership already being demonstrated by Mark Lloyd at Cambridgeshire County Council and others.

How this behaviour and attitude can be spread throughout the sector, and encouraged in places where it isn’t already happening, I’m really not sure – which may be why most people left this session with more questions than answers in their heads.

Emma Langman

Photo of Emma Langman by Kevin Campbell-Wright

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Friday, 11 June, 2010

How to run a GovCamp

With the excitement building up to LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and the Humber on Saturday, I thought I might share this piece, which I wrote for the UKGovCamp hub site a little while ago.

It’s a ten point plan to organising your own GovCamp type event – and it really is quite easy!

1. Have an idea

It doesn’t really even need to be a good one, though that sometimes helps. GovCamps take two main forms: being about a location, or an issue. So, would gathering people to talk about lots of issues about a specific place be useful? Or maybe getting people from lots of different places to talk about one similar topic would work better.

2. Float your idea

Join the Nou Camps group on UKGovCamp, and just chuck your idea out there. Mention it on Twitter, on your blog if you have one, and other online networks. How do people react? If they don’t at all, then it’s probably a non-starter. If they do, but don’t offer to help organise, then it’s worth doing, but expect to be busy!

3. Create a group

Next, if people seem interested, create a group on UKGovCamp and invite people to join it. Ask people for ideas on venues, sponsors, things to talk about and that sort of thing. Also ask for volunteers, but don’t be upset or indeed deterred if there aren’t many. Often it’s easier to get things done yourself.

4. Decide on a date, and find a venue.

First of all: weekday or weekend? All depends on your audience. If it’s a very worky-type event, do it on a weekday. If it’s a bit more socially-inclined, then a weekend is perfect. Here’s an example – Jon’s localgovcamp about project management was planned for a Saturday, but not many people fancied it. He changed it to a weekday, and was oversubscribed!

Next, fix a date. Don’t ask loads of people because a) they’ll give you a different response; and b) you’re giving them an excuse not to come if you don’t choose their preferred date. Instead, pick a couple of weeks where it could happen, and then…

Get a venue. What does it need? One big room for congregating in. Several breakout rooms – the numbers depend on how many attendees you have. Lots of coffee is a must! Wifi is also quite important, but not a deal breaker.

If you can, get someone to let you have the venue for free – it’s your biggest cost by a mile if you can’t. Approach companies in the area you want to host it in to see if they’ll put you up – they often will if it is a weekend and they get some good press out of it.

The venue will generally detemined the exact day you run your GovCamp on.

5. Organise, and find someone to pay for, the food and drink

Having a decent venue is important, but having decent – and sufficient – food and drink is vital. Arrange to have very regular deliveries of tea and coffee, and make sure that pastries, biscuits, muffins and that sort of thing are turning up all the time too. If you can arrange for a sponsor to bring a supermarket trolley full of Mars bars, apple pies and cans of coke, all the better!

Lunch is important too. Always order more than you need – never underestimate the appetites of public servants out on a junket.

6. A note on sponsors

I have mentioned sponsors – or at least, getting people to pay for stuff – a couple of times now. Here’s my advice on this – identify things that need paying for, and then get someone to pay for it. Don’t whatever you do either pay yourself, then find a sponsor to pay you back, or just take cash from a sponsor. Connect the sponsor to the supplier, and let them get on with it. Two reasons for this: you’ve got other things to be thinking and stressing about, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably cock it up.

7. Pimp your ‘camp

Keep banging on about your event, on Twitter, blogs, forums, social networks, phone calls, emails, conversations with strangers. It’s a good idea to set up a site for your GovCamp so people have an easy place to link to – a simple WordPress blog will do.

Use something like Eventbrite to handle ticketing, it makes life a lot easier. Release tickets in batches to create a false sense of excitement. Always hold a few back for good people you’d like to attend but who weren’t quick enough originally.

Think of some mad stuff to do at your GovCamp. If you fancy having some musical accompaniment – why not get a DJ to come along? It’ll be fun! Tell everyone about it – they’ll think you’re an idiot, but it turns out that everyone LOVES idiots.

Basically though, never, ever, stop talking about your event.

8. Get some tat to give away

The thing with sponsors and GovCamps is that there isn’t that much to pay for. Once the venue is sorted, and the lunch and refreshments, that’s all the important stuff done. So you’re likely to have to invent things you ‘need’ to satisfy the need of companies to be seen to be involved with your awesome event. So, get people to pay for things like:

T-shirts
Pens
Mugs
USB sticks
Stickers
Badges
…and anything else you can think of

9. Get people ready to present

The one big worry about a GovCamp is that nobody is going to want to talk about anything. Usually you’re safe because there will be one or two happy campers who know the drill. To be sure though, get people to talk about issues they’d like discussed before the event, online. Encourage people to join together to present sessions together if they have similar interests. Talk to people offline to make sure they will be up for stepping forward to suggest something they’d like to talk about.

As a back-up, have a couple of your ideas up your sleeve yourself – you almost certainly won’t need them, but just in case…

10. Get the agenda sorted – and then relax

The last stressy thing to get done is first thing, on the day – and that’s the agenda. Find someone skilled with a magic marker and get them to draw a grid on a sheet or two of flipchart paper. Then, gather everyone around and get them to introduce themselves – a good way is for everybody to say their name, organisation and then two or three words that describe why they are there.

Next, call people forward to suggest sessions. In a break from true Barcamp style tradition, it’s often useful to get people to tell the group what they are planning on talking about, so everyone gets an idea of what is on the agenda. They then write them down on a post it, and add it to the agenda grid.

Once this process has begun, you’re done. Relax in the marvellousness you have created.

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Thursday, 10 June, 2010

Let’s Talk Central

Let's Talk Central This week saw the launch of a new local government digital engagement project – Let’s Talk Central by Central Bedfordshire Council.

The Learning Pool online innovation / social media / loafing around team – that’s me and Breda – were delighted to be involved.

Essentially, Central Bedfordshire is a new unitary council, and the concept of Central Bedfordshire hasn’t really existed before, so there is a job of place shaping to be done. Using an informal, online way of getting residents views seemed a good approach to take and so we have been working with Karen Aspinall, Alan Ferguson and Rechelle Graham to do just that.

We helped to develop a strategy, build the tools – including a cool WordPress based engagement hub website – and develop some policies for online interaction for those that work at the council. On top of that, we provided some training on how to use this stuff, and are providing ongoing support as the project continues.

Here’s a quickish video that explains the site and how it works:

If you’d like to explore the idea of running a similar project at your organisation, just get in touch!

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Looking forward to LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber

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 it’s only a year since the first LocalGovCamp, in Birmingham. I’ve such fond memories of that day – the sun was shining, Stuart was a hit on the decks, and Mrs Briggs and the boy even turned up and joined in.

For a trip through memory lane, the Flickr tag page provides a great visual time machine. I’ve just spent far too long looking through the photos from Birmingham (June ’09), Lincoln (Oct ’09), London (Jan ’10) and Cheltenham (March ’10).

Anyway.

I’m quite excited about this LocalGovCamp, because in the spirit of these events, the format has been messed with slightly, with a parallel track for councillors to talk digital engagement. Should be fun and I’m hoping to get involved in that at some point with some exciting plans for Learning Pool’s Modern Councillor service.

The regular track has already had a wide range of suggestions put forward for sessions on the day, so we should be short of a few things to talk about:

How efficient is social media? or, How the internet can teach you how to save money
Our digital future – what does it look like?
Getting offliners online – digital mentors – who where when how?
Libraries and Social Media
The mixtape as social media
Web & online content strategy for local government. An informal discussion about who’s got one, why / why not?
Connecting, public culture & cuts – how the social web can help public cultural institutions to connect with the public, and consider new patrons and forms of patronage
Stuff you can do with Flickr
New ways of working – a solution to local government’s crisis?
Enterprise 2.0 – deploying social technologies within our organisations to improve comms
Selling open data in local government – what steps do we need to take as sector to get us sharing our data
Election wash-up – why wasn’t this the first Internet election?
Co-designing the Knowledge Hub – developing an open process of development
Using ‘Free’ and ‘Good Enough’ technologies – the next stage of digital services development?
Smart Cities & Internet of Things – What could the future hold?
Social Media Surgeries – Lesson, Practice, and Applicability to other contexts
Engaging less able people by the use of virtual walks/events in their area or field of interest.
Front- line social media: Engagement, Consultation & Learning
Just games? Does the growth in social and geo-sensative gaming have any meaning for local government?
Crisis, what crisis? Innovative responses to emergencies

I expect it isn’t too late to get in, if you want to. Come – it’ll be fun!

Photo of Andrew Walkingshaw at LocalGovCamp Birmingham by Arun Marsh.

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Tuesday, 8 June, 2010

Google jokes

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 from other more po-faced tech companies.

Here’s a couple of examples:

1) Recursion

Search for ‘recursion’ on Google, and see the suggested result. It took me a couple of seconds to get it…

2) ASCII art

A real one for the geeks this. Seach for ASCII art on Google and see what happens to the logo…

3) Anagrams

Search for the word anagram on Google, and it offers this suggestion – ho! ho!

4) World Cup

This one came to my attention today via Google’s Matt Cutts, who posted this to Twitter:

And here it is:

Nice one!

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Monday, 7 June, 2010

Bookmarks for June 3rd through June 7th

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

Armchair Auditor – Nice clean and simple example of what can be done with open government spending data by @adrianshort
Supreme Court’s untendered website cost revealed – "You need to ask yourself whether £360,000 seems like a fair price for such a website. I'd suggest it isn't. Even with a significant allocation for design, I'd have thought you could produce a similar result – with better functionality – for 95% less."
Why I’m fed up of talking about social media, really – "Sure it’s great that lots of councils are interested in social media and what it can do for their communications. But what is really starting to annoy me is that too many councils are asking the wrong questions."
Zotero | Home – "Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources." – via @jjn1
Local Data wiki – Great idea to create a wiki explaining opendata to local government types.
Centre for Digital Citizenship – "The CdC’s mission is to promote outstanding research on the changing nature of citizenship in a digitally networked society and to contribute to the analysis and development of policy in this area."
Yammer Introduces Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Integration – Potentially significant move.
So You Want to Switch to Android…One Man’s iPhone to Nexus One Migration – "Android is ready for prime time. It’s not going to beat the iPhone – not yet – but it’s ready for mainstream users."
Publishing itemised local authority expenditure – advice for comment | data.gov.uk – "The Prime Minister has made a specific commitment that new items of local government spending over £500 be published on a council-by-council basis from January 2011" – and here's how to do it.
Good and bad transparency – Great post from Steph on the implications of opening up government data.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

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Sunday, 6 June, 2010

John Naughton on the iPad

John Naughton‘s Observer piece on the iPad is well worth reading in full:

It’s when one tries to use the iPad for generating content that its deficiencies become obvious. The biggest flaw is the absence of multitasking, so you have to close one app to open another, which is a bit like going back to the world of MS-DOS. Email, using the on-screen virtual keyboard, works fine, and if you buy Apple’s text-processing app, Pages, then you can create documents. But the hoops one has to go through to pull existing documents in for editing are ludicrously convoluted and there’s no way one can easily print from the device.

Further, his week long diary is also a great bit of writing about what this device is actually for:

The week has reminded me of how much I value my laptops (MacBook Air and Hackintosh netbook)
The iPad is primarily a consumption device — and is very good for that. But it’s hopeless for originating or editing existing stuff. It doesn’t fit into my personal workflow. At the moment, it can’t handle digital cameras (though Quentin tells me there’s an optional USB-type connector available) and doesn’t have an onboard camera, so much inferior to iPhone in that respect.
The huge sales of the iPad suggest that Apple has discovered another profitable market niche — between laptop and smartphone. If so, then it isn’t the elderly, PC-less folks of this world. To make use of the iPad you need (a) access to a machine running iTunes; and (b) access to a wi-fi network.
For me, the iPad turns out to belong to the category “nice to have but not essential”. It’s beautifully made, but overpriced (esp in UK) and heavy.
I can see that I might find it useful in some circcumstances — e.g. a day spent travelling away from base when all I need is email, web browsing and small amounts of writing. For some people, that may be all they need.
Finally, I can’t see it making big inroads as an eBook reader, somehow. Of course the big screen is an advantage. But it’s offset by the increased weight, and the poor performance in bright sunlight. And it’s too bulky to carry around. When I compare it with the Eucalyptus App on my iPod Touch — which enables me to carry, for example, the entire text of Ulysses in my pocket. Given that the iPad is only marginally heavier than my hardback Everyman edition of Joyce’s novel — and I don’t carry that around — well, you can see that the Pad is no competition for the Touch.

This pretty much matches my experience. The iPad is wonderful for informal consumption of content quick browsing whilst sat on the sofa, scanning through PDFs and other documents, chatting on Twitter etc. But trying to create anything significant on it is presently a nightmare, and it’s not a Kindle-killer for me.

Update: Andrea Di Maio has posted his thoughts too:

What the iPad has turned into is a compelling professional device. I use it to take notes during meetings, to show slides to small groups around the table, as well as to do formal presentations (I bought the dongle to connect to VGA projectors). Most of my blog posts are now drafted on the iPad, an so are my research notes. When I find a wifi hotspot I just send those as attachments to my Gartner email, where I import into the relevant tool.

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Friday, 4 June, 2010

Thursday, 3 June, 2010

Webchatting in Kingston

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 and government departments out there, it’s hardly any.

But Learning Pool have over 80% of UK councils signed up for one product or another, and from time to time I get to talk to those councils – usually by turning up to a meeting and performing, but sometimes in other ways. Normally I’d never get a chance to find out from these people what the issues are that they face, and how I might be able to help out.

I’ve spoken from my desk via a live webcam thingy using Skype, and have pre-recorded webinar type things which have been played within organisations or at meetings. Occasionally it’s a mixture of a couple of ways of interacting.

A great example of this is the work we are doing with the The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. A couple of weeks ago, RBK launched their Learning Pool based learning system, which is called Evolve. To provide some light entertainment I went along to present on the subject of all things social.

Evolve

It seemed to go down pretty well – and I’m going to do a question and answer session this Friday with RBK staff on what they might want to use the social web to do, and how they can go about it. Only, I’m not going to Kingston to do it, I’ll be at home in my office, contributing to a webchat on Evolve. Here are some of the topics I’ll be covering:

1. During the presentation the other week, I showed several examples of public sector organisations engaging with citizens about the services they provide. Could your service reach out to residents in this way? What would be the advantages, and what are the barriers blocking you from doing this?

2. A major theme of my presentation was about how we can apply the tools of the social web within organisations, to improve learning, collaboration and knowledge sharing. How could these tools be used within your council and what are the issues they could help tackle?

3. An important part of any organisation’s approach to using social media is that it has the appropriate governance arrangements in place in the form of corporate strategy and user policy. What are the important things to consider when drawing up these documents? How do you think you can get buy in both from senior management and from staff?

4. I bought an iPad on Friday. Anyone want to know anything about it?

The Learning Pool system, you see, is based on a bit of open source software called Moodle, which you may well have heard of. It’s the pre-eminent learning management system, used widely in academic, perhaps most notably at the Open University. We call our version of it the Dynamic Learning Environment (DLE).

The DLE isn’t just about e-learning though, it also includes social stuff like forums, wikis, blogs and the ability to run chatroom style webchats. Hundreds of councils in the UK have this technology available to them thanks to Learning Pool – although not many use it to its potential.

Kingston really want to make the most of it though, which they are running my Q&A as a live webchat. It’ll only take up 2 hours of my time, rather than the whole day which it would take were I travelling down. Hopefully it will be of help to the council, as well.

We are always looking for interesting and innovative ways that we can help councils. If your organisation has a Learning Pool DLE, and fancy doing a webchat or similar, let us know. Even if you don’t, we’re testing things like GoToMeeting and DimDim to provide online sessions to anyone who wants to join in. Get in touch!

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