Wednesday, 14 October, 2009

Selling the benefits

I attended the session by Liz Azyan and Simon Hume at Socitm09 on social media – which was ostensibly about the blocking of social networking sites in the workplace but which was also a general discussion around the benefits of this new way of working.

As a follow up, a brief discussion took place on Twitter last night around how senior management can be engaged and convinced of the necessity of using this technology. Carl Haggerty at Devon County Council always points to the fact that he got his Chief Exec on board early on, and the role this played in getting adoption throughout the organisation.

Various web tools were discussed, then I rather grumpily responded:

I would say that if you want to engage senior m’ment on a large scale, you’re unlikely to succeed with any web tool

Which sounds very negative, but wasn’t really meant to be so – my point was more that there are more effective ways of going about things. Basically, you have to talk to them.

Get a spot on a meeting agenda, and make the most out of the time you have, by focusing on what you can achieve. Don’t go into detail about how to set up a blog, or how to tag a link in Delicious. Instead, focus your energy on whipping up some enthusiasm, and inspiring a bit of curiosity.

Also, focus on what the benefits are for them, and for their organisation. Don’t make the mistake of putting all this stuff into a box marked ‘web’ or ‘communications’. Make it clear that this is less about marketing and a whole lot more about forging a new relationship between the organisation and citizens, or customers.

In other words, before you even mention technology, make sure you have some idea of what the point of all this is. For local government, this is about opening councils to conversations between authorities and the people, businesses and organisations it serves. It’s about bringing together communications, customer service and service design into one iterative process, each one informing the other. It’s about local government choosing the right delivery method for each service it provides, whether doing it itself, getting a social enterprise involved or handing it over to the private sector. It’s about government at all levels taking a more forward thinking attitude to its information assets and making them available to those who can do useful things with them.

The web, and social media, is just a means to an end, after all. Anyone who tells any organisation that they are golden if they just start a blog, or twitter account, is doing that organisation a massive disservice. At best the web, social or otherwise, is an enabler to a bigger change and one that benefits everyone.

Because, of course, websites don’t change the world, people do.

Tuesday, 13 October, 2009

The Twitter Book

This is a lovely little guide to getting to grips with Twitter:

Twitter book

Thoroughly recommended.

Sunday, 11 October, 2009

Socitm09

Just a quick post as I am on my phone, but I am waiting at my gate at Stansted so I can get on a plane to Edinburgh, for the Socitm conference.

I’m not speaking, which will mean I get to spend my time there finding interesting people to talk to, and spreading the good news about how Learning Pool can help local government engage effectively online.

Liz Azyan will be doing some social reporting at the event on the official event blog, which looks like it was Vicky Sargant’s doing. Nice one, both.

Wednesday, 7 October, 2009

Teach us a Lesson

I’ve been working with BIS and Becta quite a bit recently on the Learning Revolution project, which is all about improving access to informal adult learning – that is, learning which doesn’t generally mean a qualification. So, stuff like book groups, choirs, yoga classes, basic computer skills. That sort of thing.

One part of this project was helping to manage the delivery of a DirectGov hosted website, ably put together by the Dextrous Web team, which provided an interactive calendar and map for the Festival of Learning throughout October. It’s a lovely looking site with a load of interesting features. We also have been running an online community, on good old Ning, for providers of this type of learning to get together and share knowledge and information.

But there remains a question over how a national, permanent directory of informal learning might work, and what it would look like. To try and find out, Becta have launched a competition, called Teach us a Lesson.

It’s based on Show us a Better Way, and allows ideas to be submitted from anybody. These will be vetted for filth and stupidity, before going live on the site, and other users will be able to comment and rate them.

As the ideas flow in, we’ll be organising an unconference in November, to get everyone together to connect and collaborative on ideas that fit well together. After that, the best projects will be judged, with a pot of £25,000 being split amongst up to five projects, so that prototypes can be delivered by March 2010 at the latest.

If you have any ideas on how such a directory might work – which could be anything from “I think it ought to be blue!” to “I know the SQL syntax we need to make this work” (I know, I know, I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about…) – then do submit them into the site and be a part of this exciting initiative.

Monday, 5 October, 2009

Bookmarks for September 29th through October 5th

Awesomeness off of the internet for September 29th to October 5th:

Tuesday, 29 September, 2009

Understanding Finance for Business

I’m spending some time today doing some social reporting for EEDA, my local regional development agency, at one of their Understanding Finance for Business workshops. I’m taking photos and recording quick interviews with some of those attending, as well as the presenters.

Here’s David Gill, Director of the St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge, who are running the workshops on behalf of EEDA, introducing the programme and what it is all about:

Monday, 28 September, 2009

UKGovCamp 2010 taking shape

After just one day, interest is already starting to build up for January’s barcamp. We have had a tonne of responses to the register of interest form, which is awesome, and have made significant headway in getting the venue arranged.

More on that as soon as I know it.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing some gardening on the community site we have set up on Ning. Deleting spammers, starting new conversations and creating some new groups.

We now have specific groups to discuss government data sharing and cloud computing – both hot topics. Make sure you sign up and jump into the conversations about these two topics.

Bookmarks for September 25th through September 28th

Awesomeness off of the internet for September 25th to September 28th:

  • Improving data visualisation for the public sector – "Good data visualisation can help users explore and understand the patterns and trends in data, and also communicate that understanding to others to help them make robust decisions based on the data being presented. This site supports public sector researchers improve the way that they visualise data, by providing good practice examples and case studies, practical and step-by-step guides on how to visualise data, and links to more detailed resources. "
  • Google Blog Directory – All of the official Google blogs listed in one place.
  • Global Neighbourhoods: Using Lethal Generosity in Social Media – "In today's competitive environment, you need to understand that the customer is in control. If you want to win, give the customer what the customer wants. If you do this often enough and credibly enough it will be brutal to your competitors–unless the competitor rises to the occasion and tries to "out-generous" you back."
  • What will Council 2.0 look like? « Business Analysed – "The most useful phrase that I have heard when describing new technology and the debate when to implement is that some innovation can be ‘a solution without a problem’. I feel that this is true."
  • The BCS: enabling the information society « Conradiator – Conrad Taylor's view on the big BCS rebrand.

UkGovCamp 2010 – #ukgc10

UKGC10

The previous two UK government barcamps have been wonderful events – bringing people together to start and continue conversations about how web developments affect the public sector in this country.

If we are going to run the event in January 2010, we probably need to start organising it now. So I have kicked things off a bit by tidying up the online community, adding a blog post ‘announcing’ January’s event and setting up a form for people to register their interest in the event.

So do head over to the community and start sharing some ideas, stories and experiences. And make sure you tag your stuff with ukgc10!

More on culture – Getting Real

To carry on the culture theme, I’ve recently been reading 37 Signals‘ book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application. For those that don’t know, 37 Signals are the guys behind simple but useful collaboration tools like Basecamp, Backpack and Highrise.

It may describe itself as a book about web application development, but so many of the lessons can be applied to any organisation – and that can (and should) include government of course. I ordered the hard copy of the book, via LuLu, but you can read it for free, online. I’ve picked out some of my favourite bits, and linked them below for your reading pleasure.