Click here if you can’t see the video embedded below.
John Naughton on the iPad
The iPad is great for some things, but hopeless for others. I’ve had one since its launch in 2010 and I use it every day. It has a terrific battery life, springs instantly to life when opened, is robust and portable and, when fitted with a sim card, provides good connectivity on the move. One could, I suppose, try to write a book, edit a movie or build a big spreadsheet model with it – just as one could, in principle, dig the garden with a teaspoon. But you’d be mad to try. The truth about computing is like the truth about steeplechasing: it’s always horses for courses.
Creative Technology Day – 17th March in Louth
As part of an EU-funded bit of work we are working on with Lincolnshire County Council, we’re running an event in Louth next Saturday to demonstrate a whole range of useful and innovative technology that people working in the creative, cultural and heritage sectors would find especially cool.
You can book your place here. The blurb follows:
Kind of Digital, in co-operation with Lincolnshire County Council are holding a one-off digital demonstrator day for the Arts, Creative and Cultural sector in East Lindsey.
This one day event in Louth offering you the opportunity to connect and participate in some great digital technology demonstrations with top technologists, future-forward practioners and thought leaders.
Get hands-on with cutting edge equipment such as 3D scanners and learn how they can benefit your business. We want you to leave this event, inspired, connected and clued into what digital can mean for your business.
The event will also kick start our consultation into the development of Creative Hubs across East Lindsey, leading to the implementation of new digital technologies to grow local infrastructure, networks and great creative business ideas.
This is part of a series of events in the DigitalLincs programme focused on the development of East Lindsey’s creative industries infrastructure.
Reimagining town centres
I’ve been an interested follower of the debate around town centres since the Portas review of last year, not least because I live close by to a small town, and indeed it’s one where a debate is raging about the future and sustainability of the town centre as a place for people to visit, and to buy stuff.
The town in question is Spalding, and right now there is quite a heated debate going on in the local press about two development ideas – one for a regeneration of an in-town-but-exactly-the-town-centre retail area, and the other proposing a big supermarket and retail park on the outskirts of town, but which might generate some section 106 money etc to help with other work.
As you can see from this article on the local newspaper’s website, the topic is one that has inflamed local public opinion and it’s interesting to see people coming together to use an online platform to debate the issues.
I can’t help but feel that the debate here is missing the point. I very much enjoy reading Julian Dobson’s blog, and his group’s submission to the Portas review, The 21st Century Agora (PDF warning) makes some very interesting points that really chime with me.
It reads:
High streets and town centres that are fit for the 21st century need to be multifunctional social centres, not simply competitors for stretched consumers. They must offer irresistible opportunities and experiences that do not exist elsewhere, are rooted in the interests and needs of local people, and will meet the demands of a rapidly changing world.
In other words, the town centre shouldn’t be based just on buying stuff. We need other reasons for people to visit the town.
What sort of things? Julian’s presentation below highlights some of them (apologies if your firewall means you can’t see them):
Town centres ought to be places where people meet, work, consume culture, share ideas, get things done – not just shop!
Whither the internet in all this? It’s a view that the web, and the sheer efficiency of shopping online is one of the things that’s drawing the commercial elements away from the town centre.
The Portas review did mention the use of the web to create an ongoing sense of community and conversation about a town centre. This has been picked up by Sarah Hartley from Talk About Local (she does wear other hats) in a number of posts, including a dead handy list of ways that online communities could help reverse the decline in high streets.
If you’re interested in this stuff, Julian and co have started up an online community, using the Ning platform, and are organising an open space event to discuss the issues. Am hoping to be involved as much as I can.
Picture credit: ambernectar on Flickr
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 Department of Health, amongst others, using WordPress to deliver some or all of their web content.
There’s increasing evidence of its use in local government too, mostly for micro-sites rather than being used as the main content management system for a council’s corporate website. Take the ‘digital press office’ sites at Shropshire or Birmingham, for example.
Carl Haggerty recently blogged about two new WordPress sites Devon County Council have published – a newsroom site and a networking site for social care commissioning.
Some councils have the capacity to run their own servers for hosting WordPress, and to keep the software maintained, templates developed and so on – which is great. But what about those authorities that lack the in-house knowledge, or perhaps just the time?
At Kind of Digital, we are currently supporting one district council to make the most of WordPress by supplying a comprehensively supported platform to run multiple WordPress sites for a small yearly subscription fee.
The platform provides:
- a dedicated virtual private server hosting a WordPress multisite instance, with no limit on the number of sites hosted
- maintenance of the software, plugins and themes, with regular upgrades taking place
- daily backups both locally and to the cloud and an SLA guaranteeing uptime and availability
- telephone, web and email support, and written and video-based documentation and guidance
- a number of training and consultancy days every year to help people use the platform to its potential
- a number of templates to use on sites, including microsites, blogs, commentable documents, consultation sites and much more
The organisation will soon start to see considerable savings as microsites hosted in a number of locations are brought together and re-hosted on the multisite platform.
We’re already talking to a couple of other organisations about supporting them with a similar arrangement. As I mentioned above, many organisations can support WordPress perfectly easily themselves – but for those that need a helping hand, we’ve got a nice system ready and waiting to go.
Interested? Drop me line!