Thursday, 18 September, 2008

The importance of community management

One of the great arguments in favour of employing social web tools is the fact that they are pretty quick, and usually cheap, to put together. However, that’s not taking into account the other costs, one of which is managing the community created by such sites.

This entails a number of things: welcoming new people, seeding some discussions, encouraging people to get involved. At the bare minimum it should consist of moderating content, getting rid of the rude, the crude and the jibberish. You simply have to allow for time to do this. Otherwise you end up with problems like those that Jamie Oliver, everyone’s favourite fat-tongued foodie, seems to be having.

Does this sort of thing actually present anyone in a good light?!

Meatball Sundae

I’m working my way through my dead tree reading list, and right now I’m burning through Seth Godin‘s Meatball Sundae. It’s terrific stuff.

Here’s one nugget from early on in the book -a list of ‘the foundations of new marketing’. It works for stuff other than marketing, though, I reckon, and might serve as a useful way of describing what worldview 2.0 might be:

  • Direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers
  • Amplification of the voice of the consumer and independent authorities
  • The need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases
  • Extremely short attention spans due to clutter
  • The Long Tail
  • Outsourcing
  • Google and the dicing of everything
  • Infinite channels of communication
  • Direct communication and commerce between consumers and consumers
  • The shifts in scarcity and abundance
  • The triumph of big ideas
  • The shift from ‘how many’ to ‘who’
  • New gatekeepers, no gatekeepers

I wonder how many of these things can be applied to government and the governed, rather than producers and consumers?

Wednesday, 17 September, 2008

ReadWriteGov Update

Bookings are flying in for ReadWriteGov, the social media shindig I am organising along with Fran Paterson, which will be held at Peterborough City Council on 29th October.

Responding to a bit of feedback I have received, I have added an option to pay the (miniscule) cost of the tickets by requesting an invoice, which should make it easier for some folk to come along. So now nobody has an excuse!

Tuesday, 16 September, 2008

10 Social Media Steps

10 Social Media Steps is a guide to how people with very little experience get get engaged with social web tools. Taking in a whole range of different services, from social networks to photos sharing to social bookmarking and blogging, I’ll be introducing each tool in an easy-to-understand way, using as many different types of media as possible. It’ll be fun!

The steps will be as follows:

  1. Join a social network
  2. Subscribe to some RSS feeds
  3. Bookmark stuff socially
  4. Share some photos
  5. Use online video
  6. Start blogging
  7. Stream your thoughts
  8. Aggregate your life
  9. Collaborate on the web
  10. Meet some people

If you want to follow the 10 steps, or (even better) pass them on to people who might get the most benefit, then just point your browser towards here, which will present all the posts.

So, I think that is probably that for this introductory post. You could always amuse yourself watching this video from Common Craft explaining what social media is all about:

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Monday, 15 September, 2008

Teacamping this Thursday

Teacamps are the bi-weekly get togethers of people interested in government and the web, which emerged from January’s Barcamp.

I don’t get along nearly as often as I would like – something that will hopefully change now I have a bit more control over my time – but I will be heading down to the House of Fraser cafe on Victoria Street this Thursday. Hope to see plenty of folk there!

Sunday, 14 September, 2008

Software Freedom Day

Next Saturday (September 20th) is Software Freedom Day:

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere!

There are various get togethers happening around the world to celebrate – here are all the UK ones. If you’d like to know more about free software, this video from Stephen Fry is a pretty nice start:

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Other things you might like to do include tracking down your local Linux User Group – who can help and advise you on any issues you are having – and actually installing some open source software on your computer. Here’s some quick suggestions:

How else could you support or celebrate software freedom day?