Dave Briggs – Page 170 – An online notebook

Portfolio: sharing council comms resources

May 25, 2011

Portfolio looks an interesting idea, coming out of Nottingham City Council.

We’re launching Portfolio, a web portal that allows public sector organisations to share marketing materials. Councils and other public authorities can sign up to it for free and save money by buying ready-made, proven marketing campaigns. It also enables them to make money by uploading and selling their own designs.

Kind of an app store but for comms resources. Cool.

Right now it’s just traditional print media designs that are available, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too hard to include video assets, audio and so on.

Maybe even WordPress templates and the like?

Innovative ways of training

May 24, 2011

I’ve been thinking about using some new ways of providing training on digital engagement stuff to those working in public services – in tandem with the traditional approach that we are taking in our workshop tomorrow.

Webinars are something I’m looking into, and I’ve written about my experiences of running them previously. What I am looking at doing is something a little more structured over a period of time.

So, how about a twelve week course on digital engagement? One webinar per week on a chosen topic, with a private discussion space so everyone can talk to each other about the topic afterwards.

Here’s a draft list of weekly topics:

Introduction to digital engagement
Designing your strategy
Designing a policy
Operational engagement plans
Managing risk
Developing a Facebook page
Effective organisational use of Twitter
Blogging for organisations
Crowdsourcing and online open innovation
Social media for events
Social media in a crisis
Community building and sustainable engagement

Would this be something you or people in your organisation would be interested in?

Also… would you (or your organisation!) be willing to pay for it? How much?

Power lines

May 23, 2011

The RSA have just published a rather interesting paper that is well worth a flick through.

The paper argues that the government’s efforts to build the Big Society are too focused on citizen-led service delivery. An approach based on utilising and building people’s social networks, which largely determine our ability to create change and influence decisions that affect us, may prove more effective.

I’ve embedded it below, but if for whatever reason you can’t see it, you can download it from here (PDF warning).

RSA Power Lines

Engage people on their terms, not yours

May 23, 2011

I’m always going on about how, if you want people to give up their time to help you out, then you need to make it easy for them to do so, else they won’t bother.

Stefan has a lovely example, which he documents at admirable length on his blog.

I have laboured all of this probably more than the example is worth to make a point. None of this is impossibly difficult to find and use, but none of it is as straightforward as it could be and should be. If there is a serious desire to collect and respond to views, there are better ways of doing it than this.

Go read the whole thing.

Thank you, LocalGovCamp sponsors!

May 19, 2011

Since my last ~~desperate begging~~ funding drive, several companies and organisations have leapt to support LocalGovCamp, namely:

Many thanks to them. They join those who had already stuck their hands in their pockets:

LGIU
Podnosh
The MoreOpen fund (where the cash comes indirectly from all the people listed here)

We’re still not quite there yet though, and if anyone out there still has a bit of marketing budget they’d like to lavish on the coolest (ok, joint coolest with the FutureGov stuff…) event in local government, please do get in touch.

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