Lovely spoof from the BBC ‘Horrible Histories’ show:
In case you can’t see it – here’s the link.
Give us a break
Am sharing the details of this event on behalf of my good friend Jude, who is running what looks to be a really interesting project.
GIVE US A BREAK: Ideas for developing easy ways to source respite breaks for carers online
Give Us A Break tackles the feelings of social isolation that are often experienced by people caring for an ill, frail or disabled family member, friend or partner. Give Us a Break aims to ease the burden of caring by providing a few days away from day-to-day responsibilities, as well as ongoing support over the phone and online. It is the first project run by soundinnovation, a not-for-profit hub to develop projects with a social purpose.
A key part of the project is to develop ideas around online support for carers to enable them to access respite opportunities. There doesn’t seem to be any specific ‘go to’ websites for carers to tap into carer friendly accommodation. For example one of the most interesting carer friendly accommodation like the Kiloran Trust are very hard to find.
How can you help?
On Thursday 9th June from 6.00pm we’re hosting a brainstorming evening with tech savvy individuals to explore and potentially develop ways of enabling carers to access info for breaks – online. For example it could simply be finding a way to map appropriate and available respite opportunities across the country by geo-tagging respite opportunities around the country and getting other carers to rate them or make suggestions for carer friendly accommodation.
We’re not planning on reinventing the wheel but what is clear is that when a carer can get access to a break we want them to be able to find it quickly – but there doesn’t seem to be much available.
Location:
soundinnovation offices at Happy Computers, Cityside House, 40 Adler Street, London E1 1EE.
If you can come along, please RSVP to jude@soundinnovation.org.uk.
The digital engagement game
At the introduction to digital engagement workshop we ran this week, I debuted the digital engagement game.
It’s a workshop exercise that’s an expansion of my version of David Wilcox‘s social media game, which in turn has been developed into the Social by Social game.
The original game featured a pack of cards detailing various social media tools, and a few traditional ones too. Teams then came up with scenarios, and used the cards to produce solutions.
It was always good fun to run and is helpful in getting people to focus on purpose and not getting hung up on the tools.
Over time though it became clear that the cards needed updating, and if we were going to do that, then we might as well revisit the whole thing.
So, now there are four different sets of cards in the game. These hopefully cover the range of issues people planning digital engagement projects need to consider.
Tools – the technology
- Blogging
- Social networks
- Status updates
- Media sharing
- Online collaboration
- Newsletters
- Aggregation
- Social authoring
- Web conferencing
- Mobile apps
- Location services
Roles – the people
- Champion
- Community manager
- Digital mentor
- Moderator
- Social reporter
- Developer
- Strategist
- Data expert
- Evangelist
- Content wizard
Activities – the other stuff you have to do
- Training
- Events
- Workshops
- Social media surgeries
- Network mapping
- Codesign
- Listening online
- Evaluation
- Publish open data
- Carry out surveys
Process – tackling the bureaucracy
- Develop strategy
- Write policy
- Campaign plans
- Project management
- Identify the keen
- Make business case
- Get IT support
- Get political buy-in
- Get senior managers on board
- Manage risks
Teams in the game have two sheets, one to set the scenario:
And one to plot the solution:
This format of the game seems to work pretty well, helping people think about all the issues involved in solving problems using digital tools – especially the idea that the people and the process matter just as much, if not more, than the technology.
If you’d like to make your own set of cards, here’s the PDF (3.1mb) which you can print out, cut up, fold and laminate.
Online consultation and policy engagement
Neil Williams writes a great post about digital engagement on the AlphaGov blog:
On the face of it, you could say it’s a simple case of government doing something a bit whizzier and more user-friendly than publishing thousands of PDFs on hundreds of websites for people to find, comprehend and comment on by email. And it was tempting to build that whizzy something, pooling the best current practice from forward-thinking departments (like mine) as a baseline to push things further.
But scratch the surface and you quickly find yourself dealing with big issues around democracy, the delicate balance of trust between citizens and the state, the complexities of our constitution, and the culture of the civil service.
You find yourself touching on every opportunity for citizens, businesses and organisations to interface with any part of the state online, be it to give feedback, ask a question, seek help, present an argument, influence thinking or help solve a problem. And – most importantly of all – you touch on the capability and capacity of the state to process all this user feedback, to analyse, respond and interact.
A chunky quote, but there’s still more good stuff on the original post – go take a look.
There are also some slides that Neil developed in collaboration with Steph and Simon (what a dream team!). Embedded below, apologies if you can’t see them.
Steph followed up with his own post, which again is worth reading in full, though here’s a useful list he provides of things to do to get engagement right:
1. treat people with respect: if you spend time contributing constructively, that should be worth a proper acknowledgement, at least
2. treat different people differently: there’s not a ‘general public’ who have views on policy: there are service users, their relatives, people who work in public services, people who lobby about them, people who have oddly expert experience or niche specialisms. Consultation should be layered, asking people to give feedback on different aspects of the same thing, based on how much they know and care
3. combine customer and citizen roles: boost participation and improve public services by asking people for ideas when it’s relevant, connecting a public service experience with feedback on the policy behind it
It’s great to have some proper thinking done on this subject, though as Neil and Steph themselves have said, this is a start rather than the finish.
Some interesting bits came out of yesterday’s digital engagement workshop that we ran in Peterborough yesterday, and once I get my head together I’ll post them up here.
Portfolio: sharing council comms resources
Portfolio looks an interesting idea, coming out of Nottingham City Council.
This, from an article at LGComms:
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?