Email lists still the best?

An interesting point made by Tom Steinberg of MySociety at barcampukgovweb was when he was asked about the best platform to use to operate an online working group. An example of a working group like this could be those who attended the barcamp – how could they manage their interactions online in the future?

Tom’s response was that the mailing list was the best way for a group of people to communicate online, and so for the barcampers, the best thing to do would be to stick with the Google Group already created (by me, heh heh). I chipped in at this point with my theory as to why email lists seem to work well, especially with government types. It’s because email is work, and the web is not work. People are now so used to working through their email, that they are quite happy for it to be used for a number of purposes, whether it be news alerts (more popular than RSS feeds) or community interactions (more popular than social networks).

There are problems with email lists though, especially for community based collaborative efforts. Scalability is a major issue, with only 25-30 regular contributors being feasible on a list. The second is when individual work streams start to develop, which some list subscribers just aren’t interested in. Thirdly, you can’t work collaboratively on documents, and at that point additional services have to start to be used.

Build your own search engine

This is a presentation I created  a while ago explaining just how easy it is to create a personalised search engine with Google CSE. I have had a few people ask me how this is done recently, so I thought it might be worth re-publishing it.

[slideshare 69077 customised-search-with-google4296]

Creative Connectivity Slides

I spoke last week at Creative Connectivity, a conference being organised by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Support Centre, which is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee – on the subject of the risks and opportunities presented by Web 2.0 and social media for e-learning providers.

I was surprised by some of the discussions – college staff are really paranoid about things going wrong, perhaps justifiably, I don’t know. But issues were raised that I just hadn’t occurred to me before. Take online adverts, for example, which I have for a long time accepted as a necessary evil for getting access to great free web tools. But what if a college lecturer advises a student to use a certain website, which happens to have adverts for (say) online dating? Apparently, the college could end up getting a kicking from parents.

As with all discussions about risk, though, the key questions are “So what?” and “What’s the worst that could happen?”. Certainly when it comes to issues around personal data, the latter is most pertinent. I mean, what information is likely to be left on a social network by a student that an identity thief could really make use of? And what use would a 16 year old’s identity be, anyway?

Still, I think there is an opportunity here for someone to put together a closed, safe, ad-free social network for schools and colleges.

Here are the slides that I presented, in case they are of use.

[slideshare 237302 risk-opportunities-of-web-20-1201025828755198-3]

If you would like me to come and have a chat at your organisation or event about any element of social media and web 2.0 tools – whether to communicate, collaborate or educate, do get in touch.

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