Wednesday, 14 January, 2009

Bookmarks for January 11th through January 14th

Stuff I have bookmarked for January 11th through January 14th:

PermalinkBookmarks for January 11th through January 14th

Tuesday, 13 January, 2009

Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot

…is the title of a wonderful blog, which describes itself thus:

This blog is written by 2 friends. One lives in Sajaia refugee camp in Gaza and the other lives in Sderot, a small town near Gaza on the Israeli side. There is ongoing violence between Israel and Gaza which has intensified greatly since October 2000. Many have been killed and many have been injured. The media coverage on both sides has been extremely biased. Our Blog is written by 2 real people living and communicating on both sides of the border.

PermalinkLife must go on in Gaza and Sderot

Monday, 12 January, 2009

Dave @ BCS

 British Computer Society

I’m going to be talking to the good folk at the Central London branch of the British Computer Society this Thursday, on the topic of The Search for Shared Meaning: How Social Media Changes Everything:

Blogs, online video, photo sharing and social networking are redefining the way that people interact with each other and with organisations. Understanding the implications of this is vital for any organisation which wishes to remain relevant in a Web 2.0 world. Dave will discuss how organisations can approach these new tools, and how such an approach should relate to existing strategies and communication plans.

Weighty stuff, I hope I don’t disappoint!

It all kicks off at 6pm at the BCS HQ on Southampton Street in London.

Hope to see some DavePress regulars there – and for those that won’t be, I hope there will be a twitter back channel to keep folk at home informed on just how badly I’m doing. How about #davebcs for a tag?

PermalinkDave @ BCS

Open Source Schools

Open Source Schools is a site that launched sometime last summer, I think, but has now had quite a bit of a makeover.

It’s chock full of great advice and resources on how schools can make use of open source software – and there is plenty in there that other organisations or individuals could pick up on too.

PermalinkOpen Source Schools

Sunday, 11 January, 2009

What is Twitter for?

Whenever I mention Twitter to anyone who wasn’t previously aware of it, the first question they ask is always ‘What is it for?’

Like many social web services, it can be difficult to explain the concept of Twitter. I find it is best to respond with another question: ‘Well, what is talking for?’

‘Er, telling people about stuff. Asking questions. Finding out what’s going on.’

That’s what Twitter is for, too. It’s just like talking.

PermalinkWhat is Twitter for?

Saturday, 10 January, 2009

Bookmarks for January 7th through January 10th

Stuff I have bookmarked for January 7th through January 10th:

PermalinkBookmarks for January 7th through January 10th

Wednesday, 7 January, 2009

Patients Know Best

Mohammed Al-Ubaydli

Dr Mohammed Al-Ubaydli from Patients Know Best came to talk to the Cambridge Refresh group this evening. Patients Know Best is a startup which aims to help patients make use of their ‘Personal Health Record’ – a copy of which can be requested by anyone from their doctor under data protection laws.

The idea is that the management of a patient’s health should be a partnership between the patient and their doctor, and that anything the patient can do to help their doctor must be a good thing. People should take some kind of responsibility for their own illnesses.

One example Mohammed gave of this working is where a patient may spot something in their own record that their doctor has missed – after all, doctors are jolly busy people, and mistakes and oversights do happen. The patient isn’t doing the doctor’s job for them, just providing a second pair of eyes.

It turns out that there is a huge amount going on in both the UK and the US with patients using their access to their records to research their conditions and provide support to each other through social networks and other means. One of the jobs Patients Know Best is doing is collecting all this stuff together, onto a wiki. This is not only useful stuff to be doing, but also good marketing, of course. Patients Know Best could become synonymous with this kind of social use of medical records.

Patients Know Best are developing a software package to enable patients and doctors to communicate better through the web. My understanding is that it will allow patients to access their records electronically and then discuss the details with their doctor, without needing to make an appointment, thus saving everyone time. Mohammed is looking for people: to act as beta testers and to offer their services to the startup – principally Java-savvy developers at this stage.

You can see Mohammed’s slides on Google Docs.

Below are the notes I made during the talk – there may well be inaccuracies and falsehoods amongst the typos – if you spot any do let me know in the comments. I’ve tried to add as many links in as I can to help make the notes as comprehensible as possible…

  • Communication is crucial in chronic diseases
  • Patient has time to learn about your condition
  • Patient has less than 1 hour with specialist per year
  • Lots of different people work together with patients
  • Patient knows more than anyone about their personal circumstances
  • Why don’t more people use the web to communicate about their condition? 1. Security risks around digital data; 2. Issues around consent and data protection act; 3. What if the right person doesn’t get access to the information they need (eg doctors seeing patient records); 4. Not knowing that you can communicate, or how you can communicate
  • 3 key questions for your clinician: 1. What are we doing; 2. Why are we doing it; 3. What happens if we don’t do it?
  • Get a copy of your personal health record – you can’t know what is going on without it
  • Patientslikeme.com – takes the view that you are safer the more people know about your situation – also rareshare.org (treat such open sites with a little caution)
  • Patients’ access to PHRs is a Lutheran revolution – everyone should have access and understanding
  • Having understanding of your notes make medicine participatory not paternalistic
  • You can check your records and possibly spot something that busy doctors might miss (is this treating a symptom rather than the actual disease in the system?!?)
  • More private tools: MyFamilyHealth, healthecard, PAERS, t+medical, healthspace
  • Rareshare – social network for people with rare diseases. Sharing of experience and stories. Clinicians also use it to learn (US based)
  • Patientslikeme – connect with similarly ill people and share knowledge, experience etc. Learning from peers rather than those in ‘authority’ (US based?)
  • Harold Shipman – got away with it by faking records, not possible if publicly available. Elimination of distrust
  • PAERS – access records through web interface
  • Healthecard – carry your records around on a USB card, very private (UK)
  • Healthspace – you put your own info on it. Good system but isolated from NHS records.
  • Think positive (vodafone backed?) Records home monitor data (couldn’t find a link within 2 minutes so got bored)
  • MyFamilyHealth (Cambridge based) Plot family tree with illness history. GenSeq backed – they use DNA samples to provides details of health risks etc also. Provides tailored health information – which drugs would work best for you, etc?
  • 3G doctor – phone based. Video phone consultation for £35 after you have given them details of your problem/history etc. Phone back after 24 hours so have time to consider. (I find this worrying)
  • Lots of information about all these services at podcast.patientsknowbest.com also on the wiki
  • PatientsKnowBest is developing software to provide communications link between patient and doctor to help explain the patient record and what it means
  • How are ‘official’ NHS initiatives liaising with this stuff?
  • Obama to put medical records online?
  • Currently 3 electronic medical records system providers in UK, not many of which work properly
  • UK Gov has set data standards – should all match – HL7
  • Role of Google Health, Microsoft Health Vault etc – use CCR data standard (better?)  – also US based so data protection issues with EU etc
  • What about digital divide – those with access, time and money to do this stuff. Are people without the skills etc really going to get involved, will they be left behind? 2 tier health service?
  • Involvement of support groups, third sector, community groups etc
  • Issue of insurers and employers accessing details of medical history – possibly a concern
  • Mohammed is looking for beta testers and people interested in helping out with the project – UK & then US focused to begin with
  • Tolven Java based is the software for the medical record software
  • Starting with genetic immune deficiencies, then diabetes, asthma etc
PermalinkPatients Know Best

Making Council meetings social

Council meeting room
Image credit: tricky

Tidying up a few bits on the IDeA Performance site, and seeing Steven Tuck’s comment on my previous post about it, I thought about how these techniques could be used in different situations within local government.

After all, here is a way of making a face to face event more accessible for people that can’t attend, and as a way of drawing together all manner of online resources for people to share and use.

How about using this kind of online social interaction in council meetings? I’m thinking it could probably be best applied to Overview and Scrutiny meetings, perhaps, but any kind of meeting where taking in views and submissions from people with an interest would work well.

What do people think? Could this work?

And does anyone out there fancy trying it out?!

PermalinkMaking Council meetings social

IDeA Performance

This Friday (9th January 2009) the Improvement and Development Agency and LARCI are holding an event entitled Performance management plus: the next stage of performance management for operational improvement. Sounds like heavy stuff, but with a great mixture of speakers and workshop sessions I’m sure it will be a great day.

I have a little involvement with the event, though, because one of the people behind the event is IDeA’s own social media evangelist Ingrid Koehler, who fancied applying some of the ideas from my work in Sweden with Cisco to this event, and another one which is coming up at the end of the month.

IDeA Perfomance

To this end, we have created a site very much along the lines of the Cisco08 one (if it ain’t broke, right?) with a few modifications. There is going to be some blogging, bookmarking with delicious, flickr photos, video interviews and of course the Twitter backchannel – all aggregated on the front page. The tag to use in any content you would like to contribute is ideaperf – so tag away!

We really going to try to apply some of the principles described by David Wilcox in terms of creating a ‘social learning space’ – we want to make it possible for those not attending to play a part in what happens at these events – and for the conversations and shared learning to carry on afterwards for as long as is required.

So, anyone with an interest in local government performance management – do visit the site before, during and after Friday’s get together: share what you know, and find answers to your questions!

PermalinkIDeA Performance

Monday, 5 January, 2009

Bookmarks for January 4th through January 5th

Stuff I have bookmarked for January 4th through January 5th:

  • Back in the office, back on PM « Policy and Performance – "We won’t be gearing up with a big project on PM like we did before, but we will be looking at how we can gather knowledge across the sector. As a start and with the help of Dave Briggs, we’ve set up a social learning space that we’ll be using at two seminars in January and beyond. Don’t go and visit www.ideaperformance.com just yet (’cause it’s still pretty much empty) – but it won’t be long before we should have some great content there. I can’t wait to start building and sharing."
  • 6 Concepts That Matter – "Don’t be distracted by any book with a focus on Social Media. Instead focus on concepts that matter for building communities."
  • Multiply – Secure, Family-Friendly Media Sharing – Multiply is taking over all the communities from the soon-to-be defunct MSN groups
  • Co-op – "Stay in tune with your co-workers. Ask questions, share knowledge, track time, and update agendas all in one place"
  • Life With Alacrity: Community by the Numbers, Part One: Group Thresholds – "We often think of communities as organic creatures, which come into existence and grow on their own. However, the truth is they are fragile blossoms. Although many communities surely germinate and bloom on their own, purposefully creating communities can take a tremendous amount of hard work, and one factor their success ultimately depends upon is their numbers."
PermalinkBookmarks for January 4th through January 5th

Saturday, 3 January, 2009

Bookmarks for January 1st through January 3rd

Stuff I have bookmarked for January 1st through January 3rd:

  • Thriving too: Leadership in a Paradigm of Respect – "we now have the means to group and voice in potential numbers never before dreamed of, how do we ensure that the overall system remains balanced, and really intelligent?"
  • Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies – Freesouls – "If I had to reduce the essence of Homo sapiens to five words, "people do complicated things together" would do. Online social networks can be powerful amplifiers of collective action precisely because they augment and extend the power of ever-complexifying human sociality."
  • WhosTalkin? – Useful looking tool to track what people are saying online, via Beth Kanter
  • 5-Part Social Media Process – Amy Sample Ward shares her tips on how to form a successful social media strategy.
  • 100+ More Wiki Tools and Resources – "Wiki engines are some of the most versatile platforms for creating websites out there. MediaWiki (the engine that powers Wikipedia) is probably the most widely used, but there are literally hundreds of other wiki engines."
  • SaaS Business Intelligence with Google Apps – "Panorama Software has partnered with Google to provide new capabilities to Google applications and Google docs via the strongest suite of analytics, reporting and visualization applications."
PermalinkBookmarks for January 1st through January 3rd

Thursday, 1 January, 2009

Are video games art?

John Lanchester is quickly becoming my favourite contributor to the London Review of Books. So much of his writing is both accessible and informative. This issue he looks at computer games:

From the economic point of view, this was the year video games overtook music and video, combined, in the UK. The industries’ respective share of the take is forecast to be £4.64 billion and £4.46 billion. (For purposes of comparison, UK book publishers’ total turnover in 2007 was £4.1 billion.) As a rule, economic shifts of this kind take a while to register on the cultural seismometer; and indeed, from the broader cultural point of view, video games barely exist. The newspapers cover the movies extensively, and while it isn’t necessary to feel that they do all that great a job of it, there’s no denying that they have a try. Video games by contrast are consigned to the nerdy margins of the papers, and are pretty much invisible in broadcast media. Video-game fans return the favour: they constitute the demographic group least likely to pay attention to newspapers and are increasingly uninterested in the ‘MSM’, or mainstream media.

PermalinkAre video games art?

Wednesday, 31 December, 2008

Bookmarks for December 30th through December 31st

Stuff I have bookmarked for December 30th through December 31st:

PermalinkBookmarks for December 30th through December 31st

What a year!

There’s not long left of 2008 now. It’s been one of the most remarkable years of my life.

I started it living in Mawsley, near Kettering, which I and my family hated. We then moved to Broughton, also near Kettering, which was better. Now I’m typing this in the study in our house in Cottenham, near Cambridge. I’ve always wanted to return to living round here, yet never thought I would manage it. I love it here.

I started the year in a proper job, which I was starting to find limiting and restrictive. At that time, I didn’t know where else I could go. Over the year I got the confidence to realise that working for myself was what I needed to do. Thanks to the tremendous support I have received from several people – many of whom I have only really known since relatively recently – I’ve been able to find myself a bit of a niche and off the back of that, plenty of work.

So, (deep breath) massive thanks to Steve Dale, Jeremy Gould, David Wilcox, Simon Dickson, Steph Gray, Shane McCracken, Nick Booth, Dom Campbell, Lloyd Davis, Tim Davies, Emma Mulqueeny, Paul Johnston and many others… I literally couldn’t have done it without you.

A quick word about Jeremy – he posted today on his blog that he is leaving the civil service, to take some time off with his family and to return some time in 2009 in some capacity as a freelancer. His blog post hints at frustration in his day job and I think he must have felt pretty under appreciated there during the last months. I don’t think this does his department any credit at all and it is a pretty damning indictment that one of the most passionate and able people I have ever met was unable to find a role that suited him and his talents within the UK public sector. He’ll do very well out of the system, of that I have no doubt, but what a shame! If civil servants with a bit of vision and enthusiasm continue to be treated like this, there will be no good ones left. Simon has blogged his thoughts too.

Apart from my terrific friends, there is one other thing that has had a remarkable impact on my workloads, and that is this blog. During the whole of December 2007, DavePress got a measly 67 hits. December 2008 saw it receive 5,328 views. I think it is fair to say that every single bit of work I have picked up has started with a conversation beginning with, “Hi Dave, I’ve just been reading your blog and…”. Here’s some advice for anyone who might be thinking about going it alone at some point in 2009 – start blogging. It’s a remarkable way to build yourself a reputation from scratch.

I’m hoping that I stay busy in 2009, obviously, and that I start to develop a bit more of a business brain than I currently have. I want, as I think I mentioned in my ‘resolutions’ post, that I want to find the time to think a bit more about how all this digital participation stuff actually works, and what it really means for the government of this country. I’m not so sure than government is going to be ‘fixed’ any time soon, but the tinkering around the edges that’s starting to happen now can only help improve things a little bit for a lot of people.

Happy new year, everyone.

PermalinkWhat a year!

Some resolutions

Or maybe just stuff I’d like to get round to doing in 2009…

  1. Get more collaborative: I’d like to spend more time working with other people, and I’m hoping that in 2009 there will be plenty of opportunities for this to happen
  2. Be more helpful: I’m envious of Dominic and his projects like AccessCity and Enabled by Design. I’d really like to get into the social innovation space and dedicate some time to making things better for people that need it.
  3. Start podcasting: I’m already in danger of over-committing content wise, with this blog and my newsletter, but I’d really like to start doing a regular podcast, whether audio or video based.
  4. Make my blog posts nicer: at least by having more pictures in them. Steve Bridger, amongst others, always has a nice big photo introducing his posts. I need to spend a bit more time making my posts a bit more, well, pretty.
  5. Write something more substantial: than just short, quick blog posts. Maybe an ebook or something which lets me take the time and use a bit more space to develop my ideas a bit more (if that doesn’t sound too pompous).
  6. Develop the idea of communities: which ties in a bit with social learning spaces too. Really sell the idea of developing communities and community-based approaches in the public sector, and build up some resources people can use to help them.

Well, that’s six and I had better stop typing now so as not to set myself too big a challenge!

What things are you planning on doing more of next year?

PermalinkSome resolutions

Tuesday, 30 December, 2008

TwitterHack

Twitterhack is a new blog I have started. And it’s horrible.

 

I hate ads on blogs, and this one has lots of them. It even has ads in the RSS, and the RSS isn’t even full text!

Here’s why I have inflicted this abomination on the world: I found myself writing – or wanting to write – more and more about Twitter as different stuff came to my attention, but didn’t want DavePress to become overwhelmed with that sort of thing.

Also, I’m kind of interested in how ads can be used on websites, how how you can use metrics to find out which bits of sites people visit and where they are most likely to click on the ads. So, why not turn my new Twitterblog into an ad experiment too?

So, if you are interested, feel free to sign up for the RSS or just visit TwitterHack now and again. But don’t send me emails telling me it’s horrible – I know it is!

PermalinkTwitterHack

FriendConnect

I hadn’t really had a chance to have a proper play with FriendConnect before today. It’s basically a Google service that lets you add social functionality to your website, based on the OpenSocial framework. This means that if you have an account with Google, AOL, Yahoo! or OpenID you can interact with the various services.

What does this actually mean? Well, it enables you to add (sort-of) social networking capabilities to your site, whether it is a blog or a traditional static site, by simply pasting in a bit of code. I’ve added two bits so far: one is the (rather pointless but kind of nice) ability to become a ‘member’ of this blog:

Which a marvellous four people had done at the time of typing (one of whom, er, is me). I suppose this is a little like MyBlogLog territory.

The second is hidden away on the Community page – it’s like a comment wall that you might find on a Facebook profile. I have been umming and ahing over adding a forum to DavePress to enable a bit of interaction between folk here. They do have a habit of looking a little empty, though, and this might just keep the barriers to entry low enough to make it work rather well.

I’ve never had a proper look at KickApps, who seem to offer a similar service. Can anyone share experiences on them?

PermalinkFriendConnect

Bookmarks for December 28th through December 30th

Stuff I have bookmarked for December 28th through December 30th:

PermalinkBookmarks for December 28th through December 30th

Monday, 29 December, 2008

Community facilitators

From Rich Millington:

A moderator keeps things normal. A moderator removes the extremes from the community. Moderating isn’t as hard as moderators would have you believe. You can typically find community members to do it.

A facilitator makes it easier for the community to communicate. A facilitator takes the community through a process, and does it well. A facilitator points out common objectives. A facilitator draws out opinions from less-vocal members. A facilitator helps the community tackle any stumbling blocks.

I think you should be a facilitator.

(I love Rich’s blog, by the way. It’s a recent find for me, but his short, pithy, confident posts containing an idea and very little flannel just work for me. Wish I could write this way…)

PermalinkCommunity facilitators