An online notebook
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An online notebook
I’ve just dug out an old 15″ flat screen monitor from a box and plugged it into my MacBook:
The way I have it set up is to have email and twitter on the flatscreen, while having the actual work I am meant to be doing on the macbook screen. I’m finding it certainly helps my concentration to keep the comms stuff to one side!
Anyone else work with two (or more!) screens? How do you have yours set up?
It’s good to see plenty of new content being added to the Voicebox blog – the home of the UK online centres and Citizens Online bid for the CLG digital mentor fund.
For example, Mike Amos-Simpson on ‘What is Open Collaboration?‘:
I find the idea of developing and running a programme in the open very attractive for lots of reasons. There’s a sense of it being more ‘honest’, there’s the opportunity that even if you’re not directly involved you can contribute, there’s a degree of accountability with people allowed to freely add their views, and of course there’s the potential to bring on board a far wider range of expertise than you could with a traditional closed collaboration.
And Gail Bradbrook on ‘Research and Mapping Objectives‘:
I think we need to develop an open and flowing process, so that we get as much quality information as possible to understand the types of projects that exist, why they exist (what drives them) and what the benefits are as well as disadvantages in the process, in particular focused on sustainability. What we can learn that is good for training others and what training needs may exist. What else do people think we need to find out?
If you would like to add your voice to the, er, box then just get in touch with admin@voice-bx.org.uk!
I spent a very enjoyable day today at an event co-organised by Opportunity Links and 4Children. It was a good chance to listen to some interesting and challenging content about the social web and what young people are actually doing online.
It was also a great chance to meet up some some pals, like Mark Cheverton, Steven Flowers and Tim Davies. Tim was running his social networking game, using his Moo.com printed cards. It was excellent – focusing in on one particularly relevant technology for youth workers.
It seems that the area of youth work and the web is a rather complicated one, but it still should be relatively straightforward so long as everyone is sensible about it. Interesting to hear that the biggest problem still facing most youth workers wanting to get involved in the social web is having no access to social networking sites at work!
Andy Gibson, one of the chaps behind School of Everything, Mind Apples and his own consultancy business Sociability, made a couple of cracking presentations last Monday at the NCVO Information Management event.
Sadly I didn’t get to see either as I was busy playing a game of my own, but Andy has generously shared his slides from the day using Slideshare:
I have a 3 mobile broadband dongle, which I bought a ear or so ago just before this stuff started to get cheap 🙁 It’s a pay-as-you-go job, because up till now I haven’t used it on that regular a basis – but it is handy to have now and again.
I tend to just pop into a mobile phone shop when I need to buy a topup for it, which – in the past – I would simply add to my account my visiting 3’s website. It was easy enough.
However, last night when I went to perform the top-up, I couldn’t. The link to do this just wasn’t there anymore. Fair enough, I thought, the site has been redesigned and the link must be somewhere else. Checking the help pages on the 3 site didn’t help either, as they told me to follow the old procedure.
I decided to ring support.
ME: Hello. I want to top up my pay as you go mobile broadband thing but your site won’t let me.
3: Oh. Have you tried following the instructions on the help page?
ME: Yes. It tells me to click a link that isn’t there.
3: Oh yes, we have upgraded the My3 site…
ME: But not upgraded the documentation.
3: Er, no. Apologies for that. To top up you just need to login to your My3 account online.
ME: I don’t have a My3 account.
3: To sign up, you just need to enter a few details on the My3 site. You’ll then get a text telling you your password.
ME: How would I receive a text on a USB modem?
3: Oh. Er, you know the 3 icon you have on your desktop, which you click to use the internet?
ME: No.
3: Which version of Windows are you using?
ME: I’m not, I’m using a Mac.
3: I’ll just put you on hold for a moment [pause] Can you put your modem’s sim card into a 3 mobile phone to receive the text?
ME: No, I don’t have a 3 mobile phone.
3: Do any of your friends or family have one you could borrow?
ME: What?
3: OK. I can apply the top up to your account over the phone.
ME: Fine. But, just to be clear, at the moment, there is no way for a 3 PAYG mobile broadband top up to be made for Mac users?
3: That is currently the situation, yes.
ME: Bloody marvellous.
[sound of phone being hung up, picked up again and a number being dialled]
ME: Hello, Vodafone?
I am enjoying helping with the Voicebox bid for the CLG digital mentor project: those involved like Helen, Anne and Ben from UK online centres are so enthusiastic and eager for the open, collaborative approach they are taking to succeed.
Here’s a video of Helen Milner talking about the Voicebox bid:
As part of the tendering process, all interested parties had to submit an expression of their interest to CLG to advance to the next stage. Voicebox has done just that, and what’s more, they have posted the content of their EoI on their blog! Great work!
Also on the blog, Voicebox are keen for people to post their thoughts on digital mentoring, whether in their big picture thread, or by adding thoughts about any of the work packages that have been identified so far. This can be done by leaving comments on existing posts – which quite a few people have started to do already – or by contacting the team using admin@voice-box.org.uk to write a whole new post.
Here’s a second video, which features, from left to right, Paul Henderson of Ruralnet, me, and Nick Booth. We’re talking somewhat disruptively about whether digital mentors would be better off without CLGs money… it’s all David Wilcox‘s fault, who was encouraging us to be naughty.
Anyway, part of the reason I included this video is for the benefit of readers of this blog who haven’t met me yet and who assume I am significantly older than I am. It happens a lot.
A little while ago I threatened to start an email newsletter service. Well, I am finally getting to grips with it.
My newsletter will be a monthly affair, providing useful hints, tips and links about digital participation, with the usual social media / web 2.0 slant to things. It won’t be the same stuff as I publish here, so even subscribers to the blog should find some value.
I’m really hoping though that I might be able to reach a few people who don’t really see themselves as RSS junkies or blog readers, but for whom an email every four weeks or so is just enough.
So do visit my newsletter page to fill in the form and sign up, and pass it on to anyone who you think might be interested!
Stuff I have bookmarked for November 12th through November 25th:
I had a fun day today at NCVO running a couple of workshops involving the social media game, a great way to put tools into some organisational context.
A few participants asked where they could get a copy of the cards. The answer is here – there is a PDF to download, print out, cut up, stick together and then laminate.
Tim has other ideas, of course.
Tom Watson points us all to a new wiki for getting the next barcamp for UK (and elsewhere) government webbies going.
Sign up and start thinking about you could present about! I have already put down that I’m interested in running a social media surgery which worked so well at the UK Youth event in September, and which is being pioneered amongst the blogging community in Birmingham.
For a flavour of what went on last year, check out the aggregated stuff on the pageflake. For discussion of the event, last year’s Google Group is being used again.
I am really happy to promote and support this event as much as I possibly can – last year’s event had a tremendous effect on me, in the friendships I made and the developments I my career. It’s an easy and maybe glib-sounding thing to say, but I wouldn’t be where I am today without the Barcamp, and I encourage everyone to make as much of it as they can this time around!
Jeremy has now blogged it too.
Actually, no it couldn’t, because Rotterdam is a beautiful city, and I am having tremendous fun here with Nick Booth.
We are at an R4R event for residents groups throughout Europe, with two aims: to demonstrate the power of the social web, and to show just how easy it is to do.
We are armed with some basic kit: Flip Ultras and point and click cameras, as well as our mobile phones (don’t worry, in order to stave off bankruptcy for a little longer I’ve switched roaming off on my iPhone…). The point being that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on tech to be able to publish content online.
We’re running a blog here, in order to demonstrate how easy it is, which has been populated with some of the other work Nick has done with R4R.
Nick and I actually got up at 5.30 am this morning, and we have since used four forms of transport: taxi, plane, train and finally water-taxi. Here’s a pretty rough video of us getting on the water-taxi, with Maurice Specht, who generously guided us around.
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I have just come back from a meetup in Birmingham of folk interested in the Digital Mentor concept and how we can all collaborate on a bid. I got to meet some great people for the first time, and catch up with some familiar faces.
Also present was Ben Brown from UK Online Centres, who had travelled from Bristol for the meeting. Great effort on his part, and also to UKOC for having the gumption to send one of their people to a pub in Birmingham to chat about working together with a bunch of strangers!
Anne Faulkner from OKOC has now posted a great comment on the Digital Mentor blog, sketching out how they see an open, collaborative bid, in co-operation with other organisations like Citizens Online and Ruralnet, working.
UK online centres and Citizens Online know this approach isn’t the easy option, but we figured that if we want to deliver a project about partnership and online collaboration, we should try to put it into practice as part of the bidding process. We think we need both breadth and depth in this project, and we’re interested in developing a framework which enables a range of organisations and individuals to share their expertise.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops, and getting involved where I can!
Simon Dickson reports that Stephen Hale, the FCO’s “Head of Engagement, Digital Diplomacy” is now blogging:
Makes sense for numerous reasons of course, not least as a means of setting a good example for colleagues. I mean, would you trust a ‘blogging expert’ who didn’t blog?
Stephen’s first few posts are all pretty interesting, and he’ll make a great addition to the Public Sector Blogs line up. I’ve now added him to the list.
Stuff I have bookmarked for November 7th through November 11th:
I will shortly be heading down to London to eDemocracy08, Headstar‘s annual shindig for anyone interested in how technology and democracy can be improved by one another.
I actually have some involvement at this year’s event, having being generously invited by those friendly folk at Delib to share a panel session with Chris Quigley, Gez Smith and Steph Gray talking open source. Here’s the skinny:
Open Source in e-Democracy – How good can it be if it’s free?
Chair: Chris Quigley, Director, Delib
- Steph Gray, Head of Social Media, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills
- Gez Smith, Senior Consultant, Delib
- Dave Briggs, Digital Enabler, DavePress Ltd
Over the last few years, UK e-Democracy has been characterised by small pockets of piloting and ‘innovation’, often to the exclusion of demonstrable impact and software sustainability. In contrast to this, the wider internet has seen an explosion of participative software, free to use and open to be redeveloped, integrated and customised to suit individual situations. This session explores the role of such open source software in e-democracy. Featuring perspectives from central government, local government and the private sector, the session will look at the benefits and drawbacks of the open source approach, the value of software vs knowledge, and what all this might mean for e-democracy in the future. In the spirit of open collaboration, it will also hopefully feature a good participative discussion too!
Now, if that doesn’t sound like something you would enjoy then you must be mental.
Before these things, I always struggle a bit to think of what I am going to say. Part of this is that I just don’t know in which direction the conversation is going to head, and so having something heavily prepared might mean I end up banging on irrelevantly and irrate everyone present. However, in an attempt to do at least some groundwork, I thought I would put my open source principles to the test and try crowd sourcing the topic with my buddies on Twitter.
I got some good stuff back:
I’ll try and work as much of this stuff in as I can. My own thoughts include:
I’m sure more will occur to me over the course of today. Oh, and just to note – I wrote this post in WordPress, running Firefox on Ubuntu.
I have finally gotten round to posting up some of the content from the ReadWriteGov event in Peterborough last month.
Sadly there is no audio as the acoustics in the room, coupled with the lack of a lapel mic, meant the quality of the recording was, to be frank, piss-poor.
Click a person’s name to be taken to stuff from their session.
More of these events are being planned, so subscribe to the blog to find out when and where it’s next happening…
I love the social media surgery concept, which was pioneered by Pete Ashton in Birmingham, used by me at UK Youth Online and then turned into something amazing by Pete, Nick and others in Birmingham.
I think there is a lot of value in having an online equivalent, just a place where people can ask questions about this stuff and hopefully get some answers from anyone who is browsing at the time. So I have started to build something.
It’s is very much early days, but the prototype site is at socialmediasurgery.com. It’s (obviously) built in Drupal, and as far as I have got so far is repurposing the blog function to act as questions, and comments as answers. Sophisticated it ain’t.
You can add a profile with some details of who you are in it, which might help you get the answers you need, or decide whether you trust the people providing them. There is also a simple rating system in place for answers, so if a response has one star it might well be worth taking with a pinch of social media salt.
Beyond changing a few colours, I haven’t got near to theming the site, I thought it far better to get the features in first. So if it looks like the default Drupal theme, it is. I will get round to changing it at some point.
Other stuff I want to get in:
…and probably loads of other stuff too.
So that’s it really. Please let me have any feedback or suggestions, but otherwise, let people who might benefit from the site know about it, and of course do register yourselves in case you can help someone, or get some help yourself…
Things are starting to pick up with the digital mentors initiative, which is a part of the digital inclusion programme supported by the department for Communities and Local Government.
There is now the option to express an interest in tendering for the money to run the pilots, which is a reasonably healthy £900k. To help support this process, there is a workshop being held at BERR on Victoria Street, London on 19th November between 3 and 5pm.
Further developments have seen UK Online Centres, one of the obvious candidates to put in a bid, reach out to the community being developed at www.digitalmentor.org through a blog post by the Managing Director of UKOC, Helen Milner. This is great news – rather than use their own website to push out messages, UKOC are going where the people are to enable collaboration on their bid. Helen wrote:
We all obviously share a passion to ensure that the digital mentor programme is a success, and that it embraces the best of community development and technological innovation. I’m keen to discuss ideas for the programme here on this blog so that we can use open innovation principles to develop a bid together.
Do come to the blog, the wiki and the email list and help out in any way you can.
David Wilcox as ever has his finger on the pulse, and has produced an excellent summary post over at Social Reporter, including pointing out the exciting news that Ruralnet are also keen to be involved. He writes:
UK Online Centres have the local presence, experience and capacity to head up a bid, so I hope they are willing to do that. Ruralnet also have a strong track record through their work with Net:Gain and DirectSupport. Together with independent trainers, consultants and activists we can put together a strong core team, with an oppen invitation to others to join.
There seems to be some real coming together over this: an acknowledgement that a) no single organisation or individual has all the right answers to meet this challenge; and b) that this is too important a project to be allowed to go wrong.
By working together, we can make sure this succeeds.
Stuff I have bookmarked for October 30th through November 6th:
Sorry for the light blogging of late, but I have been jolly busy of late, not least with moving house. I’m now resident in Cottenham, near Cambridge. Do come and say hello if you are ever nearby.
Here’s a couple of morsels to chew on before I can get back in the blogging swing of things: