Monday, 22 September, 2008

Building networks in Twitter

Neil Williams has a nice post about the way he has built up his network using Twitter:

Twitter, the micro-blogging site to rule them all, has introduced me to more relevant contacts more quickly than any other web 2.0 tool. Or other human being for that matter.

Some people just don’t like Twitter, and that’s fair enough, although I think that much of the time it’s more that they don’t like the way some people use it. One example of terrific use of it, though, comes from local government, of all places.

Quite a few local authorities have Twitter feeds now, as an extra channel of communication between the council and the folk who live in the area. OK, so there are unlikely to be that many Twitter users in each authority’s locality, but as an add-on bit of comms stuff, it’s pretty cool.

However, quite a few of the web teams behind these feeds have set up extra ones, which represent just the webbies themselves. So, not a feed with information about council, but actualy with news of what the web guys are doing and which they use to talk ides through with others. These feeds are seeing a considerable amount of activity and are increasing the interactions between these teams to an extent which I really don’t think happened before.

What’s even better though is the fact that others are being drawn into these conversations as well – it being Twitter, this is no walled garden. So when one local gov web team asks what people think about some of the stuff they are doing, they get responses from not just other local authority folk but also feedback from people like me, who might have a different perspective on things.

It’s a great example of the use that these social networks can bring, as long as you approach them in an open, and collaborative way, of course.

The local gov web team twitter feeds are:

  • http://twitter.com/sdcwebteam
  • http://twitter.com/shcinternetteam
  • http://twitter.com/SBCDevTeam

Have I missed any?

#Building networks in Twitter

Sunday, 21 September, 2008

Public sector bloggers: the OPML

I have made another quick addition to Public Sector Bloggers, with the availability of an OPML file to download. Rather than subscribe to the combined feed, you can instead import each individual feed into your RSS aggregator in one go.

To do this, first right-click the link and choose whatever your browser offers as a term for downloading the file to your computer. If in doubt, left click the link, then when you are confronted with what looks like a page of code, choose ‘Save Page As’ (or similar) from your browsers’ file menu. Do remember where you saved it!

Next go into your aggregator and choose to import the file to add to your feeds. This will differ depending on which one you use. I’ve found some handy help files online:

If you need any help, yell in the comments, or email me.

#Public sector bloggers: the OPML

Barcamp London 5 : the spillover

Next weekend is a busy one for webheads in London. Not only is it UKYouthOnline (which I am attending) but also Barcamp London 5 is happening. Sadly, that’s all booked up. But never fear! Harry Metcalfe is organising a spillover event for those that couldn’t get themselves on the original Barcamp list.

The wiki states:

BarcampLondon5 is full. Lots of people who wanted to go couldn’t get tickets. We figured: why not have our own, extra, mini-barcamp? The British Computer Society kindly volunteered to host, so it’s on: we’ll have a one-day barcamp on the Saturday (27th).

So, if you want some barcampy action in London that day, you’ve still got a chance. And if Harry has anything to do with it, it’ll probably be better than the ‘proper’ one. Book yourself a spot here.

#Barcamp London 5 : the spillover

Public Sector Bloggers Update

I’ve been putting a bit of work in updating the Public Sector Bloggers site, which aggregates a load of feeds from folk in the public sector who blog (duh…) in one place. The website gives a quick overview on the latest additions, or you can subscribe to a combined RSS feed or by email.

One thing I have changed is how the feed is generated. Before, I used Yahoo! Pipes to merge them all, which was a bit of pain in the neck. So I have now gone for a much easier way, which is to organise all the feeds in my Google Reader into a specific folder, and made that folder public, meaning it produces an RSS feed. I then use that feed to drive the site. Now to add a new feed, I just need to subscribe to it myself, and whack it into the right folder. Easy.

When I mentioned it last time, I had quite a few suggestions for additional feeds to add to the service. I’ve added quite a few more, so the list now looks like this:

Again, if I have missed anyone obvious out, please do let me know.

#Public Sector Bloggers Update

Saturday, 20 September, 2008

Thursday, 18 September, 2008

The importance of community management

One of the great arguments in favour of employing social web tools is the fact that they are pretty quick, and usually cheap, to put together. However, that’s not taking into account the other costs, one of which is managing the community created by such sites.

This entails a number of things: welcoming new people, seeding some discussions, encouraging people to get involved. At the bare minimum it should consist of moderating content, getting rid of the rude, the crude and the jibberish. You simply have to allow for time to do this. Otherwise you end up with problems like those that Jamie Oliver, everyone’s favourite fat-tongued foodie, seems to be having.

Does this sort of thing actually present anyone in a good light?!

#The importance of community management

Meatball Sundae

I’m working my way through my dead tree reading list, and right now I’m burning through Seth Godin‘s Meatball Sundae. It’s terrific stuff.

Here’s one nugget from early on in the book -a list of ‘the foundations of new marketing’. It works for stuff other than marketing, though, I reckon, and might serve as a useful way of describing what worldview 2.0 might be:

  • Direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers
  • Amplification of the voice of the consumer and independent authorities
  • The need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases
  • Extremely short attention spans due to clutter
  • The Long Tail
  • Outsourcing
  • Google and the dicing of everything
  • Infinite channels of communication
  • Direct communication and commerce between consumers and consumers
  • The shifts in scarcity and abundance
  • The triumph of big ideas
  • The shift from ‘how many’ to ‘who’
  • New gatekeepers, no gatekeepers

I wonder how many of these things can be applied to government and the governed, rather than producers and consumers?

#Meatball Sundae

Wednesday, 17 September, 2008

ReadWriteGov Update

Bookings are flying in for ReadWriteGov, the social media shindig I am organising along with Fran Paterson, which will be held at Peterborough City Council on 29th October.

Responding to a bit of feedback I have received, I have added an option to pay the (miniscule) cost of the tickets by requesting an invoice, which should make it easier for some folk to come along. So now nobody has an excuse!

#ReadWriteGov Update

Tuesday, 16 September, 2008

10 Social Media Steps

10 Social Media Steps is a guide to how people with very little experience get get engaged with social web tools. Taking in a whole range of different services, from social networks to photos sharing to social bookmarking and blogging, I’ll be introducing each tool in an easy-to-understand way, using as many different types of media as possible. It’ll be fun!

The steps will be as follows:

  1. Join a social network
  2. Subscribe to some RSS feeds
  3. Bookmark stuff socially
  4. Share some photos
  5. Use online video
  6. Start blogging
  7. Stream your thoughts
  8. Aggregate your life
  9. Collaborate on the web
  10. Meet some people

If you want to follow the 10 steps, or (even better) pass them on to people who might get the most benefit, then just point your browser towards here, which will present all the posts.

So, I think that is probably that for this introductory post. You could always amuse yourself watching this video from Common Craft explaining what social media is all about:

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#10 Social Media Steps

Monday, 15 September, 2008

Teacamping this Thursday

Teacamps are the bi-weekly get togethers of people interested in government and the web, which emerged from January’s Barcamp.

I don’t get along nearly as often as I would like – something that will hopefully change now I have a bit more control over my time – but I will be heading down to the House of Fraser cafe on Victoria Street this Thursday. Hope to see plenty of folk there!

#Teacamping this Thursday

Sunday, 14 September, 2008

Software Freedom Day

Next Saturday (September 20th) is Software Freedom Day:

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere!

There are various get togethers happening around the world to celebrate – here are all the UK ones. If you’d like to know more about free software, this video from Stephen Fry is a pretty nice start:

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Other things you might like to do include tracking down your local Linux User Group – who can help and advise you on any issues you are having – and actually installing some open source software on your computer. Here’s some quick suggestions:

How else could you support or celebrate software freedom day?

#Software Freedom Day

Saturday, 13 September, 2008

Sticky posts in WordPress

Recently it was announced over at WordPress.com that a new feature had arrived – the ability to have ‘sticky’ posts on your blog homepage.

Regular updates are what blogging’s all about, but sometimes you want to keep hot topics or other static info at the top of your posts. This feature has existed as Sticky Topics in the forums, but hasn’t been available on blogs. Until now.

These are posts that exist outside the normal chronology of your blogging, and stay at the top no matter what.

There are a number of uses this feature could be put to – from introducing your blog to new readers, to highlighting important information to your readers.

However, people who manage their own WordPress installs needn’t be dismayed as there is a plugin which provides this functionality to self hosted blogs, which you can find here, courtesy of Lester Chan.

#Sticky posts in WordPress

Bookmarks for September 12th

Stuff I have bookmarked for September 12th:

#Bookmarks for September 12th

Friday, 12 September, 2008

Re-order posts in WordPress

One of the features of a blog is that the posts appear in reverse-chronological order – that is to say, with the latest content first. But there are times when that might not always be appropriate. Let me give you an example.

I’m planning a series of blog posts on a certain topic. Current subscribers and regular readers will spot them as they come in, but what about comers to the party? One way of grouping all the posts would of course be to stick them all in the same category. But all the posts will be displayed in traditional reverse-chronological order, meaning folk have to work their way from the end to the beginning, or dig around for the first post in the set.

There is a way around this though, which can be achieved by fiddling around with the URLs you use. Let’s take the posts on DavePress within the blogging category as an example. The traditional view of the posts can be found at http://davepress.net/category/blogging/ which has the latest at the top. Compare that with the results of http://davepress.net/category/blogging/?order=asc (note the ?order=asc at the end). This view of the posts put them in chronological order, starting at the beginning.

You can apply this to any view of your posts, including the home page, and tag and author views. There are other options too, including sorting posts or pages alphabetically. If you really wanted to, you could also incorporate it into your theme, making such presentation an integrated part of your blog.

I’ll be using it to help promote the blog series I’m planning. By circulating the URL including the extra bit to reverse the post order, people will be able to find themselves at the beginning and work their way through without excessive scrolling just to get started.

Am sure there are other uses this could be put to – any thoughts?

#Re-order posts in WordPress