directory – Dave Briggs

Daily note for 22 September 2023

“While we are thinking about the future, the present is still happening.” Julian Thompson in his keynote at Service Design in Government. Saw this quote shared a number of times and I love it!

Tass has put together a website for the LocalGov Apps Managers Network using localgov.blog. Awesome! Do join if that’s your thing.

Don’t use QR codes in digital media! Have seen a couple of example recently of organisations putting QR codes in emails or even on websites. I find this bewildering – given most people will be using their phone to read said email or web page, how the hell are they meant to scan it? And why oh why oh why wouldn’t you just use a link?!

QR codes are great for getting people from analogue to digital quickly and easily and without typing anything. But when your user is already on a digital channel, it’s a completely unnecessary and user-hostile step.

Creating one directory to rule them all! – Fab stuff from Adele at West Northants.

Bookmarks for March 8th through March 13th

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

Roundup: Social Media Monitoring Tools – WebWorkerDaily – Useful list of dashboard-like monitoring tools.
It is not about our App, It is about the User’s Data and Context | Zoho Blogs – “…whichever app the user happens to be, it pulls relevant information from other apps, and displays it in the right context”
Google Apps Marketplace – “The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps.”
Google Reader – Play – “elcome to Google Reader Play, a fun, fast way to browse the most interesting stuff on the web, personalized just for you. We’ll keep track of the things you star, like, or share, and we’ll show you more stuff you’ll like the next time you use Reader Play.”
Plan for Welsh councils to work together collapses – “Local government reorganisation which cuts the number of councils is the only realistic option.”
Crown Copyright switches to Creative Commons – Information World Review – “Click-Use, the licence that for the last decade has authorised anyone to reuse government and Parliamentary information, is to be phased out by May.”
Google – public data – “The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.”
Steve Bridger › Putting your people at the heart of your social media strategy – “This was the title of a talk I gave at the end of February and I think it is important, and frankly, worth repeating over and over.”
Social Media Resources – The Altimeter – Useful wiki, full of lots of social media goodness.
publicSIRO – Public Sector Information Security News – New blog from Ian Cuddy cataloging public sector data losses.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Communicosm

A short while ago, I wrote a little piece about a possible idea to enter into the Building Democracy competition, which was to create a social ‘directory’ of online community groups. I put directory in inverted comments because that isn’t really what it is, but I could think of a better word. Anyway, I’ve come up with a working title for the project: Communicosm – it’s like a microcosm of communities. Or something. I dunno.

Anyway, for the Building Democracy site, I need to answer some questions about the project. Here’s my draft responses, which will hopefully give more detail on how this thing might just work. Once again, all feedback gratefully received! I need to get this up on the site next week really, so chop chop people.

What is your idea’s name?

Communicosm.

A short description of your idea (in twenty words or less)

A socially generated directory of online communities, tagged by areas of interest, that organisations can use to find people to talk to. (This is 22 words. Dammit.)

Describe your idea. What will you do?

Create a wiki based site which will contain details of online communities, which organisations such as central and local government can use to find the people they need to get in touch with for consultations, etc. Each community will have a page describing it and its interests, with tags describing it with keywords, which can then be used by organisations to find the right communities quickly whether through a search engine or a tag cloud. Time will be spent at the beginning researching and finding communities and adding them to the site so that when it launches, it is full of content for people to get their teeth into. After this initial burst of activity, it will be a community generated job. Further additions to functionality might be for people to make lists of communities that they have found on the site, which can be emailed to them or shared on the site.

What will the benefits be?

The site will save time for those searching for groups to contact and engage with. Searching online for communities is a time consuming business, not least because some human research element is required to judge activity levels and how relevant the community is to a project.

Who will you target?

Online community groups will be targetted and encouraged to add themselves to the site. Non-online community group could also be added, though if they have no online presence this could be tricky. It will also be publicised amongst government and other organisations to encourage use.

Is your idea linked to a particular town or region? If so, where?

No, it’s a national thing. A local version already kind of exists with GroupsNearYou.

What kind of assistance would you like from others?

Help in identifying, adding and tagging communities on the site once up and running. Encouragement of organisations to make use of the site’s content.

My Building Democracy idea

I just had a request from someone asking what the best community sites are for a certain – fairly specific – group of people. A little digging, partly Google, partly ‘I know I’ve seen something like this somewhere…’, soon produced some good results. I emailed them off and my contact was a happy chappy (hopefully).

This set me off thinking, that some kind of online resource for government, both central and local, and other organisations, could use to identify where the places are that people are talking about certain topics. It could be community maintained and updated, but would need some seriously work in the first place to firstly identify key target groups that would be good places to start, and secondly do the grunt work to track down the most popular communities and forums, and then list them on the site.

A further development could then be to add other communities which aren’t necessarily online based – though if they have no web presence at all, that might be tricky.

So, some time is required to get it up and running, which if I were to do it (and why not?) I’d probably like to be paid for. Which made me think of Building Democracy, the competition to identify projects which help ‘stimulate public discussion’. I reckon this idea suits that remit pretty well. I need to do some maths around how much time it would take to scope and do the initial work, but I doubt it will use up very much of the available £150,000 at all.

Before I post it up to the site, though, I’d like some initial feedback:

Is it a good idea?
Does something like this already exist?
Can you see any problems at this early stage of the idea’s development?

Any thoughts welcomed! Oh, and please don’t steal my idea!