discussion

Formspring

Formspring seems a neat little service.

Formspring

It creates a profile for you on which people can ask questions, either anonymously or by logging in.

Questions don’t become publicly published though until you decide they are worth answering, so there is the possibility for a bit of quality control there.

Also what’s neat is that you can integrate it with a few different social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, so you can ensure people in those spaces get to see your answers.

What’s more, you can grab some embed code so people can submit questions to you from any website or blog.

I can see a potential use for this simple technology for politicians to answer questions in public from citizens. Am sure there are plenty of others too – any ideas?

Here’s my profile. Feel free to try out asking a question on it. I might answer, if you aren’t too rude 😉

Zoho Discussions

You may not have heard of Zoho, but they are one of the leading providers of cloud-based applications on the web. If you are looking for an alternative to the likes of Google Docs, you might not go too far wrong with Zoho.

They have just released a new service, called Discussions which allows you to run internal or external discussion forums, and includes loads of functionality like rating posts, creating idea style forums – a bit like UserVoice or IdeaScale – and a bunch of other stuff.

Well worth looking into, and this video explains more:

LocalGovCamp group

Much planning is afoot for LocalGovCamp, the unconference for local government which is taking place on 20th June in Birmingham. All tickets are technically sold out, but if you are desperate to come, email me.

I took a wander around the venue – Fazeley Studios – last Friday and have to say I am really, really impressed. Plenty of space, light and airy and lots of blank white walls for projectors or post-it notes!

Remember – what is keeping this event free, and ensuring it is happening at all, is the terrific sponsorship we have received from a variety of sources. Check out the supporters page for more information on who is involved.

Anyone wanting local information about where to go and where to stay can find it on Jon Bounds’ excellent post.

To get some more discussions going around various issues at the event – including people putting forward ideas for sessions – I’ve created a Google Group for email based conversations.

All those with a ticket should have received an email invite. If you would like to join in the group – even if you can’t make the event – sign up below. Everyone is welcome. Well, not everyone. But you know what I mean.

Google Groups
Subscribe to LocalGovCamp
Email:

Visit this group

Even if you don’t fancy joining this group, I’ll still be pinging the odd email to the attendees list on Eventbrite and adding updates to the main blog, so don’t worry!

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