An online notebook
Get posts sent to your inbox:
An online notebook
Why do so many councils have such a poor online presence? I’ve written before about some of the missed opportunities, such as here, but for me the puzzle is as much “what should a council do?” as “why don’t more…
Tim Davies has posted an excellent response to my post on the myths of engaging with everyone. Recommended reading, and a great example of the quality of debate and content using blogging as a conversational medium (well, on Tim’s side,…
When I talk to people about the possibilities of engaging with people online, using social technology, I often get questioned about the numbers issue. Stuff like: How many people in our area actually use Twitter? What about people who don’t…
One of the things I like about Google is the number of blogs they have, used by many of the teams at the company to document their work and share some good stuff. Here are some of the ones I…
I attended the session by Liz Azyan and Simon Hume at Socitm09 on social media – which was ostensibly about the blocking of social networking sites in the workplace but which was also a general discussion around the benefits of…
Just a quick post as I am on my phone, but I am waiting at my gate at Stansted so I can get on a plane to Edinburgh, for the Socitm conference. I’m not speaking, which will mean I get…
To carry on the culture theme, I’ve recently been reading 37 Signals‘ book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application. For those that don’t know, 37 Signals are the guys behind simple but useful…
I had an enjoyable time on Thursday of this week, with the rest of the Learning Pool crew, customers and friends, at the Learning Pool networking event / third birthday party. Some good pals were there, and I got to…
The Knowledge Hub is a terrifically ambitious project being run by IDeA, in partnership with CLG, to bring knowledge and information sharing to the local government sector. A mixture of technology and capacity building, the aim is to alter the…
I had an enjoyable morning today with a bunch of local government communicators, at an LGC organised conference. It was also a great opportunity to catch up with my buddies Carl, Dominic and Simon. Here are my slides, where I…
There has been a great response to the What makes for a decent council website? experiment. Here’s the top 5 at the end of the first day: Plain english – Jargon and acronyms should be kept to the absolute minimum,…
After the kerfuffle over the Birmingham City Council website, as expertly documented by Paul Canning, there has been a considerable amount of discussion about what a Council website should look like, and what it should actually do. This isn’t just…
I’ve got a few speaking engagements coming up, as well as other events that look like fun… 1. Developing Public Sector Communications through Social Media, 15th September, London This is an LGC event, spending the whole day talking about how…
Brighton and Hove City Council are advertising for a Social Media Officer! You are a Facebook pro, the fastest Twitter tweeter on the planet? Do you love nothing more but connecting with folks online? Are you one step ahead of…
There was all sorts of excitement yesterday with the news that yet another Council has reacted to the fact that some of their staff spend some of their time using social networks. This from Arun on LocalGov.co.uk: Staff at Portsmouth…
After a break of a week, the guest posts are back! This time it’s Mark Pack, who has written a handy guide for councillors on how to get to grips with the net. It is pretty rare these days to…
Dom Campbell of FutureGov has blogged about the start of a new project around how the web can help improve and innovate in children’s services. This project will kick off with a get together of interested folk: To start off…
LocalGovCamb is the latest regional LocalGovCamp to be arranged. I’m helping put this together with Michele Ide-Smith. There are hardly any details, really. December this year or January 2010. Somewhere in Cambridge. Theme will be local government innovation. While the…
Learning Pool are running a free breakfast meeting for local authorities in the East and West Midlands. This meeting will give you the chance to see and hear what your neighboring local authorities are doing with E-Learning, hear how you…
Those who attended, or would have liked to have done, the Google event last week might be interested in a new group we have set up: To talk about how local government can use Google tools. Though this isn’t…