web 2.0

The web and safeguarding – a new project

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 with, we are looking to bring together multi-disciplinary senior manager and practitioners, from childrens social services, to teachers, police and health workers, with social web technologist, public service designer, funders – or even just people who have a personal passion for this area – to help us design and run a small Safeguarding 2.0 pilot. Nothing big in the first instance, more a proof of concept if you like, but with the potential to transform the way in which professionals and non-professionals alike might better share information and form the kinds of relationships that might prevent future tragedies.

This seems a great project, and if you’re interested in this area, I would strongly recommend attending the round table event. More details embedded below:

Fresh ideas for tomorrow’s people

I had the good fortune to finally meet Mary McKenna at the PSF event last week. Mary is the MD of Learning Pool, e-learning providers at large to the public sector. She is also on Twitter, and therefore must be a good egg.

Mary and her team have been jolly supportive of LocalGovCamp, and a delegation from Northern Ireland will be making their way to Birmingham next month. I therefore thought it only reasonable to point DavePressers to Learning Pool’s own event, which takes place later on this month.

Called Fresh ideas for tomorrow’s people, the event promises to

benefit smart organisations who want to find out how to use new media to create efficiencies and service improvements.

Having a well trained and motivated workforce is the key for the future. This interactive, fun and unstuffy conference featuring speakers, interactive showcases and masterclasses exploring new media, will generate practical ideas to help make this happen.

You can find out more on Learning Pool’s blog, and book your place on the event page.

Disposable online chat

TinyChat is a really cool new service that lets you create simple chatrooms on the fly within your browser.

Why is this useful? Well, say you want to get a bunch of people together for a chat, but you don’t know what technology they all have available. Some are on Skype, some not; some are IRC fans, others not; some have access to internet instant messaging, but not all.

Tony chat uses a really simple web interface to allow you to create your chatroom with a couple of clicks. You can then send the URL to the people you want involved, and you’re away.

Afterwards, your room and its contents disappear, so it really is disposable! It might be an idea for someone to copy and paste the contents of the chat before closing it down in case you want a record.

Another cool feature is to assign your Twitter account to your idenitity within your chat and which pings your followers with a link to the chatroom you have just created.

I like the idea of having impromptu online discussions using this, inviting people in via Twitter, to discuss an issue in a more ‘live’ environment that Twitter normally allows.

What other applications can you think of for TinyChat?

New media for a new generation

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!

ReadWriteGov is this Wednesday!

This Wednesday sees the first of hopefully many ReadWriteGov events taking place at Peterborough City Council.

It’s going to be a great day, with some excellent speakers, all of whom are working within the public sector trying to get things done. They are:

  • Dominic Campbell who will be speaking about the work Barnet Council are doing to better connect with their citizens
  • Steph Gray from DIUS who will be talking about making social media projects happen in government
  • Hadley Beeman from the London Deanery who will be discussing her project to get social networking and collaboration happening in the health sector

If you would like to come, there are still one or two places available – find out more here. Tickets are jolly cheap for this sort of thing, at just £25 for public sector folk.

Even if you can’t make it though, you can still receive some ReadWriteGov love. For instance, you can visit the blog, where after the event we will be posting content from the day, including presentations from speakers, audio, photos and maybe some video too.

We also now have a Twitter account, through which you can hear about what is happening and pass comments or ask questions during the day. Unlike a lot of events that offer this kind of thing, I really will be tracking what people are saying and making sure the less offensive questions get asked!

Just follow @readwritegov to join in!

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