Public Sector Blogs

Just published: Social Media – Youth Participation in Local Democracy

2009-11-09T21:55:12Z

[Summary: Introductory guide on youth participation with social media now available]

One of the curious things I’ve discovered in seeking to equip practitioners to engage with social technology is that, the more I explore about digital media, the more I end up creating printed resources, or at least, resources based on a book/handbook structure.

That’s the case with a new resource that was published today by the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) that is the product of learning from the Network Participation action learning set I co-facilitated earlier this year.

Drawing on theory and case studies explored during that action learning set, ‘Social Media – Youth Participation in Local Democracy‘ is designed to step through some of the issues that practitioners need to consider in exploring the use of social networks and social media in youth participation.

It’s available to order from the LGIU Website, and for online purchase via Central Books.

(P.S. If you’re interested in more practical resources to support youth engagement and youth work uses of digital technology – keep your eyes open, as I’m in the midst of working on a new toolkit hopefully ready early in the New Year…)

Don’t Just Buy. Do. Reflections on Fair Trade Futures

2009-11-09T21:30:12Z

[Summary: Reconnecting Fairtrade with activism, thinking about Fairtrade and data, and how social reporting can transform events]

The Fair Trade Futures conference that took place in Oxford on Saturday has been well reported and captured, but, before I head over to start tidying up and re-posting the fantastic content created by Amplified on the main Oxford Fairtrade website, I thought I would add just a few quick reflections on the day.

Don’t just buy. Do.
As inscribed upon a banana by @oxfordsing, this ’slogan’ captures the tension at the heart of the Fairtrade movement right now, and a thread running throughout the day. As Fairtrade reaches the mainstream, the connection between Fairtrade and activism, and the importance of linking Fairtrade with Trade Justice can become dilluted. Fairtrade is about building ethics into purchasing decisions, but, it’s also about building ethics and justice into trading relationships. That was a point made well by People Tree founder Safia Minney who spoke of how we need to push companies to respect principles of Fairtrade throughout the production process, not just in the inputs they buy.

The challenge, for the Fairtrade movement, is being in the mainstream, being a set of standards, but also being the first step for people on a pathway to engagement with wider global issues.

Data, data everywhere
I spent a lot of the day in conversations about the digital dimensions of Fairtrade. After a morning including presentations from Dorothea and Ian of the Fair Tracing project, and inputs from Steve Bridger and Pete Cranson on social media and Fair Trade, we spent one of the afternoon open space sessions talking about ‘Fair Trade 2.0′.

Asides from discussions about how social media could lead to greater disinter-mediation of supply chains, we also discussed the transformation of trade as being ‘trade in stuff’, to being ‘trade in stuff + data’. That is, the move, led by retail giants like Wall Mart, to enable every individual product in a supply chain to be tracked from origin to consumption, with vast collections of data on products and customers collected and created. How does Fairtrade, which is in one sense, a very simple bit of data for consumers about the conditions in which a product was made, engage with this environment?

As firms may be compelled to collect more data on each product, to come into line with safety regulation, how can we ensure ethical information is embedded alongside the other data that may follow a product on it’s journey? And how can that information be made meaningful and useful to time-pressured shoppers? Are ethical criteria needed to account for fair trading in the data that might travel with a product – so it does not become a source of commercial exploitation? And can the rise of a data-rich supply chain be subverted in the cause of ethics?

Amanda Gore, who was blogging with the Amplified team, has further notes on the discussions here. This was a session full of questions – but one raising issues I’m sure will be cropping up more in discussions of Fair Trade in future.

Amplified Events
There were quite a few experiments going on with the Fair Trade Futures conference. It was the first time many of the organising team had experienced any Open Space sessions, and for most delegates, the first time they had been at an event being actively digital reported.

I was a little nervous about the digital reporting – as I’ve seen it work well at technology events, and in youth events, but I’ve not experienced digital / social reporting in action with a community for whom social media is not part of the everyday. Yet it worked fantastically. And by the end of the day, many delegates were won over to the potential of social media to help capture, curate and continue conversations started at an in person event.

There is still much to learn about how best to use social reporting to catalyse online community (for example, I would love to work out how best to equip delegates new to social media to try their own blogging and twittering from sessions, without spending too much time training them up, or distracting them from participation in face-to-face discussions), but the team from Amplified certainly demonstrated that we need to be adding digital dimensions to many more events outside the social media mainstream.

(Co-incidentally, Amplified are currently setting up as a non-profit, able to marshal teams of digital reporters to all manor of events, so if you’ve got projects and events coming up that could do with an online edge, I would certainly recommend getting in touch with the Amplified team.)

Where next…
Fair Trade Futures was the follow on event from a Fair Trade conference held in Oxford five years ago. I have a feeling it may not be quite so long before the next events are held here – and I would love to see an event taking place soon dedicated to the digital dimensions of Fair Trade. No plans yet… but if you might be interested, do get in touch…

Stuff I’ve seen November 7th through to November 9th

2009-11-09T16:00:37Z

These are my links for November 7th through November 9th:

October Wrap-Up « Blog « WordPress.com – Last month 467,107 new blogs were created on wordpress.com. For more mind numbing statistics click on the link.
Let me take you by the hand… « Beanbags and Bullsh!t – Really intersting thoughts on social enterprise: "Whether or not their activities are described as ‘trading’ for tax purposes, it’s hard to see how those social enterprises that just provide an outsourced public service in a specific area – and would go bust if the council (or other agency) cut their biggest contract – are businesses in any meaningful sense. Either way, Curley’s point is that these kinds of organisations – that make up a worrying large chunk of the social enterprise sector – are not sustainable unless state funders choose to sustain them."
Center for Media Justice : Grassroots groups speak up for Net Neutrality – Interesting campaign in the USA to support net neutrality on the basis that a controlled network will discriminate on race ground – and I presume also on the grounds of wealth.
What do you think about the way that technology can empower young people? | The Youth of Today – "The Youth of Today programme is conducting a survey of 13-25 year olds around the world to better understand how young people use information and communication technologies (ICTs). We are conducting the survey as part of our work on a publication on the subject (coming March 2010)."
The Future of Politics is Mutual « SoloBassSteve.com: Shiny Happy People Blogging… – We now live in a world where we construct our own media consumption, where we pull together, build our own stories. Politics and the mainstream media are clinging on to old methods of distribution and delivery.
UNB Student Union | Blog | Our Dirty Linen, Part 1: Communications – I will be working with some student unons this montha dn found this wonderful idea – admitting fault: "Welcome to Part 1 of a blog series that we’ll be calling “Our Dirty Linen.” The idea is simple: we admit to areas we haven’t been doing so well in in the past, we talk about some of the ideas we have for moving forward, and you give us feedback to guide this process."
Campaign for better connectivity on trains « John Popham’s Random Musings – Yes

Barcode Posters – the second coming

2009-11-09T17:11:11Z

With all this talk of data, and online, we can often lose sight of the real, physical world (as a certified iPhone addict, I know I do – there’s been a few times I’ve almost walked into a lampost due to me paying more attention to my phone than what’s going on in front of [...]

Guest post - UK homeworkers left increasingly unsupported

2009-11-09T15:05:35Z

Joe Turner is Director of the Freedom Clothing Project

Government believes there may be 70,000 homeworkers in the UK earning below the minimum wage. That is 70,000 people, primarily women, who are so exploited by bad employers that they continue working on poverty rates, hidden behind their own front doors.

Ministers have said to me that the women can complain about their pay, but this totally misunderstands the situation they find themselves in. The women need the money, to complain would to blacklist themselves from the only source of income that they have. The reality is that the government would prefer to allow these people to fend alone rather than support services that actually fight on their behalf.

Last year the National Group on Homeworking, the only UK group focussing on the issue of UK homeworkers, closed. The government said it had no interest in continuing to fund their work and instead set up a phone helpline.

What remained was an inadequate and scattered network of services. One of the few remaining dedicated council workers now finds her role under threat. When I went to visit Tanzeem Mahmood in Rochdale, she took me to meet the group of homeworkers she supports. Acting as a part translator, part social worker, part friend, Tanzeem helps the women to read and fill in official forms, listens and collects information about bad employers and tries to do as much as her 3 days-a-week job will allow.

In December, Rochdale Council is planning to end the post in a cost-cutting exercise leaving some of the most exploited workers in the area entirely alone. Clearly the weakest matter little to the accountants in Rochdale, even though the service must cost a tiny fraction of their total budget.

What you can do:

Educate yourself on the issue of UK homeworking. Write to your local politicians to ask why there are so few services and little knowledge about this neglected group of women. It is an issue that rarely hits the headlines, but last year the BBC completed a brief report here.

If you live in the greater Manchester area, write to your local media asking them to urgently take up the issue of Rochdale’s homeworker service

Write to the managers at Rochdale Council expressing your disgust at the loss of this service supporting some of their most vulnerable residents. Write to:

Paul Young
Head of Service
Customers and Communication Service
Homeworking Service
PO Box 39
Municipal Offices
Smith Street
Rochdale
OL16 1LQ

Can I have a new website?

2009-11-09T13:58:32Z

If you work in a digital team in a big organisation you'll be familiar with this scenario:

Someone you haven't met before phones you and says something like:

"I'm working on [insert strategy/product/policy/event]. We'll need a website. How do we get one?"

You're instant reaction might be "No chance. How about using the extensive web presence we've already got?" but you don't say it quite like that. You say something like: "That's interesting. Tell me what it is you want to achieve?"

How do you turn this scenario into an outcome that satisfies everyone? It's not something we've always got right in the Foreign Office in the past. Here are some ideas:

1. Have a coherent online strategy

You need to do this before you receive the phone call. But if you don't have a positive vision for how you intend to use the web as an organisation, you're not going to be able to convince anyone to follow your advice.

So set it down. And make sure it's ambitious.

If you work in UK government, the Transformational Government website rationalisation programme actually makes it pretty hard to set up new government websites. But you need to offer your excited policy team more constructive reasons to follow your advice than saying "the Cabinet Office won't let you".

In the Foreign Office our digital strategy, policy and guidance is all published on our digital diplomacy website. This includes our vision for digital engagement and outreach into other spaces, as well as explaining how we benefit from a single web domain for all our official sites.

2. Don't say no

It's likely the people that want new websites are exactly the people you want to be working closely with - finding people who have ambitious ideas about how they might use an online presence should be a blessing for any digital team.

And maybe their definition of "website" is actually compatible with your vision of an integrated online presence.

So find out what it is they want to achieve. They might present a compelling case. You might be able to offer them something much better. But you need to work with them - saying no isn't a good way to start.

3. Demonstrate what you can offer

In the Foreign Office our web platform is home to 255 official sites in 40 languages. And we've delivered effective digital campaigns that mainly make use of online spaces that other people run. We've thought very carefully how to present the work of the office online. So we can usually demonstrate what can be done by showing what we've done already.

So for example, we have already thought about how to present foreign policy campaigns and big cross government campaigns, partnerships with NGOs, and policy engagement on subjects that aren't really campaigns, and content about the UK and one other country, and content about multilateral organisations. We have plenty of good precedents, and we have case studies, evaluation reports and a whole bunch of people we've worked closely with in the past to draw on.

4. Share your methods

However good your internal comms, it's likely that a lot of people in your organisation don't really understand what the digital team actually does.

In the Foreign Office we spend a lot of time explaining what we mean by "digital diplomacy". We know that staff don't understand what a digital campaign manager does in the same way that they understand what a press officer does.

So you may need to demonstrate what your team actually offers. For us that means talking through our digital diplomacy method (listen, publish, engage, evaluate), offering to run workshops for policy teams, and demonstrating what we've done for other teams or campaigns.

5. Offer to help them produce a wider digital strategy

Sometimes people think they need a website, but actually just need some help thinking through how they might use the web to meet their objectives. Sometimes a request for a new website might turn into an online marketing strategy, or a blog, or a set of digital partnerships.

As a digital team you should be able to offer them something better than they imagined. By combining their enthusiasm to do something and your expertise you'll be well on the way to doing brilliant work.

You can help them to work through this by developing a comprehensive digital strategy for their project. It doesn't need to be long. We use a set of 5 headings for our digital campaign strategies: Context, Objectives, Audience, Activity, Evaluation. 1 side of A4 is usually enough.

6. Be realistic about resources

The person making the request for a new website might not have considered the resources it takes to maintain it.

And you might find that by sharing all this expertise and good practice, you end up with a long list of tasks to deliver yourself. You might be very happy with this, but if you have other priorities you'll need to decide how you're going to deliver them all.

You don't need to take all the actions yourself. Some campaigns will need full time staff to deliver them - if you want to run an online community then you'll probably need to recruit a full time community manager. If you want to update web content every day, then you probably need to train some new devolved editors. If you're recommending personal digital outreach or blogs then you need to be clear about they time it will take for staff to carry this out.

Digital engagement often comes with no technology cost. We often run big ambitious digital campaigns in the Foreign Office without spending any money on technology. The main resource is usually staff time, and you shouldn't underestimate the amount of time it takes to deliver successful digital campaigns.

7. Set up a new website

If you're done all of this and you conclude that it's the right thing to do, then you should set up a new website. That's exactly what we did for our London Summit campaign, and it's kind of what we're about to do with our cross government Afghanistan content, although both sites make use of existing platforms and are part of wider engagement strategies.

So there you go. A 7 point plan to avoid your heart sinking at the moment that you ought to be delighted by a new opportunity to work on something brilliant. I'd be interested to hear what you do when you take the "new website" call.

links for 2009-11-09

2009-11-09T13:00:54Z

easyCouncil should soon be taking off | Mike Freer - Times Online

(tags: easyborough barnetcouncil localauthority community future pba government uk)
BBC NEWS | UK | Claims of sex abuse by women grow

(tags: sg20 safeguarding2.0 bbc children uk)
MustExist | What Twitter lists say about dominiccampbell?

via @josiefraser

(tags: twitter twitterlists list tagcloud government dominiccampbell)
Connecting People Connecting Places | Swindon Borough Council

(tags: swindon swindoncouncil cpcp localauthority government)
News & Star | News | Cumbria Tourism develops stone skimming game for iPhone

Clever

(tags: cumbria iphone apps tourism)
President Obama and the web « Town Hall Matters

via @sharonodea

(tags: barakobama us participation politics engagement)
toronto.ca | Open

via @autoritas

(tags: toronto canada opendata data government gov20)

European Union – finance

2009-11-09T12:14:54Z

I am writing this blog because I am a member of a House of Lords select committee that has recently published a report on the Future of European Union Financial Regulation and Supervision. We are debating this report tomorrow, TUESDAY, and it brings up some serious questions.

After the financial crisis of the last year, the European Union Commission clearly feels that it should have a say in the Regulation of banks in the 27 countries that are now members of the European Union. They would aim to supervise the limits and terms on which these banks lend their customers money.

I have always been a strong supporter of our membership of the EU. Without it we would, in international affairs, become like a dog that barks but has no teeth.

But I am worried by the EU Commission’s apparent belief that they have the knowledge and experience to stave off further financial crises. I doubt that this is so. Certainly, any measures they take must fit in with initiatives being taken globally, and particularly in the USA and China.

I would like to hear the views of others on this important but difficult subject. It is not a problem that will go away quickly.

Tim Renton

Award winning web team!

2009-11-09T12:38:00Z

Lincolnshire County Council’s Web Team has received a Firmstep Award for Customer Excellence.

The award is in recognition of innovation and commitment in working with Firmstep, who are a leading online forms and bookings solutions platform in the Government sector.

The award comes after LCC together with Firmstep prepare to launch a new Freedom of Information solution, which allows the management of information requests and responses, in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Customers can make new information requests, search through similar requests, and track the progress of their enquiry.

As a result both time and money is saved by reducing duplication of requests, and providing visibility of all requests on the web. Therefore encouraging self-service and in turn making the web the easiest way to make a request.

This is yet another example of how the web team strives to transform services in order to improve service delivery.

Can you help orphans in Wolaita?

2009-11-09T05:16:10Z

I have been contacted through my website by somebody saying:

we are working to save lives orphans in south Ethiopia, Wolaita. but still we don’t have our own website to spread our works and sounds of orphans. please try your best to help us.

I don’t know anything about this organisation but it sounds like a worthy cause. If anyone out there would like to help them to develop a website, please let me know and I’ll pass on the email address.

A debate on immigration

2009-11-09T04:18:52Z

Martin Wolf in the Financial Times says he is calling for “a debate” about immigration but his article is, in truth, a thinly-veiled diatribe against immigration on the grounds that it harms the economy, the environment and society.

The most important step in his argument is the first one. Wolf says:

I, for one, have no difficulty with arguing that immigration is a privilege, not a right. Most people agree.

The assertion that “immigration is a privilege not a right” seems to me to be the wrong starting point. I would begin with an opposite premise that seems to me to be much more basic and compelling: “The burden of proof rests on those who would restrict human freedom.” If someone wants to move from one part of the planet to another, to live and work and raise their family, then we ought to have a very good reason before we set up a system to stop them.

To construct his argument, Martin Wolf wants us to believe both the following claims:

Immigration has a negative impact on the existing population; and
We ought to pay more attention to the interests of the existing population than the interests of the migrants.

On the first leg of this argument, Martin Wolf (under the guise of “calling for a debate”) claims that immigration is harmful to the economy, environment and society of the existing population. As it happens, I don’t agree with any of this, though since that is not the point I want to focus on, I shall restrict myself to pointing to the economic and social success of countries that have been open to large-scale immigration. But while I think the first leg of the argument is wrong, it is the second leg of the argument that I most want to challenge.

I doubt if anyone would seriously contest the view that even if if immigration causes some harm to the existing population, this harm is in total is far less than the very significant benefits to the migrants themselves. So the case for restricting the freedom of people to live where they choose can only be made if you accept that we should pay more attention to the interests of the existing population than to the interests of the migrants.

There is no question that it is a widely-held view that we should give more weight to the interests of the existing population. For example, Wolf says:

My view is that the interests of the existing citizens are of decisive weight, though we should also place some weight, too, on the interests of immigrants.

Perhaps I was born with faulty wiring, but I simply do not understand this view.

I believe we should give equal weight to the rights and interests of every human being. The idea that the interests of people born in our own country should weigh more in our moral calculus than the interests of people born elsewhere is, in my view, indefensible. To say that we will less attention to the interests of another human because they happen to have been born far away is organised racism, directly comparable with the pass laws under apartheid.

The United States Declaration of Independence asserts:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence does not limit its assertion of equality to people born within a single country. Nor is the pursuit of happiness bounded by national borders created by man. (This is just as well, as in the period following US independence one third of Europe’s population migrated to the Americas.)

Of course, the view that we should give equal weight to the interests of all human beings is unlikely to get very far in political systems designed to represent the interests of the citizens within existing borders. But just because a political system makes it possible to ignore the rights and interests of a group of people who are weakly represented in it does not mean that it is morally right to do so.

My view is that the burden of proof lies with those who would restrict the freedom of people to live anywhere they choose. Such a case would require, at minimum, weighing up the costs and benefits of a restriction to show that we are better off in total if we curtail this freedom. Such a case could only be made by placing more weight on the interests of the existing population than on the interests of other people. I understand that there is a a widely-held view that we should do exactly that, but I nonetheless think it is profoundly wrong. When we weigh up the case for a policy to restrict people’s freedom based on the benefits that such a restriction will bring, we should place equal weight on the rights and interests of all people, and not privilege the interests of some people who happen to be like ourselves. The case for restricting immigration rests on denying the equal humanity of people born abroad. I hope that, over time, we will come to see this with the same moral outrage as we now view slavery and apartheid.

Bookmarks for November 5th through November 8th

2009-11-08T23:00:38Z

Awesomeness off of the internet for November 5th to November 8th:

data.govt.nz – "Today, the Department of Internal Afairs launched data.govt.nz, a beta site where government agencies can register their non-personal data sets for use by members of the public and organizations."
Prefinery: Beta Management Software – "Take the headache out of private beta testing with our fast and simple system." Looks really useful.
GovHack: govt data + hackers + caffeine == good times | Government 2.0 Taskforce – "John Allsopp from Web Directions was an organiser of GovHack, an event sponsored by the Taskforce. It was held on the 30th and 31st of October 2009 to encourage greater use and availability of government data in support of the MashupAustralia contest."
Local Blog impact on Local Democracy: Somerton Town Council | Online Journalism Blog – "Local Bloggers are beginning to produce a few good examples of effective scrutiny of Local Councils. In this piece David Keen, who is a Vicar in Yeovil and writes regularly for my Wardman Wire political site, gives an account of a local controversy in the Somerset town of Somerton, which has lead to a number of resignations from the Town Council."
2 of 3 Feel They Can’t Influence Local Decisions – "Government’s Citizenship Survey results published today reflect some familiar trends but there are also some surprising findings that support new thinking on empowerment, active citizenship and community cohesion."

Leaving the Asylum

2009-11-08T22:27:34Z

I read this post with some sadness, as John is giving his blog a break. He writes book reviews, great pieces about proper books. He says it’s going to be temporary, I hope it will be.

John’s blog is an example of why handing the process of publishing into the hands of everyone is a good idea. Amongst the egos, the idiots and the talentless are the gems like John, who make sifting through all the shit worthwhile.

Without the internet, and without the development of the technology that democratises the power to publish, I would never have bought the books he recommended and my life would have been less rich as a result.

Just another reason why this stuff matters.

Possibly related posts:

Citizen Issues

2009-11-08T20:23:51Z

Having twelve suppliers on Company table V7, dated 25 October 2009, I thought I was just about covered. The list provides a list of applications and their suppliers who provide solutions to measuring citizen satisfaction or even the UK government National Indicator 14 on ‘avoidable contact’.

I have now, by accident, found another approach in the USA entitled ‘Citizen Issues’, which is incidentally free, unless a municipality wants the ‘premium’ edition. The system is provided by CCD Health Systems, which supplies applications for handling root cause analysis and web-based incident reporting.

I’m not sure that it’s much different from some of the UK examples such as Fixmystreet and CommunityFix , but it was their focus on root cause analysis that brought me to them. I find root cause analysis a potentially useful approach to getting the best out of services when collating feedback.

So, I now have Company table V8.

How to write a great web link

2009-11-08T04:00:00Z

A link is a signpost, a promise. If a customer clicks on your link they are spending their time. Don't make them waste it.

President Obama and the web

2009-11-08T20:00:27Z

I’m grateful to my colleague, Ben Unsworth, who gave me a copy of a briefing paper by Chris Quigley of Delib Ltd on how President Obama has been using the web to facilitate a more participative approach to governance.

Chris explains how Open for Questions encouraged citizens to submit questions on line, via text or video, as well as to rate questions submitted by others. President Obama then responded to the top questions via an online town hall meeting held at the White House and streamed live on line. Recovery Dialogue enabled the public to contribute their ideas on how to ensure transparency about the way funds provided through the Recovery Act are spent. As Chris points out the Recovery Dialogue demonstrated a new way of running policy roundtable ideas-sharing events- it enabled 20,000 people to be involved in the policy-making process.

It seems to me that there are a number of things that we can learn from the approach that the Obama administration is taking.

1. the aim is to generate ideas and collaboration. It is about participation not technology. So, to take a current example from UK local government, if we want to encourage e-petitioning it needs to be because it’s an effective form of participation rather than because technology now enables us to do on-line what we’ve done for centuries off-line.

2. the way to do this is by trialing specific projects and learning from them. There are always a lot of unknowns when it comes to participation so piloting different approaches for specific purposes makes sense.

3. if you get this right the rewards in terms of the extent and quality of the participation are high – much higher perhaps than could be achieved through more traditional mechanisms for the money involved.

4. we need to move on from our pre-occupation with surveys – there are other more participative ways of engaging residents in ongoing conversations about the key issues affecting local communities.

The Three Business Opportunities of Social Media/Software

2009-11-08T14:11:20Z

I’ve been attending the Gartner Symposium Event in Cannes this week and my brain has been bombarded with so much information on so many topics and I won’t be using this post to share all I learnt but instead i’ll share some snippets around social media and in particular the Business Use of Social Media/Software.

It wasn’t a surprise to me to hear so much about the benefits of social media at a technology event, but what did surprise me was that there wasn’t many people there who actually used it. There was a symposium tweet-up arranged via twitter for the Wednesday and only 6 people attended - yes i was one of them, so a lot of work to do in terms of awareness and understanding if anyone thinks this stuff will impact the business model. You can follow or catch up on the tweets from the Gartner Symposium events on twitter.

So on that note i thought it would be a good idea to start to bring the issue of business use into some context for people based on a number of Gartner sessions i attended and one in particular facilitated by a very good analyst Ed Thompson, who as it happened gave another excellent presentation on Customer Experience (more to follow on this one in a separate post).

Gartner highlight three separate and logical areas to guide thinking and implementation approaches to these tools and technologies within organisations.

I’m going to share my perspective on these areas:

1) Internal - “your people, your place”
Essentially this area is about looking at the internal opportunities that are there for you. This is an area which I personally feel will deliver great benefits not just around the learning but in supporting a wide range of internal business issues.

It is important to remember that unless your organisation has articulated business issues you will struggle to get buy in or support.
Some potential business issues you might hear which you could link to these tools are as follows: NB this list is an example and is not comprehensive. It also doesn’t imply any particular approach.

- people finder or skills finder (internal staff directory)
- project spaces and business collaboration
- real-time or near real-time internal communications (yes email is an option but that isn’t always collaborative)
- learning communities and peer support groups

2) External – “your people, other people, your place”

The second area that Gartner referred to was external but a platform that was managed by the organisation. An example of this would be where you host a community function for people to discuss and or support each other like a helpdesk community support function. In local government terms this is a challenge as we need to be careful about trying to create communities that we intend to be organic. So the difference here is that we are clear and open about what we would expect such a community to do or what broad outcomes we would expect.
Again some potential business issues you might here to link to would be as follows:

- service improvement function
- service user support community
- shared communities of practice
- project spaces and collaboration with partners and other organisations

3) Public – “your people, other people, their place”

This aspect is the area that to be honest most people focus on, it includes facebook environments, twitter, youtube etc. This is where stuff (for most social media people) get interesting. However this is also where most fear resides and organisations are low in awareness around the possibilities, case studies, return on investment figures. BUT this is where the MOST VALUE will be gained to all.

Again some possible business issues (not comprehensive) you might come across which could be linked into these solutions or approaches – however i stress and i say this all the time now. Don’t focus on a single technology, do your homework, work out what will actually deliver the value in any given circumstance.

- connecting and engaging with communities
- civic debate and discussion
- trend spotting, listening to the social web community or as Gartner refer to it “the collective” can provide insights into what might be the next big opportunity or next big issue developing.
- people to people connections
- building relationships

All of the above requires a different viewpoint on the traditional way of looking at things. The social space is ALL about the relationships between people and the benefits that spin-off from those interactions. We are now moving into a more focused look at people to people relationships (P2P) – In these difficult times, the potential to interact with people becomes even more important, for all of the issues i have given as examples.

What is interesting about this is that it has always been about P2P but dressed up and disguised as business to business or business to consumer – what drives those agenda = People.

The challenge for anyone wanting to explore the world of social media and social software is to learn more about how people interact and the connections and networks people have. I for one am very excited by this prospect and look forward to learning more over the coming months and years.

Posted in Collaboration, Communication, Community Engagement, engagement, Events, Knowledge Share, Learning, Work Tagged: cannes, external, gartner, gartnersym, internal, likeminds, P2P, public, social media, social software, socitm

links for 2009-11-08

2009-11-08T13:00:55Z

The Twitter Times: dominiccampbell

News I'm meant to be interested in. But am not so far.

(tags: twitter news newspaper content)

Found/interesting: 15 October to 7 November

2009-11-07T14:33:22Z

Look what I found interesting enough to bookmark recently:

BBC Democracy Live – Nifty live political TV and news thingummy via Simon Dickson.
JobFact – community of anonymous employees – Compare your salary anonymously.
Optimal Workshop – online card sorting tool – Fantastic and free online IA toys.
Cybersoc.com: guide to using social media (in 6500 words) – Headshift on the basics.
We don’t want to read your website. We want to write it - “Government should do nothing about us without us” – including running websites?
New look FCO website – Stephen Hale on the new FCO website and see also FCO’s modest redesign for a healthy debate.
Pesky People - because digital access is a human right (UN 2006).
Twitter insights: Blaine Cooke @ teacamp – Q&A with one of the early architects of Twitter (so that’d be back when it used to fall over a lot, right?)
The Social Media Marketing Blog: Recent Twitter Statistics – Useful presentation fodder.
Mozilla Raindrop: Is the Intelligent Inbox Coming? – I live in hope.
The myth of engaging with everyone /The myth of easy engagement. Who should participate and how? – Digital engagement isn’t about reaching everyone, and decisions are made by those who turn up. So how do you get the right people to turn up? This blog-off between Dave and Tim is required reading.
Essential drum & bass albums! – Because you’re never too old.

War memorials – ways of remembering

2009-11-07T12:49:51Z

There was a debate on defence issues on Friday inevitably dominated by Afghanistan but it went wider than that. I referred to the importance for our troops of ensuring that we did not try and score political points in these debates. You can read the debate here and see what you think.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/91106-0008.htm

I also used the campaign to abolish the slave trade as an example of how memorials can be used to reconnect with our history and remind ourselves that conflicts of the type we are struggling with in Afghanistan are not unique and sadly will re occur in the coming decades. I particularly want to see a memorial to the Royal Navy and Marines which could include and represent all those from Africa and Europe who campaigned or fought for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. I suggest it could be situated in Ghana – a stable and democratic country so closely associated with the slave trade. It could be a statue of liberty for Africa and demonstrate to people of all races that although the slave trade was driven by extreme brutality it was also stopped by the courage and conviction of Africans and Europeans who increasingly rose up against the abhorrent trade. I think the Commonwealth will also be interested in this.

16,000 RN personnel lost their lives in the campaign to stop the transatlantic slave trade. Their contribution was vital. Should we not remember it and does it have something to tell us about current conflicts? Please read what I say about this in my speech and let me know what you think – I would particularly like to hear from people with links to the RN, the Army and RAF.