Citizensheep

Smart Swarm

2010-09-01T14:53:53Z

How can ants help us solve complex problems but, using the same technique, end up walking in an endless circle for the rest of their lives? Why can crowds be much smarter, and at the same time more stupid, than any individual?

In Smart Swarm Peter Miller explains how lessons from the natural world have already changed dramatically the way we work. These lessons illustrate how our individual interactions with our local environment can have a profound effect on the behaviour of society as a whole.

The author shows how an understanding of swarms (that is, groups of independent individuals aware only of their immediate neighbours) has saved the lives of hundreds of Muslim pilgrims, increased efficiency at Boeing and demonstrated that physical town meetings can be far more beneficial than virtual ones, even if they are less convenient. ’Citizens who talk to one another,’ he writes, ‘Give themselves a better chance to make smart decisions.’

I’m often wary of books like this. They come packed with kudos from the forward-thinkers in communication, which can give them an aura of game-changing brilliance (or at least the impression that they provide remarkable new insight into human behaviour). Often though they seem simply to be expounding common sense, backed up by examples and seasoned with the occasional ‘wow!’ moment. So, if I’ve been expecting a greater intellectual challenge from a book I can be left feeling underwhelmed.

What’s refreshing about Smart Swarm (to me, at least) is that, while it’s part of the discourse around developments in human communication, it’s not written by a ‘social media guru’. Instead Peter Miller, who is in fact senior editor of National Geographic, demonstrates how lessons from nature justify some of the theories posited by those gurus.

He shows us how ants are better than we are at planning business travel, how successfully bees use dancing competitions to decide the best nesting spot, how termites can teach us a thing or two about air conditioning and why locusts suddenly change from shy individuals into massive, marauding swarms (apparently it’s because they’re cannibals).

I enjoyed this book; it was engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking. Miller narrates the extraordinary discoveries of scientists and their application to complex logistical conundrums with a lightness and craft that makes them intriguing and easy to understand.

I haven’t figured out yet if this book has had a more profound effect on me than providing a few hours of pleasurable reading, but that really doesn’t matter. And besides, maybe I never will; perhaps I’m too small a player to be able to see the bigger picture. Maybe, in a hundred years or so, an anthropologist will argue that profound changes in human behaviour can be traced directly to the group of individuals who read Smart Swarm. And for that reason alone you should read it.

This was written for the good folk at Delib, who very kindly supplied the book.

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Creating Database-driven Apps with Sinatra

2010-08-20T13:04:54Z

Sinatra itself has useful help pages, but (so far) this the best tutorial I’ve found.

Creating Database-driven Apps with Sinatra

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Web Designer’s Checklist

2010-07-19T09:14:35Z

An up-to-date set of comparison tables for browser support of CSS3 selectors and HTML5 properties. It doesn’t include IE9, because they have a whole separate page of tables previewing IE9 support for HTML5 and CSS3.

Visit Web Designer’s Checklist

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Public consultation or user testing?

2010-07-08T13:01:47Z

The only difference between engaging someone in public consultation and engaging them in user testing is, as far as I can see, the type of reward they get for taking part.

With user testing it’s easy: the client pays a company an extortionate amount of money to test their product; or, if it’s being done on the cheap, buys lunch for a few folk and tests the product on them instead. People might even do the testing as a favour, but that requires them to have some level of emotional attachment to whoever’s doing the asking.

With public consultation the reward is harder to quantify, but it still needs to be there.

On Tuesday evening I was involved in giving some feedback on a local council web initiative. I wasn’t paid or fed, and I had no emotional attachment to the consultant (the council). I do, however, have an emotional attachment to the group that was being consulted and so I am quite happy to have taken part. But had I been consulted directly I would not have been happy at being told that my suggestions would be ‘added to the log’ and ‘may or may not be used’. In fact I would have been angry: they’d taken up my evening and wouldn’t even be bothered to let me know if and how they used my suggestions. (And no, I see no reward in simply helping the council as I have little faith in its ability to do things well.)

Many public consultations seem to treat their participants as free user testers, which seems something of a paradox. Some reward (which could be simply the satisfaction of doing someone a favour) is important. If there’s no payback – fee, lunch, feedback, satisfaction, etc – then the participant will probably feel used and alienated.

The same goes for ‘digital engagement’ initiatives; which tend, in essence, to be attempts at consultation.

Last night I went to a panel discussion on ‘Connecting with constituents: MPs and Digital Engagement’, chaired by Andy Williamson of the Hansard Society. On the panel were Jon Kingsbury of Nesta who talked about the new MyMP iPhone app (funded partly by Nesta and partly by Public Zone), Tim Hood of Yoosk and Paul Hodgkin of Patient Opinion.

All three initiatives aim to listen to people and feed their input effectively into the public processes, while also making them a valued and engaged part of those processes. There are in fact lots of online initiatives trying to do this, but I’m not sure many of them have really grasped the importance of payback. MyMP doesn’t seem to have considered it (I may be wrong of course). When I posed the question to the panel last night, Yoosk appeared to put faith in the conversation developing to the point where the participants felt bonded enough in some way (as part of a network perhaps) for payback to occur naturally. Maybe that will happen, but it seems a bit of a gamble.

Patient Opinion was apparently the only of the three initiatives to have understood the importance of payback (feedback, in this case: they gather stories from people and are starting to post outcomes of those stories). It seems telling that Patient Opinion was set up by a doctor – not a politician, charity or think tank – and was the only initiative last night that didn’t claim to connect citizens directly with elected representatives or public figures.

The problem seems to be that perennial one of the Web: lots of people have great ideas for layering technology on top of society, and rush to deliver them. What doesn’t seem to happen is a questioning of the underlying processes; it’s all very well encouraging conversation, but what do you do with it?

Someone asked why on earth there were all these different tools available when there should simply be one in the obvious place: Parliament’s own website. One reply was that if people don’t trust a site or organisation (or they don’t have a connection with it) they won’t use its tools, and so these third-party tools are crucial to engagement. While I agree with that I also agree with an assertion made by Andy Williamson: people already have social tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) that they use to talk about general stuff of interest to them, and when those conversations wander into politics it is in those spaces that they’re conducted; in general people won’t seek out a dedicated site or application for holding those conversations.

Last night the old adage seemed to ring truer than ever: meet people where they are. And having a voice is great up to a point, but feedback – or reward – is critical in the end.

Note: in this post I use the definition of ‘consultant’ as that of someone who asks questions, not someone who gives professional advice.

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YUI Graded Browser Support

2010-06-25T15:20:59Z

This page has been around for a good while. I’m flagging it up now because I’m trying to build up a sort of toolkit and primer for colleagues managing websites; the rather unsophisticated ‘every user should have exactly the same experience on our website’ is – sadly and surprisingly – still a common attitude.

This explanation of Graded Browser Support and ‘progressive enhancement’ from Yahoo! is well put and, coming from Yahoo!, adds credibility to our arguments for it.

Visit YUI Graded Browser Support

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Web management for beginners: how detailed should I be?

2010-06-25T06:30:50Z

I’m trying to write an outline of key considerations for website managers. I don’t want to blind people with science; on the other hand, the audience in question are people who are paid to be responsible for websites. They really ought to know these things already; how much should I give them?

I don’t want to write reams where there is already plenty of this information elsewhere (which I will probably refer to a lot); I want to produce something that colleagues can skim through very quickly; I want something that will highlight key things that they need to be aware of, but also explains some of those things a little.

I want the document to be clear, succinct, easy to understand; above all, I want people to use it. The problem is there is an awful lot of stuff that I want them to be aware of, and once you scratch the surface this stuff gets very complex.

Things I’ve already identified:

difference between markup, code, styles and scripts;
Hosting, server configuration, etc;
DNS;
http; ftp; etc;
awareness of legal responsibilities (re terms and conditions, privacy, accessibility, moderation, intellectual property, etc);
awareness of standards (re accessibility, markup, etc).

Even this short list is massive in scope.

I’ll try and remember to let you know how I get on.

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Legal considerations for people responsible for websites

2010-06-17T09:37:58Z

I’ve drawn up a legal primer for people commissioning or managing websites. This is by no means detailed or comprehensive: it is intended as a starting point and to raise awareness of the issues. I welcome feedback on anything that’s unclear or factually wrong.

I’ve posted it here initially, but I may well move it in due course. If so I will leave a clear link and explanation in this post.

I appreciate that what follows might not embody an approach relevant to all organisations.

You are responsible for adhering to the terms and conditions of any services you sign up for, and for ensuring that your use of those services does not put our organisation in a position in which it is:

breaking the law (copyright, for example);
breaking a contract (a website’s terms of service, for example).

Accessibility

We have a legal duty to ensure our services are accessible to disabled users, which by implication includes websites. There are no specific requirements for websites; as far as I know there have been no significant test cases yet, but groups such as the RNIB have been active in trying to force such a case.

The important thing is to be mindful of accessibility issues when commissioning and managing websites, and to understand the implications of – and be able to justify – your site’s accessibility measures.

Disabled access to websites under UK law (out-law.com)
Web Accessibility And The Law (ictknowledgebase.org.uk)

Data protection

When collecting personal information from someone (eg for sending marketing emails) you must be able to show that they were made fully aware that they were giving consent and that they did so actively (as opposed to passively).

A common way to do this is to offer a box that the user ticks to say they are happy for you to send them emails (as opposed to a ready-ticked box that they must un-tick in order not to receive emails).

You must also provide an ‘unsubscribe’ option in every newsletter and marketing email.

Records of those who have unsubscribed should be kept so that they are not accidentally contacted again (unless they explicitly give their consent to be).

Whatever means you use to collect and store data must comply with the Data Protection Act.

Email marketing – when to use opt-in and when to use opt-out (out-law.com)
Best Practice For Sending Email Newsletters (ictknowledgebase.org.uk)
Data Protection (out-law.com)

Intellectual Property

Don’t use anything you don’t have the right to use. Always check licences, copyright and terms of use for anything you re-use (eg text, photos) regardless of where you find them.

For example, images on Flickr are not free for anyone to re-use: by default the owner has copyright control of them, and in many cases the images will have been released under a Creative Commons licence.

Intellectual property in websites: ownership and protection (out-law.com)

Moderation

This is somewhat counter-intuitive. If you hold comments in a moderation queue in order to vet them, you are deemed to be their creator: legal responsibility for their content is transferred from the original author to you.

Current popular advice is to allow all comments to be published, but operate a solid complaints procedure: include a ‘Report this’ link in each comment and respond swiftly (within 48 hours) when you receive a complaint.

You should check the comments regularly.

Moderation, liability and terms of use (out-law.com)

Contracts

Whenever you accept terms and conditions for a website or service, you are entering into a contract. If you are using that service in any way for work, you are responsible for that contract on the organisation’s behalf.

Read before you sign up

It’s laborious, I know, but always read through the terms before you agree to them.

Record

Keep a record of those terms of service that you have agreed to, as well as the links to them. This makes it easier for us to remedy any situation that might arise.

Remember

Even if you don’t tick a box explicitly to accept terms and conditions, you are still bound by a website’s terms while visiting it or using content on it.

Terms of use

Use our Terms of Use [link], not someone else’s (such as the BBC’s), as the basis for your own. Ours were written for us, other people’s were not. Our Terms of Use are not set in stone, we can always amend and adapt them as necessary.

Our Terms of Use include rules for posting to our website [link].

Further information

Moderation, liability and terms of use (out-law.com)
Legal guides from law firm Pincent Masons (out-law.com)
‘Legal Issues’ on lasa’s Knowledgebase (ictknowledgebase.org.uk)
Data Protection Act explained (ico.gov.uk)
Disability Discrimination Act explained (direct.gov.uk)

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Arguments for open local data

2010-06-03T11:11:53Z

One of the challenges facing proponents of open data is persuading others of its value; particularly persuading the custodians of data that making it publicly available is a valuable thing to do, and is in their interest to do it.

Dan Slee (Walsall Council) and Stuart Harrison (Lichfield District Council) and myself have compiled some arguments for open local data for people to use when faced with making the case for it.

We’ve also put together the Local Data wiki, so that this work can be continued collaboratively.

Visit Arguments for open local data

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A Beginner's Sinatra Tutorial

2010-05-31T17:00:11Z

In my desperate attempt to grapple with Ruby people keep introducing me to new and 'better' ways to use it, before I've had a chance to understand what I was doing with the previous one they lauded. Currently under my nose is Sinatra, which would probably be great if I understood what I was doing. Anyway, this tutorial seems to make more sense than Sinatra's own help pages.

Visit A Beginner's Sinatra Tutorial

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HTML5 Readiness

2010-05-19T17:01:34Z

This is a very nice demonstration of what HTML5/CSS3 is capable of, and shows how ready the various browsers are for it.

Visit HTML5 Readiness

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Citizensheep

Smart Swarm

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Creating Database-driven Apps with Sinatra

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Web Designer’s Checklist

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Public consultation or user testing?

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YUI Graded Browser Support

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Web management for beginners: how detailed should I be?

Possibly related posts

Legal considerations for people responsible for websites

Accessibility

Data protection

Intellectual Property

Moderation

Contracts

Read before you sign up

Record

Remember

Terms of use

Further information

Possibly related posts

Arguments for open local data

Possibly related posts

A Beginner's Sinatra Tutorial

Possibly related posts

HTML5 Readiness

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