DavePress

Sarah Brown blog - No 10 team just does it

Dave — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:04:46 +0000

Great work from the webbies at Number 10. Wanting a way to let Sarah Brown discuss some of the activities going on around the G8 summit, they produced a great quick-and-dirty solution by hosting a blog using the free WordPress.com platform.

It’s perfect for a time limited site like this, and what’s more they have managed to get it looking great too.

An awesome example of JFDI in action!

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Bookmarks for June 3rd through July 4th

Dave — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:00:03 +0000

Stuff I have bookmarked for June 3rd through July 4th:

I want to - Phil Bradley's awesome blog of web 2.0 tools and services.
Online debate community for logical, passionate people - CreateDebate - CreateDebate is a social tool that democratizes the decision-making process through online debate.
Downloads « Building a DIY website - Useful stuff for community websites
Barack Obama won using ‘old school’ technology, says his campaign manager | Media | guardian.co.uk - "David Plouffe, mastermind of Obama's 'web 2.0 campaign', downplays role of Facebook and Twitter in US election victory"
LocalGov.co.uk - Your authority on UK Local Government > Local Government News & Analysis > Council freezes Twitter account after insult gaffe - "How anyone could ever suggest that a public body could control a Twitter account is beyond me."
CLASSIC!

Developing a community game

Dave — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:23:09 +0000

I have run the social media game many times now, and it always turns out differently and is always rewarding, and interesting.

Basically, it is learning and FUN!

Here is a PDF of the cards I used, which I put together about a year ago for the 2gether08 conference. It’s based on the original by David Wilcox and friends, which has subsequently been developed in a different direction into the Social by Social game.

I’ve been involved in building and managing online communities for a while now, and it looks like I’m going to be doing even more in the near future (more on that later). To help refine my own thinking, and as an aid in planning online community work, I’m putting together a version of the game specific to to community building.

The game will work as normal, with teams asked to produce ideas around projects or problems which an online community could help solve. Then, in this version, the teams use three sets of cards to develop a strategy for what that community needs to work effectively. The sets of cards are technology, roles and activity.

Here are the cards I have thought of, under each category. Have I missed anything obvious? Anything you would change?

1. Technology

Hopefully these are self explanatory:

Blogs
Forums
Profiles
Status updates
Wikis
RSS feeds in
RSS feeds out
Embedable media
Polls and surveys
Email alerts
Respond by email
Email newsletters
Groups
Event listings
Document sharing
Social bookmarking
Chat
Third Party Applications
Public and private spaces

2. Roles

Note - these are my definitions for the purpose of this game. You might not necessarily agree with how I describe certain roles - let me know in the comments if you would call them something different!

Community manager - overall responsibility for success of the community
Community cultivator - helps to develop conversations and use of the community
Digital curator - finds good content on the community and elsewhere, and brings it to members’ attention
Social reporter - creates content around the subject of the community, whether text, images, video or audio
Community evangelist - someone to promote the community and encourage new members to sign up
Moderator - ensuring content is appropriate for the community, works with members to ensure conversation stays on track
Technology steward - helps manage the tech side of the community, provides help and support on how to use the features available, plans for future development
Domain expert - someone with a deep knowledge of the subject matter of the community
Facilitator - someone with a wide range of skills who can support the community by providing a little of all the other roles

3. Activities

These are a touch verbose right now, and will need to be a bit more succinct to fit on the cards!

Plan community activity in advance
Identify existing communities (online and offline)
Identify enthusiastic potential members
Identify relevant websites to promote community
Promote community through social networking sites
Run hotseats
Seed content and discussions
Run online conferences
Develop user guidelines and policies
Communicate with members and potential members using backchannels

It would be awesome to get feedback on these ideas before I set @davebriggswife to work with the laminator!

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#GoogleLocalGov

Dave — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:38:47 +0000

Do you work in local government?

Are you free on 7th August?

Fancy popping down to Victoria in London to visit the Google offices?

Oh, and get to hear from the real experts about how to make the most of Google services, whether search, analytics, maps, advertising, widgetising content, and more?

For the princely sum of, er, nothing?

Then you’re in luck.

Pencil that date in your diary. Keep an eye on #googlelocalgov on Twitter. More information will be released as it is confirmed.

This will be a ticketed event, and it will be first-come-first-served when it comes to places. You can’t afford to miss this one!

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Evaluating online engagement

Dave — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:18:43 +0000

I’ve mentioned before that we all really need to start evaluating the online engagement stuff we’re all doing. Alice Casey’s presentation provides some great pointers for where to start and what to consider:

My main argument was that a good evaluation tells a compelling story through combining qualitative and quantitative information in a clear format to key decision makers and practitioners.

Evaluating Online Participation Web 2.0 Engagement

View more documents from Involve.

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Fail better

Dave — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:51:14 +0000

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett, Worstword Ho (1983)

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Be Vocal

Dave — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:18:21 +0000

Be Vocal is

A site about social media for social good in Birmingham and using the internet to turn public data into something useful.

It’s part of the ‘Birmingham Open City’ project run by Digital Birmingham with a grant from the Timely Information for Citizens programme set up by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Nick Booth is involved, so it must be good. Here he explains what it is all about:

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Google spreadsheet forms video

Dave — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:03:21 +0000

Nice video from Google explaining the forms function in Docs‘ spreadsheets, which I have found my self starting to use rather a lot.

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LocalGovCamp - what a day!

Dave — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:49:58 +0000

Image credit: Arun.

LocalGovCamp last Saturday was a marvellous day, lots of great conversations and everybody seemed to have a good time.

David Wilcox caught up with me just before lunch for a chat about how things were going:

There has been a load of online coverage of the event, as well as talk of several spin off events too. Find out more on the LocalGovCamp blog.

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LocalGovCamp very close indeed!

Dave — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:04:22 +0000

I can’t think of much other than LocalGovCamp now. Am literally widdly with excitement at what will be a fabulous day.

Despite the disappointment of a few folk having to drop out at this late stage, the demand for places has been such that substitutes have been found - we’re looking at over 120 people turning up to Fazeley Studios on Saturday morning. Fabulous.

Even better will be the great range of talks and discussions taking place. The beauty of open space events is that the agenda is decided by the people attending, so there’s no arbitrary decisions around what people might or might not find interesting. Some of the stuff includes:

How to engage online
A sneak preview of Help Me Investigate
“Encouraging active citizenship may be seem like a good idea, but it isn’t really”
The pros and cons of open source
Better use of Google Analytics
Is twitter worth bothering with
The Public Sector Web Professionals group
A social media toolkit for local gov
Debategraph
Less local government, more social innovation? From local government as an institution to local government as a community

…and many others. All of these sessions will be run by people like the people attending them practitioners talking to practitioners, nobody calling themselves experts, just lots of people with a desire to learn and a desire to share.

Don’t forget that even if you can’t be at the event, you can still join in via the blog, the Google Group, twitter and plenty of other online places. Remember, if you are creating online content, make sure you tag it with localgovcamp so we can bring it all together.

I’ve also started a twitter list of everyone attending, so that those new to twitter can find a bunch of useful people to start talking to. If you are coming, please add yourself. If you aren’t, then start following those on the list so you can keep up with what’s happening!

Finally, a few thank yous to people who have been so remarkably helpful in putting this event together: Vicky Sargent of Boilerhouse and Socitm; Nick Booth; Sammy Williams of Birmingham City Council; Kate Manion at Fazeley Studios; and of course everyone who has contributed via the Google Group or on Twitter.

Massive thank-yous as well to the supporters of the event, without whose sponsorship, this would simply have not got off the ground. You can find them listed on the blog’s supporters page. They are all good people, and should be praised for associating themselves with an event which is quite different from most others.

I doubt I will be back here again until after Saturday. Hopefully then I will be writing about what a success the day was, and where we will be going next with this.