So if you’re looking for a public sector communications job it’s worth checking out a role that was emailed to me by Colin Wood, Head of Communications at West Dorset District Council.

He’s looking for a Communications Team Leader for his team. Here’s the lowdown on the role:

We need someone to lead the team that is responsible for all West Dorset District Council’s internal and external communications.

There are some big communications challenges ahead, including proposals to merge our workforce with Weymouth & Portland Borough Council’s and to move to smaller and more efficient offices in Dorchester.

The successful candidate will:

• Be inspirational – you must be able to motivate others and quickly gain the confidence of senior management and councillors
• Hate jargon – we need someone who can communicate complex issues and topics in a way that makes sense to staff and local people
• Be versatile and very organised – you will be involved in a number of high profile projects at the same time, while supervising the work of others
• Make sound decisions and act quickly – on behalf of the council and your team

The post suits someone already working in communications with a track record of producing innovative and creative campaigns and who can show that they are ready to step up to a role in which they can inspire a team of people.

For more information check out the job ad here.

I will freely admit I know nothing about Tameside and the thinking or decisions behind this project, so all I’m basing my thoughts on this on the documents that have been released under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request by Liam Billington.

I’m always reluctant to blog about stories like this without a rounded view of the facts, but having read the documents released there are just some obvious things that are crying out to be said about this. To allow you to make your own mind up about this, you can read all the documents and Liam Billington’s follow-up request here.

So, to cut a long story short it seems that Tameside MBC commissioned a company called Second Places to build them a presence in virtual world Second Life. The company had also produced similar Second Life presences for Manchester and Oldham. The total cost for the presence was £36665 and the project was seen as a pilot – essentially to test the water with a new and innovative digital presence.

The scoping document produced by Second Places looks like the best summary of what was envisaged – you can read it all here. What are also worth a read are the internal report that were put forward for approval of the project – the first that was written in February 2008 is here, while a second produced in May 2008 is here.

The first report to the management team  includes this paragraph:

Second Life presents a real opportunity to be at the forefront of a new technology which provides new ways of interacting with the community. It gives us the chance to empower and engage with hard to reach groups…It allows Tameside to establish itself as a leader in the use of new technologies, in new ways of doing things and it is an opportunity to publicise the borough on a global scale. This could be the next railways and canals opportunity, transforming our services in a dynamic and accessible way for the benefit of all in the borough.

The second report is more detailed and includes quite a lot of detail about what’s being proposed and how it would benefit the council:

As highlighted at the workshop the applications for Second Life can be as wide in scope as Real Life, but we have decided to concentrate on the following areas on the basis of that these might be the areas that TMBC would find easiest to demonstrate tangible benefits to the business and community:-

• Virtual Council Office
• Service Delivery Applications
• Consultation Applications
• SME Support Service Applications
• Community Engagement Applications

Now regular readers of my blog or people that have heard me speak at conferences or on training courses will know I’m a big fan of evidence. Real evidence that proves a point about why public sector organisations should or shouldn’t do something. That means basing decisions on a particular communications or engagement tool on real facts about current usage among the target audience and, in the case of pilot projects, realistic estimates of likely future usage.

I’ve read through all the documentation released about this project. What’s strikingly missing is any evidence of an assessment of who the presence is aimed at (beyond a very untargetted “Tameside residents), any clear outcomes or measurable objectives, or indeed a very basic assessement of how many Tameside residents might be Second Life users (or even potential Second Life users).

While ideally this kind of evidence would come from primary research – for example the inclusion of a question in a representative piece of research about levels of Second Life use – it’s not that difficult to get a steer of levels of usage from publicly available information.

From what I can read in what has been released by Tameside MBC that didn’t happen, so here’s how I would have approached measuring the likely audience for a presence in Second Life back in May 2008 when the project was approved:

• Based on publicly available data in February 2008 from the people that run Second Life , the UK then had 41182 active Second Life users
• At the time the TMBC report was written, the best estimate of the UK resident population from the Office for National Statistics was  60,587,300.
• That means the penetration of Second Life users within the UK population at that time was 0.00067971%
• The estimated population of Tameside MBC (admittedly in 2005, but I don’t imagine the growth that may have occurred would be significant in this analysis) is 214,100.
• As a rough estimate of audience size for the Tameside pilot project, it’s reasonable to apply the UK penetration of active Second Life users to the Tameside MBC population – giving an estimated number of Second Life users living in the Tameside MBC area as 146 at the time the trial was commissioned.
• Around that time Second Life was reporting user sign-up growth of 10-15% per month – so taking the most favourable growth rate of 15% per month in active users (and that’s generous because not all new sign-ups will convert to active users), the 146 estimated users in the TMBC areas would become 656 users after a year or 2578 users after two years

Leaving aside the upfront costs to set the presence up, the two year running costs for the Second Life presence were £9940 (comprising “rental and support”) – that’s £4970 per year.

So in year one, the average estimated number of Second Life users in the area would be 401 (assuming a linear growth rate from the initial total number of users of 146 to the end of year total of 656) – and that’s using that all Second Life users chose to interact with the council’s presence on Second Life – which will be an overestimate, but again let’s take the most favourable view.

That means in year one there would have been an estimated 401 users against a running cost of £4970 – £12.39 per active user.

And remember this analysis is using data available at the time the trial was commissioned. I don’t have the SOCITM channel benchmarking data to hand, but it’s hard to argue that an online presence with such a low penetration is worth £12.39 per active user – especially when all those users will, by default, have access to the internet where a fully interactive online presence is available to all online residents anyway.

I don’t want to labour the point further on this one. I recognise the importance of innovation and testing in public sector communications – but that must be within the bounds of a resonable expectation about what might come out of the end of a pilot project.

My main thought on this is that as communicators (and others working in the local public sector) that commission communications and engagement tools to help us communicate and deliver services to people we must make decisions based on the best evidence we have available at the time. We need to avoid hype, bandwagon jumping and pet projects so that we can make decisions that will deliver the right outcomes at the right cost.

Being able to evidence our decisions in communications and marketing has always been important. We won’t always make the right calls and mistakes will be made, but what we do choose to do should be based on sound professional judgements the best information available to us at the time.

That’s always been important and will be increasingly more important as public sector spending is opened up to public scrutiny in the coming months.

So I’m not writing this in any way to criticise those involved with this project directly, but the thing I take away from reading about the whole experience is a renewed commitment to use evidence in making decisions on communications and marketing and challenging others to do the same.

Without good evidence-based decision making  the Tameside MBC Second Life won’t be the last of this kind of story that we’ll read in the next 12 months.

Public sector communicators are facing unprecedented challenges – the scale and pace of change being experienced in the public sector mean communicators need to be able to adjust to the rapidly changing environment.

For that reason the theme of this October’s conference is “Navigating change: Shaping a new model of communications in local public services”. It takes place on 21 and 22 October at the Thistle Hotel in Brighton.

Speakers confirmed so far include:

• Alastair Campbell – former Director of Strategy and Communications for Tony Blair
• Scott Chisholm – former Sky News Anchorman and one of the UK’s leading media trainers
• Peter Bingle – Chairman of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs and one of the UK’s leading lobbyists.
• Paul Mylrea – Head of press and media relations at the BBC and President elect of the CIPR.
• Jonathan Males – Director of Performance 1 and former Olympian

There will be a choice of three master class sessions, one which will be on Personal Styling with Igor Srzic Cartledge – Igor uses his keen sense of style to help clients find the look that’s right for them as an individual. Another of the master classes will cover Social Media which will be held by Catherine Howe, Chief Executive of Public-I, a Hove based company that was created to respond to the new opportunities the internet presented to local authorities for re-engaging with their citizens.

The conference is designed for communicators working in areas including local government, health, police, fire and the voluntary sector. It will be a great opportunity to learn from some top speakers as well as network with colleagues and share experiences and tips about working in local public service communications.

Full details and a booking form are available on the CIPR website here or you can read the brochure here.

[disclosure: I'm a member of the CIPR Local Public Services committee]

Whether it’s a gadgety mobile phone, an extensive collection of running equipment or a few sets of outdoors trainers, I’m a sucker for some new features or the latest innovation.

Which is why I was dead chuffed when Fitness Footwear asked me to road test the latest North Face Hedgehog GTX XCR trainers. So here’s a picture from last weekend’s Sunday morning dog walk in Blean Woods proving that the North Faces are suitable for climbing up dead tree trunks to impress your small children with your tree climbing prowess.

For the last year or so I’ve been wearing a pair of Karrimor trainers which have seen better days. They get daily use for dog walks, including trips to the beach, woods as well as just day-to-day out and about wear. They’ve done a winter which included a fair amount of snow, mud and rain.

The North Face Hedgehogs are a step up from the Karrimors – here’s the tech spec straight from North Face themselves:

• Waterproof, breathable Gore-Tex® Extended Comfort Range membrane
• Abrasion-resistant, bomber synthetic nubuck and breathable sandwich-mesh upper
• Gusseted tongue
• Northotic™ ergonomic footbed
• Lightweight, compression-molded EVA midsole
• Heel X-2 O2™ air pod
• Injection-molded TPU shank plate
• Exclusive lightweight Vibram® rubber outsole

I have to admit some of those specs mean absolutely nothing to me at the moment. What’s most important to me is that, four days in, they’re very comfortable and are waterproof because of their Gore-Tex membrane (although I’ve not had a summer rain shower to test out that quite yet).

I’m planning on giving the shoes a good road test over the summer – daily dog walks, a caravan holiday and generally using them for getting out and about.

(disclosure: free review pair of North Face Hedgehog GTX XCR trainers supplied by Fitness Footwear)

Mainly considering how to communicate difficult messages to customers, colleagues and other people who need to know about what’s happening and why, as well as spending the odd minute or two wondering if I might be one of them.

One of the things that communicators need to factor into their thinking is the attitude of their intended audiences to what’s happening. For local public service communicators the national context is really important. And is possibly the most rapidly evolving context in my time in public sector communications.

Since the election campaign, the formation of the coalition, numerous central government announcements through to the emergency budget in June, the national media agenda has been driven by the need to cut public spending, the depth of the cuts and where they should fall.

I’ve been keeping a look out for evidence that helps communicators understand more about people’s attitudes towards reductions in public sector spending, job cuts and most importantly the services to the public that are affected.

So here’s a selection of what I’ve found so far…

The shift in public opinion about how quickly to cut the deficit continues. The public now seem to accept the government’s stance that cutting the deficit needs to begin immediately. In March, over half said the national debt should not be cut this year as it may stop the recovery – just a third (35%) say the same now….Perhaps unsurprisingly, those of lowest social grades (DEs) are most negative about the Budget. They are most likely to think Budget is bad for them personally (56%) and for the country (41%), as well as being most likely to oppose the rise in VAT (67%) and most likely to oppose raising pension age (60%). Among this group there is also higher opposition to cutting housing benefit (43%).
Ipsos MORI/ The Economist – 2 July 2010

Consultation of public sector workers will have little or no influence on the decisions the government takes on cuts, in the view of the vast majority of voters.
PoliticsHome -  25-28 June

Just over half (51%) of Brits feel prepared for the spending cuts ahead, although this approval comes before specific cuts have been outlined. And while most feel prepared, a significant proportion (42%) feels ‘unprepared’ for a change in lifestyle as a result of cuts….In general, most (55%) support the Government’s proposed cuts to public spending.
You Gov/The Sun – 8 June 2010

Many of the government’s proposals for reducing the deficit are proving popular with the public…notions of fairness and providing a safety net are core to the public’s understanding of public services. Most people feel that government and public services have tried to do too much in recent years and that people should take more responsibility for their own lives (64%).  Local control is cautiously welcomed, but concerns about variation in services dominate. For example, more people think that standards of service should be the same everywhere for health services (81%) and even relatively straightforward services such as recycling (70%). Most of the public say they do not want to be actively involved in how public services are run – but there are still significant minorities who say they do, which represents millions of people across the country as a whole. Further, it is likely that those who are directly affected will be more likely to get involved; for example, parents are far more likely to want to have more of a say in how Primary Schools work than people without children.
Ipsos MORI / The Economist – 28 May 2010

Updated 5 July 2010:

62 per cent of people would prefer local councillors to make decisions about public spending in their local area…Taxpayers also think NHS managers, quangos and overseas aid are the top three areas where cuts should be made to save money…Just one per cent respectively thought street cleaning, care for the elderly by social services and rubbish collections should be cut to save public money…The services people regard as being frontline are: police (84 per cent), fire service (81 per cent), doctors, nurses and other hospital staff (80 per cent), schools (59 per cent), care for the elderly by social services (49 per cent), rubbish collection (44 per cent), help for disabled people by social services (43 per cent), child protection (40 per cent)…The survey also shows that almost three quarters of people (74 per cent) believe frontline services will be hit by cuts.
ComRes/LGA – 5 July 2010

My reading of the situation in broad terms from the evidence is that there is a growing and substantial acceptance of the need for cuts – driven by messaging and actions at a national level. But I don’t think that has yet been widely linked to services stopping or changing at a local level – and it’s the understanding and acceptance of this that is crucial for public sector communicators that are trying to keep residents informed at this challenging time.

However things are moving fast, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for more evidence that might point to the communications impact of public sector spending cuts being felt a the local level.

Feel free to add any more links to relevant research/evidence in the comments below.

One thing I’ve been mulling over for a while, but couldn’t quite get straight in my head was a sense of frustration around social media and local government communications. To put this in perspective I’ve spent a lot of time over the past four years exploring, talking, researching and learning about social media. I’ve taken a real focus on what role it could play in local government communications and have tried to ensure I have a very broad range of learnings from beyond the sector to draw on.

I remember when I first went to a conference and talked about social media it was still seen as a geeky, niche kind of thing which many communicator thought would go away. But it hasn’t gone away, and for some demographic groups it has become an integral part of their day-to-day lives and their main way of keeping up with their friends.

Yet I’m frustrated with local government’s approach to social media. Sure it’s great that lots of councils are interested in social media and what it can do for their communications. But what is really starting to annoy me is that too many councils are asking the wrong questions. As communicators we shouldn’t be pushing social media as something we must do – it’s something we can do, where it’s an appropriate tool for the communications objectives we have. And if we don’t have clear, measurable objectives that contribute something positive to the lives of local people, we should be relooking at the communications strategy not working out how many people like a particular Facebook page.

On one level social media is just another tool in the communicator’s toolbox. Communicators need to have the practical skills to use these tools and to recognise when it’s appropriate to do so – as well as the more traditional skills that we all recognise, not as a substitute. We need to learn how to monitor the conversations that happen on social media and learn what to do about these to help safeguard the reputations of our organisations.

The bottom line is that we’ve got to learn how to use social media strategically as part of the communications mix.

But that’s it. As communicators we’ve got a lot of other challenges – not least driving up the quality and accountability of communications so that we can truly demonstrate what we contribute towards organisations. And I’m not talking about counting how many followers we’ve got on Twitter – I’m talking about the real headlines that are important to the organisations that we work for and the communities we serve.

Don’t get me wrong, digital/social communication skills are very important. But social media seems to be treated as a must-do priority in too many places, ahead of many of the more fundamental initiatives that we need to do to drive up communications performance across the mix.

And in taking this very narrow focus on social media, I fear communicators, as well as neglecting broader performance issues in the wider mix, are contributing towards organisations overlooking the greater potential for real innovation in service delivery through social technologies – in the drive for Facebook pages or Twitter feeds local public sector organisations are missing the bigger picture.

While for communicators social media is another tool in the box, for public sector organisations serving communities such tools are an opportunity to redefine relationships between organisations, officers and the residents they serve. The public service climate over the next few years will demand radical shifts in how we approach delivery of services and organisational relationships with residents, groups of residents and the third sector. It’s here that social technologies – people connected in effective, communicative and productive relationships through technologies and shared interests – can make the biggest difference to delivering services and changing people’s lives in a particular place.

Yet in many councils I’ve seen in the past few months, this broader and far more powerful use of emerging technologies has been subjugated to a desire to stick up a Facebook page and be done with it.

There’s a role for social media in local public service communication and a need to research more what impact it has on the things that matter. But what would be really heartening to see would be more examples of councils grasping social media as an opportunity for genuine innovation on a greater scale – maybe that’s a year or two off yet, just as when I first starting looking into social media its inclusion in the communications mix seemed like a stretch, but the context seems right for it now.

Or do I just need another holiday?

You can check it out online here, although there are still some areas where not all the materials and information has been published online yet.

The idea is to help communicators in local government by analysing as much available data as possible to help determine what’s behind the reputation of local councils and what communicators can do to improve that reputation.

I like it (and its previous incarnation) as it helps give an empirical and evidenced argument why local government communications needs to focus on certain areas (and not on others). Too much communicating in local government isn’t focussed on clear, business-led outcomes – and a toolkit like this helps address that.

There is a risk however that communicators see this as a quick-fix – do what it says and all will be good. As the website explains though, it’s not about being prescriptive and more about giving a base of evidence to help communicators plan local strategies using both local and national evidence.

One tool that’s not yet fully live on the website is a calculator that aims to determine what local satisfaction with a council should be, based on six variables that have been shown to determine this. The tool looks like it will then compare this theoretical satisfaction score with a particular council’s actual score (from the Place Survey in 2008) – showing whether a council is under or over-performing on satisfaction given the nature of their local area. I’m looking forward to investigating this further once it goes live.

The first session I caught was a discussion about total place, communications and what the new coalition government means for all this. There was general agreement that the concept of total place – a way of looking at all public money flowing through a place regardless of who provides the service – was something that was here to stay, although possibly under a different moniker.

There won’t be any prizes for guessing the other certainty of the session – the need for a reduction in public spending generally and what it means for local public service communicators. There’s a need to continue the drive to make communications spend, whether on people, channels or campaigns, more accountable and linked to outcomes (or to avoid the jargon, things that actually make a difference to the lives of local people). There was a good discussion about how this could be done and different approaches that could be taken.

There was also a debate about how joined up communications functions between local public service providers could become a reality. One view was that creating a single communications team for a place, covering the remits of council, PCT, police and others, was just the kind of visionary thinking that the current times demand. Idealistically I can see the appeal of this logic – an area’s sustainable communities strategy is the blueprint for what every public service partner should be doing in an area – and this should therefore where the outcomes for an area are set out and those are what communicators should be supporting. Job done.

However the creation of such a team has its challenges – the need for each organisation to give up some of its more organisationally focussed goals would require a real change in thinking for many organisations, especially those with politics at their core. I think there’s a real risk also that a shared communication resource between partners would become a lightning conductor during times of conflict between those partners – if a shared communications function is to become a reality this kind of eventuality will need considering and approaches agreeing before it happens.

Others in the audience could see other solutions to removing overlap in communications functions in local areas – one suggestion that sounded interesting was organisations in a local area taking a lead on different parts of communications – for example one organisation may host a media team while another may lead on graphic design. Again with this I can see challenges, particularly on the practical side, but I wouldn’t dismiss any options at this stage.

What’s very clear is that we need to take a wide ranging look at what communications contributes to local public service organisations, ensure that contribution is aligned to what the organisation actually wants, and think radically about different models for delivery that can increase efficiency yet further.

Alex Aiken’s workshop on Westminster’s latest thinking on their approach to communications was also very useful – giving me plenty to think about and challenging once again some of the comfortable norms of communications thinking.

The other session that was really useful was from Prof Stephen Coleman who spoke about changes in politics, society and the internet. He challenged public sector communicators to think about how they needed to recast the public engagement agenda that’s needed in the new mode of technologically enabled politics and in the era of an unprecedented public mood towards politics. He had three challenges for the future:

• Where do people find information – much council information is not demand-driven – organisations need to push information to people but this is a greater challenge in times when people have so many competing demands for their attention
• The exclusive narrative of public sector communications – many communications “talk” in words or terms that people just don’t understand (and shouldn’t have to understand). Communications need to be framed in a narrative that people can related to – and in the conversations of social media we have a great window into those real-world narratives. We need to learn how to interpret them and fit our communications into those narratives.
• The challenge of efficacy – the best single predictor of successful engagement is people’s belief in their ability to influence the world around them. As a belief it’s an entirely subjective measure but is really important – if people think they can make a difference, they will participate, and if they think they can’t make a difference, they won’t.

And then Stephen closed with three areas for delegates to take away and put into action:

• mapping - taking a “from the bottom up” approach to how and what to communicate – rather than building from the current practice – because incremental, creeping growth of a communications landscape will invariably lead to less effective practice than a clean-sheet approach
• storying - thinking about how communicators can take the day-to-day life narratives of real people, which are far more influential than council or council people’s narratives, and using them in communications. The next level would then be to connect these narratives together to tell a story of place grounded in people, rather than the physical aspects of place which form many existing communications.
• production of meaningful, tangible consequences to feedback – or put simply, we need to be able to tell people what we’ve done with things they’ve told us. From Stephen’s research the lack of this is one of the biggest frustrations among audiences that have participated in public sector research or consultation. Making these links is key to sustaining and developing a culture of participation and engagement.

Having left home at 4.30am this morning and expecting to get back at 10pm it’s been a long day, but very worthwhile. I’ve certainly got a lot to think about putting into practice, and I might even manage a few blog posts on some aspects of it – after this is meant to be a blog about public sector communications after all!

The workshop will:

• Provide an overview of social media in the UK today
• Explore the different social media tools and how they can be used in public sector communications and engagement
• Provide a practical introduction to how to introduce social media into the public sector communications mix
• Discuss real examples of social media in action in the public sector – good and bad practice
• Give delegates the knowledge and skills to start using social media in public sector communications and engagement.

Previous courses run in Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff have been well received by delegates – here’s feedback from Kam Mistry at Stroud District Council:

“This was an exceptional workshop/seminar – perfect for my needs. For a while I have wanted to get a comprehensive understanding of all the relevant social media options and how they could work for an organisation such as ours. I, like many others, simply don’t have the time to research this area properly. This seminar meant that I could get to grips with everything in one day. The agenda was well thought out and the seminar delivery by Simon Wakeman was excellent. It was also very reasonably priced compared to others I have seen! Definitely ten out of ten. A very productive day.”

This time around the workshop takes place this Thursday, 13 May at the Glasgow Thistle hotel. There are still a few places left on the course, so if you’d like to join us email Nick Hill at nick@publicsectorforums.co.uk.

Previously booked delegates please note the change of venue – this course now takes place at the Glasgow Thistle hotel, not the Mitchell Library, Glasgow.

The marathon is like no run I’ve done before – the atmosphere is superb with people lining the entire route offering cheers, encouragement, drinks, food, music and entertainment. The weather was kind – not too hot, but good for spectators as well.

I finished in 4 hours, 38 minutes and 4 seconds – which was about what I was expecting to run. The first half of the race went really well – I passed 13 miles in exactly 2 hours. But then at 16 miles as the route headed down to the docklands area, I really started suffering from bad cramps. My pace chart tells the story:

Once I’d sussed that this was about being dehydrated as well as fatigued I drank lots of lucozade and consumed as many jelly babies, banana pieces and energy gels as I could. Miles 16 to 20 around the tall buildings of docklands were miserable – with a few thoughts about not completing the race, but as I hit 20 miles and began to head back towards central London, I knew I could make it around the full route.

There was no way I was failing to complete the marathon for the sake of the 6 miles left to run, so it was a heads-down keep going approach – although the last 3 miles were incredible with noisy support from thousands of spectators lining the route along the Embankment.

Running the last few hundred metres past Buckingham Palace and heading down the Mall to the finish was a great feeling – the tiredness and cramping faded away in one last rush for the line!

As well as being about completing a long-held ambition to run the marathon distance, the race was about raising money for a great charity, Action Medical Research.

So far my race has raised £2634 – thanks to my sponsors Public Sector Forums, friends, family and work colleagues. That’s a great total and more than I had ever expected to reach.

I’d also like to thank my supporters on the day: my parents, Jenny and Amelia Benson, Jo and Olly. Their presence along the route kept me going and gave me mental high points to look forward to throughout the 26.2 mile route.

But most of all I must say a massive thank you to my wife Jo and boys Oliver and Toby for their support – both on the day but also during the long winter weekends when I was out trudging through dark wet forests putting in the training miles. I couldn’t have done it without their support and I am very very grateful.

Having done the marathon last week, I’m racing again on Monday at the Whitstable 10K, and then I’m looking forward to keeping fit with running and BMF, but without the pressure to run ridiculous distances every weekend!

It’s a great challenge and, from what friends who have completed the London Marathon tell me, it’s a race with an excellent atmosphere too. I’m running to raise money for a charity called Action Medical Research – the leading UK-wide medical research charity dedicated to helping babies and children.

The charity finds and funds the very best medical research in hospitals and universities across the UK that is most likely to deliver real benefit to babies, children and young people. Their funding is focussed on research that aims to improve medical care in three areas:

• Treating sick and vulnerable babies
• Helping disabled children
• Targeting rare diseases in children

My lead sponsor for the race is Public Sector Forums (PSF) – one of the UK’s leading public sector IT, web and communications communities and event organisers. I’d really like to thank Nick Hill and Gary Marston from PSF for their generous sponsorship for the marathon as well as everyone else that’s sponsored me online and offline.

I’m aiming to raise £3000 for Action Medical Research – at the time of writing my total sponsorship was just over £2050 with three weeks to go before the race.

If you’d like to support me then we’ve set up a Facebook group where you can support me and take the mick out of me for wearing excessive amounts of lycra when running.

If you’d like to sponsor me for the marathon and help me raise as much money as possible for this great charity, my online sponsorship page is here or use the link below:

The event was designed to take some aspects of the unconference/barcamp approach, but use them in a slightly more structured way to help the flow of the day. It’s a first for us as councils so the day was also about understanding how these kind of techniques could be used in a local government consultation or engagement context.

We had 23 delegates at the event from across Kent and Medway – with a really interesting mix of people from all sorts of different backgrounds and places.

Courtesy of social media reporter extraordinaire Dave Wilcox, here’s a short video of Noel Hatch and me talking about the day before it all kicked off:

Before the event people could propose ideas for topics they wanted to explore on a Uservoice site and a voting system was used to help reflect the popularity of different ideas. Then in the first session this morning people volunteered themselves to work in groups on the topics that interested them most. The four areas that we started the day with were:

• How to reach the “hard to reach” groups in communities
• Finding out what’s going on in your local area
• Asking your council a question
• Tackling challenges using mobile or smart phones.

The morning session was spent thrashing out what the actual issue was that each group wanted to tackle, identifying who is being served/who’s involved in the issue and how a solution to it might work. Then after the lunch break it was onto more detail about what each group was actually producing, which was where each group’s work took very different directions depending on the issue they were working on.

Here are the videos from each group presenting back the work they’d done during the day:

And here’s Carol Patrick from Kent County Council and yours truly summing up at the end of the day:

All in all a great day – some really great thinking that could be taken forward in a variety of different guises both by the councils and the broader community. Plus it was good to catch up with a number of people I’ve not seen in a while and especially to meet lots of people I’ve “known” online for a while but have never met properly – as ever good proof of the power of social media to connect people around areas of shared interest!

You can also read more about the event in blog posts from Julia and Catherine. The full set of videos are available here.

Below you’ll find info on the course, agenda and what some of the delegates on previous courses said about their experience. Places are strictly limited and can be booked online here.

Workshop aims

• Targeted at those working in public sector communications or engagement
• Will help those that know you need to start using social media at work but don’t know where to start
• Will help delegates learn from the experience of councils and other public sector organisations that are already using social media
• Will help delegates to convince others in your organisation why social media is important.

The workshop will:

• Provide an overview of social media in the UK today
• Explore the different social media tools and how they can be used in public sector communications and engagement
• Provide a practical introduction to how to introduce social media into the public sector communications mix
• Discuss real examples of social media in action in the public sector – good and bad practice
• Give delegates the knowledge and skills to start using social media in public sector communications and engagement.

Course agenda:

Social media – the basics

• What is social media?
• Seven types of social media explained
• Usage statistics for the UK
• Why should your organisation care?

Using Facebook in communications and engagement

• Profiles, pages and groups
• Enhancing your presence – apps, content and updates
• Promoting your Facebook presence – growing your network
• Examples of Facebook in action in the public sector – good and bad
• What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Facebook?

Using Twitter in communications and engagement

• What roles can Twitter play in communications and engagement?
• Harnessing the power of Twitter to reach new audiences
• Getting the right content for Twitter – achieving shareability
• Integrating Twitter into the communications mix
• Understanding Twitter: hashtags, retweets and the rest
• Developing the conversation – follow etiquette on Twitter
• Attracting followers to grow your Twitter audience
• Examples of Twitter in action in the public sector – good and bad
• What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Twitter?

Social media relations – dealing with coverage on social media

• What is social media relations?
• Effective online monitoring
• The local online audit
• What to monitor and how
• Should you respond if someone says something bad about you?
• How you can respond to social media coverage of your organisation

Writing a social media strategy

• Components of a good social media strategy
• Gaining buy-in – the case for and against social media
• Implementing social media in communications and engagement
• Tackling the issue of blocked access to social media at work
• How to evaluate the effectiveness of social media

Feedback from previous delegates

This was an exceptional workshop/seminar – perfect for my needs. For a while I have wanted to get a comprehensive understanding of all the relevant social media options and how they could work for an organisation such as ours. I, like many others, simply don’t have the time to research this area properly. This seminar meant that I could get to grips with everything in one day. The agenda was well thought out and the seminar delivery by Simon Wakeman was excellent. It was also very reasonably priced compared to others I have seen! Definitely ten out of ten. A very productive day.
Kam Mistry, Principal Marketing Officer (Corporate), Stroud DC – Attended Birmingham Workshop Nov09

“Very good, everything explained clearly and lots of good examples.

“Really good insight and covered stuff I hadn’t thought of looking into including Monitor”

“Very thorough. Started from the beginning on each topic + offered useful personal experiences + insights to demonstrate the point”

“Excellent – very engaging”

“Very good, useful content, well presented”

“Well put together and well presented”

“Excellent information, evaluations, content & presentation”

“Great, useful tips on monitoring, provided examples. Showed good/bad sites”

“A really informative day. Relevant interesting content. Given me a load of insight to inform my work & development of our SM policy”

Do you want to get together with others to see how you can turn these ideas into prototypes of new online services in just a day?

Kent County Council and Medway Council are running the “Transformed By You” interactive event on Saturday, 20 March. I’ll be there and am really looking forward to an exciting and challenging day where hopefully we’ll end up with some genuine innovations that can be rolled out both locally and to other areas nationwide.

At the event we are bringing people together for a day to develop prototypes of online tools that tackle local challenges.

In advance of the event, we want you to tell us what challenges you want to work on the day. You can either vote on those we’ve put forward or suggest your own! The deadline for voting will be 14 March. The top 10 will be the challenges we work on the day itself.

Examples of challenges could include developing prototypes of ideas on how to “find out what’s going on in the local area”, “report problems, “help people help each other”.

On the day itself, you will able to get into small groups to brainstorm ideas on how to tackle these challenges and develop prototypes based on the ideas you come up with.

Public sector organisations face growing pressures to deliver bigger and better services with far less money. Kent County Council and Medway Council recognise that by tapping into local creative thinkers they could go someway to resolve some of the issues that are emerging.

Digital technologies are effective at doing just this. More people are talking and sharing ideas online in ways that weren’t possible before. Technology also provides opportunities for individuals, businesses and other groups to create innovative models to meet these new demands.

The venue hosts a main room where you will meet and network and breakout rooms where you can get into a group and develop ideas. These all have wifi internet connection.

There will also be post its, pens and flipcharts provided as well as all day refreshments and lunch from  Cafe Sunlight.

Please feel free to bring your laptops if you want to use them to develop prototypes on the day.

We’re looking for a wide range of people to come along on the day – you don’t necessarily need to have technical, computer or IT development skills – your thoughts, ideas and active participation in the workshop could help make a real difference to services that are provided for people in Kent and Medway.

The venue is located directly off the A229, which can be easily accessed by both the M2 (junction 3) and the M20 (junction 6). There are also good public transport links – you can get the 101 bus from Chatham Rail Station – see here for more. See map here.

To book your place visit transformedbyyou.eventbrite.com now.

We’re looking for a self-motivated marketing executive to plan and deliver a range of marketing campaigns.

It will be down to you to identify appropriate marketing solutions, manage budgets and maintain relationships across departments. Multi-tasking is a must in this fast-paced job, so good planning and project management skills are essential.

This is a demanding role, but with a solid marketing background, excellent communication skills and organisation that’s second to none, it’s a challenge you’ll be ready for.

It’s a full-time permanent position. The salary range is £19,621 – £26,276 and the closing date is 12 March 2010.

For more information check out the posting here or contact Charlotte Edwards (01634 332449, charlotte.edwards@medway.gov.uk).

It’s a great challenge and, from what friends who have completed the London Marathon tell me, it’s a race with an excellent atmosphere too.

I’m running to raise money for a charity called Action Medical Research – the leading UK-wide medical research charity dedicated to helping babies and children.

The charity finds and funds the very best medical research in hospitals and universities across the UK that is most likely to deliver real benefit to babies, children and young people. Their funding is focussed on research that aims to improve medical care in three areas:

• Treating sick and vulnerable babies
• Helping disabled children
• Targeting rare diseases in children

My lead sponsor for the race is Public Sector Forums (PSF) – one of the UK’s leading public sector IT, web and communications communities and event organisers. I’d really like to thank Nick Hill and Gary Marston from PSF for their generous sponsorship for the marathon.

If you’d like to sponsor me for the marathon and help me raise as much money as possible for this great charity, my online sponsorship page is here or use the link below:

And to use a bit of community peer pressure to keep my training motivation going, below is a live feed from my training log. Feel free to nag me in the comments if you think I’m slacking!

As a council communicator I’m very familiar with how the purdah rules affect the business of communicating, but civil servant Steph Gray’s blog post about how he will be avoiding blogging and using Twitter during purdah started me thinking.

Steph’s doing this because to him the whole nature of using social media while under purdah rules is too risky. The chance of being misquoted or inadvertently involved in a political debate is too great for him to risk his job over.

I understand what he’s saying and have been contemplating similar thoughts myself recently as the intensity of political activity grows both nationally and locally.

However my blog and Twitter content has never and will never be in any way political as long as I’m a public servant. The rules are very clear and I’m always very careful to only write about topics that are relevant to the blog and not politically biased.

But in the heat and excitement of a general election, particularly with the role that online media will play this time around, I’m guessing virtually any topic that I write about here could be construed as politically sensitive. Because I write about public sector communications (and mainly local government), comments about an organisation, for example, could easily be taken out of context and given a political angle that was never intended.

Similarly with Twitter I know that a number of local and national politicians from all political parties follow me (and indeed I follow them too). Which means, in theory, there’s a chance that political nuances could be given to my Twitter messages and I would need to steer clear of Twitter conversations with politicians during the purdah period.

I agree completely with Steph’s view of the risk here – my job as a public sector communicator is my livelihood and keeps a roof over my family’s head. I would be foolish to risk that job – but I’m still weighing the risks up against the professional benefits that I get from blogging and using Twitter.

I’m not sure what I’ll do yet, but I guess I’ve got a few weeks to decide yet. I will, of course, be posting my conclusion here before purdah starts.

What are other local government bloggers and tweeters thinking about doing during purdah?

The courses, managed by Public Sector Forums and led by yours truly, will take place at City Hall, Cardiff on 24 February 2010 and at Manchester Digital Development Agency ,Manchester on 12 March 2010. For more information and booking details click here for Cardiff and here for Manchester.

Here’s info on the course, agenda and what some of the delegates last time said about their experience:

Workshop aims

• Targeted at those working in public sector communications or engagement
• Will help those that know you need to start using social media at work but don’t know where to start
• Will help delegates learn from the experience of councils and other public sector organisations that are already using social media
• Will help delegates to convince others in your organisation why social media is important.

The workshop will:

• Provide an overview of social media in the UK today
• Explore the different social media tools and how they can be used in public sector communications and engagement
• Provide a practical introduction to how to introduce social media into the public sector communications mix
• Discuss real examples of social media in action in the public sector – good and bad practice
• Give delegates the knowledge and skills to start using social media in public sector communications and engagement.

Course agenda:

Social media – the basics

• What is social media?
• Seven types of social media explained
• Usage statistics for the UK
• Why should your organisation care?

Using Facebook in communications and engagement

• Profiles, pages and groups
• Enhancing your presence – apps, content and updates
• Promoting your Facebook presence – growing your network
• Examples of Facebook in action in the public sector – good and bad
• What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Facebook?

Using Twitter in communications and engagement

• What roles can Twitter play in communications and engagement?
• Harnessing the power of Twitter to reach new audiences
• Getting the right content for Twitter – achieving shareability
• Integrating Twitter into the communications mix
• Understanding Twitter: hashtags, retweets and the rest
• Developing the conversation – follow etiquette on Twitter
• Attracting followers to grow your Twitter audience
• Examples of Twitter in action in the public sector – good and bad
• What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Twitter?

Social media relations – dealing with coverage on social media

• What is social media relations?
• Effective online monitoring
• The local online audit
• What to monitor and how
• Should you respond if someone says something bad about you?
• How you can respond to social media coverage of your organisation

Writing a social media strategy

• Components of a good social media strategy
• Gaining buy-in – the case for and against social media
• Implementing social media in communications and engagement
• Tackling the issue of blocked access to social media at work
• How to evaluate the effectiveness of social media

Feedback from previous delegates

This was an exceptional workshop/seminar – perfect for my needs. For a while I have wanted to get a comprehensive understanding of all the relevant social media options and how they could work for an organisation such as ours. I, like many others, simply don’t have the time to research this area properly. This seminar meant that I could get to grips with everything in one day. The agenda was well thought out and the seminar delivery by Simon Wakeman was excellent. It was also very reasonably priced compared to others I have seen! Definitely ten out of ten. A very productive day.
Kam Mistry, Principal Marketing Officer (Corporate), Stroud DC – Attended Birmingham Workshop Nov09

“Very good, everything explained clearly and lots of good examples.

“Really good insight and covered stuff I hadn’t thought of looking into including Monitor”

“Very thorough. Started from the beginning on each topic + offered useful personal experiences + insights to demonstrate the point”

“Excellent – very engaging”

“Very good, useful content, well presented”

“Well put together and well presented”

“Excellent information, evaluations, content & presentation”

“Great, useful tips on monitoring, provided examples. Showed good/bad sites”

“A really informative day. Relevant interesting content. Given me a load of insight to inform my work & development of our SM policy”

The event is about bringing local innovators together for a day to develop prototypes of online tools that tackle challenges about accessing local public sector services online – basically looking to make local residents’ lives easier through better online tools. And the things the event creates should be easily reused in other local areas throughout the UK.

To explain a bit more here’s an extract from the background paper for the event, produced by the most excellent guys and girls at KCC’s innovation team:

Why are we doing this?

Public sector organisations face growing pressures to deliver bigger and better services with far less money. For local authorities, like Kent and Medway, the changes needed to make this happen do not necessarily require more funding, but tapping into creative ways of thinking and delivering our services.

Digital technologies are effective at doing just this. More people are talking and sharing ideas online in ways that weren’t possible before. Digital technologies also provide opportunities for individuals, businesses and other groups to create innovative models to meet these new demands.

Examples of this include Enabled By Design and School of Everything. These haven’t just created new ways of delivering services that didn’t exist before, they’ve exploited the power of the web to create approaches that offer micro public services.

What do we want to achieve?

We need to create an environment that allows innovators to develop and take these models to scale. We need to join up people with the skills – the innovators – with the people with the influence to make innovation happen – the service providers. We want to enable those groups to come together on specific challenges, and we believe that this is one of the most effective ways of achieving this need.

Kent and Medway Councils want to enable people within the community to benefit from our resources to develop innovative solutions to common problems. We understand that there is always a risk when encouraging change and experimentation, but without it there is no way for councils, businesses, communities or users to move forward and improve.

How are going to organise this?

That’s why we want to bring people together to develop their ideas into prototypes of online services in our one day. We believe that doing it within 24 hours will help to ease the risk of change and experimentation. You may find it surprising that such online services can be created in a day, but Enabled By Design, Good Gym and MyCouncilTax were all developed in similar types of workshops.

Organising “Transformed by You” would highlight which bright ideas are worth fast tracking and would provide us with an opportunity to showcase the expertise of local innovators. This will hopefully stimulate greater engagement between our organisations and the wider community. Finally, this concept can bring benefits to the community itself as the tools created over the day would tackle common challenges.

Who do we want to involve?

We are reaching out to people whose experiences, expertise and enthusiasm will really benefit the event – not just those taking part, but also people who can facilitate the activities during the day. There will be around 30 people taking part of all ages and sexes split into 5/6 groups.

We want facilitators who can create the glue with participants as well as facilitate the activities within the group and make sure groups can complete the actions on time.

As well as facilitators, we will also invite “critical friends” to drop in and out of groups, who can provide advice if needed on how the ideas could work in real life and we will invite people who can provide general support on the day.

What does the analysis show us?

The success of this day will be based as much on the quality of relationships that are formed, as it is on the event itself. To incentivise people to achieve something, we want to let people experience and test out different ways they can get involved. The organisers will seed facilitators to lead discussions that captivate people.

There are different ways of organising “innovation camps” – from informal meetups like at Teacamps, all day events like at 2gether08 to weekends like at SI Camp. Whatever type of activity is chosen, there needs to be a balance between centrally coordinated and self-organising activities.

Bottom-up activities are very popular but they’re also very new to people, so we want facilitators to make it as comfortable as possible for people to self-organise, or if it senses people are finding difficult to do that, then playing a more “supporting” role by suggesting ways forward.

We’ll be advertising the event itself very soon, but for now we’re looking to recruit some help with facilitation from someone who knows how make an event like this tick. If you think this is something you can help us with, read on.

We’re looking for a short submission response detailing how you will provide the above requirements and any other inclusions as your feel are appropriate.

The submission must include:-

1. Your background including any previous work in this area
2. Costing including VAT
3. Any ideas and feedback you have on the approach to facilitation and organisation of the day
4. Your name and contact details

All responses to be returned by 4th February 2010 at 5pm to innovation@kent.gov.uk

The submissions will be evaluated based on previous experience, understanding of the requirements, cost and the best value offered to Kent County Council.

The successful applicant will be contacted by 10th February 2010. It is anticipated that an initial detailed meeting with the organisers of the event from Kent and Medway Councils will take place within the following 5 days.

For any further details please contact Noel Hatch (07515992174, noel.hatch2@kent.gov.uk, @noelito) or Adam Fox (01622 694532, adam.fox@kent.gov.uk)

I can’t find a copy of the article online tonight, but it’s a case study about Aviva’s sponsorship of a world record attempt to sail around Britain and Ireland by an all female crew.

The objectives for the campaign are listed as:

• To increase awareness of Aviva within the UK and support the name change campaign
• To strengthen the association between Aviva and Dee Caffari (the lead sailor)
• To extend beyond the traditional sailing audience

Reading these I found myself wondering if they’re actually real objectives. For a start they’re not specific about what they’re aiming to achieve empirically – PR and marketing students will be very familiar with the concept of SMART objectives, which these definitely aren’t.

The article then goes on to describe a decent campaign and what the agency actually did.

But it’s when it comes to the measurement and evaluation section that it all falls apart. I know it will have been subbed down, but the headlines from the evaluation from the campaign were:

….100 pieces of coverage were generated over a one-month period…one third of these were on TV and totalled 42 minutes of UK airtime.

The BBC covered the world record attempt from departure to completion, and covered the completion live with seven pieces on BBC One’s Breakfast programme and six on the BBC news channel.

In total 12 pieces of national print coverage appeared in various publications…seventy-one per cent of all coverage featured a logo or photograph.

Eh? Surely evaluation needs to address the reasons why you did the campaign in the first place?

Leaving aside it would be hard to know whether the stated objectives were ever achieved because of their lack of SMART-ness, how does that pass for evaluation? It looks at some of the impacts of the campaign (ie coverage) but doesn’t even come close to considering the outcomes (ie what happened as a result of the coverage).

In the second opinion part of the feature where an external PR person takes a critical look at the campaign, it’s claimed there was a 93:1 return on investment on the campaign.

I’m really struggling to see how given these objectives and evaluation that focusses on coverage as this one seems to how anyone could come up with a credible return on investment figure. I’m guessing the ugly head of advertising value equivalent (AVE) has probably popped up somewhere though.

I’m being a bit narky about this one – I’m sure the campaign was very nice, but it does wind me up a bit because it’s so familiar – woolly and unclear objectives and misleading or non-existent evaluation are too common in public relations.

In a time when budgets are under ever-increasing scrutiny, public relations professionals have got to be able to frame campaign objectives measurably and in terms that link PR success to organisational goals, whether they are commercial, behavioural or reputational. And they’ve got to ensure they have methods in place to provide valid empirical evidence about whether the campaign has delivered those objectives.

Without both those things, I fear public relations will continue to struggle to justify its activities and be accountable for what it contributes to the organisation’s activities.