5 simple things a council should do to make a website work better for social media

Written on July 14th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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I’ve just presented at Building Perfect Council Websites 2010 on a panel shared with Dr James Munro and his brilliant Patient Opinion and Jane Postlethwaite – and her experience of  being the social media officer for Brighton and Hove Council.

I talked, as I often do, about online civic activists, social media surgeries and the nurturing of neighbourhood level civic activity online.  The presentation is below but the 5 key points are:

  • Permanent links to everything
  • RSS feeds – lots of them by place and service
  • Commentable pages
  • Embeddable content
  • Share your data openly – complete with its flaws

The film that appears on slide 3 is here (yes it does make me look like a git. The viseo was shot the morning after the power had coned our street in the small hours (because of a sports match) then started slapping tickets on cars – we went to bed legally parked and woke up illegaly parked, without warning).

Parking Attendant’s illegally parked whilst ticketing cars during the Ashes at Edgbaston from Podnosh on Vimeo.

Make Love Not Porn – a lesson in the way the internet changes society

Written on July 10th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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Fascinating lesson from Cindy Gallop on how the internet changes our real world and the “pornification of culture”.  (have I just got this site blocked form every local government web service?)

“The single biggest impact technology is having on our most fundamental human activity, our sexuality”

Also includes a big challenge to understand social media around pornography.  Hat tip various on twitter.

See www.makelovenotporn.com

See also www.textsfromlastnight.com

Just showing someone how to write a quick blog post.

Written on July 7th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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Titus Dawo

I’m with Titus Dawo at the Balsall heath Social Media Surgery.  All I’m doing here is giving him and idea of how simple it can be to publish to the web.

Big Society and barriers in government

Written on July 6th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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I’m on the train home from the Big Society network launch in London this afternoon. A strong and varied group of people brought together to consider, be sceptical about and challenge the notion of the Big Society.

Here I just want to share a few notes I made after joining John Houghton of Shared Intelligence and the National Association of Neighbourhood Management.

Breaking Down Practical Barriers Read the rest of this entry »

Government Reservists 2 – an idea for the Big Society?

Written on July 6th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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I’m on a train to London for the launch of the Big Society Network  and pondering.  This week Nat Wei described the Network  as having a

…mission to be – in partnership with government, business, and the voluntary sector – an action-orientated remover of barriers to mass civic engagement where people live – enabling the change we want to be.

He also wants what The Guardian described as

an army of community organisers that will become the “catalyst” for communities to band together and challenge the apparently arbitrary decisions made about public services in their name. “I want them to be the glue bringing community together. They will be financially independent of government. They will be able to have different views from government. There can be healthy debate and this can build social capital. [Organisers] I hope will end up as trusted as the local GP,”

Perhaps…..

In 2008 I wrote a post musing about the idea of a sort of Territorial Army for government. I was thinking about the implications of a growing band of self organising citizens Read the rest of this entry »

Switching on Social Media Surgery Plus

Written on July 5th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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I don’t get excited very often ;-).  Today I am.

Last night we flicked a switch.  You might think it was a simple switch.  On the face of it all we  did was turn http://beta.socialmediasurgery.com/ over  to www.socialmediasurgery.com.

For me though that is one helluva switch.  It means that today you lot can start making the most of Social Media Surgery Plus – a site created to make it easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to find, organise and report on social media surgeries.  Read the rest of this entry »

Neighbourhood surgeries and community blogging at the Balsall Heath Forum

Written on June 29th, 2010 by Andrew Brightwell

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Abdullah from the Forum and Andrew Brightwell. Picture by Nisha Virdi

We’ve been holding some social media surgeries in Balsall Heath. So far they’ve been supported by the  Birmingham Social Investment Trust and our hope is that, after our third event on July 7, we’ll be able to carry them on as completely voluntary events. If you’re interested you can sign up here.

One of the projects that has benefited from our this is the Balsall Heath Forum, Read the rest of this entry »

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Click here to download the podcast

Stuff I’ve seen June 10th through to June 19th

Written on June 19th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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These are my links for June 10th through June 19th:

  • Neighbourhoods Learning Together — BVSC – Course available for community activists in North Birmingham and Sandwell: “30 places are available and we want to the group to reflect the diversity of the area. If there are barriers or support needs which are making you hesitate, then let us know and we’ll see what we can do. The venues for the sessions will be wheel chair accessible.”
  • Telford & Wrekin CVS-news from the Development Team » Blog Archive » Telford & Wrekin CVS BASIS Project – “The whole purpose of which is to recruit, support and train 50 local voluntary and community organisations, in the art of social media, so that they can implement it, to ultimately support group sustainability”
  • Swimming pool data scraping: comparing opening times | Where can we swim? – “Birmingham City Council’s leisure centre website isn’t an easy place to look for information, harder still to try to take data, but that’s just what I’ve spent some considerable time trying to do….” Our own Andrew Brightwell continues his one man campaign to scrutinise availability of swimming pools.
  • The power of conversations « Francesca Elston – “…conversations make people happier and more useful.”
  • Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website | Media | The Guardian – The Daily Beast, a US news reporting and opinion website, reported that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Julian Assange – an Australian citizen who moves frequently between countries – after the arrest of a US soldier last week who is alleged to have given the whistleblower website a classified video of American troops killing civilians in Baghdad.
  • Cutswatch | Society | guardian.co.uk – Public services face the harshest cuts in decades. We want to know what’s happening in your area
  • Futurebuilders — loan business scrapped, new direction will be grants for neighbourhood organisations « The BSSEC blog – “Civil Society Media website reports that Nick Hurd, the civil society minister, has confirmed that Futurebuilders — New Labour’s flagship loans-plus-support model for investing in third sector development, managed by the Social Investment Business — is “effectively closed for business”. In future the £200m fund will be dedicated to providing grants to stimulate the formation of neighbourhood-based organisations, a clear change of direction under the coalition’s new ‘big society’ policies.
    The Office for Civil Society (the replacement for the Office of the Third Sector) has also confirmed that Capacitybuilders and the youth volunteering organisation v — both major New Labour initiatives — are “under review”.”

Help Me Investigate short listed for NUJ award

Written on June 19th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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Help Me Investigate and my very clever colleague in that venture, Paul Bradshaw,  have been nominated for Multimedia Publisher of the Year in the 2010 NUJ Regional Press Awards.  The full list of nominees in Paul’s category are:

The site has had an number of big investigations, from uncovering the £2.8 million price tag for Birmingham City Council’s website (which in turn led to the council’s own inquiry on the spending) to stripping away the layers of what lay behind a new free newspaper in London.

The site allows citizens to collaborate which each other to ask civic questions and find the answers.  HMI  was also recognised in Talk About Locals Un Awards earlier this year – (full result on the Guardian site) thank you!

We’ll find out on the 29th whose won this one.

Staking a claim – new allotments and new community

Written on June 13th, 2010 by Nick Booth

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A decade ago I made a half hour documentary about allotments, called Losing the Plot.  The programme reflected what was then a confused attitude to urban land and how we value greenspace.

It featured academic and activist Simon Baddeley talking about his campaign to prevent homes being built on the Victoria Jubilee allotments, which border Handsworth Park.

Grab your plot

Simon and his neighbours couldn’t stop the housing development, but they did manage to get planning to require the developers to re-instate 80 of the allotments plots.   Simon has fought long and hard to ensure that this commitment is honoured.  Yesterday he claimed his plot:

Simon Baddeley: "Got the plot"

and filmed this:

A few weeks ago Simon also digitised the original documentary, which you can see here:

A healthier approach to Urban Land?

For me the re-opening of the allotments  represents a small symbol of a shifting attitude to land in our cities. At the time the doucmentary was made it felt like land was there for developers and individual profit.  Since then demand for allotments has grown, people are showing off their pride in these places, the Birmingham Open Spaces Forum is nurturing a better relationship between citizens and council.  Parks like Cannon Hill and Handsworth have improved immeasurably and the famous CoCoMad in Cotteridge Park has shown how far open space cements community relations.

As Emma Woolf, of the Friends of Cotteridge Park,  explained in one one of our first Grassroots Channel Podcasts in 2005, conflict over public space can be a catalyst for a community coming together:

Click below to listen to the podcast

 

Click here to download the podcast

Is it time for a more flexible understand of public land?

Martin Field has been making the case for an easy to use map of publicly owned land plots in the city.  He’s made a tiny bit of progress:

We  emailed  a simple google map reference to the relevant officer and within 24 hours we had a response as to the specific ownership. Very good service and free, although you can only determine if the land is owned by the City or not, but still a good start. If the City does not own the land you are directed to the UK Land Registry, which is not a good experience and not free!

Last week I was at the Handsworth Residents Network meeting, which included a detailed discussion about how hard and frustrating it is for community groups to clean up or use eyesore plots.

The council itself has been seeking to streamline the process of transferring assets into the hands of community groups through it’s Community Asset Transfer Development Programme.  (I’ve been involved in recording that programme). Their work includes thinking of broader ways to measure the value of using land, called Valuing Worth.  This is supported by a wide range of other activity – including Growspace, which is taking hold in Ladywood.

These are small things.

I think we are still confused about ways of using urban land and why shouldn’t we be. Cities are confusing places.  But people outside and inside local authorities are finding it easier to collaborate to make better use of land for community benefit.

What else do we need to do during a time of lower public spending, tighter financial restrictions for developers and an ideological/economic battle over where food should be produced?  Update – perhaps all questions you can explore at the Cultures of Birmingham: Open Spaces event from the Chamberlain forum on 24th June at 6.30 at the the Mac in Cannon Hill park