Podnosh

Online it’s harder to judge integrity. You lack those face to face indicators which have evolved over millions of years. Despite that this add on lie-detector for Skype is a worrying development. I know such technology is already used by insurance companies to detect potential fraud. But I think the solution to bridging the online trust-gap is simpler: spend more time getting to know people.

skype lie detector trust

“Play is a every child’s human right”

After a decade or more working with after school clubs and play schemes Laura Watts established a new organisation in Birmingham called Dens of Equality. She wanted to help the families who found their children effectively barred from the pleasure of full blown play because they had some form of disability.

Dens of Equality is a central hub which helps groups of parents create their own autonomous organisations. With these the families can apply for funds and also approach play workers directly, encouraging them to find new ways to include all children in their play schemes. They create tight new relationships which work for professionals, parents and children, all using a system which hands power to the people closest to each child.

Please leave comments on this blog. You can even write a short independent review of the Grassroots Channel at our page on iTunes.

Links – mentioned in this episode:

Written version (pdf) of this story with more information

Dens of Equality

Birmingham Early Years and Childcare

Todd Hannula

Pete Ashton

Soweto Kinch Podcast - direct link to mp3

Roger Telphia Podcast – direct link to mp3

Kings Norton Farmers Market Podcast – direct link to mp3

Click below to listen to the podcast

Click here to download the podcast

Last month I wrote a little something about how technology is defined by the simple truth that it is somehting which doesn’t yet work properly.

Today I got another point of view. Writing on the Bamboo Project blog (another frequent user of the nptech tag) Michele Roy Martin describes how her daughter and ex-husband found themselves intimately involved in a shooting at a school in the US. The news spread fast. Michele’s take, though, was:

What struck me about all this was not only how quickly news spread through the use of technology, but also how the kids and families were able to use this media to begin connecting, processing, discussing and mourning what had happened. I thought about how as a parent, if it had been my child, I would have been so grateful to go to a site and see this outpouring of love and connection coming from other people, people who didn’t even know my child. As the mother of a child who saw what happened, I’m also grateful that she has the ability to process her own trauma and grief by connecting to so many people. It’s astonishing to me to see what technology can accomplish in creating human bonds.

I read a lot of stories about how people are worried that online community interferes with “real” community. That may be true in some cases. But this is one time when I believe that technology may actually help in healing “real life.”

I hope things settle quickly for you and your family. Take care.

Just a couple of things I wanted to mention. Thanks a bundle to Pete Ashton of Bournville (the place where we make chocolate) who wrote this about the Grassroots Channel:

Podnosh is a podcast station based in Birmingham that I stumbled across recently. I like that this pretty established outfit with high aims exists outside of my awareness – it implies there’s even more happening online in the city for me to discover. I’m particularly taken with the Grassroots Channel which “is here to provoke and inspire anyone who thinks they just might want to change the world around them”. For a quality sample check out this interview with Soweto Kinch, a jazz saxophonist and rapper from Handsworth who recently released an CD set in a tower block in B19, samples of which can be found on his MySpace page. Given what he says in that interview I intend to investigate Mr Kinch further.

Pete come and talks to us – I bet there’s loads I’ve yet to discover. Perhaps together we can get dear old web 1.-1 Digital Birmingham listening?

But double thanks to Pete for telling me that Birminghamitsnotshit won the annual Birmingham Pantomime Horse Grand National on just the second time of asking. Unbelievable. Jon Bounds you are in big trouble for not sharing your triumph with us here, first.

soweto kinch grand national horse racing birmingham is brill

Yeah but, no but.

pollard walliams matt lucas little britain grammar

Gapingvoid’s take on online social networks and business boils down to:

You can’t blame the tools – they’re here, they work.
Niches rules (and they make money)
Nobody cares what the MBA’s think
You need a great product
Integrity matters
Love works.

Sounds like something made for the focused non-profit.

leweb3

This is just a quick mention of this story (also here) . Jimmy Wales tells us he plans to use www.openserving.com to offer us all free hosting plus 100% of all advert revenue from the stuff we write, as long as we keep a link to his company Wikia. He plans to host all sorts of open source software (including wordpress which creates this blog) and allow us all to create multiple author blogs with voting and feedback buttons etc etc.

How will he make his money – it looks like it should come from advertising on wikia.

This is an enormous opportunity to draw many more people into using the social web, and for non-profits to not only see their web cost tumble, but start earning money from the things they and their supporters are saying. It is also likely to become the focus of a huge amount of (mainly open source ?) creative effort to make the different websites work well and look fab.

Still don’t understand it properly though.
jimmy wales wikia wordpress drupal wiki

The Donor power Blog made me smile with this post, brought to my attention by Nonprofit Curmudgeon.

google

I wouldn’t normally write about specific competitions or even gadgets, but Jane Slowey (once my boss for a few months) e-mailed me about a tie-in between her organisation The Foyer Federation and Dixons and I really want others to blog about it. After all it’s a huge improvement on reports that homeless people were paid to queue in Tokyo and the US when the PS3 was released there.
The fundraiser is a competition. Enter here to win a PS3 from Dixons and a proportion of the £1 fee goes to the Federation. (It might also help get round fears of shortages) So think of this as an experiment in attracting a new audience for you and helping a good cause. If enough of us use this link perhaps we can get it onto the front page of technorati. With the tags below we’ll certainly find new readers and give them a way to turn their gaming passion to good use. If you give it a go please send me a link and I’ll add it here, or use trackback or perhaps add a comment with a link. I’d also love to know what effect it has on hits to your blog.

Read the rest of this entry »

David Wilcox has just put up a post which helps think about the relationship between formal and informal structures – whether in non-profit or profit organisations.

He cites a thought which popped into the head of Lloyd Davis at It’s Social Stupid. It occurs to Lloyd that creativity most often happens in the ‘shadows’ – the informal links into and out of  formal organisations – rather than within the naturally constraining structures which were designed to get things done.

I think we all spend some considerable time in the shadows. You know: Read the rest of this entry »