Podnosh

Take a good look at this picture. It is full of what I would call ordinary folk. None of them appear to be super heroes, to fit the heroic mould we have created for our social entrepreneurs and active citizens.

They are David Barrie’s fellow “bloody minded obsessives” who have collaborated on this urban project. He tells us

there are about ten people missing from the shot but this picture includes community leaders, an architect, a property developer, a former school cook and a janitor who won an Order of the British Empire – in part for her commitment to the cause. Every town or city in the world has such a group.

Dejan calls them urban obsessives.

Doug Henton of Collaborative Economics has a positive, more romantic catch-all description of the cadre.

He calls them civic revolutionaries.

I mention it simply because it is people such as these that populate the stories of the Grassroots Channel Podcast. You can see some of the pictures of these folk on our flickr account. More than 50 stories almost all from Birmingham. That’s a lot of bloody-minded urban obsessive civic revolutionaries for one city – but I know we’ve only just scratched the surface.

More on Downing Street on Twitter this lunchtime, Very friendly, would like to have a name behind the address please and I suppose my feedback would be that until we know who you are we don’t really know how to relate to you.

There has been loads of blog other suggestions since the Downing Tweet Twitter feed appeared last Thursday.

Here on Podnosh we were asking if this was anything special and what the social web might mean for politics and patronage, as we all potentially dance the merry dance of getting digitally close to those in power.

Simon Collister puts us social media enthusiasts in our place by reminding us that:

I spoke to a client’s government relations manager recently about how he communicates with MPs and Peers. His reply was: “Mostly by phone or letter…. Although some are starting to now use email.”

Emma Mulqueeny is a twitter fan and summarises why it does and doesn’t work:

Twitter rocks – but only if you use the Internet to communicate: email, Facebook, blogs etc. If you don’t it is as pointless as setting up an email account and not telling anyone about it… nothing will happen. My personal use of Twitter has been to share experiences and validate thoughts.

Is “Downing Street” interested in using Twitter to “validate thoughts”. The business of using it to ask questions assumes you need to know answers. So what sort of questions could the Prime Ministers Office ask on twitter? Would it be “How quickly should we get out of Iraq?” or “Purple or Red Tie for PMQ’s”. Most of my Twitter friends use it for both.

Techprogressive (Hello, do you have a name?) offers this sound advice:

be less boring. And be more human. Twitter’s a new form of media — use it that way. Post observations, insights people wouldn’t see in press reports, jokes, reactions to news.

Twitter is about forming relationships with your followers, so it doesn’t work if those doing the tweeting just come off sounding like public relations bots

Nils at NDNL echoes all these suggestions and expands on them a touch:

So, @DowningStreet, tell us who you are and keep things worth our while. Know we’re a different audience. Make sure any “news” you push our way has that sense of immediacy we’ve come to know and love over at Twitter.

If you, and others, keep that in mind, get personal with us (can you?) I suppose this will work. If not, the unfollows will hit you harder than you’d held possible and the, essentially great, idea will founder.

Meanwhile our own Brummie web news guru Paul Bradshaw offers a techie slap on the back over at Poynter:

so far their feed mostly offers a kind of Twitter shovelware using Twitterfeed. But that’s not bad in itself. Actually, I think it shows a higher level of tech savviness than simply twittering.

So I’d like to sum this all up into “Hello my name is Nick: what’s yours?”

I like courage in a brand.  Tessy Britton pointed out this brave sweet (yes candy/confectionery)  shop in Barcelona:

For more images look here and have a mooch around Tessy’s fine blog

I like this Youtube video from Birmingham City University English department.

Good community leaders need to be connected, competent and of good character. That is one of the blindingly obvious conclusions of a survey in the West Midlands for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The researcher explains what they set out to do

This study examined the realities of citizen governance from the perspective of participants living and working within six Birmingham wards, and 50 women from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities in Birmingham and Wolverhampton. BME women refers to Asian women from Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds and black women, including black Caribbean and black African.

The findings (summarised here) are a bit of a statement of the obvious. This is possibly the most interesting and obvious:

The defining components of strong, effective leadership were seen as character, connectedness and competence. Leaders were expected to be of ‘good’ character with high standards of personal conduct, particularly trustworthiness, integrity and honesty. Conduct most likely to cause concern was the appearance of questionable ethics, hidden personal agendas and duplicity.
Being connected to the communities they served was also considered an important aspect of community leadership, whether through residency in the area or having an emotional or spiritual association. Leadership perceived to be driven by officialdom and bureaucrats through impersonal institutional structures inspired less confidence than that by known individuals such as councillors and community leaders.
In addition to technical competences, softer ‘people and communication skills’, particularly the art of listening, were considered most important. These skills were needed to motivate others, resolve conflict and bring together disparate groups.

Recently I’ve been reporting for the Grassroots Channel on the Neighbourhood Performance Reward Grant (the following links are to related video and podcast audio from Sparkbrook, Kingstanding, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green). The NPRG is an experiment which provides resident groups with £10,000 to solve (or make reasonable agreed progress on) a local problem which has not responded consistently or well to government (local,national etc) efforts. Meet agreed targets and a further £15,000 is available to achieve more. Now clearly I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in principal, but what interests me is what effect it might have on leadership and residents getting involved in local governance.You see money focuses the mind. Power over resources is a great way to test the leadership qualities outlined above. It allows individuals to flex the integrity and competence muscle groups. Control over resources is also a more direct way to forge relationships – it is where compromise needs to happen. Sure things can go wrong – but they also go right faster when real resources are to hand.
So I would like to add another element to the following conclusions to this report.

Money If local people are to have a more effective role in local governance they need to have real control over money, the effort that can buy and the decision making that requires.

The study found a mismatch between ambitions for governance and the reality of governance. To address this imbalance the following areas are highlighted.
Governance leadership – strong frontline leadership is vital for increasing trust and widening local governance’s reach and impact. This requires leaders such as councillors, chairs and appointed officials who are empowered and equipped for the task and fully committed to working in partnership with communities. Building confidence also depends on leaders displaying exemplary character and behaviour, maintaining the highest ethical standards and development of strong public accountability structures.
Building inclusive governance – skilled leadership is integral for achieving co-operation by communities and increased representation by all ethnic groups. Priorities include counteracting discrimination, promoting equality and ensuring that the values and principles of inclusive governance are reflected within local structures. Other measures needed are:

1. Open, honest dialogue to increase understanding of the specific challenges faced by faith groups.

2. Mentoring programmes and positive role models to support engagement by BME women; and

3. Appropriate capacity building and training support.

Strengthening engagement structures – a more positive environment with a ‘listening, can-do’ culture is needed to increase community confidence, underpinned by an effective communication strategy. This includes highlighting success stories, providing opportunities to learn about the aims and processes of local governance, timely feedback on consultations, a more focused agenda for meetings, and ensuring that communities’ needs and concerns are taken into account in the planning stages.
Harnessing motivations – people with aspirations and potential to engage in governance exist in all ethnic communities and all types of neighbourhoods. However, different communities face different obstacles, and structures that might be appropriate in one neighbourhood might not be appropriate in another. To ensure that everyone has the equal opportunity to participate, local government and partners need to more clearly identify and challenge the specific barriers existing within their localities and communities.
Governance definition – greater clarity is needed about what encompasses local governance.

Thanks to Andrew for telling me about the report.

I just want to say hello to Andrew Hemmings who moved from lurker to blogger after last night’s mini Birmingham Bloggers meet in the Spotted Dog. (Don’t panic, it was an impromptu meeting for Joanna Geary who will miss the next one this Monday 7pm at Rooty Frooty in the Custard Factory) Andrew talked to a number of people about blogs and their possible impact on his work in promoting the TIC. He had a typical response to a first bloggers meet:

By the way…thanks to all those last night who so willingly shared their knowledge, views and opinions to a newbie at the blogging table – I’ve got plenty to think about! Those thoughts will follow….!

Now he’s done the perfect thing, and started his own blog. It really is the fastest way to appreciate/understand the possibilities. So welcome Andrew.

Hi also had a fine chat with Nicky Getgood who was watching the blog meet from the bar then came and joined us – mostl because she’s very friendly, but also because she blogs here.

Chris Unitt was also at the Spotted Dog and is blogging for the fantabulous Fierce Festival here. You can also vote to help them programme the festival. Hi Chris, I like the scratchy graphics. Did you do those?

Simon Howsey is new to me – he seems to be using wordpress to aggregate a whole series of feeds, many from Birmingham Bloggers.

A belated hello to a blog I subscribed to a while back thanks to a tip off from the very fine fine Tim Davies. Alice Casey has set up her blog to explore some of the ideas which percolate through her work with with Involve. This (and many other blogs) are about the link between social media, neighbourhoods and social good. Which is of course where I began a good while back with the Grassroots Channel podcast. She and I will both be at a barcamp in May to explore social media and youth participation – which again relates to some other work I’ve been doing.

For anyone who’s just set up a new Wordpress blog an hour ago the rather heavily revamped Wordpress 2.5 went live. Looks good. Time for some upgrades.

From  wikinomics with thanks to Euan.

Paul Caplan responded to this comment I made yesterday on this blog post with this explanation of what he thinks slow media is and why it matters. Thanks Paul. For taking the time.

Robin Hamman and Richard Fair’s BBC Manchester Blog has just been officially wound up as an experiment.

When I first wrote about this I and others were arguing that a culture change needs to come too – and that is what Robin is setting our more explicitly in the key things they have learnt:

1 Being part of the community by participating as equals, as opposed to participating as a broadcasting organisation keen for new content but not interested in the community, brings with it many editorial and personal rewards.
2 People don’t necessarily blog or post content about the topics, stories and events that media organisations might hope they would – and, in our experience anyway, rarely post about news and current affairs.
3 As a stand-alone proposition, the amount of staff time and effort spent was high in comparison to the quantity of content generated and size of audience served. But, when we were able to use the contacts and content we found through the blog on-air that equation immediately changed. That is, in resource terms, the blog was costly as just a blog but much more efficient as a driver of radio content.
4 The best way to get noticed online is links and the best way to get links is to give good links yourself. That is, you have to play by the established rules of engagement and, online, that means linking prolifically.

I think a lot of people in the BBC now know this and understand this. The BBC guidelines on staff using social media (here and here on blogging) strike me as realistic and relaxed. Let us hope the new public interest test and governance structures don’t delay those folk making the most of their understanding of the social web.

See also:

Manchizzle “but they did good”.

There has been a lot of interest in Downing Street joining Twitter. But does it really mean much, or anything, that’s new?

At the moment number 10 is using it predominantly as a means to feed us links to press releases plus the odd Youtube film. Very good.

Within less than 24 hours 178 people were following the updates and very sociably the Prime Minister’s Office has begun following fellow twitterers. Sorry if we’re a bit loud.

Simon Dickinson was very fast to blog it, as was Paul Bradshaw who treated it as a tweeting and blogging news exercise. Marshall Manson and Stuart Bruce wondered if this is the first Prime Minister(s office) on Twitter. If this is true it doesn’t seemed to have interested Twitter on their blog but has raised eyebrows in Holland, The US and Spain. Shane Richmond is sceptical about its true value, Steve Clayton treats it as a bit of fun while Matt Wardman has started laying claim all sorts of other twtiter/govt feed names.

This is not the first time the UK Government has ventured onto twitter.

I’ve been following HMGOV for a week or two now. Again it is quite literally a feed of news (as HMGOV sees news). What is interesting is that so far it has only attracted myself and 12 other followers (as I took that grab earlier today).

So what is going on?

Does being a top 100 follower give access to power? Glib I know but there was no equivalent rush to follow HMGOV. (Update – his was set up on the personal initiative of Justin as a personal tool for tracking news updates using twitter)
It is clear that Downing Street is potentially much more influential than a news feed from something called HMGOV (which doesn’t even have a link to a home page) and the social web is partly about patronage, attaching oneself to those with greatest/most useful influence. This is echoed by the fact that celebrities will often have the most ‘friends’ on any social network.

Is it also a minor indicator of how the web is essentially personal? Following HMGOV is like befriending the NHS – amorphous and meaningless. DowningStreet is smaller and one can imagine (just) that a known individual (called Gordon Brown) might see or even feed the feed from time to time. However I think the account might build more enduring relationships if it had a name behind it and not Gordon’s because that isn’t credible.
What other questions does this throw up:

How do senior government figures use patronage as they extend their professional social networks online and will it differ from how they act in other networks?
How far will their feeds, blogs, social network profiles attract such large audiences that they diminish the influence of mainstream media?

Any answers? Any other Questions?