Podnosh

The next CENTRAL Birmingham Social Media Surgery will take place on Thursday 11 February from 5.30-7pm at thestudio.

Thestudio is bang in the middle of the city centre – situated on 7 Cannon Street, B2 5EP. To get to Cannon Street take a right turn off New Street after H&M. You can see the location on their map here.

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These are my links for January 26th through January 27th:

• News : NDS – The government will create one secure, resilient and flexible network which will enable every area of government to adapt their ICT to best deliver for the public. Other changes include, for the first time, bringing together Government departments, local government and wider public sector organisations to remove unnecessary overlaps between departments and avoid costly duplication of technology.
• Giving activities – Part 2: Professional amateur « Project : Arena – "taking journalism into the gift economy where it’s no longer a simple exchange between producers and consumers, writers and their readership. This new form of journalism is confronting issues familiar to many in volunteerism and others who’ve worked for many years in the gift economy."
• Open Government Initiative | The White House – "As part of the Directive, federal agencies have answered the President’s call by democratizing hundreds of high-value datasets on every aspect of government operations. While this is meaningful for the technology community and transparency advocates who have been working on this issue for years, the data released will have direct impact on the daily lives of the American people. Here are three examples to consider:"
• http://bournvillevillage.com/?p=622 – Bournville hyperlocal volunteer run news reports like, well er, reporters…."Passions ran high at a packed Rowheath Pavilion on Tuesday evening as experts and residents clashed over the best way to preserve Bournville’s future in the light of the Kraft takeover of Cadbury."
• SOCIAL MEDIA: Your EIGHT step guide to getting started… « The Dan Slee Blog – Really fien post from Dan Slee at Walsall: "You need to construct a cohesive and persuasive argument backed by figures that will work with people who look on digital with the suspicious eye of a Daily Mail reader."

The short video below is Carl Haggerty, Enterprise Architect at Devon County Council, talking about his thoughts on the nay sayers in government, local or central, who use the problems of risk to prevent social media use.  For him this is a misuse of the idea of risk management. Indeed the right response to managing the risks that social media might present to government is to – use social media.

These are my links for January 16th through January 22nd:

• Puffbox.com » Archive » Creative Commons coming to data.gov.uk – "There's something almost unnerving about the launch of a government website getting so much positive coverage. But today's been data.gov.uk's big day, and everyone seems to agree it's a jolly good thing. For now.
  James Crabtree's piece for Prospect magazine hails it as 'a tale of star power, serendipity, vision, persistence and an almost unprecedented convergence of all levels of government'. The New Statesman says it's 'a far more radical project than it first appears… a clear break with the closed, data-hugging state of the past.' We're all getting quite excitable, aren't we?"
• Unlocking innovation | data.gov.uk – Advised by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt and others, government are opening up data for reuse. This site seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data and is under constant development. We want to work with you to make it better.
• News Corp is foolish to block linking | Media | The Guardian – "Linking is a right. The link enables fair comment. It powers the link economy that will sustain media. It is a tool for accountability. It is the keystone to free speech online."
• The Through the Viewfinder photography of Pete Ashton – My mate Pete keeps on forging new ways to make money from networks, trust and creativity: "As part of my plan to make lots of money from my photographs I’m encouraging you to download high resolution versions of my TTV photos to make cool things with them and I don’t mind if you pay me or not."

  There’s a new section in my shop: Roll your own. That explains how I expect this to work so go read it before reading on.

• African Social Media Surgery launch | Technology for Community Empowerment – I am almost impossibly excited by this first social media surgery in Africa: "The Social Media Surgery will be managed by Craig Ross and the rest of the RLabs Superstars. What excites me about this initiative is that the management and our surgeons will be men and women who use to disempower their community through drugs and violence, who are now giving back and empowering citizens through Social Media."

It is with almost heart thumping glee that I get to write about the first use of a social media surgery in Africa (at least the first I now of).

I met Marlon Parker when he visited Birmingham last year.  He taught us really interesting stuff about using mobile phones and went back intent to get a social media surgery started in South Africa.

He writes:

Today was no ordinary day for the RLabs team as they launched the first African Social Media Surgery. The idea was to take Social and New Media to the public in an open space providing them with basic skills on getting started on this exciting journey. The launch was hosted by Vangate Mall in Bridgetown (Setting up of equipment above), Cape Town and 47 people actively participated by spending at least 15 minutes each with our Social Media Surgeons. These included people signing up for email accounts (gmail), Facebook as well as Twitter accounts. There were people also interested in sharing sites such as Flickr and Youtube with also the occasional person asking about blogging. Below we see Clive, one of our Social Media Surgeons, helping a couple with an email account that could be used for their small business.

The surgeons included some people who had previously learned about using social media from Marlon. One of them, Craig, sums of the group of teachers as:

ex drug addicts and ex gangsters that have completed the course: Social Media for Social Change and various other training at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).

Judging from this tweet surgeon and patient appreciated it (which is what we find here).

Birmingham’s Central Surgery carries on in a new venue tomorrow night. The folk at The Studio have kindly offered to host it. For more please look here.

Things sound different in the fog. (Image Beardy Git on Flickr. Click on the Picture to go to his flickr page)

The core piece of advice for any public service on how to make good use of social media is “learn to listen”.  It’s the one part of the conversation that sometimes gets lost in the rush to publish.

That’s why I was pleased to find West Midlands Police considering recruiting someone who’s job it is to help them do just that.  I’ve already done a little work with WM Police and genuinely admire their determination to value social media for how it connects them to the public through conversation.

Big Brother Watch (a sister organisation to Tax Payers Alliance – very adept users of the social web) raised a number of concerns about this, including:

that this role is designed to prevent criticism of the police from taking place online. Those with understandable grievances should be free to air them in a democratic forum without fear of reprisal. We would appreciate the West Midlands police giving assurances that there will be no black-list created as a result of the web cop’s work.

Chief Inspector Mark Payne, head of comms for the force, responded to this on his own blog:

I can say with absolute certainty that this is not about jumping on people who are criticising us. We sometimes get things wrong, even when we are trying to do the right thing. Policing is a hugely complex business, and it is inevitable, that we will upset some people. If this is the case, we want to hear about it, warts and all. At least if we know, we will have opportunity to put it right, or do better next time.

As I said at the top, listening is the core skill in using social media well.

Having somebody who has an in depth understanding of how to to do that, is experienced in how to respond to what they find and can help others understand the social web is a good idea for an organisation the size of WM Police.

What was curious about the Big Brother Watch piece was the apparent assumption that police listening to the web is automatically a menacing thing.  That in turn got me thinking about listening itself. Can it ever be a neutral process?

I think not.

Any professional organisation does have to listen with intent and how you do that depends on a number of factors:

• Partly it’s a question of where you stand to listen.  If I chose to stand on the balcony I’ll hear one version of a party.  On the dance floor I’ll hear another. That can also be true of the net – how you filter what you’re listening to is a conscious decision.  My feed reader has some feeds in folders I happily ignore – others get my early attention.
• What are you listening for?  There are officers who are very skilled at listening to the the net to detect crime.  Comms teams listen for reputation.  The social web type can also be listening for public feedback or practical neighbourhood problems.  They may use similar techniques but with different intentions.
• Familiarity matters.  We tend to hear what we are used to. In a crowded room I’ll tune out your child but hear mine. I’ll not notice someone use your name but my head will turn at the slightest mention of mine.
• We are sensitive to criticism.  Sometimes we hear it when it isn’t there.  The web is full of good advice for public services, often this is heard as criticism rather than constructive help.
• We always filter everything we hear through our own prejudices.  Some professions (I presume including detectives and Judges) should have experience/training  in listening in a more open fashion, helping them see a truth rather than the patterns which reinforce their assumptions. For most of us though listening is a wholly subjective process.

So listening with a purpose is exactly what this person should be doing, otherwise they would be wasting public money. It doesn’t follow that this will be a malign purpose.  Listening to the social web can help  the police improve the way they spend public money rather than waste it.

These are my links for January 12th through January 14th:

• John Popham’s Random Musings – "I have been quite annoyed by some of the accounts of “heroic” struggles to get to work through the snow, because, it seemed to me, that some of them just weren’t necessary." John on why the web doesn't seem to make it easier for people to work without traveling through snow.
• Building the “reusable video” player « Carl’s Notepad – "What i’d like is a player which has the ability to pull content from any source, youtube or vimeo or a traditional video storage platform – I’d also like to add value by providing a feature that allowed me to layer content, questions etc over the top to gain additional benefit from the original content. I’d like to be in a position to reuse our existing video archives and repurpose them, or use other public material from either central government or other local authorities providing the content was reusable”"
• Official Google Blog: A new approach to China – "we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties."
• Google to end censorship in China | Technology | guardian.co.uk – "Google acknowledged that the decision might well mean Google.cn, and potentially the company's offices in China, would have to close."
• Management | Zoetica: Connecting Organizations with Their Networks – Beth Kanter becomes a Chief exec.

I was just talking to someone who’s work overlaps with mine and has just joined twitter.  “It’s granny watch really”, she said.

Her grandchild is new and, like all new ones, quite demanding.  So her son/daughter need a simple way to communicate with anyone who’d like to know how things  are.  Doing this on twitter allows the grandparents to keep in touch, share but give the parents a little peace.

It’s www.twitter.com/meganwatch but please don’t look – it’s a family thing you know!

It’s a question I’m often asked.   May I start with something simple.  I’m assuming you want something that is easy to use, easy to carry and makes video which is simple to edit and very quick to upload to the internet.  If so buy this one, the Flip Mino – but not the high definition one.

If you are going to buy a flip get this one

Why?

It is light and very easy to carry in a pocket or a bag.
I’ve used and owned the larger ones but found that the red record button was prone to stick.  On these it works like a dream.
60 minutes is plenty of recording time.
The built in usb connector is darned useful.
It does wide screen, which is nice.
There’s no point in buying the high definition one because the lens is the same and the files are just bigger and take ages to upload to the net.

Tip:  the white one if often cheaper than the black one and you’ll rarely find any for less than they sell on Amazon.

What if I want something like a Flip that isn’t a Flip?

At the moment the best reason to do that is because you want better sound. The Flip does perfectly decent sound in straightforward conditions – but make it very noisy and you start to struggle a bit.

Oddly there are not that many sensible choices. There are growing number of high definition flip type camera  that allow you to do what you can’t do with a flip – plug in an external microphone.

Dave Briggs has this very informative explanation of why it’s worth buying a Kodak Zi8:

What Dave says is right, but the point of the Flip is simplicity.  Once you have to add an external microphone, plug it in,

Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera - almost but not quite

mess with it, hope it doesn’t drop out then – to keep the file size down, remember to reset the video recording quality to less than HD (for upload speed) I’m not convinced the more complex camera will be better. It does have one advantage – you can take stills.

It is still simpler to buy the Flip and ask someone to step into a quiet room to talk to them.

However sound is all important in online video so there’s a more expensive but better solution.  I bought one a few weeks ago and love the new Zoom Q3.  You can record just audio if you wish ( a still photo combined with an mp3 makes great content) and will record very simple video with great audio. There’s a built in USB connector, you can use and sd card and the file sizes are weeny – so whizz up to the net.

This is what @documentally says about it – and I agree with him:

What then is special about it?:

Robust
Same ease of use at the Flip
Great sound without needing an external mic
Low resolution video – hence small file sizes.
Does just audio in great quality

So for for me the almost ultimate is the Zoom Q3 – give me widescreen yet low def video on the Zoom Q4 and I’ll be a very happy man.

Beth Speaking from elstudio on Flickr (click on the picture to go to the original)

Beth Kanter is the social media expert for non profit organisations. Last year I made this promise to pay more attention to her prolific blog output.

Today is her 53rd birthday, and in keeping with a small tradition built up over the last 3 years, she is again using her birthday as an excuse to show how social media and trusted networks can combine to help charities. She is raising funds for her favourite charity, the Sharing Foundation.

I first met Beth almost exactly 3 years ago when she visited Birmingham from her home in Boston, New England. She was  working with David Wilcox to deliver a presentation at a conference for people who provide IT support for charities and the like.  It was a time when social media had not become the generic term it is now. I was mostly thought of as a podcaster, one of the one’s who’s job it was to help with telling the story. So naturally enough I interviewed her for the Grassroots Channel podcast.

Click below to listen to the podcast

Click here to download the podcast

Here are 5 things things that I know a number of people have helped me understand, but I can confidently say that Beth Kanter repeatedly showed me these ways:

1. Lead by example. Beth experiments all the time.  Just (F) Do It is ingrained in her personality.  The more I’ve done the same the more confidence it’s given me to keep on going.
2. Don’t hog your content. Share it and move on. You should always build your expertise on the next new thing you’re going to learn, rather than worry about others getting good at one you already know. The faster you share the faster you learn that new thing.
3. Respond. Beth has 305,000 followers on Twitter. She still gets back to you!  How does she manage it?  Discipline.
4. Blogging isn’t a vain thing to do. It can be but, the way Beth does it, it isn’t.  She writes a great deal about the people she meets, she is very generous in describing what she is learning from them. She also puts huge amounts of effort in doing thinking for us and sharing it when it’s incomplete.  These are things Beth (and others) taught me about content.
5. It’s about bringing people together. As David Wilcox said it 3 years ago:    “The other delight at the event was a chance to meet up with fellow UK enthusiasts for social media including Steve Bridger, Miles Maier, Paul Henderson and Nick Booth. We can’t rival Beth’s US fellow social media bloggers yet, but I think a little blog community is emerging here around social media and social network where the focus is nonprofits and civil society. Drop a comment in here if you are interested in linking up – we hope to have a get together fairly soon. Beth suggested we start tagging social media posts with nptechuk … the standard US tag is nptech.”

There is so much more I learn from Beth but these are the basics. That’s why at least once a year I donate something to the Sharing Foundation.  Not because I’m especially connected to the work of the foundation, simply because I’m am especially connected to Beth.

Thanks to Amy and Stacey for encouraging me to write this post.