Podnosh

Let me introduce you to two new blogs about neighbourhoods in Birmingham, both run by public servants

Hands on Handsworth is written by Tracey Thorne – the neighbourhood manager for Handsworth in Birmingham;  Be Heard in Birchfield is being nurtured by Yvonne Wager – the neighbourhood manager for that particular part of the city. (Click here to see Tracey’s explanation of neighbourhood management)

Both Yvonne and Tracey are in jobs funded by Be Birmingham – the local strategic partnership.  They were inspired to start a neighbourhood blog by their colleague Kate Foley who had been running Life in Lozells – a site set up originally to address the problem of all the bad news you find when googling Lozells. Kate explains in more detail in this video made by the Chamberlain Forum.

What do they do?

They talked to us about helping them develop these sites during the Social Media Surgeries we ran in Lozells last year.  Both are built on WordPress with some changes to the back end that make it a little easier to blog and listen to what the web is saying about your neighbourhood.  There’s also a simple events system with mapping, plus the sites include a facility to easily turn plans into commentable  consultation docs.  We also provide a service that ensures the software stays updated, plugins don’t clash etc, plus training and support on using it well.

Tracey is a natural – she really enjoys writing for the site and is on a roll. Yvonne is equally enthusiastic but needs a different sort of support, so it is taking a little longer.

Why Bother

The sites are the neighbourhood managers’ home in a wider web conversation. It’s only fledgling at this stage.  The point is that over time they help the neighbourhood managers share information, ask questions, pool expertise and begin to collabroate in new ways with their community.  I’m not convinced they should attempt to become THE site for their neighbourhood.

Such an idea concerns me, because if THE site gets switched off or someone begins using it to be self serving that’s a problems for the whole neighbourhood. Instead I’m interested in how we can nurture a range of online resources and voices in a place. These blogs form  part of that process – providing a tool that can also help neighbourhood managers link to and encourage the wider conversation.

What do you think?

It will take time and patience for these sites to bed in – but what do you think? Could you encourage them by commenting a post or do you have any advice for Yvonne or Tracey?

I think it is only a matter of time before we switch from hyperlocal blogging to hyperlocal “mapping”.

Below is a short TED2010 talk from Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft Live Labs.

He is demonstrating augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft. It’s quite a substantial extension from where Google appears to be just at the moment and shows glimpses of great possibilities.

If you serve neighbourhoods,  interested in very local media or work for a news organisation, whether press, web or broadcast then it may be worth sparing a few minutes to watch this:

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.

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.

www.north-wales.police.uk/balanceyourbobbies is a really simple way that people living in North Wales can help their police force set local priorities for neighbourhood policing. You are given a choice of priorities (set by the public) and then able to assign resources to them. The priority that averages the greatest amount of support where you live gets turned into a job for the local police.

It’s an extension of the idea of Neighbourhood Tasking, where police and public meet to set priorities.

Ian Davies – the Programme Director for Citizens Focus in the force – explains how it works and how he hopes it will help.

I met Ian last week at a hugely encouraging event organised by West Midlands Police, the Police Improvements Agency and the Association of Chief Police Officers.  Nick Keane, Mark Payne and Gordon Scobbie brought together a small group from various police forces with some social media specialists, including Podnosh, Talk About Local and MyPolice (worthy winner of this years Sicamp in Scotland).

I have to say I am very proud of how open West Midland’s Police is embracing the possibilities of social media.  They have been ahead of many forces with early use of podcasting in the form of Plodcast,  getting officers using  Facebook, widespread us of Youtube and Twitter. More importantly they are impatient to learn and, I think, willing to accept mistakes along the way.

Assistant Chief Constable Gordon Scobbie was keen to stress that different forces should learn from each other as quickly as possible.  I think he was hinting at a competitive between forces which would be best set aside, instead collaborating to make good use of social media.

The web itself sets the example for this.  Why sit in a darkened room invesnt a who new governance policy about social media (should you need such a thing) when others have already shared there’s: www.socialmediagovernance.com.

He also recognises the potential culture clash between an organisation structure around control and the problem that the web can’t be controlled in the same sense.

Chief Inspector Mark Payne and I first met properly when we both spoke at an Association of Police Press Officers event in June.  Last week his first blog post threw a challenge out to all the forces in the country:

Nobody is going to be confident in an organisation who they don’t hear from, and who they can’t engage with.

Why then are many police forces so reticent to engage in social media? I have spoken to people involved in policing up and down the country, and I am genuinely amazed at the real fear that there seems to be around blogs, Twitter and Facebook. We are still in the position where the majority of Forces do not have a meaningful web presence.

I have a theory that people have become a little bit seduced and scared by the technology involved in social media. In my experience though, there are no dark secrets associated to the web, IT IS JUST ANOTHER FORM OF COMMUNICATION!

One of the other people there was PC Ed Rogerson of North Yorkshire Police. He tweets his job:

For him it’s a simple way of raising his visibility – people can see he’s working even though they can’t see him. It is all start on what might turn out to be a powerful new way of police relating to communities.