These are my links for February 20th through February 23rd:
Socitm and LGA prepare open data guidance | Kable – The Society for IT Management and the Local Government Association are preparing advice to help councils make more of their data publicly available
Citizen Ethics Network – There is a widespread concern that the winner takes all mentality of the
banker, and the corrupted values of the politician, have replaced a common
sense ethics of fairness and integrity. Many worry that an emphasis on a
shallow individualism has damaged personal relationships and weakened
important social bonds."
Iceland mulling plan to become ‘haven’ for journalism – The China Post – "Hoping to make Iceland a global home for freedom of speech, lawmakers are asking the government this week to implement a journalist's dream package of legislation — promising a safe haven for reporters who want to dig deep, hit hard, and avoid being sued. "
MASHe » Blog Archive » Twitter powered subtitles for BBC iPlayer – "Whilst in the general populous there is still uncertainty over the benefits of sites like twitter broadcasters are already exploring how this technology can be used. A case in point in the BBC/Open University The Virtual Revolution series which is exploring how 20 years of the web has shaped our lives. Its not surprising that a programme of this ilk is exploring how technology can be used to support the broadcast (including allowing viewers to mash-up and reuse clips from the series), it is also the first programme that I’ve seen broadcast a hashtag within its opening credits. The hashtag is a community driven invention which allows comments and content to be tracked across the web including in comments made as tweets."
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?
These are my links for February 14th through February 15th:
Richard Sambrook: Big Thinker | Big Thinkers – Transparency is the new objectivity
Balance used to be the watchword of the regulated UK news environment
Now that is not enough. Trust is built through transparency.
This can be liberating and it means “showing your workings”- as you did when doing maths at school- and admitting mistakes.
Federal Agency Ideascale Dashboard – Very neat – I especially like the bit which says which departments are short on ideas and could do with a little love. "To satisfy the Open Government Directive agencies are soliciting your ideas on how to make them more transparent, participatory, collaborative and innovative"
Google Buzz: Not fit for purpose – Really detailed post on the many flaws with Google Buzz: "I have enough problems managing my email already, I don’t need Buzz to add to the cognitive load".
These are my links for February 12th through February 13th:
Stop selling scarcity « BuzzMachine – If you are selling a scarcity — an inventory — of any nonphysical goods today, stop, turn around, and start selling value — outcomes — instead.
WEB: So, what makes a good council website? « The Dan Slee Blog – Great piece from Danslee: "You’re in a rush. You’re going swimming. You’ve three minutes to find out when the nearest leisure centre closes… and you’re face with a council website. This could be a pleasant experience and for many it is. But if you’re unlucky you’ll be faced with a sprawling brick wall behemoth of a website written in a funny language riddled with jargon. Oh, Lord. It’s not gritting information, for example. It’s a winter service plan. Your opinion of your council suddenly plummets and you hurl abuse at the screen.
Mark Thomas talks sense about the Digital Economy Bill by Andrew Dubber – "Most people in the world do creative things for no money. The vast majority of music in the world is made for cultural reasons that are not economic. To suggest that the only reason to be creative is with the expectation of payment is utterly offensive."
These are my links for January 27th through February 4th:
Peter Levine: a critique of expertise, part 1 – “Although I acknowledge the value of expertise, we can identify several important general reasons why it is never enough and we always need citizens’ participation to tackle social problems.” Thanks to Paul Evans for spotting this.
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."
These are my links for January 7th through January 10th:
Steadicam Smoothee for iphone 3gs – 'The Steadicam Smoothee™ is specifically designed and engineered to work with your Apple® iPhone 3Gs. Based on the same technology as the big $60,000 rigs used in Hollywood, it allows iPhone 3Gs owners to capture incredible video without the shakes normally associated with hand-held video shot on the go, right out of the box, the very first time.' via @edmore
Social workers start turning the tide over media coverage – Mad World – "Angered by inaccurate media reports in which Tracy Dawber, the community care worker charged in relation to the Little Ted's Nursery child pornography ring, was identified as a social worker, users of Community Care's CareSpace discussion forum wrote to both the BBC and the Daily Mirror asking them to correct their coverage."
Akvo blog » Blog Archive » Akvo Really Simple Reporting (RSR) – "it has become clear that sophisticated project prospecting, project reporting and monitoring tools are needed to be able to effectively scale up implementation efforts to handle many thousands of projects in parallel. Akvo will be developing these tools as Open Source software tools and will also be running an online service which anyone can use, without having to install and maintain these tools on their own servers."
A large pile – Viewing a problem – FixMyStreet – Another reason why I love www.fixmystreet.com: "It needs clearing away before it becomes an unofficial tip for the weak minded and indolent."
Doing journalism in 2010 is an act of community organizing – Good to see thoughtful journlaistic material making the case that bloggers have made for a while: "Nothing frustrates me more than watching journalists who've lost their newsroom jobs entering the blogosphere… with no clue as to what they should be doing online. Too few emerging online journalists understand that the function of news publishing has changed in the Internet era. Simply reporting the news, however you might define that, is no longer enough, not when you are publishing in such a competitive environment."
"# Attend 12 theatre shows in the next 12 months, 4 by West Midlands writers/artists/companies you haven’t seen before, 1 in a West Midlands Venue you’ve never been to before.
# Take 12 people who have never been, rarely go, or don’t ‘do’ Independent Theatre to a show. Share transport.
# Host a meal/party for 8 people 4 of which you barely know.
# Write 12 comments/reviews/blog entries about theatre on other people’s sites.
# Attend 1 mid*point or return to the next Open Space event."
Another day, another report « Chief Inspector Mark Payne’s Blog – How did it stop being like this? "In West Midlands Police we have been one of the pilot forces for ‘community resolutions’. This effectively allows officers to use their judgement to make decisions at the scene of some lower level crimes, and together with the victim agree on a suitable remedy. So if a gang of kids break your window, you can ask them to apologise and pay for it, rather than enter into the criminal justice system. So far we have carried out 8000 of these types of resolutions, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Police officers are allowed to use their professional judgement (or common sense as it is more commonly known,) based on the full circumstances of the case, not on narrow performance objectives."
Idiot English: Vorsprung durch Biscuit – This is blogging to warm the cockles of my heart: "My wife likes Bahlsen's Choco Leibniz biscuits, so we often have some in the pantry. But their presence weighs heavy on my pedantic mind. There it is, in my home, the yellow box with its (in)famous slogan:
More chocolate than a biscuit
Eh? It should be "More chocolate than biscuit"! (They're about two-thirds choc.) I can only imagine that this slogan was the victim of hypercorrection in the seminar room"
A quick start guide to Twitter – "The guide takes absolute beginners to Twitter right from the start – explaining what Twitter is, and how to sign up – right through to replying, retweeting, hashtagging and using tools to measure success." Dave Briggs knows his stuff – and he can be funny.
You are the editor of a newspaper. You are allowed to employ one more person. You can choose either a writer that has won a Pulitzer prize or a writer that has built an online community of 40,000 highly committed readers and contributors. Which do you choose?
I know nothing is ever that clear cut, of course. This is a real “daddy or chips” question. Yet, I guess how you answer it gives a good indication of how you think we should train our journalists of the future."
I'd choose both.
Thriving too: Making Openness Work – The 'Open100' competition is a celebration of the power of openness and mass collaboration. You can be part of the competition by nominating the company you think is the best open innovator. The competition will be open until 12th February while the winners will be announced on 24thFebruary. The winners are those who will be included in the list of the world's top 100 open companies
Official Google Research Blog: Automatic Captioning in YouTube – Google experimenting wiht automatically captioning video: "The auto alignment features is available for all new video uploads, however the scope is limited to English material. The auto captioning feature is initially rolled out to a set of educational partners only. Although this is very limited in scope, the early launch makes the results of the system available to the viewers of this material instantly and it allows us to gauge early feedback which can aid in improving the features. We will release automatic captions more widely as quickly as possible." via @pigsonthewing
Here are some of the things I’ve been reading October 24th from 22:45 to 23:23:
Steve Bridger › Blogging a crisis: reflecting on some lessons learned – Steve Bridger writes a very fine post on his After Wilma blog, sharing with us why getting the story told is very important in times of crisis. He quotes Dan Gilmour: "Tell the truth. Tell it quickly. Tell as much as you can. People crave a genuine, human voice in times of crisis."
21st Century Councillor – about 21st century councillor – "A 21st Century Councillor is one who is a supported, confident, talented and professional community leader. One who understands but can also transform their place. One who can think strategically, as well as be informed and inspired by their local roots. In short, being a 21st Century Councillor is a role that many more people should understand and aspire to fulfilling for at least a part of their lives. Where this is not the case, change is not going to come through statutory obligations alone."
Huddersfield gets it’s own social media surgery – The whole process is very well summed up: "At the surgery you’ll get chance to sit down and have a cup of tea with someone who understands about web sites and tell them about your group or organisation and what you do. This will be the starting point. Then you’ll be able to look at the kinds of web sites and services that you might find helpful, and see what similar groups are doing. You can choose some services to try out, and even set up a web site there and then if you feel you need some help getting started"
Rusbridger’s Mutualised News – Editors Weblog – Alan Rusbridger: "For the first time since the Enlightenment, communities are faced with the prospect of living without verifiable sources of news," Rusbridger warns. "This feels like some kind of emergency, and it is not clear to me that our legislators recognise that." Sometimes I think news organisations over play how much they really check the truth of the stuff they run.
We don’t want to read your website. We want to write it. | Local Democracy – Paul Evans echoes a number of thoughts on councils and online media: "They are finding that all of these annoying geeks are making it more difficult for them with their FOI requests, their defamatory blogs, and so on. They feel that they’re in an arms race that they can’t win."
These are my links for August 28th through August 31st:
15 Unconventional Uses of WordPress – "In this article we will highlight some of the most unconventional uses of WordPress and show you how you can use WordPress in these unconventional way as well." via @problogger
Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text | Wired Science | Wired.com – Neat way forward to what we think we can rely on, colur coding the wikpedia stiff that is form people we trust and survives: “They’ve hit on the fundamentally Darwinian nature of Wikipedia,” said Wikipedia software developer and neuroscientist Virgil Griffith of the California Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the project. “Everyone’s injecting random crap into Wikipedia, and what people agree with more often sticks around. Crap that people don’t like goes away.”
Clive Thompson on the New Literacy – "technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions."
Access Space Overview & Site Map – Sheffield – "Access Space is the UK’s first free media lab: an open-access learning community where participants learn, create and communicate online. Participation empowers individuals and develops skills, community, creativity and resourcefulness."
New feature: custom locations / The EveryBlock Blog – Draw your own neighbourhood: "As a neighborhood news site, we try to maintain accurate lists of neighborhoods and their boundaries, but we're inevitably incomplete. Neighborhoods change, areas get renamed and redeveloped, and even the most well-established districts can have ambiguous boundaries. (In fact, some argue that neighborhoods have no true boundaries, only centers, but a computer needs to be able to draw the line somewhere.)" Via @dominiccampbell
