Podnosh

As we look forward to February’s Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery tomorrow, I thought I’d reflect quickly on last month’s.

One obvious highlight was the arrival of television cameras. Since the last event I went down to was November’s – where a German Camera crew was shooting – I’m beginning to think the presence of a film crew is a pre-requisite to a proper surgery!

This time the crew was there to see that social media can be used for a good cause as well as a bad, as part of a BBC Midlands Today piece that concentrated on how protest groups – including the English Defence League – have boosted turnout at their rallies by using sites like Twitter and Facebook. There was a good turnout or our own for them to film and Nick Booth put them straight, pointing out that in the right hands social media can do an awful lot of good.

I got a taste of this myself as I sat in on a session helping out the blog for Danny Reeves’ and Dave Morris’s climb to the top of Kilimanjaro. Danny and Dave, as I can see from looking at the blog, have reached the summit now – and raised more than £11,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support – exceeding their own combined target by more than a thousand pounds.

We were also in our first surgery in thestudio. Yep, it’s called thestudio, not The Studio, which might seem a lot more sensible, but is presumably a lot harder to trademark. The most brilliant thing about thestudio, aside from the fact that the venue has offered itself for free, is that it is in central Birmingham. Smack bang in the middle, in fact.

Hopefully that will ensure we meet the trade descriptions act – and that it makes it easier for more organisations and people to come down and get involved. And there’s a pub right across the road. Not a bad a location, then, really.

These are my links for August 12th through August 13th:

• mySociety » Call For Proposals 2009 – My Society wants suggestions on what they should do next: “We need your help to decide what mySociety builds next.
  Our previous calls for proposals have led to WhatDoTheyKnow.com, WriteToThem.com and Pledgebank.com.”
• The Imperative for Government to Engage Online | Open Forum | Independent public policy think-tank, blogs & forums | openforum.com.au – Matt Crozier: “Most of the time, the great silent majority is completely missing in action from public policy debates. If you are one of those people (and most of you are) then ask yourself, when was the last time an interest group asked your views? Or checked that their passion aligned with yours before campaigning on your behalf?”
• Case study on Facebook engagement « Al Smith – Al Smith details what he did with a group of Newcastle citizens who were using Facebook to have a go at the council.
• The Seven Laws of Journalism – This Semester « M. Appeal (Mass Appeal) – “Grow a pair.” (via @joannageary
• Sarah Lay: Getting noticed: The Five Step Programme | DavePress – Sarah Lay does a guest Post for Dave Briggs: “So, how to go about raising your profile and getting social media offerings to the table? I’ve worked up a list of five approaches.”
• Brooklyn Typology – “The subject of continuous residential development since the mid-1600s, every trend in American architecture and urban planning has inscribed itself onto Brooklyn’s moraine and salt marshes. Brookyn Typology is an investigation of borough’s population and urban form. It consists of 2100 photographs taken in a sample of blockgroups in Brooklyn, plus detailed Census, historical, and typological data about the residential and housing in area. Together, the interlinked photographs and data form a portrait of the urban fabric of Brooklyn.”

Here are some o the things I\’ve been reading August 13th from 19:06 to 23:31:

• Fermoy town’s out of date website an embarrassment – News, Frontpage – Corkman.ie – Bloody brill: "town clerk Ray Owens admitted that there was no member of council staff actually trained to manage and maintain the website. "Nobody can actually do it, that's where we are falling down," said Mr Owens.
• Your Boss Doesn’t Care About ‘The Conversation’ – So what the hell IS ‘X’?
• Apps for Democracy Finland – Kansalaisosallistujan työkalut | MindTrek – Finish competition for data applications
• Social Media points the way for Corporate Website Development « Carl’s Notepad – "I see a model where corporate websites are essentially delivering packages of “information and services” into the wider Internet community or even social networks. This would essentially allow people to participate in particular topics, based on their preferred community." Carl Haggerty doing a very nice job of thinking through new council websites. Wonder if the new Birmingham one will take this into account? ;-)
• Capital Funding for social media…how to get it « Policy and Performance – Nice clarification from Ingrid

Even more thing I found in my feed reader after a while away

• The new model for journalism: Hyper-local, collaboration and aggregation « How to microblog in high heels – Hanah Waldram, she behind the hyperlocal site for Bournville says about Help Me Investigate (I site I helped set up) “hyper-local, collaborative and aggregation seem to me to be key terms in the future of local journalism online. And I’m excited my home town Birmingham is pioneering such innovative and exceptional work.” Thank you Hannah
• Finding Innovation in Design – Bokardo – Joshua Porter is interesting on how websites should start by mimicking existing and current behaviour, before attempting to lead users towards some new combination of behaviour.
• Towards a New Golden Age of Rail? | Andy Howell – “I never thought I’d be praising the work of Lord Adonis. But now this famed train spotter has begun to unveil his vision for high speed rail I’m going to have to take my hat off to him.” Andy Howell on the hope for a high speed rail link from Birmingham to London. Despite high levels of digital connection it would certainly make my work easier. The web has made me want to meet more people and get more done, that means better transport. Now where in Birmingham do we have the space for a shiny new train station… umh, there’s some empty land behind Curzon Street.
• Islamophobia: only 10% of Muslims believe discrimination is on the basis of religion « walls come tumbling down – I ink to this partly because it’s intersting and partly to encourage you to keep tabs on Chris Allen’s blog: “the evidence base for Islamophobia is remarkably weak and so offering any comparison between this and other forms of data remains extremely difficult. Nonetheless, if the findings are correct, then it may be time to re-consider the way that Islamophobia is perceived particularly when the reality and the perception appear to be so different.”
• Screen WM – Roger Shannon writes about Jill Balcon – I link to this simply because one of the first films I ever made when i was working on the first series of Inside Out for the BBC was about Balcon and the other famous movie entrepreneurs who worked out of Birmingham in the 1920’s. it was presented by Adrian Goldberg an included a wonderful interview with Roger Shannon. In fact the whole piece was essentially Roger’s idea.
• Total Place and Accountability « Philip Parkin – Birmingham Councilor Philip Parkin also has views on Total Place: “the conversation about how to best scrutinise the unelected should have begun a long time ago.” in 2003 I ran a quango called Birmingham City Pride, who had as part of it work scrutinising the Local Strategic Partnership. It was a rubbish idea because the organisation which paid us to scrutinise the Local Strategic Partnership was …. yes you’ve guessed it.
• Birmingham Post – Cost of new Birmingham City Council website spirals to £2.8m – This story originally emerged from a Freedom of Information request made as a result of an investigation started by Josh Hart on http://www.helpmeinvestigate.com. At first the Post piece failed to acknowledge the work of volunteers that had made their story possible, but after being prompted they put that right. If you read the comments you’ll see they gained respect for doing just that. The Birmingham Mail also amended their story to acknowledge Heather Brooke, who submitted the FOI
• Local Gov is self organising | DavePress – Dave Briggs on how localgovcamp is spawning self organised regional events.
• 10 great leadership quotes « Common Purpose – Leading Beyond Authority – Click this link for 9 more quotes a bit like:
  “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Steve Jobs
• Roy Greenslade: Murdoch is wrong to charge for online content | Media | guardian.co.uk – I’m with Roy on this one: “Journalists have skills, valuable skills, but the net allows new forms of collaborative journalism that does not recognise the need for barriers. We want to see journalism develop, not return to the days in which an elite minority acted as secular priests, telling people what they thought they ought to know. “
• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Archives: The Struggle Over Local Media: An Interview With Eric Klinenberg (Part Two) – Cart before horse argument going on here: “young people may not miss reading the local newspaper, but they would be very concerned if they could no longer get reliable local journalism online because the paper had fired so many reporters or even closed. They would notice if their favorite bloggers suddenly had less material to comment on or extend, or if their local TV news got even dumber because there was so little reporting to repackage. If the media is an eco-system, newspaper reporting remains its sun, even in a digital age. When it diminishes, so does everything else. “
• Citizen Engagement « Policy and Performance from IDeA – :A range of projects to promote citizen engagement are being sponsored by CLG under the aegis of the snappily titled Citizen Engagement Tools Sub-Programme Board.”
• Birmingham, B29: Weoley Castle – local news – Charlie Pinder eviscerates the Post and Mail’s attempt t use tagging to get very local.
• A41 Warwick Road Route Enhancements – A-social media from this local government consultation site. It uses wordpress but doesn’t allow conversation. It’s a classic case of consultation being understood as you tell us, on a one to one basis. Wrong, and I’m not interested in being told “we’re learning”. You’re not!

Here are some things I’ve been reading July 17th:

• MP asks UK.gov: Why are you still using IE6? • The Register – Tom Watson MP: “I feel sorry for the thousands of civil servants using the Austin Allegro of web browsers when they can have newer, faster alternatives. I want government CIOs to pull their fingers out.”
• UK Parliament – House of Lords Information Committee – Lords information Committee want to see parliament change the way it shares information with the public: “We recommend that information and documentation related to the core work of the House of Lords (including Bills, Hansard, transcripts of public committee meetings, evidence submitted to committees, committee reports, records of divisions, expenses and the register of Lords’ interests) should be produced and made available online in an open standardised electronic format that enables people outside Parliament to analyse and re-use the data.” (paragraph 66) “We ask the Government to explain how and within what timescale our recommendations will be incorporated into the work that Sir Tim Berners-Lee will lead on opening access to data.” (para 81)
• The social media paradox: success & time. | Blog | Econsultancy – “We’re about to see a wave of anti-social media feeling and a call for back to basics; with comments like “Why were we all getting so carried away!?”"
• 10 things you should cover in your social networking policy | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com – This post reminds of why controlling and obsessive business will founder with sociaol media. The whole tone of voice is about aversion to rather than embracing the social web: “To have teeth, a policy must include consequences for violations. The policy should spell out that violation of the policy can result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination, and reference other company policies that lay out the appeals process and other relevant information.”
• The Wires are gone, now for the Restrictions « FutureLibrary – “Is your library wireless friendly? And why not? It is the way we communicate and work now. People are less attached to desktops as sales suggest, with laptop and other mobile devices taking off. Yes, we are a mobile society in more ways than one.”
• A huge list of social media and blogging guidelines « Webyogi’s blog – “One policy that really sings to me is Zappos Twitter policy ‘Be real and use your best judgement’ – that’s it! Thanks to original posts listed below just for reference….”

These are my links for July 10th through July 12th:

• Intel Social Media Guidelines – Genuinely excellent guidelines for intel staffers on getting involved with social media.
• Not what ships are for at Helpful Technology – "one of the local authority participants contributed a quote which struck a deep chord: “Ships are ’safe’ in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are for” – great spot from Steph
  Amen to that. Here’s to seafaring!
• Google – Local Government – This site is your guide to the tools and best practices your council can adopt to reach, communicate and engage with your community.
• Conversation with communities – A councillor’s guide to social media – Councillors, as local leaders, will have a key role in these changes if they take that opportunity. Enhancing local democracy through greater transparency and providing both a greater voice and a greater responsibility for citizens in setting priorities and delivering public services means that the nature of a representative democracy may change. But the need for elected officials does not go away and there are tremendous opportunities local leaders to use social media to engage with a wider range of people in a powerful, focused way.
• Kebablog » Blog Archive » Surgery anyone? – Steve's experience of the Social Media Surgery in Acocks Green: "2 ladies (bec and mandy? – I may have asked the names, but in the excitement forgot!) came in and asked about setting up a blog, Nick pointed them in my direction and I was happy to help out."
• I couldn’t possibly comment: An open, digital Iraq inquiry – "The inquiry should assume that interesting things will be done with the information they publish off their website by independents." A really thorough explanation from Will Perrin about how the UK Government Iraq Enquiry could use the web and meta data in important ways.

Here are some o the things I’ve been reading July 5th from 09:59 to 13:20:

• Sustainable independent and impartial news. WriteToReply consultation – "Sustainable independent and impartial news; in the Nations, locally and in the regions" is a 12 week public consultation document published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that "seeks views on the proposal for a contained, contestable element to be introduced to the next licence fee settlement."

  This WriteToReply republication of the original consultation document allows interested members of the public to comment on the consultation document at a paragraph level.

• The Investigatory Powers Tribunal – Welcome to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal website. The IPT exists to investigate complaints about conduct by various public bodies, in relation to you, your property or communications.
• paulcanning: A SocMed history moment – "This is a historical moment. A question from Iranians, via social media, gets asked of the US President. Mark this one down"
• What's wrong with Flips? – The Daily Grind – A Flip Pro would be breaking new ground, and that’s an order of magnitude more risky. Are people ready for it?
• Social media in public service: ideas for the Capital Fund at LocalGovCamp « Policy and Performance – "We were (ARE) looking for ideas: CLG’s Efficiency and Transformation Capital Fund potentially includes some significant funding for innovative and effective social media projects. The ‘only’ criteria are that projects can roll out quickly, achieve real outcomes against local priorities (as set out in Local Area Agreements), be scaleable and applicable across authorities, promote empowerment, link to the Total Place approach as that develops…!"

Birmingham News Room header

After a brief consultation process and suggestions  from a number of folk, including this lengthy burble from me, Birmingham City Council has launched birminghamnewsroom.com.

It’s a wordpress based site for their news service to the public and press and  describes itself as

…your first stop for all the news from Europe’s largest local authority.

The aim is to improve our news delivery, so we want the newsroom to be a useful resource for both journalists and members of the general public.

Last rites to the press release?

Deborah Harries, head of news at the council, blogged about where they are at:

The press office at Birmingham City Council has moved into the 21st century and after months of hard work we’ve finally launched our online newsroom. This is an exciting development for my team and hopefully this site will prove to be a useful resource for journalists, bloggers and residents.

We haven’t quite read the last rites to the press release but the world of media relations is changing. (my emphasis)

People consume news in many different ways now and we’re keen to reach a wider audience through the burgeoning and exciting range of social networking tools available. Don’t get me wrong, this is far from the finished article and we’re looking for your views to help further develop the service.

Included is:

A dedicated Youtube Channel, managed partly through vodpod,  with straightforward self made content like this:

There is a series of photos in their self hosted gallery ( I’d like to be able to link to and use these images) and the twitter account, which popped up a while ago. Plus the all important RSS feed(s?) and yt’s good to see comments enabled on individual blog posts/news items.  I imagine trackback is too?

What do I think?

I think it’s wonderful. I’ve got a head full of things that could be done next or perhaps a litle differently, but they can wait.  It’s through using social media that you get good at it and here the council has created a wonderful place for doing just that.

Congratulations to Geoff Coleman, who’s been nursing this for some months, and Deborah Harries for just getting on with it.

(Declaration – from time to time I get paid by Birmingham City Council – not for this though!)

Above is Sarah Lay from Derbyshire County Council talking about her recent experience of using social media to tell the story of  the council elections of 4th June 2009.  As SOCITM the organisations which represents the folk who run council websites, puts it:

County Councils saw their web traffic double last Friday and Saturday thanks to their provision of a sophisticated online election results service coupled with use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and email alerts.

Sarah describes how the council announced the results straight onto twitter (followers trebled), plus offering an election map and a virtual council chamber.  They also used a Facebook fan page (yes 74 people claimed themselves fans of a local election) where people were able to have their own conversation about the results.

In effect they by-passed mainstream media.   This system treats journalists just the same as any other citizen, offering us all the same information at the same time and space to talk about it.   However this is also good news for journalism, because it allows the professionals to spend increasingly precious time checking for truth and getting to the bottom of the implications of the election, rather than simply shoveling fact.

Sarah has written in much more detail on her own blog.  In the first of two posts, on election day itself, she wrote with great passion about preparations:

All of this has been going on for a number of months (not full time) and has been a learning curve and exciting project for this team to get into. For the first time we have had a significant presence internally in promoting and reporting on elections. It’s provided an opportunity for us to raise awareness of our work internally and work with colleagues in other departments to enable everything to happen.
Our results system will hopefully be the jewel in the crown of what we’ve done so far. We won’t know until the dust settles tomorrow and we have some feedback from Derbyshire voters, councillors, other officers and colleagues in the public sector who are kind enough to take the time to have a look.

After the elections she said:

I am still a little emotionally charged from the adrenalin of working at such pressure yesterday and giddy with the joy of how well our team worked together on the day and in the run up. Now we just need to decide what to tackle next!

Simon Wakeman at Medway Council was one of a number of people who gave support and encouragement to Derbyshire and other councils embarking on this path. He has written about how a variety of local authorities used the social web on election night.  Also on Sarah’s list of supporters was Al Smith in Newcastle.

All the above was recorded at the truly wonderful localgovcamp, held here at Fazeley Studios in Brum

These are my links for June 16th through June 19th:

• Helpful Technology – New Ministry new website – From idea to live site took less than 72 hours, including signoffs – a thoroughly enjoyable collaboration between former DIUS and BERR people, led by Neil.
• The Guardian’s tool to crowdsource MPs’ expenses data: time to play | Online Journalism Blog – So here’s The Guardian’s crowdsourcing tool for MPs’ expenses. If you’ve not already, you should have a play: it’s a dream. There are over 77,000 documents to get through – and in less than 24 hours users have gone through over 50,000 of those. You wonder how long it took The Telegraph to get that far.
• Birmingham Social Media Cafe – Flick to page 29 of this month’s copy of Wired UK and you’ll see we got a mention as part of an article looking at free-form workplaces. Which was very nice of them.

  The next meet-up is on 10am to midday, Friday 26 June downstairs at the Coffee Lounge. Feel free to just turn up on the day but it’d be nice if you could sign up on one/all of:

• Councils of the country unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! « Policy and Performance – The essence is that councils challenge and help each other to help them get out of difficulties or ideally prevent it before it happens. We do a lot of that already through peer challenge and review, mentoring and ‘loaning’ staff to authorities in trouble. However, taking this to the next level where it’s not just a ‘nice to do’ but the whole of local government is committed to it, is a major challenge.
• BBC – The Editors: Social media in Iran – What really stands out is the range of sources, voices and angles to be looked into. There's no hierarchy: everything's on merit, and there is of course a new set of challenges for our staff – chiefly editorial challenges, as well as a kind of chase as social media services appear and disappear in what The Times' Judith Evans describes as "an electronic game of cat and mouse".