Rewired State Projects – Young Rewired State is a weekend event emulating the success of ReWired State’s National Hack the Government Day, but this time with hackers aged 15-18.
Data & Stuff – Neil Houston so enjoyed doing some spare time data journalism he’s started blogging about it.
localcommunities – Who’s who – David Wilcox has pulled together a very fine summary of lots of community digital media activity.
Autocar – New tech to cut congestion – Dominic Gill, Microsoft regional manager, said: “This is the first application to use available data intuitively to put real power in the hands of individuals to make and refine travel plans.“The strategy of linking with information sources so they can react to an individual’s changing circumstances will transform people’s travelling experiences.”
I’m very fortunate to have people tag things in delicious for:podnosh, which means I get to see stuff that I would otherwise have missed, or many never knew that I was interested in (what Stef calls accelerating serendipity). One such lovely person is Dominic Campbell who tagged this for me:
I would love to have heard what Hugh Graham was saying, espcially during the final few slides. Fortunately though you can read a lot of his idea on his blog.
This leads me to assemble some stuff:
Be2Camp is coming to Birmingham on August 12th 2009. “It’s for people interested in how the latest web applications and web design techniques could help build a better, more sustainable built environment – from planning and design through construction to occupation and management of buildings, infrastructure, landscape, etc.” Organised by Rob Annable and Lorna Parsons, you can register here: http://be2campbrum.eventbrite.com/.
Paul Slatter at the Chamberlain Forum has been experimenting with the Structured Dialogue method which is “an approach to storytelling circles designed to produce robust evidence (as opposed to anecdotes) which can be used in influencing policy.” There’s a more detailed outline at the Evaluation Trust.
In Sheffield in May I met Tony Quinlan from Narrate. He reminded me of some mass story collecting techniques, like these on Cognitive Edge.
Somehow I also connected this with Jon Bounds wandering Moseley drunk.
But blogging can be tricky to begin with and after the surge of excitement of getting your first post up, sometimes it’s hard to know what to do next. The good news is that among the Birmingham Bloggers Group there are some kind folks who can help.
So if you’ve been to a surgery and started a blog (which means you’re a Birmingham based community oor voluntary group) and would like a volunteer ‘Fairy Blogmother’ to give some extra tips and keep an eye on your blog while you get going – all you have to do is:
Write a post on your blog saying you’d like some help and link back to this post
(To make a link, copy the address (URL) of this post and write some text that you want to make into the link. If you’re using WordPress, highlight the text and click on the link button) then paste in the address.
You can just ask for help or if you’ve got a question, write about it and someone will try and head over to you blog.
How does it work?
Just by linking to this post (as if by magic) a little trackback will be created and that will let the Fairy blogmothers (and fathers) know that you need some help. It won’t necessarily appear like magic, but hopefully some Fairy Blog Father or mother will then leave a comment on your blog post saying they’re willing to help. With that comment you will get their private e-mail address, which you can use to keep in touch with them.
What is a Fairy Blogmother?
From time to time we get people who would like to help at the social media surgeries saying they can’t make it. We hope that some might be willing to offer you advice etc by e-mail. They’ll be doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, so take care not to overburden them.
Help Me Investigate allows people to ask civic questions and work together to find answers. Since it emerged into life a couple of months ago people have sought answers to questions ranging from:
“Why wont’ Birmingham City Council hand over the running of Lightwoods Park to Sandwell Council”
“Help me investigate why my doctor has an 0845 number”
“What is the tracking process for petitions handed into Birmingham City Council.”
The site feels quite Birmingham centric at the moment simply because we are experimenting using questions about the place where many of us live. As the site evolves that will change.
Who pays for this?
It is funded by Channel 4’s 4ip fund, Screen West Midlands and Advanatage West Midlands and it’s launch attracted interested from the mainstream media. The Guardian summed it up like this:
Rather than a publishing platform, the site is a tool that could equally benefit news organisations and the public; it follows the MySociety mould of successful activism sites like TheyWorkForYou and FixMyStreet.
“Journalists think investigative journalism should be very secretive, but [HelpMeInvestigate] has to be seen to be owned by the community than by journalists because that puts off the public. People can contribute their expertise to answer specific questions, and journalists with no resources could use the site to call on the community for help.”
Today the site, still in a private experimental phase, saw it’s first spin off mainstream media news story.
The Birmingham Post runs an HMI story on Parking Tickets.
This morming the post ran this story about how HMI had found the worst street for parking fines in Birmingham. The story began here, with a question from Heather Brooke:
Help me investigate on which Birmingham Streets are the most parking tickets issued?
It’s an interesting HMI question because it is about something which bothers many of us, but it’s also specific and local. It’s also a classic local newspaper question, but what thye may not take the time to ask.
The next stage was a freedom of information request, which you can see here on MySociety’s brilliant WhatDoTheyKnow service, which makes FOI requests public and easy to make.
When the information finally arrive in three files another user of the site stepped into to help. Neil Houston likes messing around with spreadsheets (part of the point of Help me Investigate is to allow people to play to their strengths).
He quickly established the 10 worst places to park for ticketing were:
•Alum Rock Road, Washwood Heath (3,995)
•Stratford Road, Sparkhill (2,418)
•Corporation Street, city centre (1,748)
•Alcester Road, Moseley (1,545)
•Waterloo Street, city centre (1,455)
•High Street, Harborne (1,391)
•Gas Street, city centre (1,083)
•Whittall Street, city centre (1,022)
•St Paul’s square, Jewellery Quarter (1,008)
•Dean Street, city centre (978)
Neil normally blogs about food, so even though he wanted to right about this he didn’t want to contaminate his normal blog. He borrowed some space on Be Vocal to write this piece, including the observation that:
it’s surprising to see that the warden BM739, issued 5,080 tickets. The next ‘top’ ticketer issued 3,559. This shocked me, as that’s a LOT of extra tickets by BM739.
Tom Scotney at the Birmingham Post started to use his papers position to seek explanations for the figures from the council, and this morning he posted the article including explanations for these questions: 1/2) Why is Alum Rock Road the most ticketed area in Birmingham?
3) Why did the number of tickets given out rise significantly over the last full recorded year?
So what do I make of this?
Thanks to the Birmingham Post for running the story and more importantly sharing credit for the story. It’s important for news organisations to get used to being open and generous with sources.
It’s good to see citizens and journalists (who are also citizens, I know) collaborating with each other to get to the bottom of something
This one set of data has already triggered new questions about car clamping and could lead to a flurry of similar questions across the country.
The other thing to remember though is that this may not be typical of what happens on Help Me Investigate. This is a question which has general interest, hence useful for a mainstream news organisation. Many of the questions though may be, on the face of it, more mundane and more about how thre system works or perhas problems that are very very local.
For these the collaboration could involve public servants using the questions as a means to improve the work they do. At least let’s hope so.
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
