Author: Nick Booth

Are you Powered Up?

Next month in Birmingham is a two day training event to help active citizens wield more power in their communities. Organised by Friends of the Earth “Power Up” will cost you £60 and should help you:

Talk tactics and share strategies with the experts
Meetgovernment agencies and other community support organisations
Get practical tips for shaping your community
Meet like-minded inspirational campaigners
Examine real life local case studies.

It is for:

…anyone involved in community campaigns or site-specific environmental campaigning. You need not be a member of Friends of the Earth to join us, nor do you need to be an expert.

I’ve mentioned Friends of the Earth before for their online efforts (which now also include this local blog) and, so it’s good to see them also extending their efforts at face to face networking and skills sharing.

Hat tip: Involve

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Welcome to the Videodrome. Why High speed broadband is the wrong priority.

Two sources tell us the same thing – we need 100mbs internet links and we need them now. The Broadband Stakeholder Group tells us that future internet use in the UK will flounder without an expensive infrastructure upgrade

There was little evidence that the UK’s existing telecoms infrastructure would be able to bring such high speeds to much of the population

Whilst Om Malik warns the same is true of the US

Every day we twiddle our thumbs, we lose some of the edge when it comes to developing clever ways to use the bandwidth.

For me Om has the problem wrong. The first thing to solve is universal access. Ensuring everyone has their 2 or 4mbps is also going to unleash innovation. Compare it with the problem of clean water. Water to every home is the first priority, but not every home needs an industrial sized pipe. Those that do can and will find ways to get the supply they need.

And vast speeds dont give us more time. Being able to download an entire library does not mean I’ll read it. Downloading a thousand podcasts doesn’t mean I listen to them. If we want the internet to drive innovation and support some social benefit then universal access comes first, better upload speeds to make it easier for people to participate and express themselves next, and only then a more widely available ultra high speed network.

After all the latter is really designed to support the videodrome – as much about the online TV and advertising as it is about innovation which improves lives.

Others: Skuds Eric
Hat Tip Drew B Stewart Jones

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Jobs at WAITS

One of our earlier programmes on the Grassroots Channel was about a Birmingham based organisation called Women Acting in Todays Society. They have also been running the Women’s Empowerment Network in conjunction with b:cen.

BVSC tell me that WAITS has three jobs going: a community organiser, a BME women’s capacity builder and a Chinese women support and development worker.

Should anyone be interested you can find more details here and, unlike almost any other job applicant, you can also listen to Marcia Lewinson talking about WAITS here.

Radical Impartiality

Thanks to Sunny at Pickled Politics for this quote from Peter Horrocks, the head of BBC News at the BBC:

So, the days of middle-of-the-road, balancing left and right, impartiality are dead. Instead I believe we need to consider adopting what I like to think of as a much wider “radical impartiality” – the need to hear the widest range of views –all sides of the story.
So we need more Taleban interviews, more BNP interviews – of course put on air with due consideration – and the full range of moderate opinions. All those views need to be treated with the same level of sceptical inquiry and respect.

The notion that the views of the the BNP did not deseve the same respect and analysis as those the New Labour or any other party have always eluded me.  It is not straightforward, and the difference between lunacy and mainstream if often based on nothing more complex than how many people believe in something.

But I have always belived that the most honest way for a public (minded?) broad(narrow)caster to tackle an issue is to open it to public scrutiny. To trust the audience.
If that’s radical then it’s proof that the BBC has been far from radical for many decades. If so, what are we paying for? Mundanity?