Author: Nick Booth

“Aren’t there enough people using the Internet already?”

 

Our Digital Planet
Our Digital Planet – from Nominet Trust

Home for the next couple of weeks with @nominettrust #ourdigitalplanet

I’m just finishing the first week managing the Internet Station for the Nominet Trust’s Our Digital Planet exhibition which Podnosh are supporting as it moves around the country.  We’re helping people who’ve not had much exposure to the internet to have a go and see what else there might be for them online.

We’re on the promenade in Brighton this week and naturally only a few of those I’ve approached as they walk along have felt they needed to come in for more.  There are plenty though who want to engage in conversation about whether we should be doing it or not which is where the quotation above came from 🙂

Nevertheless, it’s extremely heart-warming to work with those who are brave enough to step inside and sit down at a laptop.  It’s like doing a Social Media Surgery but with people who have even less idea of what things are possible or how technology might fit into their lives.  I’ve helped people use Google Maps to plan family day trips, showed them that downloading and using Skype to keep in contact with far-flung family members needn’t be so daunting and today I helped a man to get his photographs off the old phone that he was carrying around simply because it had his favourite pictures on and onto his smart new Samsung from which he was already comfortable sharing to Facebook!

I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting some inspiring people from projects like History Pin, the local AgeUK group, and BeatBullying as well as Clem Wilkinson who came along to run Social Media Surgeries.

We’ll be back in Brighton from 28th-31st next week and then the exhibition all gets shifted up to Bristol where John Popham will be in charge for a couple of weeks, then I’m with it in Cardiff in early October before it goes on to Liverpool and Glasgow.

 

Helping Birmingham Leadership Foundation use social media

Video by Punk Zebra for BLFLeaders

Birmingham Leadership Foundation helps new and aspiring leaders to emerge. They connect emerging leaders with established leaders to help them learn from each other’s experience.

They organise networking events, training and connect existing leadership development projects to encourage the next generation of leaders in Birmingham to develop – leaders who reflect the city’s demography. These could be:

  • A young person aged 16–30 with the ideas, ambition and spark to make an improvement to the lives of others in their local community.
  • A person who is proactive in their community.
  • A chief executive or senior manager of a private company or public sector organisation who wants to work with, and support, the local community but lacks the know how and contacts.

Nick and I ran a social media surgery at the Foundation’s first Monday Masterclass last month. We’ll be working with the young leaders at the upcoming Masterclasses, sharing social media skills to help them get out there, network, collaborate and make things happen.

We’re also helping the Foundation team with their social media strategy and to further develop their own social media skills.

“Charities should be the gold standard for open data” – and so should local gov.

Karl Wilding and I have worked together on social media and the implications of the web for civic activity since 2007.  He’s head of Policy and Research and NCVO (I’m on the advisory board of NCVO) and a very clever/prescient man.

Here he talks for Guardian Voluntary Sector Network about what open data means for charities – much of it is also useful/true for local government.

Telling the stories of homeless people in the UK using social media – Mark Horvath is coming from over the pond

http://youtu.be/zkUzCWBfrQ8

Sometimes the difference we make is looking at things with fresh eyes.  It seems to me that that is what Mark Horvath plans to do when he visits Britain to gather and share stories of homelessness here.

He’s crowdsourcing funds in the USA for a project to spend a month in the uk helping homeless people tell their stories. British Airways have donated the flights and others are helping.  I’ve been watching Mark’s work and he comes withe the blessing of Beth Kanter. The video explain what a difference traveling can make for him.  As he says on his blog…

The first signs of a serious homelessness crisis in England’s towns and cities are emerging, with increases in rough sleeping, street drinking, crime and antisocial behavior as a result of swingeing cuts to hostel and housing services. Charities have warned that official figures showing a 14% rise in people classed as homeless are just the “tip of the iceberg”, because they fail to capture huge numbers who have been displaced from their home and are living with friends, in hostels or on the streets. For 10 days early July Invisible People will tour the UK helping homeless people and homeless services tell their story.

A generous donor will be matching every donation up to $3,000 so your donations will be doubled.  Join us, be the one helping tell how the story turns out for so many of our homeless friends in the UK.

If you want to donate here is his chipin account: