Author: Nick Booth

Social media surgeries, simplicity and being there

A proper cup of tea
A proper cup of tea by James Shade on flickr

 

I often say this about social media surgeries: please keep it simple.

Why?  Because the most important single thing about a surgery is that it should be there.

Being there is a core part of supporting communities.  Month after month they know you’ll be there, they get used to it, they get used to the relaxed format and they come for help, come for ideas, come for connections, come back to offer help.

It is just a truth that something is more likely to happen if it’s simple.  A cup of tea with a friend is much more likely to happen than Read more

Stop pretending data visualisation is easy – bring distributed skills together

I spent a great day at LocalGovCamp in Birmingham last Saturday, an unconference for anyone interested in how social media and digital technology relates to local authorities and improving public services.

LocalGovCamp Birmingham 18 June 2011
Photo by Glenn Wood

Toby Blume, of Urban Forum and Paul Evans ran a session on data visualisation and visualising policy (more on that in this previous post).

Partway through the discussion, one particular issue really grabbed my attention. There was some frustration from some local authority officers about how difficult it is to actually make a visualisation or to communicate issues visually. It went something like this:

“This stuff is really hard. I want a tool that will let me put my data in and will give me a nice visualisation back.”

After a few responses – useful suggestions such as starting with Google Spreadsheets or Fusion Tables – the frustration with the steep learning curve came out, and Michael Grimes refocused the room with this nugget of sense:

“The process of creation [for a data visualisation] is important. It’s about how we communicate accurately with the information we have.”

And Michael got me thinking… do local authority officers expect making a data visualisation to be a straightforward process? Should it be easier? Are the available tools not serving those new to visualisation?

Or, and this is my thinking, there’s a false expectation that visualising data is easy. The JFDI attitude prevalent in other areas of digital tools for local government may have created false expectations on ease of access to visualisation.

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Community Lover’s Guide To The Universe and Birmingham

Spines of Community Lover's Guide books arranged on a shelf

Tessy Britton is an inspiration and so is Maurice Specht. Tessy got to me to write a chapter on social media surgeries for Hand Made – her book on new community culture and  militant optimists. Maurice ‘dragged’ me over to Holland to talk about the work we do to government, housing associations and community groups.

From that has emerged the “Community Lover’s Guide To The Universe”  and we’re editing the Birmingham edition.  Sort of like the Grassroots Channel but with better pictures (and a book).  Let Tessy explain:

A few weeks ago Maurice Specht turned to me on the way to Schiphol airport and said ‘So when are we going to bring out a Hand Made for Rotterdam?’.

What a brilliant suggestion!

Since then the idea has really taken off with 12 community enthusiasts already volunteering to edit special local editions – collectively now called the Community Lover’s Guide To The Universe. Since we brought out Hand Made last August the number of people-led projects has continued to grow and we wanted to explore both the common themes, but also the unique cultural ideas and interpretations from all parts of the world.

We also wanted to start to show how places that are buzzing with community activity and projects are amazing places to live, increasingly more amazing than places with cool architecture or luxury shops. Community brings places alive, gives us new and interesting ways to contribute and connect … and there are signs already that people are finding places that have this creativity and excitement going on highly desirable.

Community can’t be mass produced and it can’t be ‘delivered’. But in rising numbers there are a lot of very excitable people just getting on and making and shaping their local communities for themselves. This series of books will create the opportunity for them to tell their stories, which in turn we hope will encourage other people to put aside any hesitations they might have and get more involved in their neighbourhoods.

So I’ll be doing one of my favourite things –  chuntering my way through the wonders of Birmingham, asking for 800 words or so and loveley pics. No one’s getting paid for this, but I hope you’ll join in.

Who should I talk to – where is the new community culture in this city and who are the militants optimists?