Author: Nick Booth

Stuff I've seen September 11th through to September 27th

These are my links for September 11th through September 27th:

  • Government Should Do its Own Data Homework | Jeni’s Musings – "….we need to work towards a virtuous cycle in which the public sector is rewarded for publishing useful data well. The reward may come from financial savings, from increasing data quality, from better delivery of its remit, or simply from kudos. It doesn’t matter how, but there needs to be some reward, or it just won’t happen."
  • editorialgirl » Ah, Bridezilla… we’ve been expecting you – Government and e-mail: ! The assistant was apparently a bit flummoxed, saying, “well, you could email it, but there isn’t much point – I wouldn’t get it til tomorrow anyway”. Why was that, then? It wasn’t even mid afternoon. Had they got problems with their email? “No,” she explained, “all the emails are read at 9 o’clock in the morning, then they’re all printed out and we each get a copy on our desks. So if you email me now, I won’t get it until tomorrow.” He was baffled. Couldn’t she just access her email now? “No, it’s not my email,” she said. “It’s the office email. Only one person has access to it, and she only looks at it at 9 o’clock each morning.” Whu… why? “That’s just the way we do things.” Well, that’s silly, he told her. “Well, it works for us,” she replied. Bonkers."
  • Rewired State – For the first quarter the challenges available are likely to be (but we don’t know for sure yet):

    * Building a framework to enable localised civil action (Big Society)
    * Using digital channels to get people online; building network of digital champions and apps to help get people online (Race Online)

  • The arts make a contribution to the Big Society in Yorkshire | Arts Council – 'If public funding of the arts is cut too hard, the contribution the sector makes to the Big Society may be in real jeopardy.
  • Local council spending over £500: full list of who has published what so far | News | guardian.co.uk – UPDATE, 5:05pm: Government has just published its guidance for local authorities. See the guidance here

500 people involved in Social Media Surgery – plus…..

Today the 500th person signed up to www.socialmediasurgery.com.

She is Anne Elliot, who’s planning to go along to the Leeds Social Media Surgery on October 7th because she’s hoping to start work with a social enterprise in October.

That’s 500 people  since the site was first sort of functioning in private beta in April of this year,  although most of you have joined in since we went more public in July.

Of those 500, 178 of you have registered as surgeons – the people who are there to help.  And of those,  33 people are surgery managers, the people who take responsibility for finding venues, choosing dates and keeping people happy at these informal but potent events.

Between you, you have set up social media surgeries in 38 different towns cities or neighbourhoods in 5 different countries (plus some others coming).  You’ve run or set up 76 different events.

The site also allows people to capture who has helped who learn what and add links for sites created during the surgeries.  I’d love to encourage more people to make use of that, because then it will be easier to record the effectiveness of the surgeries.

Great work from all of you and some fine work from Josh Hart on the coding. We have a bunch of improvements heading your way.

Hand Made – “new community culture”, the social media surgery and Militant Optimists.

I’m proud.  The picture above is of a lovely thing Tessy Britton has sent me – the gift of a book.  She asked 28 people (including me) to write about their experiments in community.  My chapter is on Social Media Surgeries. The combined result is a wonderful book:

Tessy writes:

Largely (but not exclusively) these projects by-pass existing ‘systems’.  They start with little or no money and ask for no permissions….Small they may be, but they represent the seeds of an emergent culture which I believe is going to spread, so potent is the glow created from the human interactions these projects generate.

The surgeries are spreading. As I write this I’m on the train to London, to speak at Open Tech (another great example of community culture stuffed full or people working on “stuff” that matters) about them.  Rootling around in the back end of www.socialmediasurgery.com I find (and this site doesn’t record it all) that:

  • 30 people have become “surgery managers”  (the people who set them up – run them – keep them friendly and happy)
  • 168 people have registered as surgeons (helpers)
  • 506 people have attended a surgery somewhere

They are running in

  • 34 places – 28 in the UK plus South Africa, Spain, USA, Eire and India.

We launched the site in July.

These people belong to something that David Barrie describes in his chapter in the book as the Thirteenth Tribe of community life – “Militant Optimists”:

One thing that makes life worth living is … people who are committed to improving society, prepared to organize and give it a go.

Hand Made: portraits of emergent new community can be bought from blurb.

The authors are:

David Gauntlett
Megan Deal and Friends
David Barrie
Rob Hopkins
Jerry Stein
Nick Booth
Jack Ricchiuto
June Holley
Ryan LeCluyse
Tracey Todhunter
Jack Forinash and Friends
Julian Dobson
Tom Andrews
Hannah Bullock and Tim Smit
Sarah Drummond and Friends
Andy Gibson
David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young
Peter Sergeant
Caroline Woolard and Friends
Louise Macdonald and David Key
Anab Jain and Chris Hand
Lloyd Davis
Dougald Hine
Edmund Colville and Friends
Matthias Regan and Friends
Chris Kennedy and Kate Cahill
Cassie Robinson
Tessy Britton

Stuff I've seen September 2nd through to September 7th

These are my links for September 2nd through September 7th:

  • Investing in Social Growth: Can the Big Society be more than a slogan? (September 2010) | The Young Foundation – The report warns of the gap between the ambition of the Big Society and the modest proposals currently associated with it, and of the risk that cuts will fall most heavily on innovative social enterprises and small grassroots organisations rather than big public or private ones
  • What’s beautiful to you? | Community Spaces – A photography competition is being run by Dezeen, the online architectural and design magazine and The Photographers’ Gallery to find ‘Areas of Outstanding Urban Beauty’.

    The idea behind the competition is to find out what people love about the places where they live.

  • Global Voices in English » Russia: Online Cooperation as an Alternative for Government? – The story of how bloggers organised to fight wildfires…. "Yesterday we went to Kulebaki to bring them everything they needed – firefighting equipment, food, protective devices that were purchased with the bloggers' money. Our mission to the “hot spot” was organized by i_cherski, who, as you know, is filling in voluntarily for our temporarily incompetent leadership of the Ministry of Emergency Situations."
  • The organisers are coming : RSA Projects – "How much harder will the Big Society organisers find it to engage and motivate communities if, unlike Obama, they are seen as part of the establishment and therefore somehow associated with the very problems they are trying to solve?"
  • KnightBlog » Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Joins World Wide Web Foundation’s Board of Directors – "The World Wide Web Foundation (Web Foundation) today announced that it appointed former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to serve on its Board of Directors. Throughout the world, the Web Foundation leads programs that empower people to use the Web to nurture local economies and improve access to education and information. As a Board member, Brown will primarily advise Web Foundation on ways to involve African communities and leaders in the development of sustainable programs that connect humanity and affect positive change."