Category: Local Government

A perfect description of a perfect social media surgery? Bearwood.

This video is shot by the Lorna Prescott – who’s the surgery manager for the enormously successful Dudley Social Media surgery –  and she’s talking to Coral Musgrave who organised last night’s first social media surgery in Bearwood. It is wonderful to see surgeries seeding with people who run one helping others develop there’s – and all working along the keep it simple lines that started with the recipe.  Lorna (of Dudley CVS)  learnt this from her first surgery:

  • Never underestimate the power of sharing knowledge, skills and experience (crucial in community development practice)
  • Social media surgeries are to help active citizens to join the massive conversation which is taking place on the internet
  • Social media surgeries are not basic IT training – we can signpost to adult learning for that
  • Individuals working in the public sector, voluntary sector and involved in community groups are willing to give their time

Well done and lets hope those organisations come back for more help in Bearwood. Can I make one suggestion Coral?  Put some more dates in – so people who are enthused can book to come to another.

May I also say it’s a top notch piece of social reporting. Lorna came to one of our social reporter training programmes a year of more ago – and is a natural in the business of keeping things relaxed, simple, and get them online quickly.

Wolverhampton LNP, Social reporting and finding their feet on Twitter.

We have recently been doing some work in Wolverhampton with the Local Neighbourhood Partnership (LNP), talking to their neighbourhood wardens about how they can use Twitter to communicate on their patch, the sorts of conversations they could be having and showing them practically how to use it.

As I live in Wolverhampton, sit on the board for my local LNP and use twitter in my neighbourhood with @WV11, one of the examples I used when training them was live tweeting from our meetings.

Bi-monthly in each LNP area Read more

#Opendata, cities, civic tools and Make it Local 10 things to make opendata work in local government – some links from #tal12 in Birmingham

I have a collection of half baked thoughts following the truly excellent Talk About Local unconference in Birmingham on Saturday.

Whilst they stew into something edible I just wanted to quickly share some very useful links plus a list of ideas generated as part of Make it Local – the work done by Nesta on opendata and local government.

First the links – all mentioned by Jon Kingsbury  (twitter) – who’s driving the Nesta Destination local programme.

  • http://civiccommons.org/  is a us website which “is a marketplace for open innovation in government, tracking 585 apps in 199 cities. ”  As Jon said – son’t re-invent the wheel, check ideas against this site.
  • http://www.listpoint.co.uk/  Jon described as “an open platform for code lists standards”collates a lot of work on data standards, what they means and saves time and energy for opendata work.
Make it Local - opendata and local governement programme from Nesta
Make it Local - opendata and local government programme from Nesta

Make it Local –  was a project that Jon helped run for Nesta which  supported local authorities to work with local developers on open and data tools.   One of  the projects – for example – was Birmingham’s Civic Dashboard.  Nesta created this make it local toolkit. – (download as a pdf ) which gives from very practical thoughts on how to make data work in government more successful.  I cite the whole thing below, simply because i think it’s worth sharing:

Ten tips for creating online local public services using open data

nesta.org.uk/areas_of_work/public_services_lab/make_it_local

1 Generate the idea

Focus on the needs of the Read more

#Opendata @72prufrocks radishes and neighbourhoods – an unashamed lift.

There’s this really thoughtful post on where we live and opendata from Diane @72prufrocks – here’s a bit I’ve lifted to encourage you ro read the whole:

Knowledge and experience dwells in neighbourhoods, because we do. On recent visit to Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol, I was struck by how firmly the centre is rooted in the local community. Andrew remarked that projects like their University of Local Knowledge value and celebrate local experiences, and also treat the neighbourhood as a kind of pool of local data and local stories. The challenge for local authorities is how to mix our data into that same pool – how to put the data that communities can make use of into the places where they can really use it – their own places.

If you know where the radishes are, you know whether it’s feasible to get a supply of radishes – and if you know where the shops are, or what people buy, or what people’s attitude to local food is, then you also know where you might be able to sell those radishes. If you know who is growing the radishes, you can start a conversation with that person, and who knows where it might lead.

I know a few people who are partial to a good radish. There’s a story in that somewhere.

🙂