Category: Miscellaneous

Things I've spotted October 24th from 22:45 to 23:23

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading October 24th from 22:45 to 23:23:

  • Steve Bridger › Blogging a crisis: reflecting on some lessons learned – Steve Bridger writes a very fine post on his After Wilma blog, sharing with us why getting the story told is very important in times of crisis. He quotes Dan Gilmour: "Tell the truth. Tell it quickly. Tell as much as you can. People crave a genuine, human voice in times of crisis."
  • 21st Century Councillor – about 21st century councillor – "A 21st Century Councillor is one who is a supported, confident, talented and professional community leader. One who understands but can also transform their place. One who can think strategically, as well as be informed and inspired by their local roots. In short, being a 21st Century Councillor is a role that many more people should understand and aspire to fulfilling for at least a part of their lives. Where this is not the case, change is not going to come through statutory obligations alone."
  • Huddersfield gets it’s own social media surgery – The whole process is very well summed up: "At the surgery you’ll get chance to sit down and have a cup of tea with someone who understands about web sites and tell them about your group or organisation and what you do. This will be the starting point. Then you’ll be able to look at the kinds of web sites and services that you might find helpful, and see what similar groups are doing. You can choose some services to try out, and even set up a web site there and then if you feel you need some help getting started"
  • Social Media Surgery « John Popham’s Random Musings – "Every City, Town, Village & Neighbourhood should have a Social Media Surgery"
  • Rusbridger’s Mutualised News – Editors Weblog – Alan Rusbridger: "For the first time since the Enlightenment, communities are faced with the prospect of living without verifiable sources of news," Rusbridger warns. "This feels like some kind of emergency, and it is not clear to me that our legislators recognise that." Sometimes I think news organisations over play how much they really check the truth of the stuff they run.
  • cybersoc.com: guide to using social media (in 6500 words) – A wonderful long post where Robing sums up some of the stuff he's learnt about social media.
  • We don’t want to read your website. We want to write it. | Local Democracy – Paul Evans echoes a number of thoughts on councils and online media: "They are finding that all of these annoying geeks are making it more difficult for them with their FOI requests, their defamatory blogs, and so on. They feel that they’re in an arms race that they can’t win."

Things I've spotted October 24th from 21:53 to 22:40

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading October 24th from 21:53 to 22:40:

  • FutureGov » Features » ePetitions data standards – get involved! – Andy Gibson is looking for local government to help him create a standard data set for e-petitions.
  • Against Transparency | The New Republic – This, from Lawrence Lessig, is really worth reading: "This is not to say the data will not have an effect. It will. But the effect, I fear, is not one that anybody in the "naked transparency movement," or any other thoughtful citizen, would want."
  • An encouraging week at the conferences – Digigov – David Pullinger of COI reflects on a couple of conferences: "It struck me that there are many talented expert e-communicators across government but hampered by the misperception that Web is IT."
  • Living with rats: Trafigura, climate change and the power of reputation – Julian reminds us that Trafigura is about our willingness to use tools, not the tools themselves: "The real story, I think, is the power of citizens to change an organisation’s reputation. What matters isn’t the tool – Twitter, Facebook or even good old-fashioned newsprint – but people’s willingness to use it. What’s also interesting is people’s readiness, at a time when politicians’ esteem has hit a new nadir, to defend the rights of Parliament against corporate and legal bullying. There was a glimmer here of what Parliament should be: the champion of the citizen and the exposer of abuses."
  • potlatch: the economic sociology of receipts – Will is really interesting on the growing trend to give a receipt with everything: "to normalise receipts in cafes or bars is to strive for the perfect, 'dis-embedded' clean exchange, of the liberal-economic imaginary. It depersonalises the interaction and substitutes data for memory. It declares the exchange over, with nothing more owed by either party. Frankly, this is futile, as exchanges always leak into society."
  • New for 2010: Retooled | Antonio Gould – Antonio's latest job: "The project will work with ex-manufacturing employees from the West Midlands, skilling them up in social media and working together on a challenge which mixes old and new skills."
  • Volkswagen to Rely Solely on IPhone App for GTI Launch | Advertising Age – Neville’s posterous – Volkswagen of America is launching the newest-generation GTI exclusively on an iPhone app, a cost-efficient approach the automaker said is a first for the industry. How cost efficient? When the marketer introduced the GTI in 2006, it spent $60 million on a big-budget blitz with lots of network TV. By comparison, an executive familiar with the matter estimates the annual budget for mobile AOR services is $500,000. And while an iPhone-only strategy may seem limiting, consider this: In September, Apple reported there are more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide. By comparison, CBS' "NCIS," the most-watched show for week ending Oct. 18, reached 21 million viewers and commands an average price of $130,000 for a single 30-second spot.

Stuff I've seen September 20th through to October 6th

These are my links for September 20th through October 6th:

  • Pits’n’Pots – The Radical Press » Labour leader Barnes impersonates Pits’n’Pots! – "Labour Group Leader Mike Barnes has admitted to impersonating someone from this website to try and find information about a rumoured news story in another Authority."
  • Free music, courtesy of your library « Mabblog – "If (like me in Birmingham), you have an enlightened library service, they will have paid for a subscription to Naxos Music, so, by entering your library card number (you do have a library card, don’t you?) you can listen on-line, for free, to a “CD quality” stream of their recordings of Gilson’s music (or anything else in their vast and ludicrously high-quality catalogue). From home (or anywhere else, for that matter)."
  • Kirklees Community Technology Project « Yorkshire and Humber ICT Champion – ‘Local 2.0’ will work with community organisations, individuals, service providers, ward councillors and others within one neighbourhood and will look at how new web technologies can help people share information more effectively and bring more opportunities to neighbourhoods.
  • Feeding back citizen experience – Digigov – "We not only hinder the citizen in their ease of reporting (thereby potentially adding to their distress or preventing them from complimenting the service), we also lose something much more valuable – the ability to analyse where small changes across public services could result in maximum effect."
  • Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: A Methodology for Learning from Social Media Pilots: Reflection – Questions to Help Deep Reflection Occur

    1.What worked really well in this project?
    2.Did it accomplish goals or outcomes? In what ways?
    3.Did it fall short? Why?
    4.What would you do differently?
    5.What surprises came up during the project? What unexpected happened? What could you learn or capture from that?
    6.What insights did you get during the project?
    7.What processes did you use that worked well? Which didn’t work so well? Why do you think that was?

Stuff I've seen September 19th through to September 20th

These are my links for September 19th through September 20th:

  • BBC NEWS | Politics | Dyke in BBC ‘conspiracy’ claim – Greg Dyke was impatient for change when he was at the BBC – remember if you have a radical boss find a way to support them: "Our current model was designed for the 18th Century. It doesn't fit 21st Century Britain," he told the meeting. And he added: "We want more influence over our lives and we are not just prepared to hand it over to this strange bunch of people who stand for Parliament because they have been knocking on people's doors for 10 years." "
  • Online Database of Social Media Policies – This database contains 82 documents.
  • Sentiment analysis – analysis « Emma Mulqueeny – Emma: "it is the first step I have seen in digitally automating the mood of the nation on any given topic."
  • Sarah Lay on Twitter and Coseley Baths – Sarah was almost in tears: "This account is the voice of a swimming baths in the Black Country on which the local council has taken the decision to condemn it to closure and demolition."
  • Sarkozy’s blue-chip Commission recommends measuring social capital « Social Capital Blog – It's personal" "A formal organization with a name and address may not correspond to any actual individual members, much less to social networks among those members. Moreover, the role of associations differs from country to country. Because of these reasons, measures of organizational density are generally not good measures of social connections, despite their frequent use for that purpose."