I’m very fortunate to have people tag things in delicious for:podnosh, which means I get to see stuff that I would otherwise have missed, or many never knew that I was interested in (what Stef calls accelerating serendipity). One such lovely person is Dominic Campbell who tagged this for me:
I would love to have heard what Hugh Graham was saying, espcially during the final few slides. Fortunately though you can read a lot of his idea on his blog.
This leads me to assemble some stuff:
Be2Camp is coming to Birmingham on August 12th 2009. “It’s for people interested in how the latest web applications and web design techniques could help build a better, more sustainable built environment – from planning and design through construction to occupation and management of buildings, infrastructure, landscape, etc.” Organised by Rob Annable and Lorna Parsons, you can register here: http://be2campbrum.eventbrite.com/.
Paul Slatter at the Chamberlain Forum has been experimenting with the Structured Dialogue method which is “an approach to storytelling circles designed to produce robust evidence (as opposed to anecdotes) which can be used in influencing policy.” There’s a more detailed outline at the Evaluation Trust.
In Sheffield in May I met Tony Quinlan from Narrate. He reminded me of some mass story collecting techniques, like these on Cognitive Edge.
Somehow I also connected this with Jon Bounds wandering Moseley drunk.
Help Me Investigate allows people to ask civic questions and work together to find answers. Since it emerged into life a couple of months ago people have sought answers to questions ranging from:
“Why wont’ Birmingham City Council hand over the running of Lightwoods Park to Sandwell Council”
“Help me investigate why my doctor has an 0845 number”
“What is the tracking process for petitions handed into Birmingham City Council.”
The site feels quite Birmingham centric at the moment simply because we are experimenting using questions about the place where many of us live. As the site evolves that will change.
Who pays for this?
It is funded by Channel 4’s 4ip fund, Screen West Midlands and Advanatage West Midlands and it’s launch attracted interested from the mainstream media. The Guardian summed it up like this:
Rather than a publishing platform, the site is a tool that could equally benefit news organisations and the public; it follows the MySociety mould of successful activism sites like TheyWorkForYou and FixMyStreet.
“Journalists think investigative journalism should be very secretive, but [HelpMeInvestigate] has to be seen to be owned by the community than by journalists because that puts off the public. People can contribute their expertise to answer specific questions, and journalists with no resources could use the site to call on the community for help.”
Today the site, still in a private experimental phase, saw it’s first spin off mainstream media news story.
The Birmingham Post runs an HMI story on Parking Tickets.
This morming the post ran this story about how HMI had found the worst street for parking fines in Birmingham. The story began here, with a question from Heather Brooke:
Help me investigate on which Birmingham Streets are the most parking tickets issued?
It’s an interesting HMI question because it is about something which bothers many of us, but it’s also specific and local. It’s also a classic local newspaper question, but what thye may not take the time to ask.
The next stage was a freedom of information request, which you can see here on MySociety’s brilliant WhatDoTheyKnow service, which makes FOI requests public and easy to make.
When the information finally arrive in three files another user of the site stepped into to help. Neil Houston likes messing around with spreadsheets (part of the point of Help me Investigate is to allow people to play to their strengths).
He quickly established the 10 worst places to park for ticketing were:
•Alum Rock Road, Washwood Heath (3,995)
•Stratford Road, Sparkhill (2,418)
•Corporation Street, city centre (1,748)
•Alcester Road, Moseley (1,545)
•Waterloo Street, city centre (1,455)
•High Street, Harborne (1,391)
•Gas Street, city centre (1,083)
•Whittall Street, city centre (1,022)
•St Paul’s square, Jewellery Quarter (1,008)
•Dean Street, city centre (978)
Neil normally blogs about food, so even though he wanted to right about this he didn’t want to contaminate his normal blog. He borrowed some space on Be Vocal to write this piece, including the observation that:
it’s surprising to see that the warden BM739, issued 5,080 tickets. The next ‘top’ ticketer issued 3,559. This shocked me, as that’s a LOT of extra tickets by BM739.
Tom Scotney at the Birmingham Post started to use his papers position to seek explanations for the figures from the council, and this morning he posted the article including explanations for these questions: 1/2) Why is Alum Rock Road the most ticketed area in Birmingham?
3) Why did the number of tickets given out rise significantly over the last full recorded year?
So what do I make of this?
Thanks to the Birmingham Post for running the story and more importantly sharing credit for the story. It’s important for news organisations to get used to being open and generous with sources.
It’s good to see citizens and journalists (who are also citizens, I know) collaborating with each other to get to the bottom of something
This one set of data has already triggered new questions about car clamping and could lead to a flurry of similar questions across the country.
The other thing to remember though is that this may not be typical of what happens on Help Me Investigate. This is a question which has general interest, hence useful for a mainstream news organisation. Many of the questions though may be, on the face of it, more mundane and more about how thre system works or perhas problems that are very very local.
For these the collaboration could involve public servants using the questions as a means to improve the work they do. At least let’s hope so.
If you look at the top of this page you’ll see a new set of pages called Social Media Help. They are an extension of some work we have been doing for Groundwork UK on the Big LotteryCommunity Spaces fund..
With tight resources we wanted to provide some simple guidance for any community groups who use social media as they apply for or perhaps spend the Community Spaces fund dosh. My favourite of all is this wonderful blog post from the Friends of Abbey Gardens, but other groups are at it, including Macclesfields Skate Park group, Fairland Park, and some consistent blogging from Roy at Meols Park.
The help section is available on their site and here. It will also be useful for the facilitators who help groups with contracts etc. there are 50 of them and we neither had the time or the desire to try and show all 50 how to blog etc. For those do want to encourage local groups to use social media it’s a starting point.
The help section is available on this site and here and the end result is:
We’ve compiled some practical articles and videos to help you get the most out of using social media to tell your story. You can go through them one at a time, or dip in and out. Each section has a search facility to help you get to useful nuggets of information from trusted help and support sites.
It deliberatley only covers a few services because we dont want to clutter things up for beginers. Thanks very much to Paul Henderson for pulling this together. Feel free to use it for social media surgeries and the like.
TH!NK ABOUT IT – european blogging competition – Homepage – TH!NK2 Climate Change is a 3 month blogging competition with a focus on UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) in December 2009. 81 bloggers from Europe with featured guests from India, China Brazil and the USA, representing the world’s biggest players in climate policy, will come together on the European Journalism Centre’s thinkaboutit.eu platform, to exchange ideas and debate the issues of climate change.
A return to the “old skool” – Social Media challenges in the Public Sector « Carl’s Notepad – Thoughtful piece from Carl Haggerty: “Are we seeing social media facilitating a return to traditional and “old skool” values around community and neighbourhood support. I see the main difference being the “community” and the “neighbourhood” that people relate to is more complex and far reaching (offline and online) than ever before. If this is the case, then the Pubic Sector truly has a huge task ahead, not only support itself to transform the way we engage with people and our own staff, but to acknowledge those communities who are already engaged but also nurture communities (offline and online) to become part of the wider public service delivery model.”
Mapping Digital Inclusion Actors « CDI Europe – A really useful map of the different roles different organisations and people play in digital media, digital inclusion, democracy and civic activism from iris at CDI
The Stirrer – Social Media Surgeries – “The Birmingham social media group have attracted visitors from across the UK to see how it works. The model is so simple and cost free. Just bring those who have something to teach together with those who want to learn and bang a life changing concept is off.” Audrey Miller, a beneficiary of the social media surgeries sums it up quite nicely, although it’s a touch embarrassing.
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