Tag: community

Stuff I've seen February 12th through to February 13th

These are my links for February 12th through February 13th:

  • Stop selling scarcity « BuzzMachine – If you are selling a scarcity — an inventory — of any nonphysical goods today, stop, turn around, and start selling value — outcomes — instead.
  • WEB: So, what makes a good council website? « The Dan Slee Blog – Great piece from Danslee: "You’re in a rush. You’re going swimming. You’ve three minutes to find out when the nearest leisure centre closes… and you’re face with a council website. This could be a pleasant experience and for many it is. But if you’re unlucky you’ll be faced with a sprawling brick wall behemoth of a website written in a funny language riddled with jargon. Oh, Lord. It’s not gritting information, for example. It’s a winter service plan. Your opinion of your council suddenly plummets and you hurl abuse at the screen.
  • Mark Thomas talks sense about the Digital Economy Bill by Andrew Dubber – "Most people in the world do creative things for no money. The vast majority of music in the world is made for cultural reasons that are not economic. To suggest that the only reason to be creative is with the expectation of payment is utterly offensive."
  • Let’s learn to respect each other « Let’s Respect – "I am trying to make everyone learn to respect each others differences." via @steventuck
  • Misspelled nemesis club » Blog Archive » Hacker Culture and geek groups in Birmingham, West Midlands – Birmingham has a vibrant community of geek/enthusiast groups, of which I’m proud to be a part. That said, it’s sometimes hard to find or even know about all of them, without the right. So collected here are the groups I know of:

Stuff I've seen January 7th through to January 10th

These are my links for January 7th through January 10th:

  • Steadicam Smoothee for iphone 3gs – 'The Steadicam Smoothee™ is specifically designed and engineered to work with your Apple® iPhone 3Gs. Based on the same technology as the big $60,000 rigs used in Hollywood, it allows iPhone 3Gs owners to capture incredible video without the shakes normally associated with hand-held video shot on the go, right out of the box, the very first time.' via @edmore
  • Social workers start turning the tide over media coverage – Mad World – "Angered by inaccurate media reports in which Tracy Dawber, the community care worker charged in relation to the Little Ted's Nursery child pornography ring, was identified as a social worker, users of Community Care's CareSpace discussion forum wrote to both the BBC and the Daily Mirror asking them to correct their coverage."
  • Akvo blog » Blog Archive » Akvo Really Simple Reporting (RSR) – "it has become clear that sophisticated project prospecting, project reporting and monitoring tools are needed to be able to effectively scale up implementation efforts to handle many thousands of projects in parallel. Akvo will be developing these tools as Open Source software tools and will also be running an online service which anyone can use, without having to install and maintain these tools on their own servers."
  • A large pile – Viewing a problem – FixMyStreet – Another reason why I love www.fixmystreet.com: "It needs clearing away before it becomes an unofficial tip for the weak minded and indolent."
  • Doing journalism in 2010 is an act of community organizing – Good to see thoughtful journlaistic material making the case that bloggers have made for a while: "Nothing frustrates me more than watching journalists who've lost their newsroom jobs entering the blogosphere… with no clue as to what they should be doing online. Too few emerging online journalists understand that the function of news publishing has changed in the Internet era. Simply reporting the news, however you might define that, is no longer enough, not when you are publishing in such a competitive environment."

Things I've spotted December 4th from 22:11 to 22:41

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading December 4th from 22:11 to 22:41:

  • The challenge of pledges | Created in Birmingham – Pledges to support local theatre/culture. Could they be adapted to strengthen local community?

    "# Attend 12 theatre shows in the next 12 months, 4 by West Midlands writers/artists/companies you haven’t seen before, 1 in a West Midlands Venue you’ve never been to before.
    # Take 12 people who have never been, rarely go, or don’t ‘do’ Independent Theatre to a show. Share transport.
    # Host a meal/party for 8 people 4 of which you barely know.
    # Write 12 comments/reviews/blog entries about theatre on other people’s sites.
    # Attend 1 mid*point or return to the next Open Space event."

  • Another day, another report « Chief Inspector Mark Payne’s Blog – How did it stop being like this? "In West Midlands Police we have been one of the pilot forces for ‘community resolutions’. This effectively allows officers to use their judgement to make decisions at the scene of some lower level crimes, and together with the victim agree on a suitable remedy. So if a gang of kids break your window, you can ask them to apologise and pay for it, rather than enter into the criminal justice system. So far we have carried out 8000 of these types of resolutions, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Police officers are allowed to use their professional judgement (or common sense as it is more commonly known,) based on the full circumstances of the case, not on narrow performance objectives."
  • Idiot English: Vorsprung durch Biscuit – This is blogging to warm the cockles of my heart: "My wife likes Bahlsen's Choco Leibniz biscuits, so we often have some in the pantry. But their presence weighs heavy on my pedantic mind. There it is, in my home, the yellow box with its (in)famous slogan:
    More chocolate than a biscuit
    Eh? It should be "More chocolate than biscuit"! (They're about two-thirds choc.) I can only imagine that this slogan was the victim of hypercorrection in the seminar room"
  • A quick start guide to Twitter – "The guide takes absolute beginners to Twitter right from the start – explaining what Twitter is, and how to sign up – right through to replying, retweeting, hashtagging and using tools to measure success." Dave Briggs knows his stuff – and he can be funny.
  • Pulitzer or community – daddy or chips? | Joanna Geary – "It reminded me of a hypothetical situation someone put to me the other day:

    You are the editor of a newspaper. You are allowed to employ one more person. You can choose either a writer that has won a Pulitzer prize or a writer that has built an online community of 40,000 highly committed readers and contributors. Which do you choose?

    I know nothing is ever that clear cut, of course. This is a real “daddy or chips” question. Yet, I guess how you answer it gives a good indication of how you think we should train our journalists of the future."

    I'd choose both.

  • Thriving too: Making Openness Work – The 'Open100' competition is a celebration of the power of openness and mass collaboration. You can be part of the competition by nominating the company you think is the best open innovator. The competition will be open until 12th February while the winners will be announced on 24thFebruary. The winners are those who will be included in the list of the world's top 100 open companies
  • Official Google Research Blog: Automatic Captioning in YouTube – Google experimenting wiht automatically captioning video: "The auto alignment features is available for all new video uploads, however the scope is limited to English material. The auto captioning feature is initially rolled out to a set of educational partners only. Although this is very limited in scope, the early launch makes the results of the system available to the viewers of this material instantly and it allows us to gauge early feedback which can aid in improving the features. We will release automatic captions more widely as quickly as possible." via @pigsonthewing

Stuff I've seen November 24th through to November 28th

These are my links for November 24th through November 28th:

  • Open Sourcing Google Project 10^100? – Social by Social – 170,000 ideas have simply disappeared. Only Google knows what they are.
  • Sarah Lay » Blog Archive » Social networking for councils – "Carl Haggerty of Devon County Council had re-branded social networking as business networking in order to get chief officers to look past what they thought they knew toward the potential of such a system."
  • NN News & Blogs | Networked Neighbourhoods : passionate about local digital – The key differences between the different types of local citizen sites were brought sharply into focus by a simple four-box model. Hugh also offered some insight into how different types of sites may be best used:
  • Changing the acoustics for citizens’ voices – Neighbourhoods – initiatives imply significant changes to the acoustics for citizens' voices. Organised community action – in meetings around the town as in Castleford or (especially) online as in some of William's examples – is starting to bring about a far more audible articulation of local people's views and experience than we have had before. And don't be fooled by the rhetoric from above, which to use Alison's phrase tends to mean 'big people not listening': much of it is in spite of, not because of, official action.
  • A Manifesto for the Social Organization | The Idea Hive – "We are entering the era of the social organization, because, like a school of fish, or a swarm of bees, a social organization fluidly dances with the ever changing music that engulfs it, rather than trying to control it. For, as shown by the story of King Canute trying to hold back the tide, attempted control over elemental forces is ultimately futile. Change is on the way."