Tag: Dave Briggs

Seven links and five blogs to delve into #sevenlinks

Tom Watson MP (and Ahmed Al-Omran) blogging at the G20 conference
Tom Watson (and Ahmed Al-Omran) blogging at the G20 conference

 

Thank you Kate Hughes for being so kind on your blog post for the seven links blogging idea – one which encourages bloggers to talk about some of their older blog posts and share who they follow and read. I’ve also read Dan Slee’s post on the same, full of more inspiration.,

Not normally my thing but it’s good to do things differently.

So what seven links from back in my blog  do I want to share with you under the chosen categories

1 My Most Beautiful Post: Perhaps curious is a better word for Why doesn’t government have reservists. It was written  just after Christmas 2008 at the time the Labour government was pouring cash into the economy to try and see us through a recession.  The question provoked wonderful, intelligent responses in the comments section, 2 years later the post prompted an invitation to meet Nat Wei  (hello Nat) and was re-vamped for the world of big society.  It’s beauty?  Simple half finished ideas shared is one of the joys of blogging.

2 My most popular post: Read more

Switching on Social Media Surgery Plus

I don’t get excited very often ;-).  Today I am.

Last night we flicked a switch.  You might think it was a simple switch.  On the face of it all we  did was turn http://beta.socialmediasurgery.com/ over  to www.socialmediasurgery.com.

For me though that is one helluva switch.  It means that today you lot can start making the most of Social Media Surgery Plus – a site created to make it easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to find, organise and report on social media surgeries.  Read more

Stuff I've seen December 20th through to January 7th

These are my links for December 20th through January 7th:

  • Doctor Who leads Welsh regeneration | UK news | The Guardian – The success of Doctor Who provided a platform to develop the skills and experience of local people within the industry and then attract further productions to the city [and] region," he said. "The diversity of the landscape is also a significant factor, with beaches and mountains within half an hour of a modern capital that has changed beyond recognition." So successful has Doctor Who been in blazing a drama trail that the BBC has outgrown the programme's dedicated studios in Pontypridd and is proposing to build a "drama village" in the country, possibly in Cardiff Bay.

    Cardiff is considered to be cheaper and more film-friendly than London and will fill in for the streets of the British capital on Sherlock Holmes, a modern take on the Arthur Conan Doyle classic, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, being made by Hartswood Films for BBC1.

  • NESTA Connect: Human Scale Organisations – Human Scale organisations are fundamentally different in that they:

    1. Tend towards sharing first and inventing second, to create mutual value;
    2. Are honest about the mistakes they’ve made and seek to rectify them quickly;
    3. Know their strengths and weaknesses and so actively seek complementary partners;
    4. Prioritise long term relationships over short term outcomes;
    5. Systematically focus on the macro and the micro.

    via @dominiccampbell

  • Summation: Outsourced thinking is today’s biggest problem – Strive to be wrong

    "To be true to yourself, you need to be wrong sometimes. You need to be ok with being wrong and you should be ok when others around you are wrong. That means going against the grain and speaking your mind, especially when it’s different from what those around you are thinking."

  • MadLab – Manchester Digital Laboratory – home of creative community technology in Manchester – The Madlab is a community space for people who want to do and make interesting stuff – a place for geeks, artists, designers, illustrators, hackers, tinkerers, innovators and idle dreamers; an autonomous R&D laboratory and a release valve for Manchester's creative communities.
  • The state of the UK gov blogosphere – Really good comment from Neil on Dave Brigg post about the problem of us not blogging enough good stuff. Like Steph, my own experience of blogging about my work within Whitehall over the last year and a bit has been that it is *really* difficult. Lack of time is the biggest barrier due both to having a young family and the day job spilling over into evenings and weekends. But this is closely followed by issues around permission and propriety. I’ve felt that I’ve had to restrict what I share and write about more, not less, as time has gone on.

    Which is a real pity – because writing about this stuff online gets me a lot of useful feedback, helps me make contacts which are useful to my employer, makes me reflect more deeply on the value of what I’m doing – ultimately helps motivate me to do the best I can. If it was easier, if I felt safer, if it were encouraged, I’d do it a lot more."

  • Hackitude gets down and dirty with data | Be Vocal –

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