Tag: local

8th August 2009

Things I've spotted on August 8th

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading August 8th from 12:43 to 13:15:

Citizen involvement in local governance | Joseph Rowntree Foundation – “This Round-up outlines the challenges and dilemmas that local partners, central government, councillors, staff and communities must resolve if citizens are to have more power and influence over local services and their neighbourhoods.”
Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0: How to address scaling and cause fatigue? – Beth challenging non profits to step uop a gear when it comes to now owning the message but being part of a network which achieves things. Excellent post
What would you do with a journalist? « Talk About Local (alpha) – Good question asked by Will Perrin.
Where British blogging is at | The Democratic Society – Demosc worries about whether blogging can replace msm: “a lot of sympathy with his scepticism about what blogging brings to political debate. It may be that it grows up, or that the cream floats to the top, if the traditional media do go under.” Medium and message mix up again?
A Rebuttal & an Example of a High Performance Organization | Tactical Philanthropy – This is one of a series of interesting posts and conversations about social media and charities, high performance versus high impact. Some really intelligent stuff being chewed over on this blog.
Hyperlocal, when you don’t want everything – jon bounds – Jon Bounds improves is Birmingham hyperlocal blog pipe, created as part of Talk About Local

8th August 2009

Stuff I've missed during my quick holiday

These are my links for August 7th through August 8th:

BrandNew – “BrandNew is a friendly, informal gathering in London, UK, for those employed to represent a brand online to get acquainted, chat and share.” Jo Geary, yes she who set up the Birmingham Social Media Cafe, starts something new in London. You can still come home though Jo.
Mappa Mercia: Is this the shortest bus journey in Birmingham? – I linked to this simply because it shows the potential benefits of having attentive eyes on the street. I might not want time/money spent putting this right, but volunteer mappers are bound to find things worth changing.
‘Total Place’ in Birmingham « – Total Place is an important idea, one which I first came across many years ago when Dr Dick Atkinson was trying to work out the total public spend for Balsall Heath. I know he shared that passion with both government an opposition. It helps at city level, but I think key decision making will change when there is also some way of making ti work at neighborhood level. To quote from one of the local MP’s: “The BeBirmingham partnership recently estimated that in total around £7.5 billion of public money was invested in the city in 2008-09. That’s a huge amount. Over a billion is spent on education.”
Government names successful projects to help young people unlock their talent – Corporate – Communities and Local Government – Have we on just got round to doing this? “The Inspiring Communities initiative is about getting people in communities working together to boost the aspirations and achievements of their young people.”
Social Media Provide Untapped Opportunity to Engage High Dollar Non-profit Donors, According to Community Philanthropy 2.0 Research Study : New Communications Review – The social web offers a welcome place for individual philanthropic activity. New research funded by the Columbus Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrates that High dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the new research study, “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Beth Kanter, Society for New Communications Research Fellow Geoff Livingston, and Qui Diaz of CRT/tanaka.

8th June 2009

Stuff I've seen June 4th through June 8th

These are my links for June 4th through June 8th:

Socially Media, Birmingham – 24Randomthoughts.com – Birmingham is a huge hive of activity there’s stuff going on every single week if you just seek it out (it took me a while to find it but then I can be quite lazy). The people that come to these events are welcoming and friendly and I have had the most excellent introduction to this scene and I know its only going to get better.
socialstrategy:start [Practical Participation] – There are many small hurdles to effective use of social media and technology in public services. In democratic engagement and participation; communications and outreach; education; or just about any other area of work – the same soluble barriers hold up action.
Headstar E-Government Blog » Blog Archive » Birmingham Transformation Aided By Mapping Tools – The group hopes to make Birmingham England’s first “intelligent city” by creating an integrated, fully digitised transport network. Birmingham also uses digital maps in its contact centres, where staff can pinpoint the caller’s property on a map and quickly bring up information relevant to that location.
Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide » The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media – It’s about having a strategy for making your company or organization more like a person and less like a machine. It’s about humanization.
LocalGov.co.uk – Your authority on UK Local Government > LocalGov.co.uk – Your authority on UK Local Government > Council freezes Twitter account after insult gaffe – Croydon council has suspended the Twitter account of its 'newspaper' Your Croydon after it 'tweeted' a dig at an Evening Standard journalist. A local newspaper has reported that a member of the council's staff used the account to criticise the reporter, claiming 'a squirrel could have run rings' around her after she had interviewed TV personality Esther Rantzen.
As Dominic Campbell put it so beatly, get over it.
The council claim that the post was supposed to be a private message, but was instead published for all to see.

It was then forced to post a further message which said: 'A few have picked up on a tweet about Esther R interview that was meant to be a PM (private message). No offence intended to ES (Evening Standard) lady! Still learning here!'

23rd April 2009

Stuff I've seen April 22nd through April 23rd

These are my links for April 22nd through April 23rd:

OpenGov: One big challenge? Or a thousand small hurdles : Tim’s Blog – “The big challenges are not about technology – they are about the content and the process of mobilisation and communication. When it comes to technology we’ve not got one big challenge we’ve got 100s of small challenges – and we’ve got no systematic way of dealing with them.”
Sutton Green Map – “This is the Sutton Green Map, designed for pedestrians and cyclists with lots of overlay information to help you make the most of the Borough.” Brilliant use of open source mapping and data scraping.
Echoes From The Edge | Friction arts – Exhibition starts April 23rd 2009: Echoes From The Edge is a unique living history contemporary art exhibition, housed in a converted factory in Digbeth, Birmingham. Over the past eighteen months, Friction Arts have been collaborating with US artist, Shannon Flattery, to create an interactive exhibition reflecting the voices, thoughts and histories of the residents and workers of Digbeth, Deritend and Highgate as the area undergoes it’s most significant changes for forty years.
Stumbling and Mumbling: Waste & decentralization – “cutting waste and empowering public sector workers are not substitutes. They go together.”
Home of the Community Broadband Network – “There is an increasingly important role for community broadband projects even after traditional operators have provided vanilla services into an area. Many member projects give something back to their local community, and are constantly innovating and evolving their service to the needs of their community.”