Tag: net2uk

Glasgow Crime and Grime

I’ve been scootling around the place recently making a series of short films as means of introductory pieces for a neighbourhood safety conference in the Hague this coming week. I’ve met four groups from Birmingham and two from The Hague, all working experimenting with ways to give residents more power in reducing grime and the associated crime.

Just before Christmas I also spent an incredibly wet day in Glasgow where I met some very fine people from the city’s shiny new Community and Safety Service. It’s pulling together funding, ideas, equipment and people from all of the different pots of public money aimed at tackling crime and grime.

Of especial interest is the structure. The GCSS is a non-profit company owned by the council, police, fire service and the city’s housing company. I sensed a really positive attitude among the staff I met. They seemed to have more energy and optimism than you might find among council teams in other large cities. Am I doing others a disservice or does the autonomy that can come with creating a social enterprise give the work force a greater confidence in their ability to change things?

Today Demos has also popped up a podcast about last years rather controversial report on dreams for Glasgow’s future. When the row bubbled up I thought that most of our cities need some sort of institutional hacks. One is doing anything in your power to remove the grey hand of bureaucracy from people’s working days – let ’em do what they love to do rather than what the risk averse tell you they must do.

Alastair – who appears in the film – was very much a man after my own heart. He’s passionate about how social media can be used to connect neighbourhoods, including maintaining this blog for his home patch in Leith. Other films (which you can find here) and some Grassroots Channel podcasts from Birmingham still to come.

Youtube.


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How to make the £50 million Facebook Application?

The photo of Katie Derham swaddled in bank notes is from the flickr part of the promotional package for the People’s £50 million. In the next two weeks the whole nation will be invited to vote on which of 4 communal projects should win £50 million from the Big Lottery fund.
I want the Black Country Urban Park to win cos the Black Country is an astonishing collection of industrial villages which have a future as a remarkable place to live and work. Also I’m a Brummie and what’s good for our neighbours is good for us.

But I’ve got a tiny stake in this now. After a very recent casual conversation with a couple of people from the Black Country, Jon Bounds and I put together a very most Facebook app/button to help the cause along – (in exchange for similarly modest number of notes and no – nothing like the ones Katie is wearing).

It links to the place where you have to register and vote and also helps you declare allegiance to the cause. Donato Esposito has already set up a facebook group to suport the campaign.

There’s two weeks of online voting culminating in a telephone vote extravaganza. Clearly a much broader online campaign needs to evolve – but how do you reckon we should improve the application as we head towards the end of the vote?

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Charities missing an $8 billion gift token trick.

I can’t bear gift tokens. I usually forget to spend them. According to Seth Godin that is true of $8 billion dollars worth each year in the US (not sure of the source for his number).

Seth wants two things: For us to stop believing that gift tokens are more thoughtful than cash and for

a creative non-profit [to] start marketing alternative gift cards. They would consist of PDF files you could print out and hand over to people when you give them cash. It could say,

“Merry Christmas. Here’s your present, go spend it on what you really want. AND, just to make sure we’re in the right holiday spirit, I made a donation in your name to Aworthycause.”

Mommy CEO is uncompromising about all of us making an effort to not waste that $8 billion:

Think of what we could accomplish as a country of all that money was donated to a cause? Can you even imagine?

Yes I can – but if you do give someone a voucher make it an online voucher. Amazon sells just about everything so it’s as good as cash and then encourage people to spend it through your favourite charities online affiliate.

Social Networking Tips… Beth Kanters Question. My answer

Beth used Facebook to ask for our time saving tips for professional and organisational social networking. She asked specifically about tools etc to help work across mutliple sites (something which I can’t answer) but I can offer some basics, and getting the basics right will save wasted time:

1 Guiding principle number one is to make sure your work and what you do on the network are compatible. Don’t go chasing audience for the sake of numbers if that takes you away from your core purpose. Doing so will just increase the number of people you might bore or irritate and waste effort.

2 Guiding principle number 2 is that social networks are fundamentally about people relating to people – not people to organisations. So be yourself. If you are bad tempered, arrogant, rude and ignorant, then please ask someone else to do your online social networking- and don’t give me that look either.

3 Don’t play the games or the just for fun stuff – cos it eats your life, clutters up your profile and gives a mixed impression. (This does not apply to scrabulous, or ……)

4 Use pictures where ever possible. Include people’s faces, names and link to them.

5 Groups or fan groups on Facebook are good because they allow your network to bring new names and faces into your orbit. Before you set them up have a plan of action for communications or invitations to act over, say, 3 months. Don’t make the demands too onerous or frequent – make them entirely relevant. Between invitations to act add links etc to keep the group ticking over.

6 Add links to other people’s work. You just need to to make a brief comment. It is quick and shows your breadth of interests. It is also generous – and generosity oils social networks. Indeed, generous networkers will hat-tip facebook notes etc.

7 One thing I don’t do – but think I should – is have a monthly stock take of online profiles etc. I should set aside half a day when I do my accounts, order stationery, update profiles and clean out apps and groups I don’t use any more. So plan an online-offline house keeping session.

8 If someone called Beth Kanter invites you to collaborate online – do it.

Interestingly Beth cites Amy Graham who talks about how she uses her feedreader to keep track of herself on online social networks. I’m already finding myself slipping behind – which is not the point. Better respond to David next re netsquaredUK.