Tag: Socitm

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 August 23rd through August 25th

These are my links for August 23rd through August 25th:

  • Zopa: Peer to peer lending | Tom Watson MP – Tom Watson outlines his enthusiasm for per to peer banking: “Out of all the digital start-ups I met as a minister, the one that most inspired was Zopa. Why? I think they have the capacity to completely re-write the terms of trade in the banking sector.”
  • Socitm surveys IT managers over ‘blocking’ of social media by councils – Socitm Insight is asking local authority IT managers for their views on the use of social media within local authorities and the degree to which it poses security threats, drains bandwidth, or causes other problems to councils’ IT systems and infrastructure.
  • BBC NEWS: Green energy hit by ‘faceless Nimbys’ – “You have some of the best onshore sites on the planet but they are strong, the faceless Nimbys [not in my back yards],” he told The Report.”

Things I've spotted August 23rd from 22:26 to 22:46

Here are some o the things I\’ve been reading August 23rd from 22:26 to 22:46:

Derbyshire County Council elections – a social media experiment.

Above is Sarah Lay from Derbyshire County Council talking about her recent experience of using social media to tell the story of  the council elections of 4th June 2009.  As SOCITM the organisations which represents the folk who run council websites, puts it:

County Councils saw their web traffic double last Friday and Saturday thanks to their provision of a sophisticated online election results service coupled with use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and email alerts.

Sarah describes how the council announced the results straight onto twitter (followers trebled), plus offering an election map and a virtual council chamber.  They also used a Facebook fan page (yes 74 people claimed themselves fans of a local election) where people were able to have their own conversation about the results.

In effect they by-passed mainstream media.   This system treats journalists just the same as any other citizen, offering us all the same information at the same time and space to talk about it.   However this is also good news for journalism, because it allows the professionals to spend increasingly precious time checking for truth and getting to the bottom of the implications of the election, rather than simply shoveling fact.

Sarah has written in much more detail on her own blog.  In the first of two posts, on election day itself, she wrote with great passion about preparations:

All of this has been going on for a number of months (not full time) and has been a learning curve and exciting project for this team to get into. For the first time we have had a significant presence internally in promoting and reporting on elections. It’s provided an opportunity for us to raise awareness of our work internally and work with colleagues in other departments to enable everything to happen.
Our results system will hopefully be the jewel in the crown of what we’ve done so far. We won’t know until the dust settles tomorrow and we have some feedback from Derbyshire voters, councillors, other officers and colleagues in the public sector who are kind enough to take the time to have a look.

After the elections she said:

I am still a little emotionally charged from the adrenalin of working at such pressure yesterday and giddy with the joy of how well our team worked together on the day and in the run up. Now we just need to decide what to tackle next!

Simon Wakeman at Medway Council was one of a number of people who gave support and encouragement to Derbyshire and other councils embarking on this path. He has written about how a variety of local authorities used the social web on election night.  Also on Sarah’s list of supporters was Al Smith in Newcastle.

All the above was recorded at the truly wonderful localgovcamp, held here at Fazeley Studios in Brum