Tag: Voluntary Sector

29th March 2008

Five new blogs – four from Birmingham one not – plus something new from WordPress.

I just want to say hello to Andrew Hemmings who moved from lurker to blogger after last night’s mini Birmingham Bloggers meet in the Spotted Dog. (Don’t panic, it was an impromptu meeting for Joanna Geary who will miss the next one this Monday 7pm at Rooty Frooty in the Custard Factory) Andrew talked to a number of people about blogs and their possible impact on his work in promoting the TIC. He had a typical response to a first bloggers meet:

By the way…thanks to all those last night who so willingly shared their knowledge, views and opinions to a newbie at the blogging table – I’ve got plenty to think about! Those thoughts will follow….!

Now he’s done the perfect thing, and started his own blog. It really is the fastest way to appreciate/understand the possibilities. So welcome Andrew.

Hi also had a fine chat with Nicky Getgood who was watching the blog meet from the bar then came and joined us – mostl because she’s very friendly, but also because she blogs here.

Chris Unitt was also at the Spotted Dog and is blogging for the fantabulous Fierce Festival here. You can also vote to help them programme the festival. Hi Chris, I like the scratchy graphics. Did you do those?

Simon Howsey is new to me – he seems to be using wordpress to aggregate a whole series of feeds, many from Birmingham Bloggers.

A belated hello to a blog I subscribed to a while back thanks to a tip off from the very fine fine Tim Davies. Alice Casey has set up her blog to explore some of the ideas which percolate through her work with with Involve. This (and many other blogs) are about the link between social media, neighbourhoods and social good. Which is of course where I began a good while back with the Grassroots Channel podcast. She and I will both be at a barcamp in May to explore social media and youth participation – which again relates to some other work I’ve been doing.

For anyone who’s just set up a new WordPress blog an hour ago the rather heavily revamped WordPress 2.5 went live. Looks good. Time for some upgrades.

4th March 2008

Why should leaders blog?

That’s the question thrown my way by Simon Peters at Common Purpose as this international leadership charity sets out to start it’s own blogging experiment. So why?

Leaders need followers and followers need to know if they can trust you.

A blog helps establish how trustworthy you are. It is a patient process, but, over time, if you write about the things you care about, link to the people who make sense to you, share questions online it paints a picture people can trust. It reveals who you are and why your vision makes sense. Of course if you tell your PA to do that for you it won’t work.

Leaders not only need followers, they need help.

Problems are usually best solved collaboratively. Collaboration is at its best when there is a diversity of opinions available. Blog about a problem you need to solve and the network you can establish around your blog will help you solve it. This is leadership in a world where hierachy is often the block to progress. Blogger Tessy Britton (link) can help me explain this:

the amount of technical information is doubling every 2 years, there were 3000 books published today, 2.7 billion searches performed on google this month . . .

Which is why computers are no longer optional… and why social network sites have literally exploded. We need to manage all the connections and all the information. The truth is really quite profound. We cannot manage without people networks, where we have connections with lots and lots of other people. And with those connections can come a measure of confidence. Perhaps we don’t need to be trying desperately to absorb so much information, perhaps it is OK to let others know lots of other things we don’t . . . but are only a click or a call away? We need people, and we need to build trusting relationships with those people in order to collaborate.

I think that that this is a truly wonderful thing.

Why else? Followers are clear about what they expect from their leaders, and the openess it takes to blog well can encourage some of those qualities.

In 2005 the DTI commissioned leadership company Caret to carry out the biggest ever survey of followers. They asked 5,000 people what they looked for in their leaders. The results (link here) were interesting, although not surprising:

An inspirational leader ….
• Has an ability to manage and engage people: they listen, involve, trust, appreciate, have fun; they care and involve everyone.
• Is honest, open, respectful, committed, focused, determined, courageous, humble, patient, vulnerable, energised, reflective, passionate, non-jargony, curious.
• Has a novel outlook: looks laterally, bends rules, loves pressure, is highly accessible, strongly visionary, and customer-obsessed.
These are the things followers said would inspire them.

Qualities many of us show in everyday life, with our friends and family, but we can tend to put them aside when we have to function as part of an organisation.

Blogging helps you find your voice, it helps you understand what you naturally believe in, and then challenges those beliefs. It exposes you to a global set of ideas and examples riddled with novelty and invites you to join a conversation, sometimes leading, sometimes following; sometimes learning, sometimes teaching.

It makes you accessible, encourages you to communicate in plain language, it requires you to stick your kneck out, expose yourself and learn from doing so. It works best when you are patient about building a valued network, curious about others people’s ideas, generous with your own.

See any parallels?

Disclosure. I’m a Common Purpose “graduate” (I don’t like that term) from Birmingham in 2000 and 2003. I’m also an associate consultant with Caret – the DTI sponsored research was completed before I joined.

Image thanks to pinkbetty on Flickr.

Update: April 17th 2008. You might be interested in this new blog on leadership.

3rd March 2008

We-Think by Charles Leadbeater. A review

About the time I start writing this a bunch of people will be gathering in London to launch We-Think (Amazon link), the book written by Charles Leadbeater and 237 others. I was sent a review copy, partly because I left a single comment on the wiki, which was used to turn his solo first draft into a collaborative 2nd(!) draft. I also mentioned it in this blog. So send me a free book and I’ll read it:

For those new to the ideas of a world of collaborative and networked creation this is a very measured and well illustrated survey of where the world is taking you. For those already familiar, it’s a clearly written and well seasoned refresher course. For those who wonder why their business model is shot full of holes this might help explain.

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For all groups it comes with that most useful of commodities – caveats. Lots of them. Charles has sought to explore the pros and cons. You can read the first three chapters without buying the book (and for those new to the ideas chapter three on how it works is very helpful), but the most valuable is probably Chapter 6. “For Better or Worse” is the writers’ survey pros and cons of the changes coming. Of particular interest to me is the review of the effect on democracy, how the web is enabling We-Act(ors) rather than We-Think(ers). On balance though the book clearly approves of the long term benefits of the disruption of we-think.

Reading this helps me structure my understanding of the work I’m doing and some of the work I’m likely to do. If you fly to SXSW this week, buy a copy for the plane. If you work in government get your department to buy you a copy and then next year fly you to SXSW.
Meanwhile the launch has been twittered:

A few other reviews/mentions:

Nesta – organisers
Ed Mitchell – “uplifting”
Charlie Mansell – “how collaboration operates”
David Wilcox – “quote”
Computer Weekly – “will not transform every business”
gnovis – “somewhat controversial”
Sicamp – encouraged by Charles
Andrew Keen – it’s individuals who innovate – stoopid.
The Spectator – “a riveting guide to a new world”
Freshnetworks community managers rock.
Shane Richmond at the RSA: Polariser

David Cameron, Tom Steinberg and Information Scraping

Has David Cameron been talking to Tom Steinberg at MySociety? His announcement yesterday suggests he has because he wants to make ‘scraping’ easier. Scraping is the process of harvesting information from government websites and reusing it – hopefully for public good.

The Conservative leader quoted a really good example with the mysociety website theyworkforyou which provides collated information about politicians and what they do and allows you to contact your MP. Last month I met Tom Steinberg at the UK Gov barcamp. What stuck out in my mind is how extending theyworkforyou to include councillors can’t be done at the moment because councils don’t make details of councillors available in a consistent format. That in turn makes automated collection of this information a nightmare. Freeing up data is a key part of Tom’s Power of Information review and he also talks about it here:
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So I think it is quite remarkable to see something as apparently prosaic as consistency of data making it into a policy statement from the leader of the Conservative Party. In his speech he explains how freedom of data will make it easier for social enterprises, charities, community groups to identify and understand local need and solve problems. He’s right.

Local MP Tom Watson is looking for what to do with his new ministerial interest in web strategy. I’m sure you’ve already had this conversation Tom, but in the spirit of the social web please say that you agree with Mr Cameron and do what you can to get those standards in place and used.
By the way – yesterday MySociety launched GroupsNearYou. I did a tiny bit of testing (adding data and telling them what I thought) in the development stage. Please go on there and add details of groups near you, the sooner we do that the sooner we can stop more public money being wasted on more online databases of well – groups near you.