Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, December 1, 2008
Social Media Strategy
Some help and advice from Twitter:
davebriggs @StevenTuck just cut and paste from a few blogs!
podnosh dream it?
draml @davebriggs @StevenTuck Couldn't someone just put together a mashup to do that automagically by now?
podnosh @StevenTuck start with the simple and obvious to give others a chance to get their heads around. Support those who get it - then move on.
@podnosh Thanks I think you're right I'm trying to fit too much in too early rather than planning a staged approach
podnosh @StevenTuck Yes! Pleasure.
davebriggs @StevenTuck just cut and paste from a few blogs!
podnosh dream it?
draml @davebriggs @StevenTuck Couldn't someone just put together a mashup to do that automagically by now?
podnosh @StevenTuck start with the simple and obvious to give others a chance to get their heads around. Support those who get it - then move on.
@podnosh Thanks I think you're right I'm trying to fit too much in too early rather than planning a staged approach
podnosh @StevenTuck Yes! Pleasure.
- Hidden gems: helping people discover stuff which could change their lives
- Digital democracy: new ways to let everyone keep an eye on money and power
- Amplifying voices: new ways to empower those communities that media could never previously reach.
- Wise crowds: connecting people who need to know stuff with people who know it already
- Tools to make trouble: developing disruptive media tools, then putting them in the hands of people that need them most.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
So why would local government want to get involved with social media anyway?
podnosh @StevenTuck because good government is capable of useful/fruitful conversations with the people it serves.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Marching forward
A good week for soc med progression.
Spent some time at weekend preparing a Facebook page for KC to demonstrate two things; the ease in which existing information can be exported to other sites and that anybody with was able to do it. I did have some concerns about the replication of the information on the existing web site and the lack of UGC and participation. My angst was put to rest by Dave Briggs and Nick Booth who generously checked over the page and gave me some reassurance. Thanks chaps - I really valued that.
...you have the discussion board, and have lots of different interesting content...
Dave Briggs
Success! The point of trying this stuff is to help you make the case for where next/what next/how next.
Nick Booth
Management are very enthusiastic about the FB page and have endorsed it. The wheels are moving and hopefully the process of implementation will not take too long. I'm hoping we can get get FB and Twitter badges on the homepage during the BC09 for a bit of Socitm recognition.
Several individuals researching and using soc med within the organisation so have suggested a Web 2.0 Group be set up for knowledge sharing etc.
String possibility about getting a consultant in to do some work with us in January 2009
Spent some time at weekend preparing a Facebook page for KC to demonstrate two things; the ease in which existing information can be exported to other sites and that anybody with was able to do it. I did have some concerns about the replication of the information on the existing web site and the lack of UGC and participation. My angst was put to rest by Dave Briggs and Nick Booth who generously checked over the page and gave me some reassurance. Thanks chaps - I really valued that.
...you have the discussion board, and have lots of different interesting content...
Dave Briggs
Success! The point of trying this stuff is to help you make the case for where next/what next/how next.
Nick Booth
Management are very enthusiastic about the FB page and have endorsed it. The wheels are moving and hopefully the process of implementation will not take too long. I'm hoping we can get get FB and Twitter badges on the homepage during the BC09 for a bit of Socitm recognition.
Several individuals researching and using soc med within the organisation so have suggested a Web 2.0 Group be set up for knowledge sharing etc.
String possibility about getting a consultant in to do some work with us in January 2009
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Socitm 2.0
Thinking about what went wrong with Socitm's attempt at social media http://www.socitmweb2.net/ after the Web 2.0 conference. Dave Briggs tweets me with:
"simple. Complete lack of community management. As far as I could see no one from socitm ever visited! Schoolboy web 2 error!"
Need to get to one of Dave's ReadWriteGov gigs.
Had a long, stream of conciousness, brain storming session about the future of LocalGov web with Lewis on IM will have to post on Google Docs and edit.
"simple. Complete lack of community management. As far as I could see no one from socitm ever visited! Schoolboy web 2 error!"
Need to get to one of Dave's ReadWriteGov gigs.
Had a long, stream of conciousness, brain storming session about the future of LocalGov web with Lewis on IM will have to post on Google Docs and edit.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Post from Ingrid Koehler's blog
web 2.0 briefing (it's not as dull as the title, I promise!)
10 Sep 2008 by Ingrid Koehler
I went to a SOCITM Web2.0 briefing today at the impressive venue of the Natural History Museum. It wasn’t a really a briefing - it was a regular old conference. I go to a fair few of these webby social media type events, but this was probably the first “normal” conference I’ve been to on the subject. Usually the ones I go to are small and it’s all preaching to the choir. This time the audience were the unwashed masses, many of whom had yet to see the light. And by unwashed masses, I mean a lot of web and IT managers.
There was a lot to take in at this conference, so I’m going to split my coverage of the event into a few separate posts. Call it the good, the bad and the interesting. Before I take you into the bad (yes, of course I’m starting with the bad) - I think it’s worth highlighting a couple of things
Firstly, the just published SocItm (the Society of Information Technology Management) report called Web 2.0: what it is and why it matters, available on their Insight microsite. You have to be an Insight subscriber to get instant access. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I’m guessing that most local authorities are subscribers. And even if you’re not, you can request access. Anyway, I would highly recommend at least going through executive summary which is a pretty handy overview. Their summary key actions are laudable, but missing at least one - and that’s FREE the WEB.
Too many council officers have emailed me saying that they can’t access my WordPress blog or our YouTube channel. And it’s not as if we’re putting porn up here - it’s all local government all the time with us. So I’d urge councils (and the socitm report does too, just not in the recs) to let officers use social networking sites Flickr, YouTube, blogs, Facebook, Beebo, and so on. You don’t need the Internet to waste time. Your communities are using these sites to talk about your area and sometimes your projects and organisations and you should know what they’re saying - and on company time.
Secondly, if you missed this one (and it was a good conference) there are other Web2.0 events coming up this autumn. Dave Briggs is running an event called ReadWriteGov at Peterborough City Council (he’s the guy I recently linked to with his post on How councils can get started in social media). I’m also attending an event in October - Web 2.0 Practical Applications for Business Benefit which addresses both government and private sector applications. And there are probably loads more…
To see the bad… read more after the jump.
The IT Crowd
Now, I realise I’m a web2.0 evangelist (and I swear that will be the last religious metaphor I use), and I really don’t mind explaining different applications or telling people about some of the advantages to service, communications or efficiency that web2.0 can bring. I don’t think it’s rocket science, it’s just about appropriate tools for different audiences. Ewan McIntosh, the main speaker of the day, led a merry romp through a variety of well-known and some new-to-me tools including Flickr, WordPress blog platforms and feed readers. As I was talking to one person during the break and telling him how I use some of these applications to help me do my job and in my personal life. What’s all this Flickr stuff? He said. I explained how I love Flickr - and that it has many uses. In my professional life, I use Flickr mainly as a storage facility for photos I’ve taken at events and so forth - pretty minimal. In my personal life, it’s a way I can share pictures of my little boy with family and friends in America, Scotland, Germany and Finland. It’s also helped me improve my photography skills tremendously through observation, discussion and through feedback left on the images I post. (If you want to see what a local authority is doing with Flickr, check out Stratford DC’s Flickr album.)
He also said he didn’t see the point of all this feed reading, if he wanted to know something he’d just Google it. Well, yeah… I guess. I know not everyone uses feeds, but for me it’s a really valuable information tool. And saying that I’d go to Google if I wanted to know something is a little akin to saying “Please don’t talk to me, if I want to know something about you, I’ll ask you a question.”
And then he finished with “And I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what efficiency this will bring.” I guess he could always Google it.
I know I’m being a bit mean, but it’s not like he’s going to pick this blog post up in his feed reader tomorrow.
Tom Steinberg of MySociety (the folks who brought you the Downing Street petition site and They Work for You) spoke at the conference, focusing on their project FixMyStreet.com. This is a site where every day folks who just happen to have Internet access and a keen eye for disrepair can send complaints to the relevant authority. Obviously it’s mostly about environmental services, street scene, fly tipping, graffiti, broken pavements and so forth. It works off your post code, so you don’t even have to know which council to report it to - FixMyStreet will sort it out for you. They then zip the issue off to the council in an email and it’s publically available for all to see on the Internet, which presumably puts councils under a bit of pressure to sort it out quickly. And councils can respond, as well. (All this reminds me of my favourite example of community-council communication that took place in spraypaint from BOTH SIDES!)
Now you might think that what with all the great work that Tom Steinberg and Co have done there’d be a lot of questions about how councils could engage more effectively with third party sites that are already hosting community concerns. But noooo…. it was all about how MySociety should be talking to these other sites to come up with a community standard that would make life easier for folks running council IT systems, content and customer relationship management systems. I’m all for making life easier and I understand that it’s annoying to have to re-key a complaint that’s come by email from some other site. The problem here isn’t with groups like MySociety - they’re engaging with government bodies. The problem isn’t even with other sites that spring up trying to do similar things. The problem here is stick-in-the-mudness. Look I know my council would prefer that I use the council site to report a problem in my road and that you’d probably like to get my name, address, and probably my gender, national origin, race and religion to boot. But I’d prefer not to give that information - and I can remember FixMyStreet.com If I just send an email or a letter to the council, you’d have to input all that stuff anyway.
And anyway, it’s really all about the citizen, isn’t it? I mean what about the user?
Obviously, not everyone felt that way and I heard at least one delegate making this very point during the break. And tomorrow, I’ll write more about the good and the interesting.
Comments:
Hi Ingrid Great to see you at the event and introduce you to some of the great unwashed. I think you should give the sceptics you met some credit at least for being motivated to come along – although personally I was dismayed by the types who restricted their feedback comments to complaints about the food (which I thought was pretty nice) and the fact that they’d had to travel to London for the event!! Overall, delegates gave the event an 85% plus rating for content and relevance, so even if some presented the ‘why are citizens (and their advocates like FixMyStreet) making my life so difficult’ view of the world, I don’t think these are representative. Its not always appreciated that web people in local authorities are almost always struggling with small budgets and sometimes also with slow moving and sometimes unenlightened decision-makers, which can make their job at the sharp end very difficult and frustrating. That’s one reason why web managers get very, very, upset when they feel that Better connected, Socitm’s annual report on local authority websites, has got something wrong. Just to clarify, the Web 2 report is free of charge to Socitm Insight subscribers, which includes 92% of local authorities. The subscription (and therefore the password) is usually held by the Head of IT. People who came to the event have been given passwords too. Apart from that, people can buy the report for £195 (£175 for Socitm members). Of course, you don’t have to buy the report to participate in the forums or comment on the blogs or use the bookmarks and other resources we’re adding the microsite www.socitmweb2.net so I’m hoping lots of people will do so, most especially people who may not have participated in any sort of web 2 stuff before. Looking forward to reading your further feedback on the event….
Posted by Vicky Sargent 14 Sep 2008
10 Sep 2008 by Ingrid Koehler
I went to a SOCITM Web2.0 briefing today at the impressive venue of the Natural History Museum. It wasn’t a really a briefing - it was a regular old conference. I go to a fair few of these webby social media type events, but this was probably the first “normal” conference I’ve been to on the subject. Usually the ones I go to are small and it’s all preaching to the choir. This time the audience were the unwashed masses, many of whom had yet to see the light. And by unwashed masses, I mean a lot of web and IT managers.
There was a lot to take in at this conference, so I’m going to split my coverage of the event into a few separate posts. Call it the good, the bad and the interesting. Before I take you into the bad (yes, of course I’m starting with the bad) - I think it’s worth highlighting a couple of things
Firstly, the just published SocItm (the Society of Information Technology Management) report called Web 2.0: what it is and why it matters, available on their Insight microsite. You have to be an Insight subscriber to get instant access. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I’m guessing that most local authorities are subscribers. And even if you’re not, you can request access. Anyway, I would highly recommend at least going through executive summary which is a pretty handy overview. Their summary key actions are laudable, but missing at least one - and that’s FREE the WEB.
Too many council officers have emailed me saying that they can’t access my WordPress blog or our YouTube channel. And it’s not as if we’re putting porn up here - it’s all local government all the time with us. So I’d urge councils (and the socitm report does too, just not in the recs) to let officers use social networking sites Flickr, YouTube, blogs, Facebook, Beebo, and so on. You don’t need the Internet to waste time. Your communities are using these sites to talk about your area and sometimes your projects and organisations and you should know what they’re saying - and on company time.
Secondly, if you missed this one (and it was a good conference) there are other Web2.0 events coming up this autumn. Dave Briggs is running an event called ReadWriteGov at Peterborough City Council (he’s the guy I recently linked to with his post on How councils can get started in social media). I’m also attending an event in October - Web 2.0 Practical Applications for Business Benefit which addresses both government and private sector applications. And there are probably loads more…
To see the bad… read more after the jump.
The IT Crowd
Now, I realise I’m a web2.0 evangelist (and I swear that will be the last religious metaphor I use), and I really don’t mind explaining different applications or telling people about some of the advantages to service, communications or efficiency that web2.0 can bring. I don’t think it’s rocket science, it’s just about appropriate tools for different audiences. Ewan McIntosh, the main speaker of the day, led a merry romp through a variety of well-known and some new-to-me tools including Flickr, WordPress blog platforms and feed readers. As I was talking to one person during the break and telling him how I use some of these applications to help me do my job and in my personal life. What’s all this Flickr stuff? He said. I explained how I love Flickr - and that it has many uses. In my professional life, I use Flickr mainly as a storage facility for photos I’ve taken at events and so forth - pretty minimal. In my personal life, it’s a way I can share pictures of my little boy with family and friends in America, Scotland, Germany and Finland. It’s also helped me improve my photography skills tremendously through observation, discussion and through feedback left on the images I post. (If you want to see what a local authority is doing with Flickr, check out Stratford DC’s Flickr album.)
He also said he didn’t see the point of all this feed reading, if he wanted to know something he’d just Google it. Well, yeah… I guess. I know not everyone uses feeds, but for me it’s a really valuable information tool. And saying that I’d go to Google if I wanted to know something is a little akin to saying “Please don’t talk to me, if I want to know something about you, I’ll ask you a question.”
And then he finished with “And I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what efficiency this will bring.” I guess he could always Google it.
I know I’m being a bit mean, but it’s not like he’s going to pick this blog post up in his feed reader tomorrow.
Tom Steinberg of MySociety (the folks who brought you the Downing Street petition site and They Work for You) spoke at the conference, focusing on their project FixMyStreet.com. This is a site where every day folks who just happen to have Internet access and a keen eye for disrepair can send complaints to the relevant authority. Obviously it’s mostly about environmental services, street scene, fly tipping, graffiti, broken pavements and so forth. It works off your post code, so you don’t even have to know which council to report it to - FixMyStreet will sort it out for you. They then zip the issue off to the council in an email and it’s publically available for all to see on the Internet, which presumably puts councils under a bit of pressure to sort it out quickly. And councils can respond, as well. (All this reminds me of my favourite example of community-council communication that took place in spraypaint from BOTH SIDES!)
Now you might think that what with all the great work that Tom Steinberg and Co have done there’d be a lot of questions about how councils could engage more effectively with third party sites that are already hosting community concerns. But noooo…. it was all about how MySociety should be talking to these other sites to come up with a community standard that would make life easier for folks running council IT systems, content and customer relationship management systems. I’m all for making life easier and I understand that it’s annoying to have to re-key a complaint that’s come by email from some other site. The problem here isn’t with groups like MySociety - they’re engaging with government bodies. The problem isn’t even with other sites that spring up trying to do similar things. The problem here is stick-in-the-mudness. Look I know my council would prefer that I use the council site to report a problem in my road and that you’d probably like to get my name, address, and probably my gender, national origin, race and religion to boot. But I’d prefer not to give that information - and I can remember FixMyStreet.com If I just send an email or a letter to the council, you’d have to input all that stuff anyway.
And anyway, it’s really all about the citizen, isn’t it? I mean what about the user?
Obviously, not everyone felt that way and I heard at least one delegate making this very point during the break. And tomorrow, I’ll write more about the good and the interesting.
Comments:
Hi Ingrid Great to see you at the event and introduce you to some of the great unwashed. I think you should give the sceptics you met some credit at least for being motivated to come along – although personally I was dismayed by the types who restricted their feedback comments to complaints about the food (which I thought was pretty nice) and the fact that they’d had to travel to London for the event!! Overall, delegates gave the event an 85% plus rating for content and relevance, so even if some presented the ‘why are citizens (and their advocates like FixMyStreet) making my life so difficult’ view of the world, I don’t think these are representative. Its not always appreciated that web people in local authorities are almost always struggling with small budgets and sometimes also with slow moving and sometimes unenlightened decision-makers, which can make their job at the sharp end very difficult and frustrating. That’s one reason why web managers get very, very, upset when they feel that Better connected, Socitm’s annual report on local authority websites, has got something wrong. Just to clarify, the Web 2 report is free of charge to Socitm Insight subscribers, which includes 92% of local authorities. The subscription (and therefore the password) is usually held by the Head of IT. People who came to the event have been given passwords too. Apart from that, people can buy the report for £195 (£175 for Socitm members). Of course, you don’t have to buy the report to participate in the forums or comment on the blogs or use the bookmarks and other resources we’re adding the microsite www.socitmweb2.net so I’m hoping lots of people will do so, most especially people who may not have participated in any sort of web 2 stuff before. Looking forward to reading your further feedback on the event….
Posted by Vicky Sargent 14 Sep 2008
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