Author Archive

Stuff I have bookmarked for January 4th through January 5th:

• Back in the office, back on PM « Policy and Performance - "We won’t be gearing up with a big project on PM like we did before, but we will be looking at how we can gather knowledge across the sector. As a start and with the help of Dave Briggs, we’ve set up a social learning space that we’ll be using at two seminars in January and beyond. Don’t go and visit www.ideaperformance.com just yet (’cause it’s still pretty much empty) - but it won’t be long before we should have some great content there. I can’t wait to start building and sharing."
• 6 Concepts That Matter - "Don’t be distracted by any book with a focus on Social Media. Instead focus on concepts that matter for building communities."
• Multiply - Secure, Family-Friendly Media Sharing - Multiply is taking over all the communities from the soon-to-be defunct MSN groups
• Co-op - "Stay in tune with your co-workers. Ask questions, share knowledge, track time, and update agendas all in one place"
• Life With Alacrity: Community by the Numbers, Part One: Group Thresholds - "We often think of communities as organic creatures, which come into existence and grow on their own. However, the truth is they are fragile blossoms. Although many communities surely germinate and bloom on their own, purposefully creating communities can take a tremendous amount of hard work, and one factor their success ultimately depends upon is their numbers."

Stuff I have bookmarked for January 1st through January 3rd:

• Thriving too: Leadership in a Paradigm of Respect - "we now have the means to group and voice in potential numbers never before dreamed of, how do we ensure that the overall system remains balanced, and really intelligent?"
• Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies - Freesouls - "If I had to reduce the essence of Homo sapiens to five words, "people do complicated things together" would do. Online social networks can be powerful amplifiers of collective action precisely because they augment and extend the power of ever-complexifying human sociality."
• WhosTalkin? - Useful looking tool to track what people are saying online, via Beth Kanter
• 5-Part Social Media Process - Amy Sample Ward shares her tips on how to form a successful social media strategy.
• 100+ More Wiki Tools and Resources - "Wiki engines are some of the most versatile platforms for creating websites out there. MediaWiki (the engine that powers Wikipedia) is probably the most widely used, but there are literally hundreds of other wiki engines."
• SaaS Business Intelligence with Google Apps - "Panorama Software has partnered with Google to provide new capabilities to Google applications and Google docs via the strongest suite of analytics, reporting and visualization applications."

John Lanchester is quickly becoming my favourite contributor to the London Review of Books. So much of his writing is both accessible and informative. This issue he looks at computer games:

From the economic point of view, this was the year video games overtook music and video, combined, in the UK. The industries’ respective share of the take is forecast to be £4.64 billion and £4.46 billion. (For purposes of comparison, UK book publishers’ total turnover in 2007 was £4.1 billion.) As a rule, economic shifts of this kind take a while to register on the cultural seismometer; and indeed, from the broader cultural point of view, video games barely exist. The newspapers cover the movies extensively, and while it isn’t necessary to feel that they do all that great a job of it, there’s no denying that they have a try. Video games by contrast are consigned to the nerdy margins of the papers, and are pretty much invisible in broadcast media. Video-game fans return the favour: they constitute the demographic group least likely to pay attention to newspapers and are increasingly uninterested in the ‘MSM’, or mainstream media.

Stuff I have bookmarked for December 30th through December 31st:

• 27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community - Chris Brogan shares some blogging magic
• TDO Mini Forms Wordpress Plugin (v0.12.5) [thedeadone.net] - "This plugin allows you to add a form to your website that allows your readers (including non-registered) to submit posts." This could be INCREDIBLY useful.
• dotproject - Open Source Project and Task Management Software
• Cambridge Carbon Footprint - "Cambridge Carbon Footprint is a local, voluntary organisation concerned with climate change. Our aim is to help people work together creatively to make real reductions in their CO2 emissions."
• The Akashi Project - "The Akashi project works with community and faith groups (via social gatherings at your church, mosque, village hall, community centre, youth club or even with a group of friends at a local café!). We can run discussions and group activities that will help you to consider the future of our planet in a fun, interesting way, that is relevant to your lifestyle and values."
• McMillanChavis.pdf (application/pdf Object) - "This article holds more useful advice (and a great practical framework) for developing an online community than any other." - Richard Millington
• Sueetie - "The Future in .NET Open Source Online Community Development" apparently.
• Measure how the media is portraying your company or organization - A 'web based media management platform'
• Not all online community members are created equal - "Do you know who your most important members are? You should be able to name them all right off the top of your head."
• ThoughtFarmer: Intranet 2.0. Wikis, blogs, social networking. - "ThoughtFarmer is next-generation intranet software: wikis, blogs
  and social networking for effective internal collaboration."

Here are the posts in decreasing order of popularity that seem to have caught people’s attention in the last 12 months:

1. The UKGovWeb Twitterverse
2. WordPress.com widget guide
3. 10 Cool WordPress themes
4. 8 tips for beginner bloggers
5. Macbook Wireless Problem
6. Effective collaboration with wikis
7. What is a ‘Digital Mentor’?
8. ReadWriteGov
9. Digital mentor update
10. The different types of blog post

There’s not long left of 2008 now. It’s been one of the most remarkable years of my life.

I started it living in Mawsley, near Kettering, which I and my family hated. We then moved to Broughton, also near Kettering, which was better. Now I’m typing this in the study in our house in Cottenham, near Cambridge. I’ve always wanted to return to living round here, yet never thought I would manage it. I love it here.

I started the year in a proper job, which I was starting to find limiting and restrictive. At that time, I didn’t know where else I could go. Over the year I got the confidence to realise that working for myself was what I needed to do. Thanks to the tremendous support I have received from several people - many of whom I have only really known since relatively recently - I’ve been able to find myself a bit of a niche and off the back of that, plenty of work.

So, (deep breath) massive thanks to Steve Dale, Jeremy Gould, David Wilcox, Simon Dickson, Steph Gray, Shane McCracken, Nick Booth, Dom Campbell, Lloyd Davis, Tim Davies, Emma Mulqueeny, Paul Johnston and many others… I literally couldn’t have done it without you.

A quick word about Jeremy - he posted today on his blog that he is leaving the civil service, to take some time off with his family and to return some time in 2009 in some capacity as a freelancer. His blog post hints at frustration in his day job and I think he must have felt pretty under appreciated there during the last months. I don’t think this does his department any credit at all and it is a pretty damning indictment that one of the most passionate and able people I have ever met was unable to find a role that suited him and his talents within the UK public sector. He’ll do very well out of the system, of that I have no doubt, but what a shame! If civil servants with a bit of vision and enthusiasm continue to be treated like this, there will be no good ones left. Simon has blogged his thoughts too.

Apart from my terrific friends, there is one other thing that has had a remarkable impact on my workloads, and that is this blog. During the whole of December 2007, DavePress got a measly 67 hits. December 2008 saw it receive 5,328 views. I think it is fair to say that every single bit of work I have picked up has started with a conversation beginning with, “Hi Dave, I’ve just been reading your blog and…”. Here’s some advice for anyone who might be thinking about going it alone at some point in 2009 - start blogging. It’s a remarkable way to build yourself a reputation from scratch.

I’m hoping that I stay busy in 2009, obviously, and that I start to develop a bit more of a business brain than I currently have. I want, as I think I mentioned in my ‘resolutions’ post, that I want to find the time to think a bit more about how all this digital participation stuff actually works, and what it really means for the government of this country. I’m not so sure than government is going to be ‘fixed’ any time soon, but the tinkering around the edges that’s starting to happen now can only help improve things a little bit for a lot of people.

Happy new year, everyone.

Or maybe just stuff I’d like to get round to doing in 2009…

1. Get more collaborative: I’d like to spend more time working with other people, and I’m hoping that in 2009 there will be plenty of opportunities for this to happen
2. Be more helpful: I’m envious of Dominic and his projects like AccessCity and Enabled by Design. I’d really like to get into the social innovation space and dedicate some time to making things better for people that need it.
3. Start podcasting: I’m already in danger of over-committing content wise, with this blog and my newsletter, but I’d really like to start doing a regular podcast, whether audio or video based.
4. Make my blog posts nicer: at least by having more pictures in them. Steve Bridger, amongst others, always has a nice big photo introducing his posts. I need to spend a bit more time making my posts a bit more, well, pretty.
5. Write something more substantial: than just short, quick blog posts. Maybe an ebook or something which lets me take the time and use a bit more space to develop my ideas a bit more (if that doesn’t sound too pompous).
6. Develop the idea of communities: which ties in a bit with social learning spaces too. Really sell the idea of developing communities and community-based approaches in the public sector, and build up some resources people can use to help them.

Well, that’s six and I had better stop typing now so as not to set myself too big a challenge!

What things are you planning on doing more of next year?

Twitterhack is a new blog I have started. And it’s horrible.

I hate ads on blogs, and this one has lots of them. It even has ads in the RSS, and the RSS isn’t even full text!

Here’s why I have inflicted this abomination on the world: I found myself writing - or wanting to write - more and more about Twitter as different stuff came to my attention, but didn’t want DavePress to become overwhelmed with that sort of thing.

Also, I’m kind of interested in how ads can be used on websites, how how you can use metrics to find out which bits of sites people visit and where they are most likely to click on the ads. So, why not turn my new Twitterblog into an ad experiment too?

So, if you are interested, feel free to sign up for the RSS or just visit TwitterHack now and again. But don’t send me emails telling me it’s horrible - I know it is!

I hadn’t really had a chance to have a proper play with FriendConnect before today. It’s basically a Google service that lets you add social functionality to your website, based on the OpenSocial framework. This means that if you have an account with Google, AOL, Yahoo! or OpenID you can interact with the various services.

What does this actually mean? Well, it enables you to add (sort-of) social networking capabilities to your site, whether it is a blog or a traditional static site, by simply pasting in a bit of code. I’ve added two bits so far: one is the (rather pointless but kind of nice) ability to become a ‘member’ of this blog:

Which a marvellous four people had done at the time of typing (one of whom, er, is me). I suppose this is a little like MyBlogLog territory.

The second is hidden away on the Community page - it’s like a comment wall that you might find on a Facebook profile. I have been umming and ahing over adding a forum to DavePress to enable a bit of interaction between folk here. They do have a habit of looking a little empty, though, and this might just keep the barriers to entry low enough to make it work rather well.

I’ve never had a proper look at KickApps, who seem to offer a similar service. Can anyone share experiences on them?

Stuff I have bookmarked for December 28th through December 30th:

• Oxite - Lab - MIX Online - Microsoft's open source blog platform / CMS?
• Front Seat - Software for Civic Life - "Front Seat is a civic software company and incubator. Our software connects people to the places we live, the resources we consume, and our communities." Via @AlbertoNardelli
• Podnosh Blog » Archive » Why doesn’t government have reservists? - "The role of government is going to change. As individuals find it easier to collaborate and solve problems, traditional government structures will need to be reshaped and rewired. So how do we start this change?"
• www.patientsknowbest.com - Welcome to Patients Know Best - "An open source personal health records project"
• PHPizabi - Create Worlds - "PHPizabi is one of the most powerful social networking platforms on the planet. With literally thousands of websites powered by PHPizabi including everything from simple friends sites to the most complex networking super sites out there. Easy to install, use, and raising the bar on what it is to provide a reliable, fast, social networking package to raise your business to the next level."
• Predictions for Google’s 2009 - What might happen at Google over the next 12 months…