Hello everyone, welcome back after the easter break!
I’d be really interested to find out more about the people who read this blog, and what they make of it. So, I threw together this little survey. It’s done in Google Docs, and if you can’t access it for some reason but would like to complete it, just drop me an email and I’ll send you a version you should be able to use.
Thanks in advance!
Update: thanks to all who have taken the survey. I’ll publish the results soon.
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An interesting exchange online happened last week after the wonderful Robert Brook posted a piece on his site entitled ‘Boring Innovation‘ – all about how innovation can best happen within large, complex organisations, like those you tend to find in government.
It’s well worth reading in full, here’s a snippet:
How about this: a two-pronged approach. Introduce, recognise and support innovative thinking within the existing processes – and, separately, set up a sandboxed arms-length entity to take on the risk. But, make that sandbox small and real – very quick turnover of work, short iterations, very tight on the money.
This was quickly picked up on by James Gardner, CTO of the DWP and author of several publications on innovation (he got the link via another post by Stefan – everything’s linked these days).
Everyone thinks innovatively all the time, whether they know it or not. But when it comes down to the press of doing the day job, versus changing it to accommodate innovation, most people will just do what they have always done…
That’s why you need an innovation unit, whether you bought it or grew it yourself. The name of the game is about starting lots of little, new projects. Without waiting for that random blue-bird superstar performer who can do it without any help at all.
Genuinely, how great is it that this debate is being held, in the open, online so that everyone can share in what is being said, and contribute to, if they choose to.
This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about in my discussion about the .gov.uk blogosphere. it’s great to see people like Robert and James being so actively involved like this – and as per my earlier post, Alistair and Carl too.
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Two great blog posts recently on the ever thorny issue of local government websites.
Firstly, Al Smith recounts his experience managing the refresh of Newcastle City Council’s site. A remarkably honest and open appraisal of how it all went, and Al’s own role, it’s a great read and one for any local gov web manager to take a look at.
Secondly, Carl Haggerty – who is on blogging fire at the moment – has written a really thought provoking post on web strategy. He says:
What i think we need is a strategy for the web channel that actually talks about “Exploiting” the channel for business benefit and value creation and not a strategy that focuses on how we will build it, what technology we will use and what level of security we will apply. These are of course very important things but in my view should actually be contained within your organisations ICT Technical Strategies and not within the web strategy.
Great examples of blogging being used to share experience, knowledge and ideas. More of this, please.
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I was delighted to have the opportunity to interview Mark Lloyd, Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, recently.
Since taking up his post, Mark has written a prolific internal blog about his work at the Council to inform and engage with his colleagues at all levels of the organisation.
This is exactly the sort of thing I have been talking about for the last couple of months – that really effective use of social media behind the firewall should be a priority for local councils. Mark’s experiences should hopefully encourage more of this activity across local government.
Many thanks to Michele Ide-Smith for arranging this interview.
I’m keen to do more videos like this – if you or someone you know would make a good subject, do get in touch!
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I started writing a blog because I was hacked off with nobody listening to me at work when I tried to discuss with them the ideas I had for using the internet to make the work we did more interesting. I found that by writing stuff in public, online, people who were interested found it useful, and talked to me. Later on, people found it so useful they gave me work based on what I wrote here. It was a kind of freemium business model, though I never planned it that way.
After all, in the archives of this blog is an awful lot of information about how organisations can innovate around the way they use the internet, and what lessons they could learn from internet culture. If the people that wield budgets read it properly – and trusted their own staff a little more – they probably wouldn’t need to hire me, ever. But don’t tell anyone that.
Dennis Howlett writes a really interesting and informative blog called AccMan which “concentrates on innovation for professional accountants with a strong leaning towards the technologies that drive client value”. Don’t worry though, it’s a really interesting read. The other day, Dennis posted about a couple of related things: one, that he spent a lot of time providing free advice off the back of his blog posts via other channels like email; and secondly, that as a result of this, he would be making some of his blog content available only on a paid for basis.
It’s an interesting response to an issue that probably didn’t exist until recently. The question is, I guess, once you start giving stuff away for free, is it impossible to withdraw, even partially, from that position? And do people then expect you to provide everything for free? In other words, just because I provide advice, guidance and opinion for nothing here on DavePress, does that obligate me to answer people’s questions on email for free? I, like Dennis, find myself doing it all the time.
I guess this is an issue a lot of content businesses are wrestling with at the moment, newspapers especially.
Don’t worry, I can’t see myself charging for what I publish here anytime soon – I doubt there would be many takers. I’m happy using the blog to develop my ideas, and develop a bit of goodwill in the hope that can turn itself into paid work at some point in the future.
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As a follow up to my post on the UK .gov blogosphere, a small session was run at the recent govcamp on the state of blogging in the public sector in the UK.
The discussion was an interesting one and Al Reid took down some great notes that cover most of what was said. Pubstrat wrote a great post before the event which summed up most of the stuff we talked about anyway.
Here’s my take: I was wrong to mention blogs. A lot of the resultant discussion in the comments of that post and other chats have focused on blogging, which is of course just the medium. It’s the content I am interested in.
What we seem to lack is an ecosystem of ideas in public services. Discussions about new ways of doing things, how to change the way things are, how ideas get progressed into prototypes and then into actual delivered services or ways of working. Whether this happens on a blog, in a social network, on a wiki or over a cup of tea is neither here nor there.
This ties in with the discussion sparked by Dom on Twitter about the lack of challenge in evidence at the govcamp, and that it was a pretty homogenous group of people in attendance. The question was posed, how do we get everyone else to these events, or at least having these sorts of conversations?
I’ve no idea, frankly.
I believe a couple of things are pretty evident though:
- Government at all levels has to improve its attitiude to ideas and thus to innovation
- Structures and processes will help the behaviour required for an ideas ecosystem become embedded and accepted
- People within organisations have to start getting better at talking to each other for any of this to actually work
The unconference format works very nicely in providing the space for people to have conversations about stuff. The blank canvas that is the agenda can be daunting, but with the right preparation, everyone can arrive at the event primed and ready to say things. I’m having chats with Jeremy and others about how this might be applied to individual organisations. Watch this space.
All of this ties in with what I started to think about in several post over the last couple of months, which seems to be coalescing in my mind around the notion of learning organisations – familiar to anyone that has read the work of Peter Senge but which for me focuses on the ability for organisations to have meaningful conversations, both internally and externally, and to have a grown up attitude to change and new ideas.
I’ll be talking about this on Thursday at the Cllr.10 event, with some focus on the shift in leadership that this stuff necessitates.
Also worth reading around these ideas is the work Lloyd Davis is doing, as social artist in residence at the Centre for Creative Collaboration. David Wilcox has covered social artistry before too. I’m not sure we’ll ever see civil servants or local government officers with that job title anytime soon, but the skills of convening and facilitation are vital for anyone who wants to succeed within a learning organisation.
The web is fundamental to the development of this thinking and the conversations around it. Firstly, because the web is the domain where the ideas are being kicked about and refined. Secondly, because these ideas are the by-products of using the web and social tools. As I keep saying these days, what makes social software interesting is not the software, but the implications of using it.
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I thought it might be useful to offer a sneaky-peak into my processes for writing this blog. After all, given that I am trying to encourage others to do the same, it’s probably only fair that I let people know how I do it.
Obviously, it’s worth pointing out here that this works for me, and it might not for you. Also, there are probably better ways of going about it. But since I started blogging back in 2004, I’ve got into the habit of working this way, and it seems to produce a fairly steady flow of content for me.
Standing on the shoulders…
For inspiration, I spend a bit of time in Google Reader, checking out what other people are saying, Likewise with Twitter, and Delicious. I’m not necessarily hunting for things to write about, but generally imbibing information and ideas and squaring them with whatever I’m thinking about at the time. Be catholic with your reading habits – don’t just limit yourself to reading blogs in and around your own sector, but find out what people are saying elsewhere. Consider how what they write about can be applied to your interests.
Type first, think later
I spend quite a bit of time writing posts that will never see the light of day. There’s no editing at the ideas stage. Sometimes I only have a sentence, or a whiff of a concept for a post, but I make sure it’s recorded somewhere. My preference is for these to be draft posts within WordPress, but sometimes that isn’t possible, so I’ll use another tool like Evernote, or even just a text editor. I’ll usually aim to get those posts into WordPress ASAP though.
The point is that I very, very rarely sit down and write a post from beginning to end, without having a good think about it first.
So, I usually have up to ten draft posts in WordPress at any one time. I spend quite a bit of time just staring at them, then I read other things, see related content online and how I can work that into the post. Sometimes this changes what the post is about, and the original theme is lost entirely, or reduced to a footnote. What often happens is that I’ll combine two or three of the posts I have in draft to try and produce something a bit more meaty.
Go ugly early
I’ll often hit publish on posts when I’m not entirely happy with them, when the thinking is half-baked or I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve got something totally wrong. I usually get corrected in the comments, or people add stuff to help me make what I’m saying make sense. I must admit, though, that it takes a bit more nerve that usual to do this as it risks exposing me as the fraud I really am.
Your tips
So that’s a quick run through of my writing process. What tips do you have for any budding bloggers?
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Two services which aren’t very new, but which I only started using recently, are Tumblr and Posterous. They are basically blogging platforms, but in a different way to, say, WordPress, Blogger or TypePad.
It’s all about how you post to these services.
Posterous, for example, is almost entirely email based. You create your account on the service by sending it an email, and that’s by far the easiest way of posting to it – thought there is a web based interface if you really want one.
It’s brilliant at handling multimedia, especially photos and videos – just attaching one to your email will see it hosted at Posterous and embedded in your blogpost. Including YouTube URLs will embed the video into your post as well – it’s very easy. It’s also very impressive the way Posterous interacts with other social networks, cross posting nicely to Facebook and Twitter, and sending photos to Flickr too.
I use my Posterous as a personal blog, but one to which I post almost exclusively by email, from my iPhone.
Some of the other blogs that use Posterous that I read include:
Tumblr is a blogging system that is probably best described as an online scrapbook. Again, you could use it as a normal text based blog, but Tumblr really comes into its own by acting as a clipping service – you see a link, or a photo, or a video that you like online, and you post it to your Tumblog, perhaps with a bit of commentary added.
I’m using mine to clip videos I find interesting, or will want to save for later viewing. I never bookmark videos in Delicious for some reason, and this will make up for that!
Some other great Tumlr based blogs I follow include:
The key thing about both these services is the easy of use, and the way they speed up posting. I’ve never really kept a personal blog, but by being able to make quick, short posts on my phone, finding the time is a lot easier.
Perhaps if you are finding Twitter’s character limit a bit, well, limiting, but full blown blogging seems a little bit daunting, maybe Posterous or Tumblr can fill that gap for you!
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There have been about 60,000 visits to this blog in the last twelve months, and thanks to you all.
In December the site broke through the 1,000 subscribers barrier, which is very nice indeed. 50-odd of those subscribers choose to get updates from the site via email.
Big thanks to those that have contributed guest blog posts this year too. Hopefully there will be more in 2010 – if you fancy having a go, just drop me a line.
The most popular day was a Saturday, strangely enough, the 17th October. It looks like this was due to the myth of engaging with everyone post being stumbled.
Here’s a list of the top 10 posts on DavePress this year, with the number of views for each:
- My iPhone Apps – 1,371
- The UKGovWeb Twitterverse – 1,154
- WordPress.com widget guide – 1,034
- Re-order posts in WordPress – 861
- Social media & local government – 702
- The importance of evaluation – 694
- A quick start guide to Twitter – 677
- What makes for a decent Council website? – 528
- The myth of engaging with everyone – 521
- The state of the UK gov blogosphere – 515
I suspect the reason for some of these posts’ success comes down to search engine traffic.
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(This is one of those posts I really seriously considered not posting, because I’m not sure whether I am talking bollocks here or not. Please leave comments, letting me know one way or the other.)
Here’s an assumption of mine which is pretty important to this post: that people blogging is important, and a Good Thing. There are a number of reasons I think this way – mainly that blogging is a great way to develop and share ideas, to create a movement, to develop a reputation. A healthy and active blogging community in a sector means that it’s a sector where there is a lot of creativity. It means that sector is an interesting place to be.
I don’t think the public sector blogging space in this country is anywhere near as developed as it should be. There are too few voices, and often one gets the impression that these bloggers struggle somewhat under the pressure that is created by the fact that too few others are joining in. This isn’t anyone’s fault, of course, and there are a number of reason why blogging amongst public servants hasn’t particularly taken off:
- Lack of time
- Lack of backing from up high
- Lack of stuff to write about
…and no doubt plenty of others.
Let’s look at who there is at the moment, blogging regularly about government in a useful way:
- Steph Gray
- Neil Williams
- Stephen Hale
- Carl Haggerty
- Ingrid Koehler (and colleagues)
- Mick Phythian
- John Suffolk
- Andrew Stott (and colleagues)
- Simon Wakeman
There may be a couple of others that I have missed. There’s also a bunch of people outside government – but with, let’s say, an interest – who blog, like Simon, Dom, Nick, William, Jeremy, Shane, and me to name a few.
Public sector blogs does a nice job of aggregating this activity.
Obviously people write blogs about what they want to write about, and no one should be mandated to blog, or to write about certain topics. But I’ve been really getting into some of the tech analyst blogs recently, many of which focus on issues that are of great relevance to people working in public service: how to we go about getting adoption of ‘2.0′ ways of working within large, enterprise scale, organisations?
Check out some of these examples:
I love these blogs – full of insight, research, evidence, opinion, news, challenge and views. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a community of bloggers doing just this sort of thing for UK government?
I think we need a strong, vibrant blogging community in and around government providing some real analysis of what is happening, and some real thought-leadership in terms of what should be happening.
This should be tied to a conversation that I have been hinting at recently around not talking about social media as an end in itself so much as how we get news ways of working adopted in government, tied into technology enabled change around software as a service, cloud computing, collaborative technology and so on. Who’s blogging about what the vendors are offering government and whether it’s any good or not?
Are we that far away from this now? Does anyone actually need it? Am I way off the mark here?
I’m planning on convening a ‘State of the UK gov blogosphere’ session at the UKGovCamp in January where we can talk about some of this, and maybe do some planning around how we can get more blogging going in a more sustainable way within and around public services.