A community around using social tech for social impact
Networking in Big Society - how do we do it?
This isn't really a tech issue ... but we do need social technology to help.
Although there's a lot to disagree about in the Big Society approach - is it a smokescreen for cuts etc - the one area people do seem to agree on is the opportunity to support local social action more effectively and innovatively. That may be by helping community organisers learn from each others, get resources and use social technology; re-work local cross sector alliances and partnerships; and join up the disparate conversations about these topics that are lifting off in different places.
So we need better networking - something that economist Paul Ormerod says should be at the heart of policy making in future anyway. Rose Beynon gives a good summary of his recent pamphlet here.
The problem - and the opportunity - as I wrote here is there is no central plan for Big Society, and no one is in charge. Big Society Network (BSN), with whom I have been working as social reporter, want to promote networking but aren't setting up networking systems until they launch Your Square Mile.
So if we want to network, we have to do it for themselves ... which is just what Big Society in the North have done, using a free system that has now attracted some 180 members. More here on their launch event.
As I've noted in the intro to this group, representatives of a wide range of community and voluntary sector networks came together for a briefing from Steve Moore on the events BSN is planning this autumn. At the end of the event there was general interest in the idea of continuing conversations online, and opening this up to others.
It would have been technically pretty easy to set up something like the BS in the North system, or the one we are on here. But in the bottom-up, collaborative spirit of Big Society (as we hope it will be), it seems more appropriate to explore first just what's needed, and the options for setting it up.
Just for starters ... my sense is that we need something that is a neutral, common space which can link easily to other online spaces and conversations; can connect with reports of events; and helps people join up face-to-face as well as online. Not something aiming to be big, but smart.
I'm putting up this first forum post so we have something to point to when inviting people into the group. I hope we can then start discussing what's the need ... what's the problem we are trying to solve ... before jumping to any tech solutions.
At heart this is about forming relations, starting conversations, and using whatever tech is appropriate blended in with face-to-face events, phone calls and other older ways of networking.
Do jump in with a comment ... although it's probably best to hold back until we have a few more people in group. Then it doesn't feel as if the party has started without you.
Although there's a lot to disagree about in the Big Society approach - is it a smokescreen for cuts etc - the one area people do seem to agree on is the opportunity to support local social action more effectively and innovatively. That may be by helping community organisers learn from each others, get resources and use social technology; re-work local cross sector alliances and partnerships; and join up the disparate conversations about these topics that are lifting off in different places.
So we need better networking - something that economist Paul Ormerod says should be at the heart of policy making in future anyway. Rose Beynon gives a good summary of his recent pamphlet here.
The problem - and the opportunity - as I wrote here is there is no central plan for Big Society, and no one is in charge. Big Society Network (BSN), with whom I have been working as social reporter, want to promote networking but aren't setting up networking systems until they launch Your Square Mile.
So if we want to network, we have to do it for themselves ... which is just what Big Society in the North have done, using a free system that has now attracted some 180 members. More here on their launch event.
As I've noted in the intro to this group, representatives of a wide range of community and voluntary sector networks came together for a briefing from Steve Moore on the events BSN is planning this autumn. At the end of the event there was general interest in the idea of continuing conversations online, and opening this up to others.
It would have been technically pretty easy to set up something like the BS in the North system, or the one we are on here. But in the bottom-up, collaborative spirit of Big Society (as we hope it will be), it seems more appropriate to explore first just what's needed, and the options for setting it up.
Just for starters ... my sense is that we need something that is a neutral, common space which can link easily to other online spaces and conversations; can connect with reports of events; and helps people join up face-to-face as well as online. Not something aiming to be big, but smart.
I'm putting up this first forum post so we have something to point to when inviting people into the group. I hope we can then start discussing what's the need ... what's the problem we are trying to solve ... before jumping to any tech solutions.
At heart this is about forming relations, starting conversations, and using whatever tech is appropriate blended in with face-to-face events, phone calls and other older ways of networking.
Do jump in with a comment ... although it's probably best to hold back until we have a few more people in group. Then it doesn't feel as if the party has started without you.
Tags: bigsociety
Views: 11
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by David Wilcox on
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Steve Moore has now circulated to the group that met this week a couple of documents from Big Society Network - one about BSN, and one on Your Square Mile. Attached
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on -
David, from what I've read of the Big Society Network and Your Square Mile, it aims to connect people with their local community groups and social entrepreneurs.
I'm a software developer who 6 years ago decided to turn my business into a social enterprise, a for-purpose organisation investing in a social purpose. When I'd asked recently of Big Society Network whether their might be a role for us in this process, the response was something like "after we've got it off the ground there may be some opportunity".
It's a tragic reality in social enterprise that fe seek out other social enterprises as suppliers and for all the efforts that have been made to create social exchanges and directories there is very little interest. I've joined most that were relevant, including the SECs as a member, leaving them because of my experience of rather selective member promotion.
The latest attempt, taking a great deal of time to get listed in this directory of social environmental and ethical business has so far proven fruitless.
Neither of the social enterprise development agencies which cover my region of Gloucestershire and the South West care to communicate or hold any kind of forum on local development. This grant supported world of social enterprise is anything but social.
I blogged recently about specific cases of exclusion, one of which came up on my doorstep and has led into a public investigation over the mis-use of council tax payers money. As a social enterprise investing it's own revenue, we pay tax to both the government and local council for the privilege of exclusion and then find our council tax squandered. As I see it, that's paying to be excluded 3 times over and if you read the council response to the question I raised, you will see that it's yet another social enterprise directory.
In the context of one of my actions, in the parish and community led plan for the district we've learned that our local authority has no directory of local business at all, let alone social enterprise and community groups. It was this revelation which led to my creating the community action network that my blog is on, such that these groups might collaborate.
Making a start, I've engaged a local charity fundraising group for their bookkeeping and administrative support. This is the only way it can be done. I know from experience both in economic development and social networking terms that top down solutions always seem to exclude those who need them most.
Jeff -
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Thanks Jeff
I share your frustrations at top-down solutions. I'm no longer working with Big Society Network, although still friendly and in touch. I hope that the innovation hub challenge process that I'm now involved in may offer some opportunities. Have you seen Nick Buckley's My Square Mile? -
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on
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Thanks David,
I left a suggestion for Nick on his blog. Meanwhile today I saw a tweet referring to Stephen Timms comment about needing an index for good. Let me go back to where we started, on the role of information in social end economic inclusion in our founding paper on people-centered economics:
"We can actually engineer, very precisely and intentionally, a social system whereby human beings are not disposable, and then go about setting forward our social machinery with this requirement built-in as a part of our "social software", as it were. Or, we can decide not to do it. Either way, a decision is made as to the fate of those who would be dispossessed, unwanted, and in the way. "
It goes on to describe how economic development and due diligence depend on access to information, referring to Alvin Toffler's 'Power Shift' and 'Peter Drucker's' Post Capitalist Society. The greatest influence however is People-Centered Counselling from Carl R Rogers who believed that people given the resources to enable them to solver their own problems might flourish and grow. P-CED placed this into an economic context and a bottom up approach which could be replicated at the community level globally by means of information access and the web. The paper was delivered to President Clinton in September 1996.
I came on board 8 years later after the concept had pioneered moral collateral microfinance in Russia and the opportunity to practice soon arrived with our Friends of Beslan efforts. With the aid of a database of family addresses we were able to encouraged supporter to engage directly with the survivors and endure as far as possible that none were excluded.
We knew precisely what Philip Blond and David Cameron had in mind with 'a new kind of capitalism' because we'd been putting it into practice and writing about in the public domain it for more than a decade.
For this reason, I'd directed my missive on international social enterprise development to David Cameron the day he came on board as Prime Minister.
I attempt to relate it to Social Business International, but once again social media is one-way broadcast only in a blog soliciting but not publishing comments.
Jeff -
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