Blogs

The Social Civic Nudge

It seems like such a simple idea – people are talking to each other online and they are even talking to each other about civic issues – surely we can use the social web to increase levels of democratic participation?

Anyone who is interested in using the social web to effect levels of citizen engagement is following this train of thought – and there are already many really interesting trials and pilots in place. Online is not the only potential solution to the problem of how to… Continue

Added by Kirsty Russell on January 25, 2010 at 12:00 — 3 Comments

Developing better digital public services through user involvement

Following a critical review of Directgov - the Government's central online portal - the official consumer champion Consumer Focus promised a campaign to ensure that users of digital public services get a better experience in future.

What's needed to achieve this, Consumer Focus believes, is a stronger user perspective on digital service delivery from the very… Continue

Added by David Wilcox on January 14, 2010 at 11:48 — 1 Comment

How to Join This Network: Ensuring new members are also community members

This might be the first private online network you've joined - or maybe you can't even count the number of groups and networks you belong to online. Either way, we want this network to be a safe place for ideas, an easy way for people interested in the issues discussed to find each other, and a secure place for members to find and network with each other. As all online spaces are, we are susceptible to spammers and trolls (not the under-the-bridge type, but the ones who may want you to find… Continue

Added by Amy Sample Ward on January 10, 2010 at 18:00 — No Comments

Quite sociable

Before Christmas, we announced to the Knowledge Hub advisory group that we'd be using the Social by Social network as our online home for shaping and developing Knowledge Hub. This might seem a slightly perverse decision considering that the IDeA already administers a… Continue

Added by Ingrid Koehler on January 5, 2010 at 13:39 — 4 Comments

Mapping the Future: Knowledge Hub Advisory Group

The second meeting of the Knowledge Hub Advisory Group took place on, 7th December. ( For some background to the Knowledge Hub see previous posting).

It was regretable that we didn’t get more attendees from local authorities, but those who did manage to attend were involved in some excellent workshop sessions aimed at teasing out their vision for how the Knowledge Hub would deliver efficiency and… Continue

Added by Stephen Dale on December 9, 2009 at 21:06 — No Comments

A Twestival on Education

Some of you may have heard of Twestival, a gathering of social media people to collect funds for charity. It is an initiative from the worldwide Twitter community with a commitment of Social Media for Social Change (SM4SC). These events explore the exciting possibilities for change and raise money for charity. Global Twestival was organized for the first time on February 12, and collected 250K US$ to drill wells in Africa & Asia and provide many villages with fresh, clean DRINKING WATER for… Continue

Added by Christian DE NEEF on December 8, 2009 at 22:49 — No Comments

Imagining a connected future: Knowledge Hub Advisory Group

Feeling crafty

I love crafts. I don't do much by way of crafts anymore at home, but I love a good workshop based on the use of brown paper and stickers and coloured bits of paper. The Blue Peter method of facilitation.

Ocasionally you get people (often senior) balking at rolling up their sleeves and gluing pictures on paper. So, it's often best to show one you made earlier, just to set some parameters on it and show that it will be… Continue

Added by Ingrid Koehler on December 8, 2009 at 16:30 — No Comments

We are recruiting an education manager: exiting job with young people and mobile apps

I hope this is ok to post this here, since it is very much in the area of work of the network...

Join one of the most successful social enterprises in digital inclusion to create and set-up a new exciting training programme to enable young people in low-income communities to use, design and develop mobile and web-based applications for social change and community action.

Founded in 1995 by Rodrigo Baggio, the Centre for Digital Inclusion (CDI) is the pioneer of… Continue

Added by Iris Lapinski on December 8, 2009 at 13:25 — 2 Comments

A New Way To Engage Volunteers In Local Development in India

I'm running a volunteering agency called 'AMAIDI Volunteering in India', located near Pondicherry, South-India. Every year about 70 volunteers from all over the globe come and work in Indian organizations, mostly charitable Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Next to their physical and/or intellectual contribution, many volunteers plan to contribute in cash towards the aims of 'their' organization. They figure out - some of them real fast - what is needed the most, have a chat (or two) with… Continue

Added by Amaidi on December 7, 2009 at 3:31 — No Comments

Social media for public services: how about an Open Innovation Exchange?

I posted this first at Socialreporter.com. If you think it's a good idea (or not), please add a comment.

The Crowdsourced Council event earlier this week was for me interesting at three levels. First for the idea expressed in the name - that councils… Continue

Added by David Wilcox on November 25, 2009 at 11:33 — 3 Comments

Building Bridges

After a few weeks of relative silence, I thought I'd blog a short update on what's been happening in the background on Community Voices.

Over the last few weeks I've been pouring through research papers, amongst other things, including our own Community Voices research paper , as well as Hidden Talents II from the… Continue

Added by Aidan Kelly on November 20, 2009 at 17:06 — 6 Comments

Community Voices research pubished

Dear All,

The research that will underpin our approach to the Community Voices project has been published. You can download a copy from the Media Trust website.

Firstly, we should say big thank you to all who contributed to the research, but more importantly we'd like to use this opportunity as a starting point for further discussion and engagement. We'd very much like to hear your… Continue

Added by Aidan Kelly on November 9, 2009 at 11:43 — 2 Comments

Digital engagement governance – a dichotomy between hyperlocal or partnership managed

I’ve just started working on a project where we’ll be exploring digital engagement methods, using social media alongside offline forms of engagement such as neighbourhood panels. The aim of the project is to improve community cohesion in a semi-rural community. The project is being developed as a partnership between the County Council, District Council, community centres, a rural development agency, housing associations, the Police and the Fire & Rescue Service.

The partners are… Continue

Added by Michele Ide-Smith on November 1, 2009 at 14:23 — 14 Comments

Community Voices at Digital Engagement Event: Reflections on the Conversation

At the Digital Engagement Event, back on 6th October, David Wilcox and I helped the Community Voices team facilitate two sessions that focused on the three things more important to digital engagement than the technology. You can check out the Community Voices group on the Social by Social community for videos, notes and other reflections from the… Continue

Added by Amy Sample Ward on October 30, 2009 at 11:21 — 2 Comments

How about joining up with the European Media Coaches?

I spent a few days last week at a European conference on media literacy, at the invitation of Ed Klute who runs the excellent trans-European Media Coaches network. I came away thinking there could be really useful connections with local progammes over here, including Talk About Local and… Continue

Added by David Wilcox on October 25, 2009 at 18:04 — 5 Comments

Making connections

Hello and welcome to the first post, of what I hope will be many more, as the Community Voices project develops.

The Community Voices team is now in place and you can meet the team on the Community Voices blog (http://communityvoicesuk.wordpress.com/) . We'll also be Tweeting via our @CommVoices twitter site.

This week I've been focused on making connections, both in the professional sense and from a marketing point of… Continue

Added by Aidan Kelly on October 21, 2009 at 16:08 — 3 Comments

Changes to this Ning: Local Communities moving to Social by Social

Hi everyone - Wanted to quickly share some thinking and updates about this network:

We are expanding the network and goals here, and changing the name to reflect that. We hope you'll find that exciting, will stay with us, and invite others to join. This explanation is a bit lengthy, but we want to be transparent, so hope it is helpful.

The network was originally set up around the September 21 2009 workshop that was organised by the Social by Social team with Department for… Continue

Added by Amy Sample Ward on October 14, 2009 at 10:00 — 3 Comments

Videos from the workshop - and much thanks

Briefly - thanks to everyone who hosted, helped organise, and turned up and talked so enthusiastically at yesterday's workshop. I've uploaded videos with minimum description in the hope that those who presented might like to add their own content.

Please either add a comment under the video, or even better create a blog post, embed the video and tell us more about what you said ... or wanted to say.

Amy and I… Continue

Added by David Wilcox on September 22, 2009 at 11:09 — 2 Comments

An agenda for digital inclusion

Some thoughts on how to move yesterday's Local Communities discussion forward - your views welcome: http://livingwithrats.blogspot.com/2009/09/agenda-for-digital-inclusion.html

Added by Julian Dobson on September 22, 2009 at 8:54 — 1 Comment

A few links

Yesterday Michelle from Cambridge outlined the issue of concerns about the use of free websites - (like Ning). I'm assuming that data security and persistence of the site were some of the concerns. These are valid concerns and one of the things which shift councils toward building "bespoke" sites rather than using almost off the shelf products that are either free or have a low cost "pro version".

I'm not sure if the following links have the answers, but they might… Continue

Added by Ingrid Koehler on September 22, 2009 at 6:28 — 3 Comments

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