Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

Conference Live Blogging

David Wilcox and I walked down the Embankment last summer and talked about his idea for social reporting.  This spring it has gathered some momentum and today he and Dave Briggs are at the Digital Inclusion Conference at the Brewery in London.

They have created a site to provide some coverage of the event.  At the moment it consists mostly of videos recorded by David and uploaded by Dave.

You get some sense of what the event is like and does serve a purpose. For example David tries on a glove designed to replicate what it is like to be an arthritis sufferer.  It's good to see new stuff.  Kevin Carey gives an interesting view on digital inclusion and bemoans the focus on PCs rather than phones.

BUT, there are too many talking heads; there is no live feed although Public-i were webcasting apparently; and the live blogging aspect isn't really there.  Come on Dave's let's hear something about the conference.  What's the purpose?  Who is buzzing?  Was it worth paying £295 to attend (not very inclusive - VAT was extra)?  What have you learnt today? 

Ploddledygook

Ploddledygook:  when the police try to be overly corporate.

My favourite was from Lincolnshire Police:

"The ambition of Lincolnshire Police is to: focus on the citizen, achieve the highest standards of professionalism, deliver excellent performance and so inspire confidence amongst the people we serve."

"Could they have an ambition to do the opposite of those things?" said the PEC spokeswoman. "Interesting that they don't appear to aspire to catch criminals."

Mike Alderson, from Open Eye Communications, has a fuller list of the Police jargon that has been criticised by the Plain English Campaign.

Someone really ought to call the police, because the English language has been murdered.

Web search promotes suicide?

The British Medical Journal has published (behind a payment firewall) a report saying that suicide is promoted on the web.  There are the usual calls for Internet Service Providers to

"pursue strategies that would maximise the likelihood that sites aimed at preventing suicide are sourced first."

Paul Canning has written at length and incisively about the story.  He points out his searches on suicide, and how to commit suicide generally don't encourage the act.  He also points out quite rightly that instead of complaining the charities should be doing what they can to promote the supportive sites.  Just like I have done with the links in the sentence above. 

Incidentally, Marjorie Wallace of Sane hasn't got a leg to stand on.  Search for suicide on the SANE website (click on image below) and you simply get a bunch of research and lobbying.  Not the page they have produced to help prevent suicides.

UPDATE:

The British Medical Journal has now released the full report.

The Sharing President (ial Candidate)

The Obama08 campaign doesn't stop amazing me.  Today Michelle Obama emailed me to show me a video (shared via YouTube of course) from The Bronx High School for Performance and Stagecraft in a tough part of the Bronx (are there wimpy parts of the Bronx??).

The video is incredibly natural.  The teacher in his fetching argyle jumper speaks from the heart, the students are articulate and straightforward.  There is a slight discontinuity because Obama isn't at the school, but the students watch a recording of a speech and the two are intercut.  Overall though it is great.

It gets better though.  On the Obama08 site where the video is embedded the team have used an email importer so that you can load your webmail contacts or simply paste their address en bloc and send them the video.  Purists may have issue with security issues, but the simplicity and lack of hurdles make the process very simple and probably effective.

"ICELE - What is it for?"

Professor Stephen Coleman is getting into his blogging. Yesterday he questioned the role of ICELE and the comments section has hotted up awaiting the arrival of someone to represent ICELE.

Professor Coleman feels that ICELE has produced very little (and the little they have produced seems to be quite well hidden) despite being well-funded.  There didn't seem to be much defence of ICELE in the comments so I jumped in to point the finger at the conditions under which they were created and the role that VOICE had to play in diverting resources and focus from general e-democracy research and promotion.

Coleman connects on Citizenship

That arch-sceptic of bloggers, Professor Stephen Coleman, has succumbed to the lure of blogging (for a week at least) as a guest blogger on Connecting Bristol.

He's just returned from an intellectually challenging conference in Amsterdam to pose some points about the changing nature of citizenship:

1. The rules of the political game are changing and smart politicians are making themselves more visible, seem more able to be influenced and be more human.

2. It ain't working yet for politicians so they are confused.

3. Citizens are confused too.

Professor Coleman wants to challenge us and is looking for a response in the comments section.  Problem is he is stating (very eloquently) the obvious and doesn't provide too much to disagree with.

Is it a bad thing that the rules of the game are changing?  No.

Is is surprising that politicians are sharpening they persona as opposed to their policies?  Not really as political research becomes more sophisticated and able to identify the desires of the key swing voters.  The policies are the same so make the politicians different - slightly at least.

Is it surprising that politicians and citizens are confused?  Not really, it is new and complex.

So what are the important questions to ask?  Well we have a week to pose those in the comments section.

The Audit of Political Engagement 5

The Audit of Political Engagement series is the Hansard Society’s annual political check-up of the nation’s health. It includes original poll data from surveys conducted by Ipsos MORI, which allow yearly comparisons to be made about the British public’s attitude to politics and their level of engagement with the political system. The fifth Audit includes a special section on constitutional issues that questions the public’s knowledge about how our constitutional arrangements operate, which areas they are satisfied with and which they think are ripe for reform.

Some bedtime reading for the weekend.

No 10 Twitters and Flickrs into life

Having recently dipped my toe into the TwitterWorld (or whatever it is called) my attention (h/t Simon Dickson) was drawn to the new Twitttering from no.10 who then today drew my attention to their new Flickr account.

Personally I'm not sure about Twitter.  I think it is because it is so new that established norms for using it haven't developed.  Some people use it instead of IM, others for press releases, and some for getting information out and in v quickly.  Some are witty, some are dry.  However it is undeniably very 2008 and so it's good to see Downing Street start to use it even if it is only for publicising their RSS feeds for now.  I'm sure it will develop.

Also they have finally started to use Flickr, but I'm not sure why.  It's not as though they have a problem with photo hosting and since they have posted the pictures with all rights reserved they're not exactly doing the sharing bit.  Surely posting under a creative commons licence that allowed ordinary folk to use the pictures would have been better?

Citizen Empowerment Symposium - Final Evaluation

The talented folks from Norfolk who ran the X-factor session at the symposium have now posted their evaluation on YouTube.  Well done guys.  You've joined a small group who have actually posted something about their attendance at the symposia.  A group that sadly doesn't include its sponsor the DCLG or ICELE.  The event's own web-site doesn't ask for feedback.

For an event primarily about using the internet the organisers are scarily poor at doing so.  With only a quiet Facebook group it is not surprising that the top Google Search for Empowerment Symposium is this blog rather than the event site.

Your Personal President(ial Candidate)

The Obama08 campaign have always made a big deal out of the fact that they raise all their funds from ordinary citizens whereas Clinton and McCain have taken millions of dollars from lobbyists and political action committees.

The latest sales promotion that the Obama campaign are using is the chance to have dinner with the candidate himself.  And a nice dinner too by the looks of it.

Also very powerfully they are using personal stories from those who have already dined with him:

"It was an awesome experience -- Barack spent hours talking to us, and at the dinner table he was just like any other guy. It really felt like somebody invited friends over for dinner and good conversation.

My dad is a paralyzed vet, and his health care costs are huge, so I talked to the Senator about how he planned to provide for our veterans. He gave a thoughtful, detailed answer, and I could tell that taking care of our veterans was a big concern to him.

But we didn't just talk about politics. He talked about his children, and his wife, and how much he misses his family when he's on the road. And those of us with children shared stories about our families, too. He was a funny guy, and there was a good amount of joking around. All in all, it was a great conversation.

Ever since the dinner, I've remained active in the campaign. I was the precinct captain for my neighborhood here in Fernley, Nevada, and we won our caucus. I also went to the county convention, and we won there too.

I'm grateful to have been a part of this, because I know that beyond winning an election, we're also changing the way politics works in this country."

[via email]

Sadly this wouldn't be possible in the UK.  Unless the rules have changed from my Sales Promotion days on a game of chance like this promotion you need to state that no purchase is necessary.  That might suppress donations!