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.