Gallomanor provides creative audience-led communication solutions and events to local government and other organisations. We specialise in citizen engagement campaigns and e-democracy.
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The post is really well written. It is personal. It links the UK with Rwanda. It explains part of DFID's important work in the country. It gives you hope that things are improving.
Please go read it, tell your colleagues to read it and tell your bosses to read it. Then read some more of the DFID bloggers. They are doing a fantastic job of telling the story of DFID's work in a real and human way.
Google Analytics provides a wealth of information, but for most of our projects the map of where the visitors come from is very skewed towards the UK, US and Australia. Apart from one project that is...
The map for the DFID blogs has truly international footprint. Since the blogs started visitors have come from 137 countries. We have a gap in west africa and parts of South America. Kazahkstan has refused to visit but apart from that coverage is absolutely amazing.
It's not altogether surprising. International Aid by it's nature is in almost every country either as a donor or recipient. I'm delighted that the bloggers we've coached have managed to capture such as widespread audience. And the best is still to come.
A new set of bloggers are working their way towards posting. Already Colum Wilson has set the scene for a visit to Chad (one of the gaps in the map) and the quality of writing coming through is superb. Keep watching that space...
Just before Christmas we finished the evaluation report for CivicSurf and submitted it to the Ministry of Justice. In the interests of sharing our learning we've posted it on the CivicSurf site. Click on CivicSurf Evaluation Report to download all five pages of it [PDF, 60kb]
It's a fairly important part of the DCLG White Paper Consultation process for CivicSurf. The Code of Practice on Local Authority Publicity has been blamed by many as a major obstacle to helping councillors use blogs. This consultation is a chance to make your views clear on the matter.
I'll be reading this over Christmas and posting some thoughts and responding in the New Year.
We're very lucky in that our blogging volunteers are superb
writers with extremely interesting lives and situations with enormous
scope for great photography. They are going to provide a fine insight
into the work that DFID do and the effect they have on the people of
the countries in which and with which they work.
The coaching programme has had its challenges. As you can imagine the budget to fly us to Tanzania was not made available, so coaching is happening online is the same manner as we did with CivicSurf. The DFID bloggers are in full-time positions working seven days a week and in time zones and work patterns that don't necessarily coincide with our 9 - 5 UK life. Thankfully Griff Wigley, who has been leading the coaching, works flexible hours.
It's Blog Action Day on Wednesday 15th. The topic this year is Poverty. I've posted some advice for blogging councillors over at CivicSurf to help spark some ideas for blog posts on the day.
Well done, Peter, Steve, Andy and Tom. And Chris, Bradley, Jason, Jamie, Rebecca, Nicole, those who won other medals and those who simply achieved their dream of competing at the Olympics. Well done.
Back in April she posted a video on the Queen Rania channel asking for people to post questions about the stereotypes YouTubers have of the Arab World and for other YouTubers to help breakdown those stereotypes.
It's interesting because although her initial video is ever so nicely shot in black and white with soft backlighting she hasn't steered away from controversial topics. Her latest post covers an Arab wedding that was bombed by terrorists. The comments on the videos are numerous and that initial post has 81 video responses.
Along with some other examples such as RhymingWithOranges it demonstrates that YouTube is not just a place to host video you embed in your site. It is a social network in itself. Comments get left, and get rated. Videos get responded to by video and commented upon themselves. Word gets passed around.
In comparison the very impressive No.10 Downing Street site has nearly as many subscribers and lots more videos, but the individual films get far fewer views and comments and I can't find any video responses to the No.10 films. Downing Street seems to be using the site as a broadcast tool as opposed to a networking tool. I can understand the hesitancy to network but wonder if they are missing out.
The Cabinet Office released "Participation online Guidance for civil servants" today. It has been some time in gestation but the really good news is that it is only one page long. In fact the guidance has been boiled down to 5 main points and a paragraph on how it relates to the Civil Service Code.
In summary,
1. Be credible 2. Be consistent 3. Be responsive 4. Be integrated 5. Be a civil servant
Your Say Your Way was a highly effective voter education campaign used to show residents of two wards in St Albans how to use new electronic voting systems being piloted in 2002.
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