One of the highlights of the empowerment symposium in February was going for dinner and sitting between Phil Booth, from NO2ID and Carolyn Lukensmeyer from AmericaSpeaks. Amongst other things we talked about the previous symposium in Budapest and I went on as usual about how inspiring a speaker had been. Read more…
Big Kudos to Ideal Government who are hosting Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO, the first blogging Permanent Secretary in the UK. Sir Bonar, perhaps stuck a little in a Civil Service mentality of talking to us, uses his first post to reflect on the "famous talk I always give to Read more…
I’ve come across this lovely little research project from the Violence Research Group at Cardiff University. Basically, academics investigating youth crime involved some of the young offenders themselves, getting them interviewing the academics who study the phenomenon and film it. I’ll let them explain. As far as we are aware, Read more…
David Cameron is often accused of being full of hot air and lacking real policies. All the more surprising that the majority of his speech to Conservative Councillors Association last week was devoted to the subject of data standards. He told the councillors that their councils should be publishing data Read more…
The reason for me being at the symposium was to take part in the final session on Thursday. Tom Gaskin from NorfolkBlurb forced young people onto the agenda and was asked to organise a session on empowering young people. A couple of phone calls later and I was going to Read more…
Friday morning was probably not the best time to present after a conference "networking evening". The first session I saw involved Paul Hilder from AVAAZ.org, Sara Ashton from Amnesty, Thomas Noirfalisse from Oxfam and Juan Gonzalez-Mellizo from the European Commission. All fine speakers with interesting things to say. AVAAZ was Read more…
I went to barcamp and the online noise about it was deafening. I went to the Social Media CoP Big Day out and the blogging about it was swift and detailed. I went the 2006 International e-Participation & Local Democracy Symposium and the blogging was in depth, immediate, and analytical. Read more…
You spend £1,000s on developing an advertising strategy, £100,000 on creating some TV ads, £1,000,000’s on advertising slots and some students from Poynton High create an homage on Facebook to "one of the greatest drama teacher’s" ever. For FREE. You can’t buy this type of marketing and that is why Read more…
Over on the UKIE-dem mailing list and at Designing for a Civil Society, there has been discussion about the BBC relatively new plans to launch an Ultra-Local network of community sites and the closure of the BBC Action Network. Mick Phythian, a Local Government ICT manager from Yorkshire wrote: Working Read more…
School children in Wiltshire are to help older people in the county become more familiar with new technology. Shock horror. Some positive youth coverage in the media. Quick Plug: Tom Gaskin of NorfolkBlurb is leading a session at the Empowerment Symposium on "Young people and eParticipation: X-Factor excitement meets bureaucratic Read more…