I’ve been out braving the snow across the UK to present at a couple of great events.

Neighbourhoods

The first was the networked neighbourhoods event where Kevin Harris and Hugh Flouch presented the findings of their Capital Ambition funded research on ‘hyperlocal’ sites – basically neighbourhood networks.  This includes a survey of council officers and members on their attitudes and approaches to neighbourhood based social media sites – the opportunities for collective local action and the barriers to participation.  You can find the research here in a series of reports. And it’s cracking good stuff (disclosure:  I was on the advisory group).

Despite wading through the dirty gray London slush, there was a fantastic turnout and although the atmosphere outside was chilly the rooms were ablaze with enthusiasm for the neighbourhood social media approach.  But as so often happens these days, there were dissenters and naysayers and people asking for more.

1. More equitable. Supporting a wider array of voices.  There was the usual commentary on the complexion of the room. (White. Middle class. Mainly.) But Indy Johar, addressing at least the class issue, felt that the middle classes maybe weren’t that pushy and often were excluded from existing structures through time poverty.  He said he was quite excited about the possibilities of the middle classes bringing their skills and organisational abilities to not just council/agency and citizen co-delivery, but citizen and citizen co-design, local financing and delivery.  I have to agree with him.  I also believe that the biggest barrier isn’t the access to tech or even digital literacy, but functional literacy.  And the solution doesn’t lie with lowering the barrier to access, but getting people to read better.

2. More structured. All this blah, blah, blah about social media – without providing a real framework for delivery.  Well, maybe.  This will always happen while the social media enthusiasts (like myself) are charging across a smattering of areas instead of focusing on one thing at a time, maybe.  We’re at pains if we forget that social media is just a communication method and one among money.  I do believe that it’s as revolutionary and transformational as the printing press, but let us not forget that while the printing press certainly changed for ever and for the better the relationship between the governed and the governing, moveable type sure as heck didn’t solve all of our problems.

3. The tyranny of the masses. How much should we (decision makers) pay attention to all this stuff anyway?  Isn’t it just people spouting off?  What if it’s unbalanced? What if the people are wrong?  Well, masses can be wrong.  Wagner couldn’t have continued so long on the X Factor otherwise.  But we have a system of representative democracy to counter the whims the crowd.  But they still have a responsibility to listen, respond.  And sometimes they get it dreadfully wrong when they listen to popular opinion and when they don’t.

4. What should local government do? How should local government support this movement? Should it?  I reckon the best thing is for people who work in government and people who are elected to local government to represent us.   But there are some easy things that can be done and should be done anyway.  RSS for one thing.  Making council content more shareable.  Including local bloggers and networks as part of the regular communications infrastructure.  Listening.  Listening would be good.

Knowledge

After the networked neighbourhoods, I was off to Bath to a Knowledge and Innovation Network event.  This is cool network of knowledge management that we’re part of and involves knowledge managers across the private and public sector.  We heard about Fujitsu’s efforts for archiving knowledge in order to keep promises to support products…indefinitely. Paul Lewis told us about some cool work by a Bath based start up Mediagrand on using augmented reality on smart phones to manage disasters – like flooding – just in time knowledge management.  And from Bex Ferriday of Cornwall college on how they’ve been using Second Life to support teacher training.  I’ve got to admit I’ve never been a massive fan of Second Life, but can definitely see how these virtual reality platforms could support learning and engagement. Richard Wallis of Talis did another variation of his hugely informative and entertaining talk on Linked Data.   And I gave a talk on how we’re supporting changes to sharing knowledge through behaviour change as well as tech in Knowledge Hub programme, using social media and open data as a catalyst and infrastucture for better sharing of practice and knowledge.