I’ve just presented at Building Perfect Council Websites 2010 on a panel shared with Dr James Munro and his brilliant Patient Opinion and Jane Postlethwaite – and her experience of being the social media officer for Brighton and Hove Council.

I talked, as I often do, about online civic activists, social media surgeries and the nurturing of neighbourhood level civic activity online. The presentation is below but the 5 key points are:

• Permanent links to everything
• RSS feeds – lots of them by place and service
• Commentable pages
• Embeddable content
• Share your data openly – complete with its flaws

5 simple things to do to View more presentations from podnosh.

The film that appears on slide 3 is here (yes it does make me look like a git. The viseo was shot the morning after the power had coned our street in the small hours (because of a sports match) then started slapping tickets on cars – we went to bed legally parked and woke up illegaly parked, without warning).

Parking Attendant’s illegally parked whilst ticketing cars during the Ashes at Edgbaston from Podnosh on Vimeo.

I was sad to read today that one of the greatest agency-client partnerships in advertising came to an end this week after 28 years. Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) has resigned one of its founding clients and the basis of its legendary creative reputation, Levi's.
My favourite (although let's face it, if you're of a certain age, you grew up on this advertising and they were all great) was the 1992 ad "Swimmer".

Drop in activities for children from 11am-3pm.

Bored at home already? Join us here at the House for fun childrens activities every Wednesday in August.Each day will have a different theme. Choose from Space and Travel, Beads Buttons and Braiding, Fossils and Flowers and Portraits or why not come to all four!

£2 per child. Booking recommended. Free admission for parents/carer. Supervision from parent required.

To reserve a place phone the Office on 01543 306260 or e-mail enquiries@erasmusdarwin.org

 

We are looking for a conscientious and welcoming couple to take over from our outgoing Caretakers/Hosts.

The couple will act as Volunteers for Museum Caretaker and House Hostess. Free accommodation is offered, above the House ,which is in the heart of Lichfield, adjacent to the Cathedral Close.

Responsibilities will include preparing for and hosting corporate bookings,weddings,museum events and educational visits as part of our team. Daily caretaking duties are required.

For more information please phone/contact us here at the office on 01543 306260/  enquiries@erasmusdarwin.org

If interested please send a CV and cover letter to the House address.

So, James and Matt have left us to head down to the smoke on a placement there. Obviously they won't like it in that there London and will be back where we'll be waiting behind a big wall with Cilla and open arms like some long lost twin sister (80's TV references are great when referring to people who are just into their twenties).
In the meantime, we'll have this lovely toaster they bought for us as a reminder of their HOT ideas - geddit?...Sorry.
Good luck guys.

Fascinating lesson from Cindy Gallop on how the internet changes our real world and the “pornification of culture”. (have I just got this site blocked form every local government web service?)

“The single biggest impact technology is having on our most fundamental human activity, our sexuality”

Also includes a big challenge to understand social media around pornography. Hat tip various on twitter.

See www.makelovenotporn.com

See also www.textsfromlastnight.com

Currently I’m using a couple of community based websites and am looking to add into the node creation flow in Drupal an option to share a node you have just created on Facebook. The process would be

Create node > Node (add) form
Submit
Share to Facebook (popup window)
View node

I’ve looked into downloading and writing modules for this but I don’t think it’s really necessary. The share widget module is good for offering sharing of nodes to multiple social media sites, so I’ll leave that on the node.tpl.php page so people can share nodes they read, but I want to add it as an option into the flow of creating content.

Facebook offers this page:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.creativebirmingham.com

Where the u variable is the page you’re sharing. So now I just need to add a user journey into the node creation flow to include a popup link to that page (maybe in a thickbox window) once the node if created. Should not take too long, I hope.

Currently I’m using a couple of community based websites and am looking to add into the node creation flow in Drupal an option to share a node you have just created on Facebook. The process would be

Create node > Node (add) form
Submit
Share to Facebook (popup window)
View node

I’ve looked into downloading and writing modules for this but I don’t think it’s really necessary. The share widget module is good for offering sharing of nodes to multiple social media sites, so I’ll leave that on the node.tpl.php page so people can share nodes they read, but I want to add it as an option into the flow of creating content.

Facebook offers this page:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.creativebirmingham.com

Where the u variable is the page you’re sharing. So now I just need to add a user journey into the node creation flow to include a popup link to that page (maybe in a thickbox window) once the node if created. Should not take too long, I hope.

OK, not really. But watch this (in HD), it’s brilliant.

I once read about someone working on Aardman’s Curse of the Were Rabbit. In a scene in a wood it wasn’t possible to light the model in such a way as to give the right level of contrast between the shadows on one side of the trees and the light on the other. So they simply painted shadows on. I’m sure they weren’t the first people to come up with that but I just love these little details and practical solutions. In this lego movie it’s the sound, the focus pulls, the single shot nature of it and the action movie deliberate clichés. It also works brilliantly without music.

The tracking on the jet pack guy is surprisingly ropey but the rest of it is just great fun.

Alex Fleetwood, founder of Hide&Seek quoted in The Guardian:

“I go to a lot of conferences on the subject of audience engagement in the digital age and how to address it, and I still hear people saying, ‘When it all settles down and we can see what has happened to the relationship between people, technology and culture, we’ll take sustained action.’ But it’s not going to settle down, at least not in our lifetimes. We are living through perpetual technological and cultural change: seismic shifts that challenge the way we make and distribute the performing arts.”

I mentioned yesterday about bringing back the Social Media Surgeries I ran in 2008. Next week I’m going to do it.

They’ll take place over three days in three different locations in Birmingham and cost £20 for half an hour. I’ve explained how these surgeries will work on the Surgeries page.

Where they’ll happen

Tuesday 13th sees me in the MAC cafe in Cannon Hill Park near Edgbaston Cricket Ground. Free wifi, plenty of parking and a nice creative atmosphere.

Wednesday 14th I’ll be in Digbeth at Fazeley Studios where I’m subletting a desk in Substrakt’s lovely offices. A more professional atmosphere with other digital professionals around.

Thursday 15th has me in Urban Coffee Co on the edge of the Jewellery Quarter which is turning into the city centre’s de-facto co-working space. Free wifi, good quality beverages, comfy chairs.

How to book

Here’s a spreadsheet with the available slots.

If you’d like to book a slot contact me by email, phone or Twitter. I’ll then reserve you that slot.

Each slot is for 30 minutes of my time. You’re welcome to buy more time at £20 per half hour.

Pay by cash or cheque on the day, or bank transfer beforehand.

If you’d like a time before 1pm or after 6pm this might be possible.

Any questions?

Check the Surgeries page or get in touch.

Titus Dawo

I’m with Titus Dawo at the Balsall heath Social Media Surgery. All I’m doing here is giving him and idea of how simple it can be to publish to the web.

Back in May I gave a 15 minute talk at The MAC in Birmingham as part of an event titled Social Media and Globalisation. I chose to talk about Facebook as a multination corporation and what that might mean for Internet culture in general.

I’ve finally put the audio online.

Download the mp3 (21 MB)
Download audio file (socmedglob_mac_peteashton.mp3)

Here are my notes if you want to sing along.

Please bear in mind I was utterly exhausted from running the Created in Birmingham shop so while I did manage to remain coherent and make my points I’m not at my most sparky!

I’m on the train home from the Big Society network launch in London this afternoon. A strong and varied group of people brought together to consider, be sceptical about and challenge the notion of the Big Society.

Here I just want to share a few notes I made after joining John Houghton of Shared Intelligence and the National Association of Neighbourhood Management.

Breaking Down Practical Barriers

People in the main bit of the conflab:

• John Houghton
• Alice Fung from 00: www.research00.net
• Nick Booth
• Steve Bridger
• Rohit Grover

John was inviting us to consider the sort of barriers that government can create which frustrate engaged (or partly engaged) citizens when they try to do what they consider is the right or useful thing. We talked for a while before I started making notes – but my ears pricked up when Alice mentioned

Meanwhile licenses - (we have been working on this site and material to capture learning from Community Asset Transfer in Birmingham – and have also been talking to Birmingham Social Investment Trust about mapping local government owned resources). Alice explained a little about the idea as a form of “You can use a piece of temporarily redundant land based on good behaviour,” which is summarised as this from the Development Trusts Association:

The Meanwhile Project is making interim use of all kinds of buildings and land easier by working with government, landowners and local projects. This includes providing financial support and business planning advice for organisations involved in local meanwhile projects; the recently developed Meanwhile Lease for shops and other town centre buildings; and an awareness raising campaign to highlight the potential for meanwhile use.

There was also discussion about access to useful information which included the points:

• Big barrier – we can’t find out easily enough.
• The process of micro volunteering to create information or gather data can be quicker than expecting government to change.

The combined power of pro bono professional work

Rohit Grover was there from Professionals for Good – an organsiation which is seeking to coordinate the pro bono work done by various professionals to increase the impact it has – an intersting idea in an neighbourhood.

Government Reservists

I shared my idea of a TA for government as a means of helping engaged citizens understand government better and vice versa. Paid reservist work inside government.

Allow staff to be enthusiasts

Clearly this should always be the case, but Steve Bridger talekd about how organisations can stifle the enthusiasm and understanding for what ought and could be done – over emphasising what is required to be done. Ideas that emerged from this thought include:

• Government requires staff to do more than what the rules say – performance review
• The barrier of a blame culture.
• The system - empowered to suggest.
• The role of government – to provide service and to act as a catalyst and enervator in places - they cant do that within a set of rules.
• Rewards - Employees benefits trust. Co Operatives.
• Time as a currency – community dividend.

Total Place

We all talked a little about Total Place with Alice, John and Nick outlining some of their experience. Area we highlighted include

• We need Mission not vague vision (put on the moon etc – I keep meaning to write more about this)
• Get practical not issues but things.
• Whole systems thinking – (a contribution from @leashless was which balance sheets does it appear on?)
• Small success
• Neighbourhood Mutuals
• Your Square Mile – put the broken stuff in public.
• Government as a mediator
• Tricks – cheap no legislative change.
• Barriers – are question agnostic. No ways to ask questions – often around conflict.
• Who doesn’t government go to where the questions are, not where the process takes it

Other who’ve shared their thinking from the event (before or after):

Chain Reaction

the need for The Big Society Network to not ‘reinvent the wheel’ and to recognise existing projects and networks;

Tim Davies

It’s important to challenge architects of the Big Society Network to avoid institutionalised age discrimination. If a mutual is to be created – make sure anyone, however young, can be a full voting member: no arbitrary restrictions preventing under 18s or under 16s from being involved.

I’m building up a backlog of things to read in my browser so here’s a dump of them. Some I’ve read and merely want to point you towards, others I need to spend more time with but all have piqued my interest.

LEGO’s Social Media Strategy – the way LEGO has used the Internet to engage with their customers in ways that were impossible before is a case study anyone who wants to learn how online social stuff is a game-changer. There’s more to it than this but this looks like a nice introductory video.

Cultivated Play: Farmville. Farmville is an interesting phenomena in that none of the big internet guru types seem to have anything to say about it other than bemusement yet it’s one of the biggest online games going. This article is fascinating, explaining that Farmville is not a fun game and the motivation for playing comes down to social pressure. “People are playing Farmville because people are playing Farmville.” You want dark side of social media? Here it is.

Two from my learned friend Mr Jon Bounds: Skip-Tech looks at QR codes and compares them to DVD recorders and other technology that the majority will skip over. Jon Bounds is not impressed by Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom is just that – his 2p on the Your Freedom site. “Crowdsourcing, like any form of community, isn’t just about setting up the space — it’s about thinking about how people interact, making sure that constructive behaviour prospers.”

Time Magazine’s Best Blogs of 2010 looks like an thoughtful snapshot that covers more bases than usual journalism-centric attempts.

Art and Digital Space: Fab Labs and Media Cities. No idea what this is about, where it came from or why I should read it but I’m reluctant to close it. Looks like it could be interesting.

Clay Shirky has a new book out. Mine’s on the Two Read pile but you can probably get most of what he’s talking about from the promotional talks he’s giving. This one is from the Watershed in Bristol. Of course people with vested interests are confused but that’s par for the course. He’s not saying TV=bad. He’s saying shifting from consumption as the dominant creative activity is having interesting results.

Everything you ever wanted to know about mobile, but were afraid to ask. This is very long. I’m not sure what I’m afraid to ask about mobile but I’m sure it’ll be worth a skim.

A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook. This is great stuff. “Socrates famously warned against writing because it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.” He also advised that children can’t distinguish fantasy from reality, so parents should only allow them to hear wholesome allegories and not “improper” tales, lest their development go astray. The Socratic warning has been repeated many times since: The older generation warns against a new technology and bemoans that society is abandoning the “wholesome” media it grew up with, seemingly unaware that this same technology was considered to be harmful when first introduced.”

Social Media Reversals in which Dubber tells people who want to use The Internet for selling their stuff to listen as much as talk. Which seems pretty obvious dull advice but occasionally it needs repeating.

My fellow traveller Nick Booth has been developing the Social Media surgery model for the last couple of years and this week launched Social Media Surgery Plus, a website to list, coordinate and inspire surgeries around the world.

Here’s Nick introducing the site and you can feel his pride and enthusiasm bursting from the screen and justifiably so.

Of course nothing comes from a bubble and, while I’ve only been on the periphery of the development of the surgery model, I planted one of the seeds when I sat in a cafe once a week giving free online help in 2008 and called it a “social media surgery”. Nick along with many others has taken it to new levels but I hope you’ll forgive me a soupçon of pride at seeing one of my silly ideas graduate like this.

I’ve been thinking of bringing back the original Pete Ashton Surgery model as a way of generating some income and it does seem to be the best way for me to work with people. More on that if and when it develops but if you’ve like half an hour of my time for a reasonable fee do get in touch.

I’m on a train to London for the launch of the Big Society Network and pondering. This week Nat Wei described the Network as having a

…mission to be – in partnership with government, business, and the voluntary sector – an action-orientated remover of barriers to mass civic engagement where people live – enabling the change we want to be.

He also wants what The Guardian described as

an army of community organisers that will become the “catalyst” for communities to band together and challenge the apparently arbitrary decisions made about public services in their name. “I want them to be the glue bringing community together. They will be financially independent of government. They will be able to have different views from government. There can be healthy debate and this can build social capital. [Organisers] I hope will end up as trusted as the local GP,”

Perhaps…..

In 2008 I wrote a post musing about the idea of a sort of Territorial Army for government. I was thinking about the implications of a growing band of self organising citizens being able to do more of the stuff government does. I was thinking how this might mean we need government which is more flexible, better able to shrink or expand quickly. Here is just some of what I was chipping away at:

I first found myself thinking of the role of government as a “pilot light” at a Department for Communities and Local Government event on digital inclusion. Most government bodies are prone to consider themselves as somehow permanent but what would they be like if they got their collective heads around being only sometimes on? The pilot light on the boiler that hums quietly away, then sparks into life when things get a bit chilly.

That, of course, is very Keynsian and at the moment [in 2008] government is turning itself to full roar and bunging on all 4 rings on the gas cooker in an attempt to get some heat back into the economy.

What is interesting though is how we habitually structure most government on an assumption of permanence. That means that when we need more government we struggle to find the capacity and when we need less we are clumsy at shrinking, often reluctant to scale it back and put the excess capacity to useful work elsewhere.

It wasn’t a complete set of thoughts and the comments on that post were both encouraging and cautioning.

Dave Briggs wrote:

There is no doubt that there are a number of civically minded people in the private and third sectors who have a sufficiently strong interest in government – and specifically *good* government – that they would be willing to make themselves available when required.

You hit it on the head when you mentioned culture, though. To bring in the reservists, those in charge have to be able to spot that they haven’t the ability or experience to get things done.

While Andy Sawford of the Local Government Information Unit wrote:

I love your idea of reservists. Will explore this with the LGiU team.

I still think the idea of government as (in some circumstances) a pilot light which can roar into action when needed is relevant. Perhaps more today than we could predict in 2008?

Government reservists might also help change the way citizens and government relate to each other.

The Big Society – half in half out.

We do need government to change itself and fast. Might government reservists now be a way for active citizens and government staff to understand each other better, work together more closely and wrought change?

If many of the people in these community organsiations can also have the opportunity to work as a government reservist, on a similar model and pay structure as the Territorial Army, how will that change relationships between government and citizen?

• What will government learn from reservists?
• What will reservist learn from government
• Would people do it?
• What does it mean for public workers losing their jobs?
• Could this be applied more intensively in neighbourhoods (as part of the next stage of Total Place ) – with super reservists being deployed for longer stretches to tackle particular problems
• What might this idea break?
• What new things could emerge from it?

Apologies for lumping all government in as one – some of the answers require a “it depends” – but just asking

HTML emails can be a real pain to successfully create since the standard used by email clients are more varied and many years behind standards used in today’s web browsers. Below is a short check list to help you create a usable HTML email template:

• Use UTF8 encoding and declare the ISO 8859-1 Character set.
• Make sure the HTML code is good and clean. Poor code is a major trigger for SPAM filters. Check your code at http://validator.w3.org/.
• Don’t use CSS tags/styles. Use html tags instead. Many email clients still do not support Styles/CSS.
• Use tables to layout your design, not CSS Divs or frames.
• Slice large images into smaller combinations of images.
• Large images are likely to trigger SPAM filters or get rejected by the recipients mail server.
• Include text within the body of the document.
• Using 100 percent images is likely to trigger SPAM filters and stop your email getting through.
• Use Bold font and coloured font tags sparingly, these increase your SPAM score.
• Background images and colours do not always work well within emails on different email clients.
• Do not use ‘Forms’ as ‘JavaScript’ can be seen as a potential security threat and stop you email being received.
• Avoid inserting ‘comments’ between the tags. Using ‘comments’ will add to your Spam score.
• To help get your message across quickly without being lost, ensure your main ‘call-to-action’ is positioned near the top of the email.

HTML emails can be a real pain to successfully create since the standard used by email clients are more varied and many years behind standards used in today’s web browsers. Below is a short check list to help you create a usable HTML email template:

• Use UTF8 encoding and declare the ISO 8859-1 Character set.
• Make sure the HTML code is good and clean. Poor code is a major trigger for SPAM filters. Check your code at http://validator.w3.org/.
• Don’t use CSS tags/styles. Use html tags instead. Many email clients still do not support Styles/CSS.
• Use tables to layout your design, not CSS Divs or frames.
• Slice large images into smaller combinations of images.
• Large images are likely to trigger SPAM filters or get rejected by the recipients mail server.
• Include text within the body of the document.
• Using 100 percent images is likely to trigger SPAM filters and stop your email getting through.
• Use Bold font and coloured font tags sparingly, these increase your SPAM score.
• Background images and colours do not always work well within emails on different email clients.
• Do not use ‘Forms’ as ‘JavaScript’ can be seen as a potential security threat and stop you email being received.
• Avoid inserting ‘comments’ between the tags. Using ‘comments’ will add to your Spam score.
• To help get your message across quickly without being lost, ensure your main ‘call-to-action’ is positioned near the top of the email.

I don’t get excited very often ;-). Today I am.

Last night we flicked a switch. You might think it was a simple switch. On the face of it all we did was turn http://beta.socialmediasurgery.com/ over to www.socialmediasurgery.com.

For me though that is one helluva switch. It means that today you lot can start making the most of Social Media Surgery Plus – a site created to make it easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to find, organise and report on social media surgeries. You can start creating surgeries, joining surgeries, learning form them and sharing that with others. And it’s not just for us Brits – oh no – it works anywhere!

It has taken a long time to get to this point and of course we still have a big beta badge – this needs a lot more work.

It all started with the first surgery we ran on October 2008. Shortly after that that Dave Briggs did his usual bit of forward thinking and registered the domain. He’s like that. He knew at some point someone would need it, even if we didn’t know why or what for. Last December I asked him if he minded me using it and essentially he responded with “about time too you numpty” and transferred the domain.

Then I started talking to Claire at Substrakt who came up with the design and That Josh Hart. In fact for weeks Josh and I talked about it. Then, he disappeared into his shed – like our very own Caractacus Potts on crack code. He would emerge, covered in Ruby coloured soot, we would talk, he would disappear again.

Eventually we shared it with the the most brilliant people in the world: social media surgery organisers. They started tinkering and using so that even before we are out of beta there are surgeries from 18 places using the site and 219 registered users.

Thank you also to…

Marlon Parker from Rlabs is using it to run them in South Africa, Paul Webster (a huge supporter of surgeries who came to our first) is registered as the surgery manager for York, along with the efforts of Yortime and Abhay Adhikara of Dyaan Design. The folks in York even made it onto the ipadio blog.

Diane Sims has been using the site for the very succesful Huddersfield Social Media Surgery while Mike Rawlins has been doing the same in Stoke and John Popham in both North East Lincolnshire and Leeds. Like Paul, John has made huge efforts to set up and encourage wider use of the approach.

Also thanks to Jag Gill of Gistlab in Sheffield, Podnosh’s one time staffer Hannah Waldram and Ed Walker for their runaway success in Cardiff, Rennee Wallace from Shropshire, Ben McKenna from Bradford, Michael Waugaman near Bristol, Duncan Hodgson in Blackpool and Pauline Sargent from Drimnagh near Dublin. Our own Andrew Brightwell has also used it and tested it an poked as he organised the surgeries we run for our customers and the central Birmingham one – which we still do on a voluntary basis. Thanks, every single one of you who helped us get to this point, along with 200 others who signed up as surgeons or to get help. So what does Social Media Surgery Plus do?

If you are looking to attend a social media surgery (to help or for help) then the site:

1. Helps you find your nearest Surgery
2. Makes it easy to register for one near you – for help or as a helper
3. Sends you a polite reminder via email to remind you to go
4. Lets you keep track of who helped you and what help they gave you – or vice versa
5. Tells you when the next one will be

If you want to set up your own local surgery to support community and voluntary groups:

1. You can create a surgery for a single place with as many events and venues as you need
2. E-mail the link to potential surgeons (helpers) and people who want help.
3. See them sign up – send them reminders
4. Check dates of other surgeries to avoid clashes
5. Generate a flyer from the description you write for each event (including adding your own logos – coming soon!)
6. Manage the surgery on the days – including a register, marking who helped who do what, add links to sites/accounts created on the day.
7. Blog about and create reports of what happened very easily. As you add the above information the site automatically begin to generate a simple post – very near the end of the event you can refine that, make a few changes and publish it. You can also highlight the text and then publish it directly to a wordpress blog of your choice, or copy and paste into any other blog. it makes the business of linking to surgeons to say thanks and telling people what happened much, much simpler.
8. Keep and manage e-mail lists of people who came to one surgery event or to all of them.
9. Help promote your surgery with Calendar files, add to Google Calendar buttons, blog this buttons, share on Twitter, via email and more ways to help spread the word on your event page.
10. Display tweets that use a hashtag of your choosing so your conversation is on that page too.
11. Can set limits on the number of attendees (if that’s your thing) and a waiting list that kicks in if you’re full
12. WordPress sidebar widget (coming very soon) to show your upcoming event in your sidebar (also available to others so friends can install it on their sites too)

So a social media surgery specific eventbrite with a whole load of extras. All the above is free for the volunteers who run the one surgery for their own neighbourhoods.

If you’re an organisations running a number of surgeries:

Some commercial and public organisations are already using the site to save them time and money managing how they organise surgeries and how they keep track of who goes, what happens there. The site also monitors the outcomes form the surgeries and we’re just refining how that can be used to make it easier to join relevant conversations.. The site makes all of this simple and inexpensive. It’s just the end of the first stage, of a big investment of time and some cash on our part. I’m hoping that you all enjoy using it and it makes your efforts easier.