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Summary: Yesterday I handed in my notice in my current job as Digital Engagement Advisor at Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. In a months time I will be Digital Engagement Lead for the Government Digital Service, reporting to Emer Coleman, Deputy Director of Digital Engagement.

There are some people, some offers, that you just do not turn down. There are logistical nightmares, it's true. I'll make no bones about that. Al's mum is ill, his father is ill and he cannot relocate with me. I simply wouldn't let him. In real terms this will mean a lot of to'ing and fro'ing for some time. It will mean we are not as available at the last minute as we used to be.

But it will also mean many other things too. I will be leaving a team of dedicated, inspirational people who have been endlessly patient, allowing me to find my feet and spread my wings. I will be leaving a Council at what feels like a tipping point in terms of new understandings, new ways of working, new efficiencies but also new opportunities. I will be leaving a desk which I remember feeling to be too big for me 18 months ago and a smaller team who have made me laugh, think and put up with my endless questioning and incessant 'why can't we's'. It will mean not playing a part in the changes and improvements which are happening right under our very feet.

So what could possibly tempt me away? What question was asked which finally made me say yes, yes I will leave a job I love in local government which I also love, yes I will do some ridiculous weekend commuting, yes I will come back to a city which I very much have a love/hate affair with?

A year ago, I met a man briefly in a coffee shop. His name was Chris Chant. He left an impression. Earlier this month I sat with my legs crossed, back against a wall and listened to Mike Bracken. He left an impression. The drip drip drip of tweets from the GDS team in my stream, full of passion and pride. The code on github. The API's. The 0's and 1's. Meeting one of the team in person and listening and understanding the glee of problem solving but also the challenges inherent in the size and scope of the problem. The start up culture. The sheer ridiculousness of the aspiration but the sensibleness of approach and implementation.

But most of all, the delivery. Because words and aspirations aren't enough. You've got to deliver on them. It's not enough to know the path, you have to also be able to walk it, taking the sticks and stones thrown at you along the way.

That unique combination is probably about the only thing that could have tempted me away to be honest.

Some things, you just don't say no to. So I'll be interpreting and translating and educating and informing, networking and connecting and helping some other people to do the same too. I'm excited but I'm also honoured. Let there be no mistake about this, it is an honour to be asked.

This will be the last post in this blog. I'll continue with the other ones as they could never be construed as a conflict of interest but this one must pause, for a while. I take some things very seriously, and the impartiality of a civil servant is one of those things. If I have anything to say relating to work there are more appropriate places to place those words. This will not be one of them.

#'ukgc12 - Some final thoughts

So off I went to London to UKGovCamp 2012, an unconference for local and central government types to talk about digital in its many and varied forms across two days at Microsoft HQ in London.

Here are my 20 thoughts, with thanks to Dan Slee for the idea.

1. The tipping point is when the men in suits start to attend. And seem not the remotest bit phased by people in jeans and trainers discussing random complicated things about their business with as much knowledge and confidence as they have and with as much passion and enthusiasm as they have.
2. It took a morning for the equilibrium to be reached, but once it had the energy levels were off the scale. There were still a few people who felt it necessary to explain they'd been in government a long time unnecessarily but it was a far less frequent occurrence than I remember it being last year.
3. Some sessions were so over subscribed as to verge on a health and safety issue. Sitting, standing, wedged in corners, we all still managed to find a space. Wonderful problem to have.
4. Death by powerpoint is not just restricted to projecting your images. In fact, in some ways its a zillion times worse to know the lone speaking voice in the room is looking at graphs and visualisations that you cannot even see. 
5. The law of two feet is a wonderful thing. You don't have to endure death by powerpoint. And as Lloyd Davis correctly pointed out, the corridors are the connectors of the sessions but they are also where the connections often happen which are of greatest value. This was true for me.
6. Gonna need a bigger pub.
7. Mike Bracken is enviably excellent at communicating and is becoming what seems to be a much needed and well respected totem for digital change, excellence and eventual maturity.
8. Some facilitators are better than others. But you will forgive anything at all of those who have the grace to concede they are struggling and let others gently chip in and suggest things, and then the courtesy to not shut those people down.
9. There was a lot more talking and not enough doing. But then, what's not enough? If the event hadn't happened, nothing would have happened at all. And I suspect the value of the doing day will not be seen actually on the day but will instead be seen in the days, weeks and months to come in the connections of skillsets which yesterday facilitated.
10. Security and identity is an issue for everyone. Tell us once does not just apply to births, marriages and deaths but also to security, identity and reassurance.
11. Government can look impenetrable at times and a long way from local government experience but in some ways central government is way behind local, and in others way in front. I learnt so much yesterday about how to explain digital value to different audiences, so much about evaluation and so much about understanding policy wonks minds.
12. Some are more open to learning and sharing than others. There are some cliques in central government, in just the same way that there can be in local government. The value of unconferences and digital networks is that it no longer matters. No one person can be a barrier to the evolutionary cycle of an organisation or Department any more. They become lost in the mass of voices speaking sense.
13. I understand stakeholders better. I understand political influences better. I understand that political motivations can be varying but that ultimately once things are broken down into small outcomes, those outcomes can unite especially when those outcomes will benefit all no matter where the country is in 5 years time.
14. I spent barely any time in sessions with local government bods I knew and lots of time in sessions with local government people I didn't know and now do. The freshness of perspective was brilliant - 'we are good at this', 'x Council is doing this and found this enormously beneficial' for example. Lots of positive changes being made but we still, even in a digital age, have no official channels for sharing best practice nor best value.
15. The future of local government CMS's is absolutely definitely totally in one place. Optional or not, there can only be one outcome for the end user, the residents that we serve. Consistency of user experience, consistency of user journey and consistency of outcome. As long as the user experience, journey and outcome are good for those people I can see no problem with this. However, there are questions about innovation which someone else has asked far better than I can. (If you wrote this post, can you comment with a link so I can add it? It was very late last night when I read it).
16. Char Stamper (paraphrased) 'if we know the potholes page is a top visited page, and we need foster carers, why are we not advertising that we need foster carers on the potholes page'. Well, quite.
17. Fresh eyes. Business transformation and process refinement cannot happen without them, and in parallel to this an unconference is broken without new blood because there are no fresh eyes. I am past the point of being those fresh eyes and as such am most relieved to see so many new faces over the past two days. Without you, we stagnate, we discuss in circles and we don't move on.
18. Someone said that Government needed a Government Digital Service was a sign of immaturity. I would argue still that it is the centre of a linear evolution. First, digital is left to everyone out in the wilds to do, because it's not deemed as important and it's impact is misunderstood and it is assumed that staff will acquire skills at the same pace as the general population. Then riots and revolutions happen. And it is realised that there are people out in the general population far more advanced in understanding, capability and implementation than those working in Government. And so Government responds by pulling things in, training and upskilling, employing those from the general population who are ahead and using them to pass on their knowledge by working along side some of those who are from Government. Will the end of the linear be for GDS to dissolve, and all those contained within it to go back out into Departments as critical friends whose role will be to ensure digital is embedded? What happens when the general population has such a breadth of skills? If HE offers literacy and numeracy courses for free, will it also now offer digital literacy courses too?
19. Unconference is the equivalent of back to back meetings for 6 hours. The lunch break is rarely contains less intense discussion than the sessions themselves. This is tiring. The energy levels on the second day were noticeably different to those on the first and I don't think it would have mattered, as Sarah Lay commented, a jot, if no one had gone to the pub at all.
20. Women in Tech are a shy old bunch. Without a leader, it all falls apart. This worries me. A lot.

#ukgc12 Day 1

Summary: Awesomeness

Or; happier, more productive.
Or; I didn't realise we were kind of kicking ass as an organisation.
Or; I didn't know I would end up not having time to talk to people.
Or; What on earth was Paul Clarke doing even getting out of bed.
Or; banking security can teach government security but business can intersect with public sector.
Or; I don't think scripts can hack images or rather more importantly resonant images and I think that's possibly the  single most important thing I discussed (with Stef) today.
Or; I can dodge cameras exceedingly well. Good.
Or; I don't believe in no. Or rather, in impossibility. I don't.
Or; Phenomenal energy and talent.
Or; Blistering speed of conversations.
Or; learning. Understand where we are as an org, identifying my part to play in helping change that, and the importance of it.
Or; seeing people who have left happier and more productive.
Or; seeing people who have not happier and more productive.
Or; I don't belong in a box. I just can't do it.
Or; Respect. Admiration. For a man who calmly and quietly states it as it is and as it will be and does so with humour. Mike Bracken is going to need a bigger bus to fit everyone on board.
Or; The loveliness of mischievousness well intentioned.
Or; Death by Powerpoint is not something I am prepared to tolerate any more.
Or; I am too damn gobby for my own good.
Or; At what point do you embrace being a disruptor, understand it's a strength and just go with it? Today.
Or; Work faster at the boring stuff so you can damn well get to the good stuff.
Or; Stop being embarrassed about knowing stuff. Just know share it. It's criminal to not do so, not to do so.
Or; Agile does not fit into PRINCE.
Or; Relinquish control and let the networks do your job for you in communicating your message. If it's a good one, it will get through.
Or; Service users are more agile than us. They consume. Fast. We need to be faster, light footed and leave no trace in our immersion and eventual abandonment of technologies, ideologies, or policies and strategies.
Or; Policy don't need to understand digital. They need to understand outcomes. Evaluation.
Or; Translate and interpret and do it with honesty and integrity.
Or; Be proud of where you work, not ashamed. Be proud of the history, the legacy and the future not seen yet.
Or; Pride and identity is fundamental to a well performing team/organisation/company.
Or; I love my job. I love my job. I love my job.
Or; We are family. Support. Argument and dissention but respectfully and always with good heart.
Or; Leave your issues outside of the room.
Or; Days may start disastrously but can turn around real damn fast.
Or; It's like a day in back to back meetings. Increasingly, the meetings I attend are reflecting in content and weight of outcome at 'work' as they do at 'unconference'.
Or; Awesomeness.

Summary: Awesomeness.

Today was awesome.

Getting SOPA with it

Summary: Legislation's what you need if you want to be a internet breaker

In the beginning, the web was the Wild Wild West. And in the end, the web will remain the Wild Wild West. 

We could stop there but it would perhaps be a little flippant, and easily dismissed and today I wish to write something which is neither. I will not be pitching on this subject to any Editor and if I did I would not expect to be sanctioned to go ahead, but the simple fact remains that this needs explaining and I've done it before and will continue to do so until I am blue fingered.

The Daily Mail contingent exist. Whether we like it or not they do. But is not just the Daily Mail contingent that requires consideration here as to the best of my knowledge the US does not have the Daily Mail. I am sure that instead, something Heralded or Timesed will step into the breach instead.

But the target audience are there and so they are citizens just like the rest of us and when a collection of people who feel generally the same about generally the same kind of issues there is weight there - political, economical and societal. To ignore this collective power is akin to sticking your fingers in your ears and singing 'la la la' if you are a politician or a Councillor and I believe that SOPA is an acknowledgement of this, albeit a US one. But lets make no bones about it, SOPA is the US equivalent of the Digital Economy Act 2011 and the same mistakes are being repeated across the pond (the only bit of this I must confess to finding unforgivable). 

For the rest is forgiveable but not for very much longer.  There is only so far accidental ignorance can take you as a plea before the Judge and Jury raise their eyebrows and tell you that the onus was on you to take responsibility for your actions and to find out whether they were encompassed by the law or no. And this is where we are at. I believe we are at the tipping point where a voting generation have arrived en masse who are intelligent enough (and judgemental enough) to base their future voting decisions at least in part on the actions of that particular party when it comes to digital.

Once you have reached that point, and we are not quite there yet, it can only go one of two ways.

We can either:

• Continue to issue legislation which is not fit for purpose accidentally
• Continue to issue legislation which is not fit for purpose on purpose

There is a subtle difference. I can forgive the former and the latter right now. But there is coming a time when I will not forgive the former and will positively encourage the latter because the latter, believe it or not is the only damn option we have and you had better get used to it.

You see, it is the Wild West out there. And there are people out there who are smarter than me or you and all of 'us' non criminally minded collected together. The best we can hope for, and I do mean the very best, is that groups like Lulzsec or whoever they are this week don't get annoyed at us. That they see us as unchallenging and unworthy of their collective wrath and intelligence. It is not them who are running under the radar on the web, it is us. Try being Sony for a day and find out how it feels. I should imagine not dissimilar to the bottom of your world dropping out and there being nothing you can do about it because you simply can't find anyone smart enough to help you with it that you didn't already nark completely with one of your comments challenging their intellect.

No. The way forward is the latter option and here is how it is going to go.

Someone either side of the Atlantic is going to have to balance keeping the Daily Mail lot (the majority whether you like it or not) happy. And keeping them happy equates to removing the evidence of any kind of wrong doing from their eye line. It means Google being the respectable face of the internet for your mother and your father. It means effort required to acquire anything illegal be that unpaid for music or guidelines on how to build a rocket with explosives. It means the Government visibly and forcefully clamping down on what it knows it can do something about and keeping those people happy who have a vested interest in this happening because this, this is the way the world works people.

But. And it's a but almost as big as mine. In doing this, there must be an acknowledgement that for some cracking things open is an addiction and a thrill. It's a 'cos it's there kind of thing', you know, the reason we're trying to go and land on the moon like it's nothing out of the ordinary at all. Those people are always going to exist and their not the majority and some of them might even come and work for you if you offer them enough caffeine and monitors/shiny gadgets but you can't win. I'm sorry to say this and I dislike saying it intensely because had we had this conversation 5 years ago the odds would have been different but the simple fact is:

You cannot win this battle.

So retreat. Use finesse. Consult the high level geeks on how to be seen to be locking down on piracy as much as is possible but for heavens sake don't break the internet doing it.

Thank you for reading.

I am woman, hear me whimper?

A #weeklyblogpost contribution.

Summary: If you've got something to contribute, DO IT. No excuses.

Last night I had an interesting conversation with Janet Davies and Dominic Campbell. Essentially, we identified that women were hideously unrepresented when it came to Life Peerages but that that merely reflect the gender imbalance within Parliament.

My reaction to Janet pointing this out was this:

@janetedavis @dominiccampbell yeah. No. That's not somewhere I'm prepared to ever go either. Behind. My place is behind.

And then followed swiftly by this:

@janetedavis :@dominiccampbell and also, in that sentence I start to understand why women stay at home. Oh. :/

Janet mentioned that she kept hearing women say they didn't want to stand out or speak or be on TV or in newspapers.

I do too. I am one of them. And it's unforgivable really. Veering towards the pathetic when you think I have no childcare issues to take into (quite correct) consideration. I am not tied to a location and am not afraid to travel and be rootless. I believe fiercely and passionately in certain things and I can be utterly relentless when I get the bit between my teeth about an issue I connect with.

So why don't I want to be an MP, or indeed a Councillor? Well, actually I do. In fact, more accurately, I did until a certain storm over mobile phone hacking happened. Because in order to be able to keep calm and carry on you have to have a certain level of resilience. Now I might come across as kind and fluffy and squee'ing around the edges but believe me I can be fearsomely cross if I believe it is justified. I will always concede if someone subsequently points out I've got the wrong end of the stick but I can more than stand up for myself thank you very much and if I think you're consistently being an arse, I'll just disengage entirely.

No.

It's not that. It's the fear. The fear of spectacularly failing and being crucified for it - see Diane Abbot for recent reference. The fear of being seen to not somehow being a woman because to become an MP is to admit by default you are ambitious and thirst for power - things I don't identify with. I want to change a lot of things and am prepared to follow through on those things but power is merely a tool in order to do that, not something in itself to aspire to have. The fear of being visible is innate I think in a generation of girls brought up by parents to be seen and not heard. The fear of being unfashionable, of being ugly, of not being what people somehow expect of someone passionate and committed sits alongside this - comment on my brain all you like, call me an idiot and ill prepared or ill judged but don't ever comment on how I look - I will wilt. The fear that if I were to become an MP that somehow all the enthusiasm and determination would be sapped by successive and endless arguments, directives and spin, all the reasons I thought I should be there in the first place sucked out from my brain and replaced with drudgery and hopelessness.

And I know not whether I am alone in this but I am not prepared to do that. I am not prepared to risk it. I am not prepared to be crucified and I am not prepared to be mocked nor jeered for my looks or my clothing. I am, instead, drawn to working in places where intelligence is valued, where passion is cherished and enthusiasm wanes momentarily before flaring once again.

That is behind. So while I my voice may have joined the masses of women stepping back and letting them men play out in front, I believe that this is the best decision for me. This is not a path I should ever walk down.

However, I would like to ask every one of my female readers - what are your reasons? Do you really not believe vehemently and relentlessly that you could make a difference? Is it childcare or hours? Spotlights or political complications?

Essentially, I want to know - why are we under represented and can we complain if the answer is 'because we refuse'.

I refuse.

Who am I?

Who am I?

Summary: Web users are evolving and Facebook is no longer king.

So, who am I. You can play along, if you like. Think about your digital footprint, by which I mean all the different websites which you have log ins for. Think about your Pinterest boards and your Tumblrs (yes, that is intentionally plural), your Flickrs and Twitter streams.

All of them are you. Each account has your username attached to it which is for some people consistent across all accounts, your gender or your date of birth perhaps. The essence of you, your identity in the web world, is tied to your username and your user icon, the two things which instantly flag in streams of data that you are present, you are in the room.

Some people make a conscious decision to make their usernames different, the intertwining of professional and personal not uncomfortable, per se, but raising issues around privacy of friends and family, especially when it comes to Flickr or Instagram. 

Each of those decisions are conscious decisions which we make in a world where it can feel that we are being forced to make a decision about uniformity across all accounts or having somewhere hidden to go a little bit crazy out of the public eye. And even then we are perhaps being judged by those who do not choose to deal with this weird conundrum in quite the same way. 

But I noticed something yesterday when discussing this with a colleague. I noticed that he had evolved. He had gone from being a Facebook 'sharer', posting status updates a few times a day, letting everyone know where he was going, what he was doing, when he was doing it and with who, to using Facebook to simply share the innocuous. The silly video clips and the laugh inducing pictures. In other words, the content contained within Facebook and perhaps the appropriateness for updating certain types of things to Facebook is changing. I keep hearing 'oh I don't use Facebook much any more' and I cannot prove it, I don't have figures to do so but I have the strangest feeling that this group of people linked to my colleague, they are not alone.

So where are they going? 

It seems, from a model of one site to put everything, to a model where many sites reflect many facets. And is this not actually naturally who we are? When a friend has a baby, I want to know if its cute, what she's called it, and see a few pictures. I do not want birth details, I do not want hourly updates on shades of poo (you're either laughing in disbelief or understanding right now and I know which camp is bigger) and I do not want to know that you were up every hour breast feeding. Mums.net is the right place for that - if nothing else you'll find thousands of people in the same situation,.all of whom will commiserate with you and all of whom will understand the life stage that you are currently at.

I have friends who are fantastic photographers. I don't want to see their 100 roll set of photographs where the bird moves an inch through each click of the shutter. I do want to see the 10 best shots and I want to make sure that I don't miss them - so I use Flipboard to select the latest shots for me so that I don't miss anything but I don't have to wade through the whole set on Flickr. But he uses Flickr because there is a community there (although I hear tell they're moving to Google+ and other places too) who will critique his photographs, provide advise and support on locations to find certain types of birds, or sell kit or provide kit reviews and thus for my friend Flickr is no longer an album site but a resource which he can access.

I use Pinterest. It's an amazing site, and suits my blackbird nature perfectly. I can collect wonderful, beautiful, fascinating and inspiring things all in one place without ever needing to buy a thing. I can bookmark the wonderful websites which sell quirky things, but with images and not an ugly url. I can share the things which I find inspiring and others can share their inspiration with me. We are all similar and yet vastly different, those of us who use the sites, from the quirky to the cliched, from cheesecake pin up to crafty creatives. But we all use it as a place to share - just the things which perhaps none of our friends would find cool, or be interested in.

Facebook assumes one fundamental thing. It assumes you want to know everything someone wants to tell you about themselves. So they introduced features such as timelines and groups in order to give you more control over who you shared updates with and whose updates you would see the most of. But we don't want that, where 'we' is this loosely defined web generation we seem to be evolving into. We used to, in the beginning, when Facebook was shiny and new. But we evolved, because evolution is what happened when time passes and external forces such as economics, politics and well...evolution of psychology happens. And make no mistake, the web is changing our brain chemistry. But as an association of that, it is also changing our sense of identity.

We don't want to tell everyone everything any more. We want to tailor, we want to be more considerate. I've been doing this for a few years because I have been here perhaps longer but now, it seems, everyone else is following the same journey and that's a different subject for a different post, about accidentally always being ahead of the curve of web psychology because you've been immersed to this level that now a lot of people seem to be for a lot longer and you were talking about getting off grid 3 years ago, and now everyone is craving that disconnect, that silence..

But Facebook is not who we are any more. We do not all want to be on the same platform, because on some deep seated lever that says to us that we are all the same. We are not all the same. We are individuals and we are choosing, now, who we share what with. We have evolved to understand our digital footprints can be massive, if we want them to be. We can have Tumblrs for weight loss or exercise, for quitting smoking or for sharing cool photographs. We can have Fitocracy profiles to incentivise our exercise. We can choose, but more importantly, we can deliver to those interested, whilst filtering it away from those who are not.

In other words, that information overload problem?

We're taking care of it ourselves. The evolution of the internet just took another big jump and whilst it could be argued, and will be argued that our identity is becoming split and that this is not healthy, I instead believe that we are becoming more thoughtful in our web use, that we are delivering content to those who are interested in places where they have chosen to be, rather than over sharing information with those who are simply not interested.

To thine own self be true - #weeklyblogpost

I've missed the deadline for #weeklyblogpost - it was midday today. But I wanted to tip this into the pot now because I have the strangest feeling there wont be much spare time next week either.

To thine own self be true

My own personal rule for Twitter. I heard someone sounding almost apologetic this morning because they appeared to think showing emotion on Twitter was a bad thing. As it happened, they'd feel passionately and fiercely about something, they made some good points, and they didn't come across to me as being emo or depressed or indeed anything else.

They came across as human. A person with feelings and emotions, just like everyone else. Now, this person tweets under their own name and I appreciate that maybe that's a different ball game. I have the luxury of mostly being able to walk into any room and not owning up to my Twitter account - I look nothing like my icon and there must be a lot of Louise K's in the world. However, most of the people I work with and some of my more tolerant of local government geeking friends still follow me.

I'm quite a fiery person. I'm quite an enthusiastic person. I'm quite er....animated when talking to people and have been known to sending things flying by accident. I don't do half measures in real life - why on earth should I do them online? The things which make me a good person to be around (most of the time) in real life, when I am standing in front of you arguing the hell about something completely random are the things which make me me.

Which is where I come to Diane Abbott. Because I called her on a tweet of hers. But I did it with no expectations of response, nor to censure. I don't expect to have to step on eggshells around anyone, never mind MP's. I expect to be able to call someone on being an idiot, careless or thoughtless, them to apologise if they feel they've genuinely done something wrong and then for us all to move on.

People make mistakes. People are always going to make mistakes. I make them, I own up to them, I apologise. I expect other people to do the same. And I am glad Diane Abbott explained about context and I am glad she was given the opportunity of redress and was not asked to stand down as one request made. I believe that you have the courage of your convictions and state your mind - but I also believe it is not a climbdown to explain context and nor is it a climbdown when someone has genuinely misinterpreted your tone of voice.

To thine own self be true. Say what you mean, love, hate and dream of clearly and succintly. That's what Twitter is for, that's what Twitter absolutely rocks at. Expect to be judged, expect to be laughed at occasionally, but understand this: if you are not true to yourself, you will spend all your time apologising and none learning, sharing, shaping or changing. 

So that's my number one Twitter tip for 2012.

What's yours?

My digital heroes of 2012 - no to #pandagate

#pandagate. Sounds ridiculous really. 12 faces of 2011 - the women the title blazed in H1. Bottom right of the photo montage, a panda. Not, by any stretch of the imagination, a woman.

Might not have been an issue had it not followed on the heels of the Sports Personality being completely gender blind. Timing and context, my friends, your two greatest foes in social media reputation land.

But; to happier things. Like my heroes list for 2011, because believe it or not, there are some women in it and believe it or not, there are some men too. Because believe it or not, that's the way the worlds mixed up these days whether you like it or not. It's a personal list, yours will be different. Feel free to add your own in the comments, disagree or post a link to yours in your own blog.

Src: Wikipedia

This is Margaret Atwood. She's on Twitter. She wrote The Handmaids Tale which was on our GCSE syllabus. She also wrote a few other books, the most memorable to me being Cat's Eyes. Which I told her. And which she graced with a response. And so I came to have a conversation with the author of a book which had quite a profound affect on me when I was a teenager. And that conversation has stayed with me, because of the ease and naturalness with which it was conducted, considering the age of the lady it was with and the medium it was across - a medium she uses comfortably and with great effect.
Got a grandmother who's too old for this computer crap? Send her Atwood's way.

Src: Wikipedia 

Martha Lane Fox. Apparently she's a 'figurehead'. Not supposed to be taken seriously. Not technical enough, not geeky enough. Just some of the accusations levelled. Which I think is interesting, as I can only assume it was purely accidental she built one of the first .com success stories which didn't go the way of boo.com. Evidently, it's incredibly simple to create a successful internet business, so simple we should all be able to do it. Except...no, wait...where are all these successful businesses? The lady isn't being asked to be technical, she's being asked to be digital. There is a difference, once I believe in passionately because it is, most definitely all about the people. The tech just spins the wheels and passed the packets.

Src: Wikipedia

Ben Hammersley. Flippantly referred to as Editor at Large at Wired (UK) magazine. Stealthily, quietly and ever so determinedly educating the important people on the merits of digital technology. I fell over the transcript of his speech to the Information Assurance Advisory Council. It is simple, powerful and true. I hear tell he's also now appointed to go do something to do with our new silicon roundabout Tech City. I anticipate great things. I assume that he will be accused of similar things to Martha. But figureheads are there for a reason, rallying calls issued by those with integrity and knowledge. In order for something to have direction and traction, it must be led. And leaders are not made.
.

Src: Cyberdoyle's Blog

Meet Cyberdoyle. Aka Chris Condor. As her Twitter bio states, she's a bit familiar with fibre and not the dietary kind. She has a reputation as a campaigner but she isn't. She's a do'er. She is part of B4rn, a social enterprise comprised of herself and a few colleagues who are going to bring super speedy connections to the tippy toppy most cornerish bit of Lancashire where it merges with Cumbria and Yorkshire. Where BT wouldn't go if you paid them, basically. They're selling shares, digging trenches and laying the fibre themselves and making a whole tonne of noise whilst they're doing it. Digital role models? Right up there as a woman just doing what she does best. JFDI.

Src: European Commission

Neelie Kroes. Vice President of the European Commission and increasingly a name I keep coming across in digital and opendata circles. Undeterred by impenetrable cross border digital rules, regulations, terminology (I'm looking at you here France) and expectations she is ploughing a straight path through the lot and organising commitments to digital single markets, interoperability and standards, trust and security, speedy connections, getting everyone skilled up, using tech to solve social problems, opendata and what seem to be a thousand and one other things too. Dutch born, but somehow...very English in her way of doing things. Her direct and determined approach is winning my utmost respect.

Src: Wikipedia

I may not always agree with Facebook but watching Sheryl Sandberg stand up on a TED stage and tell it exactly how it is for women in the working world was a pivotal moment for me in understanding my own mentality up to that point. Don't have an opinion, don't join in, don't contribute, don't stick your head above the parapet. Someone might notice and then what the hell will you do?
Well, you'll have a career is what will happen. One you wont put on hold or take your foot off the throttle from because you might want children (or not), or you might be sort of quite ill (or not), or.....
The magic of digital is that her words kicked my ass into touch and I'll never meet her. Chalk one up.

This could be a picture of Emer or Julie, Andrea or Gladys, Shirley or Chris, Caroline or Jane. It represents an entity without a face or with many faces. Role models and mentors on a person level who have helped and listened, talked and coached, advised and pushed, encouraged and nurtured. Because of them, variously I am; more confident, more assured, more sane, more organised, weigh less, speak more, stand taller and think more. My world has widened and my thinking speeded up - but then it has also slowed down. I have understood what it is to be professional but also what it is to be human from these women and I am grateful to know them. Some of them I call friends. And I am blessed.

This year, I have sat in meetings and spoken about digital technologies all over the Council. From leaving care to foster care, from domestic violence to young parents support, from info governance in health to community meeting co-ordination discussions. To the last I have met professionals with integrity, honesty, and an unabashed acknowledgement in some cases of their own fear of the technology. I have laughed, encouraged and been completely honest in reciprocation. And I've left every meeting smiling. Not bad for local gov.

Inserted for comedic effect. But come on, far funnier than a freaking panda.

This is not a review.

This is not a review.

This is a commentary on modern life. I am currently on leave for the day. Long drawn out reasons - not Xmas related or shopping related, though I am using it to whip through HMRC related paperwork, tidy the house and generally make room for the tree which rather embarrassingly has not yet made an appearance.

I live in a turn of the century or so stone terrace. None of this new fangled brick here. The walls absorb the cold but once warmed keep us nice and toasty. The house needs a lot doing to it - it's work in progress. The walls are not as thick as you would expect and with families both sides of us and there just being the two of us, sometimes we feel assaulted by the by product noise generated on a day to day basis.

Mostly the sounds that drift through are of Bollywood movies, of calls to prayer, of the kids mimicing the sounds of prayer with little understanding of the shape or meaning of the sounds. Never is there the sound of recorders, Tomy toys or Strictly Come Dancing, nor is there pounding dance music emanating from the teenagers bedrooms.This would be because the teenagers don't have bedrooms of their own - these are two up two downs and the 4 children to my right all share a bedroom. I never hear the daughter, only ever the 3 sons. I have briefly seen the daughter pass through the garden and into the ramshackle wooden building in their back garden - but that was only once. I don't think she goes to school and I don't think she leaves the house. I don't know what she does. Sometimes I question whether she even exists at all.

They are Pakistani and the father is a pillar of the local community or so it seems. Groups of wise and elderly men come and go and the front living room briefly comes alight, showing men seated, arms waving passionately, words and thoughts flying and being meant.

On the other side is another family. I think Arabic though I am not sure. I never hear them speak and I never really here the children either. All I hear, occasionally, is the sound of the mother sobbing, a heart breaking sound. It happened 15 minutes ago and I tweeted about it.

Go round, go knock, take a cup of sugar, everyone suggested.

It's not that easy.

It should be that easy. I am a caring kind of person. Empathic. I feel for people very much and am a self confessed sap when it comes to sad movies. I've had to leave films 2 minutes early to fix my make up on more than one occasion and I don't really mind admitting it either - what's wrong with emotion anyway?

But her emotion is making me feel uncomfortable because I simply do not know what I should do about it. And I have come to the conclusion that I am incapacitated through nothing more than stupidity. I have tried, of course I have, to make eye contact, to say hello. The problem is, in order for a conversation to start, there has to be a response to the hello. There has to be some kind of engagement from the other side. And there just isn't. I can't even get eye contact half the time and if I do it is fleeting.

But that's no excuse for stopping trying. Not speaking English is no excuse for not making a connection. A smile is a connection so instead I'll try smiling and scrap the hello bit - maybe it's just not understood. A smile says a million things that would take hours to speak.

The simple fact is, I am not going next door to offer help because I am unsure how it will be received. I am fearful of imposing and intruding. I am awkward in my lack of understanding of what the right protocols are. I am hurting because I can't stand the idea of someone being in pain emotionally and not having someone to hug and reassure. But I don't know where to begin in trying to work out how to offer the care I would so like to.

As a footnote, in John Lewis on Sunday I saw a woman alone struggling with the contents of a pram and a toddler, the pram having evidently tipped over when the child had climbed out due to the sheer weight of shopping on the back. I did not hesitate for a second in asking if she needed help and was fine with her answer that she did not - it was an easy exchange, unmired as it was by the removal of knowable social mores.

I don't have the rulebook for the interactions that where I live demands of me. It's not as simple as knocking on the door. It should be. But there are language barriers, cultural barriers, gender barriers that I simply do not know how to navigate.

And it seems to me I am not alone in this and it seems to me, we should be focusing a little more on understanding and navigating these situations and a little less on offending people. So if anyone has suggestions on how to navigate such situations as these, please please please comment. I feel about as confident in my own ability to do so as a dead chicken.

Digital dreams

@benjoda mocks me for getting excited about discovering a pdf aggregator which saved me a lot of time and presented things efficiently and effectively.

He's going to hate this post with a passion. Because in it, I am going to indulge something which has been missing for a while - and it is passion. For digital. Because it is what I am, who I am and what I do.

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, this country experienced an acceleration of thinking, developing, innovation and JFDI arguably never seen before (yes, flinty, hence the slight give). It was distributed equitably in the spoils which emerged, at least geographically - I know this as I have walked beneath key stones from Edinburgh to York, Bristol to Exeter which have born roughly the same dates, leading to great palaces of learning named libraries - the 'giving back' method de jour of any self respecting industrialist.

And so, almost exactly 100 years later and what do we have? I passionately believe, a digital revolution. A monumental shift, not only in the way we conduct business, but also our daily lives, with the potential to shake the very foundations of the world, economically, politically and yes, even perhaps what it actually means to be human. Married with the scientific research discoveries which mean we can control physical objects with a thought, that we can see the unseeable and know the unknowable. As we strip away the layers of mystery between us and the stars, the skies, the sand and the snow, are we turning to a manufactured, invisible and unquantifiable digital space to satisfy what is perhaps a coded embedded behaviour in humans - the need to not know the future, to be uncertain, to see no guarantees?

So what will this digitalists leave? Industrialists took care of their workers, relatively at the time, by providing roofs over heads, opportunities for learning and personal development, and eventually education for the young. In their own sweet way they enabled social mobility, by ensuring that the generation beneath the workers spinning endlessly in factories were educated to a level where basic numeracy and literacy were possible, encouraged even, where it was possible to use education as a way to change their futures and to level up.

Digitalists have a number of options. Hack days, I think, are a shade of this in that it is an opportunity for developers to make contacts yes, and it is an opportunity for developers to make apps with useful data which will no doubt be marketable products, but the fact still remains; free time, free thinking, free bodies. A model which involves an exchange of something where both benefit.

But they are small. And in time, the memory of them will disappear. They are not, in other words, the equivalent of libraries still standing 100 years later.

Which begs the question, what will digitalists leave? What will be their legacy? Will they acknowledge their power and their genius, the collective wisdom collision that seems to happen once every 100 years and decide to collaborate and do something wonderful for no other reason than to further humanities development, or will they be oblivious, wrapped in the push to better the tech, better the tools, and forget entirely that humans use them?

I'd like to think the digital crowd are only just getting started.