Every now and again I read something which resonates, something which sets the little alarm bells ringing and puts a big grin on my face.
Put Feelings First on Fast Company is one of those articles - the link is to the online version and I read the offline version which is slightly different but the ethos, nevertheless, is the same. See something which accidentally or intentionally provokes and emotion, feel the emotion intensely, and as a result change an opinion or behaviour.
It doesn't sound like rocket science. Yet it appears to be solving real world problems which have persisted and continue to do so without using this approach. The offline version which I will scan and link to from this post when I am not sat on a train whizzing through the West Midlands uses a powerful example - hand washing.
A Doctor in America on a flight home from somewhere tropical noted that the care and attention that the airline staff were giving to hand washing and cleanliness far exceeded the attention to detail which was being demonstrated in his home hospital - a big issue for obvious reasons. So he decided to try and do something about it - because he had seen proof that people could care about hygiene, and wanted to replicate that behaviour in another group of people.
So he went home, collared a few surgeons after lunch in the hospital canteen and asked them to place their hands in some petri dishes with nutrient agar prepared. That culture was taken away to develop and returned to the surgeons a few days later. Predictably, the emotion provoked was disgust - not only for the patients that they were about to touch and interact with before carrying out actual surgery but also for the fact that they'd just been tucking into turkey sandwiches with the same hands they'd placed in the dishes.
To further prove a point and spread the emotion, pictures of the worst were turned into screensavers and displayed on every desktop in the hospital. Handwashing rose to 100% across the board immediately, and has since mostly stayed there.
See-feel-change.
It resonates because I know it to be true. I know it to be manipulation but I also know it to be necessary when it comes to things like quitting smoking or doing more exercise. I'm qualified to talk about the motivators , can comment on what I see which triggers the emotional response in me to change. I've written about them repeatedly over on my other blog. See someone having fun and behaving the way you wish to behave, see someone like you doing something you didn't think you could ever do, try it out, feel something intensely as a result, rinse, repeat, change. Become the thing you never thought you could become. People need reasons, identifiable reasons, to stop or start behaviours because we are creatures of habit, all of us, and change requires concerted conscious effort, stepping out of our 9-5 daily auto-pilots.
Shock tactics might look drastic, might look cruel - but I believe that in order to motivate people, sometimes you have to spark something deep inside them. You have to give them something to resonate with.
Turns out, being emotional might not be such a bad thing after all.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Open the door (close the door)
Open data as an overall banner is a very useful one. It says exactly what it means - opening up data (for benchmarking, performance improvement, resource allocation efficiencies etc etc).
What is becoming foggier as time passes, for me, is the role of all the individual stakeholders in this banner - I had to try and explain to a colleague from Policy how the open data landscape currently looked as she will be directly involved in the Single Data List roll out once it's out of consultation and into implementation and believe me when I say, without a pen and paper to draw all the bubbles of the interested parties, it was quite hard.
So here's my attempt at drawing the open data landscape as it is currently. All mistakes are mine, if I insult your job title, please correct me in the comments. Because this is my post, I'm going to cover them in the order in which I became aware of them - this is not necessarily the order of creation. Apologies if you feel it's 'simplistic' - I'm writing for a different audience to the one you write for. I'm writing for the Policy people who have to get their heads around all this.
Rewired State
Starting at the end of the process, just my style. Rewired State convene hack days and developers within those hack days to take data which has been released by organisations of all kinds within the public sector and do something interesting with it - in the case of hack days in one day. Prizes are usually given for the best 'hack' where hack does not equal breaking things, but creating things by 'hacking' around with the data. Rewired State recently has started to employ developers, I think, though their web page makes no mention of this for some reason.
What they also have is 7 simple rules for releasing open data:
1. No PDFs
2. CSVs not Excel (I wonder how many people would know how to create a CSV without using Excel)
3. Consistent formatting of documents (can be hard when source varies from Access databases to Oracles to Sharepoint)
4. Know what data you've got/can provide access to
5. Appoint a decision maker and contact point
6, Stick to standards (which ones?)
7. Listen to feedback
I've commented on them because I want to make a point - it's not that simple for a 4000 employee organisation. It's just not. It should be, perhaps, in the eyes of the outside world, but the simple fact is, Rome wasn't built in a day, so for now you're going to need to accept our systems were not built for this, are disparate, legacy systems we often inherited from 3rd party bods (or which are currently sat with 3rd party bods) and what should be something simple, actually isn't.
Datadotgovdotuk
Datadotgovdotuk is a data signpost. It doesn't host the data, individual organisations do that, instead it simply provides the ability to signpost it, and crucially for everyone in the public sector to do that, all in one place. In theory, if you want to find some public sector data which has already been released, it should be located through datadotgovuk - and on this front I think it is a brilliant resource. It integrates with something called CKAN which stores all the location data which people upload - so the website is almost a pretty cover on the front of a database. In addition to this, it was also supposed to be somewhere developers could come and ask for more data and show off the apps which they'd made using the data. That side of things seems to be going less well and the forums are very quiet. Some readers will know about this site as it's where we have to signpost our over £500 spend data from.
Public Data Corporation
Datadotgovuk is all about providing data for free and Rewired State hack days rely on data being free too. So the Public Data Corporation (PDC) is raising some concern in some quarters as it has not been made clear whether data which is provided to the PDC for free from the public sector, will then be charged for 'in the interests of taxpayers'. We are not sure because the details of the existence of the PDC have been published before the actual datasets or code of conduct have been decided. There is concern from a large number of quarters that the PDC will crush innovation and curiosity and prohibit the habit of bored data gatherers to simply have a wander through some data to see what possibilities it contains for making something if a charge is imposed before it is even possible to see what the dataset contains, what format it is in, if it's 'clean' and finally if it actually contains something useful to mash up with something else. There is no doubt that the implementation of this needs careful examination not only from the point of view of the taxpayer but also the point of view of people like Rewired State. One assumes they are involved in any consultations currently happening.
Single Data List
The single data list is the proposed 'replacement' for the National Indicator Set which was abolished last year along with the Audit Commission whose job it was to monitor the NIS. There are over 400 or so requirements to provide data by Councils in the Single Data List some of which directly correlate with the old NIS and some of which do not. Looking at this from a purely open data stance, there is an assumption that we will be required to publish either centrally or locally the detailed equations and processes behind our Single Data List results but it is not clear whether we will be locked into an agreement with the PDC on this and this is quite crucial. If you wish to see others responses to the Single Data List, please Google. It's an interesting read.
Protection of Freedoms Bill - Section 92 (Release and publication of datasets held by public authorities)
Included because it affects us local govvies - it covers how we release data as a result of a Freedom of Information request and states that we will make the data permanently available electronically once someone has requested it in a FOI. It doesn't mention whether this needs to be signposted form datadotgovuk and it doesn't mention whether it will need to be submitted to the PDC either. It also mentions that the format of the data should be 'capable of re-use', something which seems a little fluffy to me - PDFs fine then?
There's also a small issue of it mentioning a licence in 92 (3) 11A (2) (apologies if not right syntax, it's been 15 years since I did law) which is never explained, but which is quite important as it mentions copyright and us making data available under the relevant licence.
It does specify in the next sub section that:
Code of recommended practice for Local Authorities (consultation)
Taking all the above into account, the Department of Communities and Local Government would like to know what you think about open data and local government. You have until the 14th March to contribute and somewhat unusually, I think, comments on the forum linked above will count as actual comments on the consultation which will be fed back as part of the formal consultation process.
Somewhat interestingly, there are already mutterings about the fact that it is a Recommended Code of Practice only, that there will be no penalties for complying and that this might lead to no one actually taking the blindest bit of notice, especially when compared and contrasted with less staff and the Localism agenda. It is interesting also to note, in particular, Annex B Section 17 which states data must be made available as quickly as possible and if this results in errors in the data so be it. A difficult one to reconcile when crucial financial and resource allocation decisions may be made as a result of this possibly incorrect data.
In typical style we're looping back around to the end of the process again:
Linked Gov
Linked Gov is a social enterprise and quite a clever one (I'm declaring interest, here). The idea is to acknowledge that the public sector is new to data publishing on the scale which is becoming expected, that benchmarking can't happen if all the data from all contributing Authorities is not comparable both in format but also in content and the location of that content within the format, and that accuracy and cleanliness of the data is paramount in order for it to yield performance assessments, incorrect resource allocations, monetary issues, codding allocation issues etc. In acknowledging this, they have come up with a rather interesting way to rectify all these issues - incentivise the act of cleaning the data and interlinking the same data but from different sources and turn that action into game play. Where some visible tracking and reward is possible for the voluntary effort which you contribute to doing those aforementioned actions. It is in fledgling stages at the moment, but taking all of the above post into consideration I believe it identifies something no one else does (though the next entry covers this too), which is that data can be unwieldy, massively scaled, inappropriately presented and a incredibly horribly time consuming to clean and present in the correct format in the correct place at the correct time. And I speak from personal experience here, believe me.
There is far far more to Linked Gov than simply this - the scale of it is breath taking once you start to investigate and I would encourage you to do so - semantic is becoming a reality.
And to the final player in this epic post of epicness:
Making A Difference With Data
Making A Difference With Data (MADWD) was created, I think, at UK Gov Camp 2011 which I posted about before. I must confess it was completely off my radar until it launched a few days ago so my understanding of where it fits, the reasons and motivations behind it and who funds and runs it is nil. However, the front page points, very emphatically, in the 'doing' camp and I think we're going to see some considerable developments of data mash ups and collisions in the next few months from this site. I suspect this will also be the place which you will come to, to demonstrate to your peers in Finance and Legal, what can actually be done with open data and why it matters and why it's worth the effort.
One more. Last, but definitely not least.
London Data Store and now Manchester Data Store
Not directly relevant to my colleagues and I, nevertheless, both these sites are incredibly helpful collections for developers and those who are simply 'data curious' (I'd class myself in that, I think). Collations of all relevant data to a place or city might seem obvious, but I think it is fair to say that only now do we have the scale of data available and the quality and relevance of data available to make these sites the absolute goldmines that they are. Go and have a play - yes London and Manchester have the audience for the apps which are being created, and yes that audience might not exist in the same scale elsewhere, but all you have to do is think on a County level instead of a city level and perhaps the potential can start to be realised. Admittedly some out of silo working will be required, but one assumes the London Data Store has been liasing with not an inconsiderable amount of London Boroughs to get to where it is - the challenge is for others to step up to the plate and stake their claims as collators and diplomats.
And there you have it. The reason why an hours lunch on Tuesday turned into 90 minutes and could have gone on far longer - so this post is an attempt at perhaps being somewhere that, at least for the next few weeks, people can point others to as being a snapshot of where open data is at in the UK - before it changes and someone launches something else.
As ever, please comment if I have made any glaring omissions or mistakes. This post brought to you by @pip_cross, @emercoleman, @hadleybeeman, @paul_clarke, @annelidworm, @socialtechno - all of whom have contributed massively to my knowledge and understanding of all these sites and issues and have patiently listened or answered questions when I have been trying to get my head around it all.
What is becoming foggier as time passes, for me, is the role of all the individual stakeholders in this banner - I had to try and explain to a colleague from Policy how the open data landscape currently looked as she will be directly involved in the Single Data List roll out once it's out of consultation and into implementation and believe me when I say, without a pen and paper to draw all the bubbles of the interested parties, it was quite hard.
So here's my attempt at drawing the open data landscape as it is currently. All mistakes are mine, if I insult your job title, please correct me in the comments. Because this is my post, I'm going to cover them in the order in which I became aware of them - this is not necessarily the order of creation. Apologies if you feel it's 'simplistic' - I'm writing for a different audience to the one you write for. I'm writing for the Policy people who have to get their heads around all this.
Rewired State
Starting at the end of the process, just my style. Rewired State convene hack days and developers within those hack days to take data which has been released by organisations of all kinds within the public sector and do something interesting with it - in the case of hack days in one day. Prizes are usually given for the best 'hack' where hack does not equal breaking things, but creating things by 'hacking' around with the data. Rewired State recently has started to employ developers, I think, though their web page makes no mention of this for some reason.
What they also have is 7 simple rules for releasing open data:
1. No PDFs
2. CSVs not Excel (I wonder how many people would know how to create a CSV without using Excel)
3. Consistent formatting of documents (can be hard when source varies from Access databases to Oracles to Sharepoint)
4. Know what data you've got/can provide access to
5. Appoint a decision maker and contact point
6, Stick to standards (which ones?)
7. Listen to feedback
I've commented on them because I want to make a point - it's not that simple for a 4000 employee organisation. It's just not. It should be, perhaps, in the eyes of the outside world, but the simple fact is, Rome wasn't built in a day, so for now you're going to need to accept our systems were not built for this, are disparate, legacy systems we often inherited from 3rd party bods (or which are currently sat with 3rd party bods) and what should be something simple, actually isn't.
Datadotgovdotuk
Datadotgovdotuk is a data signpost. It doesn't host the data, individual organisations do that, instead it simply provides the ability to signpost it, and crucially for everyone in the public sector to do that, all in one place. In theory, if you want to find some public sector data which has already been released, it should be located through datadotgovuk - and on this front I think it is a brilliant resource. It integrates with something called CKAN which stores all the location data which people upload - so the website is almost a pretty cover on the front of a database. In addition to this, it was also supposed to be somewhere developers could come and ask for more data and show off the apps which they'd made using the data. That side of things seems to be going less well and the forums are very quiet. Some readers will know about this site as it's where we have to signpost our over £500 spend data from.
Public Data Corporation
Datadotgovuk is all about providing data for free and Rewired State hack days rely on data being free too. So the Public Data Corporation (PDC) is raising some concern in some quarters as it has not been made clear whether data which is provided to the PDC for free from the public sector, will then be charged for 'in the interests of taxpayers'. We are not sure because the details of the existence of the PDC have been published before the actual datasets or code of conduct have been decided. There is concern from a large number of quarters that the PDC will crush innovation and curiosity and prohibit the habit of bored data gatherers to simply have a wander through some data to see what possibilities it contains for making something if a charge is imposed before it is even possible to see what the dataset contains, what format it is in, if it's 'clean' and finally if it actually contains something useful to mash up with something else. There is no doubt that the implementation of this needs careful examination not only from the point of view of the taxpayer but also the point of view of people like Rewired State. One assumes they are involved in any consultations currently happening.
Single Data List
The single data list is the proposed 'replacement' for the National Indicator Set which was abolished last year along with the Audit Commission whose job it was to monitor the NIS. There are over 400 or so requirements to provide data by Councils in the Single Data List some of which directly correlate with the old NIS and some of which do not. Looking at this from a purely open data stance, there is an assumption that we will be required to publish either centrally or locally the detailed equations and processes behind our Single Data List results but it is not clear whether we will be locked into an agreement with the PDC on this and this is quite crucial. If you wish to see others responses to the Single Data List, please Google. It's an interesting read.
Protection of Freedoms Bill - Section 92 (Release and publication of datasets held by public authorities)
Included because it affects us local govvies - it covers how we release data as a result of a Freedom of Information request and states that we will make the data permanently available electronically once someone has requested it in a FOI. It doesn't mention whether this needs to be signposted form datadotgovuk and it doesn't mention whether it will need to be submitted to the PDC either. It also mentions that the format of the data should be 'capable of re-use', something which seems a little fluffy to me - PDFs fine then?
There's also a small issue of it mentioning a licence in 92 (3) 11A (2) (apologies if not right syntax, it's been 15 years since I did law) which is never explained, but which is quite important as it mentions copyright and us making data available under the relevant licence.
It does specify in the next sub section that:
“the specified licence” is the licence specified by the Secretary ofHowever S45 in that Bill refers to Devolution of Scotland and Wales and S45 in the original Freedom of Information Act which I am told this Bill is actually amending is Issue of Code of Practice for the Secretary of State. So we appear to have a hanging reference to a 'licence' which one hopes will be clarified before the Bill becomes an Act or there are going to be far more confused people than just me.
5State in a code of practice issued under section 45, and the
Secretary of State may specify different licences for different
purposes.”
Code of recommended practice for Local Authorities (consultation)
Taking all the above into account, the Department of Communities and Local Government would like to know what you think about open data and local government. You have until the 14th March to contribute and somewhat unusually, I think, comments on the forum linked above will count as actual comments on the consultation which will be fed back as part of the formal consultation process.
Somewhat interestingly, there are already mutterings about the fact that it is a Recommended Code of Practice only, that there will be no penalties for complying and that this might lead to no one actually taking the blindest bit of notice, especially when compared and contrasted with less staff and the Localism agenda. It is interesting also to note, in particular, Annex B Section 17 which states data must be made available as quickly as possible and if this results in errors in the data so be it. A difficult one to reconcile when crucial financial and resource allocation decisions may be made as a result of this possibly incorrect data.
In typical style we're looping back around to the end of the process again:
Linked Gov
Linked Gov is a social enterprise and quite a clever one (I'm declaring interest, here). The idea is to acknowledge that the public sector is new to data publishing on the scale which is becoming expected, that benchmarking can't happen if all the data from all contributing Authorities is not comparable both in format but also in content and the location of that content within the format, and that accuracy and cleanliness of the data is paramount in order for it to yield performance assessments, incorrect resource allocations, monetary issues, codding allocation issues etc. In acknowledging this, they have come up with a rather interesting way to rectify all these issues - incentivise the act of cleaning the data and interlinking the same data but from different sources and turn that action into game play. Where some visible tracking and reward is possible for the voluntary effort which you contribute to doing those aforementioned actions. It is in fledgling stages at the moment, but taking all of the above post into consideration I believe it identifies something no one else does (though the next entry covers this too), which is that data can be unwieldy, massively scaled, inappropriately presented and a incredibly horribly time consuming to clean and present in the correct format in the correct place at the correct time. And I speak from personal experience here, believe me.
There is far far more to Linked Gov than simply this - the scale of it is breath taking once you start to investigate and I would encourage you to do so - semantic is becoming a reality.
And to the final player in this epic post of epicness:
Making A Difference With Data
Making A Difference With Data (MADWD) was created, I think, at UK Gov Camp 2011 which I posted about before. I must confess it was completely off my radar until it launched a few days ago so my understanding of where it fits, the reasons and motivations behind it and who funds and runs it is nil. However, the front page points, very emphatically, in the 'doing' camp and I think we're going to see some considerable developments of data mash ups and collisions in the next few months from this site. I suspect this will also be the place which you will come to, to demonstrate to your peers in Finance and Legal, what can actually be done with open data and why it matters and why it's worth the effort.
One more. Last, but definitely not least.
London Data Store and now Manchester Data Store
Not directly relevant to my colleagues and I, nevertheless, both these sites are incredibly helpful collections for developers and those who are simply 'data curious' (I'd class myself in that, I think). Collations of all relevant data to a place or city might seem obvious, but I think it is fair to say that only now do we have the scale of data available and the quality and relevance of data available to make these sites the absolute goldmines that they are. Go and have a play - yes London and Manchester have the audience for the apps which are being created, and yes that audience might not exist in the same scale elsewhere, but all you have to do is think on a County level instead of a city level and perhaps the potential can start to be realised. Admittedly some out of silo working will be required, but one assumes the London Data Store has been liasing with not an inconsiderable amount of London Boroughs to get to where it is - the challenge is for others to step up to the plate and stake their claims as collators and diplomats.
And there you have it. The reason why an hours lunch on Tuesday turned into 90 minutes and could have gone on far longer - so this post is an attempt at perhaps being somewhere that, at least for the next few weeks, people can point others to as being a snapshot of where open data is at in the UK - before it changes and someone launches something else.
As ever, please comment if I have made any glaring omissions or mistakes. This post brought to you by @pip_cross, @emercoleman, @hadleybeeman, @paul_clarke, @annelidworm, @socialtechno - all of whom have contributed massively to my knowledge and understanding of all these sites and issues and have patiently listened or answered questions when I have been trying to get my head around it all.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Guest post: Chris aka Cyberdoyle
I don't think Chris needs any introduction. But just in case; Chris is a digital campaigner. She is more of an expert in the use of social media for campaigning than anyone should be - she led the way that others follow. She's a granny who keeps in touch with family across the world using Skype and chat, a woman whose opinion is massively respected when it comes to digital inclusion and broadband, and whose voice occasionally echoes around Whitehall despite rarely leaving her farm near Lancaster, where she is a farmers wife, but also co-ordinator of DIY broadband, microwave and wireless distribution for her local area. She is a volunteer, a farmers wife and a granny. But she is also one of the most inspiring women I've ever met.
Therefore, it is something of an honour to be able to say, here is a guest post from Chris. I hope the end makes you grin as much as it did me.
I don't profess to be a writer, or a blogger. As a disclaimer I follow no political party or religion. I have a lot of faith in the wisdom of ages, and history. I think back to the old days, and the fables, old wives tales and stories passed on by the generations, either at home, school or church.
These days I find I am bewildered by the hype, spin, lies, deceit and totally ridiculous state of affairs in this country. I see, hear, meet and talk to many people who seem to feel the same. When Lou asked me
to do a guest post on her blog I refused, because I don't think I can keep up the high standard she has set, but tonight I read this story that came through an email that had been forwarded many times. You may
have seen it already, and I don't know who to credit for writing it. (It wasn't me)
It reminded me of how we used to be taught to live our lives. Today we seem to be taught/expected to do the opposite. It makes me wonder how long before the circle closes and we return to a land of common sense,
courage, honesty and truth. I know the vast majority of people are good and honest. I know the young executives in this story were doing their very best to succeed, but there has to be a cut off point when
the monkeys stop climbing ever higher up the tree and stop to see what is happening on the ground. This isn't like the old fables, this is the 'apprentice' equivalent...... let me know your thoughts if it generates any.
The story:
A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.
Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.
He said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you. "The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. "I am going to give each one of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you
bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO."
One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed.
Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.
Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.
Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant and he felt like a failure.
Six months went by -- still nothing in Jim's pot. He just new he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing.
Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however, he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - He so wanted the seed to grow.
A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.
Jim told his wife that he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life,
but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful -- in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him!
When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.
Jim just tried to hide in the back. "My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the CEO. "Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!"
All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, "The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!"
When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed - Jim told him the story.
The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, "Behold your next Chief Executive Officer! His name is Jim!" Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed. "How could he be the new CEO?" the others said.
Then the CEO said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow.
All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and
honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!"
* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust
* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends
* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness
* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment
* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective
* If you plant hard work, you will reap success
* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation
So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.
I will add one more thing to the story...
* Don't spend your life climbing the tree and forget to plant something. :)
Therefore, it is something of an honour to be able to say, here is a guest post from Chris. I hope the end makes you grin as much as it did me.
I don't profess to be a writer, or a blogger. As a disclaimer I follow no political party or religion. I have a lot of faith in the wisdom of ages, and history. I think back to the old days, and the fables, old wives tales and stories passed on by the generations, either at home, school or church.
These days I find I am bewildered by the hype, spin, lies, deceit and totally ridiculous state of affairs in this country. I see, hear, meet and talk to many people who seem to feel the same. When Lou asked me
to do a guest post on her blog I refused, because I don't think I can keep up the high standard she has set, but tonight I read this story that came through an email that had been forwarded many times. You may
have seen it already, and I don't know who to credit for writing it. (It wasn't me)
It reminded me of how we used to be taught to live our lives. Today we seem to be taught/expected to do the opposite. It makes me wonder how long before the circle closes and we return to a land of common sense,
courage, honesty and truth. I know the vast majority of people are good and honest. I know the young executives in this story were doing their very best to succeed, but there has to be a cut off point when
the monkeys stop climbing ever higher up the tree and stop to see what is happening on the ground. This isn't like the old fables, this is the 'apprentice' equivalent...... let me know your thoughts if it generates any.
The story:
A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.
Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.
He said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you. "The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. "I am going to give each one of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you
bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO."
One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed.
Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.
Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.
Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant and he felt like a failure.
Six months went by -- still nothing in Jim's pot. He just new he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing.
Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however, he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - He so wanted the seed to grow.
A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.
Jim told his wife that he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life,
but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful -- in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him!
When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.
Jim just tried to hide in the back. "My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the CEO. "Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!"
All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, "The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!"
When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed - Jim told him the story.
The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, "Behold your next Chief Executive Officer! His name is Jim!" Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed. "How could he be the new CEO?" the others said.
Then the CEO said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow.
All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and
honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!"
* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust
* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends
* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness
* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment
* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective
* If you plant hard work, you will reap success
* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation
So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.
I will add one more thing to the story...
* Don't spend your life climbing the tree and forget to plant something. :)
Friday, 18 February 2011
Inappropriate car collisions of emotion
The clues in the title, don't bother reading on if you find admitting to have them indulgent.
Emer Coleman says humans are messy. Well so is this post, because it's the culmination of two weeks which have affected me deeply, but in which I have felt, very much, as if I had no right at all to feel a thing.
I'm not a robot.
I got nothing done last week. I admit it freely. I hope that the people I have confessed this to will take into account my usually ferocious and excessive work ethic when judging me on this admission. I am not alone, either. I can't speak for others, but I really don't think I am.
You see, while certain sectors of society will celebrate each -1 one which appears on our HR payroll listing, the -1 themselves is going through utter hell. That simple 2 digit expression does nothing to encompass the dents in pride, the loss of dignity, the unstemmed anger, nor the ferocious intense desperation to understand why this is happening and why it must happen so fast and why their post in particular has been selected for deletion. It lacks emotion, a -1. And yet for some it will evoke a very different emotion - satisfaction, achievement and relief that there's one less salary draining the deficit ever downwards.
Of course, it never is just -1. It's -spouse +2.4. A family, in other words, who probably rely rather heavily on the -1's pay if the -1 is male. Because we still live in a society, whether we like it or not, where 9 times out of 10 the main earner is male.
Let's not even contemplate the decimation caused by there being two -1's in the same household - surely that could never happen - people don't show emotion at work. People don't fall in love at work. People don't marry people they fall in love with. At work.
It's a long path to the confirmation that you will be -1. But...
There are other people in this equation. The non entities. The non existant. The invisible. I call them the guilty. I am one of them. We survived. This time. But we all, to the last, know our number is up. That the only job post left in local government will be procurement and commissioning. We're all checking job pages and we're all looking at the ties which bind and desperately trying to work out a way of unravelling them, burning them, escaping them.
We sit and try and be positive. We sit and try and maintain some kind of service. We lose ourselves, some of us, in the process and the procedure as a way of dealing with the guilt of surviving and watching colleagues and friends going through hell. Some of us have shed tears. Some of us have drunk the sadness away. Some of us have got disproportionately angry in random places. Some of us have snapped, some of us has been unnecessary harsh, some of us aren't sleeping and the bags are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Frankly, people in both camps look like hell, right now.
The problem with Twitter, you see, is that you only see half the story. Don't judge people on the way it might look that they are or are not dealing right now. Don't assume life is rosy just because some people have an in built relentless need to find the positive. It doesn't mean we don't feel. It doesn't mean we have no emotions. It simply means we don't know how else to deal and the show must go on.
Sounds callous. But we serve. That's what we do.
There are two camps on Twitter, replicating the two camps which exist out in the real world. There are those who've been issued risk notices, those who're interviewing, some at the mercy of matrices and some whose 90 days notice has been issued and who are winding down and searching for work.
But there are also those who got issued (and those who didn't) with 90 day notices which got pulled. There are those who got interviewed and were successful. There were those whose skills came up rosy on the matrices.
It's a complicated mix of complicated and intricate emotions inflicted on a group of people who are, in the main, terribly British.
Welcome to the car crash which is currently local government. Where no one quite knows what to say, everyone either feels miserable or guilty, and the work, the service, must still go on.
Epiphanies
I love the word, but that's beside the point.
An old ex boyfriend found me today on Twitter. No dramas, we parted company reasonably amicably and time passes and turns reasonably into water passing under bridges. We swapped details, little has changed, he's doing very well for himself as a PM at Channel 4 and I'm earning nothing at all in some ex cotton mill town in deepest darkest East Lancashire.
I left it there. I didn't have to. I merely explained peoples job roles didn't define them and dropped it. And there was the epiphany. I've got nothing to prove and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether I am more or less successful compared to my old peers at university. It doesn't matter that I live in a run down falling apart terrace. It doesn't matter that the roof leaks sometimes. It doesn't matter that the garden is tarmac and over looked by what feels like hundreds.
I'm proud of my job. I am more than my job. My extra-curricular activities these days define me perhaps more, and would perhaps look more successful to outsiders than the ones I undertake during my working day.
I just left it. It doesn't matter. It's not a competition. Local government doesn't get done because it's noble, because it's cool, or because it's what success looks like in this modern world.
Local gov gets done because some of us care. And are proud to care. And whilst my work/life balance is receiving some TLC at the moment, I will continue to care. Where I express that care might change, but the caring never will. It just is.
But for a 30 something, it's about the most uncool damn job in the whole wide world.
An old ex boyfriend found me today on Twitter. No dramas, we parted company reasonably amicably and time passes and turns reasonably into water passing under bridges. We swapped details, little has changed, he's doing very well for himself as a PM at Channel 4 and I'm earning nothing at all in some ex cotton mill town in deepest darkest East Lancashire.
I left it there. I didn't have to. I merely explained peoples job roles didn't define them and dropped it. And there was the epiphany. I've got nothing to prove and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether I am more or less successful compared to my old peers at university. It doesn't matter that I live in a run down falling apart terrace. It doesn't matter that the roof leaks sometimes. It doesn't matter that the garden is tarmac and over looked by what feels like hundreds.
I'm proud of my job. I am more than my job. My extra-curricular activities these days define me perhaps more, and would perhaps look more successful to outsiders than the ones I undertake during my working day.
I just left it. It doesn't matter. It's not a competition. Local government doesn't get done because it's noble, because it's cool, or because it's what success looks like in this modern world.
Local gov gets done because some of us care. And are proud to care. And whilst my work/life balance is receiving some TLC at the moment, I will continue to care. Where I express that care might change, but the caring never will. It just is.
But for a 30 something, it's about the most uncool damn job in the whole wide world.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
ROI for social networking
I don't have any answers. Lets get that clear right up front. What I do have is some questions and some personal experience to share. If you're looking for numbers - wrong place. I'd send you somewhere else to find them but...well we'll come to that.
Return on Investment is a big big deal at the moment, not only in the private sector, where you'd expect it to be at the top of everyone's list, but also in the public sector, especially in the current climate. It is not enough, any more, to justify your existence in your job by saying you improve 'engagement' or your help citizens understand your services better, or that you make sure everyone has an equal opportunity of knowing an event is happening in their area which might be of personal or professional development for them. No. Money, revenue and profit are king.
Perhaps that's the way it always should have been. Perhaps not. A debate for someone else to hold, for I don't have the stomach for it today.
Instead I'd like to examine some difficult concepts. Ones which don't neatly fit a monetary model. Things which don't immediately achieve a quantifiable aim, despite the fact that they may do in the long run. Points I alluded to two paragraphs above.
Social networking allows you to do something no other current form of communication allows you to do. Speak with one voice or many voices, to many people. It grates to refer to audiences, but I am going to, for the moment. Because until you engage with a group of people, they are merely that. An audience sitting and waiting for someone to come to them and talk to them. Our residents, across large parts of the United Kingdom are simply that. They are on Facebook, less on Twitter, more on YouTube and on Flickr. They are communicating with each other using those channels. But we are not communicating with them.
Broadcast, by definition, means a one way push of information, outwards. But if there is no broadcast, then there will never be engagement, because there is nothing to respond to. A void. Not venturing into the social networking space means an assumption will be made, increasingly, that you do not think it is worth talking to people where they are already holding the conversations. So to broadcast is to open up a channel of communication, to step tentatively into the space, to say 'we are here, we are aware you are there, and we are testing the waters a little to see what you do'.
The next step from that is usually in the form of comments based on the broadcast. A tentative response back, to find out how you will respond to questions and queries, to find out if the response time will be something useful, to find out if the people monitoring the communication channel are actually monitoring it properly and going to be of some use. At this point, the line wavers - a response will turn this social networking venture into an engagement - ignoring it into broadcast.
That moment is pivotal. It's the point where an audience turns into a community, a broadcast into a conversation. It is the point where an organisations reputation can almost live or die - on one response. Because the response is not just seen by the one requesting it - it is seen by the many who received the original broadcast.
What is there to be gained from turning a broadcast into a conversation?
Return on Investment is a big big deal at the moment, not only in the private sector, where you'd expect it to be at the top of everyone's list, but also in the public sector, especially in the current climate. It is not enough, any more, to justify your existence in your job by saying you improve 'engagement' or your help citizens understand your services better, or that you make sure everyone has an equal opportunity of knowing an event is happening in their area which might be of personal or professional development for them. No. Money, revenue and profit are king.
Perhaps that's the way it always should have been. Perhaps not. A debate for someone else to hold, for I don't have the stomach for it today.
Instead I'd like to examine some difficult concepts. Ones which don't neatly fit a monetary model. Things which don't immediately achieve a quantifiable aim, despite the fact that they may do in the long run. Points I alluded to two paragraphs above.
Social networking allows you to do something no other current form of communication allows you to do. Speak with one voice or many voices, to many people. It grates to refer to audiences, but I am going to, for the moment. Because until you engage with a group of people, they are merely that. An audience sitting and waiting for someone to come to them and talk to them. Our residents, across large parts of the United Kingdom are simply that. They are on Facebook, less on Twitter, more on YouTube and on Flickr. They are communicating with each other using those channels. But we are not communicating with them.
Broadcast, by definition, means a one way push of information, outwards. But if there is no broadcast, then there will never be engagement, because there is nothing to respond to. A void. Not venturing into the social networking space means an assumption will be made, increasingly, that you do not think it is worth talking to people where they are already holding the conversations. So to broadcast is to open up a channel of communication, to step tentatively into the space, to say 'we are here, we are aware you are there, and we are testing the waters a little to see what you do'.
The next step from that is usually in the form of comments based on the broadcast. A tentative response back, to find out how you will respond to questions and queries, to find out if the response time will be something useful, to find out if the people monitoring the communication channel are actually monitoring it properly and going to be of some use. At this point, the line wavers - a response will turn this social networking venture into an engagement - ignoring it into broadcast.
That moment is pivotal. It's the point where an audience turns into a community, a broadcast into a conversation. It is the point where an organisations reputation can almost live or die - on one response. Because the response is not just seen by the one requesting it - it is seen by the many who received the original broadcast.
What is there to be gained from turning a broadcast into a conversation?
- Reputation increase - you are responding in public & demonstrating your customer service in public
- This should have a knock on effect onto any customer satisfaction surveys you run online
- Getting straight to an issue before it becomes escalated
- Putting a public face on a Council often takes the heat out of peoples attacks born of frustration - it is harder to attack a person than it is a faceless entity
- Access to easy to reach opinions for your Citizens Panels from already demonstrably engaged citizens
- Ability to connect with the 'harder to reach' sectors of society
- Ready made pool of people who can potentially be turned into advocates and champions in their community for areas such as digital skills/community clean ups or looking after neighbours during adverse weather
- A way of seeing who is viewing information on an event and who is signing up
- Targeted information to the people you're talking to about events etc - because you can ask them what they're interested in and then make sure they're told about the relevant information
- News from on the ground in real time about problems but also successes in the community
- News from on the ground about environmental issues which you will no longer have the staff to send out to check for
- News on the ground about missing or damaged assets which you will no longer have the staff to send out to survey
None of those things are quantifiable. None of those things are measurable. You will be able to see how many people are reading your words. But you wont be able to measure the time and money saved on surveying assets for issues, for example. You wont be able to actually see a monetary return in your satisfaction scores going up - only that they're going up. You wont know immediately that people feel more comfortable talking to you this way in what feels a more unofficial and therefore less intimidating capacity for a while. You might never know unless you ask. You wont perhaps notice the increased attendance at events as you start to get the message out in the right places and at the right times for people to pay attention.
Numbers are measurable. Increases in attitude, satisfaction and attendance are measurable. But how does that link to monetary ROI? It doesn't. These are not savings, these are not investments, these people don't affect funding or even National Indicators any more.
Yet using social networking improves the perception of the Council, the connected nature of a community, allows conversations to happen which never would have before, breeds community spirit, a sense of belonging and empowerment and citizenship and best of all, makes running events as a Council more efficient as more people turn up.
There's no monetary value in it, but does that mean there is no value in it? How are we now measuring ourselves as Councils in this current climate, and is there room for engagement?
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Linked augmentation
The following post is entirely Hadley Beeman's (@hadleybeeman) fault. So much is, actually, when it comes to opendata and linked data - just Google her and you'll find it why. For the US orientated among you, Hadley is essentially our national lead on opendata in the UK, she's an American and she yay's. In public. Unashamedly. And that makes her just awesome because us Brits, frankly, we do not yay enough.
Anyway.
This tweet kicked off a waterfall of thoughts and feelings:
"Soundthing: Ambient music selection: just walking into a pub with your phone can bend the pub's playlist towards your Spotify prefs. #gsxsw"
The tag is also worth investigating - gsxsw was curated by Rewired State (Emma Mulqueeny) and held at the Guardian newspaper offices this weekend - it was a hack day with a bit of a difference. Hack days might be a Brit thing also - if so, Google it, there's some amazing stuff going from idea to actuality here at the moment under these banners.
So, the tweet led me to respond with the idea that not only would the pubs sound system bend to me and my mates Spotified taste in music, but that this would somewhere be recorded for future questioning - that somehow I would land in a new city and know where to find like minded music lovers because I could see on a map layer or something similar all the pubs which linked with my Spotify preferences by more than x percent, where I set the percentage. So, for example, and purely hypothetically (ahem) if I hated 80's music with a passion most people only reserved for politicians, I could avoid pubs which played any 80's music at all. Or, if I was ambivalent to ambient but absolutely loved techno, I could set the filter percentages accordingly and go and find my tribe. Or if I was feeling kinda brave and adventurous, I could change the settings randomly with a button and land somewhere entirely new and unlikely.
But, I thought, what if you took that further? What if you took that out of a pub environment, that linked data which told me where I should be depending on my musical preferences, and as Hadley suggested with food, you applied it to something else?
I'm going to segue a little and tell you a story, based purely on an experience I had yesterday. It's true and it's relevant, so bare with me a little if this comes across as self indulgent.
I've got quite severe tendonitis which flares up every now and again. It means my tendon contracts which then pulls on the muscle above it which dislikes it, which then has a knock on effect upwards again. Riding my bike fixes it, I've not ridden my bike for a bit thanks to snow and torrential rain. You try mountain biking in snow on tech Northern trails sometime. Anyway.
We went out for the day and parked up in Manchester, in a car park we don't normally use. The car park is essentially one of those 'this used to have something built on it (in this case Boddingtons Brewery), it now doesn't, someone decided to make money off the land by parking cars on it'. My other half led us towards a sneaky exit he knew which wasn't the official exit. Just by the exit out onto the street was a short but incredibly steep upward incline. My calf muscles combined have lost about 1/2 inch of flexibility. Lots of unladylike swearing ensued. For the next 30 minutes walking was faintly hideous. It eventually stopped when I relented and dived into a handy second hand bookshop to let them calm down a little and stop contracting.
It could have been avoided, those 30 minutes of pain, and I'll tell you how. Augmented linked data. Somewhere else out there, I have no doubt, is someone else with slightly broken calf muscles who's probably done exactly the same thing and was discomforted enough to want to ensure someone else didn't suffer the same ouchiness. Currently, there is no way for her to do that. Currently, there is no way for me to do that. I can't tell anyone. Putting it on a forum would be pointless, it would get lost in the noise. Putting it an email to someone would get me nowhere. I now know something about the environment in a car park in Manchester would could save someone else some pain and I can't share.
In each of our heads is data. We know things. Some of these things are small, so infinitesimally small that we might never think of sharing them or that they might be of worth to someone else, and some of those things are very big things. Some of those big things are only big to us and some of those big things would make the world a better place if we could share them with everyone.
Imagine, then, a way of sharing, if you wanted to, everything you ever knew about obstacles or opportunities. A world where on your GPS there was a layer you could switch on or off which linked in to the local councils database in the area you were passing through and told you where the major potholes were or into the local police database so you could know as a motorcyclist where the accident blackspots and blind corners were. Or, even, which gate you needed to slow down for as you passed it because the cows always came across the road for milking at 4:45pm and as a result the road would be slippy and possibly treacherous for the next few hours after.
Imagine a world where local knowledge was at your fingertips. Don't park down that side street because anyone who does gets broken into - or if you must remove the GPS suction circle from your windscreen because the only people who get broken into are the people who forget. Imagine a world where you knew which restaurants and pubs were genuinely child friendly because other parents had indicated it so and you could see this in real time when driving down a street without having to get your smartphone out of your pocket, because your GPS told you? No more relying on the restaurant owners claims to be child friendly when his definition includes a high chair but nothing else.
But most of all, to me, imagine a world where you could see issues before they arose. Where people with sensory overload problems could reference to other people with similar issues without ever needing to know their name, but only by linking with someone just because they have a similar intolerance, and following where they've been and had problems, but more importantly where they've been and not had any problems at all.
A world where I'd never have walked up the slope because someone with the same issue as me had a way of indicating somehow that people with x issue should use the gate on the flat at the other end, should walk the long way around, should not even think about attempting if in a wheelchair.
In my world, in my future, I believe these things will happen. I believe everyone will see through the same eyes I do - through eyes which see data layered across and streamed through reality in real time. One where my world is shaped by others experiences who are like me. One where there are no potholes to break your suspension and no steep inclines to break your muscles.
Don't tell me tech can't change the world for the better. Don't tell me maps don't matter and visualisation is pointless. Don't tell me these are pipe dreams. If no one dreams, reality will never be changed. Yes, thinking small allows people to JFDI. But sometimes, just sometimes, someone has got to think BIG.
Anyway.
This tweet kicked off a waterfall of thoughts and feelings:
"Soundthing: Ambient music selection: just walking into a pub with your phone can bend the pub's playlist towards your Spotify prefs. #gsxsw"
The tag is also worth investigating - gsxsw was curated by Rewired State (Emma Mulqueeny) and held at the Guardian newspaper offices this weekend - it was a hack day with a bit of a difference. Hack days might be a Brit thing also - if so, Google it, there's some amazing stuff going from idea to actuality here at the moment under these banners.
So, the tweet led me to respond with the idea that not only would the pubs sound system bend to me and my mates Spotified taste in music, but that this would somewhere be recorded for future questioning - that somehow I would land in a new city and know where to find like minded music lovers because I could see on a map layer or something similar all the pubs which linked with my Spotify preferences by more than x percent, where I set the percentage. So, for example, and purely hypothetically (ahem) if I hated 80's music with a passion most people only reserved for politicians, I could avoid pubs which played any 80's music at all. Or, if I was ambivalent to ambient but absolutely loved techno, I could set the filter percentages accordingly and go and find my tribe. Or if I was feeling kinda brave and adventurous, I could change the settings randomly with a button and land somewhere entirely new and unlikely.
But, I thought, what if you took that further? What if you took that out of a pub environment, that linked data which told me where I should be depending on my musical preferences, and as Hadley suggested with food, you applied it to something else?
I'm going to segue a little and tell you a story, based purely on an experience I had yesterday. It's true and it's relevant, so bare with me a little if this comes across as self indulgent.
I've got quite severe tendonitis which flares up every now and again. It means my tendon contracts which then pulls on the muscle above it which dislikes it, which then has a knock on effect upwards again. Riding my bike fixes it, I've not ridden my bike for a bit thanks to snow and torrential rain. You try mountain biking in snow on tech Northern trails sometime. Anyway.
We went out for the day and parked up in Manchester, in a car park we don't normally use. The car park is essentially one of those 'this used to have something built on it (in this case Boddingtons Brewery), it now doesn't, someone decided to make money off the land by parking cars on it'. My other half led us towards a sneaky exit he knew which wasn't the official exit. Just by the exit out onto the street was a short but incredibly steep upward incline. My calf muscles combined have lost about 1/2 inch of flexibility. Lots of unladylike swearing ensued. For the next 30 minutes walking was faintly hideous. It eventually stopped when I relented and dived into a handy second hand bookshop to let them calm down a little and stop contracting.
It could have been avoided, those 30 minutes of pain, and I'll tell you how. Augmented linked data. Somewhere else out there, I have no doubt, is someone else with slightly broken calf muscles who's probably done exactly the same thing and was discomforted enough to want to ensure someone else didn't suffer the same ouchiness. Currently, there is no way for her to do that. Currently, there is no way for me to do that. I can't tell anyone. Putting it on a forum would be pointless, it would get lost in the noise. Putting it an email to someone would get me nowhere. I now know something about the environment in a car park in Manchester would could save someone else some pain and I can't share.
In each of our heads is data. We know things. Some of these things are small, so infinitesimally small that we might never think of sharing them or that they might be of worth to someone else, and some of those things are very big things. Some of those big things are only big to us and some of those big things would make the world a better place if we could share them with everyone.
Imagine, then, a way of sharing, if you wanted to, everything you ever knew about obstacles or opportunities. A world where on your GPS there was a layer you could switch on or off which linked in to the local councils database in the area you were passing through and told you where the major potholes were or into the local police database so you could know as a motorcyclist where the accident blackspots and blind corners were. Or, even, which gate you needed to slow down for as you passed it because the cows always came across the road for milking at 4:45pm and as a result the road would be slippy and possibly treacherous for the next few hours after.
Imagine a world where local knowledge was at your fingertips. Don't park down that side street because anyone who does gets broken into - or if you must remove the GPS suction circle from your windscreen because the only people who get broken into are the people who forget. Imagine a world where you knew which restaurants and pubs were genuinely child friendly because other parents had indicated it so and you could see this in real time when driving down a street without having to get your smartphone out of your pocket, because your GPS told you? No more relying on the restaurant owners claims to be child friendly when his definition includes a high chair but nothing else.
But most of all, to me, imagine a world where you could see issues before they arose. Where people with sensory overload problems could reference to other people with similar issues without ever needing to know their name, but only by linking with someone just because they have a similar intolerance, and following where they've been and had problems, but more importantly where they've been and not had any problems at all.
A world where I'd never have walked up the slope because someone with the same issue as me had a way of indicating somehow that people with x issue should use the gate on the flat at the other end, should walk the long way around, should not even think about attempting if in a wheelchair.
In my world, in my future, I believe these things will happen. I believe everyone will see through the same eyes I do - through eyes which see data layered across and streamed through reality in real time. One where my world is shaped by others experiences who are like me. One where there are no potholes to break your suspension and no steep inclines to break your muscles.
Don't tell me tech can't change the world for the better. Don't tell me maps don't matter and visualisation is pointless. Don't tell me these are pipe dreams. If no one dreams, reality will never be changed. Yes, thinking small allows people to JFDI. But sometimes, just sometimes, someone has got to think BIG.
Saturday, 12 February 2011
The curious tale of the mysterious triangle
The web amplifies. And here's a good example of how the silliest little thing can go viral. Of how unintentional geekness thrown together in 10 minutes can suddenly end up with people from Cologne to California commenting on that geekness and people saying thank you in quite sweet and lovely ways.
On January 12th this year I created this:
I studied Human Resources among other things, and in that module we studied something called Maslows Hierarchy of Needs - which looks pretty similar to the above. Which is not accidental - I copied the idea and I copied the headings. I just made up the sub contents. It didn't take long to put together - look closely and you'll see some of the graphical hideousness - but it wasn't supposed to be serious, it was supposed to be a celebration but also a mockery of geek culture, because, well, if we don't laugh at ourselves...
O'Reilly have been on my radar since university days - mid 90's. The Llama book is my personal nemesis, the first one I owned. It's so called, because yes, you guessed it, it's got a llama on the front. In those days, as far as I am aware, every single O'Reilly book had an animal on it and thus was referred to, not by its title, but by the animal on the front of it. It was an in joke, a little, but also, geeks love visuals (it's the theme of this entire post after all) and it just worked. Every single respectable, intelligent, high achieving geek I know has owned or borrowed one of those books. Every. Single. One. As a publishing house, among geeks, they have achieved a status only rivalled by, well, TED actually. You know when you pick up an O'Reilly book, you're getting well researched, well written text which will do exactly what it says on the tin. No messing about. No authors pretending to be experts and filling the book with drivel and posturing. No. There is a reason the Computing section in Foyles has a dedicated O'Reilly shelf, okay? Trust me on this if you've never heard of them - they are epic.
So someone from O'Reilly Media commented on my pyramid. And I nearly fell off my chair on Friday when I read it. Add this pic to our group pool and our Facebook page they said. So I did. I then received a tweet from someone at O'Reilly asking me to DM them my email as they'd like to say thanks. I'm still not entirely sure what for. They also pointed out that the pyramid had been posted on O'Reilly Facebook pages in Cologne and California. That they'd posted it on their own Posterous and it had been reblogged 500 times.
So, the 11500 views and counting on that picture on Flickr perhaps only tell a part of the story. But it is a quite insane story and it doesn't end there, either. But that bit is for later when it actually happens as I think I will have to pinch myself a number of times to actually believe it even might, never mind that it will. In the meantime, thanks to a very very generous multinational corporation with more grace than I ever expected, I'm off to download some free books they gave me to say thank you.
10 minutes. 11,500 views. One slightly befuddled geek.
On January 12th this year I created this:
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| You'll need to click to be able to read it |
So I threw it up on Flickr where my account is under the name whitelighted and I tweeted it and a couple hundred people viewed it and that was that.
That should have been that, really. And you know, in any other world but the one we live in right now, it would have been that.
Except something a bit odd happened. For 3 weeks after, every now and again an email from Flickr would pop into my Inbox. Very unusual. And it would tell me someone had favourited my 'photo'. No one left a comment but the views went from hundreds to thousands. About 2 weeks ago it settled at around 5000 and I thought 'well that's not a bad first attempt at an infographic', tweeted something similar and left it at that.
Then I went to the SFX Weekender, a geek camp run by a sci-fi magazine called SFX in the UK. And I tweeted the pic last Sunday night onto the hashtag #sfxweekender. And it all got a little bit silly. Because my inbox kicked off again and so did the views. Out of curiosity I googled 'geek hierarchy of needs' and found it had been posted on Facebook in someones public stream and on a few geek sites in the States. On Wednesday I figured changing my display name on Flickr to @loulouk might be an idea so people could come find me if they wanted to. People left comments. O'Reilly Media left a comment.
Yeah.
You see on the top level of my pyramid are four things: speaking at TED, writing for O'Reilly, working in California and changing the world.
TED is, and will continue hopefully to be, the best source of free inspiration and hope on the web. One day, in some dreamland that doesn't exist, I'd like to stand on stage and tell people what digital has done for me, what it has allowed me to become, how it has utterly viscerally and completely changed my life, my world, my outlook and my future. I want to tell people anything is possible and I want to tell them how important it is that they tell everyone they meet who doesn't think anything is possible that it damn well is and mean it and that they've got proof it damn well is cos they saw a girl from the bottom stand on stage and speak from the top.
O'Reilly have been on my radar since university days - mid 90's. The Llama book is my personal nemesis, the first one I owned. It's so called, because yes, you guessed it, it's got a llama on the front. In those days, as far as I am aware, every single O'Reilly book had an animal on it and thus was referred to, not by its title, but by the animal on the front of it. It was an in joke, a little, but also, geeks love visuals (it's the theme of this entire post after all) and it just worked. Every single respectable, intelligent, high achieving geek I know has owned or borrowed one of those books. Every. Single. One. As a publishing house, among geeks, they have achieved a status only rivalled by, well, TED actually. You know when you pick up an O'Reilly book, you're getting well researched, well written text which will do exactly what it says on the tin. No messing about. No authors pretending to be experts and filling the book with drivel and posturing. No. There is a reason the Computing section in Foyles has a dedicated O'Reilly shelf, okay? Trust me on this if you've never heard of them - they are epic.
So someone from O'Reilly Media commented on my pyramid. And I nearly fell off my chair on Friday when I read it. Add this pic to our group pool and our Facebook page they said. So I did. I then received a tweet from someone at O'Reilly asking me to DM them my email as they'd like to say thanks. I'm still not entirely sure what for. They also pointed out that the pyramid had been posted on O'Reilly Facebook pages in Cologne and California. That they'd posted it on their own Posterous and it had been reblogged 500 times.
So, the 11500 views and counting on that picture on Flickr perhaps only tell a part of the story. But it is a quite insane story and it doesn't end there, either. But that bit is for later when it actually happens as I think I will have to pinch myself a number of times to actually believe it even might, never mind that it will. In the meantime, thanks to a very very generous multinational corporation with more grace than I ever expected, I'm off to download some free books they gave me to say thank you.
10 minutes. 11,500 views. One slightly befuddled geek.
Friday, 11 February 2011
You've come a long way baby
Yeah, so it's a me post. Sorry. Something @willperrin said to me today after this afternoons #lgovsm session has really really hit a sore spot. So, naturally, I'm here to share the sore spot. Because I'm that kind of girl. But also because...he had a point. And it's always the comments which are true which hurt the most.
He said I'd do better if I focused less on social media and more on business objectives.
He doesn't know. Which indicates to me that quite a lot of you don't know either. So here's the truth, plain and simple.
I had never even read a strategy until 12 months ago. I didn't know our Council objectives until 6 months ago. I didn't know we had Council meetings. I didn't know we had an Executive Board. I didn't know what being a Unitary Authority meant. I didn't even know 'local government' was the correct term for what we were. I didn't know how it all tied together. I wouldn't have recognised one of our Councillors if they'd hit me in the face. I'd spoken to a Director (one) once or twice. I usually went through his PA. The PA ordered me around and over saw what I did sometimes. I was managed by a Business Support Manager, and in all but name, I was an administrator. There to make the tea for meetings, do others bidding, not think, not suggest, not have ideas, not hack workflows, not suggest, not get involved in big discussions.
I didn't in the evenings either. I went home and I played World of Warcraft. I used my brain to level faster, to see the loopholes and quick damage configurations. I didn't take it seriously, I didn't really work well as a team in big raids, I wasn't anything special.
I studied a HND in Business and Finance at university. I failed a module. An accounting module. I kicked ass in the rest of them, but I failed all the same. Didn't apply myself.
I had a job once, where I managed 15 ppl almost straight out of university. I was in my early 20's. I got promoted from helpdesk to team leader quickly, and probably would have made call centre manager eventually. Until I took voluntary redundancy after firing people twice my age kind of took the sparkle away and the dot com crash ripped the heart out of a company I was so proud to work for and so dedicated to I drank, laughed and grew up with my colleagues and some of the team members.
I learn fast. Voraciously. I pick up terminology fast. I catch on quick. Throw me in at the deep end and 9 times out of 10 I will swim. But don't presume I always know what you're talking about without needing to Google something quickly first. Don't assume I've got a background in policy or strategy or PR or marketing.
I've self taught everything I know. It means there's gaps. It means I'm smart, yes, but it means there are gaps. Understanding social media and digital and where it fits into the larger picture of a massive organisation is something I am still grappling with. I'm still putting the finishing touches to a strategy for the organisation I work for and completing an Executive Summary for it when 12 months ago I didn't know what an Executive Summary even was. I've borrowed someone elses template and populated the strategy from scratch.
I am learning by asking questions. I am learning through taking part in #lgovsm - I set it up as a learning platform for me as much as for anyone else. I didn't set it up for attention. I didn't set it up for comment or compliments. I set it up because I needed it and I hoped other people needed it too.
I can write. I can express myself using words. I can wrestle with difficult concepts. But in the process of doing so, don't assume I understand them, only that I am trying to get my head around something because I just want to know more.
I have never and will never present myself as an expert on anything. I wrote posts and articles from the point of view of someone in the middle of all this beautiful digital magic who looks around and asks questions, who queries the assumed, who wants to know why people have always done things a certain way and how they can be done differently.
I disclaimer every post, because I need to. Because I am not sure of myself. Because I am painfully aware of where I've come from, which is nowhere at all. But I am learning, I am progressing and thanks to the help of very very many people I am finding my feet here in this shiny world. But it takes time and everyone has their own pace and everyone is somewhere different along that learning curve - so be patient with me, okay?
Someone asked today, whether I wanted to be an Officer or a Director. I don't know the answer, the same as I didn't when someone asked me the week after I started in my current job. Tiger Tiger, burning bright etc etc. What I do have is a complete and utter determination to change things, to make things easier, to make things clearer and simpler, to allow Plain English to reign, to help shape our future so it doesn't descend into digital chaos, to try and allow the little guys voices to be heard, to hack workflows and change worlds.
I want to change worlds. Big aspiration for a little girl, and I don't know where it came from, I don't know why I am like this, only that I can't switch it off, can't simply make it go away. So if I have to become a Director to make any kind of different in this world, well then maybe one day I will be good enough. One day. With a lot of hard work, reading, learning and questioning.
Still standing at a crossroads and still not sure which way to turn. But I do know I need to be more strategic and I do need to understand business objectives better in order to play with the big boys. And since that appears to be where I am being thrown, then so be it. I will learn.
It hurt, that comment. But it's taken on board and acknowledged. But please acknowledge too, how so very very far a little administrator has come.
He said I'd do better if I focused less on social media and more on business objectives.
He doesn't know. Which indicates to me that quite a lot of you don't know either. So here's the truth, plain and simple.
I had never even read a strategy until 12 months ago. I didn't know our Council objectives until 6 months ago. I didn't know we had Council meetings. I didn't know we had an Executive Board. I didn't know what being a Unitary Authority meant. I didn't even know 'local government' was the correct term for what we were. I didn't know how it all tied together. I wouldn't have recognised one of our Councillors if they'd hit me in the face. I'd spoken to a Director (one) once or twice. I usually went through his PA. The PA ordered me around and over saw what I did sometimes. I was managed by a Business Support Manager, and in all but name, I was an administrator. There to make the tea for meetings, do others bidding, not think, not suggest, not have ideas, not hack workflows, not suggest, not get involved in big discussions.
I didn't in the evenings either. I went home and I played World of Warcraft. I used my brain to level faster, to see the loopholes and quick damage configurations. I didn't take it seriously, I didn't really work well as a team in big raids, I wasn't anything special.
I studied a HND in Business and Finance at university. I failed a module. An accounting module. I kicked ass in the rest of them, but I failed all the same. Didn't apply myself.
I had a job once, where I managed 15 ppl almost straight out of university. I was in my early 20's. I got promoted from helpdesk to team leader quickly, and probably would have made call centre manager eventually. Until I took voluntary redundancy after firing people twice my age kind of took the sparkle away and the dot com crash ripped the heart out of a company I was so proud to work for and so dedicated to I drank, laughed and grew up with my colleagues and some of the team members.
I learn fast. Voraciously. I pick up terminology fast. I catch on quick. Throw me in at the deep end and 9 times out of 10 I will swim. But don't presume I always know what you're talking about without needing to Google something quickly first. Don't assume I've got a background in policy or strategy or PR or marketing.
I've self taught everything I know. It means there's gaps. It means I'm smart, yes, but it means there are gaps. Understanding social media and digital and where it fits into the larger picture of a massive organisation is something I am still grappling with. I'm still putting the finishing touches to a strategy for the organisation I work for and completing an Executive Summary for it when 12 months ago I didn't know what an Executive Summary even was. I've borrowed someone elses template and populated the strategy from scratch.
I am learning by asking questions. I am learning through taking part in #lgovsm - I set it up as a learning platform for me as much as for anyone else. I didn't set it up for attention. I didn't set it up for comment or compliments. I set it up because I needed it and I hoped other people needed it too.
I can write. I can express myself using words. I can wrestle with difficult concepts. But in the process of doing so, don't assume I understand them, only that I am trying to get my head around something because I just want to know more.
I have never and will never present myself as an expert on anything. I wrote posts and articles from the point of view of someone in the middle of all this beautiful digital magic who looks around and asks questions, who queries the assumed, who wants to know why people have always done things a certain way and how they can be done differently.
I disclaimer every post, because I need to. Because I am not sure of myself. Because I am painfully aware of where I've come from, which is nowhere at all. But I am learning, I am progressing and thanks to the help of very very many people I am finding my feet here in this shiny world. But it takes time and everyone has their own pace and everyone is somewhere different along that learning curve - so be patient with me, okay?
Someone asked today, whether I wanted to be an Officer or a Director. I don't know the answer, the same as I didn't when someone asked me the week after I started in my current job. Tiger Tiger, burning bright etc etc. What I do have is a complete and utter determination to change things, to make things easier, to make things clearer and simpler, to allow Plain English to reign, to help shape our future so it doesn't descend into digital chaos, to try and allow the little guys voices to be heard, to hack workflows and change worlds.
I want to change worlds. Big aspiration for a little girl, and I don't know where it came from, I don't know why I am like this, only that I can't switch it off, can't simply make it go away. So if I have to become a Director to make any kind of different in this world, well then maybe one day I will be good enough. One day. With a lot of hard work, reading, learning and questioning.
Still standing at a crossroads and still not sure which way to turn. But I do know I need to be more strategic and I do need to understand business objectives better in order to play with the big boys. And since that appears to be where I am being thrown, then so be it. I will learn.
It hurt, that comment. But it's taken on board and acknowledged. But please acknowledge too, how so very very far a little administrator has come.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Thought for the day
When did a multi-million pound operation like a Council become reduced to 'an organisation which provides libraries'?
Some damn expensive libraries.
And some abandoned other issues. Telling issues. Like youth centres. Like SureStart. Like all the voluntary sector funding gone. Like rural bus routes disappearing.
I'm guessing some complaints might start appearing when the '10,000 holes...' jokes stop being funny and start being a reality and wrecking front axles.
And I'm also guessing that by that point, everyone will have forgotten that an Auntie or sister was made redundant, and the moaning will start about cutting front line services.
Some damn expensive libraries.
And some abandoned other issues. Telling issues. Like youth centres. Like SureStart. Like all the voluntary sector funding gone. Like rural bus routes disappearing.
I'm guessing some complaints might start appearing when the '10,000 holes...' jokes stop being funny and start being a reality and wrecking front axles.
And I'm also guessing that by that point, everyone will have forgotten that an Auntie or sister was made redundant, and the moaning will start about cutting front line services.
Monday, 7 February 2011
21st century branding
So, day zero for Blackburn with Darwen draws to a close. There will be 500 or so compulsory redundancies and there is no way to avoid them. 500 more posts have been deleted - meaning a total, by mid summer of 1000 posts which will simply no longer exist. What that means for the people left behind wont be clear for months, perhaps not even before the end of the year, but for those 500 people, I have some advice. It's offered freely and for free, because I believe there but for the grace of god, but also because I am going to call it straight.
Disagreement and discussion are, as ever, welcome.
Whether you like it or not, a social media presence right now is a sensible thing. And I'm not talking about your personal Facebook page. Smart people network their way into jobs - not by preferential treatment, but by knowing about jobs which might not be advertised in the normal way any more because there is no budget, but will be tweeted or posted on LinkedIn because it's free.
Networking aggressively will get you nowhere. Bombing hashtags with your consultancy offerings or training solutions will get you ignored at best and blocked at worst. It's lazy and it requires no thought - and the people whose stream you're interrupting will think you're a complete idiot and if you continue to do it, will get very cross at you.
Networking is a subtly nuanced thing. Build relationships with people. Don't bombard people with responses to every single one of their tweets, but if you have something in common with someone, in the same way that you would probably chat about football before a meeting started, chat to them about your common interest. Small talk paves the way for the more complicated work based stuff.
If communicating well with words is part of who you are, start a blog. Don't sell yourself directly, talk instead about the things which interest you. Comment is free. Well researched posts which are thought provoking and offer a different viewpoint of a policy, current affairs event or scientific discovery are usually welcomed. Don't think of it as giving away good ideas for free - think of it instead as a way of allowing other people to see what they're going to get if they should ever have a post free which you might fit into.
Being made redundant hurts. Just ask the MySpace lot. The natural reaction is to kick back and kick out. Social networking is a quick and easy way to do that. Unfortunately, for your opinion to have any credence, you're going to need to use your real name. And everything you type and submit, every negative comment, every piece of snark, every inappropriate comment will remain there as a testament to how carefully someone should consider when looking at employing you. Leaving your social networking profiles off your CV or consultancy pitch or tender wont work either. People Google. Get over it. Watch every word - it's fine to be upset and hurt, it's not fine to make the lives of those left behind hell - it's not their fault the axe didn't swing for them. Make sure that if you must be angry, the anger is pointed in the correct direction.
Set up your RSS feeds. If you don't know how to do that, ask me, ask on Twitter. Assorted job sites allow you to customise a search for jobs and then RSS the results, so that every morning, instead of wading through tonnes of emails in various states of undressed formatting, you can skim down a list which will update the second a new job role is posted to the relevant site, meaning in theory you could get the jump on a job application a few hours before less tech savvy applicants. Not such an issue with application form posts, but a big deal with agency advertised posts.
Find the people who are influential in your sector and read their blogs. Educate yourself. Blogs are full of the current thinking, current reactions and current issues and problems, and they're free. They're also often written by incredibly well respected academics or leaders in their respective fields. The same people who contribute and write white papers which you've probably been reading as part of your job. It's not good enough any more to wait for the papers to come to you - find out the thinking before it comes to you, and if you're comfortable doing so, leave comments and get into discussions. Make impressions - but most of all, bring your learning, awareness and thinking up to speed.
If you're a local govvie - take advantage of the fantastic live Q & A panels which the Guardian are running on almost a weekly basis to help you get a job, should you need one, or to set up a social enterprise should you want to, or how to improve internal communications even if you're one of the ones left behind. They're free, the experts on the panels generally really are, and they're free. Did I mention free? If you don't want to be seen to be asking for advice then set up an account which doesn't make it obvious its you - and ask the questions under that - the nature of the website means you wont be accorded any less consideration for not asking under your real name. The Guardian Local Government Network content is all archived and is a wonderful resource.
Learn to ask for help. Swallow your pride if you have to, but ask. We're all happy to help and assist - some of us for free and some of us not. Don't assume free is better, but don't assume it's worse either. Some people know some subjects much better than others. 9 times out of 10, I, or someone else will be able to point you in a specialists direction. If we do, it will be because we know they're good because we read their blog - spot the theme here? If you pay, or if you don't, you will get the same time and consideration - some people are practising giving information and training for free to gain confidence and to practice before they charge for it.
Finally? Baby steps. Don't create a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a Quora account and then.... Pick one. Focus on it. Build a repuation and a profile, and yes, I hate the word but build a brand. It will follow you when you become entirely comfortable on one of those sites and decide to move to another - each of the sites has a subtly different etiquette and a very different way of building reputation - trying to crack all of them at once will simply lead to complete confusion.
Disagreement and discussion are, as ever, welcome.
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Backslashed
Every revolution, every movement, every policy, every strategy has its backlash moment. This is the social media backlash. However, in a clear reflection of the way the world currently is, the backlash is not coming from mainstream traditional media. It's coming from within.
Within the space of 3 days, 4 people mentioned the book The Net Delusion to me. There seemed to be a bit of a buzz, and despite one person who recommended it doing so with a certain malicious glint in their eye, being a good little geek I downloaded the sample of it on my Kindle.
I got as far as the author both admitting he was an ex social media evangelist and that the web was entirely responsible for everything bad in the world before I deleted the sample without even getting to the end of it. We've all met ex-smokers, yes? Remember how irritating and irrational they can be? How they suddenly seemed to be rendered incapable of acknowledging personal choice? So too, ex anything else who suddenly decide they've been utterly deluded and need to tell the entire world about it. I want unbiased observations, commentary and analysis on a subject which has become so intrinsic to my existence, not the view of an ex anything.
The second issue I had, was the intimation that 'social media bods' were incapable of acknowledging that the web had made it incredibly easy, as the Egypt situation has eloquently shown, that it is very easy to flip a few switches and completely remove the new shiny ability to communicate instantly. However, amusingly, all Mubarak has shown is that removing tech means either a) someone will create a system which will turn text messages into tweets or b) there will be a revolution anyway, because once a ball that size is rolling down the hill, well, don't get in the way of it and if you do, expect to get rolled right over.
Extrapolating from this, there is also the acknowledgement that the web has made it far easier for groups such as the BNP, KKK and EDL to convene and organise, in the same way as the UKUNCUT groups also have. I'm not arguing with that. I don't think anyone would argue with that. What I am arguing with is the stupid notion that somehow someone who believed in what those groups stood for would never have managed to find an address to write to or a telephone number to call, or even a zine to subscribe to, before the web. To think this is deluded. To ignore the intelligence value to interested agencies is also stupid. Zines cannot be keyword monitored. Emails and Facebook groups can. Letters cannot be intercepted as easily as emails. All ISP's are legally obliged to keep everything sent digitally for 12 months across their servers by an EU Directive - something the government paid £12 billion towards last year. Further to this, GCHQ are planning mass monitoring techniques in order to keep up with what's being said where. Anyone who knows the history of cryptography and intelligence in this country will only be shocked that it has taken GCHQ this long to get in on the party. One suspects the CIA have not been so backward.
I acknowledge that monitoring in this way can be abused. So can telephone monitoring (hi, Mr Coulson), or, indeed, any kind of intelligence. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely etc etc. But the simple fact is, anyone who thinks that anything they do or say on the internet is private is stupid. There are simply different levels of privacy. And in some cases, that is a good thing, as it allows the people who look after us and make sure we don't get caught in the crossfire to monitor and keep tabs on 'interesting parties'. The truly scary thing, perhaps, is that I don't know who keeps an eye on the people keeping an eye - or rather that I do know who keeps an eye on who keeps an eye and they don't perhaps know enough about technology and its limitations and capabilities to be able to make fair judgements when asked to sign warrants. And back we go to the Digital Economy Act.
Once we've acknowledged absolute lack of privacy, what do we have then? An acknowledgement that as soon as a movement is big enough to be on a radar, there is no surprise and no secrecy. Infiltration used to be physical, by undercover police officers - now it's simply a matter of tapping on a keyboard and making sure IP ranges display properly. Simpler, one imagines. Less costly, also. But it hasn't changed the fact that intelligence gathering happens, it hasn't introduced anything new to the equation, it's simply changed the balance of the equation a little, perhaps moved power temporarily.
Ultimately, the same things happen in the same ways, with the same people watching the same other people - the only thing which has changed which is the range of tools to do the job. The power balance hasn't changed, the rules haven't changed and the actual outcomes haven't changed (Mubarak would have fallen, I believe, without Twitter, blogs or Facebook), it is simply the arena within which we all operate which has changed.
Just one more thought - almost every single piece of technology which you use on the web today, from instant chat to webcams, from secure payment transactions to mass collaboration is directly a result of the need for those same technologies in the porn industry.
Out of bad things can come good things. Out of good things, can come bad. But in the end, I believe it all balances. And if believing that makes me net deluded, so be it.
This post was entirely inspired by @curiousc aka Catherine Howe's wonderful post. In the reply I mentioned a server farm in East Anglia, because I honestly thought the government had gone ahead with their plans which were originally reported in Computer Weekly a good few years ago. Proper research (natch) resulted in the post above.
This post was entirely inspired by @curiousc aka Catherine Howe's wonderful post. In the reply I mentioned a server farm in East Anglia, because I honestly thought the government had gone ahead with their plans which were originally reported in Computer Weekly a good few years ago. Proper research (natch) resulted in the post above.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Events, dear boy, events
This isn't a post on web privacy. It's a post about www.police.co.uk and I'm afraid it isn't pretty.
News that the website was up hit Twitter last night and of course everyone beat a path to the website to have a play. After discovering it didn't recognise my postcode (I'm absolutely 100% sure that's not because no crimes have happened in this postcode, just trust me on this) I finally managed to get it to tell me that 468 crimes had happened in a radius around the centre of Accrington, 33 of which were violent crime. In one month. I was a bit shocked. So I had a look at Blackburn. Similar. Okay, that's reassuring I suppose, similar sized town, similar crime levels, right next to each other. Some perspective gained.
In the midst of this I'd posted on Twitter about the 468. Lots of other people went to have a look including @ruthkennedy who discovered that the end of her back garden, among the potatoes and leeks was a crime hotspot.
I initially wondered, when she said she thought it might be something to do with the station 200m away that they'd projected the co-ordinates wrong and not allowed for North moving. Then I wondered if it was just down to different forces using different GPS units with varying levels of accuracy causing peoples odd discoveries.
This morning it transpires that in an effort to 'anonymise' the data, all offences recorded in a street seem to be arbitrarily allocated a point and referred to in the downloadable data sheets from the site as 'near XXX road' rather than publishing the actual geographical point where the offence happened.
So what we've actually got with www.police.uk is neither one nor the other. Ruth looks like a crime overlord cos of all the crimes happening in her garden and we haven't got exact point data, but we haven't got first part of postcode data either e.g. BB5 crimes or NW1 crimes. Instead, we've got this weird halfway house thing where it's not accurate, but its inaccuracy almost renders it useless because we don't have any idea if every force uses the same parameters when picking these points, we don't know how they pick their points, we don't know what we don't know in terms of whether one house in particular is causing a considerable issue with anti-social behaviour for example, allowing me to go to my local Council and demand they do something about it.
And if you think that's militant, well according to the Home Office, I am supposed to be taking action and doing something with this data. It says so at the bottom of this page. Well actually it doesn't it says I should use the data to have meaningful interaction with my police force. But as I don't know so many things, I can't really because I don't actually know what this data is going to be useful for.
I don't agree, for the record, with publishing point data to the public. I would have, I think, picked arbitrary points not in peoples back gardens, but in the middle of roads. I would have made it quite clear that that's what I had done. Because the most worrying thing of all to me is that picking some random point along a road to allocate all incidents in that road to can mean crossing a postcode line. Because, as we're not in an augmented world quite yet, when I'm standing in a street, I can't see the postcode line from BB5 1 to BB5 2 for example. And so I could accidentally misallocate a bunch of offences to the wrong sub postcode.
But that doesn't matter, does it?
Except, actually, it might, because does anyone know how insurance companies algorithms work or what they're based on? Might it be this very same crime data? It's worked out on postcode, I'm pretty sure of that. And what about house prices? Lose £10,000 of your house because that point is the wrong side of a line? Oh never mind.
So my point (ha ha ha)? Pick either point data, or area data. Map to specific co-ordinates, or map to postcode sub areas. But please be accurate and please think about this and actually, really, build a consultation forum and ask people who know what they're talking about, like Adrian Short, who has written a fantastic blog post on this subject, what pitfalls you're heading for. They'd happily help, and I hate to hit where it hurts, but they'd tell you for free, more than likely. Might chip £50,000 off that £300,000 bill. In fact, if you gathered opendata interested people all into one place, you might find you could get the whole shebang done for £100,000. Worth doing, I'd say.
As for me? I'll be keeping an eye on that 468.
Some other interesting viewpoints on this subject:
Adrian Short
David Higgerson
Mike Rawlins
Paul Bradshaw
Mad Prof
News Lancashire on Glover Court, Preston, being most crime ridden street in England.
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| Leyton on www.police.uk |
News that the website was up hit Twitter last night and of course everyone beat a path to the website to have a play. After discovering it didn't recognise my postcode (I'm absolutely 100% sure that's not because no crimes have happened in this postcode, just trust me on this) I finally managed to get it to tell me that 468 crimes had happened in a radius around the centre of Accrington, 33 of which were violent crime. In one month. I was a bit shocked. So I had a look at Blackburn. Similar. Okay, that's reassuring I suppose, similar sized town, similar crime levels, right next to each other. Some perspective gained.
In the midst of this I'd posted on Twitter about the 468. Lots of other people went to have a look including @ruthkennedy who discovered that the end of her back garden, among the potatoes and leeks was a crime hotspot.
I initially wondered, when she said she thought it might be something to do with the station 200m away that they'd projected the co-ordinates wrong and not allowed for North moving. Then I wondered if it was just down to different forces using different GPS units with varying levels of accuracy causing peoples odd discoveries.
This morning it transpires that in an effort to 'anonymise' the data, all offences recorded in a street seem to be arbitrarily allocated a point and referred to in the downloadable data sheets from the site as 'near XXX road' rather than publishing the actual geographical point where the offence happened.
So what we've actually got with www.police.uk is neither one nor the other. Ruth looks like a crime overlord cos of all the crimes happening in her garden and we haven't got exact point data, but we haven't got first part of postcode data either e.g. BB5 crimes or NW1 crimes. Instead, we've got this weird halfway house thing where it's not accurate, but its inaccuracy almost renders it useless because we don't have any idea if every force uses the same parameters when picking these points, we don't know how they pick their points, we don't know what we don't know in terms of whether one house in particular is causing a considerable issue with anti-social behaviour for example, allowing me to go to my local Council and demand they do something about it.
And if you think that's militant, well according to the Home Office, I am supposed to be taking action and doing something with this data. It says so at the bottom of this page. Well actually it doesn't it says I should use the data to have meaningful interaction with my police force. But as I don't know so many things, I can't really because I don't actually know what this data is going to be useful for.
I don't agree, for the record, with publishing point data to the public. I would have, I think, picked arbitrary points not in peoples back gardens, but in the middle of roads. I would have made it quite clear that that's what I had done. Because the most worrying thing of all to me is that picking some random point along a road to allocate all incidents in that road to can mean crossing a postcode line. Because, as we're not in an augmented world quite yet, when I'm standing in a street, I can't see the postcode line from BB5 1 to BB5 2 for example. And so I could accidentally misallocate a bunch of offences to the wrong sub postcode.
But that doesn't matter, does it?
Except, actually, it might, because does anyone know how insurance companies algorithms work or what they're based on? Might it be this very same crime data? It's worked out on postcode, I'm pretty sure of that. And what about house prices? Lose £10,000 of your house because that point is the wrong side of a line? Oh never mind.
So my point (ha ha ha)? Pick either point data, or area data. Map to specific co-ordinates, or map to postcode sub areas. But please be accurate and please think about this and actually, really, build a consultation forum and ask people who know what they're talking about, like Adrian Short, who has written a fantastic blog post on this subject, what pitfalls you're heading for. They'd happily help, and I hate to hit where it hurts, but they'd tell you for free, more than likely. Might chip £50,000 off that £300,000 bill. In fact, if you gathered opendata interested people all into one place, you might find you could get the whole shebang done for £100,000. Worth doing, I'd say.
As for me? I'll be keeping an eye on that 468.
Some other interesting viewpoints on this subject:
Adrian Short
David Higgerson
Mike Rawlins
Paul Bradshaw
Mad Prof
News Lancashire on Glover Court, Preston, being most crime ridden street in England.
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