This post from Paul Clarke is cited in entirety for bringing the issues I am about to comment to my attention. It is an excellent piece written from the perspective of a data wrangler, someone who really knows what they're talking about when it comes to open data and transparency of process.
This is my response to the original point addressed, that of Will Perrin, among others, calling for the publication of offenders names in addition to their sentences received and crimes committed.
Currently, some offenders names do end up on the web - as a result of local reporters diligence in attending local Courts, a practice which to me seems archaic but someone must have deemed it necessary and to sell newspapers and who am I to disagree.
But they're not all in one easy to find and search place. Few newspapers even now permalink content. It is as easy for content to drop off the edge of the newspapers website as it used to be for ships to drop off the edge of the world in peoples minds.
If Will and others have their way, the data will never be erased. It will persist for as long as Google retains a cached history and if tweeted will forever remain in the archives of the Library of Congress. Which would be fine, perhaps, if it were not for the fact that we have a little law in this country which says, convictions can be spent. It's called the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, and unlike the majority of legislation, the clue is most definitely in the name. As Next Step ably assist in explaining, most convictions become spent after 5 years.
The internet doesn't purge its memory after 5 years. Nor, more importantly, would I imagine that most offenders have the stomach to even try and attempt to force search engines and social media sites to eliminate all mention of their past misdemeanour's.
So, why is the Rehab of Offenders Act there, I hear you ask? Well, as an ex Probation Service Officer, I feel slightly qualified to comment, though not entirely because I can't find the statistics I know are there. Leaving your past behind is not easy. Often the people who are most successful at turning their lives around, are those who remove themselves entirely from those they associated with when they were carrying out their convictions - burglary, drug offences, shoplifting, taking without consent. All of these are linked to peer behaviour, and are intricately linked, sometimes to place, sometime to people, and sometimes to drug habit. An offender leaves prison having become clean from heroin, returns to the same place, people, life as before he went into prison and the slide backwards is much easier than if he comes out to a town where he has no networks and no temptations.
It's this disassociation with habit which leads to success. But once this has been achieved, imagine applying for a succession of jobs and being turned down for every single one. Imagine not disclosing previous convictions because you are not asked to, working your way up in an organisation, getting to the point where a management promotion is inevitable, a police check is carried out and suddenly you're doubted, all the effort you invested is devalued, because someone is judging you now, not on your behaviour as it has been for the past 3 years, but on the behaviour 10 years before that.
Imagine that you are 17 and shoplifting to fuel a drug habit. You kick the habit with help. You no longer need to shoplift. But you are refused a job ever after in the retail industry because you cannot be trusted. Imagine that you are 21 and involved in and arrested during the student protests. Imagine that following you around for the rest of your entire life and still affecting peoples perceptions of you when you're 50 and a vastly different person.
To think that a move to publish offenders details will not impact this way on those who initially chose the wrong path but who realised before it was too late it was the wrong path is naive. To compound the challenges faced by offenders to rehabilitate is cruel. To condemn people without faces to a lifetime of persecution and failure, and yes, an assumption of inability to change and turn life around is irresponsible.
I do not believe offenders details should ever be published. Because, quite literally, that's one Pandora's box you will never shut again.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Social media is for boys
Or at least, if the speakers at the last few traditional conferences on the subject were considered as evidence of gender monopoly.
Yesterday I went to a conference for the voluntary sector on tech and social media. The audience was an even split, in fact possibly more weighted towards female attendees. The scheduled speakers for the first half of the day? Entirely male. The leaders of the sessions in the afternoon which were unconference style? An almost even mix, taking into account the workshop sessions.
Now, there were what felt to be subtle intimations that I should not be complaining if I were not prepared to stand up at the front myself. There was equally, I think, some assumptions that I was in some way upset to not be asked.
I'm nothing to do with the voluntary sector right now and I am not a social media expert. I am not famous for anything. I have nothing to speak about and I didn't see the call for speakers, more importantly. Had I had something to say, and seen the call for speakers, I absolutely would have offered. I'm not much scared of a room full of people any more.
The fact still remains that the other women in the room weren't at the front either. And as I commented at the time, this was not an accusation, the conference yesterday was no more guilty than every single other conference or unconference I have been to, though unconferences tend to be slightly better, especially govcamps for some reason.
I'm really bored of it.
But most of all, very most of all, I'm still boggling at the irony of one of the female organisers asking an entirely male panel why they thought there weren't more female speakers.
So, I'm going to ask you, because I know there are many women who read this. Why don't you offer to speak at conferences? What is it that holds you back from running unconference sessions? Why are we massively unrepresented at the front and yet have plenty to say online and across social media?
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Communications is not a swear word (& neither is PR)
Imagine this.
You work for a Council. You're on the periphery of a few services, have a job which needs you to learn very quickly how a number of sub sets of services work to see if they're using digital in the most appropriate and cost effective way for them and more importantly their residents and you have a few years background in one particular area which you loved and truth be told, still occasionally miss a teeny tiny bit.
You're not part of Communications in the traditional sense in that you're digital. But you sit next to Communications in an open plan office. You hear the ebb and flow and you occasionally join in with interesting conversations because these days you're less about not disturbing Research behind you and more about random 2 minute bouts of silliness to get it all out of your system so you can get your head down and concentrate properly for the next 2 hours.
You learn some things, sat in that position. You hear some things too, but this is not what this post is about and it is not my place to talk about those things. Instead, I'd like to explain some harsh realities to those of you who think that 'traditional' communications, a phrase somehow always read by me with a sneering tone to it, is a thing of the past, irrelevant, of no standing in the conversation.
Last week I sat in a meeting room and listened to some very talented and passionate Officers and Managers discuss their Domestic Violence service. It was humbling. It was phenomenal. It was reassuring and hope inducing. They had, in the process of their service design, thought of absolutely everything. Every scenario, every bit of research, every trick in the book was used to ensure that should a woman or a man need to phone and talk to someone, they could do so, at a time convenient to them, in a way which was safe for them, to someone who understood them.
Without Communications, do you think anyone would know that service existed? Yes, social media can help and it will. Facebook ads, QR codes for quick telephone number scans inserting an innocuously named new contact in their phonebook, perhaps? Okay. But what about the demographic of mum who doesn't have a smartphone, doesn't know what the internet is and anyway the kids are always playing the Sims on the PC and the trouble doesn't start until they've gone to bed? What about how to communicate with those for whom English is a second language? Or no language at all?
Are the domestic violence team experts in domestic violence or in how to best communicate with the targets of that domestic violence? Who on either side of the table is more of a 'professional' and who has the more important knowledge?
Neither. I say neither. I say teamwork rules.
3 years ago I was involved in the biggest logistical nightmare I think a Council could have to deal with outside of emergency planning. Yes, you've guessed it. Bins. We switched from fortnightly bin collections to weekly bin collections (but with a smaller capacity bin, important that bit) and from weekly recycling collections to fortnightly (with the same capacity bin - as an aside this worked, ask if you want to know more). The redesign of the routes for the bin collection vehicles was a nightmare. Getting them into a GIS system to record them was a nightmare. But neither of those nightmares were as monstrous as the Communications nightmare. That was a special nightmare all of its own.
You see refuse collection is, whether you like it or not, the only service which, should it go wrong, will be noticed by all your residents. All of them. I don't know the exact figures but suspect inbound calls to the call centre revolve around bins quite a lot on most days of the week. It's a hot topic and it affects everyone.
Do you think that the Manager of the bin crews was in any way the right person to ensure that 59,000 individual households knew on exactly the right day, with exactly the right amount of notice so they didn't forget but knew in time, taking into account ESOL issues, taking into account fly tipping issues and the associated impact on then NI 196 scores, also bearing in mind delivery schedules and availability, print runs at the local printers and what felt like a zillion other tiny little 'have you thought of' moments - do you think he was the right person to think of all of that? Do you think he should be skilled in all those things?
Or, do you think he had enough on his plate calculating how much the change in refuse collection amount would be, the impact on number of vehicles, the number of trips to the tip to empty, factoring in of course that the nearest local landfill site had just closed and a bit more of a journey was needed, but also taking into consideration carbon emissions, the rising cost of diesel, staff who were still working to task and finish, traffic jam hotspots and avoiding them (schools) at certain times of day and the ability of some crew to drive a 10 tonne truck down a lane as wide as the truck itself. For a start.
Because I think, and I respect the man immensely, that no, He was not the right man for that job. The right woman for the job happened to be a colleague of mine. And because she was good at her job, still is good at her job, 59,000 households were all told, across 5 phases, which took 12 months, exactly which days they were changing to on which bit of the fortnight for refuse and ditto for recycling. And nothing went wrong. Okay, 20 houses went wrong, I'll fess up. But to my knowledge, across a year of phased changes, 20 people got the wrong information and to be honest? It was probably my fault and an error with my polygon.
Communications co-ordinated this. Communications made sure everyone knew what was happening, no one was taken by surprise and more importantly, Communications then made sure everyone knew why we were doing it - to save money, to encourage more recycling, to make us more efficient and to provide a better, more efficient service.
Without Communications the inbound call centre would have quit. The sheer amount of calls coming in from confused residents not knowing when on earth to put their bins out would have crashed the whole telephone system. As it was? Barely a whisper.
And this, this my friends is why your ignorance is understandable but nevertheless irritating. Because you only ever notice Communications are useless when something goes wrong. If they're doing it right, you'll forget they're there.
Have you forgotten they're there?
You work for a Council. You're on the periphery of a few services, have a job which needs you to learn very quickly how a number of sub sets of services work to see if they're using digital in the most appropriate and cost effective way for them and more importantly their residents and you have a few years background in one particular area which you loved and truth be told, still occasionally miss a teeny tiny bit.
You're not part of Communications in the traditional sense in that you're digital. But you sit next to Communications in an open plan office. You hear the ebb and flow and you occasionally join in with interesting conversations because these days you're less about not disturbing Research behind you and more about random 2 minute bouts of silliness to get it all out of your system so you can get your head down and concentrate properly for the next 2 hours.
You learn some things, sat in that position. You hear some things too, but this is not what this post is about and it is not my place to talk about those things. Instead, I'd like to explain some harsh realities to those of you who think that 'traditional' communications, a phrase somehow always read by me with a sneering tone to it, is a thing of the past, irrelevant, of no standing in the conversation.
Last week I sat in a meeting room and listened to some very talented and passionate Officers and Managers discuss their Domestic Violence service. It was humbling. It was phenomenal. It was reassuring and hope inducing. They had, in the process of their service design, thought of absolutely everything. Every scenario, every bit of research, every trick in the book was used to ensure that should a woman or a man need to phone and talk to someone, they could do so, at a time convenient to them, in a way which was safe for them, to someone who understood them.
Without Communications, do you think anyone would know that service existed? Yes, social media can help and it will. Facebook ads, QR codes for quick telephone number scans inserting an innocuously named new contact in their phonebook, perhaps? Okay. But what about the demographic of mum who doesn't have a smartphone, doesn't know what the internet is and anyway the kids are always playing the Sims on the PC and the trouble doesn't start until they've gone to bed? What about how to communicate with those for whom English is a second language? Or no language at all?
Are the domestic violence team experts in domestic violence or in how to best communicate with the targets of that domestic violence? Who on either side of the table is more of a 'professional' and who has the more important knowledge?
Neither. I say neither. I say teamwork rules.
3 years ago I was involved in the biggest logistical nightmare I think a Council could have to deal with outside of emergency planning. Yes, you've guessed it. Bins. We switched from fortnightly bin collections to weekly bin collections (but with a smaller capacity bin, important that bit) and from weekly recycling collections to fortnightly (with the same capacity bin - as an aside this worked, ask if you want to know more). The redesign of the routes for the bin collection vehicles was a nightmare. Getting them into a GIS system to record them was a nightmare. But neither of those nightmares were as monstrous as the Communications nightmare. That was a special nightmare all of its own.
You see refuse collection is, whether you like it or not, the only service which, should it go wrong, will be noticed by all your residents. All of them. I don't know the exact figures but suspect inbound calls to the call centre revolve around bins quite a lot on most days of the week. It's a hot topic and it affects everyone.
Do you think that the Manager of the bin crews was in any way the right person to ensure that 59,000 individual households knew on exactly the right day, with exactly the right amount of notice so they didn't forget but knew in time, taking into account ESOL issues, taking into account fly tipping issues and the associated impact on then NI 196 scores, also bearing in mind delivery schedules and availability, print runs at the local printers and what felt like a zillion other tiny little 'have you thought of' moments - do you think he was the right person to think of all of that? Do you think he should be skilled in all those things?
Or, do you think he had enough on his plate calculating how much the change in refuse collection amount would be, the impact on number of vehicles, the number of trips to the tip to empty, factoring in of course that the nearest local landfill site had just closed and a bit more of a journey was needed, but also taking into consideration carbon emissions, the rising cost of diesel, staff who were still working to task and finish, traffic jam hotspots and avoiding them (schools) at certain times of day and the ability of some crew to drive a 10 tonne truck down a lane as wide as the truck itself. For a start.
Because I think, and I respect the man immensely, that no, He was not the right man for that job. The right woman for the job happened to be a colleague of mine. And because she was good at her job, still is good at her job, 59,000 households were all told, across 5 phases, which took 12 months, exactly which days they were changing to on which bit of the fortnight for refuse and ditto for recycling. And nothing went wrong. Okay, 20 houses went wrong, I'll fess up. But to my knowledge, across a year of phased changes, 20 people got the wrong information and to be honest? It was probably my fault and an error with my polygon.
Communications co-ordinated this. Communications made sure everyone knew what was happening, no one was taken by surprise and more importantly, Communications then made sure everyone knew why we were doing it - to save money, to encourage more recycling, to make us more efficient and to provide a better, more efficient service.
Without Communications the inbound call centre would have quit. The sheer amount of calls coming in from confused residents not knowing when on earth to put their bins out would have crashed the whole telephone system. As it was? Barely a whisper.
And this, this my friends is why your ignorance is understandable but nevertheless irritating. Because you only ever notice Communications are useless when something goes wrong. If they're doing it right, you'll forget they're there.
Have you forgotten they're there?
Monday, 14 November 2011
We need to talk about content
I'm sorry, but we do.
I've hitherto avoided commenting on such things because at work this is not my area, and so it is absolutely inappropriate for me to step on other peoples toes and comment either negatively or positively on something I have no control over and no input into.
But someone has made it my issue. That someone is Looking Local. This morning they emailed me to tell me that they had relaunched their Facebook app which allows content from Council websites to be imported en masse and displayed on Facebook - and pointed me at Bracknell Forest as an example of how it could be used.
It's a pretty Facebook page. Down the left hand side, nice and neatly ordered are all the options from Disabled Guides to maps, virtual tours to Twitter accounts. There are car park maps, polling stations maps and schools maps. Maps galore. A plethora of maps. Click on the car park map and it's been viewed over 8,000 times. The leisure centre map 540,000 times. The play areas map 4,000 times. Not inconsequential for what is, quite clearly also demonstrated by the maps, a relatively small Council covering a relatively small area.
I am impressed. No, really I am. It's a cohesive, justified and obviously well used social media hub in the place where people evidently are (though I'm sure traffic is driven to those maps from elsewhere as well - like the Council website which will appear first in a search engine search).
So I delve a bit deeper. Friend activity reveals a blank - the Council has obviously decided it does not feel it is appropriate for them to 'friend' their residents. A quick scan down the wall reveals that almost every post is 'Liked' but that it is one 'Like' on average and that the comment rate is not as high as those viewing figures of the maps might indicate they should be. And strange to see as it's quite obvious that quite a lot of either staff or consultant time and attention has been lavished on the Facebook account - and yet the return on investment seems to be so small.
However, all soon becomes clear.
Click on the Looking Local option on the left hand side and you discover the reason for much discussion on my Twitter account this morning. What appears to have happened is that the entire contents of the Council's website has been dumped into a self contained app within Facebook. This means that a web 1.0 broadcast only content clump has been unceremoniously dumped into a web 2.0 interactive environment - but that all opportunities for adding interactivity have been firmly removed.
It would perhaps be cruel of me to point out that clicking on Social Media in the top level menu and then selecting Flickr - your images results in an error. Or that a picture of a sign with Byway written on it is perhaps a strange thing to be viewing on a Council Flickr stream without the context which undoubtedly goes with it - as the app doesn't seem to display context. It is a shame that all interactivity has been removed even from Flickr via the app as you cannot either see comments already made on the photographs nor add your own.
So I click on the Contact Us section. Surely this will be better and there will be links to email contacts or Twitter streams?
No. I am told I can walk in to a walk in centre or make a phone call. On Facebook. In an app on Facebook.
The discussion on Twitter revolved around whether:
a) the content being there where the eyeballs were was good enough, no interactivity was required
b) the content being there was a complete waste of time and money and all that content could have been linked to
c) the content wouldn't feed into peoples feeds so no one would ever know if a change had been made so what was the point?
d) Facebook is where the eyeballs are, for some people it is all there is to the internet and we should pander to them and duplicate content there because if we don't we're excluding those people
e) duplicating content to the prima donnas who refuse to go anywhere else costs money - people need to JFGI
f) should local government ethically be encouraging people to use only Facebook with the accompanying potential alleged privacy and data protection issues
g) the irony of putting none interactive content on a platform completely revolving around interactivity killed them
I looked forward to your views. You can probably guess what mine are.
I've hitherto avoided commenting on such things because at work this is not my area, and so it is absolutely inappropriate for me to step on other peoples toes and comment either negatively or positively on something I have no control over and no input into.
But someone has made it my issue. That someone is Looking Local. This morning they emailed me to tell me that they had relaunched their Facebook app which allows content from Council websites to be imported en masse and displayed on Facebook - and pointed me at Bracknell Forest as an example of how it could be used.
It's a pretty Facebook page. Down the left hand side, nice and neatly ordered are all the options from Disabled Guides to maps, virtual tours to Twitter accounts. There are car park maps, polling stations maps and schools maps. Maps galore. A plethora of maps. Click on the car park map and it's been viewed over 8,000 times. The leisure centre map 540,000 times. The play areas map 4,000 times. Not inconsequential for what is, quite clearly also demonstrated by the maps, a relatively small Council covering a relatively small area.
I am impressed. No, really I am. It's a cohesive, justified and obviously well used social media hub in the place where people evidently are (though I'm sure traffic is driven to those maps from elsewhere as well - like the Council website which will appear first in a search engine search).
So I delve a bit deeper. Friend activity reveals a blank - the Council has obviously decided it does not feel it is appropriate for them to 'friend' their residents. A quick scan down the wall reveals that almost every post is 'Liked' but that it is one 'Like' on average and that the comment rate is not as high as those viewing figures of the maps might indicate they should be. And strange to see as it's quite obvious that quite a lot of either staff or consultant time and attention has been lavished on the Facebook account - and yet the return on investment seems to be so small.
However, all soon becomes clear.
Click on the Looking Local option on the left hand side and you discover the reason for much discussion on my Twitter account this morning. What appears to have happened is that the entire contents of the Council's website has been dumped into a self contained app within Facebook. This means that a web 1.0 broadcast only content clump has been unceremoniously dumped into a web 2.0 interactive environment - but that all opportunities for adding interactivity have been firmly removed.
It would perhaps be cruel of me to point out that clicking on Social Media in the top level menu and then selecting Flickr - your images results in an error. Or that a picture of a sign with Byway written on it is perhaps a strange thing to be viewing on a Council Flickr stream without the context which undoubtedly goes with it - as the app doesn't seem to display context. It is a shame that all interactivity has been removed even from Flickr via the app as you cannot either see comments already made on the photographs nor add your own.
So I click on the Contact Us section. Surely this will be better and there will be links to email contacts or Twitter streams?
No. I am told I can walk in to a walk in centre or make a phone call. On Facebook. In an app on Facebook.
The discussion on Twitter revolved around whether:
a) the content being there where the eyeballs were was good enough, no interactivity was required
b) the content being there was a complete waste of time and money and all that content could have been linked to
c) the content wouldn't feed into peoples feeds so no one would ever know if a change had been made so what was the point?
d) Facebook is where the eyeballs are, for some people it is all there is to the internet and we should pander to them and duplicate content there because if we don't we're excluding those people
e) duplicating content to the prima donnas who refuse to go anywhere else costs money - people need to JFGI
f) should local government ethically be encouraging people to use only Facebook with the accompanying potential alleged privacy and data protection issues
g) the irony of putting none interactive content on a platform completely revolving around interactivity killed them
I looked forward to your views. You can probably guess what mine are.
Monday, 7 November 2011
#lgovsm, #1515gov & a whole lot of care
What is part of my job:
Advising 9 Departments and untold sub sections on social media
Writing guidance on social media and digital tech in our org
Training 9 Departments and untold sub sections
Keeping up with new tools and utilities I can help people use that are appropriate in their job
'Being' the Council feed
Keeping an eye on all the other channels everyone else has created to make sure they'r ok
Providing some strategy
Inputting into policy
Inputting into our 2030 vision
Sorting content for 2 intranets and 2 external websites
Keeping an eye on local, national and international stats to make sure we're reacting to trends not imposing on people who don't care
Monitoring and feeding back on KPI's
Inputting into digital bids
What is not part of my job but directly impacts on my ability to do the above:
Attend unconferences, talks and events that are free (and often pay travel and hotel myself)
Reading about 30 blogs/official site feeds to make sure I am telling people the right thing and the most current thing all the time
Scanning 2000 Twitter account inputs to ensure I am informed of the things the above scan misses
Building networks to ensure I am informed and kept in the loop for events which are not advertised using conventional means
Building a reputation by telling people what we do, how we do it and why - but not using conventional means
Spend my evenings either running #lgovsm so I learn from other people smarter than me on both a professional and personal level on all things local government and social media or typing up the learning from #lgovsm so myself and others can take something visible home with us from that hour spent in our evenings given voluntarily
Set up #1515gov so I could get an idea of all the things my local gov colleagues do on a day to day basis to better aid my understanding of local government and its workings
I blog so I can share my learning but also learn from others in the comments
All of the above I am not paid to do. I do it anyway because it informs the first section and makes me a better employee, because I do not see the end to being an employee as being 5pm and because I don't mind giving up evenings and occasionally weekends to be a better employee.
I don't expect to be paid for it. I do expect it to be recognised. And I thank from the bottom of my heart those that do.
You are stars and you keep me sane.
Advising 9 Departments and untold sub sections on social media
Writing guidance on social media and digital tech in our org
Training 9 Departments and untold sub sections
Keeping up with new tools and utilities I can help people use that are appropriate in their job
'Being' the Council feed
Keeping an eye on all the other channels everyone else has created to make sure they'r ok
Providing some strategy
Inputting into policy
Inputting into our 2030 vision
Sorting content for 2 intranets and 2 external websites
Keeping an eye on local, national and international stats to make sure we're reacting to trends not imposing on people who don't care
Monitoring and feeding back on KPI's
Inputting into digital bids
What is not part of my job but directly impacts on my ability to do the above:
Attend unconferences, talks and events that are free (and often pay travel and hotel myself)
Reading about 30 blogs/official site feeds to make sure I am telling people the right thing and the most current thing all the time
Scanning 2000 Twitter account inputs to ensure I am informed of the things the above scan misses
Building networks to ensure I am informed and kept in the loop for events which are not advertised using conventional means
Building a reputation by telling people what we do, how we do it and why - but not using conventional means
Spend my evenings either running #lgovsm so I learn from other people smarter than me on both a professional and personal level on all things local government and social media or typing up the learning from #lgovsm so myself and others can take something visible home with us from that hour spent in our evenings given voluntarily
Set up #1515gov so I could get an idea of all the things my local gov colleagues do on a day to day basis to better aid my understanding of local government and its workings
I blog so I can share my learning but also learn from others in the comments
All of the above I am not paid to do. I do it anyway because it informs the first section and makes me a better employee, because I do not see the end to being an employee as being 5pm and because I don't mind giving up evenings and occasionally weekends to be a better employee.
I don't expect to be paid for it. I do expect it to be recognised. And I thank from the bottom of my heart those that do.
You are stars and you keep me sane.
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
A girl walks into a shop....
In the midst of a meeting with one of our sections yesterday I had an interesting conversation.
The meeting consisted of some people who work with service users. I wont tell you which one, it's not relevant and it's not fair. But in this meeting there were two very digitally literate people and two not so digitally literate people - and I think if you picked any four random public sector workers today and asked a question or two, I believe that's the balance you would find everywhere.
So I was trying to explain to these two gentlemen that the implications of social media were far bigger than the riots, which is the only thing that had brought social media into their sphere. They had, as a result of the riots formed an idea on what social networking was and how it connected people. But they had done no research past asking a couple of young people who they used it.
So, myself and the two digitally literate bods opposite the table from me proceeded to explain and I used something as an example, which I'd like to share.
A girl walks into a shoe shop with a friend. In the process of walking back out again with a pair of shoes she will: take pictures of the selection of shoes and ask her friends which one they like. Narrow it down to two pairs and ask her friends via text which one's she should pick after also sending photographs of herself wearing aforementioned shoes. Then, once she has crowdsourced the decision, she will buy the pair of shoes, and then tweet a picture of her leaving with them.
Once home, she will film a 'haul' video and post it on YouTube. She will share with her friends the outfit she wears that evening along with the pair of shoes and while she is out she will be constantly taking pictures and sharing them, asking questions about where to go next, where the party is.
To summarise then:
The meeting consisted of some people who work with service users. I wont tell you which one, it's not relevant and it's not fair. But in this meeting there were two very digitally literate people and two not so digitally literate people - and I think if you picked any four random public sector workers today and asked a question or two, I believe that's the balance you would find everywhere.
So I was trying to explain to these two gentlemen that the implications of social media were far bigger than the riots, which is the only thing that had brought social media into their sphere. They had, as a result of the riots formed an idea on what social networking was and how it connected people. But they had done no research past asking a couple of young people who they used it.
So, myself and the two digitally literate bods opposite the table from me proceeded to explain and I used something as an example, which I'd like to share.
A girl walks into a shoe shop with a friend. In the process of walking back out again with a pair of shoes she will: take pictures of the selection of shoes and ask her friends which one they like. Narrow it down to two pairs and ask her friends via text which one's she should pick after also sending photographs of herself wearing aforementioned shoes. Then, once she has crowdsourced the decision, she will buy the pair of shoes, and then tweet a picture of her leaving with them.
Once home, she will film a 'haul' video and post it on YouTube. She will share with her friends the outfit she wears that evening along with the pair of shoes and while she is out she will be constantly taking pictures and sharing them, asking questions about where to go next, where the party is.
To summarise then:
- She has made no decisions on her own
- She has told the entirety of her network and probably her networks network where she was during the day but also in the evening
- She has posted a picture of her face
- She has posted to YouTube the things she has bought
- She has had feedback at almost every stage of her life she has lived that day, be it negative or positive - but more importantly she has asked for it
- She has not had a single moment 'to herself'
- She has been connected to the web in one form or another the entire time
- She has been reachable by the entirety of her network the entire time
- She has crowd sourced her taste in shoes and not made a decision for herself
This is a made up scenario. You may think it is not true. I can't prove to you it is, but I have very strong suspicions.
It's too late to change this. It's too late to censor the web. It's too late to prevent people organising civil unrest via the web and it's too late to wind back before we put all our secure information in vulnerable situations. It's too late to think any cryptography can be generated that cannot be, eventually, cracked and it's too late to remove mobile phones from young hands.
So what, my learned friends, are we going to do about it? How are we going to encourage young people to think for themselves, be themselves, find themselves? How are we going to remind them of the glee of sliding down the side of a steep hill on your ass? How are we going to remind them of the independence and empowerment gained from going off into the unknown and forging your own path? How are we going to teach them about security and seriousness, about risk and revenge attacks without receiving the knee jerk reaction of 'what the hell do you know?'
I'll tell you. By knowing. By proving we know. By passing it on. By educating ourselves and each other. So while it might be easy to sneer at the two digitally illiterate men in the meeting yesterday, I actually have the utmost respect for them.
They've started their journey. Have you?
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