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.

More Twitter rules for business

I would do well, one day, to write one of these posts when not a bit irritated. I am a bit irritated.

Last week, someone who had never spoken to me before, out of the blue asked me about my relationship with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. Now. If it weren't in my bio on Twitter, I would forgive that oversight, but it's stated quite clearly in my bio on Twitter where I work. Ordinarily, someone not bothering to read my bio wouldn't matter either. However this person was trying to establish a business relationship with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council.

So here's some free advice. Do your research before pitching at people.

Next. Same person. Asked me for traffic figures for our website. Completely out of the blue, with no preamble and only having spoken to me previously about the aforementioned cock up regarding my relationship with my own Head of Service. Whilst Twitter is informal, I freely acknowledge this, this is akin to striding up to me in the pub when I am sitting at a table in conversation with someone else, interupting, asking a completely irrelevant question to the existing conversation - and then leaving again.

The final nail in the coffin, however, was being berated in public the 3rd time this person spoke to me because not taking up his products meant a lollipop woman was out of a job.

Can anyone guess why I am not inclined to do business with this person, if I can at all help it?

I appreciate that Twitter is a new business tool for a lot of people. But taking the time to find out what the etiquette is, find out who the people are who you're trying to sell something to, can go a long way towards those people actually wanting to do business with you.

This applies to all kinds of business transactions. Being aggressive and pushy simply means I wont acknowledge you. Trying to speak for me, on my behalf in situations, means I will get slowly more and more narked. Going behind my back and agreeing things without any discussion when the outcome directly affects me is simply not the done thing and trying to tag onto the back of something because it is successful when you've never ever spoken to the organiser before simply makes you look like a dick.

Because Twitter is new, and because I am perhaps being a little uptight, everyone gets two chances. Two people blew theirs with me this weekend and it didn't need to happen - they just needed to scope out the person they were dealing with just a little bit better and everything would have gone just fine. If you're not prepared to spend the time to do that on potential customers/collaborators from whom you're going to be getting a lot of money or exposure - I suggest you don't enter into the arena at all.

#lgovsm - a redux

#lgovsm is a perfect example of why the JFDI approach to life sometimes just doesn't cut it. And I have learnt my lessons well.

Someone once said to me, make a mistake, own up to it, take responsibility for it, learn from it, move on. This is an admission of the first, definitely the second, a step on the path to the third and most definitely the fourth. And this, also, is what blogs are for, because through sharing mistakes, hopefully someone else will learn to, and thus never have to write a similar really rather embarrassing blog post.

The first session involved about 20 people. A similar amount took part in the second session, and it grew a little more by the time the 3rd one came alone. The core attendance tends to stay the same, with people drifting in and out depending on the subject - Councillors and representatives from the voluntary sector have all wondered in and out as well as local government entrepeneurs.

When I first launched it, I anticipated a few people chatting and it take a while to get off the ground. I expected people to be well out of ideas and things to say by the end of the session. I didn't expect journalists and think tank bods to have it on their radar - I wasn't sure anyone would have it on their radar - this is social media and things tend to be unpredictable.

I first realised there was a problem when Ingrid Koehler from the LGID mentioned some people had been pushing for a space to continue discussions generated on #lgovsm throughout the rest of the week. This has now been set up on the Communities of Practice and I am very grateful for this assistance. As an aside, the Communities of Practice is a fantastic resource for local government bods of all disciplines, not just those of us in social media - you will need to sign up for an account to be able to see the content, but I can highly recommend it - it's a brilliant forum to discuss issues and problems but also celebrate successes.

So, last night I did something I should have done right back at the beginning. Firstly, after discussions with @kazwccsocialnet we decided on a topic which should have perhaps been the first one - using social media to support social media evangelists in their organisations'. That right there is going to help enormously, I suspect, because it can be a lonely old place in the face of barrages of 'what exactly do you do for a job again?', blank looks from your mother when you try and explain, glares from colleagues who are facing redundancy, accusations of being peoples pet projects and assorted other rather negative attitudes which it can be difficult to shake off. Add to this that some people are running under the radar of their management in order to even create a Flickr group and the need for this discussion can be plainly seen.

Then between @carlhaggerty, @808kate and @kazwccsocialnet something rather awesome happened. We decided what was wrong with lgovsm, then we decided how to fix it, and then we decided to have lunch on Saturday at UKGovCamp to iron out the details. And suddenly, a bunch of local gov bods have formed a bit of a team, across geographical distances which still boggle me (West Midlands, Devon, Lancashire, London), built entirely over Twitter.

And this is why we bother. This is why I set up lgovsm in the first place. This is what social networking was built for - cross county collaboration between professionals who want to do things better, want to communicate better, want better tools to do better jobs. Twitter is not just a place to chat or network - it's somewhere to sew the seeds of collaboration out in the real world,. which then are applied back again to the digital world. It's where people with similar interests and drives can come together and assist, and build support networks.

If you ask me the value of lgovsm to others, I cannot answer. If you ask me the value of lgovsm to me, I can. It is becoming a professional development learning curve. It is teaching me about the need for planning and for collaboration and learning to stop being independant all the damn time, and to trust in others and ask for help. It's teaching me that geography doesn't matter any more. I am learning about organisation, planning, being agile, moving on swift deadlines and timescales, reacting to problems and solving them, but also on a personal level, I am learning very many things too. Because what we learn on a personal level benefits our professional lives and vice versa. And nowhere is this more true than on social networks.

If the conversations which happened yesterday come to fruition, lgovsm will go from something small and local to something massive and sprawling, but also useful, with interesting outcomes and ideas. There is not necessarily any actions on anyone at the end of these proposed discussions, only greater understanding and little sparks which can be stored to be lit at some future point. Social networking allows us to learn from a very great number of people from all sectors and all interest areas - a great many number of stakeholders.

No matter happens from this point forward, I have learnt, both in the running and hosting as well as in the participation of lgovsm. What makes me more happy than I can say, is that one of the people I originally thought of when setting lgovsm up, is now enabling me to make it more useful, more relevant and of more worth.

Funny how the world turns, isn't it?

Identity crisis

I use Twitter a lot. Stating the obvious, really. But it's causing a little bit of a problem, and it's not one I'm sure how to fix. And I am supposed to be 'the expert' in our organisation, so I am somewhat embarrassed and frustrated by my own inability to walk forth and say 'the solution is this, put it in the guidelines'.

The simple fact is, I'm a geek. So, I like the usual things stereotypical geeks like: XKCD, Dr Who, attending random sci-fi conventions, unconferences and bar camps, as well as attending assorted genres of live music gigs, concerts and festivals. Mix this with 1600 followers containing assorted local and national journalists, Heads of Department and Sections, Directors, Ministers and other various 'important people' out in the real world and suddenly it feels as though it would be quite an imposition to tweet that, for example, I thought Matt Smith was looking particularly fit in the Christmas Day Dr Who special.

Added to this that when attending events with hashtags attached to them, I tend to tweet at a rate of 20 or so an hour (or more) you can see where the problem lies.

When someone follows you, it feels as if you're a guest in their digital space. You're taking up pixels. The more people who follow you, the more this becomes true, the more the pressure mounts, to say something worthy, something important. You don't retweet things because no one else would find it interesting. You don't say anything about anything becaue no one would be interested and eventually, the very reason people followed you in the first place - because you are interesting - is snuffed out.

So here's my advice to other people wondering about the weird cross between 'personalisation', 'personal brand' and being yourself on Twitter. If you're the kind of person who has a lot of real life friends on Twitter, and a whole social bubble off Twitter, create a seperate account. Use it to organise D & D sessions, tweet from gigs and festivals, for posting that random picture. Chill out, relax, do what you always did. Set up another account for 'work' and make sure that there's some of you on there as well, but keep the geeky randomness seperate. But if the work you do is Ruby or something equally geeky that not all your friends will be interested in, don't be surprised if they follow your 'work' account and quickly unfollow you. They simply wont be interested in that cool bit of code and while the odd tweet here and there wont annoy, I speak from immediate experience when I say when the signal to noise ratio goes above a certain point, Twitter will no longer be where you can organise a quick present swap at Xmas - no one will be following you.

Most people wont have this problem. Most people are offline more than on. Most people can combine beautifully themselves and their work and irritate neither camp excessively. This problem, I think, might be a uniquely geeky one.

What has been fascinating to me over the last day or so is the kind of person who understands entirely why I've done this, and the kind of person who cannot understand at all. And the demographics don't break down the way you'd think. Non geeks understand, just as much as geeks do, though my geeky friends perhaps understand most of all as they're finding a similar collision of cultures.

There is a new world order out there. Being you is absolutely a good thing. An expected thing. It allows people to trust you, warm to you, understand what motivates and drives you. But there is a line, nevertheless, which must not be crossed and I have finally found it easier to draw the line myself, than expect others to do it for me.

The new world order isn't quite as simplistic and easy to comprehend as I was expecting it to be. I suspect there are some more challenges upcoming in the near future around what constitutes a friend, the connections which are made on social media which don't necessarily transfer into the real world, what happens when you get to know someone on social media, meet them face to face and have nothing to say......

I'll keep writing about them and sharing experiences, because I think it's important. No one is an expert in this, no matter what they might think, we all get caught out. Wrong account tweeted from, wrong thing said, a view harshly and clumsily expressed. Tweets can be deleted but words are still seen.

I'd like to think the world has space for a fluffy little geek, but ultimately, there is a professional expectation of a woman to be a certain way in the workplace, and so that way I will be.

PR vs the geeks

Lets see if I can explain the new world order to some people who have most definitly missed the point. Vodafone. You have missed the point. Your PR agency has missed the point. Your web devs have deliberately not missed the point but not told you. I suspect if you'd asked them, the entirety of your mobile technical support centre could have handed you the point nicely wrapped in a gift box with bows - but they'd have chosen not to.

It's not Christmas yet and you just dropped a bomb. This isn't surprising to me, because I don't count you as a particularly young and hip brand any more - you got left behind in the mobile provider wars when you didn't secure the iPhone before everyone else and even now you do have it your coverage of my bit of the UK is so appalling that I might as well use my 'phone' as a paperweight.

But all this aside, what you did this morning (Sunday, 12th December 2010) is hilariously appalling. I've only been in front of my PC for 40 minutes. In 40 minutes my perception of you as a company who has the ability to do business in the modern world is now exactly zero. I don't matter. Your stakeholders matter, of course they do, that's why you're dodging a rather large tax bill and continue to do so despite the horrific damage to your reputation this has caused amongst a demoraphic who 2 weeks ago were your main customers. The only people who matter to you are your stakeholders.

Unfortunately, when you decided you were going to use the hashtag #mademesmile to promote your 12 smiles of Xmas you forgot something quite fundamental. You decided, lord alone only knows why, in your infinite wisdom, that not only were you going to try and run a campaign to recover some of your lost reputation after the demonstrations last week, but you were going to do it in the very arena where the people who organised that demonstration gather, speak together, organise and collude.

Your arrogance, because I can only assume it is that, is going to be your downfall. Because, you see, whilst the #ukuncut bunch are not your stakeholders and don't matter and the police will deal with them and ensure you never have to put up with their pesky demonstrations again - you've now got a bigger problem. You're a laughing stock among the demographic who are your main customers. And in among those customers are the sons and daughters of your stakeholders. Who this morning will have woken to the biggest joke of this Xmas season so far - a company who listened to a PR agency who surely must be the stupidist people this side of the Atlantic?

Because who in their right minds would recommend a campaign like this is a good idea? I can only imagine we've come back to the same old problem yet again - they're a PR agency. They do PR. They've always done PR. The words social media will appear somewhere on their hastily redesigned business cards, but don't be fooled.

PR is about managing reputations. Marketing is about selling things to people. Social media? Here be dragons if you don't understand people. People who are not stupid. People who are smarter than you. More organised than you. More agile than you. More responsive than you. Can move quicker, mobilise quicker, think quicker. It's not rocket science, but it's not PR and it's not marketing. The skills required to navigate your way successfully through this new ocean, are not ones your average PR nor marketing bod have.

The simple fact is, Vodafone, you asked the wrong people. I'll give you a clue. If someone is dressed in D & G and Armani, they're not social media bods. If they're smart and smelling of gel, they're not social media people. If they're smart casual and wearing a Star Wars t-shirt - trust them, they know what they're talking about. If they're wearing trainers, pristine ones, which look like somehow they've impossibly come out of a box fresh from the 1980's, listen to them, they know of what they speak. Hell, if they look like their mother dressed them, you'll get better advice on social media than you will from people who've tacked those two words onto their online advert which has so many different colours in it it looks like a Pantone advert.

You are all still listening to advice from the wrong people, because you are all still working to the same stereotypes you always did.

If you don't want to become the next Vodafone, for gods sake go see someone sensible like Technophobia or someone decent. Let the PR bods do what they do best, let the marketing guys do what they do best but this? This is best left to the geeks.

#lgovsm

2 weeks ago I asked on Twitter if anyone was running the equivalent of #nhssm for local gov bods in the UK. I was very specific about the social media aspect of it - it's social media which it is becoming incredibly clear is still a bit of a massive mountain for some teams in local gov to climb, there's a lot of frustration and confusion flying around by DM and it seemed to me a time and place to moan/rant/share good practice/celebrate success was a damn good idea.

I didn't want to run it. I'll be totally honest. 2 weeks ago I felt like someone had found the valve in the inflatable me and pulled the stopper, letting all the confidence I'd been slowly building rush away. Work events have not helped with this, though as time has passed and I've dealt with the expected emotions (even understanding they were normal emotions to have helped enormously) and I'm back, pretty much, to where I was before the meteorite landed on our team.

Dave Briggs from Learning Pool very kindly offered to set up #lgchat (Wordpress) which would allow local gov types to talk about anything and everything to do with local gov. I will be in front of my PC every Thur at 3pm if I can be because I think the discussions which will inevitably happen will give me great insight into how people outside local gov see us.

However. There are a number of reasons why after much musing I decided to kick out on my own and go back to my original idea. Social media looks easy to everyone outside local government. If I were paid a pound every time someone said a sentence with 'but you just....' or 'why can't you.....' or 'it's free and simple, what's the problem' I'd be a millionaire.

It's not that simple. I don't care what anyone outside says, it's not that simple and that's coming from someone in a team inside a Council where social media is about to become as normal a way to communicate, I think, as picking up the telephone. There is a sea change, somewhere in peoples heads, a complete sea change in attitude. But anyway, there are barriers, there are still barriers, there will always be barriers. People outside don't know about GovConnect, don't know about the internal ICT project queues, don't know about locked down PC's which mean you can't install Tweetdeck, don't know, perhaps, that 5,000 people switching streaming Tweetdeck to on, could potentially impact negatively on aging WAN's (and LAN's). Then there's the fact that Flash updates are often stopped, that twinkly websites wont run, that lots and lots and lots of Councils don't allow their staff to use the web outside of their lunch time.

For these reasons and a thousand others, #lgovsm is simple. It's going to be kept simple. There's a webpage where transcripts of the chats will go so people who can't get on the web at all at work can come and read and take part in the discussion off Twitter. It'll be there for the people who are in meetings or out with the girls. It's at 1pm so people can go onto Twitter in their lunch breaks without getting into trouble. There's no complicated flash websites or anything involved. And if you can't get onto Twitter cos it's filtered under chat on the website blocking software, well then the blog on Tumblr is there too.

There is a place for both chats. But one is aimed very much at the bottom, while I think one is very much aimed at the top. And I am the right person to be running the one aimed at the operational people, the people who make things happen, who make things move, who run under the radar, who by whatever means necessary get the tech to work so other people can speak across it. That's me. The other isn't, not yet.

So, if you work in local government and you want to come and chat, see you on Friday at 1pm. The hashtag is #lgovchat. The Tumblr blog where the transcripts will be held is here. W'll be running for an hour, we'll spend about 20 minutes per question which will be put forward hopefully by all of you. You can submit questions to be discussed on the Tumblr. You can DM them to me if you want on Twitter @loulouk

Very most of all, everyone is welcome. Directors, CE's, Heads of Service, Officers, Managers, partners, voluntary sector who work with local gov, all Departments are welcome from Childrens Services to Environmental Services. There's no money for training, none for conferences, none for learning. Time to learn from each other and perhaps accept that the experts in local government social media are us. We're it. The buck stops with us.

See you there.

Turning a chrysalis into a butterfly (Twitter)

Used to be, someone saying 'she's such a nice person' made me wince. Used to be, being nice wasn't a personality trait people wanted to have. Connotations of naivety, stupidity, immaturity. No one can reach their 30's and be nice, there has to be some motivation, some manipulative reason, no one gives things for free without wanting something back.

It got old. Real old. And really uncomfortable, frankly. A curse to be dodged, unacceptable to demonstrate kindness. Hide it away, and get grumpier and grumpier because I'm appalling at pretending to be something I'm not.

Then I joined Twitter. You knew it was coming, right? Of course you did, if you're on Twitter. At first I thought it was just the mountain bikers who were lovely, sending kit off to people they'd never met cos they didn't want it any more and they couldn't be bothered to go through the hassle of actually selling it. Then, as I became more immersed in public sector streams and discussions, something became clear to me. For the first time in my life, I was a little bit spiky and a little bit sarky compared to most of the people around me. And it felt really really really good. But that's not the half of it.

There's the being smart thing. Everyone on Twitter with a few exceptions, is incredibly smart. Politically, technically....thousand different ways. Lots and lots and lots of incredibly intelligent people. All of whom are completely unapologetic about it. Comfortable with it. Don't flaunt it but don't hide it either. Bit of a revelation for a kid who's always been a little bit uncomfortable about admitting she knows stuff for fear of coming off as a complete smartass. Actually, to be honest, I got given so much shit at school for getting A's it all went downhill from there really. I just didn't want to stand out so I just didn't own up to knowing stuff. The first time I did a pub quiz with my other half and his friends (now my friends too, thank goodness) it was a bit of a revelation. People knowing stuff. Admitting knowing stuff. Competing to know stuff. Gosh. I knew none of the answers and it was fab. Utterly.

Essentially, those two simple things, suddenly being exposed to a massive amount of people who were nice and shared stuff 'cos it was the right thing to do' and who were smart and liked to think 'cos there's nothing wrong with that at all' have revolved my world.

Shy. Quiet. No opinions. Silent listener. Nothing to contribute. Head down. Invisible. Lacking motivation. Uninspired. Negative.

All those things. Especially the last. I told someone at work that the other day. They looked rather bemused. So they might. But I was. Terribly. And you know, there were reasons, and I'm wise enough standing where I do right now, to know they were good reasons and 99% of the rest of the population would have had the same life attitude I did, but nevertheless I'm not proud it took so long to flip things. I got bored and never learnt anything new to fill the holes. I got bored and never looked for challenges and things to absorb me. I was bored and couldn't see past the end of my nose in order to fix the problem.

You see, I didn't think I could change things. I didn't. Watching (seemingly) ordinary people do extraordinary things via Twitter means eventually there comes a slow realisation that actually, anything might be possible. You might be able to lose weight - person x is. You might be able to ride your bike further than you ever have before - person y did. You might be able to eventually set up your business and become your own boss - person z, a, b & c did. It's not nudge - it's something more than that.

The ability of social networking to expose hicks from dead end backwaters and families where aspiration is not a word ever uttered to thousands of people who do aspire,  do inspire, do strive, are driven, are nice, do try, are motivated, aren't negative?

The very demographics of the web currently mean that very few of you will know of the things I speak of. But if you do, then I suspect you too will know what I speak of. Social mobility. Looking from the bottom; up and asking the question, the fundamental question.

What can I do if I really, seriously, passionately and honestly, put my mind to it?

I'm 33 years old. I think, really, it might be a nice thing to do to try and work out how we can accelerate the process a little bit so it doesn't take the people I assume will come after me, quite so damn long to figure all this out. It's not a business plan. It's not a plan at all. But it's an acknowledgement, I think, that there will come a time when my current job or whatever comes after it wont be quite the right thing, despite my loving my current job and I suspect loving whatever may come after it, and that eventually, I must stop talking and start doing.

I only just grew my wings. But I'm going to flap them, because it's feels enormously selfish not to, somehow. Pick it up and pass it on.

BWD winter - one Council, two people, a lot of determination

Lots and lots of blog inches have been devoted to bemoaning the direness of local governments reaction to the winter weather we are currently experiencing. I can't rebut them all. I'm tired of rebutting them all, frankly.

So, instead, I'm going to explain what happens when a Council has a Director of Communications who understands social media and lets his staff have free reign (within reason), a Head of Communications who is supportive, endlessly patient and relentlessly cheerleads when needed and a PR Officer who just wants residents to understand exactly what happened last year, why it happened, that we've taken steps to ensure it doesn't happen again this year but acknowledges that if it does happen again, being in an arena where people are discussing that failure is perhaps far more of value than sticking fingers in ears and singing la la la.

Essentially, though, BWD Winter is a labour of love for two people - the PR Officer and me. I know it for what it is - a beautiful opportunity to demonstrate exactly what a combination of digital, social media, mapping, Flickr and YouTube can do when all resources are thrown at it and no punches are pulled. It's definitely love, because it's taken a lot of work and determination to circumnavigate our somewhat elderly Content Managenment System. It's definitely love because the PR Officer is frequently speaking to Highways and Grit Control at  8pm on a Sunday evening. Services between 9-5pm? Not in winter. So the communications systems have changed to reflect that.

It started with a Winter Services hub page on our website. Just, you know, bog standard really. Info about gritters somehow made interesting, awesome pics of gritters doing their thing (if you're into that kind of thing, some people are, who am I to comment). Then an internal email newsletter appeared, keeping Directors and Members up to date with developments and concerns to forewarn them of incoming issues, but also to celebrate successes. Lovely internal comms but no use to the residents.

Then, one morning, the PR Officer came bouncing up to me and asked if we could have a Facebook page. Yeah, course, I said. 48 hours or so later, we'd got a BWD Winter Facebook page. And no Likes. So off we went, all of our team, merrily commenting and throwing it into our friends streams. I'm sure there is a better way of seeding a new page or group into peoples consciousness - but we were experimenting. It snowballed quite quickly (ha ha ha) and 100 Likes later, in the middle of September, when snow was but a distant cystallised twinkle in the eye, we thought we might be onto something. The grit got delivered, pictures got taken, up they went. People talked and chatted and commented between themselves, and our PR Officer replied every time a question was asked. She still does. If she doesn't know the answer, she asks Highways. If she doesn't have any pictures she wants, she asks the gritters to take some. No professional shots here, just staff taking two minutes to pop outside with their 5 megapixel snapper. Content, magically appeared.

Then we figured tying it to Twitter might be an idea. It's tied to the FB page because we're broadcasting, of course we are, but we check for replies. Check for questions. Make sure no one is missed. But Facebook is the hub of the dynamic content, which in some ways considering the demographics of our area, is exactly the way it should be.

So, what else are we publishing on our Facebook page? Pictures aren't information, pretty as they are. So there's Met Office updates, school closure updates. There will be service updates on refuse and recycling collection should we get to the point, as we did last year, where the Head of Environment decides at 7am to pull the service. We'll explain that decision, we'll explain alternative collection points if we need to implement them. We'll also map them. We'll come back to that later. We'll explain about burst pipes in schools, we'll relay traffic hotspots and accident blackposts courtesy of the Gritter Control who will receive up to the minute traffic information - from the people driving up and down the roads - the gritter drivers.

It's not all data though. Not all boring stuff. There's a call for scenic photographs on the Facebook page at the moment so we can share the pretty. When the snow comes down properly, we'll hopefully be holding a best snowman competition - no monetary prizes though, only that all submissions will be published on the Council Flickr page in a specific set, and that the winner will go in a simple frame and be displayed in the Town Hall foyer. Momentary fame but a reward for bothering, nevertheless.

A few week ago, it came to my notice that people were publishing lots of gritting route info down in the West Midlands. @danslee and @sarahlay being the prime suspects. So off we went on an epic journey through 2 Departments and assorted meetings and negotiations, to get permission, get them hand drawn, get them to display properly using basic Google maps and get our aging Content Management System not to throw a complete hissy fit on loading something other than text, image or documents. It took relentless negotiating with people and tech to get those maps up. They're up. By any means necessary took on a whole new meaning. Mapping the grit bins has been simplicity itself in comparison, but a shining star in Transport still needed to run 3 revisions before being confident that most of the markers were in the right place, if not on the right side of the road. It's certainly brought asset mapping and tracking into the forefront of Highways mindset, which perhaps is a good thing? Certainly the bins will be numbered cheaply next year, and thanks to a discussion spawned by that, lampposts will be QR coded too, quite probably. Because perhaps the magic of social media collaboration between Communications and other Departments is not the actual conversation, but that the conversation on such things has been started at all. Bridge building.

So, now, our web hub has:

• Basic information on gritting, why we do it, when we do it and how we do it
• Maps showing the locations of all grit bins within the Borough which people are encouraged to feedback on if we've got it wrong
• Maps showing all our gritting routes as a term of reference for those bothered to find out when we say on our Facebook page which routes we're gritting, primary or secondary
• A link to a Facebook page with over 450 likes and 4000 impressions a day on busy days, where conversations, two way conversations are happening
• A link to a Twitter stream being checked regularly for feedback
• A Flickr gallery of gritters pictures, which will shortly be updated with residents scenic photographs

So what's the value of all this hard work and constant liasing and updating? Well. I guess this is where we find out.

With thanks to the PR Officer who started all this, @luciehigham, the Head of Comms who's been immensely supportive, @marcschmid, the Director who allows us a bit of lee way, @tomstanard and most of all to @leejorgensen, the bloke who puts up with me sitting at my desk clapping my hands excitedly when it works, and who helps me fix it by being calm when it doesn't. And whose righteous google maps hack means those grit bins are all on the same map instead of being paginated.

Teamwork. Even when we're heading towards having no money at all, that costs nothing at all. And some days, some times, on things like this, we've got it in spades. Cost of doing above = nothing. Happy residents feeling informed? Around 4,000 but we reckon word of mouth might mean just a few more.

The future will be digitalised

I've never seen anything like it. I never thought I'd see anything like it. This post isn't planned. It's not going to be cohesive, elegant or eloquent. It is, instead, a reaction to the events currently happening in central London and across the UK, as the nations next generation take the future into their own hands and draw their line - digitally.

Tweets from @ucloccupation, who at one point were suspended for too much activity by Twitter are an astounding example of the way social media can be used to get your message across in real time. The 100 or so students camping out at UCL are being peaceful. Entirely peaceful. Pictures posted to the feed including this one show young people doing what young people do......

Actually, no they don't. That right there, apparently, is the 'media table'.

Think about that for a second. Yes, this has been brewing for weeks and yes there's been some time to rally for the troops and organise the output and organise the events. But a 'media table'? Really? What the hell are we teaching these kids at university nowadays that they're so organised and switched on?

Of course, it's not the teaching. It's society. In our focus on the way society has become so celebrity orientated we forgot something - it's also become intensely media aware. We assumed everyone was taking the lessons from Katie Price and thinking that getting your tits out was the only way to acquire fame and success. We did the next generation a great injustice in doing so. And now we learn, now we see. The future generation took all we taught them, indirectly, about self promotion and branded perfumes and they learnt the lesson well. Then they took the lesson and they applied it to their politics, to their morals and their codes. They picked it up and passed it on, and passing it on as we speak, the network of tweeting students in occupation spreading. Talking to journalists without needing to pick up the phone. Using Twitter like a knife to cut through the noise and explain. Passing the account from hand to hand and producing soundbites from individual protestors.

The point?

Typing furiously. Using the tools. Channel shifts. Ways of communication absolutely changed in the future world where by any means necessary means choosing words and having the intelligence to understand the power of words.

The future will be digitalised.

A little bird tweeting

I am naught but a little bird tweeting. I am not a journalist, I am a geek. A geek in love with words, yes, but nevertheless a geek. A woman who loves to describe, shape, evoke, revoke, aspire, inspire, play and provoke, but a geek, first and foremost.

Geeks don't like it when things are not 'fair'. I don't mean not fair in a tantrum rattle throwing way, I mean a basic human right violated, criminal getting away with it kind of not fair. Something done wrong, which could easily be righted, a thing unprovoked and unwarranted, undone.

On Thursday, a man called Paul Chambers lost his appeal against his conviction earlier this summer, under some random nuisance call legislation, for posting a tweet joking about Robin Hood airport being closed. No matter that the tweet was a written communication, no matter that it was a joke and everyone knowing the man who read his stream would have know this without needing to be told, no matter that he is one man writing in public what a thousand will have said in private - the conviction stands and he is saddled with a total £2000 bill as well.

Also on Thursday, a Birmingham Councillor posted a tweet inciting the stoning of a Muslim columnist for the Evening Standard and The Independant, also on Twitter. Gareth Compton apologised, used in his defense the comment:

Twitter is a forum for glib comment of the moment. It was a glib comment. Who could possibly think it was serious?

 If the Judge in the appeal for Paul Chambers cast doubt on his defense that he was not keeping up with news and current affairs, then one assumes this is also the defense Gareth Compton is using. So tell me, do tell me please, how it is possible that Gareth Compton is not being charged with anything for a 'glib comment' on Twitter which was tantamount to inciting murder in text, while a young man has been punished for life for doing exactly the same thing - except I think we can all agree that perhaps his comment was more obviously a joke, given the context?

Ah, but here we come to the crux of the matter. Context. Both these tweets are taken out of context, and as such contain no history, no attached framework which explains the context within which they were said. And lo! because legislation has not kept apace with technology developments, we now have a situation where we are using 80 year old legislation to prosecute 21st century commentary. Which, therefore, does not require context, but only allows a comment to be judged on what it is - a comment out of time.

So we come to this morning. Ah yes, I hear you cry, but you're biased. Well actually, I'm not. I've never spoken to the lady in question, until this morning I did not follow her, and though we know many people in common because this is the nature of Twitter, we did not know each other at all. I now follow her, and she now follows me. But this is inconsequential, as I have not read her stream at all.

The lady I am talking about, of course, is one Sarah Baskerville, aka Baskers, which is her tag on Twitter. The Daily Mail, this morning, saw fit to print a character assasination of someone, by name, in Quentin Letts column. It is worth noting the number of comments on the piece linked above. It appears The Daily Mails abhoration of freedom of speech extends to its readership, who are not permitted to express displeasure at the contents of the articles they are reading.

Baskers is a civil servant. She writes a wonderful blog. In it, she comes across as a rather intelligent, bright young woman, in a job which she admits she could try harder at but also admits is not glamourous or particularly frontline. So instead of descending into a spiral of self pity and demotivation, she has looked outside of her little silo and has decided to push the transparency agenda as hard as she can, involving herself voluntarily, and giving her time freely, to attend unconferences and bar camps and to talk to the geeks who are trying to do cool and funky things with data, in order to bridge a gap, a gap of understanding, of comprehension, of workflow and of civic mystery.

In other words, last time I looked, a shining role model of what Big Society is. Is it not? Is this how we reward the people who work for us not only 9-5 in front of a desk, but also out in the wild, telling people the good, but also occasionally the bad, and in the process gaining audience and credibility in their honesty? Is this the thanks we will give to a generation of men and women who see the right and shout about it, but also see the wrong and shout about that too - and then get off their asses and go and try and do something about it? Do we want sheep who will do nothing but what's instructed, never to think for themselves, never to innovate or find the edges?

Can I suggest to the Daily Mail that the roi on Baskers is not only monetary? That she is a link between the past and the future? That her way of doing things - honestly and openly - is the future that generation y are bringing en masse whether you like it or not?

Except no, I cannot. Because the comment thread is closed. And here we come to the root of the cause of all this noise. The fear. The fear that social networking, social media is untrackable, untraceable, rippling and evolving. Out of control? Perhaps in only the sense that everything is out of control, in its evolution. Could we have predicted the expanding capabilities of the computer chip 10 years ago? Should we have stamped on that development because we had no idea of where it would end? As a species, are we going to stamp on all things which we cannot predict, because we do not wish to see where the unsigned path will lead? Why is freedom of speech free only verbally, why is it becoming clear that freedom of speech textually is going to be a gnarly issue, attempts made to constrict and punish? Why has Twitter suddenly become the focus of so much attention? Is it because it is easier to read bursts of 140 and find the thoughtlessly posted comments, than it is to wade through every blog in existence? But reading only one 140 burst only gives a moment, not the context.

So here's the thing. I am going to ask very many people to tell me the good things about Twitter. The positive things. The life changing things and the little things which make peoples day. If social media is telling a story, well come tell me yours, because if you believe the media this week, Twitter is only negative, and I don't believe that for a second.

So, in the spirit of militant optimism, this is the line. I am drawing it. Time to fight back in black and white, to tell the story of networking, of entrepreneurs, of love and laughter, of connections and friendships for life, of lobbying and engaging with constituents, of doing business and telling people they've got jobs, of memes and hash tags, of all the things Twitter which has brought us, of all the conversations in sight and out. All things can be used and abused. Alcohol causes utter chaos every Friday and Saturday night. But in the interests of balance, I think it's time to pour a glass of wine, just the one, and to savour every drop, sensibly.

ETA: A story of the Gaza convoy hostages via my friend @annelidworm who used social media with others to bring the plight of his friend to the attention of the traditional media. Incidentally, I've met him once, but spoken to him, on and off, for well over 15 years - using social media. 

90 minutes (and the rest)

Social media, I am told, is for telling stories. So here's a story about what led to a 90 minute meeting played out through many media and communication channels, but which ultimately was about something as simple as asking a question, and receiving an answer.

It started with curiosity. Someone at work mentioned there would be a public consultation meeting on Monday evening (8th November). I asked our Director on Twitter if it might be okay if I went, because as someone who shall rename nameless correctly identified, us digital geeky types tend to understand the most complicated technology easily, but boggle when it comes to the vagaries of local government and democracy actually in action.

In the process of discussing this, @marcschmid popped up and asked me if I'd like to tweet from the event. I agreed, it's something I've wanted to get done from our official account, @blackburdarwen for ages.

In the midst of this #gab10 happened and I didn't really think about the mechanics of what we'd be doing, simply that we were doing it. I finally got around to mentioning we would be doing it on Sunday evening.

Monday came, and in the absence of @sturgey I attended the final planning meeting. The meeting might have been shouted about by the Communications half of our Policy & Communications Department but the planning, intricacies, paperwork, research, challenges, agendas and minutae were the responsibility entirely of the Policy half. It's the first time I've had the pleasure of working with them on something and it was a pleasure. Well organised, everything dotted and crossed - I left the meeting a little in awe, but also a little sad to find that tweeting was perceived to be a frippery, an irrelevance.

Time passed. Policies noise levels (we share an open plan office) rose throughout the afternoon to a crescendo and then fell away as the organisers drifted across to King Georges Hall to ensure everything was in place and look after the details.

5pm suddenly crept up. Wielding nothing but an iPhone (mine) and a mifi (using 3G) off I went. Arrived. Plugged in the iPhone. Plugged in the mifi. Watched the yellow flashing light. Watched the red flashing light. Experienced that sinking feeling which comes from tying to get a 3G signal in the basement of a Victorian building. Went outside, sat on the bottom step. Watched the lights, watched the Apple spinning circle. Time passed. Mild panic reared its head. Someone nabbed a technician working for the theatre. He couldn't help, radio'd someone who could. Time passed. I paced. Time passed. Got introduced to Tom Moseley from the Lancashire Telegraph. Stress levels slightly too high to be attempt anything other than briefly charming. Wondered off muttering about relays and network cables. Later discovered Tom had managed to find the only corner of the Windsor Suite I'd not tried for signal and set himself up comfortably. Time passed. Technician arrived. Found a network cable. Plugged it into the back of the mifi box in a vain hope. Hope dashed.

Sit. Think.

Call the other half of the web team. He delivers a laptop, summoned from someone somewhere. @tomstannard appears while I'm waiting in the foyer for team member to turn up. Try not to babble. Try to convey everything under control while quietly fretting. Team member turns up, saving me from acting as a temporary theatre usher. Set up laptop, plug in network cable. Start talking to the laptop, practically begging it to work. Tap in wrong password. CLONK goes the laptop. Cringe. Am sitting in the sound booth at the back of the room. Hunch down in my chair so no one sees me. Tap in right password. Watch it load. Watch it load. Time passes.....

Try and log into Tweetdeck. Nope. No joy. Finally concede that twitter.com in old mode is my best friend. Finally start tweeting, hot, bothered and slightly hyper, 3 minutes after the meeting starts.

25 tweets and 30 minutes, possibly 40 minutes later - I lost track - I'm exhausted but it's working. A new found respect for the media team who sit behind us in the office, as I realise how hard it is to hear words said, pick out salient points, ensure no skew or bias, distill to 140 characters, add the hashtag and hit the tweet button. On a track pad. Later find the mouse in the bag. Smile quietly to myself. Sit back. Watch. A room full of people engaged and discussing. Yes, discussing hard, deeply depressing, difficult cruel subjects. But here. Talking. Engaging. Discussing. Involved. Democracy.

The point of this post is that perhaps it is not the post you expected to see. It is the post of one tiny little cog in a massive machinery. Many people contributed to one girls ability to sit at the back of a room and watch, observe and listen and then pass it on to the big wide world. It is the mechanics of a process. It is teamwork (I saw some of our team members in Communcations actually doing their jobs in the wild yesterday for the first time), it is thinking differently, it is management at senior level having faith, it is Leaders saying yes and having patiemce, it is persistence and relentlessness, it is planning and foresight, it is acknowledging that people who cannot attend physically might want to attend nevertheless. But most of all, very most of all, it is simplicity itself. Document what you see, what you hear - and pass it on.

With thanks to The Guardian Society daily for quietly and unobtrusively making my day.

Networks & Nudging (cross posted to Mud in my eyes)

Sometimes two opposites collide.

I'm a fat mountain biker and a multi media communications officer. This post is about both these things because, increasingly, those two things are becoming interestingly intertwined as the reason I am fat and still mountain bike become something of a conundrum to be unravelled for central government.

It's nothing to do with me. It's really not. Except that when people start talking about things I have personal experience of, these days I get frustrated enough to want to set the record straight.

Paul Ormerod has written a 'pamphlet', which appears to actually be a report for the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Mannufacturers and Commerce) called N-Squared. It tackles the government on it's recent assertion that nudging is the way to get people to change behaviours. I feel eligible to comment on this as, when I booked a hotel last night, the first thing I checked was whether it had a gym so I could get to ride a bike at least once in the 3 days I was away from my 'real' one. That, right there, is behaviour change for me.

Nudge comes from something called 'behavioural economics'. Don't ask. Instead, read this, which is the thrust of the matter, for me:

This essay argues that to be effective, the policy framework
for the twenty-first century must not only draw on the new
insights that behavioural economics gives us, but also needs to
be underpinned by an understanding between this and how
networks influence our choices and how these change over
time. Indeed, the impact of networks is potentially considerably greater than that of ‘nudge’. This makes creating good policy harder while offering huge potential for change.

My personal experience is that both are true. Except not in the way that these people seem to think. It's the combination of both, where one feeds the other that the thrust of the change is born.
Out there on the web are thousands of communities and they reside in very many places. Sometimes there is crossover. To understand how the web works is to understand how it motivates and supports and this is where the lack of research and understanding is becoming clear in central government and those who swim around it.

I use a forum called Singletrackworld. It collects a lot of like minded mountain bikers into one place. Rides are organised, old kit is sold, random arguments about politics and music are had, but there is very much a sense of community with the same people posting on a day to day basis and then a further circle of people commenting a few times a week on posts that particularly interest them. It's a group like any other, with the interactive dynamics that the Tavistock Institue so well defined, just like any other.

Some of those people are on Twitter. But the thing which Twitter does best is to connect people of people. So, some people from Singletrack are on Twitter. But the friends of the people on Singletrack are not on Singletrack but are on Twitter. And so boyfriends, girlfriends, riding partners, riding groups, sons, daughters, skills guides, DJ's, journalists and editors all collide in one loosely defined group on Twitter. They're in my mtbfabulousness list if you're interested.

They're the people who keep me on the straight and narrow. Actually, let me rephrase that. They're the people who kept me on the straight and narrow at the start, when I needed them. And I did need them. I was fat and horrenously unfit and I'd not ridden a bike in a long time. I didn't know I needed them, it wasn't a conscious decision, it was just that all I talk about for a good portion of the day when not at work is mountain biking and so this amorphous mass of lovely people slowly infiltrated my world. Some found me cos of this blog, Mud in my eyes. Some from seeing their friends chat to me. Some from the odd time here or there where they got added into a mass conversation about forks or flat pedals. Some because ideas of a ride out were being muted and some because of the girly biker community.

Twitter is a collision, crossing over point and shaper of new communities and networks. As a result, you find people who are also trying to keep fit and earn cake. As a result, you find other people who talk really quite a lot about mountain biking. As a result, when you don't want to leave the comfort of your sofa, you are constantly reminded of the benefits of doing so as other peoples ride reports flash up your screen. It's a great motivator. As a result, when you're feeling terrible, you can always have a quick moan and get picked up again. As a result, slowly but surely, going out for a ride becomes routine instead of a novelty and slowly but surely, your fitness improves and your world view and behaviour changes.

This is the importance of being inside something to comment on it. This is perhaps the responsibility of being inside something to be in a position to comment on it. If this works for me, would it work for others? I don't know. It seems people are writing successful books on half the story, but misunderstanding the other half because they don't use the mediums of which they speak. N-Squared hits the nail, right on the head.


In my world, my Twitter 'friends' are the people who have kept me going, kept me riding, kept me determined to get better at this ludicrous sport. They've advised, sympathised, calmed and encouraged, cheered and motivated and you know, without them I'm not sure I'd have ridden the route I rode yesterday.

Never underestimate the value of knowing others can. Never underestimate the power of following others. But most of all, understand that the key to behaviour change is a weird mix of technology, digital and sociology and psychology these days and more research badly needs to be done to get to the root of what works and is efficient, and what doesn't and is not.

I'm forever blowing bubbles?

In the midst of the mass of data I absorb on a weekly basis, somewhere in the depths has stuck the idea that we social media bods are in a bubble. That noone outside of the bubble cares. My question is, who is blowing the bubbles, exactly?

You see, quite simply, there is no noise without a silence. No solution without a gaping void. No technology without its users and no Twitter without answers to the eternal question: What are you doing? If there is a bubble, then that may very well be the case, but the bubble does not preclude the usefulness of the particles inside the bubble, only it shows the value of introducing more particles into the bubble, to expand the shape, colour and direction of the bubble. Bubbles are not exclusive. And there we leave that analogy, weeping from its abuse, quivering in the gutter.

With apologies to yet another blog writer whose words I consumed voraciously, pondered sub consciously for days and as a result have no memory of the identity of the author, someone else mentioned that 'What are you doing' might as well be 'What do you know that I need to know?'

I don't believe Twitter must be 'something'. I believe Twitter is many things to many different people, just as Facebook is. Some people enjoy immensely the pleasure of dissecting politicians and associated commentators blathering on Question Time. A mass political derision, mostly, but it's commentary nevertheless. To others it is a campaign tool, and after the campaign, a tool to continue to ask questions and receive quick answers on local feelings, contentious issues and relevant input from other politicians. Some use it as an RSS aggregator though some of those people don't know that's the name for what it is their doing. Yet others use it to relentlessly network, no interest in those passing through, only interested in the opportunities new followers can give them.


Then there's the public sector. What does the public sector use Twitter for? I had an interesting conversation with a chap from a constabulary the other day. 'We're just not sure' he said. 'We've set up the account and people are following us from the States and Canada, we think they're hoping for some kind of voyeuristic thrill'.

I was rendered almost speechless. Almost, because when talking about social media, my natural reticence seems to disappear into the ether, and there emerges someone whose enthusiasm tends to railroad anyone in its path. Something I must work on, frankly, but anyway. For the moment, points for enthusiasm seem to count for something and for this I am grateful.

This chap didn't get it. I tried. I really did try. He still didn't get it. I don't think he got it at the end of a rather beautifully presented social media presentation by a company I wont mention because you might possibly identify the constabulary and that simply wouldn't be fair. The presentation distilled social medias multiple channels neatly and concisely into easy bite size little chunks. I learnt little but it wasn't aimed at me. I'm rather comfortable in the digital world, as might be evident if you've read through this blog, the presentation wasn't aimed at me, it was aimed at the lady who identified herself as a luddite and then proceeded to get so entirely, piercingly and beautifully to the point she managed to deprive the 'experts' of speech, momentarily. I still grin when I think of that two weeks later.

Anyway, Mr Constabulary. Missed the point of being a geek. Missed the point of what geeks do. In the process applied normal rules to geeks and came up with an altogether incorrect assessment of the motivation of the geek on the other side of the world. I don't follow people because they're local to me. I follow people because, quite simply, they know something I want to know. My motivations for wanting to know are wide ranging. They lurch drunkenly from idle curiosity, to the vain hope that someone behind the account might know the solution to a particularly thorny work problem I'm currently trying to solve. Sometimes I hunt down the wrong person to thank or given positive feedback to, but I figure that's a points for trying scenario too. My follow list scythes from metal and rock music, through public sector, via excessive amount of mountain biking and cycling feeds and......can I admit to this......In Style and Vogue magazine. Is someone at Vogue wondering why a woman who enjoys getting covered in mud and chooses to do it for fun in her spare time is following them? No. No they're not. So, here is my first rule of Twitter and entering the bubble. Normal rules do not apply here. Normal people operate quite happily here but in among those happy shiny people, are people who follow thousands upon thousands of Twitter streams, yours is one of them, and what does it mean?


Absolutely nothing. They thought you were interesting. Someone they follow retweeted you and they thought the stream sounded intriguing and picked you up that way. Twitter doesn't have geographical borders. I don't think it should have geographical borders. I don't want a little UK Twitter bubble, that would be boring, Justin Bieber hate aside. One of the most wonderful things I have ever seen is following the multiple Eurovision Song Contest tags on the big night (because someone didn't publish an official tag, there were many streams, there's another lesson here for another night), and watching French, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and English scrolling up my screen, all saying the same thing. Well okay, I can guess read all of it bar the Northern European where I become lost, but it was one of the most humbling experiences I've ever had. All these people, all talking about the same thing, all at once, using the same platform. To the best of my knowledge it's never happened before, or certainly if it has, it's not been public, laid bare for all to see and appreciate and lo! behold! contribute to.


Bubbles gather air particles together, no matter who they are, how obsessive they are, how curious, what colour, what gender, how mobile they are. The bubble is growing. It's changing shape and it's becoming the thing whose direction can no longer be predicted, whose use in the future perhaps could not have been predicted in the past. This is the magic of the digital world. You can think you know the rules, you can think you know where things are going, you can think that see all the possibilities and all the outcomes, but really?


The clue is in the word social. People make the social, are the social, and direct the social. Psychology tells us much about group behaviour, but I wonder if perhaps this time the size of the group socialising, chatting, networking and collaborating means that this time, maybe, the rules will be broken and the world will truly be changed.


Not bad for a pointless little bubble which is only relevant to the people within it. I leave with the thought, one I've had repeatedly since my last post and all the fab comments which came in (thank you) - was the telephone a bubble when it was first introduced?

Information overloads

A number of blogs have been linked to in the past few weeks which have, in effect, been about information overload.

It's made me think about how I use social media, and how I use my iPhone specifically. It's also made me realise that for some people, social media is becoming an albatross around their neck. It shouldn't be this way.

Take the social out of social media for a second, and what have you got? Media. Communication. Data. News. Information. The social side is almost irrelevant when you think of it in these terms - you are the end receptor of a massive amount of information on Facebook, Twitter et al and it really can be as simple as that. You can sit and watch, you can sit and read, there is no necessity to sit and interact. It could be argued that perhaps you are only getting half the intended outcome if you only watch and read and never respond, but the choice is ultimately yours.

If the weight of expected interaction is weighing you down, then perhaps you need to step back from things for a bit and become an observer. Watch the data streams scrolling down, learn from them whatever you can, and leave it at that. Step away. Take the information, use it, budget with it, plan with it, use it to inform your decisions, but don't respond, don't get involved and don't become drained. Social media is not supposed to be a problem. It is supposed to be a tool in a box, among many other tools.

I come at things from a slightly different angle. I am a geek. I suspect quite a large amount of Twitters userbase, for example, are. And so because we are geeks, there is a very large liklihood that we have been using what has now been niftily coined as social media for years. Very many years. Somewhere in the region of 20 years for some of us, though I was a late starter and only started communicating with random people on the internet about 15 years ago. But it is as much an intrinsic part of my life as picking up the phone to communicate with someone. In fact I must confess, I am far more likely to communicate via text than telephone and there are a number of reasons for that.

The biggest one, ironically, is information overload. If I call you on the telephone, there is an expectation that if you are in you will answer it. It might be something important, afterall, and once you have answered the phone, it is very difficult to then explain you're tired and only answered in case it was important. It's a socially awkward situation imposed on someone else, putting the other person on the other end of the phone in the position of 'answer and carry on speaking' or 'ignore and possibly miss really quite important news'.

Dropping an email in an inbox is different. There is no expectation on turnaround time. There is no awkwardness. There is just a little marker in someones inbox which says 'Hi, could use some interaction/date for an event sorting/just to say hi/nothing important' and it can be left to a time when the receiver has a spare moment in their day when it is appropriate for them to answer. There is no forced expectation.

Now take that concept a little further. Imagine a world where everyone operated on their own timescales if something wasn't 'important'. Imagine a world, for example, where you could email your GP and explain you needed an appointment for something not urgent. A refill of a prescription which needs an appointment perhaps, or a vaccination for a trip abroad, or just for some advice on a non urgent twinge in your arm. No hanging on the phone for 30 minutes listening to the endless 'you are now x in the queue'. No tired over worked harassed receptionist. Just a marker in someones inbox which says 'Hi, I need some help when you've got a bit of time'.

The sender is free to wander off and do something else. Like look after their new born child, or look after their elderly relative, or indeed even go off to work. Meanwhile, the marker sits in the inbox, waiting for someone else to finish with the early morning rush when things are mad, to grab a brew, and to sit down and wade through all those markers, firing off replies and updating the appointment database at their leisure. It doesn't matter if a crisis happens and they get interupted and have to dash off - the marker remains until it's dealt with. No one is put on hold, no one is charged any money for wanting to use a free service, everyone wins. They win in time, energy, patience and the ability to not be tied physically to the end of a phone.

The same usage works right the way across using social media as a communication tool. The onus is not on you to respond immediately. Just because someone can send a Tweet in real time does not mean you must respond in real time. As long as you have clearly stated turnaround times and manage peoples expectations, why exactly does it have to be instant? Yes there may be communications coming into you which do need an immediate response - fine. Scan down the list every hour and farm the important ones off, deal with them, forward them to the right person, retweet them to the right account and you've spent 10 seconds dealing with something urgent.

Data doesn't have to be drowned in. It doesn't have to be an albatross. If managed properly, with the right frameworks set up, data is merely another asset to be managed, something to be learned from, and ultimately something to be won with. Knowledge is power. Negative or positive, it is still power.

It's time to stop talking about social media, and to start using social media, media, communication, data, whatever you want to call it, to make peoples lives easier, gentler, less stressful and more centred around the increasingly time poor way people live their lives. It can be done.

140 characters or less

The initial business plan must have seemed strange. “I’m going to build a system which allows people to communicate from all around the world, without restriction. Except that they will have no more than 140 characters to do it in”

When I first started using Twitter, I must confess I missed the point. I posted pointless updates about random annoyances, chatted to friends and used it as a way of asking my boyfriend what was for tea. Yes, in our house the man cooks. The woman owns her own hammer and screwdriver. We fight over who’s erecting the Ikea haul. Modern life.

Modern life, it turns out, can exist quite happily in 140 characters. I suddenly don’t need any more. It’s forced me to strip the irrelevant from my communications, teaching me, slowly but surely, the value of commas and sentence construction. As I accrued followers, I suddenly became aware of the potential annoyance factor of these little irrelevances and day to day tedium being thrown into a black hole for people to read. The focus switched. I became more restrained in the nature of my updates, trying to connect with people using hashtags, slowly realising the value of the individuals on the other end of the Twitter line.

Time passed. I still failed to quite see the point. Not that I wasn’t using Twitter, but I wasn’t using it to its full capability. I still chatted about pointless things, I didn’t search for interesting people to follow, I didn’t understand its point. It was a massively multiuser chat system of public conversations, and little more.

Then I went to a convention. A convention of geeks, in the main. I used the hashtag and through it found a community of others, also attending the convention, also commenting on their experiences and interactions. Some of those people I found through that hashtag are now becoming friends, people who I’ve connected with and who I can ask questions of and receive answers. The penny dropped.

140 characters is not a lot through which to get a sense of a person. It’s not a lot to portray yourself through, either. But the web is far bigger than Twitter, and so through links posted in my stream I can find out about live streaming of digital inclusion conferences, read about experienced professionals and their opinion of our digital infrastructure, discover other peoples social media strategies, take part in discussions through hashtags and learn from 1000’s of different people about the state of the world, right now. This second. Dynamic communication is finally here – public sharing of instant reactions, commentary and feedback. News is instant and available in a way it never was before.

So where am I now? What do I think the point of Twitter is now?

Connection. On a really fundamental level, Twitter connects people. People with the same interests, people with the same agendas, people studying the same courses, people asking the same questions, people fighting for the same cause. Twitter is about linking people, creating communities from nothing, breaching geographical restrictions and allowing us to finally share. You can still do nothing but post status updates in a manner similar to Facebook. That’s fine. But the level above that is a mass of information sharing, questioning, collaborating and connecting, and it’s value is immeasurable.

140 characters or less might finally be the restriction which removes all the other ones we’ve lived with for so long. Funny world, isn’t it.

Well, hello there....

Despite having an internet presence since 1996, in some shape or form, this is my first foray into public blogging.

Until I got a Twitter account, I couldn't see the point of web 2.0. I thought it was reinventing the wheel, simply mimicing what Bulletin Board Systems had been doing for the last 20-30 years. I looked at all the little kids getting excited about being able to talk to each other in real time and share pictures and bookmarks and quietly smirked in the corner.

Twitter has changed my view, and I suspect in some ways will change my digital life. I have always been a very passive viewer. I read forums but never post, I read blogs but never comment, I view pictures but never praise, I find old friends on Facebook but I rarely write the first message. Twitter has forced me to engage with people. It is impossible to watch a stream of humanity scrolling up your screen from all corners of the globe and not be touched, somehow, with the wonder which Twitter is slowly but surely becoming.

A couple of years ago I had a discussion with someone far smarter than me about collective consciousness. He, and I to a lesser extent, couldn't see the point of having all these cabbies driving all over the place with 'The Knowledge' stuck in their head, and satellite navigation systems working entirely independantly, resulting in 30 tonne lorries getting stuck on hump backed bridges in the middle of nowhere. Far better, we thought, to stream the cabbies consciousness somehow - ask them to feed into a database which correlated all their shortcuts, hotspots they avoided etc, and link this somehow to satellite navigation.  A lot of people would pay an awful lot of money for something which was 'intelligent'. A web 2.0 satnav system. A way of drawing on so many peoples knowledge, experience and current observations. A way to find out about traffic problems from the people on the ground, not a helicopter in the sky.

Imagine my sheer delight, then, to discover a map of #uksnow. Quite literally, a map of Tweets, tagged with #uksnow, ripped directly from Twitter. All you need to know is the format to post the Tweet in, and bingo! there's your contribution to the collective consciousness for all to see. So now, immediately, we have real time weather reporting, available to anyone who wants it, faster than the Met Office or the BBC can report it. 

Welcome to the brave new world.

Welcome to the point of web 2.0. It took me a really long time to see it. But now, I've seen the future, and the future is sharing.

NB: I appreciate that perhaps collective consciousness is not the correct term for this. But I don't know what is, there isn't exactly a dictionary for this sort of thing yet, and suggestions will be welcomed!