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. 

>Hack it

 Verb// to cut a path through something.
Noun// no appropriate definition exists.
Source// Chambers online dictionary
Failure// to comprehend the nature/ethos/etymology or life approach of a really rather large amount of people.

//Once upon a time there was a film called Hackers. It showed a bunch of teenagers cracking passwords (obtaining them illegally without the owners knowledge by running dictionary look up programmes against a password entry field), logging into systems and changing them. Most notably, at the end of the film, they 'hack', by which I mean to say they gain access illegally, to the traffic light system of New York City. For reference, a situation not without the realms of possibility, as proved in Los Angeles, where losing control of only 4 traffic light hubs caused gridlock. "Hack the planet" becomes the rather ridiculous tagline of the film, inducing millions of script kiddies the world over to think they actually can.

//Even before that, there was Kevin Mitnick. A 'real' hacker, who infiltrated the security systems of real companies, at the time of his eventual arrest, he was considered to be the most wanted computer criminal in the United States. He used something called social engineering, which we'll come to later, to obtain passwords, hack systems, hack networks and copy protected data. In the traditional sense of the word, Kevin Mitnick was a hacker. In a rather more common turn of events than most will ever realise, Mitnick now runs his own computer security consultancy, Mitnick Security Consulting LLC.

//In the middle of all this, Loyd Blankenship aka The Mentor wrote The Hacker Manifesto. It was fuelled by an arrest and possibly quite a justified one. Who knows. Who can ever know. But the fundamental truths which eminated and resonated from his words echo down the years, and even now speak to the hearts of the kids who are now adults who never stopped asking the question. All of the questions, the big and the small, the easy and the hard.

My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.

Curiosity is not a crime. The direction it gets directed towards can make it become the motivator to commit a crime. The world changed.

//Hack. A word. It can mean many things to many different people. A lot of people think of the Mitnicks of this world when I say the word and I'm left floundering a little, trying to backtrack out of the corner I've verbally painted myself into, rather than explain the following, the subtle nuances, the blacks and the whites and the shades of grey, the morals, ethics and social engineering pitfalls, where manipulation becomes brain hacking others and where brain hacking yourself simply means 'temet nosce'.

//Hacking, to me and many others, is nothing to do with a computer network. It's to do with efficiency. Finding the shortest path to the quickest solution. It's about learning keyboard shortcuts so that windows can fly open and shut as if by magic so hands don't need to leave the keyboard, thus wasting precious time. It's about knowing you can hit enter on most text boxes to submit. It's about knowing that hitting U a few times in a country dropdown box will always get you to United Kingdom without using the mouse, but it's about so much more.

It's about learning the shortcuts. It's about the fact that most people turn left when entering a theme park, so always turning right and not having to queue except at the crossover rides, which can be circumnavigated by Q Jump tickets provided at the entrance. It's about standing at the right end of the platform on the tube, so that you are at the exit when you get off at the other end. It's about finding the side of the stage at a festival that no one ever bothers to walk to cos they're drunk and not thinking straight and having half a field to dance in to The Prodigy.

It's a thousand different things, from making your own cables to connect technology, to hacking your own brain so that you behave in a different way and become a better person. But social engineering is where I draw the line.

\\Social engineering. You may as well call it manipulation. The cold calculated process of looking at the human race as nothing more than data packets being directed by routers around a network, and picking those packets out of the network, draining them for all their knowledge, and then placing them back into the network none the wiser, while you run off and take the credit for all their ideas. Looking at people as sheep, and using it to your advantage by predicting peoples behaviour and then maliciously manipulating that information for your own gain. Catching someone at their most vulnerable and distracted and asking them a difficult question that you know is likely to ellicit an honest answer when it wouldn't normally. Seeing peoples motivations clearly, and dangling carrots in front of them, only to whip them away when you've got what you want from them. Pretending to play nice and not being honest about your motivations.

With geeks, real geeks, there is no guarantee of nice play. Social engineering was a term coined by hackers who are geeks who use what they know of the human race to get passwords and other 'helpful' data out of them. It is, essentially, the cold hard manipulation of a person.


That's the line. Processes can be hacked. Workflows. Websites to be more efficient and engage with people better. Big society, as a concept, is just a hack. A hack of the way society behaves, a massive behaviour change.


Ultimately, hack, to me, just means change something for the better, be that more efficient, more cost effective, more streamlined, more friendly, more engaging, even prettier.


It does not mean take advantage of the stupid people.

Butterflies and Hurricanes

Working in public sector is a challenge. At the moment, it is a massive challenge. The political, financial, economic and cohesive challenges are each massive issues in their own right. To be subject to each of these vagaries on a daily basis can be disheartening, can sap anyones relentless enthusiasm and determination.

Change everything you are
And everything you were
Your number has been called

Numbers up. Funding's gone. Grants pulled. Questions asked. Relentless questions asked. Quangos abolished, rules of the game spun 180 on us in the space of 6 months. Workloads doubling, will be tripled, eventually quadrupled? Who knows. Hatches battened and posts left empty, hanging swinging in the wind. A service on pause while those who are in power decide our futures, our funding, our frameworks and our hopes to deliver a service which is fit for purpose but also efficient; inspiring and innovative but also locked down to a tight budget.

Change. Change everything? Do you want to be a player in the digital future? Do you want your service to be accessible and relevant to the people you serve, who you were elected by? Can you conceive of a world where eyeball time is precious and reserved for those who are family and friends, where paying the bill is a slice of time carefully allocated, something to be whizzed through painlessly in 30 seconds, as easily as purchasing the weekly shop at Sainsburys or the aquisition of a new pair of shoes from Asos?

This country is going digital whether you like it or not. Your protestations that people use it only for fun and chatter are becoming akin to the sound of the last dinosaurs roaring as the meteorites came cascading down. Facebook brings people with similar concerns together, allows people to express the frustrations that previously were expressed across a garden fence. Except now there are 3000 garden fences and all the chatter becomes frustration becomes action and movement. Letters are written digitally through 38 Degrees. Potholes are reported through Fix My Street. People are connected through hashtags on Twitter. Connected. Digitally. Armies of people who care, who want to contribute, who have the time, who are asking the question repeatedly and relentlessly 'how can I contribute, how can I make a difference, how can I fix a problem, where can I give this time I have spare, I want to help, how do I help?'

If it isn't your job to convene these people, if it isn't your job to talk to these people, if it isn't your remit to engage with these people, then whose job is it?

No more talking. No more waiting for the floodgates to open. They are opening. The avalanche will drown you if you do not put into place the systems and workflows to deal with all of this. If you don't happen to have a friendly geek in your orgnisation who can and will explain all of this to you in words of one syllable, put a call out on Twitter, ask one of the many Heads of Service and Directors who you know who are digitally aware. Ask them the questions - if they can't answer the question, they will know someone who can. There'll be an innovator, a changer, an enthusiast, a geek - whatever you want to call us - near you who will come and speak to you and explain. There are conferences online and offline. Make the effort. Oftentime, all it will take is one question to the right person. If you don't know who the right person is, find someone who does. We'll help. This isn't some exclusive club. This is a patchwork of assistance and patience waiting on tap for you to call.

Best, you've got to be the best
You've got to change the world
And use this chance to be heard
Your time is now

Bridges have to be built. Someone has to stand in the middle. The external understanding of the challenges and directives that the public sector is subject to is limited. A few, a very few, understand because they left before the aspirations and shine could be pummelled out of them. The internal understanding of how digital will and can change is growing. Public sector has an image, it appears, of the antithesis of incubation of ideas, innovation, doing things differently and flying by the seat of the pants.

Wrong.

The challenge of the public sector where digital is concerned is to only understand this. Innovation happens in the wriggle room we all find in the spaces around the barriers. Great things are happening in little pockets of the country, ordinary people stepping up to the plate and doing extraordinary things. I am trying to be someone who finds the wriggle room, who remains relentlessly positive, who doesn't think about 'we can't' but instead thinks 'how can we?'. It's not an attitude I've always had in the public sector and it's a new feeling, I suspect, for quite a few people. It's as if a generation of leaders and inspirations were holding their breath, and the time to let it out and get to work has come and is finally here.

I don't want to be better than anyone else. I am not competing with anyone else. I have to be the best I can be. If that means brainstorming 100 ideas and only 1 of them being viable, only one of them having the capability to wriggle under the barriers, then so be it. If I am told no, then I will simply come back with a different idea, shaped differently, phrased differently. Public sector life doesn't have to be about being mediocre, it doesn't have to be about the bad pay cheque and the dwindling pension. It can be about forgetting all about that and simply seeing the challenge, focusing on the challenge and trying the best you can to do the best with what you are given, no matter how little that might be.

It is easy to innovate with endless cash. It is easy to imagine the world redrawn with funding streams and grants. Now the challenge is for us, all of us, in cities, towns and villages, in schools and in hospitals, to try and think of ways to allow us to deliver more for less. Digital has to be part of the answer. To ignore it entirely is to miss the bus. There will be no thanks for doing this, there will be no recognition. There's no credit or fame or glory in working in the public sector.

All there is is a challenge. A problem to be solved. A barrier to be wriggled under. A digital option to be considered.

Your time is now.

#girlsinit

I don't normally do this. I really don't. But this is important so it must be done.

I've just signed up to a petition being run be e-skills UK. They are also running an IT Ambassadors rollout which will eventually see people who sign up going into local schools they are paired with and speaking about why they are in IT. With free CRB checks included.

I've signed the petition and I've volunteered to go and talk tech to some teenagers despite avoiding public speaking like the plague. Here's why.

17% of the UK IT workforce are female.

I could stop this blog post right here. Everyone reading this knows that to be a fact. Everyone reading this knows why this is a bad thing. Everyone reading this has undoubtedly had a discussion with a woman in tech at some point in their career which has come at the problem or issue from such a different angle to the one you were coming at it from that you've been blown away.

I'm not a rampant feminist. I just think every sector that delivers a service to 100% of the population (because everyone needs IT) should be representative of the people it serves. Occasionally, girls see things differently. Our best ICT Project Manager in our organisation is a woman. She is focused on detail without being mired in it, MS Project is her weapon of choice and she deploys it well, she is trustworthy but knows when to break that trust for the good of the project, and more importantly perhaps, while I have no idea how much her boss values her, she is the one PM whose name you can mention to anyone, and I do mean anyone in the organisation and to the last, the very last, the person you are talking to will visibly brighten (or relax if it's in terms of that person managing their project) and have marvelous things to say about her.

I shouldn't really need to be making this point but I she is not alone. I know a few women who IT project manage and are damn good at it. Three of the girls on our IT helpdesk are women. They outnumber the boys. Each one of them I trust implicitly to know what I'm talking about, I don't need to filter the tech, I just tell them the problem as I see it in my hodge podge mix of geek and non geek talk and they understand and fix it. So do the blokes. But tellingly, not all of them. And it's people skills where those blokes fall down.

Historically, employing techs meant conceding that perhaps inter-social and customer service skills needed to be sacrificed. The world has changed immensely in the last 10 years. But there is something to be valued in a tech who has excellent customer service skills and still knows how to be calming, polite, empathic and gentle with people. Tech is still scary to a lot of people, you might think they understand what you're saying - truth be told they're probably doing what a rather nice lady I had a chat with the other day about this does - sloping off with their tail between their legs, never daring to ask another question because they've just been geek talked into oblivion and back and would rather die than have it happen again.

This is not the way to do business. This is not the way to provide a service.

Empathy is inherently a trait we all possess. I think perhaps women are better at being comfortable with displaying it. Is the reason that so many women work in customer service because it's traditionally been a low paid role, or because women are simply better at listening to what people are actually saying, what terms they're saying it in, and then mirroring the questioners terminology and phrasing in order to make that person feel more comfortable? Is that they can hear fear in someones voice, or can remember feeling that fear and want to reassure before moving on to solving the problem? Is it because we are comfortable with delivering information slower, sacrificing speed for ensuring that a message really is received and understood.

I'm not for a second suggesting men don't do their jobs in tech well. I'm not suggesting there are some things women can do which meant can't. Everyone can learn. What I am suggesting is that the lack of women currently in IT is depriving us of some great minds, inspirational viewpoints and differently motivated people who have an awful lot to contribute and who are contributing to almost every other sector of society pretty damn well thank you very much. Except ours. And that's wrong.

So, please sign up. Pick it up and pass it on.

A digital commitment

I am a digital bunny but I do hereby declare:

• To always explain when you're misusing technical terminology
• To always do the explaining in plain English
• To always be straight about what the tech can and can't do to the best of my knowledge
• To own up if I find out from someone smarter than me that something was possible when I told you it wasn't
• To never use the terms 'reaching out', 'blue sky thinking', 'web n.0', 'thinking outside of the box', or any other vacuous terms unless absolutely necessary and unless they're needed as a bridging tool between tech and non tech.
• To never laugh when you get it wrong
• To never rain all over your enthusiasm
• To explain in clear language why something is absolutely definitely a bad idea technically, but also when I'm saying no because snowflakes falling down an email is just not an option.
• To explain the geek speak in all forms, repeatedly as many times as asked
• To tell you when I genuinely don't know something, but to always try and point you in the direction of someone who does.
• To use the word virus carefully, with due care and attention
• To look away when you're typing your password in front of me in full faith
• To inspire and enthuse others as best I can
• To pass it on, always, and never keep data to myself if it's possible to make it open
• To enable you instead of always showing you how it's done
• To ignore your fear but come back to it another day if that's what's needed
• To pay attention and notice when your eyes are glazing over and step away
• To not squee, LOL, *hug* or ROFL in a professional capacity
• To retain a sense of humour, always, because this shit is complicated and all of us want to throw out PC's out of the window at some point

Digital engagement, inclusion and ability should be open to all, not those who were born with the keys.
Digital capability should not be restricted to those lucky enough to be on the end of an unbundled exchange.
Digital speed should not be restricted because of your geographical location.
Digital accessibility should not be an issue. Ever. The software is there, it is our job to ensure it always has something to spell out.
Digital snobbery has no place in this world. Blogeratti, twiteratti - this is about elitism whether you like it or not. Get over yourself.
Digital activism is not militancy.It is not the new army. It is a bunch of geeks giving people a platform to voice their passion, belief and enthusiasm. Engagement doesn't always tell you what you want to hear. Listen. The future is hearing both sides of the story.
Digital worlds can exist next to analogue ones. Analogue tastes better, smells better and the sunshine feels fantastic as you climb out of the freezing cold lake. There will always be a place for it, don't disappear out of it.
Digital friendships are a reality. Treat them with the same respect as you would the friends you meet for coffee/beer. Don't lie, don't disappear without a word, don't assume who the people you are talking to are. Ask them. Engagement isn't just for 'citizens', people need to interact too.

In this world that is changing so fast, sometimes it can feel like ethics are fading away. So this is my commitment to everyone I deal with.

I will play nicely.

If you always do what you always did......

If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.(Anon)

Thinking digitally and thinking differently. Big ideas and big changes in direction for public sector. But fundamentally, we are at the crossroads, and I'm afraid depending on your area, we're there right now. Not in a few months when you've written a strategy and done some research, but right now. Times aren't changing, they have changed. And if you stick to the same business approaches that you've always used, I think increasingly you'll find your returns dwindling.

Yesterday, through talking to various people, I decided that the phrase social media is one I'm going to try and step away from. Thankfully, it seems I'm not alone. We are communicating digitally, shaping worlds digitally, enabling communication digitally and reconnecting communities digitally. Social media is, in most peoples heads, Facebook and Twitter. It's so much more than that. It's the software my mate's building to allow people to easily self publish. It's sharing your photographs and getting feedback and unexpected praise. It's asking the hive mind what it thinks about x, y and z and getting a quick and sensible answer and it's about philanthropy done on a very small scale but done by people like you and me.

What I'm getting at is, the platform almost doesn't matter any more. The foundation is the web, of course it is, the zeroes and ones that flow beautifully through the system, the packets that fly, the routes that mimic the nodes in the brain. But it's there and it will stay and it will endure. It's what we put on top of it that matters, how we use this and our motivations for doing so to a lesser extent. But to use all this possibility, this massive capability can be boggling and overwhelming.

I owe a confession here. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed too. I'm a geek and I sometimes still struggle to think digitally. I'm not talking about the fact that I still buy papers and books. I'm not talking about my ability to pick up 90% of software programmes and play with them until I understand them......an approach I apply to most of my life these days. What I'm talking about is the ability to incorporate digital communications into everything I do, to weave digital tech into the way I live my life and do my work. It should come naturally to me, and in some ways it does. But in order for you to weave digital into public sector, you first have to understand public sector. And understand it well, from the operations to the politics, from the internal politics to the unions. So, although in some ways I suppose you could say I am a digital citizen (I registered to vote online, I order those books online, I watch and become involve in conferences online, I talk to friends, arrange social activities, get told I've got interviews for jobs online), I am also right back at the beginning in some ways.

So, my conclusion is this. Effective digital engagement and communication has to start with something else the web does well - collaboration and crowd sourcing. Finding the experts in each of your departments who've been there while and know the intricacies, and collaborating with them in order to enable them to make the decision about which channel is the most appropriate to use to give out any specified message. Communications as a Department should be the hub of everything, but the spokes must stretch out into every single other Department, with that communication being two way, otherwise all expertise of one type will sit in the middle, another type at the end of the spoke and never the twain shall meet. Which is pointless, frankly, and does no one any favours.

So. Thinking digitally. Turns out it's not as simple as I first thought. Neither is communicating effectively and efficiently. Turns out, in order to communicate effectively externally, you must first be an absolute master at communicating internally. And that being a perceived 'expert' in one thing can be the most humbling experience of all, because it reveals in glaring technicolour exactly how much you don't know about absolutely everything else. So, this is where I become unpopular. Because I am in public sector and I'm working hard to try to join the dots. How is outsourcing to private sector with no experience of public sector going to work? Maybe the right question is, where are all the private sector consultancies and advisors who have experience of public sector?

And yet. Here is where I lie my hat.

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?

The responsibility of communicating

Lets talk about digital exclusion. Or conversely digital inclusion because the two are the opposite sides of what is, essentially, the same argument. It's merely a matter of tilting ones head to see either side of the fence and relatively easy to see which side someones sitting on the great digital divide.

The divide isn't only about infrastructure. Don't get me wrong, I acknowledge fully and completely that when someone arrives at a social media presentation with the gambit that a third of her Councils area doesn't even have mobile phone coverage, I am going to mentally calculate which century we are in and feel something very close to complete despair at the size of the challenge ahead of us if we want everyone to have the same digital opportunities. We have some challenges ahead which are going to require massive investment and some inspiring technical innovation to enable everyone to have the same platform to start from.

But this post is not about infrastructure. This post is about a sense that the government is rushing faster and faster towards a digital economy, digital communication streams and digital consultation without any comprehension of the exclusion they that are creating.

Think about the adverts that you see on TV. Think of how many quote web addresses or suggest you enter 'a phrase' into a 'search engine' for more information. Think of the government adverts which do the same. Think of all the competitions which you can enter for free online but have to pay for if you telephone or write. Think about communicating with government bodies. Applications for passports, driving licences etc, can all be done digitally. The alternative is entering into a two way conversation with a government body via post and we all know how that goes. Think of the segments on morning tv shows which quote web addresses for more information, where the information is not offered any other way. Think about the increasing habits of schools to publish timetables and events diaries on the web. Think about all the information and knowledge which is available on the web for free, which if you did not have access to the web, you would need to pay for, either by subscribing to journals or buying expensive books. Think of all the newspaper articles where comments come thick and fast and the media can form ideas on the mood and feel of the populace on the subject those comments are on.

Now think about not being able to do any of those things. Not because you can't, but because you simply don't want to. Or maybe that you can't afford to. That there is a nice pipe running past your door but you don't have the money to pay £28 a month for broadband because that's part of the food budget. Or perhaps that you have the money, but you just don't care enough to go through all the complications and learning at a later stage in your life. That your exposure to the web has only ever been through the TV and all you can see are configurations of words with dots in them and they mean nothing to you. Where your understanding only comes from what's said on screen and it seems that there is a mass of information out there but you can't access it, and you could access it, if you wanted to, but there just isn't the urge there once was to take on new ideas.

This post was inspired by a real person. She exists. There are hundreds of thousands just like her. She's the gran of my physiotherapist. She wants to receive letters through the post. She wants to pick up a telephone and talk to her bank - well actually she'd rather walk into the branch but movement isn't so easy for her these days so a telephone and hitting 0 repeatedly until she gets a human voice has to suffice. She's lived a long time and she's seen the world change and she is becoming sick of the machines everywhere. She wants to talk to people, they're the only contact she has some days with the outside world, with the sound of someones voice that doesn't emit from the television. She wants to chat to the checkout girl. She wants to chat to the bod at the bank. She wants contact - and she doesn't want it digitally. The time is past, in her mind, for learning the complications, she watches her granddaughter on the computer and her granddaughter has been kind and tried to show her how it all works, but it's too much information, and it's too impenetrable, and what on earth is the point to all the information any way? Why can't someone still bother to communicate with her in a way she understands? Why is everyone so determined to get rid of bits of paper, they've done well enough so far, why is everyone so totally focussed on publishing web addresses everywhere and not telling her anything any more?

There is a responsibility in communicating. There is a responsibility in holding a message or information which others need to know. That responsibility is to communicate so that all who need to receive it do so. In a world where floods, freak weather and all kinds of disasters can occur, for example, what danger is there in deciding that to cut costs, we will only communicate with those who provide us with a mobile phone number or who subscribe to our Twitter account? Are we going to enter a world eventually where you can only have your shopping if you suffer the swipe lottery; will it or wont it go through without the embarrassing supervisor call emitting from the depths of the machine? Are we going to cut communication costs so viciously that we cannot afford to communicate with the people on the edges, the older generation who didn't get taught how to use a PC at school, a skill which is becoming as necessary now as numeracy and literacy? Are we going to isolate an already vulnerable segment of our community in the rush to create communities online, thus creating a divide and barrier at a time when we must unify to try and deal with financial, environmental, moral, criminal and cohesive problems?

No has to be the answer. They're not up for negotiation, these questions. Like it or not, enthusiastic or not, some people do not want to be digital. They want to be analogue, they're quite happy being analogue and frankly, I think we're insulting them a little in our assertion that they should want to be digital.

Digital inclusion is necessary. It is. Digital is cheaper, auditable, time rich, convenient, indexed and dynamic. But there is a place for both. There is a place for a newspaper online as well as offline. There is a place for community offline as well as online too. The danger is the assumption that the voices, opinion, crowd sourcing and data obtained online is a clear and current representation of all voices and opinions which exist, and that all sectors of our society are adequately represented in the digital world. They're not. They never will be. The responsibility is entirely on us to ensure that they are not excluded as a result of that, that we continue to include them in the national conversation, that we check in with them, that we send them bits of paper, that we print a photograph in all it's stunning glory and continue to give joy to people who do not have the luxury of a screen to see it on.

Inclusion means including everyone.

Digital disasters

There have been many disasters in the dark and sometimes gloomy recesses of the internet, but last night the most recent one was hauled into the hard glare of geek scrutiny, thanks to live BBC Parliament streaming and commentary on Twitter.

Everyone reading this will be aware of the Digital Economy Bill. It passed 3rd reading last night, it now only has to pass once more through the House Of Lords in its now final state for it to become an Act and thus legislation which can be used to prosecute you.

I bought The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling last weekend. It tells a story of the National Security Agency in the US trying to stop people accessing networks illegally, both government owned and private sector. It reads like a hollywood film. It's not. It was reality 20 years ago. It's still reality now thought the nationality of those hacking the networks and getting caught has changed.

You would think that in 20 years, the security of networks would have moved on. You would think that in this shiny world of technology, I, as a self confessed geek, would be able to secure my wireless home network properly, so that no one could sit outside and leach bandwidth from me and run illegal downloads across it.

I can tell you now, I (or rather my epically geeky boyfriend) can secure our network. But we are geeks. We live in two worlds, the real one and the virtual one (I hate that word but there isn't a better one for now). We breathe this stuff, it's what we work with, how we are wired, what we are used to.

We are in a massive minority. Most people do not know how to secure their network. Most people do not have a clue what an IP is (as ably demonstrated by assorted Right Honourable Gentleman last night). Most people don't know the difference between a static and dynamic IP and they certainly don't know how to custom configure any firewall software that may have shipped with their shiny Netbook/Laptop/Desktop PC. These people are vulnerable, and the government has just passed a Bill which will take advantage of 90% of this countries ignorance. It leaves that 90% open to abuse, confusion, court hearings where no one will understand any of the concepts or tech speak coming out of the prosecutors mouth, and where innocent people will have convictions for things they did not commit or condone.

You would think that the US's experience with 'hackers' would have been studied, learned from and ultimately that a Bill would have been written which encompassed those things. Instead we have an Act which gives some one, hitherto unspecified, the right to convict people because their IP might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because they did not study IT in depth at university. How on earth is a Magistrate going to understand the Bill, never mind the technical details of the prosecutions evidence placed in front of him? Will the prosecutors even understand it? Will magistrates be given technical advisors in every Court, on call to explain the ins and outs of something so incomprehensible to most?

No. Instead 90% of the UK population will be at risk of floating unknowingly and unwittingly into the mire of the Criminal Justice System at a time when it is under massive strain as it is.

The simple fact is this, and I'm sorry but there is no way to say this without being harsh - the UK is run by geeks, monitored by geeks, innovated by geeks, created by geeks and pushed forward into the advantages and opportunities that IT can offer us by geeks. And I have a deep suspicion that this is the ultimate driver of this Bill and the others which will inevitably follow. People fear that which they cannot understand. And so, instead of asking geeks to explain to them the ins and outs, they blindly push forward in backing a Bill which has so many flaws that there will have to be amendments to it within the next year or the Criminal Justice System simply wont cope.

And what of those geeks? The people who the Bill was probably aimed at, in truth?

Well, I give it exactly 2 weeks before all the Torrenting software is on the next version up with an additional option in the Settings menu to allow you to mask your IP from your ISP. That setting will allow anyone who knows of its existence to become invisible. Again, I am not telling anyone reading this anything new. It is the way it is.

You cannot fight smart, passionate, intelligent and enthusiastic people on their own ground if you do not understand the ground you are standing on. Instead, you must bring those people into your own playground, to a place where you are comfortable and know the rules, and you must learn a new set of rules. If you do not, you will be left out to dry. You will be humiliated and embarassed at every opportunity, because people give no respect to those who barrel through delicate situations with no thought or care for the long term implications of their decisions. They are derided, and quite rightly, for attempting to discuss things they know nothing of, in a timescale which does not allow them to learn, under the glare of scrutiny which is unforgiving.

Now. Will someone please tell me who is advising this government on matters ICT/IT/security/networking/routers/IP's/ISP's? I need to have a word in plain English. Something they're obviously not talking.

RATM, or how a band accidentally changed a landscape

This is going to be a complicated post for me because I must not be emotive. That's hard because I passionately believe in democracy for all, in engagement, and in influence and shaping the future to be what we want it to be instead of sitting on our asses and letting someone else do all the debating.

Firstly, I need to own up to something. Shyness is not the only reason this blog never existed before. Confidence factored in, but also apathy. What was the point, I thought, in being one voice among many, invisible, tipping empty irrelevant thoughts into the black hole of cyber space. What difference can I make, what contribution do I have? I didn't think I had an opinion at all, never mind that expressing it might be a positive thing.

Then something odd happened. I loved Rage Against the Machine when I was younger. I was a shy little geek and Killing in the name of allowed me to scream rebellion in an acceptable form. It was cathartic, a way of getting rid of all the worries and stress of my teens. I didn't know they were a 'political band', I just knew the words resonated on a very deep level. And what do you know, but a large number of years later, it seems those words resonated with a whole new generation. Against all the odds, despite all the naysayers, Killing in the name of was the British Xmas number 1. Perhaps less of a deal than it used to be in this digital age, but still, actually, a really rather big deal. And not because it had the F word in it.

You see, in 10 years time, and with no disrespect to a band I now understand better and admire, no one will care who the band was and what the song was about, because it will be largely lost in the much bigger picture. One framed in the word Facebook, but containing a picture of the faces of over 1/2 million people who wanted to see if they could.

The picture is this, as I see it. At the end of last year some people in their teens and early 20's decided to see if they could do something, just for a laugh. I don't think they expected to succeed, that's certainly the feeling I got at the start of the group. They genuinely had a manifesto - to make a point to the country that they were sick of X Factor produced yawn inducing pop - but they also had timing on their side. Facebook is familiar now, a thing which even the people who have never used it are aware of, in much the same way that a few years ago people understood Googling something was to do with computers, even if they didn't own one. At the end of last year, a recession year, a year of doom, gloom, awful weather and an absence of political inspiration, bad music seems to have been the rallying call. Maybe it's what a zeitgeist is, something which cannot be quantified, just something which occurs as a result of someone catching a mood, a feeling, a discontent.

Whatever, as a result we ended up with the Xmas no 1 that 1/2 million people had actively chosen, downloaded, listened to and believed in. But that 1/2 million were not mums, dads, aunts and uncles buying presents for stocking fillers. They were a certain age, a generation. In an age of political apathy, where a certain age bracket engage not at all with the political and democratic process, suddenly there was hard cold proof of something tangible. If you stand up and state your case, your claim or your opinion, be it downloading something to ensure something else does not attain no 1 status, or be it putting a tick in a box, you can change history. Yes, it's music, yes it's a no 1, yes it's no big deal. And yet. Imagine being a teenager and being utterly disenchanted with anyone caring about your voice or opinion, and suddenly realising that you can change something real. No one can argue with the change this 1/2 million made. No can take it away from them or belittle it and no one should. The value of a lesson learnt in this day and age is plastered through old and new media alike and that lesson is indelible. If you decide that you want to make a change somewhere, no matter how big or small, if you can speak to the masses and motivate them, then you can win.

@marcshmid asked this morning what people thought of the Facebook General Election page, and I must confess that question is the reason for this post. My response was that I thought that RATM may have taught people that there is a point, that apathy may have been eliminated.

I stand by that comment, because I do believe this. I believe that this year, people who have never ever bothered putting a tick in a box (and I am one of them, oh yes I am) will get up a little earlier, and slightly self consciously fumble around trying to locate their nearest polling station. There will be people who wont know where to put the tick, whether we should take our own pencils, whether we will be looked at strangely. There will be those of us who wont do our research too much but will vote on gut instinct, those of us who will do our research and press extra hard on that pencil when we make our mark.

But our marks will be left, and I believe there will be more of them, because I believe 1/2 million people learnt a lesson for life in December 2009. I was one of them. I learnt that there is no excuse for sitting on my ass shouting at the television. I learnt that it's possible to change something that looked inevitable and divert the future onto a different course. Such a small thing, downloading a music track, and yet, from such small acorns......

On June 12th 2010 I will scream the lyrics of Killing in the name of into a storm of lights and sound with 110,000 other people. I will scream them oh so very loudly. It will be a thank you for a catalystic wake up call to an apathetic unengaged ignorant woman who should have known better. I wont be the only one, and ultimately, that's the lesson of the Xmas no 1. You're not the only one.

Judging books by their covers

A few days ago, I commented on a blog. I don't normally do this. for a variety of reasons, some of which will perhaps become clear. But the post made me think, and I wanted to discuss the subjects the author had raised and so I commented.

Annoyingly, of all the subjects to get stuck on repeat loop in my head, the one of judging books by their covers is the one which wont go away. So in an effort to get out of the loop, I'm sharing, because it's a source of enormous frustration to me and one of the reasons I've been ever so quiet on a variety of subjects to this point.

Someone who shall remain nameless, in a place which shall remain unidentified commented that they used to judge whether someone was worth doing business with on the basis of whether they had a mobile phone, because they were the right type of person.

I boggled.

That was the way business was done in the late 80's/early 90's. I accept that. In the absence, perhaps, of anything else to go on, a mobile phone was an obvious indicator of someones worth in monetary terms. But is the world the same now? Is my value as a contributor to the current discussions on digital inclusion and infrastructure dependant entirely on my access to that infrastructure and the fact I am included? Is my monetary value directly correlated to my intellect? Does my experience of living 50% of my life in a connected web world become invalidated when it becomes obvious that I do not dress in Gucci and my iPhone is last gen and battered to death?

I think outside of the box, because I don't see the box. I question because I am curious, intensely so, about how the world is being shaped, who is contributing, what the rules are, who's speaking sense and who isn't. I am not alone in this by any means, I am not unusual. There are 100's of thousands of people just like me stating the obvious, pulling people up when they make silly assumptions, correcting peoples misunderstandings of the technology and what it will do. To the last, to the absolute very last, the thing which makes those people so valuable to our economy and our future is the very thing which is not visible in any kind of monetary way. If you looked at me, or any of my friends you would see nothing remarkable. We are not remarkable. And yet we are the people with the experience, understanding, commitment, passion, enthusiasm and drive to want to make a difference, to want to make things happen, who build the things people think there are no use for only to find that actually, they're fundamental. They build toys because they can, code music because they can, create digital replicas of reality, because they can.

That person, who made that comment, would look at me and dismiss. He is a businessman. He will be playing in the digital sandpit in the future and he will be playing by old rules which are no longer always true. The digital world works differently, connects differently. The terms of engagement are changing and those who play by the old rules, will perhaps not be as successful as they could be if they do not learn the new ones.

And while we're here and I'm having a bit of a rant about the new world order, yes, I come to you Mr Head of Age Concern. I listened with interest to someone referring to your comment that 'in two years the geeks will have taken over' or something along those lines.

My response to you is this. Shall we take our tech back now? Those machines which whiz and whir in your local hospital, those scanners and life support machines churning out vital data about peoples hearts and kidneys and livers and brains.....shall we take the software which drives them, the code which makes them whir and whiz, shall we take it back? How about the flight control software which I have no doubt takes you on your shiny holidays each year and means your likelihood of crashing has been reduced quite considerably considering the amount of tin cans flying around up there? How's your commute to work? Is the traffic control maintained and controlled by dynamic speed limits and traffic lights who have been given parameters to know and understand feedback from sensors and react to that input to give you a smoother faster drive to work?

If you were to surmise that this comment irritated me somewhat, you would be correct. Geeks have inherited the earth whether you like it or not. That comes with it's own responsibilities (yes, I am looking at some of my friends very sternly), but most of the geeks I know are stepping up to the plate finally and sharing and training and communicating what they know. That's a seperate post. It's not published, but it's written, and yes I know.

Anyhow, here's the rub. It's too late to decide you don't want to play in the new world. The new shiny world allows such amazing possibilities for connection and not letting people disappear off the social map, that I am struggling to comprehend why the Head of a charity aimed at assisting older people with the quality of their life seems to somehow fear this. We don't want to exclude anyone. Anyone. Everyone is welcome on the bus. Including you. But please, seriously, would you go and find your nearest friendly geek, sit them down, feed them coffee and cake and ask them to explain whatever it is you don't understand about tech and the web. You might not understand all of it, but they'll try their very best to explain the opportunities and doorways which all these magic little tools the geeks have designed for you to play with open up, and you know, it's okay to ask questions.

It is not okay to dismiss in one sentence the hard work, passion, enthusiasm and blue sky thinking which has been going on for at least the last 20 years and which allows you to live longer and more comfortably. Get on the bus. The people you are representing will thank you for it.

And finally. If someone comes along and tells me I misheard, didn't understand the quote, it was a misquote from the chap who quoted him initially, then I will concede and apologise profusely. But I fear he is not alone in his misunderstanding and I fear there is much work to be done in making the toys we take for granted more user friendly and intuitive than they are at the moment. But that's for the other post