How to organise a web 2.0 event in real life

I've seen a few of these work well and not so well, and here are my tips:

To hold a successful event, you will need:

- a vision
And keep it under 100 characters for easy retweeting. Put it out there and see if it flies. If it doesn't, you've only wasted five seconds. If it does, you and your prospective volunteers will need to make a commitment to make it happen, otherwise it won't.

- a structure
A website which will lead you, intuitively, through all the key decisions once you've entered your location. Twestival had images, videos and copy that could be easily re-used for pretty posters and posted onto social websites. That saved a lot of time for local organisers. The Big Lunch has gone a step better, with very cute tick-boxes to indicate whether you will have music, home-grown food or limbo-dancing.

- not too much structure
You will need people to take the lead in their own locality and you won't have complete control over what they do. If you don't like the sound of that, better to stop now.

- ...but just enough
If you don't have a strong core vision, people will have trouble communicating it onwards. Participants will express irritation that you didn't give them enough direction (I know, only above we learnt that they don't like being told what to do, but people are like that).

- nice pictures
See Twitter, I Can Haz Cheezburger, Twestival and the Big Lunch. Pretty pictures (preferably of animals) make us warm to your furry inner heart rather than just seeing you as a cold screen. Why? I don't know. But Obama knows people are much more likely to rush to read about his new puppy than his economic policy and then trust that his economics will be OK because he kept his promise over the puppy.

- a very, very simple website that doesn't rely too much on people signing up
Because they don't. If you've got a small core of organisers and volunteers who can capture content in the run-up then you can avoid that awkward feeling that nobody is involved.

- ...launched not too early... and not too late
I know, this sounds like the three bears. But it's true. A holding page when people are following links to you is really bad. You need to capture people while they are interested and then send them compelling emails (not too often) to make sure they come back to your site. Some people will get involved at the early planning stage, others only when it's time to go knocking on doors, but you need all of them on your database or Twitter follow list.

- the right amount of real life people
One person can create a brilliant event on their own, but they will work incredibly hard at it and most likely get a bit annoyed that they did it on their own. Two people can collaborate on a website, but it won't necessarily go anywhere in the local area. From experience of volunteer organisations, I reckon you need at least six committed volunteers working offline to make something great happen. If those six are on Twitter, things can happen quicker and more often than they would have done when you were just a committee.

- a few borrowed ideas to sprinkle over the top
Steal ideas from the Americans. Especially if you're doing a video. I don't know why American videos are so much cooler than British ones, except that I know that the word awesome sounds awkward from a Stokie but cool from a Californian. If you can work it out, you're probably on the path to being as sexy and web 2.0ish as they are.

Get to it! Be awesome!

The places inbetween

Chain Reaction discussion feedback for Stronger Communities, Stronger Economy

"People are starting to say 'I need something'"
"I'd like to affect some kind of change"
"Maybe we need to introduce flexibility into systems"

A small group gathered at Staffordshire University in response to the open invitation by the Council on Social Action. We were not there to represent any organisation or community but we could draw on links to many different communities and experience in other places. Our group's work included education, enterprise, health and the arts and we all live or work in the midst of communities highlighted as having high levels of multiple deprivation in 2007.

Stoke-on-Trent has been hit hard by the recession with jobs in all sectors being affected. People with insecure housing or high levels of debt are vulnerable and there are unhealthy lifestyle factors related in different ways to a sense of hopelessness and lack of opportunity, as well as a legacy of a harmful environment. Having said that, many of us feel part of a "very exciting atmosphere". The desire to collaborate, connect and share is increasing. Divisions remain where there is lack of information or misinformation. "It isn't people's fault that they have skewed information". Where people have information, they have more understanding of each other. Although there are negative perceptions of other communities (from different ethnic groups to the jobless/well paid), conversation often uncovers empathy and sympathy and where people have a clearly communicated request to help with something, they do not hesitate. One of the benefits of connection is "hope". Perhaps those who have hope, as much as those who have money, can afford to be generous in drawing people they know who have lost both into new connections and opportunities.

The pottery industry had a major presence in our discussion, as indeed it retains a place in the local economy despite some perceptions. We discussed striking examples of innovation at Ainsley, Wade and Moorcroft, which are repositioning their place in the market in different ways. Once rivals, potteries are cooperating rather than lose out to outsourced companies. Most other successful potteries are cottage or studio-size and we noted that Staffs University are reviving many of the skills and developing very commercial, high-end work. They are working on a mentoring programme and employ people from the potteries, but recruitment can be challenging because of the bitterness left by large-scale redundancy rounds in potteries as recently as at Wedgwood. This damage, stemming from redundancies as well as a culture that often didn't value workers, needs to be recognised - "A lot of the creativity was knocked out of people". People and businesses are becoming creative out of necessity and media coverage has helped to raise the profile of the positive contribution creative industries can make on a place.

We avoided much of the 'official' language of community engagement. In some cases this was deliberate, a sign that some of it lacks credibility. However, many of our ideas overlapped with those in the CoSA propositions and the conversations we could see online. Our discussion also focussed on Common Space, which we defined as being where communities overlapped and something new could emerge through the energy of people supporting one another. Two of our group even had a word for it - spoinging - the places inbetween, the magic, the fairy dust. Examples of where this happens is in a pub, the Old Corner Cupboard in Shelton, which has been able to attract many different ages and races from its locality, and a community house in Blurton started by three women that had an impact on lowering street crime. We strongly believed that there is a great deal of knowledge, skills and value here - "people here are resourceful and have the answers". We believed in our ability to influence at any level, particularly through the consumer choices we make and thought that where people make decisions that are not obviously beneficial to the local economy (eg buying goods whose production has been outsourced), this may be due to a feeling of "gratitude that anyone at all opened here".

Interestingly, there was very little reference to inward regeneration investment, except to define successful places where an investment centre has had a positive effect on surrounding communities (given as Manchester as opposed to than Canary Wharf). Rather, we had much discussion on the value of things where money does not change hands: the negative value of empty, degrading buildings, wasted space and energy as opposed to the positive value that can be brought by people occupying those spaces: security, labour for refurbishment etc. People having the opportunity to trade in a shared, cooperative space shares the risk and is more likely to bring in customers. These could become centres for goods, food and services, trading cooperatively rather than competitively, creating teams where large opportunities for work come and diversifying their income streams in line with their best skills.

More than investment, we called for flexibility. Trading points and the streets are important points of overlap between communities and therefore major opportunities to stimulate connectivity and prosperity. Freedom to gather and perform makes places more festive (Durham was given as an example). Generating positive value within a building should be recognised for its value. The absentee landlord makes little positive value to a town, but could perhaps be persuaded if there was a clear, measurable value and they could be a positive connection to a richer area. Towns should have a 'sinking fund' to facilitate flexibility in times of crisis. Evidence was reported that the empty property rate relief abolition has had a positive impact in this respect as landlords cut rent or negotiate deals with people in local communities in order to fill their properties. This has been assisted in Burslem by the Bizfizz coach, who has been able to create links between people moving towards trade and property agents. It may not be the case in areas where no such personal links can be brokered.

We recognised our own responsibility to reach out to those people we feel suspicious of. While we wanted to see well-paid regeneration executives coming into our communities and speaking to local people every day, we all knew this was difficult without somebody who could welcome them and help to make them feel comfortable. A town like Burslem looks very different when you just 'land' there, rather than when someone is willing to show you round and highlight what makes them passionate about it. We share a love of Stoke-on-Trent and its diverse communities and thought that the name 'Stoke-on-Trent: City of Six Towns' could make explaining our distinctivement much easier and work in harmony with celebrations of our identity as part of smaller and larger geographical communities. Actions we committed to included helping to develop some shared 'brands' that could convey love for the city; working on an alert system to connect visitors to welcoming people and 'flashmarkets' for people to trade whenever tourists visit or there is a warm day; finding ways of creating band spaces or busking spots.

Would our regeneration strategy be taking a different course if communities were in control? In many cases, they would be the same - there are many overlapping ideas. In other cases, decisions would have been made differently, for example clearance would have been quickly followed by more suitable housing or spaces that the community needed rather than being an early stage in very slow masterplanning processes. The best way for a developer or officer to find out what would be effective or profitable in a place, we felt, would be to ask the community. This is not with reference to a piece of paper, official board or survey, but by searching conversations where people are genuinely open about the outcome. Our culture has relatively low levels of written literacy, but the communities we know are curious and articulate, with a thirst for information and debate. The much-reported friendliness of Stoke people is genuine and goes alongside a frank honesty that forces comfortable professionals to hone their ideas more carefully. Strategies have virtually no meaning in the consultation phase. This is not unique to a community like ours, participation in consultation processes is low at the best universities. Come and talk to us about your ideas. The use of well-written strategies that synthesise ideas and experience is as a tool: to steer the work of those working on its delivery, to articulate a clear routemap with which others can collaborate and to hold those delivering it to account.

In a reshaping economy, the government has much to learn from communities like those in Stoke-on-Trent. We have retained traditional cultures, industries and ways of living. Many people have lower costs of living and more time for creative thinking than in other cities. Our talents are under-used, self-esteem can be low and so a volunteer talent bank that included a focus on confidence-building could be very successful here. We have strong social networks that are becoming increasingly interconnected through technology. As people contemplate a return to human values and to flexible, shifting careers instead of a 'job for life', they will find much experience in our city and we are ready to share.

Present: Mark Brereton, Carolyn Powell, Clare-Marie White, Lou Reynolds, Lisa Wilding, Chris Litherland, Carl Plant participated online

Our discussion in Stoke was helpfully informed by the starting point in the Coffee Lounge in Birmingham with Michael Grimes and Claire from Frankley, where we discussd overlapping communities and the added value to workers created by social networks (offline as well as online).

Further content:
More points, but more concise, on the Twitter stream: http://twitterfall.com/scse
Blog post by Carl Plant: http://chain-reaction.crowdvine.com/posts/4158071
Ideas for SexUpStoke: http://affiliate.kickapps.com/_SexUpStoke/blog/221814/69169.html

Chain Reaction conversations

What if anybody who wanted to participate, could?

The tools to enable people to collaborate more easily have been around and freely available for many years, but it's interesting to see how significant the jump in usage has been in the UK. It's not their existence that matters, it's the sense that people have that they are invited to be involved which prompts them to have a look at the tools, interact and share them. When the use of those tools reaches a tipping point, the people using them become unstoppable. If you're an optimist like me, this is a good thing.

The Council of Social Action, whose Chain Reaction conference took place in November and was ace, is now inviting people to become involved in a chain of conversations linked to the development of a new report. Agreed, "Stronger Communities, Stronger Economy" will make many of your eyes roll, but don't throw sticks at me yet.

The idea is to have a purposeful conversation, without too much organisation, that anybody can join in with. Meetings will have around 20 people each and then be linked by a variety of electronic means, with the opportunity to send feedback to the council. If demand for places goes way above 20 people, then people can organise their own meetings.

The meetings also link in with the We20 initiative as they take place shortly before the G20 Summit in London, when world leaders from the most powerful countries will be gathering to discuss stimulating our economy in various imaginative and strangely worded ways. The effects of these meetings are far-reaching and people in places like Stoke are often on the sharp end. Can thousands of ideas in hundreds of global conversations make a difference to the views of a few (mostly) men in suits? Some ways of feeding in to this should be announced over the next few weeks, doubtless involving all sorts of websites with funny names and friendly graphics.

More importantly perhaps than the chance to ask governments to send more money our way, the meetings are a chance to create change in our own communities. The key question at the end of these meetings will be "What will you do next?"

I was asked yesterday whether this is a new organisation to get bogged down in, by someone with that look of someone who has had too many emails from me (I am trying to give them up).

It isn't. It's just a meeting, a good chance to get a group of people from different backgrounds together at a signficant time for our societies. You can register for the Stoke or London meetings (other cities are in the pipeline, I just think they haven't got round to adding them yet - but you're very welcome to come to Stoke of course!) or find information about holding your own here.

Dangerous ideas and change through a recession

There's quite a lot of us plugged in now in Stoke, talking about what's going on round here. And so, a new idea has been born. Feel free to repost, refine and adapt.

The Recession Rapid Reaction Force (Stoke)

What is it?

The Recession Rapid Reaction Force (Stoke) - #rrrfstoke - is an open network seeking to share ideas on how to combat the recession and for people to benefit from the opportunities that additional investment bring.

Using a Twitter stream, del.icio.us tags and any other tools that seem useful (as basic as a note pinned to a wall) as well as meetings, members will share ideas and connect initiatives to ensure that people are making the most of projects that are already running, as well as speeding up the development of ideas that need little or no funding.

How can I be involved?

Just join in. The network will work on the principle of trust so share everything you are allowed to share, ask questions and tell people about what you see. Help others and you will find a community of people ready and willing to help you if you need it.

Is this a long-term solution to the economic crisis?

No. Nor does it seek to be. That’s for the strategists to deal with, though many of us will be in those roles. This network is about capitalising on the opportunities that are available right now to get extra training for people and to think about the economy in a new way. So from something as simple as a skills-swap or a short training course, people might start to think differently about their prospects for employment.

What about people who aren’t online?

We take digital disconnection seriously. The stuff that can be shared online is only useful if it can also be shared offline in community centres, homes, pubs and the street. This can be done through screens pointed outward that can show Twitter channels (like an electronic noticeboard), printouts of information you think might be useful and by keeping an open mind with people you are speaking to so that you can tell them about things you have picked up from the network if it is relevant and you can also share useful things if they ask you to. Conversations are the only way to bridge any divide.

What the hell is ‘#rrrfstoke’

That’s called a hashtag. It’s an easy way of creating a ‘feed’ that anybody can contribute to, share and follow. It can be used on Twitter and as a tag on del.icio.us (which can in turn be automatically fed into Twitter and other websites) It’s easier and quicker to type rrrfstoke than Recession Rapid Reaction Force Stoke and quite fun, too. Try it!

Goodbye to our friend Rose

This week many of us attended the funeral of Rose Peacock, a community leader in Middleport whose death was a great shock. She chose to have Jerusalem as one of the hymns:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen

And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills

Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land

Words written by William Blake

Social reporting at events: a brief guide

In 2008, Social Reporters (and others without names) took conferences out of closed rooms and into the wider world.

This is a short guide to show what a flock of social reporters can do for you.

What are they?
Social Reporters can be professionals - coming from fields like journalism, consultancy, web development - or volunteers. They bring various skills which all help increase quality, but anybody with a willingness to chip in and help can find a role in social reporting for your organisation, event or meeting.

What do they need?
Social Reporters are friendly creatures and fairly easy to please. They definitely need a table, plug points, laptops are useful if you can supply a few spares and a wifi connection. Ideally, they like coffee and food. If you need social reporters with a definite role who you can rely on then you'll need to give them free tickets and most likely even payment, but you should ask all delegates if they'd like to take a role, at the very least through Twittering with a chosen hashtag.

What do they do?


Blog, Twitter, film and report in ways as various as you can think of. It is well worth you or your social reporting team thinking this through in advance and ensuring that common reporting methods are in place:
- a blog feed on the main event website
- a well-promoted Twitter hashtag (which doesn't necessarily need the hash) so people can follow and contribute during and after the event. An example to illustrate.
- plenty of ways to comment and contribute from outside as well as social networking tools so that participants can connect.
- flexibility on your website to add RSS feeds so you can add tagged photos, videos and other content from different services.

Whatever you do, keep it as simple as possible and use mainstream tools. Few people will have time to edit a wiki during a conference (unless this is a specific project you have decided to embark on) and people are less likely to register for a whole new service than one they are already on. Remember too that the best laid plans, or wifi connections, are frequently prone to be less reliable than you might have hoped for and people will be using different computers, so you need to keep everything accessible and simple.

But will anyone be watching?
More than likely, yes. Social reporting is a very good way of ensuring that all those who couldn't make your event due to time or money constraints can still join in the discussions if they want to. Don't kill yourself making everything too neat and slick, it's better to get some 'stuff' on than nothing. The tidying up and editing can come later. As well as helping people take part during the event, a good stock of content will help people refer back and follow up afterwards. Plus, of course, you don't know who will stumble upon you via Google or other sources.

So where do I start?
Find some of the established digital networks in your field and contact people within them about whether they would like to be involved. This will also pay dividends in promoting your event in advance. The best places to look are the social sites themselves: Twitter, Flickr, even Facebook. Of course, this approach will be more likely to succeed if you are already in some way engaged in the right communities, so if you haven't been so far now is a good time to start.

What are the benefits?
Social reporting adds value to your event by ensuring many of the good ideas and content don't just disappear when everyone goes home. Social reporting adds many more levels to a conference: instead of just all sitting there watching a bunch of slides, people can connect, collaborate and add content to your speakers' words even while they are on the stage.

What are the risks?
Undoubtedly, opening up your conference to social reporting has the same risks as any other engagement with the social web. Basically, you have no control. There is nothing to stop people using your tags to criticise your event and its speakers. Social reporters are very unlikely to toe your line, because you're probably not paying them enough. Some very cynical people are on Twitter. That said, the willingness to open up your event or your organisation to those risks at least suggests that you are genuine about building engagement - and while the conversation may be difficult, it is likely to be rewarding in the long run.

The other issue to be aware of is that if you are going to encourage social reporting, you might get blamed if somebody is quoted or photographed without their permission. Social reporting makes a conference space truly public and that might need to be explained to delegates.

Blame them (again)

We're all a little bit addicted to pointless outrage these days. If there's one thing that always gets me spitting feathers, it's the sight of well-paid journalists desperately clinging onto their jobs and ever-declining readerships by inciting a bit of racial hatred. Shocking though it might be that there are millions of people who still get up every single morning and decide there's nothing else they'd like to spend 30p on than a grey and red newspaper filled with lazy press release rewrites and rabid opinion, it is a habit that even on its current trend will take many years to dissipate.

This week the government handed the media a nice little story about how immigrants are to blame for the poor's feelings of discontent. I don't know if that was the spin the government chose to put on it, but it gave enough scope for reports about how the voiceless poor are feeling overwhelmed by the waves of immigrants and are too strangled by political correctness to say anything about it.

Where do I start? Well, I'll skip over the voicelessness bit because regular White Llama readers will have seen it all before, but I will pick up on the ghost of political correctness. Everyone knows someone who has seen it, but that doesn't mean there's any strong evidence that it actually exists. Political correctness is just another weapon in the armoury of politicians, bishops and journalists who can drag it out of the cupboard whenever they have a point to prove. Its manifestations are merely signs of unhealthy management and leadership. Policies that are being wielded like weapons when they are supposed to be upholding equality deserve to be challenged - anybody who tells you that you can't have a Christmas tree on your desk deserves a slap, not the honour of a bitter story in your local newspaper. People self-censor because they feel they should around people they don't know and especially around people with clipboards. Therefore instead of telling researchers what they really think, they will tell them what they think they want to hear.

None of this means that immigration is the problem, despite what our friendly national media might tell us. The Jews weren't the problem in the German recession of the 1920s, but that didn't stop them becoming a target. The fact that we have immigration simply means that there is opportunity here for people from other countries, just as there is the opportunity of sunshine in Spain for Brits. Global migration is something that isn't likely to change and neither would it be in anybody's interest to change it, especially not the British to whom the doors to virtually every country in the world are open. The fact that there are opportunities for foreigners means that there are opportunities for us too, niches that can be filled. If people felt as strongly about immigration as the media suggest, the market for take-aways and corner shops would soon dry up.

So what is the problem? Voicelessness and powerless, as well as poverty, is at its core. In that the survey has perhaps bought something important to the government's attention (again). Disconnection from opportunity, even very basic opportunities like a house, causes resentment. The house price rises of our 'booming' economy over the last fifteen years means it only takes a very basic grasp of maths to know that the housing ladder is out of reach to anybody on a low income, therefore the council house queue grows. It's never nice being in a queue and it never takes much to start a fight. Nice as it is of the Express to give credibility to local rumours, unfairness most likely runs a lot deeper than houses being given to some Poles. There is a wider unfairness in the fact of hundreds of thousands of empty properties, of cash buyers being able to jump in and profit from the current downturn instead of first time buyers who are being denied mortgages for amounts that would have been considered a pittance a few months ago. There is unfairness in the banks being bailed out with billions but failing to pass on that generosity to businesses, who are now going bust leaving thousands more jobless, and borrowers from whom they have done very nicely during the good times. It is unfair that banks deny thousands of people banking services, pushing them out of the mainstream economy.

And what could the government do about it? I see one of the causes of resentment as being increasing decentralising of government (local and national) services. Communities are built and maintained through conversations and it is much more difficult to have conversations with someone on the other side of a glass window in a huge processing centre. In many disconnected communities, the only remaining businesses are betting chains. On a better note, I've been impressed to notice that the Cooperative have been quietly investing in numerous food shops and pharmacies in Stoke over the last few months. As well as the services here and the fact that as a member organisations they won't take out excessive profits, most of the stores have cash machines. The absence of cash machines in poor areas has an obvious link to the lack of money being spent there - if people have to go to another town to get money, or to the supermarket that takes cards, they will do their shopping there too. This applies to the people who have bank accounts at all and there is another bright spot on the horizon with the imminent opening of the Staffordshire Credit Union. Stoke is the worst place for access to financial services, so far from just being a place for people to borrow money from, this could introduce thousands of people to mainstream banking for the first time. This has knock-on effects that don't even occur to most people who live comfortably on a salary: with a bank account you can get on to a payroll and after saving for a few weeks (once the Union has built up its reserves) members will be able to borrow small, short term loans with interest rates far below those charged by loan sharks and the high street lenders that would have said yes to these groups before.

The government could go to every street that has a Coral or a Coop and invest in small centres that will provide training, services and computers. They can hire local people to run them, constantly developing their staff to open up new opportunities for them and so draw in new people as others go on to other places. They can host other organisations, social enterprises and projects, charging rents appropriate to the local economy. They can make sure there is at least one person in the centre who is well connected to all the other projects and services and can provide a signposting service that genuinely responds to what people wants rather than any targets (which, within an atmosphere of trust, would stand a much better chance of being met for the other projects). With the community relationships that will build up after around 18 months of operation (6 if you're lucky), the government will have an immediate barometer of feeling in communities that they currently lack any meaningful connections with. This will bridge the disconnection that is at the heart of community anger. The business plan is on a 'spend to save' model with the return on invesment coming from greater income tax receipts and less benefit expenditure.

This approach is simple enough to not need any strategy papers at all to be written and it gives the government to put their money where their mouth is and invest in communities at a time when it is likely many others will pull out. It would be nice to think they could cooperate with local councils, who have the same problem of having lost touch with the people in most need of safety nets.

Deal with the real, underlying problems and the fears over immigration will pass, as they have so many times before.

Powerpoint presentations

Rather like forms, I have developed quite a deep hatred for Powerpoint presentations. I didn't quite understand why I could find some talks incredibly inspiring and useful, while others make me really twitchy and irritable.

After spending as much time today ranting about them as I did watching them, I stumbled upon this article which might explain - scientifically like - why it is so very, very frustrating to watch people circling around bulletpoints with their voices like aimless sharks, just failing to catch my attention. It's not just me being a negative grumbler, you might actually be frying my brain.

Ur doing it rong. So stop it. Pls.

A site I shall explore further.

Stoke: many modern communities with they key to happiness

This might be the most positive story you will ever read about Cobridge in the mainstream media.

The census results, obscure though they might be (anomie? what's this, a referendum question?), pin down the reason that many of us find hard to articulate about why we love being in Stoke. We feel a sense of belonging to our community, or perhaps several different communities.

And what's so good about this is that it's so thoroughly modern. As I've tweeted in passing (hooray for this new thought trail), a morning in Burslem is not unlike one in Twitter. Conversations everywhere, news to catch up on, links to follow up. It's what makes people love Burslem and feel so sad when it is empty.

Just like the web, these communities run the risk of operating in silos (the current voguish word, I prefer to say trenches). They can chatter away and never cross paths. But that in itself is not the problem. The fact that these communities have had to compete in an ever-diminishing job market, with decreasing opportunities to mix and with limited educational opportunities, has caused divisions. As the Cobridge article shows, the community builders and connectors are plentiful in Stoke. The most invigorating meetings I go to are full of grassroots organisers, fighting their different corners and finding connections. These people have been ignored for decades, but maybe - in the new connected world where you don't have to go to London to get anything done - their time has now come. With the right support, we can become better at finding connections and building capacity without additional funding. With greater investment, we can develop enterprising communities in which everyone feels they have a part to play.

The interest shown by the government over the last few months in social enterprise has made me wonder whether they would consider putting as much investment into social enterprise centres and support as is planned for retail. I don't know whether it's too late to divert the £220 million pounds that are going to be spent clearing the Coachmakers and some piles of concrete to build yet another shopping centre, but it would be nice to think that more of our shops could be like this, instead of like this.

Does that show a lack of ambition? Maybe. But if we've already defeated "anomie", aren't simple opportunities to make a decent wage doing something we like all we need to aspire to?

Review: Gordon Hendricks at the Victoria Hall

Burslem old-timers would have you believe Elvis appeared at the Queens Theatre in its heyday, along with *everybody* else. It’s one of those local myths, like Askey’s Giant Wartime Fish or the Revised Town Centre Masterplan. The truth doesn't really matter, no-one would be a true Boslemite if they didn’t find it perfectly credible that if Elvis had made a secret call to England during his GI days, he would have included the Mother Town in his visit.

It’s also not hard to believe that if anywhere should produce a voice to come close to matching the King’s, it should be Stoke-on-Trent. In common with certain other cities across the globe, we have a deep understanding of soul; of dispossession, anger and hope.

Having only heard of Gordon Hendricks a few days ago in the Focal Radio studios, I was nevertheless excited to be in the retro environment of the Victoria Hall, squashed into my metal seat with a proper Stoke crowd, people from across the six towns who find Hanley the best meeting ground to revive old friendships, romances and fights.

And when Gordon took to the stage, this was proper rock n roll, exploding sound systems and all. Like Elvis himself, nobody was taking this too seriously, despite the obvious talent on the stage. Gordon himself was delighted to be “back where it all started” with the people who had given him confidence to unleash what has become one of the most renowned Elvis tribute acts in the world, not least by Presley’s band and writers. Indeed, it was his familiarity with the crowd that hopefully lessened any hurt he might have felt over the unseemly stampede to the bar well before the end of the first half.

And in this unusual theatre environment, part Memphis, part Cheshire Cheese, a truly amazing show emerged. Gordon and the band’s style avoided too much basic imitation and were great performers in themselves. Gordon’s voice needs to be heard to be believed, absolutely authentic and without a hint that the most epic of Elvis’s classics were a strain to imitate. And while we can recreate moments from Vegas for generations, it was the single ‘Where Would I Be’ which really makes one dare to dream. Written by Geoff Morrows, this is unmistakably Elvis, but its freshness sparks the possibility that we could stretch even further than what we were lucky enough to get before Elvis died in 1977. Incredible, of course, in his own right, Elvis was also part of a package. A product of tumultuous times, Elvis was the individual bold enough to stand at the front of a stage and change the world. What else might be sitting in a writer’s cupboard, waiting to be recorded? How might That Voice interpret more of the greatest songs of the last three decades?


In Gordon Hendricks, Stoke has produced another great talent of whom we can be proud. We might have got more of a glimpse of his innate creativity in his home town - it is hard to keep up an American accent when you’ve got people shouting “‘iya Gordon, ‘ow’s yer dad?” - I hope he allows that spark to really flourish.


- website
- Youtube clips

Reflections on digital exclusion and the mentoring project

I wrote these thoughts in response to the ongoing digital mentors development and in particular, this post about whether it will simply be the white middle classes that benefit from the project. I've expressed exactly these concerns myself in many different contexts, but there's always been a response at the back of my mind that where internet access is relatively easy to get to, people still don't take part.

So, what I've tried to address is a question: if people are invited to participate, why don't they?

Apologies, for the length, it is a bit of an essay but I've tried to break it up so people can skip through and anyone is welcome to extract any useful bits. Also it's a work in progress but if I don't hit publish now I could go on forever. Acknowledgments to Clay Shirky and anyone else whose ideas I might have absorbed in passing.


Looking globally, it is not the case that only the white and middle class are digitally included. In many countries still considered 'developing', groups and individuals with access have been able to collaborate basically as well as anywhere else. A number of projects have focussed on developing this with different models, meaning I could more easily communicate online with some people working in orphanages in Rwanda than in community centres in Stoke. Sure, super-fast broadband and hot gadgets make everything look nicer, but there's no fundamental difference as long as you have the two elements I'm writing about here: technology (however basic) and time. Even literacy becomes less of an issue with increasing use of video and audio tools, but it nevertheless remains the case that education is probably the main dividing factor.

Online collaboration doesn't care about anybody's point of view. In a world where we've segregated ourselves on the basis of race, class, religion, politics while becoming ever more likely to bump into each other physically, it is the fact that we can work together often without knowing these aspects about each other that contributes to the richness and power of collaborative projects and things like community campaigns. It doesn't matter if we fundamentally disagree on religious matters if we both want to fight to save the local swimming pool. However, in the real world, something like different religious views might be one of the factors that would stop us ever talking to each other.

Digital exclusion is a problem because we are still missing out on the contributions of so many talented people.

Why is being online important?
The internet is a platform for anybody to work, play, pay for things or do what they want for free. With internet access, anybody can look up information or join in conversations, for example extending the reach of broadcast media and other aspects of society that could also have been considered 'broadcast', such as politics. Without internet access, simply, they cannot. While a local library has a certain amount of information for people, it is in no way equivalent to the searchable index available at our fingertips. Meetings are a definite positive complement to online interaction, but the internet takes the cost out of all basic organisation. It avoids the need to have meetings at set times when 80% of your community might need to be elsewhere looking after kids or working. With web 2.0 sites, even the time consuming aspects of building are removed. It enables anybody to contribute to their own strengths and decentralises responsibility - as well as control.

What and where is the conversation?
While you can look and learn online, it is all about interaction. You don't just happen to open your web page and see a site, you browse into it, find it through Google or get referred to it by an advert, another website, social network or directly from a friend. You might ask someone with power for information and as soon as they show you where that information is, you become informed rather than frustrated. Because of the sheer volume of 'stuff' online, you need some sort of prompt and that is often where 'the conversation' comes in.

The trickiest part of online participation is that it is really about your capacity, not least your time, to join in conversations. There are, obviously, millions of conversations going on all over the world in different languages and in different places. Although many of these conversations are open, barriers to involvement include your ability to read and type in the right language and the time you have to get to know the context and build up trust within the community. The conversations you join, therefore, are those you want to dedicate time to.

The simplest answer is that the conversations is actually only between the individual and the screen. This is exactly the same as the information you access - the choice to participate is an individual one. However, once you have found your area of passion, your ability to contribute is huge. To give one example, if we worry that language is a big barrier to communication, then just go and see the online community that contribute to Global Voices, translating and editing global posts to provide a more multi-layered view of the world than has ever been provided by the mainstream media. It is a project that could never be achieved on the same scale by a company alone, but the partnership between Reuters, the team they funded and the volunteers that make it happen. Taking part requires a certain level of familiarity with the community and its rules, you can't just jump in and start (although the best communities usually make it possible to do just that on some level). We see that just getting on with solving the problem, however small the initial contribution, is more powerful than merely defining, redefining and arguing over the problem. That is why, from the entirely unequal position of having paid staff on one side and voiceless community members on the other, we are now entering a time when community groups or other collaborating groups can move faster than traditional organisations and win arguments that they weren't even being invited to have before.

So what do people need to participate?
All people need is access and time. This is a big 'all'. Unpicking this, use of social media is a luxury. Access to basic equipment is enough for basic interaction, but the technology you have dictates whether you can access features like broadband. When internet access has a price, time becomes limited. Your ability to have an ambient awareness of the passing world depends if you are near a screen much of the time, for example in a job that is both computer-based and where access to social sites has not been blocked.

Joining in the many-to-many conversations online takes longer than face to face, but it is at least more possible than actually moving to the same gathering points. Twitter's strength is that it is virtually as quick to post as it is to read updates, so many-to-many conversations have become quicker and more open than email. Unless you protect your updates, you open up your interactions for anybody to follow. When Twitter becomes widely accessible by mobile phone again it will become easier for this to happen away from computer screens.

What has changed in the UK?
It goes without saying that there were plenty of active people online in the UK for the last decade. However, there has been an underdevelopment in UK communities. The active people I knew were generally part of international communities. Twitter has contributed to a change. In the blog and email era, it was just as easy to interact with people in other time zones as our own. On Twitter, the general chatter is in the same time zone as you, unless you have the time to scroll back at what happened while you were asleep. I have a fair spread of people I follow in the UK and America, but I'm much more likely to keep in regular touch with the people in the UK, including those I didn't know before Twitter. While there was an online community before Twitter, its connectivity seems to have sped up in the last few months and I think it's partly thanks to Twitter. It's also connected to the increasing professionalisation of a generation who would have got their first email addresses towards the end of high school or college and are now reaching the stage of making decisions in organisations.

There's something that is slow to change and that's the culture change that comes in an open, digital society. In a society where everyone is invited to participate, people still need to know they have the invitation. I look at Twitter or Wikinews and assume that it is fine to participate in the conversations (as long as I know a Twitterer I am following has followed me back, otherwise they won't hear me), but there are many people who will assume they are not included unless they receive the embossed invitation in the post. Part of the culture shift of the social web is the assumption that all are invited to participate and in communities that are hierachical by nature, this is a bigger shift than people from the educated classes might realise.

To illustrate further specifically to this area:- In two direct examples, a person has told me that he will not go to a meeting with a chairman because he has been made to feel unwelcome and another has said he would not go to the majority of community meetings because he is a different race and considerably younger than the people he would expect to see there. It goes the other way - I know plenty of managers who would not dream of walking into certain pubs. Hardly anybody who is white in Stoke has visited a mosque and hardly anybody who is Muslim has gone into a pub (excuse the inconsistent capitalisation, anything else looks wrong). With all these invisible walls, the internet is the best place where we could have direct conversations or, better, widen the impact of the community projects that seek to build bridges and bring people together in neutral, friendly spaces.

Particularly in the realms of politics as in corporations or any form of infrastructure, the conversation needs support to be effective. In the case of, say, an MP, a good rapport can be built up while only a few people are emailing them but as soon as all 60,000 people start taking up the opportunity you need some serious admin support to avoid unanswered emails and angry constituents. This is no longer about engaging when you need votes because scrutiny is now constant, but engaging all the time, beyond politics. This is partly a matter of making information as intuitively available as possible.

Right now in Britain (especially areas relatively new to the social web and political spheres) we're seeing the anger of exclusion bubbling up into the internet. It starts quietly and then turns into a flood. Then you get the clash of angry people. Accuse me of rewriting history if you wish, but I'd argue that America was at this stage four years ago, way back when we used to hear about hanging chads and the like. A few long, long years later and we have the incredible site of Barack Obama sending the whole world crazy.

What changed? In my view, what changed is that the people who do participate (adapting Wikipedia's statistic probably less than 1 in 100 of people who are even on participatory websites) brought their online interactions into the real world. Obama and his team have managed to bring together the traditional party system, which remains the only way you can take political power, with the collaborative power of people who couldn't care less about politics. They have completely disproved the notion that online activists can neither influence people outside their immediate circles or that they have no financial power. They have also shown that vast swathes of people who have given up, who don't think there's any point getting involved because they're always let down (but who were never, as often labelled, apathetic) can be brought in to the ballot box.

What is the role of digital mentors in the real world?
If programmers have built a world where their tools can be shared and reshaped, then it is now up to the communicators to bring that same culture into the real world. Communicating, luckily, requires fewer special skills than programming. Digital mentoring should be open to anybody with a passion for the social change that the digital sphere can bring who is willing to share that with other people, particularly with those communities that remain voiceless.

The community of digital mentors will be able to share projects and areas of practice that have worked, particularly getting over those tricky situations when you've spent ten minutes explaining the joys of Twitter only to blank stares and suggestions that perhaps it's time you stopped playing and got a proper job.

Who funds it all?
It is perhaps underappreciated, because I rarely hear it said, that the architecture of the digital revolution has, on the whole, not been provided by governments or philanthropists but by the commercial sector. The fact that community groups need not fill in a funding application to get a website built for them but can simply sign up for a blog on Blogger is perhaps why not all of them do - we have a voluntary sector that often relies on funding and assumes that the end of funding means the end of a project. It is neither necessary nor desirable for governments to build a suite of tools equivalent to those freely available from the big companies and while you can (and should) consider whether you want so much information to be held by Google and Yahoo, I think there is greater benefit than cause for concern in the fact that anybody can sign up for everything from an email address to a group wiki for free and also anonymously.

If the internet and the social web is the modern equivalent of roads, especially in an era where transport is going to become more limited, then there is a Keynesian argument for the government to be investing in people to help make those connections. The roads will be formed by people once they have had their starting points. We haven't yet got the British equivalent of Google (have we?), but there's no particular reason why that shouldn't happen if we - the public and private sector - invest in creative, collaborative people who can respond flexibly to our ever-changing global circumstances. It's a far, far better strategy for regeneration than retail parks, I'd suggest, with one eye firmly pointed at those people making decisions for North Staffordshire.

The concern that digital mentors would simply be going round telling people what to do is, hopefully, not what is going to happen if people who understand social media become the ones who take the project forward (most importantly, not just those who see it as an opportunity to "bung a few banks of PCs in community centres". Teaching is a pretty old fashioned form of broadcast. Mentoring is more about developing participation, it's the modern version of show and tell, but without the tell. When I think about the people I'd try to involve I have one friend in particular in mind, Mark. He started out by emailing a campaign via its website and quickly got immersed in the debate. Two hugely successful campaigns later and he remains a central member of the group. He has taken part in some community development training with the local university, making him almost as qualified as many of the fresh-faced consultants that parade through our communities at the start of each new tender process. As well as emails bouncing around the group, Mark now runs a one-man online attack on an array of local and national government figures, wheedling out individual contacts from big corporate departments. He's not the only one in the group and their advice has spread further, helping campign groups in other parts of the country to force council rethinks. What I like about the digital mentoring project is the fact that the DCLG must realise that they're going to create a generation of people who are going to make their lives a misery, but that ultimately we will have a more connected, empowered society.

Becoming a Mentor
What was it that first got you excited about the web? I'll guess it started with something you read or heard from someone else, possibly after hearing all sorts of things that you ignored, that got you curious. After that, it was just you and the computer screen, along with the tools and the people out there - the communities. It was when you found enough to be passionate about that you become an advocate, even an evangelist for the web. That, along with a bit of experience and enthusiasm for building or contributing to communities yourselves is really all you need to award yourself the title of Digital Mentor.

We need to find a balance between giving people adequate reward for their time (particularly where we see priority areas, to ensure digital mentoring is something adequate numbers of people have the time to do rather than assuming they will all be those that can afford to do in their spare time) and opening our knowledge and experience up to ensure that anybody with online experience who wants to share that for community benefit can find the role and take it on voluntarily (along with the other titles that have struck a chord with people such as blogger and social reporter, and no doubt there will be many more to come). We need transparency in recruitment for the paid positions and the possibility of being trained into the paid roles, or other paid work using the skills.

I think alongside a large organisation taking the lead on the proposal, we will need some of the leaders identified in this exercise, and those who emerge in the future, to be national connectors who have the ability to roam the country making sure small organisations know about each other's work (as we know, however good we might be are at online networking and getting better all the time, you do still miss a lot when you can't have real conversations with people). Clearly this needs to be matched with connectors on the ground and this is where it becomes less likely that the government-led scheme alone can afford to.

I see it shaping up into a type of open source collegiate community which needs enough resources to bring people together and enable people to work in communities (perhaps on lead, 'model' projects), while also drawing in people all the time to make a contribution to the project and to digital engagement, therefore deepening the core work and unlocking further resources, both people/volunteers and further grant funding, for example small community grants for computer centres that could be equipped with a free suite of key social sites and then that centre can be added to the Online Centres network.

Perhaps, since this does have the government angle, this sort of connecting role is also something that MPs could be encouraged to take part in. (don't look so surprised!) Furthermore, we need to spread the idea that digital communication is something that more workers are given time for within their jobs.

There will always be those people who feel they have missed out once something is up and running without them, but one of the unwritten rules of the social web is that it is better to build a structure and then see what happens than to wait until you have everybody on board and absolute agreement. Failure as a possibility is acceptable but if you don't have a defined outcome then all outcomes can be a success. As long as the Digital Mentor project has an open and welcoming community and aims to collaborate with anybody who wants to throughout its lifetime, then it will have more success in joining up the circles of online and offline conversation than all of the traditional, top-down, expensive projects that so often land upon us.

Finally
We move into a more constructive social media community when we realise that spending your precious typing time arguing and complaining about being excluded is really not as good as just doing it. Doing what? It's entirely up to you.

Action for Congo

Since I'm full of concern but not many original ideas on the situation in the DRC, I'm reposting this blog post by Fred Robarts, for more information please visit http://www.ir2p.org

The last time eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had this much media attention, it was full of refugees from Rwanda who had arrived intermingled with the extremist officials and militia groups that had orchestrated the 1994 genocide. (People who are armed or have committed crimes against humanity aren’t eligible for refugee status under international law, but neither the Congolese authorities nor the UN prevented the genocidaires from keeping their weapons and running the camps.) There were stories of cholera outbreaks and a massive relief operation, but then the news moved on. There was very little coverage or outcry when the same exiled genocidaires staged gruesome raids on Rwanda, or when in 1996 the new Rwandan army crossed the border and carried out massacres of its own, hunting down Rwandan Hutu rebels and refugees alike before sending some 600,000 back to Rwanda.

That was the opening act of two really nasty wars, followed by a power-sharing agreement and a transition to democracy. But these achievements were built on flimsy foundations, and were not shored up by meaningful reforms and effective nationally-led efforts to improve security, end impunity and improve living conditions. All manner of foreign and home-grown armed groups flourished in the security vacuum and profited by selling Congo’s fantastic mineral and timber wealth to the highest bidders.

Now the international press is back in Goma in numbers that seem remarkable, given stiff competition from the financial markets and the US elections. So there is much more material than usual to draw on for the background material and news articles below. But some humanitarian workers are also uniquely-placed to report on the consequences of the violence, as Helen O’Neill of MSF does here (audio):

“One week there is a bustling village and the next week our mobile medical teams return to discover it’s completely empty - a ghost town. Thousands are on the move - a constant stream of humanity on the road. Who knows where all these people will end up? The families settle in inhospitable areas, many of them in the bush, where there is no chance of accessing healthcare… Malaria is endemic in the country, as is cholera, which increases whenever people are on the move like this or crowded into unsanitary camps… The people I met are also hungry, as they can’t go to their fields to harvest. It’s just too dangerous. If you are out alone trying to get to your land you can be shot or raped.”

Policy recommendations

The following 10 steps have been taken from a variety of sources (listed below) and consistent with ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine:

1. Apply sustained, coherent and even-handed international pressure to ensure dialogue between the protagonists to work on acceptable problem-solving mechanisms instead of seeking to profit through dangerous alliances with proxy forces.
2. Strengthen the UN mandate and answer UN requests for more, better-equipped troops (preferably including Special Forces) for MONUC, including through rapid deployment of a UN-mandated European Force.
3. Maximise efforts to help impartial specialist agencies like MSF and the ICRC get humanitarian assistance to those who need it.
4. Regroup the Congolese army (FARDC) and bring it under firm control and new leadership as a matter of urgency. Senior officers must be vetted; no national army can succeed if it is led by war criminals and racketeers. The troops need better training and discipline, but also better conditions.
5. Through political, economic and military pressure, isolate, diminish, disarm and disband all foreign and local militia groups.
6. Enable more inclusive dialogue in DRC and Rwanda to address deeper problems including citizenship, property rights, management of natural resources and the return of refugees. In the process, listen to and inform the rural population and multiple minorities of the Kivus.
7. Examine and control the mineral trade, including through more intrusive sanctions monitoring (e.g. flight inspections) and instruments such as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the UN Global Compact.
8. Investigate and prosecute human rights abuses and war crimes through the DRC courts and the International Criminal Court.
9. Monitor, challenge and prosecute hate speech from politicians and the media in DRC, the Great Lakes region and the Diaspora
10. Review development assistance programmes to ensure that they abide by Do No Harm and OECD principles for engagement in fragile states while helping to build democracy and uphold the Rule of Law in DRC (and Rwanda).

Sources of policy recommendations, with sample quotes:

* Council on Foreign Relations: “The problem in eastern Congo is analogous to the problem Sierra Leone faced in 2000, when a British intervention stabilized the country.” (With audio)
* The Economist: “Plainly, the peacekeepers need reinforcing fast, with the right sort of troops. Instead of wringing its hands, the UN Security Council must resolve to send a robust force of extra troops forthwith.”
* Human Rights Watch: “It’s up to the Congolese government, not Nkunda, to protect its Tutsi citizens.”
* Minority Rights Group: “The grievances of the Tutsi cannot justify the abuses committed by the CNDP.”
* UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes: “We should not return to the status quo. This crisis should be the occasion to redefine the international commitment to the Congo so that there can be a more effective effort to address the causes of the conflict. If we leave the fundamental problems to fester under the surface, all our other efforts – and the UK’s laudable investment in helping the Congo – will be built on sand.”
* Amnesty International: “Deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians and peacekeepers carrying out their duty of protecting civilians is a war crime, punishable under international law.”
* Enough: “All sides must be held to account for the crimes committed, and the International Criminal Court must work with MONUC to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity by all sides”
* The Guardian (Comment Is Free): “Unless sufficient determination can be mustered to follow up with more inclusive dialogue to address deeper problems including citizenship, management of natural resources, government legitimacy and return of refugees, violent instability will continue to plague eastern Congo and unsettle the entire region.”

Further action

If you agree, the following are some actions you could take. (No doubt you can think of other ideas, perhaps inspired by other campaigns - please let us know.)

* Write to your elected representative. Better still, ask to meet them. Bring a persuasive friend. (For those in the UK, there is likely to be a special parliamentary debate this Thursday. Refer to They Work For You to get your MP’s contact info.) Ask them what they think about these proposals, and ask if they have any links with the Congolese Assembly or the Rwandan Parliament. Find out if your country is currently a member of the UN Security Council. Ask how your government is responding to the humanitarian emergency, and whether this is proportionate to the needs.
* Most news sites, blogs and radio shows encourage you to comment on the big stories. Add your voice, and draw on the material on this page and the links (please send us a link to your comment as well).
* Media coverage will slip during the US Elections. Why not write to the editors (and your MP again) to let them know you want to know what happens next?
* Find out which humanitarian and human rights organisations are doing valuable work in the Congo. Join one of them.
* If you are already a member of a club or organisation, consider how events in the Congo may be relevant to them. Discuss it.
* Find and get to know any Congolese people in your school, college, workplace or neighbourhood. They may be surprised to know you care about what is happening there.
* If you have a blog or website, link to this page and use the resources to write your post.
* Email the link to this page to friends and colleagues, with a personal message from you to introduce it.

October 23 2008: Plodding to the polls

The only feeling that I can take from today’s referendum process in Stoke is that nothing much has changed for our "damaged" system of governance.

The question resembles a camel with two legs: curious looking and, well, not very mobile. It has been put together by too many people with an eye on electoral law who forgot that democracy starts with clear language that actually makes sense. To be fair, of course, the council have already been through this process in two ways, getting two different answers.

So it has been left to the campaign groups - two different groups who chose the same name - and the local media to translate the question for the general public. Try as I might to feign an interest, my eyes went glassy the very second the No campaigners started talking of councillors trying to take away my right to choose who I wanted to lead the city.

Meanwhile, the Yes campaigners, apparently submitting to the commonly-held view that to interest people, you have to terrify them, have come up with a mock-up of The Sun showing the rioting and flames that would result should we keep our mayor. Their message is that the BNP are going to put up someone very charismatic and sexy to woo us all before May. Who this charmer is, is not clear, but if it seems a good enough reason to you to scrap the entire mayoral system, then be sure to vote Yes today.

What this has to do with unpicking the merits of governance systems before us is anyone’s guess, but the Sentinel have taken the same tack for a different result, with a confusing story based on an anonymous poll of councillors that informs us that if we vote Yes we will also get the BNP leading us next May. For BNP politicians and supporters, all that’s needed is to stay quiet and take the free publicity while all around them politicians sink under their own spin and squabbling.

The only thing that can give a convincing way forward is a large turnout today, and that's assuming we think everyone understands the question. My impression from conversations with those people who don’t take an active interest in city politics - the majority, and who can blame them - is that people neither understand nor care. People are widely referring to it as an election, meaning they will be confused when they find out they're not voting for people, but for a system. Translating the question outside the ballot box for people is fairly easy, but whether or not any of us will remember what the question means once we’re inside is unclear. You’re voting No if you want to have a mayor; Yes, if you want the councillors to choose a leader or you just want rid of the mayor. If you’re in the considerable camps of people who (a) think councillors should have more power or (b) would rather the councillors were all gone tomorrow, well then there are no options for you. I could go into the wider plans of the governance commission, which have been agreed but not acted upon by the council, but I suspect you lost interest a few lines ago.

The only reason to vote today is to contribute to the turnout, because we must use our votes when we get them. My own view hasn’t changed over the last six months: the system we have doesn’t particularly matter as long as we can have a city in which everybody can contribute and have their voices heard through different avenues of representation. In the last few weeks, far away from the political arena but sometimes involving the same people, I’ve seen some very encouraging signs that the grassroots organisations of Stoke could be enjoying something of a renaissance, inspired perhaps by the visit of Desmond Tutu back in July. Online, there are more Stoke people blogging than ever before – even if large swathes of our city are still without free internet access this is a sign that we could be entering a more healthy era of discussion and debate in which the people’s voices cannot be ignored. The day when even poor ignored Tunstall has a Facebook group dedicated to its charms is a good day for our city.

The campaigners for Trentham High School, who have been bravely standing up and dragging attention back to themselves even when all seemed lost, have in my view won the battle and should be given the prize they want. If walking to London to deliver a petition wasn’t convincing enough, the achievement of the students, teachers and parents in making their school the most improved in the city deserves our respect and more importantly that of the Building Schools for the Future architects. People are more important than buildings and our reliance on demolition and displacement needs to be put behind us. Our appearance on Question Time last week was a clear message to national government that the people of Stoke have, through bitter experience, learnt to articulate issues of deprivation, fear and unfairness as they affect our communities.

As Stoke-on-Trent creeps closer to its centenary year as a federated city of six proud towns, we could be about to enter very interesting times indeed.

Beyond poverty

Wherever you are in the world, a lot of the work around poverty tends to be focussed on funding and policy. Not funding for those in poverty, naturally, but funding for the bureaucracy that seeks to alleviate poverty. This means that those who develop most success, whether working on a very wide or very local level, tend to be those who learn to play the game of government targets around deprivation.

I was interested to hear a comment today by a very inspiring woman who complained about the short-termism of funding for a women's project she ran. It struck me that we have no choice but to move beyond our reliance on funding. Otherwise, the groups have no choice but to keep emphasising their problems in order to get the funding they need to continue. The development of social enterprise as an encouraged option moves on from that, but still puts organisations under pressure to grow and develop.

For me, the present climate makes either of these avenues increasingly difficult to sustain. The global problems are going to mean there are simply too many problems for governments to adequately fund. In addition, trading is going to become harder and those companies that made funding available for community projects are likely to have less to share. To put it simply, there is less money out there now to solve our problems. We need to rely more on our own creativity and what can be done for free.

So that makes it timely that, as is outlined well in Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody and by others, we're in an era where our costs of organising has collapsed. For all the uncertainty about what the Digital Mentor idea could look like, its greatest strength is the recognition that, by teaching people in deprived communities about digital access and use of free tools, you effectively plug them in to much wider opportunities. It could lead to two outcomes: first giving people the tools to organise whatever disruptive things they want to (and I like the fact that the government seem to be going down this route when they clearly aren't in control of the outcomes); and second transcending the basic modern reality that to be successful, you have to be willing to travel anywhere in the world: get educated, get mobile. We could start tapping in to the under-utilised resources of people who are in deprived areas, hearing their voices, hearing about their skills and making links to markets anywhere in the world. Again, the government could take the lead on this by supporting remote hubs to connect people to higher quality jobs even if they aren't in the major cities.

By building up the self-sufficiency of localised deprived areas, we can build confidence in those communities and people can actually take power, instead of waiting to be given handouts.

I think we need to start cherishing the small contributions that can lead to transformative change. One activist in a community can have a significant impact. Online, that impact is magnified. In Stoke alone, we've seen some examples of decisions being overturned because resistance could not be ignored as it would have been in the past. Indeed, even at the end of major battles, we've seen a development of greater respect for groups that would previously have been ignored. People will different skills can work together, so literacy is not necessarily a barrier to participation (although it is an issue). Through greater online dialogue adding to personal meetings, we can start to move beyond the anger and divisionism that has been fuelled by decades, if not centuries, of deprivation in our communities. People can participate in more creative ways than the standard hierarchies like resident's committees and they can be asked to volunteer more easily.

To break it down into a trite, but Twitterable soundbite:
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day
Give him broadband and he'll be able to download instructions on a wide range of fishing methods.
(and perhaps the location of a nearby community group offering a fish-supper or the ability to form one himself...)

Reviews

2005 was probably the year when I turned from blogger to connected global citizen.

In June, I was in Rwanda on a rollercoaster of a week. Meeting with wonderful friends made by email as we developed a discussion on how journalists could play a part in preventing genocide. Enjoying stimulating conversations on topics that still provoke my thoughts today. We ran a conference on how the global youth could ensure ‘Never Again’, it happened to coincide with the visit of the president of the World Bank to Africa and, Rwanda being quite a closely connected place, we got him to come to our conference. After his address, I shot up to the nearest computer lab and reported the speech on Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/World_Bank_president_addresses_global_youth_forum_on_genocide), which, in turn got a mention in the Financial Times.

Less than a month later, I heard the sound of a bomb close to my office in Tavistock Square. We didn’t know what it was, but I was already communicating with a fellow ‘wikinewsie’, Dan Grey, about explosions on the underground. At 9.56am (the log says 8.56) I immediately posted a report heard from my editor and work experience student who had run out to see what was happening. I then deleted it again, worried that it might not be true, but it was and Dan was already weaving it in to the developing Wikinews story. He later wrote (http://osdir.com/ml/org.wikimedia.foundation/2005-07/msg00060.html) that we were the first people to report the incident online. In 2008 I imagine it would have been quicker still, posted on Twitter via mobile phone from the scene itself, but in 2005 nine minutes was considered pretty fast.

Everybody brushes with news stories from time to time in their lives. The difference between then and now is that then the public’s contribution to a story was merely their answer to the bland question ‘how do you feel’. Now, we can shape the story, write it, respond to it, comment on it.

I’m now reading, simultaneously (because I’m *that* hyperconnected), Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, and CrowdWired by Tom Watson. The first is a good example of how you can carve out your niche and make money: seeing the book recommended on a few sites I trusted I marched in to Waterstones and demanded a copy, even paying extra so I could read it on the train. The second has been sent as a review copy, thanks to a connection with Tom Watson on Twitter, so I can make my own sprinklings of recommendations through my own networks so that in a few months someone else will shell out real cash for the fruits of Tom’s labour instead of just reading his blog for free.

Both books are fascinating and very readable. They represent the maturity of a movement, the time when academics can take a step back from the fast-moving events and start writing a history. 2005 is an important year in both these histories, with the 7/7 bombings and the New Orleans floods representing a step further on from the connectivity that could already be seen on 9/11 and the 2004 Tsunami. Both books are really useful as guides to those who are still waiting for the spark. I’ve already read the criticism somewhere that Shirky’s book doesn’t say anything new. Although that criticism is untrue, in my view, I can see why the online ‘natives’ may be unmoved by the story of a lost/stolen phone that could be found again by the power of the crowd.

One of the many interesting insights for me is that in the connected world, we can be very relaxed about failure. Indeed, we can afford to fail because the investment in organising is now zero. For a long time I was a little downhearted about the amount of ideas I’d started that hadn’t really got anywhere, the tools I’d built that hadn’t been picked up and used by as many people as I’d hoped. My view now, which has been backed up by the evidence in this book, is that putting ideas out that may or may not be picked up is simply part of a new process that is now done in public where it once would have been private.

Free digital revolushun. Ur doin it rong.

The sudden closure of Burslem Library last week left me feeling really disappointed.

Sited inside the city's finest building, the Wedgwood Institute, the library is one of those places whose value often goes unnoticed. When I first moved to Burslem, two rooms of the crumbling listed building were being used and through the window you could see some fairly dusty-looking bookshelves. By the time I found myself in Burslem during the day, the library had shrunk into one room, with the rest of this fine building taped off to all those without hard hats.

Despite its very obvious neglect, the library was a haven for me and many others. Inside I could spend the odd hour for free, discovering long-gone voices of Burslem shoppers, child miners and characters. There was the internet.

A long time ago, as can be seen on Stoke council's website, millions of pounds were granted to refurbish the building. Expanded library space would have been shared with business units and the lecture theatre would have been restored. See and regret that the completion date should have been August this year.

Instead, the project got dragged into the very complex and expensive business of reshuffling North Staffs agencies and 'put on hold' while a coherent vision for everything could be developed. It is still on hold. While it is fair that money should be spent carefully, this was funding granted to restore a specific building of great significance to the city. Nobody would have argued that the building needed to be restored, so it would have been better to get on with it than have it eventually shut down altogether after becoming a danger to the public. That a fine building with such an illustrious history should have been allowed to degenerate is not the fault of any individual but of systematic failure going back generations. It's a far cry from the original vision, built by public subscription to widen out access to education.

Today, because no plans could be put into place for the library, it has shut without any warning. This is, hopefully, temporary, but this is a very stretchable word in Stoke. The closure means that between the A500 and the Haywood Learning Centre (virtually the whole of the Burslem South ward), there is no free internet access available to the public (if there are any exceptions to this please let me know).

With all the government efforts towards digital engagement, the fact that this could happen in one of the most deprived wards in the country should be a cause of concern to politicians nationally. Not least because we have two important processes going on right now: the Slater Street Public Inquiry and the masterplanning process for Middleport. Those on broadband can follow these processes online and can have our say by email, blogs or on discussion boards should we so wish; we can read updates on websites. In a library, even the web-averse could read about this matter of public interest in the Sentinel for free. If you can't afford a computer and broadband, or you can't get through the credit check to have broadband then you go back to being as disconnected as you ever have been.

Like so much, people will point to alternatives. All that is in Tunstall, they will say, or Hanley. Haven't got a car? Just get a bus. Walk, it's good for you! All of which is of little use to those with limited mobility, no money, those feeling a little isolated or frightened to take to the streets or to gamble with the public transport system. There's a certain time and feeling in Burslem, after about 3 when most of the shops have usually closed for the day, when you don't have quite enough money even for a lemonade in the Leopard. It's a time when your heart can really sink as you look over the empty buildings and the closed shops. The antidote to this feeling was the library, not in Tunstall or Hanley or up any hill, but in Burslem.

The closure also came in the same week as twinkly-eyed minister for culture Andy Burnham launched a debate on the future of libraries. To which our only answer can be "yes, we'd like one of those please".

So, as is right and proper in these circumstances, I've set up a Facebook group to retain a virtual community in support of, first, having a library at all and secondly, to have a fully developed and fabulous library in the place that our forefathers built for us. So, if you can get online and feel so inclined, please join and show your support with a little gentle badgering of your elected representatives.

Lessons from a former newspaper editor

Back in July, at the end of a very difficult week, I started to accept that my dream, the newspaper Local Edition, was not going to continue in paper any more. On the same day, I was lucky enough to see Desmond Tutu speaking in Stoke. Of all the miraculous coincidences, nothing could have inspired me more than his speech that focussed on the small things and reflected back on a path that took Josiah Wedgwood from Burslem to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, free from prison after a centuries-long struggle against racist oppression.

Next week, I start a brand new role, on which I will undoubtedly be saying much more. So it's a good time to reflect on what I learnt.

I still don't believe that newspapers are dead. But their business model cannot work in the current climate. The weight of commercial funding needed is dragging newspapers - and more importantly, print journalists - down. Exciting as the new era may be for those working on the new business model, there are generations of reporters still being crushed in newsrooms across the country by groups seeking to hang on to their 30% profits. Much as the mainstream is getting on board with the internet, I still think there is a major point they're not getting. I don't believe Google is hugely profitable because it does everything it can to chase money. Rather, their vast profits have allowed them the freedom to experiment and develop tools that are as good as they can be and improving all the time. Lucky Google. Lucky us.

More and more of us are now finding ourselves in a period of exploration. Whether you grew up thinking you'd be a miner or a banker, there are no safe job routes any more. Those of us who are lucky will be able to find avenues we are passionate about, but there is no reason any more to give your life to any organisation in the hope of future rewards. At the point when I was ready to stop the newspaper, I realised I'd be happier labouring for a living than trying to sell another advertising space to a reluctant shop that hadn't made any money for a week. I was even more sick of trying to sell 'community benefit' to a millionnaire business-owner who wasn't about to start giving something back with my paper. The weight of the cost of paper was simply too much to sustain, I was risking my own reputation trying to fulfil too many roles and I wasn't making any money from it.

However, running Local Edition for as long as I could still created incredible benefits. My faith that there was more out there that people like to believe paid off and the paper pulled together contributions from fantastic writers, photographers and artists, all with the most generous spirits. Enough organisations and businesses put their money into the paper, an unproven concept, to keep it going at a break-even point. I had endless, dizzying conversations with people whose voices never seem to be reflected in centres of power. Our stories were followed up, amplifying the voices of ordinary people. I could start to imagine what these networks could look like if they were listened to and resourced. I had to grapple with a spectrum of political views far removed from the safe spaces we create for ourselves. We had to react to events, rumours and different truths that put me in mind of terrifying scenarios and possibilities. We showed it was possible to run a newspaper full of constructive news and that it would be popular.

These are some things I would tell people thinking about going down the same path:

- don't burn yourself out chasing the money you need to follow your dream. Get the money to sustain your food, essentials and a broadband connection and then carve out the time for your passion. Even a few minutes a day spent on a collaborative project makes an impact.

- the people who tell you not to get into debt are right, unless that debt is with the Princes Trust who will be one of your most steadfast friends (assuming you are in Britain, that is). There are many more organisations who will be just as wonderful and I haven't got time to list them right now, so seek them out rather than the ones that make things difficult while saying they're helping you.

- if your project is unusual, asking people who operate with a different vision for money to do it won't work. Again, use free tools to make your impact so that you're not relying on anybody else. If you prove your point, then risk-averse organisations will support you, but probably well after you need them. Be ready to know when to stop waiting.

The project has led to some great work for me and many of the people who have been involved in the paper (many of whom didn't need any help but it's still nice that Local Edition has been part of their journey). www.localedition.org.uk continues as one of the richest archives of Northern Stoke life on the internet and a communication forum that anybody can use. www.stokesounds.co.uk is without doubt the best music website in North Staffordshire. The company, Social Media CIC, will continue simply to provide a structure for ideas, without the burden of cashflow forecasts that demand endless growth to feed the machinery of business. It will instead create social capital and connect with other small organisations all over the world that are doing the same. Exciting times ahead...


PS If you're reading this thinking "but she's still got to send me that receipt/letter/form/cheque/etc/etc", I will tie up all the loose ends in the end, promise, things have just been a bit hectic recently... :)

Is this helpful?

Time is valuable. Whenever we undertake something, we have to make a brief calculation in our head about whether the time it will take is worthwhile. This is even more the case if you're working freelance or running a business.

That's why quick activities so often get far more people to participate.

The one thing I hate more than anything else at all is bureaucracy. (hopefully you understand that I'm not comparing forms to torture or genocide, I am merely being dramatic). Forms send me spitting feathers all over the place and whining like a teenager as I scrawl half-heartedly on the stupid boxes and ratings. It's only slightly better if somebody fills in the form with me.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how dehumanised does this form make you feel?"

That's a question you rarely see.

I'm not dyslexic, but I am left-handed, so there are parts of forms that I tend to miss out because I didn't see them. I find filling them in genuinely stressful and very time-consuming. I tend to get suspicious of the usefulness of the form the longer it goes on. I start to think evil thoughts about the people who created the form. I wonder at the expense of entering data that I know for a fact is already in their overstuffed servers and wandering memory sticks. Very often, I give up, unless given another biscuit or told I can't leave the room till it's done.

More than anything, I resent the fact that part of my interactions with government bureaucracy are because I'm someone in need of 'help'. The only reason I sign or fill in the bloody things at all is because I have been part of various government schemes that have really helped me and normally there is a wonderful person on the end of the form saying "Sorry about this, but it's for the funders". Because I have been through different schemes with differing levels of bureaucracy, I know that evaluation is applied differently.

I obviously see the value of evaluation and the necessity for monitoring. A bit of reflection on your work by an impartial observer is also often very useful. Even the need to demonstrate value for money, except that I think this very often destroys actual value in the process of spreading your money as thin as it can go. I don't like the fact that because I don't have my own money to do whatever I like, I have to trade personal details for help. I would rather spend that time doing something of value instead.

I'm becoming convinced that nearly all the time-consuming evaluation could be replaced by one simple question:

"Was this helpful?"

Yes or no.

If this question was applied at the end of every interaction by a publicly-funded person, or added to the end of every web page funded by a government scheme, then we would very quickly have a body of evidence to say what is helping people most and what isn't. In other words, what works. Suggestions and refinements can always come later, with the time freed up by not having to fill in stupid forms.

Two examples:

You spend four days supplying excessive amounts of information for a branding grant that, ultimately, you were rejected for because you were the wrong sort of business (even though you had checked beforehand and your intermediary had been given the wrong information).

Was this helpful?

No

(now, isn't that quicker than composing endless vitriolic letters and complaining to everyone you meet?)

You had a conversation with someone you know at the council who told you you would probably be eligible for a refurbishment grant on your house that you hadn't heard about before and then asked the person running the scheme to call you. You were eligible, so you got the grant.

Was this helpful?

Yes

One of these examples wasted stupid amounts of unpaid time and contributed absolutely nothing to government outputs. The other contributed to outputs and ensured that someone in need got something they were entitled to. The difference is in the time people are allowed to have conversations with people.

Particularly in areas where online access is low, you can forget connecting with people if you're not released from your desk to speak to people. Conversations are extremely valuable. Information can be passed on and put into context. Conversations layer on each other. Most people are more likely to take action because of a conversation, or even several conversations, than they are from websites, mailshots or even newspapers. Certainly, these add to the mix and are vital to ensure you are getting accurate information and have something to refer to, but that is combined with the spark that made you look at them in the first place.

Call conversations, if you like, the Twitter feeds of real life and you might appreciate the importance of conversations once again. Journalists, take note.

I've gone off on a bit of a tangent, but when they release the next competition to do something clever to make government work better, this will be my suggestion. Wipe out every form with more than two fields and replace it with the name of the project/person/odd new computer system in a waiting room/paper-based information given to people, a name (if you must) and a yes or no answer.

Feed it into a central space and...

We might suddenly find out what's working.