Designing for Civil Society

Proxicommunication - or technology at local level revisited

I sensed two models below the surface of discussion at last night's London launch of Proxicommunication - ICT and the Local Public Realm. One harked back to the US Freenets and community networks of the 1980s and 1990s, when pioneering enthusiasts promoted bulletin boards and later the Internet to help rebuild local community, provide services, promote debate, offer new learning opportunities. The essential components of that model were some planned provision, support and management of content and interactions.
The other model - or perspective - was of the growing use of personal multimedia and social networking online, and a fairly unstructured development of services offered by public agencies and a host of nonprofit intermediaries.
It seemed to me that the report's author Will Davies was looking for some clearer local governance and planning in his analogy of the public park as a way of thinking about the online commons. He was also arguing for a new breed of technology professionals equivalent to the architects, urban designers and civil engineers who have shaped our physical infrastructure.

Digital manifesto launched, very softly

The UK think tank IPPR managed the ultimate soft launch last night with the presentation in London of its Manifesto for Digital Britain. Some folk who hadn't read the invitation carefully enough - me included - thought they would find on their seats a thick tome or link to content covering the importance of the Net for business, education, government etc. OK, we have heard a lot about that before, but IPPR are close to Government, the drinks are free, the Minister will be there, meet some nice people... let's go!
Uuuh...different discovery on arrival. This is not the launch of the manifesto, but the launch of the process of developing the manifesto. It will be available next year. Oh well, settle down, listen to the Minister Stephen Timms (who is one of the politicians who really does know his stuff in this field).
"This is a good opportunity to review the progress that we have made in achieving.... " into standard Ministerial speech " ...not for the few but for the many..." .... now up the league table in the G7 countries in broadband deployment...Then the touch of humanity... how the Minister was on the train and had forgotten his papers and could download them using G3 technology. At least I remembered that bit. Do Orange do that for Macs? When is the new Treo 610 available? Drift into personal techno-dreams.....
Next up was Stephen Coleman, professor of eDemocracy at the Oxford Internet Institute, making some good points, I thought, about the need to translate technology lessons and opportunities into policy, and into public understanding. In doing that, he said, we need to cross the barriers of different disciplines, innovate and integrate, implement and evaluate. That is, do new stuff differently.

Techo-engagement urged on local councils

A report from the New Local Government Network called Invisible Villages - techno-localism and the enabling council promotes social software as a major force in connecting with local communities and developing networks.
"Social software is an increasingly popular tool for the development of voluntary, bottom-up social networks. Already, some social network sites, such as Orkut, have become popular amongst certain niche communities, as ways of building new relationships on the back of existing ones. E-mail and instant messenger are much more common parts of a typical social life. Informal and private socialising is not in itself a sphere where government has a role, but it is worth recognising how beneficial these technologies can be to communities and individuals”.
The report is by Anna Randle of NLGN, with James Crabtree and Will Davies - who worked together at iSociety, and are now moving to to IPPR. I expect we'll hear more at an iSociety event next week launching another of Will's reports, and the IPPR Manifesto for Digital Britain event.
The authors argue that embracing such social software will allow local government to develop its unique role within localities:
“New technologies offer councils a new and exciting opportunity to exercise their new enabling and pluralist community leadership role, in a way which can help them respond to diverse and complex needs, enable communities to find the resources within themselves to articulate and meet these, and to balance conflicts which might otherwise not be recognised."
As I have written before, I'm sceptical about the potential for techno-engagement at local level. The tools can certainly be an important part of the communications and engagement mix, and social networking models are a good way to unpack notions of "the public" or "the community". However, I'm not sure that they are leading edge.
The latest report isn't available online, and I'm not sure I would venture £10. I wonder if this blog qualifies me for a press copy? Worth a try.

Online encourages other connections

IWire reports that Keith Hampton is interviewed in Spectrum magazine, about his new findings on local neighbourhood internet use. Keith revealed some of this evidence at an iSociety seminar back in April.
The main conclusion hightlighted is that "rather than destroying community life, being wired actually helps people connect. In fact, people who frequently use e-mail are more likely to be in frequent touch with others by telephone and in person, too."

Multimedia conference reports - can I do that?

Louise Ferguson provides links to reports from the Dust or Magic conference that use - in the spirit of the event - a mix of media. They were developed by Chris Hawker and fellow postgrad students at Oxford Brookes University. The report of Louise's own presentation on ICTs in the workplace shows the benefits of a Flash version over html for slides and audio. Some reports have video too. I'm intrigued by how easy (or not) it would be to develop off-the-shelf approaches to producing event reports which enable nonprofessionals to put together something usable. I'll be on the look-out for examples.
PS Louise provides a link to a piece in PC Magazine about The New Geek - people comfortably applying technical tools throughout different industries and disciplines. Can I be an old new geek? Louise comments on the article "Geek is a misnomer - geeks are misfits, socially inept. That's precisely the image that isn't reflected in the work being described." So - new name needed for socially-capable techies who do other stuff.... or perhaps non-techies who can do more than most. I want the tee shirt.... and the skills to go with it.

Small talk can be better than big print runs

Paul Richards has an excellent article in this week's Regeneration and Renewal magazine on Small talk with a big impact, where he urges the importance of stories and conversations to help people engage in neighbourhood renewal.
Paul's enthusiasm for stories and conversations reflects what knowledge management professionals are saying in other contexts - see my last post.
He writes: "In too many regeneration schemes, marketing and communications is an add-on, delivered by staff with little or no experience and consisting of traditional methods such as newsletters, posters and leaflets," he writes and then goes on to make the case for stories rather than statistics, and word of mouth to complement other methods methods.

Why manifestos don't usually work: stories may

Dave Pollard makes a convincing case that people are more likely to change their minds about an issue through direct experience, rather than polemics from others, unless that is a deeply trusted source. Better to tell people a story ... as many preachers, but not necessarily politicians, have learned over the years.
That sort of ties in with an observation that's been buzzing around my head for a few days. The Association of Knowledge Network Ezine summarises an online debate with with David Snowden and Steve Barth, and I think this quote stands in its own right.
David added, "My own perspective on knowledge management is based on the statement "We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down." ... continuing with, "which leads me to separate KM practice into content (what we can write down), narrative (what we can say) and context (what we can neither say not write down). Narrative and context are more important than content and are social in their nature."
In my work I find that professionals favour reports, newsletters and other written content, while many of the people they are trying to engage (or maybe not) in local communities learn and make up their minds through the narrative of conversations. People are more likely to trust their neighbours than officials, and the official reliance on formal content just makes things worse. Then they'll start complaining about rumours....and produce another newsletter.
See also The new social networking tool - just somewhere to meet

Blogs and vogs may be the new community media

Lee Bryant has pulled together highlights from the blogtalk 2 conference in Vienna, including some fascinating ideas on how text, audio, video blogs (vogs or vlogs?) may evolve into a new form of community media. There are some useful tips and links, but discussion rather confirms my experience that putting together multimedia for a blog is time consuming.
One method is using SMIL - Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language - which is a bit like using html to mark up web pages. There are some Windows editors, but not as far as I can see anything for Mac OSX. I'm attracted by the scope for doing slide shows with added captions and audio, now possible using Flash-based programmes like SWF 'n Slide as something quicker and easier. I can see some events on the horizon where this could be a useful additional reporting method, which seems like a good excuse to spend some time experimenting. More later.
See also Ranting and reporting from WSIS

London e-government: interesting... or just efficient?

The e-government agency London Connects now has a new web site detailing the many public, private and nonprofit initiatives around the capital. Web developers tmg have made the whole thing easy to use from without, and no doubt from within as well. The project and organisational descriptions are short and to the point....the sections logical and easily navigable. It was designed in accordance with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister guidelines, and has a sophisticated extranet for project partners.
Unfortunately it is so neat and tidy it rather lacks any character, flavour, personality for this citizen... but maybe that's the nature of e-government, and we shouldn't expect our public servants to take on blog style. It is, I suspect, mainly meant for other officials. Even so RSS feeds would be nice. Government Office for London offers that.

ISociety report launch invite

Will Davies has now posted details of the London launch of his new iSociety report on Shrinking the Net - delivery of ICT in local communities.
"As the internet becomes ever more pervasive, its local uses start to over-shadow its global uses. Meanwhile, the decentralising direction of current policy-making makes it imperative that new ways of circulating information are found, at a variety of sub-national levels, if new tiers of governance are to be mirrored by new tiers of public debate. The internet has the capability to support this multi-tiered public realm."
My earlier item here.