I read with interest that my old employer – Reuters – has chosen Blogtronix as the social media platform for their recently launched Green Market Social Community. I’ve been pondering which platform would best suit the social media network I’m planning for the Information Authority, which will be supporting data providers across the Further Education system. Knowing how rigorous Reuters are in their procurement process, I’d be foolish not to include Blogtronix in the short list.
Came across a blog from Collective Intelligence on the topic of social bookmarking (tagging). I was at the Blogs & Social Media conference referenced in the article, where Keely Flint presented on the Bupa experience using Cogenz as the social bookmarking application. It occurred to me how much more successful these initiatives could be if Librarians were out there evangelising the merits of personal tagging, and how this would support more effective search and retrieval, a point also picked up by Helen Nicol. Maybe I’m reading the wrong blogs, but my perception is that most Librarians remain wedded to structured, corporate categorisation and file management systems, and haven’t yet grasped that the world is changing around them. Sorry if I’m over-generalising, but I’ve seen very few articles/comments/blogs from Librarians in support of social bookmarking. Someone prove me wrong?
The IDeA have published a report on the Community of Practice ‘Facilitator’s Workshop’ I organised for them on 27th April. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together the various facilitators of the on-line communities supported on the IDeA CoP platform, to learn from their experiences in facilitating communities of practice across local government, and in response to issues raised by the facilitators through their own dedicated CoP, namely:
- how can I keep momentum going?
- who can I turn to for support?
- will my opinions be seen as ‘novice’ compared to others in the community?
Community adviser and activist Ed Mitchell spoke on ‘Nurturing
communities from networks: the gritty bits’. There was also a session
from Hilary Messeter from the National College for School Leadership
(NCSL).
As with many of these type of events, the coming together and sharing of knowledge can be a therapeutic process, i.e. the realisation that you’re not alone and that someone else has the same concerns and issues as yourself, and better still, finding someone who has solved the issue you’ve been worrying about.
One particularly encouraging piece of information that emerged from the workshop was that most of the CoP’s across local government have a 10% contribution rate, which is well beyond the ‘1% rule’.
Dave Briggs, who facilitates the Collaboration and Social Media CoP, and the LGNewmedia site summed the day up very well in saying:-
“We’re trying to sell two very ambitious concepts with this [IDeA CoP] platform.
Firstly, we are asking people to tear down silos and start working
together and sharing our knowledge – something that is an anathema to
some elements of local government culture. Secondly, we are asking them
to do so using the web, with blogs, wikis and forums!”
It was apparent to me that there is a close relationship between effective CoPs and effective facilitators – i.e. you can’t have one without the other.
The Cabinet Office have commissioned a report – The Power of Information - from Ed Mayo (chief exec of the
National Consumer Council) and Tom Steinberg (the man behind mySociety and
PledgeBank) to look into the ways government can benefit from user-generated
sites, particularly with a view to creating APIs to allow mash-ups with public
sector data (like the Ordnance Survey). Press announcement here.
Good to see the that the power of Social Media has penetrated to the heart of UK Gov. But can they resist the urge to regulate it?!
I’ve recently seen a number of conversations in the blogosphere from people asking about corporate blogging policies, since I assume their companies are getting nervous about what their employees might be saying via the cyber medium. Sun met this issues head on about 3 years ago, and actively encouraged their employees to blog by providing them with dedicated server space. Their blogging policy is as good as any I’ve seen. Pity that all companies don’t encourage this level of transparency (I’m not a Sun employee by the way!).
As a closet fan of all that is ‘Google’, I was wondering when I should make the final step in my transition from Bloglines to Google Reader. I’ve been using both for some time now, which is bit of a pain when I have to add and categorise a new feed since I end up replicating the process twice. However, I think the recent announcement about Google Gears is the tipping point I needed. So, sadly, it’s goodbye to Bloglines, but loyalty only goes so far.
Basically, Gears is a browser add-on that enables web-based applications to run locally whilst off-line. The product is in Beta at the moment, and only supports the Google Reader (RSS feed aggregator). However, we can expect to see support for Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Mail, Google Blogger, and in fact any of their applications where there is value to be gained by working off-line and on-line.
Looks like another killer app to me!
