Stephen Dale's Posterous - Passionate about the social web, collaboration, learning, sharing and trying to make sense of an increasingly complex world.
I’m looking for to attending the Online Information Conference next week, which runs from 1-3 December at the Olympia. The schedule for the three days can be found on the Online Information website. There are some great speakers lined up, including Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell, who will be doing a keynote presentation on Thursday 3rd December.
Of particular interest to me is the Track 2 (Social Web ) Keynote session on the 3rd December on:
- which I’ll be moderating. The keynote presentation for this session will be given by Lee Bryant, co-founder of Headshift. I’ve been a keen follower of Lee for some time, and look forward to his perceptive analysis of how business is adapting to the social web. A brief synopsis of this track session as follows:
The application of social tools and social networking within business is all too often regarded as a purely technical exercise, where simply installing new software can solve business problems. In fact, the really interesting lessons of this new era of social business tools are about the affordances, behaviours and new ways of working that social networking makes possible. This session will look at some of the areas in which key concepts such as information flows, ambient awareness, networked productivity and cheap, easy collaboration are impacting on business processes and business design in various sectors and industries.
Learning points:
1. The basics of network-centric information management
2. How to identify business processes ripe for change
3. How to get started with social business design projects
We also have some great presentation and case studies from:
Mike Ellis, Solutions Architect, Eduserv, UK Lisa Price, Website Communications Manager, Eduserv, UK Lorna Ferguson, Associate Director of Knowledge Management, KPMG LLP, UK Ceri Hughes, Director of Knowledge Management, KMPG LLP, UK
I’m anticipating that this will be a very well attended session and feel very privileged to be sharing a platform with those who are pioneering collaborative and knowledge sharing solutions through the social web. Organisations and people are still finding their way through a fairly confusing ‘Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0′ landscape, which appears to be bounded and stifled by anachronistic 20th century working practices, rules and protocols. I believe this session will offer some insight into where we are heading in building 21st century working practices and the role that technology will have in supporting these changes.
I hope to see some of my friends, colleagues and blog/twitter followers at the event. But for anyone reading this who will be at the event, please do come and say hello.
I am very pleased to have been invited to speak at the Public Health Information Network (PHIN) conference in Atlanta, Georgia, taking place between 30th August and 3rd September. This will be my second visit to Atlanta, having been there in May this year to meet with staff at the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to share knowledge about the UK local government Communities of Practice, a strategy I developed for the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) in 2005 and which continues to thrive with over 35,000 users at the last count.
PHIN/CDC are in the process of developing collaboration tools to support geographically dispersed professionals working in the field of public health informatics, and Communities of Practice (CoPs) are a key part of this strategy. This is the primary reason I’ve been asked to attend, and I’ll be talking about the lessons we’ve learnt in developing the CoP Platform for local government. The focus of my presentation will be on the issues around measuring value of social networks and Communities of Practice. I think this will fit in quite well with the goals and objectives of the conference, repeated here:
Goal To build a public health informatics community through the sharing of promising practices and lessons learned.
Objectives
Extend the reach of innovative public health informatics practices.
Summarize current issues and trends in the field of public health informatics.
Translate issues and opportunities in public health informatics and health information technology for public health practitioners and policy makers.
Facilitate the development of a community focused on accelerating the field of public health informatics.
Validate public health informatics activities at national, state and local levels through open source collaboration and community building.
Integrate knowledge gained to leverage resources for sustainability of information technology, workforce development, and human capital.
A full programme of the conference is available online if anyone is interested. I’m speaking on the last day of the main conference, Wednesday 2nd September. I will make my slides available on Slideshare after the conference, and (access to Internet permitting) will provide regular Tweets on any the issues.
David Wilcox (Social Reporter) has produced an excellent post describing the ‘Social by Social’ game that a few of us at the Net Tuesday meeting took part in. This was the first time I had attended a Net Tuesday meeting, which is run on the first Tuesday of each month, and intend making this a regular item in my diary. Thanks too to Andy Gibson and Amy Sample Ward for organising us all on the day.
I was asked by the Network of government library and information specialists (NGLIS) to run a workshop session on Social Media Tools for their 2009 Conference, held in London 3rd June 2009. I thought this might be an ideal opportunity to run the Social Media Game that David Wilcox and Beth Kanter had developed.
I enlisted the support of my colleague Dave Briggs, who I know had run this game before, and set about preparing the cards in accordance with the guidelines on the SocialMedia Wiki. A copy of the cards is included in the attached PDF.
The following is a detailed explanation of the process we followed for the workshop which others may want to adopt or adapt if they are considering using this game, which I can recommend as a fun way of learning about the benefits and implications of using social media tools for engagement and collaboration.
Purpose of the workshop.
A simple but fun game that enables participants to discuss the merits of different social media tools and their utility and effectiveness in solving various real-world problems. The workshop will help delegates get a better appreciation of social media tools and the issues that need to be considered when deploying the tools in different situations.
Process
Step1:
The delegates were split into three teams of roughly 7 people in each team. Each team was asked to describe a scenario (a project, problem or requirement) related to their work environment. This was set out on an A3 piece of paper structured as follows:
Scenario – a description of the issue/problem.
Location - scope of influence, e.g. within a department, across depts., local, regional, national.
People - the people affected by the issue/problem.
Other considerations – any other influences or issues that might be relevant to resolving the issue/problem)
Each team was then asked to think of a number between 7 and 15 and write this number on their respective A3 sheets. The reasoning for this is given later.
Step 2:
One member from each team was asked to join one of the other teams and explain the scenario to that team. In effect they were acting as a ‘customer’ and the team they had just joined were now ‘consultants’. Each team was now working on one of the other team’s scenarios and not the one they developed themselves.
Each of the teams was given a set of social media cards, one side of which defined the functionality and on the other side an explanation of the application and the considerations for its use. Each team then set about solving the problem described in the scenario using a selection of the cards. Each of the cards had a points weighting which represented a nominal budget for using that particular feature. At this stage the number defined in step 1 was revealed as the budget for each consultancy team. Each team were required to deliver their solution within this budget, or to justify to their ‘customers’ any reason for exceeding the budget.
Step 3:
Having worked out their respective solutions each team explained their reasoning to the team that had originally generated a scenario, i.e. their customers. The customers were then asked to verify whether the solution met their requirements and could ask the consultant to clarify any points. Any budget overrun had to be justified by the consultants and agreed by the customers.
Step 4:
The final part of this game was a plenary feedback session on any lessons learnt and whether the teams had found the process useful in gaining a better understanding of how social media tools can be used to solve real-world problems, why some social media tools would not be appropriate in some circumstances.
I can recommend this game to anyone who wants to introduce the concepts of social media to their audience whilst at the same time making it a collaborative and fun learning process.
For anyone who has not yet made a submission for the 2009 Online Conference, the deadline has now been extended to Friday 8th May.
The organisers want to hear from people and organisations that have transformed themselves to be more agile and flexible by exploiting open linked data and conversation streams. They are looking for exciting, innovative applications as well as lessons learned from Twittering and mash-ups. They want to show case organisations that are using semantic web techniques to create new and exciting resources. And what about managing the chaos of agile development and “always beta” deployments? Have you learned how to guarantee privacy and security in this heady but chaotic world?
Do you have a story to tell?
-Â Maybe you’ve been involved in creating a new application for Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo or Google?
- Have you made the move to the semantic web to deal with the digital explosion and the need for greater “intelligence” in your information?
- Perhaps you’ve found ways to exploit new Online tools to transform the way your organisation does its business?
-Â Have you changed your management processes to cope with this “always connected world”?
Then why not share it with others?
Whether you work in business, libraries, academia or the public sector, good ideas are invariably transferable and we need to hear them. The Online world is waiting to learn from the pioneers who have made it work.
This is your chance to be seen as one of the leaders – with your story reaching a global audience from over 40 countries.
For information on conference themes, making your submission, review criteria please click on the links in the below.
The Improvement and Development Agency’s (IDeA) Communities of Practice for Local Government (CoPs) has been shortlisted for two awards at the e-Government National Awards 2008, this years ‘best of the best’ in public sector ICT and e-government. The winners will be announced at the National Awards dinner on 20th January 2009.
The two categories that the IDeA CoP’s have been shortlisted for are:
e-Government excellence: Leadership & Profession
e-Government excellence: Innovation in Strategy on a National Level
The local government CoP strategy was conceived in 2005 in order to support more effective collaborative working across the sector and as an incubator for service improvements and innovation. The CoP platform was ultimately launched in December 2007. Since then, over 19,000 public sector staff have registered on the platform and there are currently over 550 active CoP’s, working on a whole range of activities, from policy development, children’s services and health to leadership and knowledge management.
For me, this is the culmination of 3 years work in getting the strategy implemented. But it doesn’t stop here. New technology and products (Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0) are making it far easier to connect with experts and peers and providing enormous opportunities for co-creation and personal development. What was started 3 years ago is just the foundation for change and improvement across the whole public sector. Planning for the next 3 years has already started!
There is more background to the IDeA CoPs in the attached pdf.
Finally got to see Tom Watson in person, presenting at 2gether08 about the Government initiative to provide more open access to public, non-personal data sets. Tom talked about the launch of a competition for social innovators and entrepeneurs to develop more effective products and services using government pulished provide more effective use of published information. More information about this on the ‘Show us a better way‘ website. This is one of the initiatives coming out of the Power of Information Taskforce that was created earlier this year.
Apologies for the shaky video, but key messages are all there.
I will be presenting at the Limehouse software user’s group today, 10th June, on the topic of Web 2.0 and the issues that local authorities face in bridging the digital. I will post my slides to Slideshare after the event.
Ingrid Koehler over at the Policy and Performance blog writes about how Web 2.0 is being used to support improvement initiatives in the local government sector, and in particular the positioning of (virtual) communities of practice for engaging with staff across the sector. This point is also emphasised by John Hayes, Director of Services at the IDeA.
A tangible example of the power of Web 2.0 for networking, collaboration and consultation will be evident in the forthcoming Customer Insight Online Conference, scheduled to run from 10th to 20th June 2008. What is an online conference? To quote:
An online conference, just like a ‘real life’ conference, is about getting people together to discuss a common interest and learn from each other. There are speakers, participants, panelists and discussions. It just takes place in an online platform and over a longer period of time, allowing people to dip in and out.
It’s greener – saving all that travel and paper, less expensive and many people find it more convenient and easier to engage with. The proceedings of this conference will be distilled into a learning report for practitioners and policy makers.
There will be a wealth of useful learning and an opportunity to chat with a range of colleagues through the medium of online discussion, video, photos and more. You do not have to be a technical wizard to join in. The conference platform is easy to use and throughout the two week period, we will send you regular round-ups to support your engagement and help you direct your own participation for maximum benefit.
If this is of interest to you, you’ll need to sign up for the event using the online registration form on the Communities of Practice website.
Social Media and the new world of work. Many of us are either working on our own or else in loose associations or else within an organisation but in partnership with a range of independent suppliers and contractors. None of us expect our careers to be anything like those of our parents’ generation. How do we make sense of it, how do we keep our heads above water and how can getting to grips with social media help us out?
The event was run along the same lines as an Open Space, where attendees gravitated towards the topics proposed by – well – those who had a topic to propose. These included things like:
Building a list of interesting folk to talk to BERR (Jane O’Loughlin)
Combining relentless creativity with social media (Steve Lawson)
Turning your passion into something that makes money (Pippa Crawford & Dan McQuillan)
Finding new clients online (Rebecca Caroe)
Business podcasting (Mike O’Hara)
Organisation Lite (David Wilcox & Jemima Gibbons)
I believe there is much yet to come from this eclectic assembly of talent and skills – a lot of latent energy just bursting to innovate! Many of the breakfast goup have been meeting regularly every Friday morning as part of the Social Media Cafe. (also Facebook Group). So – watch that space – or better still – join in!
