Web2.0 briefing

I went to a SOCITM Web2.0 briefing today at the impressive venue of the Natural History Museum.  It wasn’t a really a briefing – it was a regular old conference.  I go to a fair few of these webby social media type events, but this was probably the first “normal” conference I’ve been to on the subject.   Usually the ones I go to are small and it’s all preaching to the choir.  This time the audience were the unwashed masses, many of whom had yet to see the light.   And by unwashed masses, I mean a lot of web and IT managers.

There was a lot to take in at this conference, so I’m going to split my coverage of the event into a few separate posts.  Call it the good, the bad and the interesting.    Before I take you into the bad (yes, of course I’m starting with the bad) – I think it’s worth highlighting a couple of things

Firstly, the just published SocItm (the Society of Information Technology Management)  report called Web 2.0: what it is and why it matters, available on their Insight microsite.  You have to be an Insight subscriber to get instant access.  I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I’m guessing that most local authorities are subscribers. And even if you’re not, you can request access.  Anyway, I would highly recommend at least going through executive summary which is a pretty handy overview.  Their summary key actions are laudable, but missing at least one – and that’s FREE the WEB.

Too many council officers have emailed me saying that they can’t access my WordPress blog or our YouTube channel.  And it’s not as if we’re putting porn up here – it’s all local government all the time with us.  So I’d urge councils (and the socitm report does too, just not in the recs) to let officers use social networking sites Flickr, YouTube, blogs, Facebook, Beebo, and so on.  You don’t need the Internet to waste time.  Your communities are using these sites to talk about your area and sometimes your projects and organisations and you should know what they’re saying – and on company time.

Secondly, if you missed this one (and it was a good conference) there are other Web2.0 events coming up this autumn.  Dave Briggs is running an event called ReadWriteGov at Peterborough City Council (he’s the guy I recently linked to with his post on How councils can get started in social media).   I’m also attending an event in October – Web 2.0 Practical Applications for Business Benefit which addresses both government and private sector applications.  And there are probably loads more…

To see the bad…  read more after the jump.

The IT Crowd

Now, I realise I’m a web2.0 evangelist (and I swear that will be the last religious metaphor I use), and I really don’t mind explaining different applications or telling people about some of the advantages to service, communications or efficiency that web2.0 can bring.   I don’t think it’s rocket science, it’s just about appropriate tools for different audiences.  Ewan McIntosh, the main speaker of the day, led a merry romp through a variety of well-known and some new-to-me tools including Flickr, WordPress blog platforms and  feed readers.   As I was talking to one person during the break and telling him how I use some of these applications to help me do my job and in my personal life.   What’s all this Flickr stuff? He said.  I explained how I love Flickr – and that it has many uses.  In my professional life, I use Flickr mainly as a storage facility for photos I’ve taken at events and so forth – pretty minimal.   In my personal life, it’s a way I can share pictures of my little boy with family and friends in America, Scotland, Germany and Finland.   It’s also helped me improve my photography skills tremendously through observation, discussion and through feedback left on the images I post.  (If you want to see what a local authority is doing with Flickr, check out Stratford DC’s Flickr album.)

He also said he didn’t see the point of all this feed reading, if he wanted to know something he’d just Google it.  Well, yeah… I guess.  I know not everyone uses feeds, but for me it’s a really valuable information tool.  And saying that I’d go to Google if I wanted to know something is a little akin to saying “Please don’t talk to me, if I want to know something about you, I’ll ask you a question.”

And then he finished with “And I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what efficiency this will bring.”  I guess he could always Google it.

I know I’m being a bit mean, but it’s not like he’s going to pick this blog post up in his feed reader tomorrow.

Tom Steinberg of MySociety (the folks who brought you the Downing Street petition site and They Work for You) spoke at the conference, focusing on their project FixMyStreet.com.  This is a site where every day folks who just happen to have Internet access and a keen eye for disrepair can send complaints to the relevant authority.  Obviously it’s mostly about environmental services, street scene, fly tipping, graffiti, broken pavements and so forth.   It works off your post code, so you don’t even have to know which council to report it to – FixMyStreet will sort it out for you.  They then zip the issue off to the council in an email and it’s publically available for all to see on the Internet, which presumably puts councils under a bit of pressure to sort it out quickly.   And councils can respond, as well.  (All this reminds me of my favourite example of community-council communication that took place in spraypaint from BOTH SIDES!)

Now you might think that what with all the great work that Tom Steinberg and Co have done there’d be a lot of questions about how councils could engage more effectively with third party sites that are already hosting community concerns.  But noooo…. it was all about how MySociety should be talking to these other sites to come up with a community standard that would make life easier for folks running council IT systems, content and customer relationship management systems.  I’m all for making life easier and I understand that it’s annoying to have to re-key a complaint that’s come by email from some other site. The problem here isn’t with groups like MySociety – they’re engaging with government bodies.   The problem isn’t even with other sites that spring up trying to do similar things.  The problem here is stick-in-the-mudness.  Look I know my council would prefer that I use the council site to report a problem in my road and that you’d probably like to get my name, address, and probably my gender, national origin, race and religion to boot.   But I’d prefer not to give that information – and I can remember FixMyStreet.com    If I just send an email or a letter to the council, you’d have to input all that stuff anyway.

And anyway, it’s really all about the citizen, isn’t it?  I mean what about the user?

Obviously, not everyone felt that way and I heard at least one delegate making this very point during the break.  And tomorrow, I’ll write more about the good and the interesting.