Practical Participation

[Summary: a critique of ‘Impossible and Necessary’ by Sir Michael Barber and some remarks on leadership] Preamble I try, as much as possible, to engage in debates in a constructive way, and to avoid anything that might be construed as a rant...

“How should professionals or volunteers working with young people use Facebook?” There is no answer to that question. Or at least, no answer that doesn’t start with a fairly long list of ‘It depends’...

I spent a fantastic day yesterday in Birmingham Fazely Studios at #localgovcamp – an unConference exploring local government use of the internet...

Last year I wrote a blog post on ‘7 Reasons Why Youth Workers Should Blog’. Since then a few blogs from statutory sector youth workers have made it onto the web, but not all that many...

[Summary: Notes and reflections from the launch conference of EU Kids Online research] “Can we just get on with it”...

Even with all the amazing social web tools available out there - e-mail remains a key communication tool for most people. For many committees, projects and associations - an e-mail list has a lot to offer as a co-ordination and collaboration tool...

I’m putting together a series of short guides for different clients on how to use social media tools in shared learning and online outreach. These will be a mash-up of my existing practical One Page Guides with a bit more theory on effective use of social tools...

[Summary: Registration open for the 2009 unConference on youth engagement in a digital age] Some point just after the first BarCampUKGovWeb back in 2008 I floated the idea of a BarCamp, or an unConference to explore the ways in which organisations whose work involved young people could make the...

I’m going to be taking on the social reporter role at the RSA seminar on Digital Inclusion and Social Capital today - and trying to tweet, video and blog insights and ideas arising from the discussions on Will Davies working paper on The Social Value of Digital Networks in Deprived Communities...

Networked Participation - funded by LGIU Just a quick (and slightly late) note to let readers interested in Youth Participation & Social Media that we’ve opened up the Ning network for the Youth Participation and Social Network Sites action learning set to anyone to join...

[Summary: Online social networks have a role to play in bridging one off engagement with more structured forms of participation.] A bit of scene setting Image from Hear by Right book (p.g.7) The ‘Ladder of Participation’ which asks organisations to consider the depth of youth participation in...

The Wiki My recent post on 50 Small Hurdles to Open Government generated some great comments and conversation...

[Summary: Ideas for online citizenship, digital youth work and e-safety programmes] Project proposals Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working with Jonathan and Jackie from the E-Safety Sub-Group of Brent Local Safeguarding Children Board to develop ideas for a range of projects and...

I’ve been live blogging yesterday and today for the E-engagement strand at the 2009 National Digital Inclusion Conference. You can take a look at some of the discussion and dialogue that’s been going on over here. Update: You can watch a full recording of all the plenary sessions here...

What’s the big challenge to using new technology for mobilisation / communication around social issues, where government or large existing organisations are to be players in creating change...

Next week I’ll be helping out David Wilcox, Dave Briggs and team with a bit of social reporting from the National Digital Inclusion Conference 2009...

[Summary: exciting international ICT training project recruitment open until end of April 2009] Do you know someone who: Is aged 18 - 35? Has skills in web development, graphics & animation, web hosting or e-commerce...

Last year around 50 of us got together one Saturday in September at the offices of DIUS and had a great day exploring all aspect of digital media and youth engagement through the UK Youth Online unconference...

If you have documents, websites or presentations about your youth participation project, and they spend more time talking about your organisation, or the consortia and collection or organisations involved in the project - than they spend talking about the project itself - something is probably...

[Summary: Towards a pack of practical guidance for youth workers and participation workers using Social Network Sites] I’ve just shared a copy of my latest attempt at putting together guidance notes for youth sector professionals exploring safe and effective engagement with social network sites,...

OpenGov Event - 22nd April On the 22nd April I’m going to be speaking and taking part in a panel at OpenGov which describes itself as: A practical one-day conference to discuss the challenges and opportunities of social technologies to enable engagement, collaboration, and transparency in...

[Summary: all the one page guides now available on scribd] After trying out Scribd to share my recent One Page Guide to Twitter I thought it might be handy to upload all the past guides...

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I’ve been trying to create a general purpose one page guide to Twitter for a while. I’ve made two attempts in the past for particular situations - although with the end of SMS based access to Twitter in the UK those guides are both out of date...

It’s always good when I discover one of the long term ToExplore items sitting at the top-right corner of my white board in the offices is actually already being done by someone else...

[Summary: help us explore the role of social networks in the fight against AIDS] The world has been managing the global AIDS epidemic for more than 25 years. 2031 will mark 50 years since the first report of AIDS...

I was speaking yesterday at the DigiTV Stakeholder Event alongside Steven Flower of Substance/Plings - exploring how information providers can ensure their information and services are ready not just to feed into the ‘channels’ young people use, but also into the networks and social networks...

A game for planning positive activity communication tools I love the social media game model. It works in so many contexts...