Simon’s Blog (the official one)

This competition has really got me thinking . . . . here’s another idea.

What is your idea’s name
Neighbourhood Watch Widget
A short description of your idea
Making neighbourhood watch groups more effective by improving communications between members themselves and the police service.
Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?
Widgets are small areas on a website or blog which deliver information or services provided by a trusted third party. A good example is the JustGiving Fundraising Widget. This widget is tailored for the particular fundraiser and can be placed on his/her own website. The widget shows a progress bar (amount raised vs target), the comments made by the last 3 donors, information about the charity and a button to donate. See http://ruralnet.typepad.com/pride2007/ for an example

Neighbourhood Watch Groups are very effective at reducing crime, the fear of crime and increasing community cohesion. However they face real communication challenges especially when a large proportion of the community works away from the community (eg in rural areas) or do not have email or who are not online (eg the older members of the community living on their own).

The Neighbourhood Watch widget would deliver the following functionality to every community website, blog or neighbourhood watch website that wanted it. Its availability may even stimulate the creation of new community websites. This is what it would do:

1 - Allow website visitors to log incidents: petty crime, anti-social behaviour and suspicious activity in the neighbourhood
2 - Allow visitors to the website to register to receive notifications of such incidents in the following formats: email; RSS; SMS text to their mobile phone; SMS text-to-voice to their landline phone; via twitter
3 - Allow registered visitors to turn the notification facility off or pause it
3 - Display the last 5 incidents reported in the neighborhood
4 - Have a ‘Get Your Own Widget’ button which would take visitors to the central ‘widget generator’ and allow them to specify their location and get their own widget for their own website
5 - When someone registered an incident the widget would send the details to the Police. To do this the widget would need real-time access to Government data
6 - A beat officer (ha!) or Community Support Officer could also register to receive notifications to their mobile phones when they were on duty in a particular neighbourhood
7 - The widget would also indicate that if they are reporting an emergency they should call 999!

I was alarmed to hear a piece on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme this morning. It said that OfCom had reported that broadband uptake in rural areas was now higher than it is in urban areas and that ‘a digital divide’ had been closed. This is so misleading that it beggars belief and will do a lot damage to the efforts of those campaigning for broadband in rural areas.

I think the uptake figures quoted were 59% vs 57%. But, before everyone relaxes and says “job done” – especially those developing policies for Government - I’d like to point out one or two things:

1 Figures are higher in rural areas DESPITE the fact that there are a significant number of people who can’t get it, even though they are desperate for it. I wrote about this earlier – see this true story

2 So DEMAND is a lot higher in rural areas than urban areas but the market cannot supply to all those who want it

3 Why is demand so high? Well, there is a mix of reasons: less of the population is within reach of a public access point; you can’t just walk around the corner to access a service and more and more services (including government ones) are increasingly provided online and, furthermore, realistically, you need broadband to use them.

4 An urban person’s broadband is not the same as a rural person’s broadband. I expect these figures relate to the increasingly inadequate ADSL, telephone-based service. This service will not be considered to be broadband in 2-3 years time. I wonder how the figures would compare if you looked at the higher spec services, the non-ADSL services, the services we’ll all need in the very near future. I can tell you that the rural figure will be near to zero as these services are simply not available.

So please, let’s not take our eye of the rural broadband ball on the basis of a very, very misleading headline from the Today Programme.

Monday, April 28th, 2008
Broadband must be recognised as an essential service

Monday, December 17th, 2007
The trouble with rural broadband

Friday, April 30th, 2004
Rural Broadband - Is BT good for rural communities?

The Tweeters amongst you will already know that I have been offered (and accepted) a secondment to Communities and Local Government (the Department of) as ‘Policy adviser: new technologies & online tools’ in the Community Empowerment Directorate. Grateful thanks go to Jonathan Adams who emailed me 6 hours before the application deadline saying:

Dear Simon
I saw this and thought of RuralNet. You may well know of this, but I
would not want it to pass by unnoticed.
Very short notice, but I have seen it only this evening.
Yours,
Jonathan

I’m very excited about this as it is a real opportunity to influence government policy with a White Paper due in the summer.

I’ll be using all the trusted open innovation principles on this one. I’d be a bit daunted if I didn’t know that my ‘pop-up’ support network will do just that once I get started. The job description follows. More at the beginning of next week.

(more…)

When I met up with David Wilcox (designingforcivilsociety and socialreporter) last week he spoke enthusiastically about his work programme this week which included providing a live and online dimension to face to face events. He coined the phrase ‘the online plugin for events’ which I thought was a neat way of summing it up.

So yesterday, David teamed up with Dave Briggs and they added the live and online dimension to the Digital Inclusion conference and they sum up the experience here:

Dave has documented the process here.

It’s great that they used our new Networks Online technologies and techniques as a foundation for this and integrated Twitter Feeds using Hashtags, live Video using Qik and more. As one of the people who couldn’t be there, it was great to catch the mood of the event and hear people talking about Experts Online (and seeing the banners in place). It was also good to see old friends like Dave Carter of Manchester City Council. See the whole plugin here: dc10plus.socialreporter.net.  This is what Peter Farell and Julie Mitchell of UK online centres said about their work (note the Experts Online mention).

Today David is providing a ‘plugin’ for Innovation Exchange event. And again it’s on Networks Online here: inex.socialreporter.net.

My sister-in-law lives in what must be one of the remotest spots in England. When we visit we leave our car on a grassy knoll and switch to a very old 4×4 for the last couple of miles of the journey which takes about 20 minutes.

Life for her is hard. She has a telephone thanks to the ‘Universal Service Obligation‘ but when this goes wrong it’s often out of order for several weeks. There is no mobile phone signal. TV comes in by satellite.

Internet access is over the dodgy telephone line. She can only get dial-up access so it’s slow and the telephone line is (obviously) engaged when she is online.

My sister-in-law visited us last week and I helped her setup a new laptop. The one she has is more that 6 years old and was beginning to struggle a bit. We got the laptop home and started to set it up. It came with Windows Vista. The first thing you realise is that, to set up a laptop these days, you need an internet connection. We have broadband. The first thing to do was to install virus protection. This involved dowloading an update to the program supplied and the latest data files. Once this was done, Vista needed updating too: 37 updates were required - nearly 100 Mbytes.

This whole process would have been practically impossible over a dial-up connection.

When you add to this the fact that more and more essential public services are only available online you start to feel very uncomfortable (or at least you should) that a significant cohort of the UK’s population, mostly rural, do not yet have broadband access.

While she was with us, I also set my sister-in-law up with an account on Twitter. Which she seems to appreciate (see image). At least there are still some services that work over a dodgy dial-up connection.

After experimenting with blogging for some months now, I am convinced of its value and I am moving to the next stage. I’ve split private stuff from professional and this is the professional one. “The CEO’s Blog”.

So what does a CEO’s blog need? Well, it needs more than the odd blog post with my view on something in it. My work colleagues need to know what I’m up to not just what I think. I need a mini-blog, to complement the core content, for short snippets of information.

This is how my mini-blog works. I have a Twitter account where my ID is @51m0n. On Twitter I signed up to ‘follow’ @hashtags. Over at the #Hashtags website I checked and found that nobody was using the hashtag #51m0n. This means that whenever I put these characters: #51m0n in a Twitter item (a tweet) it appears here: hashtags.org/tag/51m0n/ and, yes, you’ve guessed it, this page has an RSS feed on it. The feed is: hashtags.org/feeds/tag/51m0n/.

I then came to this, my lovely ruralnet|online Wordpress MU blog and I added an RSS widget to the sidebar and told it to keep an eye on the 51m0n feed from Hashtags.

So, now if I want to place a item in my mini-blog I simply type a tweet in Twitter and include the characters #51m0n. Brilliant!

An extra refinement is that I use Quickeys on my PC and Mac and I’ve set things up, in Quickeys, so that pressing <Windows Key><Alt>£ automatically types  #51m0n and adds the time and date.

Ah, the beauty of Web 2.0.

All the insights gathered in the co-design exercise that we have conducted here - www.ruralnetonline.org.uk - have been pulled together to produce a prototype for ruralnet|online 2.0. This prototype is a fully working system for the Rural Community Carbon Network and is live here: www.communitycarbon.net. It was launched at collaborate|2008 on 10/4/08. Click on the image above to view an annotated screenshot which describes each area of the ‘root’ page.

The Community Carbon Network is truly innovative and draws on the ideas expressed here over the last 3 months. The key factors that guided this implementation are:

1. - a recognition that in any interest area (such as rural development) there is already lots of activity going on that is being carried out by individuals and organisations;
2. one cannot expect the online elements of this activity to stop or move to another online place;
3. there has always been a lack of ‘joining up’ within any interest area but Web 2.0 technology provides new opportunities to greatly improve this situation;
4. As well as linking existing activity up, we have a role, a duty even, to provide the ‘means of production’ to anyone or any organisation who wishes to contribute to an interest area that we support. The means of production include the technical tools and online space but also the awareness and skills to participate effectively;
5. Web 2.0 technology empowers the individual and small organisation. It is very accessible, easy to learn and disentangles content from the way that content can be used and delivered to users. Joining with others into groups or coalitions is no longer a pre-requisite to taking effective action. Increasingly there is trend for groups to form in an ad hoc fashion based on the ability, that Web 2.0 provides, to identify and aggregate people, ideas, services and information based on what individuals and small organisations are actually _doing_ at any particular moment in time.
6. Providing web space and the essential tools to those who need them now costs very little once systems are in place to largely automate the whole user registration process. So we should continue to focus on:

• the delivery of online services not online systems (such as Experts Online, xPRESS Digest, Active Brokerage etc)
• the empowerment of individuals, groups and organisations so that they can participate in the new online world through awareness raising, training and ‘as required’ support services

So, what does the Community Carbon Network (CCN) look like and what does it do?

We have pulled together various bits of technology and techniques to create the CCN. This same set of technology and techniques will form the basis of ruralnet|online 2.0 and we are able to replicate this for any other network. Each network will have its own domain name and branding and will share the services and other resources. This continues the ‘Networks Online‘ philosophy established in 1998.

At the heart of CCN is Wordpress Multi-User (WPMU) running on servers we manage and backup. Each network has a ‘root’ site at: www.owndomainname. Then you can set up as many sub-sites/blogs at userid.owndomainname as you need (up to 20,000).

At the time of writing the CCN has: www.communitycarbon.net as the ‘root’ site:

and we have one sub-site configured as an individual’s blog at: lowcarbondiary.communitycarbon.net

and one sub-site configured as website: rccn.communitycarbon.net

All sub-sites operate in their own right and the owners have complete control of all aspects of them. They are likely to be marketed using their own sub-domain name url. Sub-sites will also be abl;e to incorporate shared services eg direct feeds from xPRESS Digest or access and/or registration for the Experts Online service.

A Green Bar helps tie all the sites within the network together. This contains a link to the ‘root’ site; a drop down lists all the sub-sites and a link to the latest posting over the whole of the network in contained in the Green Bar.

The ‘root’ site is controlled by the network manager. It is an ‘aggregator’. It is setup to pull together the latest activity from all the sub-sites (blogs and websites). It also pulls in other relevant activity going on elsewhere. For example, Twitter users can place insights, thoughts, hints and tips straight on to the aggregator page from ‘within’ Twitter. The aggregator page for CCN also pulls in relevant news from xPRESS Digest and answers from Experts Online.

Root pages for any network will morph and evolve organically according to network needs and the success (or not) of specific external feeds. The external feeds used and the filters applied will be modified as the network grows.

Finally, the root page includes a custom search. At present this is based on the Google Custom Search which is configured to search all of the sub-sites/blogs associated with the network, Experts Online, xPRESS Digest and selected, key external sites. Again the scope of this search will modified according to the needs of the specific network.

For more details on how the system works or to explore how this methodology could be applied to your network please contact Rob Mannion on 0845 1300 411 or r[dot]mannion[at]ruralnet.org.uk

Thanks to everyone who has contributed so generously to this co-design process. We have invented something new that wasn’t there before!

I am still very much on a learning curve when it comes to Web 2.0. But when I was further down the curve and struggling for ways to track and aggregate things I wrote this post: Call Sign - Blog Sign?. The suggestion was that each blogger should have a unique-ish ‘tag’ and  then scan the internet (= set up RSS feeds) to aggregate everything using this tag. This way if Blogger A wanted to call his or her post to the attention of Blogger B, Blogger A would attach Blogger B’s tag to the post. I still think this is neat idea.

But anyway, the #hashtags initiative by the Downtown Cartel does something similar for groups of people using Twitter. This is how it works:

1. Think of a tag - eg ‘ruralnet’
2. Let everyone in the ruralnet group know you are using this tag for items that may be of interest to them
3. Get these people to ‘follow’ #hashtags on Twitter
4. As a ‘member’ of the ‘ruralnet’ group you can now include: #ruralnet in a Twitter item and it will pop up here: http://hashtags.org/tag/ruralnet/ together with all other Twitter items (irrespective of who posts them) containing the characters: #ruralnet

You can also take an RSS feed from http://hashtags.org/tag/ruralnet/ and pull this into your community website.

With all this in place the whole ‘ruralnet’ community can post interesting items to the ruralnet community website via Twitter. Cool.

See the #hashtags website for interesting ways in which this has been used to help coordinate disaster relief.

Here is my presentation of the new version of ruralnet|online delivered at collaborate|2008 on 10/4/08. Sorry that the audio is a but stuttery . . . I need more practice. but anyway I think it is still helpful.

[Addendum: at one point I say we had 40,000 users. I should have said 4,000 users and this is the number on the slide.]

If the slide transitions don’t work automatically for you, you will have to advance them yourself. Or, you can go to slideshare and watch it there.

| View | Upload your own

This is a transcript of the audio recording first published here.

Jess. This is about your feedback on the Elluminate sessions, what do you think you’ve learned from them, what was your favourite part of them, and particularly lessons for the pilots

Annie. I’ve enjoyed both my sessions. It’s been interesting to discuss in this arena with other specialists comign from both the vol sector and the business sector. I’d like to see more of this type of thing. It’s useful for busy people who are not always office-based but may be working from home or other locations. We can all find time to log in.

Rebecca. Sorry, I was clicking away thinking it was, but the microphone wasn’t turning on then. I’ve particularly enjoyed getting to grips with using the Balanced Scorecard and then Dragon’s Den exercise was great. It would be useful to see all four Dragon’s Den presentations and then choose one or be given one to feed back on. Platform was really accessible once we got used to it. Really good to be able to sit here miles away from everyone else and be able to discuss things. Need more of this. I’m coming from the voluntary sector learning more about business thinking. Teaching us to pitch ideas in a business environment would be incredibly useful.

Stefanie. I didn’t pick up the microsphone I was just speaking away! This method of learning, online, I think it’s brilliant. It feel it’s the way I’d like in future to participate in learning instead of going to training courses! The main thing I’ve got out of it is to shift from focus on social return (that grant funding emphasises). It’s really helped me balance and look at the other side. But I’m nowhere near there yet, I’d like to see a model pitch, develop more business skills, use Balanced Scorecard properly. But it’s been a very good experience.

Joe. It’s been really interesting, especially this session today with the DVD to go with it. The amount of preparation previously was a lot of work. I was very busy and to get through that was really hard. My other favourite part is the Balanced Scorecard - very useful, I’ve never done that before.

Christine. I found the sessions really interesting. I feel that I’ve learnt an awful lot. Would like to develop my knowledge with regards to businesses. It was interesting to hear other people’s point of view. I’d like more sessions. Would love to have seen all the Dragon’s Den presentations. Done online before but it was just typing in the chat space – rather tiring. This has been very good to sit and speak and develop a flow. It would be good if this information could be cascaded to groups so they could see how to develop business ideas. It’s great and I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope it continues.

Paul. Sincere apologies for not being involved in last week’s session. I was travelling in Israel and the hotel I was staying in had a terrible wireless connection so the technology didn’t work. Also, only got back at the weekend so didn’t have time to do the homework, so I’ve been mainly listening this week. I found overall process very useful. I wish there was something like the DTA in Northern Ireland because many organisations need to be going through this process at the moment. We’ve had a period of relatively large amounts of funding and that has definitely come to an end so all organisations need to be looking at their sustainability. So I’ve learnt a lot from the process and I’m looking forward to the residential.

Heidi. I’ve found it tremendously helpful. It’s given me access to a whole range of skills that I’m really not sure where I would have found them from had I not been involved in this project. I’m in two minds about online versus face-to-face but the aspect of it being over a number of weeks and being able to comtemplate and build up between the sessions has been valuable so I’m more skewed towards the online learning. In relation to my own practice, having been asked to consider and be critical about other people’s proposals, will definitely be reflected in the way I take this organisation forwards. The Balanced Scorecard is a tremendously useful tool. Overall I feel very positive about it.

Brian. I found the process really interesting. I’ve shared in the first and third sessions. Struggling a bit to feed back. I hope at the residential we can look at overall programme objectives and what we’re expecting from the pilot and would be interested to help in planning for the future. Hoped I could use this locally, not sure now that it is, but I have really enjoyed the experience.

Neil. The first week was always going to be the worst, overcoming technical difficulties. Spot-on today, it seems to have gone well. Have learnt a lot, great to hear other people’s comments, in particular on the Balanced Scorecard because ACF is very keen on this, so it’s great that everyone’s enthusiastic about using that. Was sceptical about online courses rather than face-to-face. Still have minor reservations but since we sorted out the IT I really enjoyed, particularly today’s session, because it went smoothly with the IT especially for me.

Liz. Using internet for this is eye-opening, I do feel difficult not being able to see people and talking into space is odd but I’m surprised it’s worked so well. I have learned a lot but I don’t feel I’ve grasped it yet, more on gut feeling rather than rigorous assessment for what’s a good option and what’s not. We’ve looked at examples where they are seeking loan finance. It would be interesting to look at those setting up enterprises without taking on debt. What I love about this is that we’re talking to people across the country. Residential will be good, being able to talk face-to-face. And all the things I’ve queried as not clear will be made clear. We’ll be able to meet face-to-face and even go back to listen to some of it.

Magda. I really enjoyed the sessions. The lesson I’ve learned from doing this is a personal benefit, that I can talk better and pitch better. Would like more, this session was definitely the best. I like the Dragon’s Den and also the Balanced Scorecard.

Kerry. It’s been great for me. Over the years I’ve seen lots of different ways of evaluating propositions but not seen the Balanced Scorecard – v useful, I’ll use it in future. It’s been great week-by-week to share views, with different people. Everybody brings something different to the thought process, and everyone’s spread out across the country which makes it even better. A novel way to go about learning – week-by-week we all got to grips with it. The technology can work. I’d like to have another go in future. Great to have the opportunity to take part and thanks.

Amanda. I’ve really enjoyed the two sessions I’ve managed to come to. Especially today with the Dragon’s Den approach and the DVD to watch beforehand. In terms of what I’m going to use Balanced Scorecard will be useful in future. In terms of the learning module, one of the reasons for coming on the course was to see how online learning might work. My organisation is interested in doing this in the future. After initial teething problems it has been really enjoyable.

Linda. We’re lucky to have in this project a mix of IT and residential for face-to-face. I work visually so I’m not a big fan of huge wads of text to plough through. It’s tough prioritising it with workload so I preferred the DVD to the paper homework. I can see this as a really exciting communications platform for feedback to practitioners on social enterprise ideas. If they’re lucky they might get funding for a single consultant supporter, where they get one individual with expertise in eg finance or marketing. With this platform you could have four experts, covering each of those four quadrants, in different parts of the world possibly, actually taking them through a business proposition and marrying up all that human capital in one project. That could be really exciting.

Judith. Didn’t have a mic – sent a text to the chatroom. Neil read this out: “It was brilliant, especially the Balanced Scorecard because it opens my thought process, and makes it more holistic. We definitely need more sessions. It was a bit difficult, given work pressure, to do the homework more thoroughly, especially last week’s huge business plan. Great learning experience and will be definitley useful in my work, is already proving useful. Online great - I’m at home with my vomiting child and would have otherwise missed the session if I’d had to travel. Hooray to the organisers!

Miles. I’ve participating in 2 of 3 sessions. I was a bit sceptical when I started and not too sure how things would go but I have been absolutely enlightened. It’s great integrating from people from different organisations and with one’s experience have a bit of input. Would like to have the four Dragon’s Den presentations and could have made a more informed decision. Looking forward to residential. I’m going through the mill with my Whitby project, trying to get it into a dev trust and becoming more sustainable. Have already taken the Balanced Scorecard back to the camp, so to speak. Thanks to the organisers I think you’ve done a really good job.

Simon. Can’t come to residential. Been a learning process for us moderators as well. As participants have got more comfortable with the technology, we’ve also been picking up hints and tips along the way to make these sessions more interactive and useful. If we were to start again we would get off to a flying start. Thanks to all the trainees who’ve acted as guinea pigs.

Hugh. Thank you to everyone. It’s been a learning experience for us. We’ve been exploring an awful lot at once, including difficult homework. But in the real world you get both information overload and inadequate information. The electronic platform and the material that fits in their as well as trying to sharing tools like the Balanced Scorecard and thinking about how ideas are pitched. It really has been a pilot for us all and I look forward to coming up with sensible ways forward at the residential. We have in the pipeline some proposals to do some further work to develop this and we’ll be using Elluminate within the DTA for internal discussions of all kinds in the future.

Jess. Have to produce final report for Finance Hub who have funded it. If you would like to feed in further points – as honest as you like, you’ve all been very polite to us but if you want to make any other points that you didn’t want to say in the main room, please email me. I wll send the final report round to all of you once we’ve submitted it to the FH and we’ll keep you informed with where we take this next. Thanks to everybody, it’s been great fun and I hope we’ll see as many of you as possible at the residential.