Simon’s Blog (the official one)

This is an experiment in online social networking. If you are Jack Thurston of ‘The Bike Show from Resonance FM‘ fame please leave a comment.

It’s also an interesting case study, particularly for those who are struggling to figure this stuff out and grasp the relevance of it for them or their organisations.

The hypothesis behind this experiment is that social networking is a powerful tool and is very effective at joining people up with similar interests even though they are ‘doing their own thing in their own way in their own (online) places’.

A comment from Jack on this diary post will help confirm this hypothsis. Let’s see what happens.

Why Jack?
Last night I was listening to a podcast by Jon Winston from Bikescape using iTunes. Coincidentally, I had the Last.FM program running. This told me that 323 Last.FM users had also listened to this podcast while running Last.FM. It told me that it knew nothing about the ‘artist’ (Jon Winston). It also told me that there were two ‘Similar artists’: Jack Thurston and Scott Alumbaugh.

Last.FM knows nothing about Jack Thurston either, so I do a Google search and find his blog. At this point I realise that I have come across Jack before. He also does a podcast with a cycling theme*.

I read on and realise that we don’t just share an interest in cycling but there is also a rural thread in common. I then remember that my colleague, Paul Henderson, highlighted one of Jack’s projects to me about two week’s ago: www.farmsubsidy.org This amazing (and very clever) project uses modern law (freedom of information) and technology to bring together data on farm subsidies. It shows who gets what. David Henke of the Guardian wrote about here.

And finally, I see that Jack has a general interest in technology and attended the ‘BarCamp‘ that many of the people who got involved in the Open Innovation Exchange went to.

The chances are that Jack will find this post because he (or someone who knows him) will have his/her RSS Reader set up to scan for people writing about The Bike Show or farmsubsidy.org

Anyway, if Jack does comment here, it will demonstrate that the latest internet technology joins people up even though they don’t know each other and they are operating in different places. Will it work… how long will it take…? As the saying goes, watch this space.

Previous entries:

Thoughts on the new ruralnet|online - Part 1 (of many!)

* Listen to Jack’s account of the Dunwick Dynamo if you’re into intersting cycling challenges

Thanks to the generosity of many, the ruralnet|online co-design exercise is gathering steam over here. Please join in if you can, just visit to pick up insights for your own projects.

Here are some recent exchanges

The feature list!

What is ruralnet|online for?

This web 2.0 malarky really does work well

Thanks James and David

Following a lot of frantic activity over the last week, yesterday saw the launch of the first step towards the re-design of ruralnet|online - a mechanism to involve our users, past, present and potential, in the whole re-design process. Please get involved over here: www.ruralnetonline.org.uk.

Why should you get involved? What’s in it for you? How can you engage?

You can ‘engage’ as an anonymous browser. We are putting all our ideas up in the open and some of these ideas have been informed by some of the best brains in the internet world. So at the very least the content will be interesting and you might learn something which could help you.

You can comment anonymously. If you think we are barking up the wrong tree, please tell us! If you have an insight, we’d like to hear that too.

You can register (it only takes a couple of minutes and it’s free) and when you do you get your own blog to write whatever you like. When you’re logged in your comments get attributed to you too.

Some of the highlights on ruralnet|online so far:

- Adding value to networks and services - automatically
- how net:gain helped with the re-alignment of our ICT Strategy
- the ruralnet|uk communications strategy
- an ICT Strategy on a single page
- ideas on what forums (communities of interest/practice) might look like in the future

Please consider getting involved >>

I had a big, cheesy grin on my face as I took my headphones off my aching ears after 3.5 hours. I’d been helping to setup and moderate an Elluminate virtual classroom session run by the DTA. So why the cheesy grin? Well, the feedback was incredibly positive.

Each participant was asked what they thought of the pilot where we’d run three training sessions on income generation using the Elluminate virtual classroom system. Now the success was largely due to the content (which was good!) but we’d worked hard on the moderation too and the evaluation was really good.

Now I know, that when people are in a group situation, even a virtual group situation, they will be polite about another person (eg a trainer). But, in my experience, even in a group situation, they will not hold back when it comes to the criticism of technology. "It was great but the technology let us down" would be a typical response . . . . Well listen to this (there quite long gaps between contributions . . . we are still learning!):

We are on to something here . . . . cheesy grin fades . . .

Added on 10/3/08
There is now a transcript of this audio available here.

When we set up online systems for groups the specification usually includes ‘forums’. These are online places where people who share interests can gather to share and exchange ideas, information and knowledge. However, forums are rarely very active. The next generation of internet tools (aka Web 2.0) offer new ways of thinking about linking people who share interests. The screencast below gives an idea of the possibilities.

This is just an idea. We’d be really interested to hear what you think.

| View | Upload your own

If the presentation doesn’t load (it has been known) then it can be downloaded here. The audio to go with it is here.

It was a good day today. Lots happening. The highlight (after the Elluminate session :-)) was a glimpse at the site that Paul and Duncan (mostly Paul!) have put together to support the consultation and co-creation exercise we are soon to embark on that I first reported here. As usual the guys have ‘over-delivered’ - why isn’t ‘good’ not good enough for some people?

I am banned from letting you know where this site is located but all will be revealed shortly - "When it’s ready". Can’t wait.

I’ve had the good fortune over the last couple of months to be working with some of the folk at the DTA on a pilot project where we are trialing the use of a virtual classroom to deliver training on income generation.

The project is the brain child of Jess Steele. The main trainer is Hugh Rolo and he has been supported by Mary Doyle, Neil Berry and others. We are all being helped by Josie Fraser who is an Elluminate specialist. The pilot is being funded by The Finance Hub.

We are being very ambitious in this project. Today, our second session with real trainees, we had 22 trainees and we used 4 breakout rooms during the session. Click on the image to see a screen shot of Elluminate in action. There is a lot going on! There’s a participant list, a chatroom, a whiteboard and a mic you pass around.

Although you login to Elluminate by putting an url into your browser it is actually a Java application and Java needs to installed all machines. But it works pretty well on PCs and Macs. All participants really have to use headsets otherwise you get dreadful feedback and/or echo if you decide to enable ’simultaneous’ talking. So, you need to install Java, you need to plug in a headset and get that working to hook into the system and then you’ve got to get used to the system itself. It sounded like a disaster waiting to happen to me. But, it’s been a surprise. Today we (Josie) resolved all the connection issues with one or two participants during the session so everyone (all 22) could participate. OK so there’s a bit of lag sometimes, especially in the audio, and you have to really concetrate but it’s OK.

So what have I learnt so far:

• Everybody needs to go through the Mic and Headphones check well before the session starts. Elluminate provide test routines for this.
• You need to understand what the system is good at and work to its strengths
• It’s all in the preparation. You need good planning and simple visuals all prepared and in place before the session starts
• Having pictures of people is really good (we are using mini profiles)
• Kick off with round-robin of introductions or ‘hello again’s to warm people up. We have come up with ways to make this a quick as possible.
• You need to establish clear protocols for the session eg so that people know how to ask for the mic (we ask them to put their virtual hand up); how to show approval or disapproval (we are using the voting feature - ‘give me a tick if you . . . ‘ )
• You need to get people involved and doing things (voting, putting their hands up, drawing on the whiteboard)
• You need good moderation. We are currently spliting this into two: 1) Josie is on general user care and helping resolve mic/headphone issues, and 2) I am getting the materials onto the system in advance and then during the flipping between slides at appropraite moments and moving people in and out of breakout rooms.
• Ideally you should also try and relate to participants as individuals . . . ‘Neil, you haven’t voted, what do you think?’
• Ideally you should monitor contributors and make an effort to involve those who haven’t said anything by asking them for their view in person (just like a good chairperson would do in an audio conference)

So is it the answer? Well it’s certainly part of it. I have been surprised that everyone has been able to get the technology working _relatively_ easily. It’s not a replacement for face-to-face BUT it reduces costs enormously. 24 people x (travel costs of

The planning for the development and launch of the next generation of ruralnet|online got off to a solid start this week using flipchart paper and post-it notes. Not a bit of IT in sight!

Our objective is to involve users, past, present and future, and the best brains in the Web 2.0 business, in the co-creation of ruralnet|online 2.0 and launch it to coincide with ruralnet|online’s 10th birthday on 10 April at our collaborate|2008 event.

We will be seeking to set up a focus group to meet face-to-face twice during this period and we will also be running an open consultation/ideas exchange online. We will model this on the Open innovation Exchange which brought me into contact with some fantastic innovators last year. We will work at pace and with a clear set of goals - just like before. We will seed this with a few ideas and concepts including these that have already been posted elsewhere:

- Ed Mitchell’s Three types of community
- Email’s broke . . . and it ain’t worth fixing
- Turning process into content
- Google Apps for Farmers
- Communities of Practice and Web 2.0
- Thoughts on the new ruralnet|online - Part 1 (of many!)
- Call Sign - Blog Sign?
- Turning the telescope the other way around
- Jane Berry’s Spiral of Engagement

We heard today that David Wilcox is available to help us out on this mission both online and offline. More details over the next few days.

About this time 10 years ago I was loading

The good thing about Christmas is that there’s generally a bit more time to have a proper chat with friends and you learn. A friend of mine, Julian (aka Bev - don’t ask), it transpires is heavily into Web 2.0 to promote his music and books. I explained how we had re-jigged our online services (Experts Online etc) and put them on a Web 2.0 platform to make them more accessible and easier for others to incorporate them into their own website. The basic thinking behind this is that we will have bigger impact (as a charity) if we can have a presence where people have already congregated online - on a local community website, on facebook or wherever.

Julian is in a different situation and has used Web 2.0 slightly differently. He has distributed his content all over the place: Flickr, YouTube, Typepad, Wordpress etc etc. This gives him a presence in many places and makes it more likely people will find him, his music and books. Then he uses his website as an aggregator of all this distributed content. Interesting.

It was good to talk Julian!

8/1/08
PS: Now also see: Joining Dots on the Internet