Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

It’s dawned on me suddenly that I’m a bit fed up. I’m a bit fed up with people telling me about the great ways that charities are using digital media.

The reason they do it is, of course, highly laudible: they want to help other charities and show them what’s possible. Many people are being inspired, and many are discovering that they’re not isolated any more: there’s a community of people out there with similar jobs, issues and interests.

I’m fed up, I realise, because I feel woefully inadequate. I feel I’m crap at my job because I haven’t managed to use digital media to the great effect that others have, even though I may have been doing it for longer. And my job currently has lots of threads, none of which I feel are delivering very much.

But of course, we don’t all have the teams, support and access to funding that we’d like: so maybe I’m not alone.

The organisation I work for comprises around 30 staff and runs a number of projects. Many of these run nationally. They involve thousands of young people and teachers, and hundreds of volunteers. One project alone involves over 800 magistrates; another involves lawyers from about a third of the UK’s top 100 law firms.

It goes without saying that each project must be reflected in our central communications output. But we have no communications team now, just me. There is no press person, no PR person. I have no team; I have a small budget, which pays for the maintenance of our corporate website and not much else.

I spend my time supporting the teams, managing the website, writing content, trying to keep networks afloat, trying to find information, planning communications strategies, looking for journalists and trying to keep track of what we’re doing.

Put in black and white like this, it seems silly that I might beat myself up for not managing to pull off an exciting social media campaign, or for not solving our funding issues by giving our fundraiser the necessary online tools and training.

Yet only in the last couple of days have I realised that we can’t all be poster-children. Quick wins, led by a flexible but clear response to strategy, are all that some of us can aspire to.

So my message is: don’t be disheartened by other people’s successes. Some charities may well be running innovative and exciting social media campaigns, but we don’t all have the capacity, support or public appeal to follow their lead.

For example, what works for one charitable cause won’t necessarily work for another.

We should let our use of digital stuff be led by our goals and strategy, not by someone else’s.

If we know what we need to achieve and why we need to achieve it, digital tools can allow us do so. And they can allow us to be flexible and spontaneous in doing it.

We should play, if we can. We can’t choose the best solutions based on our goals if we don’t know what’s available, and in my experience the best way to understand what’s available is by trying it out. The barrier to use is generally so low and fast that if we have the freedom to try stuff, we should use it.

We can’t all lead the way in charity marketing, but we can do our best with what we’ve got.

Social media

I just composed this in the time it takes to write a tweet. Don’t ask me why or where it came from.

I am a puffin
Munchin’ on a muffin
But I can’t get enuffin
‘Cos I’ve got a small mouth.

Ramblings

Someone complained to me recently that he couldn’t give his product away. His company had developed a tool that it was offering to charities for free, but no-one was taking advantage of it.

He was quite indignant, implying that charities should be grateful for anything they’re given. My reply was that maybe they didn’t need his product. Charities are not magpies looking for shiny things for the sake of it (or, at least, they shouldn’t be, but more on that later).

Of course we love to get things for free or at a reduced cost, but don’t expect us to snap something up gratefully just because it’s there.

We have a job to do, which is to meet our charitable objectives. That means making the best use of resources against a clear strategy. If your product doesn’t seem to help toward those goals, then please don’t take it badly if we don’t want to use it or don’t have the time to hear you tell us about it.

I could walk around town offering people free beefburgers. But if someone is vegetarian, has a wheat allergy or just doesn’t like beefburgers, they won’t accept them. Should I complain about that?

Take that a step further: I take my beefburgers into a roomful of people and wonder why nobody’s accepting them, then discover I’m in a vegetarian convention. At worst it would be seen as antagonistic and rude; but even at best it’s insulting and highly inappropriate, and clear that I haven’t done my research.

Which begs the question: why is this product being offered free to charities when there’s clearly no demand for it? Why should a company feel that it has to be generous to charities?

Maybe because charities expect it. We are always crying out for support, asking for money and free services.

But sometimes I wonder if we’re guilty of undermining our charitable aims by not appreciating value and not planning efficiently.

Often I hear people in the voluntary sector say they need this or that; a website, for example. Why do they need it? Because they do. How does it fit with their strategy? It doesn’t: the funder requires one. They need a website but they can’t afford to spend on a designer, so they find a free designer and tell them how to design. Why? Because they haven’t planned properly, they don’t value the expertise and they think they understand the design process better than the designer.

If we plan properly we have realistic, strategic goals and the budget to deliver them. Any output (such as a website) is determined by those goals and planned as a direct response to them. In turn, that process determines the quality of the people employed to deliver it.

If at that point we don’t have enough money, something has gone wrong in the planning. And if we can’t get the budget in the first place then perhaps we shouldn’t be attempting the work.

I think people tend not to appreciate the value of things: expertise and experience as well as products and services. And those of us in the voluntary sector are as guilty as anyone.

management

At UK GovCamp recently a bunch of us looked at what an open data platform should look like. Not the technical stuff, but what a council would need to do to make the most of it. One aspect of that is how to encourage interest and trust from people who have ideas for using the data.

Simon Whitehouse has already written about the fuller discussion. Here I focus on building the relationship between developers and the council.

This is theoretical stuff, written from the point of view that you won’t get anywhere if you don’t treat people appropriately. The practical and political hurdles are many, and being from outside the sector I’m not qualified to comment on those; but needless to say they need overcoming before this model will work.

There have been a few schemes where developers have been rewarded with lunch or drinks for thrashing ideas around, but this is hardly sustainable. What happens to those ideas? How do you ensure your friendly developers don’t get disheartened or disillusioned?

In my opinion, there needs to be a genuine partnership between the developers and the council. This must be encouraged and managed by the council and must start the moment someone shows any interest.

The journey might look something like this:

[If it's worth it, I might turn this into a flowchart]

1. A developer visits the council’s open data platform, where they can search the ideas that are ‘Completed’ or ‘Under development’;
• OR they can offer an idea. If it matches existing keywords the developer is presented with possible duplicate ideas;
2. If there is no match the developer may submit an idea;
3. At this point the relationship begins. The developer’s idea is logged as ‘Potential’ and the two parties enter an agreement;
4. They must agree parameters for the development (these could be pre-determined requirements from the council, including deadlines and milestones);
5. Agreement of those parameters constitutes a pre-procurement agreement; in addition:
1. The council agrees to support the development until completion or until the agreement is terminated (see 5.4);
2. The council agrees not to use the developer’s idea independently;
3. The council agrees that the developer is not bound to develop anything at all;
4. The developer agrees that the council can terminate the agreement at any point if the basic parameters are not met;
6. EITHER: The council may offer an endorsement but no financial support
1. If the developer agrees then the product must not change without approval from the council;
2. The idea is now ‘Under development’;
3. If the product does change, or the council disapproves of any changes, the council may withdraw its endorsement;
7. OR: The council may now offer the developer a procurement agreement
1. If agreed, both parties are bound by it;
2. The developer’s idea now becomes ‘Under development’;
8. Only when the product is launched does it become ‘Completed’.

The point is that the relationship between council and citizen needs to change if anything meaningful is to come of sharing information.

Of course the council needs to retain some control over its own products, but it also needs to enter a proper, mutual arrangement with the developer if it is to keep their trust. A process such as the one outlined above should assist in that.

Such a process also ensures that the council only puts its name to products that meet its own standards. While a council can’t control how people use its open data it can control what it endorses.

If adhered to, this should help build confidence between the local authority and the development community. It should also enable a whole swathe of improvements to services, which otherwise the council would not think of or be able to develop.

Digital engagement

Every so often I find myself in an unexpected and memorable situation. Today, 1 February 2012, I am reminded of the time I met Umar Ghuman.

I was traveling home to Birmingham on a Virgin train – not something I do often – and I sat at a table with a couple of Pakistani men. They were a fair bit apart in age and it turned out that one was the son of the other. They chatted intermittently for a bit while; I gazed out of the window. I think we exchanged pleasantries.

Then, by chance, the younger man and myself looked at our mobile phones at the same time. They were identical models, and we chuckled at this. The ice was broken just enough.

So when the father excused himself to search for the conveniences (not all that convenient as he was gone some time), his son asked – a little sheepishly – if I’d join him for a drink in the buffet car. If I remember correctly, he felt it a little disrespectful to his father to go alone.

So I did. And we chatted. For some reason I mentioned my Quaker connections and he got excited because he knew some Quakers well. We chatted some more and I learned that he was a member of the Pakistani parliament. He had been in London with his father to negotiate a deal with a large American food chain: the purpose of which, I believe, was to help fund a scheme to get affordable health care (possibly even free, I don’t remember) to vulnerable neighbourhoods in Pakistan.

And then I discovered he had apologised on behalf of Pakistan for the murder of Daniel Pearl.

Ten years ago today, American journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Islamic extremists in Pakistan. Umar Ghuman, this understated chap in a standard-class train carriage, drinking with a stranger out of respect for his own father, had been the man who apologised in public to Daniel’s.

Umar Ghuman, I salute you for that.

Ramblings

In one of the UK GovCamp sessions last week we discussed the use of digital tools and third sector organisations in public service delivery.

I recorded most of the session. At some point I will try to write it up, but for now you can listen to the audio and read the transcript.

The transcript is mainly intact, but occasionally I was unable to make sense of a word or two. Therefore it’s in a wiki so that you can correct my errors if you so wish.

I missed the beginning of the discussion so the recording joins it as we address the issues of voluntary groups taking on some aspects of public services. The transcript begins as someone from the police is explaining how they worked with a group of Street Pastors.

Citizenship & civic engagement

I was pretty sure the song’s title was also that of a sitcom starring Geoffrey Palmer and Judi Dench, so I could easily have Googled it. But that felt like admitting early defeat, so I closed my eyes and tried to remember.

A tried and tested trick (by me, at least) is to run through the alphabet, visualising each letter in turn. It’s a bit like scrolling through a list on a screen: although you focus on one letter at a time you can see its neighbours too; but in this case the rest of the alphabet is always there somewhere, at the periphery.

The ‘A’ chimed with me straight away. I let it go for the moment as I still had 25 letters to compare it with. But the ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘G’ also glowed a little. (They don’t actually glow as such, but it’s impossible to describe exactly how they present themselves.)

The rest of the journey through the alphabet was uneventful, until I hit ‘W’. Everything about it lit up, and it was even bold enough to proffer a word: ‘When’.

I tried others, like ‘Will’ and ‘With’, but ‘When’ stuck fast. However, the ‘T’ then started throbbing and spat out the word ‘Time’. That posed a problem: do I trust that sudden, apparently random intervention or do I focus on ‘When’, which had been presented so decisively?

I prodded a little more, playing ‘Time’ and ‘When’ off against each other. And then, like the end of a tunnel approaching unexpectedly, the other pieces dropped into place: ‘A’, ‘Time’, ‘G’ and ‘B’ clubbed together to produce ‘As Time Goes By‘.

How the bloody hell does that work?! It feels like I’m doing physical labour, moving pieces around and slotting things together, but in fact I’m lying perfectly still. My hands are doing nothing; to any observer I’m probably asleep; the only muscle I’m using is inside my head.

And where does ‘When’ fit in? The letter ‘W’ doesn’t feature in that song title at all, yet it was instrumental in solving the puzzle.

I’m not trying to fathom the human brain; lots of very clever people are spending their lives doing that. But I am often paralysed by how incredibly unfathomable and sophisticated it is.

Ramblings

Sick of relying on Issu, or other bloated third parties, simply for embedding documents?

Well, it turns out you can embed .pdf and .ppt files via Google Docs using a simple iframe. You don’t even need a Google account.

<iframe src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://document.pdf&embedded=true"></iframe>

Simply replace the bold text with your document’s url and style the iframe with css.

This appears not to work very well with actual Google documents though, as it appends a load of navigation detritus. But it seems to work well for regular hosted documents.

Ramblings

I don’t like the term ‘gamification’. Maybe I’ve missed the point, but if we have to turn something into a game doesn’t that suggest it’s not fit for purpose anyway?

Eight or nine years ago a man from Immersive Education introduced my colleagues and me to Kar2ouche. He explained it was the result of some Oxford University research into why children enjoyed computer games but not educational software. He finished by admitting that the findings stated the bleeding obvious: games are fun because the kids are in control. It was as simple as that.

He didn’t feel the need to call it ‘gamification’. To do so now is to suggest it’s a Cool New Thing: it’s not; it’s just common sense.

We know from the pain of public consultations that there’s little point involving people if they feel they have no stake in it. If the thing I’m expected to do isn’t relevant enough to engage me in the first place, why am I expected to do it at all? Bribing me might elicit some answers but it probably won’t encourage much meaningful engagement from me.

In other words, sugar-coating something might make it taste better but it doesn’t improve the process. For example, by turning voting into a game you might get more people to vote, but that doesn’t mean you’ve improved the democratic process. Those voters might still feel alienated after the election, meaning that next time you just have to be even more creative if you want them to turn out on polling day.

You don’t build a car from a cake recipe and ask someone to rectify it later. No: you make sure the processes and environment are optimum in the first place. Either that or you’ve decided already that you want a cake and not a car.

Ramblings

I’ve not posted on this site for a couple of months, partly because I haven’t had the time or energy and partly because I was experiencing severe technical difficulties with it (and didn’t have the time or energy for those either).

WordPress was playing silly buggers; the front end wasn’t working well and the back end was even more broken. At first it appeared to be a problem with plugins but eventually became apparent that it probably wasn’t. In fact it seems that the latest version of WordPress (and plugins) relies heavily on php5, and my host was still on php4.

It’s taken me since Christmas to discover that was the problem; if you think WordPress is a walk in the park, watch out for the black ice.

Anyway, enough rambling and bad metaphors; I’m off to bed. Good night.

Ramblings