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

One of the challenges facing proponents of open data is persuading others of its value; particularly persuading the custodians of data that making it publicly available is a valuable thing to do, and is in their interest to do it. Dan Slee (Walsall Council) and Stuart Harrison (Lichfield District Council) and myself have compiled some [...]

In response to Gordon Brown’s speech on ‘Building Britain’s Digital Future’, Ben Whitnall of Delib asked if interested parties would like to group together to take a lead: ‘let’s get some interested people together and help design the future of digital deliberative democracy for the government. It’ll be faster, better and, with any luck, more [...]

A lot has been going on recently with regard to digital inclusion and civic engagement. People keep publishing reports that I really ought to read for work, but just don’t have the time to; and even if I did, many of them are pretty impenetrable. So I’m going to spread the load. In April I’ll [...]

I just stumbled across this mind map that was instigated by Robin Good. It shows people's favourite online collaboration tools for tasks such as file-sharing, drawing, writing, conferencing, reviewing and whiteboarding. Although it was developed collaboratively it doesn't actually seem to be editable by users: shame, but a great resource nonetheless. Visit Best Online Collaboration [...]

For a long time I had no way of knowing who to ask specific technical questions of, and now – thanks to the power of social media – I suddenly know loads of people on whose expertise I can call. The trouble is, when does the relationship become professional and require a financial commitment? This [...]

Our friend Karen Strunks has been taking photos of local areas at 4.00 in the morning. Now she's trying to get the rest of us to do the same. Get up at 4am on 4 April and take some photos.

Visit 4am Project

Producing a consultation document that the average member of the public can understand is easy, if you really care. Birmingham itself has plenty of top class graphic communicators, journalists, copywriters and sub-editors. The Big City Plan is such a massive undertaking that there are, presumably, the financial resources to make sure the public is consulted properly. It seems that it’s just the will that isn’t there.

These are my links for 4 February 2009 from 13:41 to 13:41

These are my links for 27 January 2009 from 23:02 to 23:02

These are my links for 26 January 2009 from 12:46 to 12:46