I keep hearing people talking about how they’ve written a ‘set of Twitter protocols’ or ‘a social media policy’. They cover things like what to tweet and what not to tweet, how often to tweet it and the ‘right way’ to use Twitter. (If you think you know the answer to that last one please keep it to yourself.)

Do we really need policies and protocols for every aspect of our job? If so, why are people employing us? Surely we use social media tools only if appropriate, if doing so helps deliver our communications goals and in compliance with our organisation’s existing codes of practice? Just like any other tools for communicating. When was the last time you saw a six-page document detailing how to use a telephone, what not to say on it and how often you should ring people? (Ok, in some lines of work (such as call centres) there will be protocols for using the phone, but you get my drift.)

I tried writing a social media policy myself recently. I started with the intention of providing broad concepts to help people communicate confidently online (such as ‘think about your audience’ rather than ‘don’t tweet more than fourteen times a minute’), and abandoned it when I realised I was simply reiterating what was already in our contracts and organisational policies; and what was, on the whole, common sense borne of experience.

Instead I wrote a guide to blogging and social media that aims to give colleagues some advice but tries to avoid a ‘right way’ of doing it (it is a document of good practice, not a policy). If communicating is part of someone’s job then we should trust them to do it appropriately; if they don’t then there are management protocols already at our disposal for dealing with them.

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In Smart Swarm Peter Miller explains how lessons from the natural world have already changed dramatically the way we work. These lessons illustrate how our individual interactions with our local environment can have a profound effect on the behaviour of society as a whole.

The author shows how an understanding of swarms (that is, groups of independent individuals aware only of their immediate neighbours) has saved the lives of hundreds of Muslim pilgrims, increased efficiency at Boeing and demonstrated that physical town meetings can be far more beneficial than virtual ones, even if they are less convenient. ’Citizens who talk to one another,’ he writes, ‘Give themselves a better chance to make smart decisions.’

I’m often wary of books like this. They come packed with kudos from the forward-thinkers in communication, which can give them an aura of game-changing brilliance (or at least the impression that they provide remarkable new insight into human behaviour). Often though they seem simply to be expounding common sense, backed up by examples and seasoned with the occasional ‘wow!’ moment. So, if I’ve been expecting a greater intellectual challenge from a book I can be left feeling underwhelmed.

What’s refreshing about Smart Swarm (to me, at least) is that, while it’s part of the discourse around developments in human communication, it’s not written by a ‘social media guru’. Instead Peter Miller, who is in fact senior editor of National Geographic, demonstrates how lessons from nature justify some of the theories posited by those gurus.

He shows us how ants are better than we are at planning business travel, how successfully bees use dancing competitions to decide the best nesting spot, how termites can teach us a thing or two about air conditioning and why locusts suddenly change from shy individuals into massive, marauding swarms (apparently it’s because they’re cannibals).

I enjoyed this book; it was engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking. Miller narrates the extraordinary discoveries of scientists and their application to complex logistical conundrums with a lightness and craft that makes them intriguing and easy to understand.

I haven’t figured out yet if this book has had a more profound effect on me than providing a few hours of pleasurable reading, but that really doesn’t matter. And besides, maybe I never will; perhaps I’m too small a player to be able to see the bigger picture. Maybe, in a hundred years or so, an anthropologist will argue that profound changes in human behaviour can be traced directly to the group of individuals who read Smart Swarm. And for that reason alone you should read it.

This was written for the good folk at Delib, who very kindly supplied the book.

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I still have a bit of a problem with it, but yesterday it did become clearer to me just how much can be gained by people investigating, reporting on and engaging with the things that happen in and affect their immediate locality.

I was at Talk About Local’s second un-conference, this time held in Leeds. The last one – in Stoke-on-Trent – was full of enthusiastic people wanting to do great things; but it left me a little worried that we (the social media evangelists) were leading them up a garden path, to be disillusioned when their enthusiasm wasn’t met with an audience and thrown unsuspectingly into a pit of libel lawyers.

However, things have moved on very positively. People are finding their feet, a solid sense of purpose and determination has set in, and the enthusiasm to share knowledge and experience is as strong as ever.

I arrived late: partly because we never intended to be early and partly because we couldn’t find the venue. The man in the car park said: “See that concrete building? It’s behind that”. He should have said: “See that concrete building? That’s it”.

So I joined in halfway through the second session, attaching myself to a group discussing the legal dangers of citizen reporting.

I attended three discussions during the course of the day, for which I made notes:

• legal issues;
• finding stories;
• covering the General Election.

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I had been incensed by a cashpoint in Birmingham’s International Convention Centre. It charged £2.50, which at the time was almost a pound more than other charging cash machines. Yet I knew full well that there was a free cash machine just a few minutes’ walk away. I felt the ICC was taking brazen advantage of people’s ignorance and I wanted somehow to leave a note there giving directions to the free machine; but more than that I wanted a systematic way for anyone to do the same.

There were problems with this:

• how to find quickly the information you want to share;
• how to generate that information if it doesn’t already exist (eg, nearest free cashpoint on a map);
• how to impart that information quickly and accessibly;
• how to leave that information to hand without:
  • causing criminal damage;
  • requiring extra tools (eg Post-It Notes);
  • risking it being removed straight away.

We came up with a solution involving tagged Audioboos & an abstract symbol left nearby, but this had drawbacks:

• as it uses Audioboo an iPhone is required;
• it relies on the chosen tag being unique;
• it relies on digital tools & prior understanding of the system (eg the user must have gps & have enabled browser to broadcast their location);
• (in theory) it detects when someone requests tips for a given location, but doesn’t map the required information;
• it doesn’t solve the problems of finding the information in the first place.

But now we have foursquare. And foursquare works on more mobile devices than just the iPhone.

With foursquare we can add information about a place from the comfort of our living room (I just added a tip about the Brindleyplace cashpoint to the ICC entry) and people can see that in context. For example, if someone is in the ICC their mobile device will tell them there are tips for their location and they can see mine alerting them to the existence of a free cashpoint. Brilliant.

I get the impression that this wasn’t quite the intention of foursquare’s ‘tips’ feature, but I can see that if enough people use it businesses will have to sit up and take notice: they may have to start trying harder to fleece people than simply relying on ignorance.

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Since nothing happened the first time I tweeted, I suspect that Chiltern were not using Twitter then. However, when I tweeted again recently…

“I’ve asked before & I’ll ask again: whose stupid idea was it to put a fixed, redundant arm on the window side of Chiltern Train seats? Grr.”

they were quick to respond:

“@citizensheep I’ll find out. Do you have a direct email address so I can get an answer for you?”

Wow. I felt quite ashamed by the tone of my tweet, and I made that clear in our subsequent email exchange. I was briefly in contact with Emma, who was personal, friendly and helpful; she offered to take my enquiries to colleagues and promised to keep me informed, even though it could take a while.

Today I got another email from Emma, with a helpful response about arm rests:

“This was standard on the refurbished fleet. The twin seats have three arm rests, one at each end, and one between the two seats. I believe that the aisle-side arm rest and the central arm rest are moveable to allow for easy seat access for people of reduced mobility, or those who are of a slightly larger disposition. The window-side arm rests are fixed as this is not a requirement in this position.  Essentially, it is a copy of the original train seating – we have not changed it, but your comments about the fixed arm rests have been noted by our engineering department.” [my bold]

So, Chiltern Railways, today you win at communication.

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Visit Citizensheep’s audio on Audiofarm

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Although I’m still not sure I know any more than other people in a similar role, I have surprised myself with all the stuff I do (albeit badly, most of the time) without really realising it.

I’ve been working for the same organisation since 1995 (yes, 1995). I haven’t left in part because I’m rubbish at moving on, but mainly because I love it there (that’s a good thing for me; possibly a bad thing for them). I’ve been the Website Manager officially since 2002, but have been responsible for the corporate website (we have a number of others now) since we decided we wanted one back in 1998.

I had been using email and the internet for a few years, but I knew absolutely nothing about web development. We were recommended some two-person operation who ‘built websites’ and I went on a basic HTML course in order to understand what they were talking about. After that I downloaded and printed (printed!) the HTML 3 specification, and then the HTML 4 one. I bought myself a PC and in my spare time I faffed around with HTML, image editing, and general web nonsense. I never got into building my own websites, but instead concentrated my pedantic energies on tweaking the organisation’s pages.

Since then the organisation has gone through some major changes. It’s had to reappraise itself a few times due to the changing climate within which it was working, and has undergone major organisational restructuring. It has taken on lots of diverse projects and has almost trebled the number of staff. The website has had to develop with and adapt to all of this.

At this point I should explain that the website operates on a tiny annual budget, with which it has to support the entire organisation. That’s not a complaint, in fact it’s something I’m quite proud of, but it serves to add context to the developments we’ve made.

The other thing I want to explain at this point is that I have never changed contractors. I have thought about it once or twice; but the commitment, integrity, economy, friendliness and willingness with which they operate has just been too valuable to lose. They are a small outfit – there are three of them now – and I have still never been seduced by the sugary words and golden promises of the big, slick operators.

And I’m not good at making decisions; I tend to get stuck in a cycle of weighing things up. On the rare occasion that I have considered changing contractors, I have thought that my reluctance to do so stemmed from my fear of change and of committing to a decision. Maybe it did; but I’m bloody glad I chose not to move. Building such easy working relationships takes time; yes, some patches of that time are happier than others, but the relationships don’t develop if you don’t give them the chance. And the smaller and more personal the organisation, the easier it is bond with.

Added to that, it’s only fairly recently that I’ve begun to appreciate the different skills that we all bring to the job. In the outset I presumed they could do everything web-related: of course they couldn’t, any more than I can now. But those skills are all developed along the way: what I now have is a pretty good understanding of what we’re all capable of achieving, rather than what we can only demonstrate at any given time. That doesn’t happen if you don’t give the relationship time to evolve.

But back to the website itself. As the organisation grew, and the projects became more abundant and more independent, it became clear that we needed to devolve some of the responsibilities for the upkeep of the website to project staff. This meant procuring a content management system (CMS), which in turn meant understanding what the project staff would need to be able to do with it (with no way of knowing themselves, and all with different and changing requirements), and with next to no budget. So we built it ourselves. Or rather, I cack-handedly scoped it out and my contractor sweated blood turning my messy concept into a beautifully coded reality.

The CMS development suffered severe ‘mission-creep’, mainly because we were learning a lot of what we needed as we went along. The bespoke nature of the CMS, possibly along with a naivity on our part of what we were taking on, has meant that it is not all that user-friendly or intuitive. It also means that we now have a long list of requirements for any new CMS, and would have a hard job ensuring that everything is covered off should we move to a new one (as is possibly the intention). In itself this isn’t a big issue, provided we audit the requirements carefully; the problem is more that my understanding of the web is now more sophisticated, and I need to decide whether the nuances of those ‘requirements’ are actually still right for us.

Aside from the CMS, there are certain functions that the website has to discharge which don’t have a counterpart in the organisational structure. This requires of me expertise in areas that I have no real experience of – such as managing the sale and tracking of resources or organising an organisation-wide image library – in order to plan new developments.

In fact, I need to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades.

I’m a web designer

I write a lot of the underlying HTML for the website, and most of the Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). It could be a lot better, but at least I know that. I designed the concept and layout of the current site, and am trying gradually to introduce developing standards such as CSS3 and microformats. I edit and optimise images: I really want to be in a place where people can store, share, label and control images without having to worry about file formats and pixel numbers, but at the moment I deal with all of that myself.

I’m a writer

I have to be able to write well. I have written a lot of the content in the past, and am editing a lot of it now. This requires a good understanding of how to communicate on a web page, and a solid writing style. Oh well.

I’m an editor and a sub-editor

One of the problems with enabling people to manage their own bits of a website is how you ensure the integrity of the writing. Style guides and management structures help, but where those fail someone has to take responsibility for what’s published on the site. So far that’s been me.

I’m a learner

In order to be of any use to the organisation I have to keep up to speed with the constantly changing nature of the web. For example I explore the benefits of social media, and I manage and advise on our approach to social media tools. I also have to have a pretty solid understanding of the anatomy of the web and of web pages, in order to know how best to support the online work of the organisation.

I’m a teacher

I have to be able to explain abstract concepts in plain English to staff and managers. I have to train staff in the relevant areas of the CMS, and help them understand how the website – and the web in general – can support their work. As well as being clear I also have to be inspiring. Not sure I manage either of those, but hey.

I’m a web accessibility champion

There all sorts of reasons why I would be doing my job badly if I didn’t appreciate the importance of web accessibility, but I won’t go into that here. However, the charity I work for encourages and enables civic engagement, which to my mind means that we must be as inclusive as possible: and that means being as accessible as possible.

I’m a pioneer

I encourage and support staff in the use of web technologies, and gently push the online boundaries of the organisation. I try to adopt emerging technologies where appropriate, and make a point of personally adopting others (partly for fun and partly to keep up to speed).

I’m a manager

In theory. I’m not very good at this bit, but I do have to do it. The site would be nothing without the contractors and all the other contributors, but they all need pulling together. I also have to try and balance myself between the priorities of the External Relations team (which is where my role is located) and those of the individual projects.

I’m a communications professional

As part of the External Relations team I also support the core communications function of the organisation, which requires an understanding of communications more generally.

I’m a strategist

The work of our organisation is particularly diverse, and so defining what the corporate website is and how it supports the various needs of the projects is an ongoing and challenging task. I take a lead on how we communicate ourselves via the web; I never get this right in everyone’s eyes (least of all in mine), but I chip away at trying to make it better.

I’m wrong

I need people to be confident that I know what I’m talking about, but I must never presume that I’m right. I can believe I’m doing the right thing, and for the right reasons; but if I ever get too complacent about standards or ignore other people’s views, then the organisation really needs to find someone else.

So there you have it. I don’t claim to do any of this with any flair whatsoever, but I like to think I might be good at some of it.

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Whilst I appreciate that the report is framed as “an active industrial policy” (in the introduction by Lord Mandelson and Ben Bradshaw MP), I do think it has missed the importance of the voluntary aspect of digital engagement.

Creating for love not money

Lord Carter’s report does acknowledge that people are using and sharing stuff differently now, and appears to acknowledge the blurring boundaries between creators and consumers of content and services. But, at the same time, it seems unable to comprehend the ‘marketplace’ as anything fuzzier than ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’. The report itself seeks new models for payment and rights, and the strategy document of the Technology Strategy Board (the body charged with implementing the government’s strategy) considers the challenge of “how to identify opportunities for content producers to generate revenue from consumption of their content”.

But, as Jon Bounds pointed out in a discussion group last week, a great many people are creating content, systems and services without requiring any sort of payment. They may do it because they enjoy it, or they see a need for it, or simply because they can.

For example (and I use ones from Birmingham simply because I know of them), Big City Talk is a translation of Birmingham’s development plan into plain English, by a group of friends who thought it needed doing; Matthew Somerville pushed the web accessibility agenda by autonomously producing an accessible version of the National Rail Enquiries website; Nicky Getgood put Digbeth on the social media map with Digbeth is Good because she just liked writing about it.

As a result, people (generally understood by the Report as ‘consumers’) often become as useful to the commercial ‘producers’ as the producers are to them: except they do it for no financial reward. They are benefiting the economy and society, often in spite of the market.

Physical infrastructure needs support, but so does social infrastructure

This is all possible because people can now share easily, widely and instantaneously. Social interactions can be much faster, more productive, more democratic, less financially constrained and less reliant on the market than before.

The tools that enable these interactions become (and indeed are known as) our ‘social networks’.

Twitter, for example, is to the digital infrastructure as train companies are to railway tracks. Although the former relies on the latter, it is the former that makes or breaks the social advantage offered by the latter. Commercial decisions by train companies can have profound effects on society: for example, if they close a rural line because it isn’t financially viable, the community it served is suddenly cut off from the rail network. The companies are providing a service that uses a physical infrastructure, but the service itself is surely part of our social infrastructure. In the same way, Twitter is as important a part of the social infrastructure as the servers that it relies on are part of the physical.

Team DB (as the Digital Britain team were known) has put a lot of energy into thinking about infrastructure, but – as far as I can tell – this is understood simply in terms of pipes and access: what about the systems that provide our new social infrastructures?

When Twitter goes down it can have a profound effect. For example, when the Iranian authorities tried to black out media coverage of its recent election, Twitter was used by the public as a key tool for communicating news to the rest of the world. However, Twitter had planned an hour of downtime right at the point when Iran needed it most, and so took the commercially dangerous decision to postpone it until the next day. A laudable move, but the downtime still happened while the situation in Iran was unstable.

In the Iran example the downtime was due to planned maintenance, but Twitter buckles under the strain quite frequently: it’s not as reliable as we expect it to be. For example, I now rely on Twitter for managing my social life – in much the same way as many people now rely on mobile companies – so when the service fails I am suddenly cut off from my supportive community.

Certainly the digital infrastructure is crucial, and Lord Carter is right to investigate ways of encouraging innovation and investment in order to ensure it reaches everyone. But government also needs to appreciate the importance of supporting the new social infrastructures (such as Twitter) that are enabled by the digital ones, and to ensure that they’re not undermined by commercial imperatives: as we saw to a degree in the example of Twitter and the Iran election.

People are volunteers, not simply consumers

Yes we need to be commercially competitive if we are to survive and thrive in a digital world; but why? For the sake of it? Or, ultimately, for the sake of people? Surely the economy needs to be healthy in order to benefit people, not the other way round?

People are not just producers or consumers, but individuals who operate on far more complex social levels, driven by love, need, interest, recognition (the list goes on): they are, in the broadest sense, volunteers. As such (and as mentioned earlier) they use the new tools not just to consume, but to create, share, and affect change.

For us all to do so effectively, for us to get the most out of the new tools and infrastructures, requires high levels of digital literacy. Simply knowing how to use the tools is not enough; we need a profound understanding of how to maximise the benefit of those tools and how to adapt them for new circumstances.

The role of the formal education sector in developing skills and aptitudes is acknowledged in Lord Carter’s report, but what about the voluntary* sector? That is, the sector which is – by virtue of being relatively out of reach of government control – often best placed to understand people as people and volunteers, rather than as workers and consumers.

Many charities and community groups are already supporting people in using and understanding digital technologies: how they can be harnessed for personal development, personal wellbeing, civic engagement and social change; all the stuff that people do voluntarily, without expecting any sort of payment.

Add to those voluntary bodies all the loose groupings of individuals who give their time simply because they care (for example Birmingham’s Social Media Surgeries, the recent LocalGovCamp, Rhubarb Radio, numerous bloggers such as Nicky Getgood and Charlie Pinder), and it becomes apparent that a whole swathe of useful talent has been overlooked by Lord Carter’s report.

That talent doesn’t just use tools that are made available by commercial outfits (such as Twitter), it relies on them; more than that: although Twitter (for example) is a commercial venture, it is the users who are shaping its social significance.

For Digital Britain to be a success, there needs – I feel – to be an acknowledgement of the hold that commercial bodies have over our social infrastructures, and a mechanism for managing and regulating that.

In case I’m talking rubbish…

I’m neither an academic nor a researcher, so these thoughts are based alone on my experience and limited reading. Therefore read everything here with critical objectivity (which, to be honest, you should do with everything you read). I had intended to blog this elsewhere, but I’m posting it here first in order to test its credibility.

* In this instance the word ‘voluntary’ is used specifically as part of the label ‘voluntary sector’, which is an umbrella term for charities, community groups and other not-for-profit organisations.

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However, the episode did spawn this blog post, which – as well as lambasting Habitat for getting it wrong – has some good tips for making productive use of corporate mistakes on Twitter (and indeed any other space in which an organisation has a presence).

Visit How not to use Twitter: HabitatUK as a case study

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She is asking other Members of Parliament to sign her Early Day Motion in support of putting parliamentary procedures online. At the time of writing 28 have done so.

If your MP is not on the list, please encourage them to sign. You can contact your MP easily via the online service writetothem.com.

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