Connecting Bristol » Momentum Meeting 14.12.06

Momentum Meeting 14.12.06

December 19, 2006 Posted by Clare in : Digital Challenge, Bristol, Connecting Bristol , trackback

With the beat of a Christmas party from the bar downstairs in the background, Dick Penny and Stephen Hilton fed back to the gathered Momentum Group current thinking around the bid, how it will be developed over the coming month and where the current gaps are. We have a number of people working on different strands of the proposition – what is becoming evident with each new piece of research and consultation is the overlap between all of the work that is being doing. The challenge for us now is to continue to harness and grow the momentum, whilst locking down the vision to create a coherent and compelling bid.

Progress on some of the distinct areas of the bid:

Connectivity
Helen Bream fed back on work stream one: A significant amount of her work has been around how we can join up the wired connectivity in the city (City of Bristol College, Bristol City Council and BMEX) to use it more efficiently and to feed spare capacity into wireless connectivity for citizens. Helen has also been involved with the Council’s award of the wireless tender, and has established a providers group, including Cityspace, Bristol Wireless, Knowlewestweb, The Cloud and BT, to ensure collaboration (alongside competition) around what coverage exists and where the gaps are.

Connecting Bristol has also brought Falmouth into the loop, as an outpost of its activities. To kick things off, Falmouth Tremough Campus will be hooked up to BMEX via SWERN.

Connecting with commerce
Dick Penny and Chris Fisher have been exploring how we get providers of services (public or private) to begin to connect better with the customer, especially those not in the city centre. Key projects will be the roll out of Bristol City Council’s leading epay systems, joined-up inspection regimes from council service providers and projects around security and trust, all supporting business to become more e-aware which strengthens their business and offers greater diversity of choice for customers. There is also work being done around flexible working, looking at how we can shift the culture of both individuals and corporates to a more flexible working environment so wherever possible people are working nearer to their homes.

Filwood
Carolyn Hassan and Roz Hall have been talking to many different people form the community about how they use technology, how they can have more involvement in decision making and about issues around co-producing content. Critical things that have come out is the need to build capacity in the community.

Lawrence Hill
Sam Rossiter is working in Lawrence Hill, speaking to the community about how they use IT and what projects already exist, with a theme of community cohesion and safety. Speaking to police and other agencies, the main theme arising from consultation is bringing people from different backgrounds together to work towards a common goal.

Henbury
David Aston from BBC talked about Heather Barham’s work in Henbury which will feature intergenerational learning and the development of some of the schools for the future strands. A How To website is also being developed for younger people and older people to share their own specific knowledge online.

Other news:
Bristol has also been pioneering the Digital Challenge card game with David Wilcox from Partnerships.org. The card game which enables ‘non-techie’ people to explore technical and IT solutions to common problems. A pilot workshop was run last week with 20 people from Lawrence Hill, inviting the to explore how technology would affect fictional personas over a period of 3 years and feedback from this workshop will help develop the game for future use. The good news is that many of the solutions identified for Connecting Bristol received very positive feedback from the workshop participants, and there was also some new ideas from them we are now exploring.

Environmental impact is also playing a keep part in the development of our thinking. This takes two strands - what is the impact of our bid and also how can we support the many other ideas that have come forward to flourish in a sustainable way? The digital café on the 4 January will also help to feed into thinking in the bid.

The wider issues of accessibility is also key to the bid. Jo from AbilityNet has been interviewing people with different needs about what they currently do and what they would like to do. See more here.

Stephen Hilton wrapped up the session:
There are far more ideas than one bid can put into reality. What we have to do now have to assess the barriers to these ideas and how the digital challenge can help. The common theme is skills and capacity. We have the hugely diverse skills and representation of the momentum group, this now has to be presented in a structure that accommodates all our thinking in a 10,000 word bid and 30 minute presentation… Connecting Bristol seeks to gain recognition of the quality of work that is going on in Bristol. Our Bid is about developing a strong mechanism for sharing successes.

Next meeting on 9 Jan, before which a draft will be circulated.