Thank You Professor Stephen Coleman, Welcome Makala Cheung
April 6, 2008 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : Digital Challenge, Bristol, South Bristol, Guest Bloggers , 2 commentsI would like to thank Professor Stephen Coleman for being this week’s guest blogger on Connecting Bristol. Who could have predicted that we would have such a lively (and for some, strangely cathartic) discussion? I am sure that Stephen and his colleagues in the Centre for Digital Citizenship at Leeds University will note any further contributions that appear in the threads he has in itiated over the next week or so.
The International Centre for Local e-Democracy, ICELE, has been the focus of much of this week’s discussion. It is positive that the centre can still attract such a high level of interest. However, we have not heard from the centre’s staff team or Board directly. We would, of course, be delighted if ICELE wished to be a guest blogger at some time in the near future… perhaps to put forward a different side of the story?
But for now, I am delighted to introduce Makala Cheung who will be the Connecting Bristol guest blogger for the coming week.
Makala is Press and Communications Officer at Knowle West Media Centre and is proud to be a local resident. Makala says, “I work in the area I live in - Knowle West. I love that I can walk to work, feel connected to my local community, and I can tackle my work from a residents as well as workers perspective. I love the Media Centre, because it supports my personal and career growth and learning, just as it does for the community”
Makala shares her own story here in a digital story that she produced to accompany Bristol’s Digital Challenge bid.
Makala will be blogging live as the new state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly Knowle West Media Centre officially open to the community with help from Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA Whilst at the Cabinet Office, Matthew initiated the Digital Challenge, inadvertently creating the process that led to Connecting Bristol and the DC10plus. If only he’d known…
Introducing Professor Stephen Coleman
March 28, 2008 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : e-democracy, Bristol, Guest Bloggers , add a commentSome people effortlessly span seemingly irreconcilable divides, for example, by being both anti-establishment and mainstream; a leading academic and a man of the people; a commentator on technology and perhaps also a bit of a technophobe?
Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication at Leeds University, is one such enigma and personally I am delighted that he has volunteered to blog for Connecting Bristol in the coming week.
Stephen Coleman has spent many years exploring and writing about the relationship between digital media and citizenship. His new book ‘The Internet and Democratic Citizenship’, written with Jay Blumer, will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year. He argues that e-democracy calls for profound cultural as well as technological changes.
Bristol’s association with Stephen began 4-5 years ago when he was Professor of e-Democracy at Oxford University. Stephen worked with us to evaluate the Local e-Democracy National Project. The series of reports that were produced caused some discussion in certain Government quarters… they have probably just about got over it by now, so over to you again Stephen…
The Big Green Bookshop
March 17, 2008 Posted by Andy in : e-democracy, Bristol, e-society, Technology, Guest Bloggers, Business , 1 comment so far
I came across this blog last week and thought it was another nice demonstration of how people are using “social media” in real life.
When Waterstone’s closed their branch in Wood Green (near me in London), there was a petition online and a local campaign.
When the store closed, the former managers decided to turn the energy of that campaign into a new independent bookstore. They used a blog to chart their progress and called on their “facebook army” for help and support.
Not only has this been great publicity, but they’ve got to know their customers, they’ve captured the spirit of the campaign and made their mark in their community.
Most importantly, Wood Green has got a good independent bookshop.
By one standard, the “Don’t close Waterstones” petition failed. The shop closed. By another, perhaps more interesting standard, it was wildly successful. Now this can’t happen in every case, but it seems that there’s often an opportunity to harness this momentum and create something better than before.
Online petitioning is something that Bristol is well known for.
So my question is, how could you help to create more positive results and situations like the big green bookshop?
Global Campaigning, Free Stuff and Cute Cats
Posted by Andy in : Bristol, e-society, Technology, collaboration, Guest Bloggers , 1 comment so farRecently, I worked with the Global Campaign for Education, who promote education as a human right around the world. They are a coalition of NGOs and trade unions and they run the Global Action Week, which sees activity in 120 countries around the world. Last year, over 5 millon children took part in the campaign.
Action Week this year starts on the 27th April.
The main reason to mention them is to highlight an organisation that could not have existed in its current form only a few years ago. You can run a huge, credible global campaign on infrastructure that is basically free, but arguably as good as the systems being used by multinational companies. So if you wanted to start your own global campaign, I’d suggest three applications that could save you tens of thousands in annual running costs:
Gmail: Free email accounts, but also huge (huge) online storage capability which gives you a place to store files and back things up. With google apps, you can create a private intranet and website. The basic service is free (and good enough for most people).
Google News Alerts: This provides a media monitoring service comparable to expensive clipping services, especially if you’re looking for global coverage. This is free, too.
Skype: You don’t even need a phone. Skype’s free international calling and instant messaging can bring together groups from around the world. It’s also got free video conferencing.
On top of this core infrastructure you’ve also got all the social media applications like myspace, facebook, wordpress and the rest.
There’s a lot been written recently about “free” as a business model recently (mostly triggered by this article in Wired), but one of the consequences of this is that you don’t need to spend much money to organise a huge global campaign.
As I was writing this entry, I came across this interesting presentation by Ethan Zuckerman on “The Cute Cat theory of digital activism” that makes a similar point, but for a slightly different audience. It’s aimed at people who build web services and it argues that if you build free online social web tools, one of the tests of their usefulness is whether or not they are used by activists.
The internet is about more than just pictures of cute cats, as shown by this graphic:
He concludes:
If there’s a single message to the talk, it is that activists are going to use your tools if your tools are any good - watch them, pay attention to them, protect them and learn from them. They’ll make your tools better, and they’re one of the reasons to make social software in the first place.
It’s got loads of good international case studies in it as well. Well worth a read over your lunch.
