18 Comments on New challenges for a new Fellowship

Matthew Kalman on Wed, 25th Feb 2009 11:01 am


Re Community websites + ‘Living Community Map: Council 2.0′ idea

With local community websites, the first thing to do would be to create some kind of Google map, or whatever, showing all the great, interactive sites that *already* exist. And are often beavering away in isolation, remaking the wheel etc.

There must be lots of sites like this one around the UK: http://www.westealingneighbours.org.uk/

People need to be able to find them – on a very obvious domain name like Neighbourhoodgroupsuk.org, or suchlike…

Maybe it already exists…?

I’m not sure how much training and support is really needed – the site above cost a few quid for a web-minded friend to set up on behalf of that local group, and is probably pretty idiot-proof to run/update, as open source blogs are these days, I think. (I was slightly disturbed to hear how cheap and simple the process was, as I’d just spent ages learning Dreamweaver/HTML etc, and put together a website from scratch. Unnecessary really…)

William should certainly go for it – but keep it simple…

I also wonder whether it’s the website authors alone who need to be talking to eachother. I’d want to enable the chairs of the local groups to be in touch with eachother, or whoever is most active. It might be the webmasters, but could well not be…

Off a a slight tangent, I also have had an idea going around my brain for some years of using GIS to allow local people to continuously map both the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ experiences within their community.

I think seeing the waxing and waning of various ‘hot spots’ would allow a new kind of real-time learning loop within communities.

It’s a leap beyond MySociety’s ‘Fix My Street’ to something more visual, covering a far greater range of our experiences.

My entry on this topic was actually the runner-up individual idea in a Westminster Council innovation competition in 2006.

I called it “Living Community Map and fault-reporting: Council 2.0″.

Your RSA predecessor Penny Egan was one of the judges…!

I think it was something rather more mundane about texting for find your nearest toilet that won – great, but not really the paradigm shift I had in mind…

Matthew

Rob Greenland on Wed, 25th Feb 2009 1:40 pm


It was good to meet you Matthew and thanks for the link. As a virgin Fellow meeting the boss for the first time I probably didn’t make my point as carefully as I would have liked to – clearly my brain works better in the slighly more considered arena of the blog.

My scepticism I suppose is informed by the work I do on a daily basis. Lots of work with third sector organisations who are being told by funders, local authorities and others that this thing we call social enterprise is the way forward, and that it will somehow magic us all out of the pretty sticky situation we find ourselves in.

It’s all become very politicised. Witness for example the push to get people out of the NHS and into social enterprises (“creating” – if you believe the minister – 25000 jobs) It’s a nice headline, but it’s stretching the truth a little to call it job creation – surely it’s more of a transfer from one sector to another.

My interest is in social enterprise as a verb not a noun. Precisely the kind of thing you point to above – people getting together to do some enterprising stuff which has a social impact. It may or may sit comfortably within Government definitions of social enterprise – and it may or may not count as a VAT registration. But it will change lives.

I think you’re spot-on on the public services issue. With less money around we’ll need to make what money there is work harder. That will mean more co-production of services – with us as citizens taking more responsibility – and has big implications for both the public sector and the third sector.

Josh W on Wed, 25th Feb 2009 3:31 pm


I have already built a concept for something similar to the buying structure you mentioned, but I do not have the programming skill to implement it. Basically it is a website structure that attempts to combine ebay style bidding with the economies of scale of mass production and transport. I would want to make the system open source so people could pick it up and change it to suit their needs. The fundimental idea of the system is “critical mass”, email me if you want to hear more.

Beyond that, I think it’s a very valuable idea to get people together who make community websites. One advantage of doing so could be aggregated neighbour news, where each site has a feed they produce on things that might effect their surroundings, automatically created via a tagging system and probably checked by someone. Then each site could just add a feed reader on the side of their page saying “what’s going on elsewhere”, that grabs from these feeds and puts them together.

This way the groups can show anything more “public” such as big events to neighbouring towns, or different groups in the same town. It would work very similarly to flyers, but automated and consensual. The trick is making the walls between groups more porous, so people can just post via the usual interface, add a specific tag, and have it added to the external news feed. But this would obviously need accountability, so every post must be linked back to the user, with the possibility of banning them from putting stuff to the external feed if they abuse it, but while still allowing others to do it for them etc etc. All that obvious stuff that is easy to forget!

william perrin on Wed, 25th Feb 2009 11:13 pm


thanks matthew – would be great to work with the RSA fellows to take this forward. i agree with other commenters – the trick is to keep it simple and to resue existing tools. it’s not so much about trainign as it is about encouragement and making people aware of how easy it is to do now

check out my current site http://www.kingscrossenvironment.com to see what is possible

the site that already tries to bring local groups together is http://www.groupsnearyou.com

if anyone wants to help, drop me a line through the site above

cheers

w

matthewtaylor on Thu, 26th Feb 2009 9:47 am


Thanks William. We are really keen to work with you on this project. In particular I am keen to explore connections between community websites and social entrepreneurs with a particular focus on how communities respond to the recession.

Matthew

Mike Amos-Simpson on Thu, 26th Feb 2009 1:49 pm


sounds relevant to http://voice-box.org.uk/ (also a UK Online Centres led initiative – although not yet known who will get the tender so obviously really only relevant to whoever that may be)

matthewtaylor on Thu, 26th Feb 2009 1:50 pm


Thanks Matthew. William has posted and I am sure he would be interested in hearing your thoughts. We are, as I say, really keen to collaborate wiith him on this project.

matthewtaylor on Thu, 26th Feb 2009 2:04 pm


Thanks Rob

Glad to see we agree. It would be great to see the new Leeds Felows group enaging with this agenda. Tell us if there is any help we can give

Best

Matthew

matthewtaylor on Thu, 26th Feb 2009 2:50 pm


Good stuff Josh. William (whose project this is) has posted and I am sure he would be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks

Rob Greenland on Fri, 27th Feb 2009 10:23 am


Thanks Matthew – yes I’d certainly be keen to get involved in something locally. I’m interested in the news-sharing side as well. I’ve blogged a bit more about it here
http://tinyurl.com/ddttzm

Thanks

Rob

matthewtaylor on Mon, 2nd Mar 2009 8:37 am


Nice post Rob. I share your ambivalence about the problems of traditional print media. This piece by Roger Parry the long standing chairman of a regional newspaper group captures the scale of the problem http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/19aa59c2-0437-11de-845b-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1. There s a public interest n supporting good community web sites which should combine news and comment with community initiatives – this is the aim we have in mind n seeking to work with William Perrin.

Hugh Flouch on Tue, 3rd Mar 2009 7:30 pm


An interesting discussion.

I write as another virgin fellow and the founder of the Catalyst Award recognised neighbourhood network Harringay Online.

I applaud the project William is involved in and am looking forward to working with William as it rolls out.

We know from our experience of the huge positive impact online communities can have to both place shaping and building real social capital.

Harringay Online was started in 2007 when we saw the huge untapped potential in using white label social networks for communities. From the outset what we wanted to do was to create a virtual third space to involve, connect and empower the community in a much more dynamic way than had been possible before. Social networks, combined with an offline element, seemed to be the obvious route.

That choice has choice has had significant implications. First, our experience of fast growth and real local impacts suggests that social network based sites work very well at empowering and connecting people in neighbourhoods. And, we believe we have the sustainability issue solved.

Secondly, what our experience suggests is that whilst awareness of the potential of digital technologies is key and training in digital skills is important, online neighbourhood networks won’t take off and thrive without a broader raft of start-up support. We don’t have to read Clay Shirky to know of the very high failure rate of new networks. Once you move from a broadcast to a community model you encounter all the issues familiar over the years to community developers. So the learning curve involves not only the getting your head around Shirky’s wonderfully targeted Promise, Tool & Bargain/i> and all that implies, there’s a whole set of community building capabilities to pick up on too. (We learned the hard way). For this reason I’ve built up a new relationships with community developers. I really hope that their professionalism doesn’t get left out of the loop.

Another key challenge will be to apply existing learning to help aspiring network facilitators identify and self-select against a profile of skills and knowledge that’s most likely to make the networks fly.

The other interesting issue that’s being played out right now is working out what the proper role is for local government in all this. It’s clear from the many conversations I’m being invited to with councils that there’s a keen interest in what’s happening with citizen-led neighbourhood networks. I think we have the questions well formed now. It’s very exciting to be involved in helping to work out the answers to those questions (but that’s another post).

matthewtaylor on Wed, 4th Mar 2009 8:22 am


Thanks Hugh. I’m delighted you wll be working with William. The RSA will I hope be linking up our connected communities project to William’s work. The big question for me is whether these communty web stes can help to generate innovation and capacity. Do you have examples?

Thanks for the comment

Matthew

Eamonn Collins on Fri, 6th Mar 2009 8:27 am


An interesting and heartening debate; I am developing a project for local internet-tv stations, based on a social enterprise model, and it’s great to see so many people thinking along similar lines. I would urge anyone who wants to see greater public investment in this area to comment on the Government’s Digital Britain Report. You can post comments online here: http://www.digitalbritainforum.org.uk/

matthewtaylor on Fri, 6th Mar 2009 9:17 am


Thanks Eamonn. Did you see the interesting Guardian supplement about public engagement earlier this week?

Damian Radcliffe on Tue, 12th May 2009 12:01 pm


Good post and comments – it all feeds into something I’m working on and I’d be very happy to chat and explore ideas therein (diaries permitting!).

Marcello Palazzi on Sun, 11th Oct 2009 8:18 am


Matthew, excellent conversation. From the perspective of “civic enterprise”, a term and practices I wrote about first 20 years ago and the experience in 30 countries since, engaging communities in effective initiatives consistently, continuously and systematically is a systemic challenge. It needs the engagement of strategic government (?) or catalytic philanthropy or even socially- engaged corporations (John Lewis and other partnerships) as co-hosts or co-anchors of individual and collective citizens action. ASHOKA, for example, is using a collaborative teams of Ashoka Fellows anchored within a foundation or a corporation that provides the continuity, some resources and the consistency over time. Perhaps identifying a number of such anchor organizations up and down the country, and the appropriate individual leaders within, is a way forward.

Marcello Palazzi, Progressio Foundation, Netherlands

Marcello Palazzi on Sun, 11th Oct 2009 8:33 am


Common Purpose has been quite successful in engaging leaders from across sectors. Next step is to move from engagement to action. Common Purpose could be a partner in those locations where their networks of leaders are strongest.

Other innovations are needed and the experience of other countries, such as Switzerland or Denmark is key. Strong, independent local government is a huge advantage. In Switzerland, 800 years of local democracy, provides the local social capital and leadership. Unfortunately, local government in the UK has been undermined, with the exception of devolution to Scotland and Wales. Perhaps, appointing a new kind of public actor, a kind of local strategic leader with a brief to coordinate, support and engage citizens’ initiatives could be a fast-track move to recreate local civic entrepreneurship. I sense there are some unique individuals with the mix of skills to take on such a role, ie leadership, entrepreneurship, commitment to the public good, service orientation (as opposed to exercising their egos as local CEOs !). Ashoka, for example, has a well-defined and tested approach to identify strategic social entrepreneurs and secures some funding to ensure their independence from vested interests.

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