A invitation to help develop the Good Stuff Store

The idea of a Social Apps Store to support local social action – floated here – has gained enthusiastic support among my colleagues in the Big Society Network, where I’ve played the role of social reporter for a few week. While very welcome, this internal support wouldn’t matter much if the Store didn’t appeal more widely to those who have pioneered the use of social tech for social benefit in recent years … and those doing less shiny but more challenging work on the ground.
I’m really pleased by support so far because it seems a good example of how social reporters can operate.
Consultants are known as people who borrow your watch and tell you the time, and then walk off with the watch. Journalists are under pressure to make things just that bit more interesting than when first heard (so you may not always recognise your idea on page or on screen).  Maybe social reporting can gather pieces of conversation and ideas and present them back in ways that encourage people to say: thanks for adding … I want to help with that … now it makes sense. Being positive, joining up, making sense, helping out, as I wrote earlier. I’ve done a bit of journalism and consultancy, and this is much more satisfying. (read more...)

Starting to stock the Good/Big Society DIY store

Recent blog posts by Nat (now Baron) Wei, unpaid adviser to the Big Society programme, give further clues to government thinking about the way that local services should evolve, with more support for groups at neighbourhood level. (Earlier posts here). I’ve been pulling together some tools and links that may be useful – including reports of a couple of sessions using a neighbourhood media version of the SocialbySocial game. I played the one above last week in Holland. (read more...)

Redesigning Civil Society, collaboratively

The Guardian’s Societydaily roundup quotes my remark that “It’s obvious we are going to see big cuts in local services whoever is
elected, so we had better get thinking” So here we go.

Patrick Butler writes in the Guardian:

I have some sympathy with the signatories of this letter in “defence of (read more...)

Local by Social

We always hoped that Social by Social would be a book that could be chunked up and re-written for different audiences interested in social tech for social benefit – and now co-author Andy Gibson has done a great job for local government.
Local by Social: how local authorities can use social media to achieve more with less was commissioned by IDeA and NESTA. As Ingrid Koehler writes at our companion site – socialbysocial.net – “this document does provide a compelling argument for how social media can be used as a tool (and not as an end in itself) to support engagement, democracy, improved services and perhaps even especially efficiency.”
There’s more details here on the IDeA site, with additional links.
If you are looking for further front-line insights on Web 2.0 for customer service in local authorities, see the latest excellent presentation from Michele Ide-Smith.

Social media for public services: how about an Open Innovation Exchange?

The Crowdsourced Council event earlier this week was for me interesting at three levels. First for the idea expressed in the name – that councils should use a variety of different methods to find out people’s opinions, engage with (read more...)

Double inspiration at Chain Reaction

I had a splendid day yesterday at the Chain Reaction event, including a chance to catch up with Simon Berry and the Colalife campaign, and an opportunity to run the Social by Social game near the top of one of the office blocks in (read more...)

Local social tech: can communities do it themselves?

We had a terrific workshop about local communities and social tech yesterday with some 40 people crowding into the boardroom of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills for an unconferency session.

We heard news of major national programmes like Community Voices, Talk About Local, (read more...)

Free download of Social by Social book

The Social by Social handbook written by Amy Sample Ward, Andy Gibson, me, and Nigel Courtney and Professor Clive Holtham of Cass Business School got a really nice mention from Craig Newmark (as in Craigslist) in no less than the HuffingtonPost.

Hey, if you’re interested in using social media in your organization, and you (read more...)

Playing the Social by Social Game

Full size image here

The Social by Social Game really took off at Net Tuesday this week when some 20 participants invented a south London borough, created a set of project ideas for better health, happiness and the environment, and then went on to plan how social technology could yield these social benefits. All within 90 minutes. (read more...)