Environment Trust is credit crunched

It’s a sad end to the year: after hearing of Steve Snow’s death I’ve just caught up with the demise of the East London Environment Trust, which I had a hand in setting up 29 years ago. It was Jon Aldenton who gave the Trust lift off, and stayed to end. “We were credit crunched” he said sadly. It sounds as if ambitious ventures in Wales and Sheffield were the Trust’s downfall … but then there’s no innovation without risk.

Steve Snow’s inpiration for digital mentors: Just Do It

The sad and untimely death of US community networking pioneer Steve Snow, just as we are getting excited about a network of digital mentors and in the UK, led me to revisit earlier enthusiasms for the potential of the Net.
Steve was a former journalist who in 1994 set up Charlotte’s Web in North Carolina, as one of the earliest examples of a network aimed at serving those who didn’t have access to the still-young Internet. He wasn’t a techie – as you can read in this article – but he did see the great social and educational developments that local and global connections could offer. (read more...)

Social reporters (and anyone else) as social artists

I’ve come away from the Powering a New Future conference in Lisbon with three interlocking reflections on developing the concept and practice of social reporting – and a new conclusion about what it means to be a social reporter.

My conclusion, inspired by Etienne Wenger – above – is that social reporters can aspire to be “social artists” who help create social learning spaces where people can work together on social issues. It’s something anyone can do, with the right attitude and some skills, but I think social reporters should definitely make it a key part of their work. (read more...)

Reflections on social reporting an event

After a couple of days social reporting at a conference in Lisbon, my co-reporters Bev Trayner, Josien Kapma and I decided we should turn the camera on ourselves and reflect on what worked well – or didn’t. (read more...)

Reporting socially from sunny Lisbon

I’m in Lisbon this week, where my Portugal-based friend and co-social reporter Bev Trayner has brought me into her small team reporting an event celebrating eight years of the European EQUAL programme. It’s called Powering a New Future, and you can see the blog we are developing here. (read more...)

Plan to train thousands of local digital activists

Over the next few months I think we’ll hear much more about the potential for community activists to use blogs and other digital tools for social change in their localities.

One push will come from the digital mentors programme, where the Department for Communities and Local Government has now selected five consortia to develop bids in more details for the planned £900,000 support programme that I wrote about here. (read more...)

Exploring the future of membership

I’m delighted that NCVO and RSA have come up with a way to explore the future of membership organisations in a world where people may feel that paying subscriptions isn’t always worthwhile if they can easily get information, advice and connections online.

It’s an issue that Simon Berry and I started to pursue with others through The Membership Project, with initial RSA and NCVO support. We generated a lot of discussion, but found it difficult to follow through without more funding. We were both interested in working on specific practical projects, and our partners were more interested in a research-led programme. (read more...)

Two social reporting tools – Qik and Videoboo

As you can see on an earlier post here, I’ve had great fun using Videoboo on my Macbook, which gives me an incredibly easy way of interviewing people with the built-in webcam. One click to start (read more...)

Launching 2gether09 with lots of Videoboo

Last night at The Hub, Kings Cross, Steve Moore, curator of 2gether08, soft-launched this year’s digital festival with a taster of what’s planned. There’ll be more detail early next year, with a series of meetups and online activities through which people can pitch ideas for what they want to contribute. Steve’s plea: make it fresh. No chance for recycled content.

I took along my current favourite social reporting tool, which is a portable videobooth on a Macbook. Well, Videoboo actually, as you can see here in previous use on an iMac at Chain Reaction.

More on Videoboo in a moment. First here’s Steve with a preview of his presentation, above. (as the evening progressed I got better at staying out of the frame) (read more...)

What works for nonprofits on the Net

Last night we had another great Net Tuesday meetup in London, this time looking at what online tools work in what situations for nonprofit organisations. It was organised by Amy Sample Ward, who I interviewed a couple of months back about her plans to bring the mainly-US Netsquared activities to the UK.

The session last night certainly worked well, with groups first looking at blogs, Twitter, bookmarking, videos and the like, and then pooling their finding. I asked Amy for a roundup at the end, which you can see above. (read more...)