A wealth of hyperlocal insights from #TAL12

April 29, 2012 – 6:23 pm

The Talk About Local unconference in Birmingham yesterday was a highly sociable and enjoyable chance to catch up on the development of hyperlocal blogs and online communities … and also gather some insights for Socialreporters’ new exploration into community enabling and digital tech.

Here are the video interviews that I shot. I’ve summarised below, with links to each interview. The playlist is here.

In thinking about the new exploration, I was particularly interested in Sean Brady’s description of how he became a network weaver after being a parish councillor (referencing Tessy Britton and Eileen Conn along the way), and Lorna Prescott’s conviction that people working in local communities can start using digital tools easily with some support. Nick Booth and Dave Briggs provide some tips on how to do that.

Annette Albert provides an honest assessment of what it means for a non tech person to run a local online community – an enormous achievement on her part, with 1200 members. Vicky Sargent and Steve Brett emphasise the need to blend online and face-to-face activity to engage people in neighbourhood plans.

The online community notice board n0tice.com got a lot of mentions as a way to curate information about events, online activity and wants and offers. I can see that becoming even more popular. Franzi Bahrle is taking an interesting approach with VisualBrum.

On the wider front, I was particularly interested to hear from Will Perrin and Alex Delaney that TAL and Media Trust will be collaborating in future. Maybe there’s scope for a tie-in with People’s Voice Media, whose Institute of Community Reporters I wrote about recently. Philip John and Simon Perry talked about the Hyperlocal Alliance, and Dave Briggs has invited everyone to join in developing the Hyperlocal Handbook.

Here’s the interviews

The first Talk About Local unconference was in Stoke on Trent in 2009, as I reported here, and where I shot these interviews.

Playlist for TAL09 here.

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Update from the Media Trust’s Newsnet

April 25, 2012 – 12:38 pm

The other day I wrote briefly about developments in the hyperlocal field, with news of the Institute of Community Reporters and Saturday’s Talk About Local conference. I checked in at the Media Trust’s Newsnet, and enquired about latest development in their project, which I’ve written lots about in the past. It is a communication flagship of the Big Lottery Fund People Powered Change programme.

The always-helpful marketing director  Gavin Sheppard provided a very full update, which I’m delighted to quote here:

Hi David, interesting piece – totally agree with Gary’s views about the difference between citizen journalism and community reporting, and actually supports our view, I think, that it’s not as much what it’s called that matters as what people are doing and why it matters to them.

We’ve been focusing more on community reporting and community media and as you know will be supporting innovation in these areas with some inspiring voices grant awards via the newsnet forums.

We’ve also been appointing more beacon projects, some of whom we’re working with intensively to help amplify what they’re doing locally and all of whom are great reference points for anyone interested in how this kind of thing is manifested in different communities.

We’ve launched a programme to support beacon projects with equipment and have been providing bespoke training and mentoring locally (Adam has a blog of some of the people he’s worked with). We’ve continued to increase the number of newsnet members, who are starting to use the online resources to develop their own local projects.

We’ve increased the number of UK360 community news shows to one per week and have had a great response from the 60 communities who have featured in the show as well as from viewers (“Having taken the time and effort to produce a short film that we believe is a cut above the usual community production, we looked around for other outlets that might help us to get our message across and were surprised to discover UK360 – a series with high production values that was already broadcasting on Freeview”) and even the Daily Mail (who say “This thoroughly worthwhile weekly magazine brings community stories to life”).

We’re also broadcasting London360, which is focused on untold community stories in the capital and is made by a team of volunteer young journalists, as well as a wealth of other community content through Community Channel online and on TV (Here’s the TV schedule), including our new Arts360 strand which aims to engage young people in arts and cultural reporting.
Community Newswire, which we provide in partnership with The Press Association, is up to full capacity and has already distributed more than 4,000 community and charity stories into the mainstream local, regional and national media around the UK. We’re going to start geo-tagging that content and making the feed more widely available also.

We’ve launched Local360 in beta at communitychannel.org, which currently contains stories from newswire, UK360 and London360, but which will start to include community reporter content from around the country uploaded via newsnet. This feed is being made available to other platforms and we plan to make it available to anyone who wants it, either for their own consumption or for publication on their own local sites etc.

We’re working with Will Perrin and his teams to further develop the newsnet resources and find our next round of beacon projects, and are supporting this weekend’s unconference. We are also working with Jacqui and her team at the Community Media Association to provide more outlets for their great content and with NESTA as a partner in their Destination Local project as well as a number of partner projects, such as the Village SOS events, at which we’re providing community media workshops.

Next steps for us are to get the Local360 content feed working well and finding new outlets for it, perhaps working with partner organisations to surface the content in innovative new ways, increasing the number of beacon projects and providing more support to them as well as highlighting them as an inspiration to other communities who may want to pursue community media, and supporting other organisations with resources, content and outlets to amplify their work and bring it to new audiences and increase their reach and impact locally.

With Newsnet focussed on links to mainstream media and TV output, as well as supporting beacon projects; accredited training from PVM, and Talk About Local’s growing network and hands-on support for sites, there’s a rich of complementary activities in the hyperlocal field.

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The $100,000 3D4D Challenge – aided by machines that re-make themselves

April 24, 2012 – 2:15 pm

Until a few weeks ago I confess that I didn’t know much about 3D printing … and was amazed when William Hoyle told me about a printer that could reproduce itself. Well, most of itself. Would I like to go and interview the inventor? Yes indeed.

That led to a meet-up with Dr Adrian Bowyer at Bath University, an opportunity to see the RepRap machine in action, and a small contribution to the 3D4D Challenge that is launched today by the technology charity techfortrade of which William is the chief executive.

As you’ll see from the interview, featured here, the RepRap and similar machines can take a design from a linked computer and use plastics or metal to gradually build up a three-dimensional object. There are web sites like Thingiverse that will provide designs for toys, gear wheels, gadgets and more. The Economist says this is part of The Third Industrial Revolution.

The idea behind the 3D4D Challenge is to apply the ability to design in one place, and construct in another, to the reduction of costs and poverty in communities that do not have the funds or facilities to construct, say, parts for a water pump or a prosthetic limb. If they have a RepRap printer, costing about $300, they could print out parts and maybe help develop local small businesses.

They could also print out the majority of another printer for a neighbouring community. Not everything, like the electronics, can be printed – but other necessary parts can be ordered at relatively modest cost.

The Challenge offers a prize of $100,000, with ideas being developed at workshops in New York, London, Johannesburg and Nairobi. Details of those here.

The Challenge is also being supported by 3D printer and rapid manufacturing machine companies MakerBot and Econolyst.

There’s a longer version of the interview with Adrian Bowyer here. He explains that the inspiration for the RepRap is biological, drawn in part from the symbiotic relationships between plants and bees. Plants need the bees to pollinate … RepRaps need people to put their parts together.

Adrian is keen that RepRaps should develop on the Darwinian principles of survival and development of the fittest. The best RepRaps will be copied and re-copied. To achieve that, it is important that development is unrestricted … so the design is open source. As he says, if you want your printers to multiply, the last thing you want to do is spend time in court trying to stop people copying them.

Inspirational, and useful, and fun, and getting cheaper. Must succeed.

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Community reporting grows up with its own Institute

April 22, 2012 – 3:54 pm

Good to see another burst of energy from the Manchester-based People’s Voice Media, with the launch of their Institute of Community Reporters, and also a European Network for community reporters.

In a news release Gary Copitch, PVM’s Chief Executive says: “We now have over 1000 reporters on the database from across the UK and a further 600 across Europe so it seems to make sense to develop the network and recognise the achievement of the reporters.”

Gary emphasises what he sees as the difference between citizen journalism and community reporting:

Community Reporting is a community development tool with individuals producing the content/stories they want to in order to encourage dialogue and discussion and establish online and offline networks. We feel this is different to citizen journalism where the emphasis is more often on individuals reporting on other people’s news.

This chimes in with some discussion sparked by Richard Millington, who blogged that hyperlocal sites were struggling, because of too much focus on technology and on news-style content, adding:

What we need is a genuine community building approach. You identify your first members, initiate discussions, invite members to participate in those discussions, write content about what’s happening in the community, and repeat as you grow.

More here on the PVC institute:

The Institute of Community Reporters (ICR) will be the accrediting body for the Community Reporter programme. It will accredit courses, issues certificates and manage the Community Reporter badge scheme. The ICR will also:

  • Provide access to online training resources and support for running local meet ups
  • Host Community Reporter content on the communityreporter.co.uk web site
  • Curate content at a European, national, local and organisational level to feed into policy and consultation

There will be three types of membership, Bronze, Silver and Gold. Platinum members will be for authorised trainers who have completed the ICR training programme.

I’ve raised the issue of the value of citizen journalism in community building before here, and on the Media Trust Newsnet site, which started with a commitment to a journalistic approach, while offering support to a wider range of projects including a competition.

There should be a chance to discuss this issue, among many others, next Saturday at the Talk About Local unconference - updates here – which will be a gathering of the liveliest of the country’s hyperlocal bloggers, and managers of community sites.

These various approaches to citizen-generated content, and other aspects of local media, are being studied by the innovation agency NESTA as part of its programme to support the hyperlocal sector, as I reported here. Talk About Local are one of the partners. There’s a detailed report on the hyperlocal scene, commission by NESTA, available here, written by Damian Radcliffe.

I think there’s value in a diversity of approaches. Which route to go depends, as usual, on what you want to achieve. Holding local councils and agencies to account may best be done through a lively mix of news and discussion like that at Pits n Pots in Stoke on Trent.

Sites like Harringay Online and W14 provide all members with an opportunity to contribute in ways that reflect their many and varied interests.  People’s Voice Media is focussing on training for citizens to develop their own reporting skills using a range of media, rather than necessarily developing and maintaining sites.

I’m currently particularly interested in how community and social reporting approaches can be adopted by community builders and organisers, who don’t see reporting as their main activity but can benefit from the use of new technologies.

The challenge for those promoting these approaches is how, on the one hand, to acknowledge the need for a variety of styles and methods, while on the other hand providing a sufficiently distinctive offering to appeal to funders and other customers. I think the People’s Voice Media Institute, and associated training, shows how the sector is maturing in its search for different business models.

I’ve no doubt there will be plenty more innovation surfacing at the Talk About Local unconference, where NESTA and Guardian Media Group are sponsors.

 

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Exploring the new community enablers, and how digital may help them

April 19, 2012 – 10:31 am

Over the past few months I’ve been nudging at a number of projects and storylines that really needed linking up  … as well as developing explorations as a way to making sense of complex situations, joining up different interests, and helping people use social media. I think that’s what social reporting is about, and it’s coming together.

Here’s news of a new exploration to follow the ones with Big Lottery Fund and Nominet Trust. It’s about community organising, building, mobilising … networks …. and how digital technology can help. I hope you’ll find interesting the way that it has evolved, and maybe make some suggestions.

The storylines leading towards this exploration have included Networking civil society, Sociable events to build networks, Celebration 2.0, Games to realise community assets, Digital literacy, the limitations of citizen journalism in community building, and the official and unofficial connectors that may make localism work.

These and others fill out – more by chance than design – the framework I wrote about last year which focussed in new roles, new structures, new resources and new methods.

The projects that I’ve wanted to join up are firstly some interviews with community organisers and builders, commissioned by Community Matters, to help citizens and community groups understand the different models and what could be useful for them; secondly the Media4ME project on social media in multi-cultural neighbourhoods; and thirdly social reporting training.

Several things have acted as catalysts to turn this into a package. Firstly, as I trailed here, and reported more fully in my previous post, Drew Mackie and I ran a day’s workshop with the community builders at Forever Manchester, and I also talked with Mark Parker about his experience as a community organiser in Southwark.

A common strand was joining up networks both online and face-to-face. Then in addition, Drew and I have been working with Ben Lee, of the National Association for Neighbourhood Management, on the Media4ME project described here. Part of that work is helping people in Fishermead, Milton Keynes, use social media around summer fun days, bringing together many creative projects in the area.

So – here my proposed exploration, as a draft invitation.

The new enablers

Join us in an exploration of the new roles, skills and approaches of community enablers, including how can they can include digital technologies in their tools for network building and neighbourhood change.

We will be looking at the growing numbers of community organisers, builders, connectors and mobilisers now being trained and supported both by Government and independent organisations.

While there are differing philosophies of social change, there is some common ground on methods for organising and facilitating action by citizens.

Several are exploring how best to use digital technology in their work, including support for community media projects, citizen journalism and social reporting.

During the exploration we will be interviewing key people in the different movements and organisations, curating information on the different approaches, and blogging about new developments.

David Wilcox of socialreporters.net is running a workshop with Communities and Local Government where he will preview a game that will help enablers choose suitable social media methods.

On May 10 Socialreporters, Media4ME, and community organiser Mark Parker are running a seminar focussed on developing further practical ideas on the use of digital technologies in neighbourhoods, and in particular network building both online and face-to-face. How do we ensure digital is really useful for local network development?

We’ll be collaborating with those who are training community enablers of various types, and developing a social reporters kit with a number of groups now experimenting with social media in neighbourhoods.

As part of our work with the European Media4ME project we are working in Milton Keynes to support local people using social media to develop new connections in their community – and will be reporting on similar work in other European projects.

As part of the Celebration 2.0 project supported by the Nominet Trust we’ll be producing a kit specifically focussed on how to use social media to amplify community events.

We’ll also be drawing on lessons from earlier exploration with Big Lottery Fund on People Powered Change, and with Nominet Trust on how young people can use digital technology to engage socially and economically with their communities

Our outputs will be a report on community enablers, advice on using social media as part of neighbourhood change, and a kit for social reporters.

I’ve posted it in draft because I would welcome any suggestions. Subject to that, I’ll post an update here shortly, and then move over to socialreporters.net where we are running the explorations. I’m also wondering whether this might be the occasion to re-animate our Social by Social network.

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A social reporting game for community builders

April 19, 2012 – 9:38 am

Recently Drew Mackie and I ran a training workshop about social reporting with community builders at Forever Manchester, as I trailed here. In practice it was more of an exchange of ideas, insights and triggers for further exploration … which is how we hoped it would turn out. We learned a lot.

I won’t attempt a detailed description, but want to share some of the materials we used, partly because they relate to a further exploration I’ll write about in my next post. I also want to mention a couple of interesting developments we’ve seen since the workshop.

Briefly, we gave a presentation about how we saw social reporting supporting community building, with a strong focus on mapping and building networks. Slides here.

Social reporting workshop

Then we played a new variation of the Social by Social game. We invented a fictitious place to give us a context, based on Slapham, which we have used in another game.  We developed some challenges, reflected on how community builders might address them, and then used a set of cards to consider what tools might be relevant.

Social reporting game cards

I need to have a proper catch-up with Gary Loftus and the rest of the team in Manchester. However, at least two of the tools are in use. Gary Stanyard tweeted how he and the team are using the YeD network mapping software, also used by Drew, to draw both social and ideas connections. They are now avidly sharing ideas for development.

The community noticeboard n0tice.com is now in use in Great Lever.

We didn’t really know at the end of the workshop where our initial exploration would lead. Just what approaches and tools may be useful depend very much of local circumstances, and the particularly skills, equipment and disposition of the community builder. I’ve absolutely no doubt that the Manchester team will find lots of innovative applications – because of they bring such diverse experience, skills plus much enthusiasm to the work, and have great support from their organisation. They have started a blog here.

The day in Manchester was one the recent events that convinced me it is worth starting a more detailed exploration of community building, organising, enabling … networks … and how digital technology may help. That’s in the next post. Meanwhile, do drop a comment or get in touch if you are interested in a workshop.

 

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10 messages in planning digital engagement with young people

April 15, 2012 – 5:22 pm

Below are 10 messages to consider in planning any project using digital technology to engage young people and address the key challenges they face. I think most are relevant to any digital engagement process.

The messages have been summarised by Tim Davies from the event we ran last week with Nominet Trust as part of the exploration I reported here. The exploration will help frame a major funding challenge programme. Tim writes at socialreporters.net:

This Thursday we brought together a fantastic crowd of 25 thinkers, social entrepreneurs, funders, youth workers and young people at the RSA in London to explore some of the messages that had been emerging so far in our Young People and Digital Technology exploration.

In a packed two hour session we took some headline challenges faced by young people (youth unemployment; lack of youth influence of local decision making), and dug a bit deeper into them to find underlying challenges and unmet needs. With that as our context, we looked at the messages identified so far, which had been printed out as cards, and discussed them in groups to see how they might be relevant to the challenges.

Here’s the top ten messages, with links to the document where we have been crowdsourcing ideas:

19. Blend online and offline

Digital and online innovations don’t only have to be delivered online. Online tools can support local community building and action – and projects should plan to work both on the web, and in local or face-to-face settings.

6. Use games to engage
Adding an element of gaming to your project can provide the incentives for young people to get engaged. Collecting points, completing challenges and competing with others can all spur young people on to get involved and stay involved.

7. Address the innovation gaps in the back-office
Not all digital innovations have to be about directly using technology with young people. Putting better tools in the hands of frontline workers, and intermediaries who work with young people can create the biggest benefit.

17. Support young people to be creators, not consumers
Digital technology can enable young people to be content creators: “youth can learn video making, digital engagement etc. – and if it aims to be social and community focused – imagine the possibilities!”. Many youth don’t take advantage of digital opportunities for creativity – and action to support them to do so is important. From creating multimedia content, to providing feedback on the good and the bad – young people can be involved in shaping digital resources developed to support them.

3. Encourage co-design/co-design with young people
The only way to create services for young people, is in collaboration with young people. User-centred design, agile and iterative design methods all provide ways for young people to be involved through the process of creating innovative solutions.

4. Consider the livelihoods of the future
Digital technology is not just about easier ways to find a job: it changes the nature of work. Home working, portfolio working, freelancing and co-operative business structures are all enabled by the Internet. Better CVs and job information won’t solve the unemployment crisis: we need to use digital technologies to create and support new ways of working and making a living.

18. Use digital tools to enable peer-to-peer learning
In the Internet age education doesn’t have to be top-down, digital tools allow for peer-to-peer learning: helping people come together to teach, learn and collaborate.

24. Use technology to personalise services
Digital technologies can be used to aggregate content from multiple sources, and customise an individuals experience of online information. Young people out of work or education are not a homogeneous group: and have many different needs.

30. Be network literate and create new connections
Although young people might be using online social networks like Facebook all the time, the connections they have to inspiration, role models and opportunities for volunteering, education or employment can be limited. Think about how digital tools can help you to map out networks, and to make new connections that broaden the horizons and increase the resources accessible to young people.

30. Recognise the diversity of youth
Who are the young people? Although there are many similarities across the 16-24 age group, there are also some key differences in how they use technology.

As Tim says, the next steps are:

  • Iteratively refine the top 10 messages, drawing on ideas from the other messages
  • Identify key questions and issues to explore for the top messages
  • Find social media resources that can provide insights into the content of the messages
  • Pursue other emerging storylines and issues with blog posts, video interviews, shared slides and storifys
  • Start weaving this all together into an online resource and write-up

I’m excited both by the quality of ideas generated so far, and the potential for this sort of exploration that blends online and face-to-face discussion. Fortunately we are following the number one message in our process. If you have further ideas, please do contribute through the crowdsourcing document, or get in touch directly.

Link summary

Update:

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Exploring how young people can use digital tech to find new opportunities

April 2, 2012 – 9:40 am

A few weeks back I was flattered – but rather challenged – by an invite from Dan Sutch of Nominet Trust to write a provocative paper on how digital technologies might help young people engage socially and economically with their communities.

The Trust will shortly be launching a specific funding programme around this challenge, and as well as substantial background research, wanted something to help kick off some conversations and innovative ideas. However, although working on social tech for social impact – as in the book Social by Social – I don’t have specific expertise on young people, employment, education and society. Unlike, for example, Tim Davies, whose expertise spans both youth engagement and open data.

Still, lack of expertise doesn’t usually deter journalists in approaching a new topic – and fresh eyes can be an advantage – so what would a social reporter do? In chatting to Dan, I realised he was most interested in my role in curating ideas, and turning them into talking points, as we did in Social by Social.

In addition, I found that the Nominet Trust challenge programme will promote open, creative, collaborative approaches … so why not reflect that from the start?And why not work with Tim?

Dan (and fortunately Tim) thought that a great idea, and so today we are starting a process with Tim’s colleague Alex Farrow to reflect on the research, generate some first talking point propositions, hold a small event, blog about the discussions and produce a paper from that … as well as lots of other content that people can use as background.

It’s a bit like the exploration process I worked on with Big Lottery Fund with John Popham and Drew Mackie: reflections here.

I’ll post more here this week. Meanwhile, there more here about our process, and how you can contribute.

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NESTA announces details of hyperlocal research and funding

April 1, 2012 – 5:01 pm

The innovation  agency NESTA has now announced full details of Destination Local, their hyperlocal development programme, which I trailed here.

Together with the Technology Strategy Board they are funding £1 million of pilot projects.

In particular, we are looking for prototypes that make the most of mobile technologies to deliver geographically-relevant local media.

Our goal in funding the prototypes is to understand what new business models may be required, what types of service work well with audiences and the challenges and opportunities of using mobile technologies.  Successful applications will be able to demonstrate how they help to understand these themes.

I’m glad to see one of the partners are the champions of local bloggers, Talk About Local. As Sarah Hartley writes on their blog:

At Talk About Local we’re delighted to have been invited to become partners in what must be the biggest drive of its type to identify the technologies, business models, content opportunities and challenges in this space.

We’ve championed, cajoled, encouraged, developed and celebrated the great work which goes on up and down the country since we were formed in 2009 and welcome both the focus the initiative will prompt, as well as the coming together of expertise it is facilitating.

The two headline announcements today are calls for applications:

  • Nesta is offering seed funding of up to £50,000 to test the next generation of hyperlocal media services. Applications open today at www.nesta.org.uk/destination_local
  • The Technology Strategy Board aims at technology-focused feasibility projects and offers grant funding of up to £56,250. Applications will open on 23 April at http://www.innovateuk.org/competitions.

Here’s quotes from the NESTA press release:

Jon Kingsbury, Programme Director, at Nesta, says: ‘Consumers’ increasing adoption of new, mobile-based technologies offers exciting possibilities to deliver highly localised information services to niche audiences.  ‘Destination Local’ will prototype the next generation of hyperlocal services in a bid to understand whether these new technologies and platforms can deliver sustainable, scalable models that serve local communities and deliver economic benefit.’

Dr. Jeremy Silver, Creative Industries Lead Specialist of the Technology Strategy Board, says: ‘Traditional models of local media, print or broadcast, have suffered as the internet has undermined their business models. But the combination of social media with location-aware technologies, the lowering of barriers to entry for self-publishing, and the high degree of user-engagement now visible online suggests that new models for local media might emerge out of new smarter uses of enabling technologies. We believe that the UK could be a great source of innovation in this field and that this could have value to communities around the world.’

There’s a comprehensive round-up of the the announcements and links from Damian Radcliffe, who until recently worked at Ofcom tracking hyperlocal developments. In a private capacity Damian has produced an excellent landscape review as part of the NESTA research, referenced below. Damian writes:

You can read the press release here as well as some FAQs and a list of partners (which includeCreative England, Mozilla, Skillset, STV, Talk About Local, Time Out, University of Central Lancashire (uclan) and the Welsh Government).

The Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £1.8m in feasibility projects that address the converged nature of the digital landscape, the first part will look at encouraging innovative, hyper-local cross-media platforms and enabling technologies that will drive new service offerings, reach out into communities and provide conduits for public services. There’s a four page brief here.

Projects should last up to 12 months and are eligible for grants of up to £56,250 or 75% of total costs. Total project costs must not exceed £75,000. Click this link for more details.

My own involvement has been around a landscape report looking at hyperlocal in the UK. You candownload it from here. Many thanks to everyone who has said nice things about the report thus far. With 52 pages, 173 footnotes and I think 15,000 words or so, it is not necessarily a short read, but I hope it is a useful and insightful one.

Sarah Hartley over on the Talk About Local blog has published Five hyperlocal take-aways from the Here and Now report – be interested to see what others glean from it.

NESTA’s main Desination Local site

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Building a network for People Powered Change

March 30, 2012 – 12:33 pm

Over the past week the partners in Big Lottery Fund’s People Powered Change initiative have provided some updating posts about their work, on BIG’s blog.

This was promised as part of the evolution of PPC, which I wrote about earlier, referring there to the work I and colleagues did on the process. It was part of BIG’s exploration of how to be more than a funder, and as Linda Quinn, Director of Communications an Marketing puts it BIG is: “… developing a number of ideas which we hope will make us a more engaged, open and social organisation. I also hope it will help us support projects to share their stories, inspirations and ideas”.

On the communications front BIG is setting up an internal comms system, and experimenting with social reporting from events. In addition they are:

  • Crowdsourcing ideas in how best to map where funding goes and the impact it makes, drawing on people’s willingness to swap and share experience.
  • Providing support for projects to tell, share and learn from stories including surgeries and games.
  • Testing ideas on the use of social media with projects funded under the Silver Dreams Fund and the Jubilee People’s Millions.

The posts on the BIG blog are from Your Square Mile, Media Trust, UnLtd, NESTA and the Young Foundation. They mainly focus on the work they are supporting on the ground, as a result of BIG funding. It is all fascinating stuff, and I hope we’ll see more, whether on the BIG blog or on their own sites.

In my mind it sparks the possibility that BIG could extend its own “sociable organisation” approach to helping create a more sociable network for People Powered Change. As part of our work with BIG, Drew Mackie did some quick network mapping at the workshop that we ran. You can see one of the resulting maps above, showing who knew who and who worked with whom.

Drew also asked what resources organisations held, and you can see those in this online map, by mousing over the nodes.

The map is just a snapshot of relationships and resources at any time, and doesn’t say anything much about the strength of relationships or collaborations that may, or not not, be evolving.

BIG is a strong supporter of the idea of Asset Based Community Development in localities, though which the aim is to nurture and build on resources, rather than just identifying problems and seeking more funds. Or if you are seeking more funds, showing that you are making the most of what you have.

I hope BIG and partners won’t mind me suggesting that there could be scope for doing the same with the People Powered Change network that we surfaced through mapping at the workshop. It might be achieved through:

  • some more systematic mapping (there wasn’t much time at the workshop)
  • further blogging from those on the network, to let each other and all of us know what they are doing
  • some way to aggregate feeds (perhaps creating a river of news on the lines Dave Winer sets out here)
  • some sociable events
  • ways to promote better internal communications ….

… and hey, I find I’m repeating many of the ideas that Linda and colleagues are already exploring for BIG.

How much more powerful it would be if BIG could become not just a more social organisation, or even a networked organisation, but one that is catalysing a really active network for People Powered Change.

We looked at different network models as part of our work with BIG, using the diagram of this general example representing a shift from a hierarchy through more of  cluster towards a mesh. As Tom Phillips mentioned at the time, the nodes can  be created by sociable events … so that part of BIG’s programme will certainly be helpful.

If the network developed, it could be the strategic movement that would support the one-the-ground developments reported by PPC partners – not just through their individual organisational efforts, but by drawing on the strengths of the network as a whole.

It may well be that some of this is happening already, and if so early examples would be great topics for further posts from BIG and partners, or others in the field.

One great example is the work of the NESTA Neighbourhood Challenge programme, which funded 17 local projects under PPC … reported here by Alice Casey. Each neighbourhood was asked to blog about their work as it developed, and so maybe there’s potential for a PPC network in miniature emerging already.

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