Author Archives: david wilcox

Update on Living Well in the Digital Age 3

October 5, 2016 – 9:25 am

My recent blogging is at mediablends.com including these posts about the Joined Up Digital initiative I’ve been working on with the Centre for Ageing Better

The @agenoretirement Festival builds on #joinedupdigital connector plans: create local community coops where #agedoesnotmatter

Ideas for connecting citizens and building local communities – developed in the Joined Up Digital initiative – moved forward significantly at The Age of No Retirement Festival yesterday.

How about new #joinedupdigital as a knowledge network, open source framework, and coop for working together

There’s no sign that any organisation will take forward the Joined Up Digital initiative for technology and older people, despite six months investment of time and/or money in the first phase by the Centre for Ageing Better, New Philanthropy Capital and Age Action Alliance. Fortunately a new option is emerging.

Looks as if @Ageing_Better #joinedupdigital may be dead after failed @BigLotteryFund bid

The JoinedUpDigitalProject, initially supported by the Centre for Ageing Better, has now heard from the Big Lottery Fund that its next stage bid has been unsuccessful.

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Techy lunch in the City shows community spirit of corporate lawyers

October 2, 2015 – 12:40 pm

I’m a big admirer of the the techy tea party movement pioneered by Sharon Tynan for Age UK London and then developed nationally by EE and Age UK. There’s now a National Techy Tea Party Day – or you can organise your own, as I reported last year from Primrose Hill. My friend John Popham has extended the idea to a techy Christmas party.

The original format is simple – companies invite older people to their premises, rather than send staff volunteers out to do good things in the community. Or hopefully both.

Then there’s tea, cakes and some face-to-face – or shoulder-to-shoulder – learning about technology. These days that’s as likely to be smartphones and tablets as laptops, with the option to bring your own or use devices provide by the organisations.

Learning at lunch

I think that the informal, conversational approach of techy tea parties, where people decide what they want to learn about, is an important complement to more formal training courses – and useful to people who already have some tech experience and want to explore further. If you bring your own device, then what works at the tea party works at home too. Not always the case with courses. Social media surgeries are another great model.

So when I spotted two local events in the City of London Healthwatch newsletter I asked Sharon if I could come along … provided I promised to blog a piece or otherwise help out.

I’ve lived in the City for 15 years – after various moves around the Midlands, Surrey, Reading, west London and Brighton – and it’s my favourite. There’s more than 7000 residents among the 300,000 workers, and lots to do, not least at the Barbican Arts Centre which is cheaper and better than many West End venues. Cheapside is now a lively High Street, and more pleasant than most.

Although bankers, lawyers and residents co-exist fairly happily we don’t usually get invited to lunch … so I was particularly tempted by the offer of a Techy Lunch at global law firm K&L Gates. They have offices in One New Change, the big shopping and restaurant complex across the road from St Pauls.

Link to video

Sharon had introduced me to Alison Westlake, who organised the event for the City’s Age Concern . In the video that I shot at the lunch, Alison describes how useful the events are for residents, and Fez Abbas, from K&L Gates, puts the event into the context of the company’s wider commitment to service in the community, explained here.

The sandwiches and cakes were excellent, K&L Gates staff exceptionally helpful, and residents contributed their own insights about the online world.

Conversations at the event, about the difficulty of finding information even when fairly confident online, gave me an idea for some possible follow through. While the City of London Corporation has good general listing of services, attractions and events, they can’t cover the whole range of smaller groups and informal activities in and around the City.

In addition, there’s scope for bodies serving older people – and anyone else – to improve their information and communication. Age UK London is running a Tell Me campaign on this.

I’ve been developing ideas with colleagues for a Maps, Apps and Storytelling initiative to provide people with better pathways to their interests, develop stronger networks in a community, tell stories, and help develop conversations online and off. One aim would be to support initiatives to address loneliness and social isolation … which can be an issue even at the heart of the City.

I’ve had some great discussions recently about developing a project in East London, using a mix of radio, other technology and events, and possibly linking up with the City for support.

I’m now thinking that I should make a start nearer to home, and see whether a group of tech-savvy City residents – and maybe corporate volunteers – would explore how best to use tech with other methods to help connect people with local opportunities, services and sociability.

I don’t think we necessarily need to develop a substantial new local web site or forum. A recent report published by NESTA and Cardiff University’s Centre for Community Journalism shows how difficult it is for the first generation of hyperlocal community sites to sustain their activity – not least because there are now so many source of information, together with DIY personal publishing via Facebook and Twitter. It’s as difficult to evolve hyperlocal digital business models as it is to keep local papers going.

The big challenge, in my mind, is how to make the most of existing local communications and resources, with an emphasis on making sense for different interests, connecting conversations, and helping people contribute. Adopt the principles of Asset Based Community Development in the digital world … join up rather than start up. I’ll see if I can gather any support for the idea and report back. If we can’t invent something appropriate both for the City and elsewhere, combining resident and business skills, where can we?

I’ll also be looking at what’s happening elsewhere. London can be complacent.

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Update on Living Well in the Digital Age 2

September 28, 2015 – 5:25 pm

Over the past few months I’ve been blogging at mediablends.com about my exploration, with Drew Mackie, into Living Well in the Digital Age, and been rather remiss in failing to provide an update since April – so here goes.

The most interesting recent development has been that the Centre for Ageing Better – initially slow to recognise the importance of digital technology – has now caught up, with the welcome announcement of a Digital Initiative and recruitment of a digital manager. More here

In addition, the Big Lottery Fund, which supports the Centre with a £50 million endowment, is promising to explore how digital technology could play a bigger part in the community projects that it supports. More here.

BIG has also announced £2 million of funding for a consortium to train and support hundreds of digital champions. The consortium – One Digital – is promising cooperation with others in the field. More here

We ran a workshop in July to explore how best to take our ideas forward – report here – and then things rather died during the holidays. My next step is to check in with the new digital manager at the Centre for Ageing Better, when appointed next month, and see if we can link the exploration to the Centre’s digital initiative.

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A little recap on Big Society

April 26, 2015 – 1:26 pm

I’m really enjoying Paul Twivy’s book Be Your Own Politician, which champions social action and citizen engagement, informed by his insider knowledge of how challenging it is to promote and negotiate support for that within the political establishment and Whitehall.

Paul recounts how he succeeded through work with Comic Relief, Timebanking, Change the World for a Fiver, and the Big Lunch, among much else – but not so much with the Big Society Network and Your Square Mile. His chapter on how this unwound is fascinating, and generally confirms my understanding as an independent observer and also paid-for socialreporter for the Network at one stage. Here’s the Big Society Wikipedia entry.

Paul recounts the point at which the change of leadership of the Network, from his initial role to that of Steve Moore, emerged through Steve promoting the fact in his bio for a TEDx event in Athens in November 2010. I picked up the bio reference – without any briefing from Steve – and blogged a piece “Steve Moore leads new Big Society Innovation Platform“.

I aimed to provide people with an even-handed update on Big Society developments, because they were so difficult to come by,  and declared I’d known Steve for a some years and worked directly for him and then the Network. I explain that Paul had worked hard on developing Your Square Mile, and this was due to launch soon.

Unfortunately Steve had jumped ahead of any official announcement, and Paul recounts in his book the difficulty and embarrassment this caused. (I didn’t appreciate until now that Steve had used Paul’s slides for his talk). May I offer a retrospective apology for my part in the upset? I probably should have checked, since I had worked for the Network, and owed it more than a purely journalistic relationship.

On the other hand, there was considerable public interest in Big Society and the Network, and I think it’s fair to say I was one of very few people trying to get behind the politics and provide a running account. I was frustrated by the lack of briefing – although reading Paul’s account, I can now better understand the reason for that. It wasn’t an open process.

Anyway, you can read that particular blog post here, and judge its tone yourself. The tag cloud on this blog – right sidebar – shows that that over the years I’ve written more about Big Society, Big Society Network, and Your Square Mile than most topics, starting with a report of the launch. That includes a video interview with Paul and Nat Wei, as well as David Cameron’s remarks. I subsequently joined the Your Square Mile mutual, reported the launch, including an interview with Paul.

I’ll leave the retrospection at that for now, although it would be interesting to reflect on what Your Square Mile was trying to achieve, and whether there are lessons for what’s now needed for local social action, blending digital and non-digital methods.  There may be some wider value in the work I’ve been doing with Drew Mackie on Living Well in the Digital Age, and the idea of local Living Labs.  Here’s some thinking on operating systems and social apps, connecting local frameworks with the DCLG Grey Cells model.

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Updating exploration into Living Well in the Digital Age

April 26, 2015 – 11:09 am

Update summary: Over the past month we’ve run a workshop with the Department for Communities and Local Government; developed some ideas on why digital innovation is important on various fronts; engaged with the new Centre for Ageing Better; and authored a paper on networks and network mapping. In addition I’ve taken a few steps to re-organise content, including moving blogging about Living Well across to mediablends.com and setting up a wiki.

Blog posts from mediablends.com

Here’s summaries of recent posts on mediablends.com archived on a new wiki.

Next steps in our Living Well exploration Briefing for workshop held with the Digital Inclusion Group and Department for Communities and Local Government, outlining our ideas for Living Labs March 27 2015

Living Well workshop report Report on the workshop held with the Digital Inclusion Group and Department for Communities and Local Government March 27 2015

Do we need Operating Systems for Living Well in the Digital Age – or a more human worldview? The new Open Policy Making toolkit from Cabinet Office helps me join up the idea of a new operating model for government with an operating system for local labs for Living Well in the Digital Age. Together they could support the emerging Grey Cells model for digital service development and citizen online engagement. However, doubts emerge about the analogy. 04/04/2015

Practical ideas for making sense of technology in Care, Living Well and #AgeingBetter Local councils and partnerships will this year be faced with the growing challenge of deciding what technology solutions to develop and promote for care, health and wellbeing in their community. We’ve put together some ideas on how to approach those issues, from our exploration into Living Well in the Digital Age. The paper is here.

Why #AgeingBetter funders and policy makers should embrace digital technology – some resources Digital technology is increasingly important for Living Well in the Digital Age. Here’s suggestions on why funders and policy makers should review existing resources. 21/04/2015

Twitter helps @BetterAgeing Centre engage with potential for digital innovation in #AgeingBetter The Centre for Ageing Better has responded positively to a Twitter discussion about the lack of reference to digital technology in its strategy. Sending a blog post in draft helped. 22/04/2015

How do we shift from yet more research and reports to innovation in #AgeingBetter? Ideas please If we believe yet more old-style research and reports isn’t the way to promote greater innovation for living well in the digital age, how can we help organisations like the Centre for Ageing Better make the change? Ideas please 23/04/2015.

Networks and network mapping

Drew Mackie has authored a really comprehensive paper on networks and network mapping

Reorganising content

Here’s how I’m re-organising content following earlier blogging on this site, and use of  a Google site.

  • First, blogging is now over at mediablends.com, on a Withknown site. The advantage of that is the site allows you to automatically post the title and a link to Twitter and other social media. Any responding tweets then curate under the post, which makes it easy to track conversations. It also uses webhooks to post to the team space we have on Slack.com.
  • Second, my son Dan set up a Git-powered wiki on mediablends.org.uk where I’m gathering content from earlier sites, archiving the blog posts, and adding longer papers with Drew Mackie.
  • Third, I’ve followed Dan’s advice in using Markdown both on the blog and wiki: that’s basically text files with simple markup like # • [] () that an editor turns into html. It’s quick to write and easy to transfer between sites.

I’ll update occasionally here, but do please take a look at mediablends.com and content on the wiki.

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Two reports promote people-led local solutions – Big Lottery Fund strategy and a Locality campaign

March 24, 2015 – 1:35 pm

Two launch events today promote more local control and citizen involvement in the delivery of services and the development of community projects.

  • Locality, through its Keep it Local campaign, is pressing for more public service contracts to be let to local organisations, instead of large private sector companies. They quote research promising big savings, and well as more responsive services.
  • The chief executive of the Big Lottery Fund, Dawn Austwick, has launched a strategic framework Putting People in the Lead, saying “we want to start with what people bring to the table, not what they don’t have; and from the belief that people and communities are best placed to solve their problems, take advantage of opportunities, and rise to challenges”

Locality is, in part, arguing on behalf of its 500 members, some of whom supply local services under contract and would like to do more.

However, I think there is a very valid argument more generally for local contracting, because it it will be increasingly important to make the most of local assets and relationships as public bodies face more cuts.

There’s a rather good 2012 Locality essay here by Jess Steele on new-style regneration.

New regeneration will be driven by local people as agents of neighbourhood change, connected through solidarity networks, with the state and market as enablers. It will focus on the fine grain of the lived neighbourhood, abjuring all silos and proactively weaving new fabrics of ownership and responsibility for the built and social environment. It will work within its means, finding new ways to unlock resources and capture value. It will encourage and reward the grassroots virtues of thrift, impatience and sociability.

That doesn’t work so well if a lot of the resources for local delivery are controlled centrally, and directed to standard formulae.

Locality have also been playing their part in realising local assets, and building networks, with their 5000-strong programme of community organisers that has supported around 1500 new community projects and actions over the past four years. The programme has been funded by Cabinet Office as part of the original Big Society vision. A new legacy organisation – Community Organisers Ltd, or CoCo – will launch this summer.

The Big Lottery Fund framework is admirably short, with the emphasis on some key principles and general statements about the way the Fund will work as an enabler and catalyst as well as grant-maker. Dawn Austwick writes:

We also want to be more of a catalyst and a facilitator – recognising the feedback we got about our place in the funding ecology and civil society more broadly. It’s not our job to prescribe but it can be our job to link, to share, and to encourage. To be a network, or a central nervous system that people navigate around, finding fellow travellers, being surprised and intrigued by the work of others, sharing evaluation and impact stories, and so much more.

There are three specific first steps:

Accelerating Ideas: a pilot programme providing a flexible route to funding for innovative practice that can be adopted and adapted more widely to grow its impact.

Awards for All: new test-and-learn pilots are underway to simplify our open small grants programme.

Digital Community: a new function of our website which will begin to put digital at the heart of our grant-making. The community will enable people and organisations to network, collaborate and communicate, opening the Fund up to our stakeholders.

I know that these ideas have been some time in development, from work John Popham and I did for BIG on People Powered Change back in 2011–12. I don’t know if our input made much difference, but Shawn Walsh, Linda Quinn and other staff were very responsive to the ideas we were reporting, and Linda’s blog at the time foreshadows some of today’s directions *.

As I wrote earlier BIG have already soft-launched their digital community, which you can see here in test mode.

There’s a blog post about the Strategic Framework but as yet comments are not enabled (see correction**). However, Dawn is inviting responses on Twitter @DawnJAustwick.

BIG are currently interviewing for the post of Digital Community Manager, so there may be more scope for online engagement when that post is filled.

We certainly need somewhere to discuss how things will play out locally in the face of another round of austerity, which looks likely whatever the government, and pressure on local government to save money through digital services.

More ideas later on what it may take to blend digital into people-powered local developments, and help realise Jess’s vision.

* More recent, and extensive, consultations about strategy were carried out last year: Your Voice Our Vision

**  commenting is open on the post about the strategy once you join the site. Obvious really – apologies.

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Open Policy Making promises engagement as well as digital innovation

March 17, 2015 – 11:31 am

A couple of posts on the Open Policy Making blog this week provide insights into how digital technologies, network thinking, and new ways for government to operate may change the way we receive services, engage as citizens – and maybe develop our own community-level innovations.

We learn that civil servants are exploring the future with specialists in in data science, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, sensors, applied programming interfaces, autonomous machines, and platforms.

Will this just lead to more top-down initiatives which will be tough for our elected representatives to understand and guide – let alone anyone else? Hopefully not, from the tone of the posts. Maybe it will help with joined-up communities for citizens too.

William Barker, Head of Technology Strategy and Digital Futures at the Department for Communities and Local Government, wrote yesterday:

Top down thinking and decision making no longer delivers the range of services that communities want. Open Policy Making is about broadening the range of people we engage with, using the latest tools and techniques and taking a more agile and iterative approach.
Open Policy Making is about broadening the range of people we engage with, using the latest tools and techniques and taking a more agile and iterative approach.
DCLG’s “Grey Cells” Open Policy Making Initiative working with the Transformation Network has been joining-up the “grey cells” of user experience, innovation, new thinking and service transformation – using a people and places centred approach to explore how digital technology and approaches can make a positive difference.

As William explains, the Grey Cells model is focusing initially on digital inclusion, Better Services, Elders as Assets and Digitising Government.

As I wrote here, with more details of the model:

I think that the Grey Cells blueprint could provide us with a much-needed framework to connect policy and programmes with the reality of what’s happening on the ground – whether through local programmes, or people’s choices as consumers to acquire a new phone, tablet or (less and less) a computer.

Today Paul Maltby, Director of Open Data & Government Innovation in Cabinet Office, writes about how ideas like nudge, digital, wellbeing, social action, open data, social finance, user-centred design have moved in five to ten years from the fringes of how government could develop in the future to become more mainstream, and asks, what will be the new norm by 2020–25?

Paul links to this video from the Government Digital Service explaining the idea of Government as Platform:

However, development could be enabling at community level too:

Platforms are about providing a (digital) framework within which others abide by rules, using data and a payment and regulatory ecosystem to unleash invention at scale. Could this notion not be applied to the wider face-to-face operation of government? Think of developments where innovative services like Casserole Club would be able to provide its amazing service in not just a handful of local authorities, but have the opportunity to develop at scale as needed by users UK wide. Consider how NationBuilder has developed a platform to organise social campaigns, and if the same organising principles were built in to the fabric of government what this could mean for democracy – particularly among a generation that expect to collaborate and create content. This brings with it an opportunity to redefine the role of government, and even create a different relationship between state and public.

There’s more about a new operating model for government, and reference to a workshop with NESTA and the Open Policy Team where they’ll be talking with specialists in data science, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence etc.

It is encouraging to get windows into latest government thinking from the Open Policy Making blog and other sources, including prototyping in the Policy Lab

What particularly interests me – together with Drew Mackie, and other colleagues – is how to help support similar open and creative thinking at community level about the impact of digital and the change it brings. We are experimenting with games and simulations evolved over the past 15 years, and well as explorations like our recent one into Ageing Well and Living Well in the Digital Age.

I’ll write more shortly about a workshop we are developing that aims to bring the Grey Cells model down to community level, with a scenario like this one.

We all need to understand a bit more about the implications of the terms and processes that Paul describes – and to do that we need creative, social spaces in communities to complement those in Policy Labs.

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How about celebrating the 20 year history of community networking and hyperlocal

March 2, 2015 – 2:33 pm

The annual Talk About Local unconference #TAL15 on Saturday was a great opportunity to catch up with the world of local blogging, online communities and community journalism that’s now collectively known as hyperlocal.

As usual on these occasions Will Perrin, Sarah Hartley and Mike Rawlins did a great job of semi-organising the crowd into self-managed sessions about everything from WordPress plugins to crowdfunding, and “surviving the abusive relationship with Facebook”, and stimulating lots of energising conversations in between. Here’s Sarah’s round-up.

The event also prompted me to reflect that it’s now just 20 years since I and a bunch of other enthusiasts, inspired by earlier North American online pioneers, and the arrival of the World Wide Web, launched UK Communities Online as a network to support local digital initiatives, or what we called community networking … so please excuse a little digital nostalgia. Maybe 2015 is a good time to look at what was then, what’s now, and what might be next.

In 1995 I spotted, thanks to the Web, that the Morino Intitute was holding their second Ties that Bind conference at Apple HQ in Curpertino, and managed to blag my way to a fare and conference tickets. Thanks due to Kaye Gapen, and Steve Cisler.

You can read here a history of what happened over the next few years, including a launch conference in October 1995 at BT headquarters, and funding for network development from BT, IBM, the Department for Trade and Industry and others.

Tribute is particularly due to Richard Stubbs, Michael Mulquin, Kevin Harris, Dave Greenop and other pioneers who did so much of the early work. Michael became UKCO director. Terry Grunwald provided so much inspiration and experience from the US (and we must rehost the Making the Net Work site). I hope we might update all our stories – about which more below.

Although Communities Online didn’t survive as a network, I think it helped people explore what the Internet might mean to local communities, and to share experience in experimenting with different approaches before the days of blogs and other social media. I believe that we contributed to government thinking, and industry too.

I’ve put together below links to pages I wrote. Many external links are unfortunately broken, which shows how digital is not necessarily a good archive medium. Or put another way, if you want stuff to last, you have to maintain your own site. Even so, I’m afraid I lost some stories.

What’s perhaps most interesting is the sort of models for Community Internet we envisaged then … as expressed in a Manifesto which the BBC helped promote at the time.

Summary of a manifesto for local onine communities – 1999

  • Every citizen, regardless of their economic circumstances, should be able to share the benefits of the Information Age – including better communications, greater participation, electronic life long learning, and e-commerce. To achieve this they should have access to local community technology centres, plus public online forums and services to create an online community. The centres will provide technical support and help ‘on the ground’, the forums will be ‘virtual spaces’ for online communities related to localities.
  • Centres and online communities should be easy to find – signposted locally, and through a national gateway.
  • Public support should be available, particularly in low-income neighbourhoods, where the market is unlikely to provide facilities on a sustainable basis without public funding.
  • Development of centres and online communities should be piloted through pathfinder projects, with community participation.
  • There should be a network and support for the local champions and partnerships who will develop the centres and online communities.
  • A virtual resource centre should be developed to provide sources of advice for local champions and partnerships, and a neutral space online for discussion of the development of centres and online communities.

Long version of the manifesto

Quite a lot of this has come about. The Tinder Foundation has been particularly successful in developing and maintaining a network of local centres.

The people who gathered on Saturday at #TAL15 – and others – are innovating locally in ways we couldn’t dream of. Chris Taggart’s Openly Local map shows hyperlocal sites throughourt the UK and Ireland.

There is a Centre for Community Journalism and course at Cardiff University

I mentioned the manifesto and Communities Online to Will and a few other people at the unconference, and found some interest in discovering more about our collective history … and what we can learn from the journey.

We talked tentatively about a 20-year anniversary event, and re-gathering stories from the pioneers.

It could provide an opportunity to explore more fully what community-based models are most relevant today, to complement the local digital frameworks being developed by Government: see for example my reflections on the Grey Cells blueprint. My hunch that in future we’ll have to look at personalised approaches, as well as local sites, as I wrote here about Living Well with tech.

I’ll check whether others involved in 1990s, and now, would be interested in organising something, and if so hope to get an organising group together, ideally with TAL.

Meanwhile, if you are interested, please drop a comment, or contact me via david@socialreporter.com or @davidwilcox.

Talk About Local and #TAL15

Links from the Partnerships Online site

Other links

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Switching focus from Ageing Better to Living Well with tech: it’s all personal

February 18, 2015 – 3:31 pm

The Ageing Better exploration into how innovations, enabled by digital technology, can help support personal well-being, has now reached the point where we can drawn some conclusions and plan the next stage.

As you’ll read in the summary below, the exploration, which I’ve been leading with Drew Mackie, was triggered by the Big Lottery Fund’s £82 million  Ageing Better programme, and particularly the initial lack of ways to exchange experience and introduce digital innovation. We’ve been working with the Digital Inclusion Group of Age Action Alliance. (DIG).

As I reported the other day, BIG has now opened its online community for testing, and there is a space for Ageing Better. We should hear more about local plans – and innovative developments – in a couple of months when the partnerships know how far their business plans have been approved, and receive confirmation of funding.

Meanwhile the main conclusion in our report is that we should switch our focus from programmes, to exploring in more detail what digital technology means to the individual – in different situations, with different interests, needs, capabilities and support. The scope for digital healthcare is likely to be particularly important, as Tony Watts has highlighted.

We’ll be playing through what that means in a workshop next month with DIG, and I’ll be posting more here about the approach we’ll be taking, based on the games and simulations reported here.

Summary from our interim report

The exploration into how to use technology for Ageing Better started in the autumn of 2014 with the idea that it should be possible to map organisations and resources in the field to enable more sharing of experience, reduce constant re-invention, and promote cooperation. The Big Lottery Fund hadn‘t done that centrally in 2014 for their five-year £82 million Ageing Better programme – could we demonstrate an alternative bottom-up approach, building on past work in the field?

This report summarises the journey that is documented more fully on our site – and comes to the conclusion that we should switch our focus from technology in Ageing Better, at a policy and programme level, to technology for Living Well as individuals, together with what is needed to support that in local communities and centrally. The challenge is that every individual has different interests and preferences – so one size of support doesn’t fit all.

Over the four months from September 2014 we moved beyond the basic idea of mapping of resources and organisations to:

The rationale was that we needed to know what we were looking for in mapping, before starting a big trawl. It‘s been a voluntary effort so far, and we needed to focus. We decided that if we could generate ideas on tech for Ageing Better, and cluster those, we could then look at which organisations might share experience and perhaps work together.

We were able to test some of our emerging ideas against a wide-ranging discussion at a symposium on technology and innovation, organised by the South East Forum on Ageing. Our blog post linking our exploration to the SEEFA discussion was re-published by Age Action Alliance.

What emerged from that – and our other explorations – was that the idea of promoting cooperation among organisations in the field, to achieve greater benefits and innovation, was somewhat naive. As other commentators confirmed, co-operation is difficult because organisations are competing with each other for funding; innovation is difficult because few organisations actually use social technology. The major challenge is culture. We could map ideas, organisations, and resources – but the likelihood of making any difference is low.

At this stage – in February 2015 – we are considering a change of focus towards the individual. It seems likely that the greatest progress will be made by exploring how older people – and those who help – can choose and use technology for personal well-being.

Tony Watts, chair of the South West Forum for Ageing, has set out how to make progress by linking digital health and digital inclusion. Roz Davies provides a model of citizen-centred care and digital health provision. The Grey Cells initiative from the Department for Communities and Local Government provides a framework for digital engagement that could help connect the individual and programmatic models.

So at this stage we are considering reframing the exploration towards Living Well with Technology – what can be done to enable and support the individual. Although our focus is on older people, the lessons will be more widely applicable.

Mapping, connecting, convening is needed at the programme level, but we don’t have the resources to do that, or any leverage to achieve much change. We do, however, suggest some modest ways forward.

Conclusions from the exploration so far

I think we can conclude:

  • There‘s lots of opportunities for innovation and use of tech for ageing better – but it is difficult to move forward on a broad front because of cultural and other barriers in organisations in the ageing and inclusion industries. There‘s great work being done – but also much re-inventing of the wheel. Competition for funding inhibits cooperation. Lack of familiarity with technologies limits development taking account of the consumer adoption of mobile tech. As this blog post summarised, the energy is around people apps and connectors – not organisations.
  • We need a shift of metaphor and framework from digital divide. Instead of thinking how to get people to learn about computers, we need to focus on how to help people adopt just enough tech for their needs, and how to support that. The models needed are personal and social ecologies.
  • We now need to experiment at several different levels: the individual, the surrounding social network and support system, and in programmes.

Overall, the issue is Living Well with Technology – rather than Bridging the Digital Divide.

Here are several ideas for moving forward:

  • Use the workshop games and simulations that we have been developing for our Living Lab to help people play through the options at different levels, and then turn the games into kits.
  • Test the ideas at a neighbourhood level
  • Explore the scope for work with partnerships in the Ageing Better programme, or with towns and cities aiming to create Age Friendly places.

Do get in touch if you would like to know more – david@socialreporter.com

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Big Lottery Fund soft launches online community – and advertises an interesting job

February 16, 2015 – 12:39 pm

The Big Lottery Fund has opened up an online community platform that’s been under development for some months, judging by earliest message in some of the forums, and news trailed here. The Welcome says:

You’ll be able to network with other people, learn about previous projects, get expert advice and share your knowledge.

There are online spaces for countries, programmes, projects and groups. I’ve been particularly interested – as discussed here – in a platform for knowledge exchange on BIG’s Ageing Better programme, and that’s now available here.

I haven’t spotted any formal announcement of the online community , although BIG is advertising the post of Digital Community Manager. I gather that’s a replacement, rather than new job, and the site is currently being used for some live testing.

I’m interested in the development strategy, because the usual wisdom – see Feverbee’s excellent resource – is that this should be a carefully managed process from the outset.

I hope there may be a blog post explaining the process, and inviting enthusiasts to give feedback and ideas. I think one of the challenges/opportunities will be to engage people who currently use the various BIG twitter accounts and tag streams, and connect with BIG blogging, which tells some great stories. There is some blogging here.

My hunch is that success will also depend on internal engagement, and whether BIG staff are able/encouraged to join in. That would make it an attractive way to get guidance on funding, and tap into the enormous knowledge resources that BIG holds about projects. I found some encouraging posts from funding managers.

Either way Digital Community Manager is going to be an interesting job.

I’ll hold off further comment until I’ve had a look around, and take the positive view that it is really good news BIG has created the space, and is hopefully open to input on how it develops. Hope to see others in there too.

Update: just spotted this strap line “Welcome to our online community – Test phase! Help us improve by signing up and feeding back!”

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