Response - will the internet kill think tanks?

First off why am I writing this on my own blog rather than on the Guardians comment pages? Because they’ve closed comments. Why?

I can only presume it’s because they had too many responses, or that they think that the internet is like a newspaper and that after a few days nobody will read the articles anymore. Either way, they’ve process issues.  If there’s too much comment data then design a decent comments path that limits comment dialogue in main arena, allows opportunity to indicate agreement, and add links if someone wants to blog about it.

and breath.

Back to the question at hand. Will the internet kill Think Tanks?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/20/thinktanks.internet

Richard Reeves concludes “So long as politicians are hungry for ideas, thinktanks have a bright future.” What’s to stop them getting ideas elsewhere?

“So long as think-tanks can demonstrate real expertise – be “elitist” in the best sense of the term – they should welcome the heat of online debate.”

Firstly, I take objection to “experts”, indeed I’d go so far as to challenge the myth of experts in the realm of thought wholesale. What qualifies an expert? How is someone living in a london suburb a better “expert” on poverty, than someone who is living in poverty?

So if an “expert” is someone who works for a think tank, what about the “experts” who are not in such a form of employ? What of the people on the ground? Those who research by doing and applying their thinking, and feeding this back into their processes? When these individuals generate voice and opinion, the only thing that makes theirs less valid is that they don’t take the ministers out for lunch.

Right now the influence that Think Tanks continue to hold over government is, as he rightly points out is due to “intimate” relationships.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the internet should kill think tanks (only cos I’d quite like to work for one), but it’s about time they started thinking along the following lines - The internet is a million voices, I have the politicians ears, how do I act as a filter to find and share the good ideas.

If they don’t do this effectively, how long will it be before we have a virtual collaborative think tank? All we need is someone who can take MPs out for dinner

Creating tools for public engagement in secret

photo credit richard winchell

This is a WTF post.

There are several organisations that I’m aware of at present developing social media strategies in secret.

At the core of all these strategies lie themes of transparency, accessibility, open communication, and community engagement. Yet the strategies themselves are being designed with the minimum of public consultation and behind closed doors.

This is patently ridiculous. To try and design tools which are intended to further public interaction, without involving the public in the process is like flying blind. We should be using existing engagement tools to create better engagement tools. We should be evolving strategies and learning from the process of public consultation to create better tools for public consultation.

The statement made is “We want to create tools for better public engagement, but we want to create them without engaging the public”. Can anybody else see the issue here?

Web Improvements

Pondering the world of web improvements, one of the joys is that if you can think of it it already exists. Fantastic as it means I don’t have to wait for the functionality, or if I do I don’t have to wait for as much of it.

So first up - The split browser function.

Picture credit qq0526.tw - This guy got abit carried away

Why did I want this?

So I could drag and drop images and text straight into my blog from other web sites and searches.

So I could drag and drop between my files and the web. This will make the creation of offline and online content so much easier.

To illustrate watch my screencast here. (Yes I’m still voice shy, and could’ve launched piclens sooner, didn’t need to right click etc. Still getting used to new processes i’m testing out).

Improvements, these improvements are to this system, not a particular application. They reflect what I would like to be able to do and how i’d like to do it.

Ability to bookmark split screen page collections and format - so that I can easily access the set up created everytime I blog.

Page search linking - it does what I have just illustrated automatically, rather than having to manually search by tag type.

Frames function share - ability to share the functionality I’ve set up.

Ability to run Piclens style function in frame only so I can select without going to overlay.

Web functions that are designed with this kind of use in mind (so I can have picture search, tag search, and blog searches running in one window connected to what i’m writing).

Flickr note (although applies to so many other web pages). Once I know what your site does and how it works, all I want to see and load is the function. In this case the search bar.

If wordpress (or another blog) was good enough and incorporarated these kind of functions. ie. passive picture recommendation based on tags, passive blog recommendation based on tags (prior to blog posting), and tag recommendation, I wouldn’t need to try and cobble all this together.

CC licensing stamp - why can’t we put a cc licence icon at side of image when browsing in piclens so I know what i’m free to use. Then an embed watermark function for ease of assigning credit. More on this later.

Can’t open documents from my laptop in web browser, is there a tool that can do this? Online is my workspace, offline now holds very little. I want to drag and drop easily between the 2. Rather than dragging to a desktop folder and back out again.

Yes I’m demanding, you’ll see more of this in the future.

Tools used: Piclens Plug in -https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579

Split Browser Plugin - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287

Google Adwords Keyword tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Www.flickr.com - be sure to use CC licensed content and attribute content owner

Organisations and Social Media - Stage 1. The buy in

To start introducing social media into any large organisation, one must first recognise the obvious - Social media is social. It can only be as successfull as the number of people using in, and social forces will come into play.

What do I mean by social forces? I mean your dealing with people, each will have their own desires, wants, needs and opinions. Some will be positive, they desire change and can clearly identify what they want from any social media system. Others will have concerns, fears and a reluctance to change the status quo.

Also to be considered are what social systems and methods will need to be used in the real world in order to drive and encourage use of social media systems. NB. This should be 2 way traffic, social media used effectively creates real world bonds, it should be used as a tool to facilitate this, not as a substitute.

Therefore, prior to beginning organisational change on such a scale (and social media is a big scale, if done effectively you are changing power structures, communication systems, culture, and process), it is neccessary to undergo a process of engagement.

Create the opportunity for conversations surrounding social media (although you may not wish to use the term - terms like internal communications, community engagement, website, content creation are some good places to start). The important thing is that you don’t start bandying around the term because it sounds cool.

You need to define what problems you are solving.

The process of gathering up these issues, will actually highlight some of the problems you will face in instigating a new process and highlight some of the design considerations. It will also help you identify the relevance of social media tools to your organisation, and enable you to demonstrate to members the most important considerations - what’s in it for them? and what to I have to do?

From my experience of one week of engagement, I have found the following.

There are far more people who want to have a say, than we can take the time to meet 1 to 1 (therefore we will have to design an engagement process for the organisation to have it’s say in a distilled manner).

There is actually a strong desire for change and very brave views of how the public can be engaged are being taken.

It has helped identify who our ambassadors, and seeders will be for this project. Who will take our ideas and propogate them within the organisation.

Socialising Social Enterprise

At the Catalyst awards Dan Mcquillan asked “what next?” for the Catalyst Awards and Social Enterprises.

He suggested a mash up of all the events together to bring them all under one roof. I suggest taking it a stage further.

Why don’t we look in more detail at the collaboration opportunities that exist within these separate social enterprises, the shared needs, the shared resource. In short why don’t we apply our own thinking to our ventures and tap into the power that this community represents.

Below are some examples of how we can support each other further using existing social resources and some of the shared problems/issues we face.

Research

Currently the data garden that is google, my del.icio.us feeds, my twitter recommendations, google reader, etc. is fast becoming a jungle. It’s too much information for any one person to sift through, as a result we miss out. Why don’t we share the work and distil and disseminate the information. Or pay someone to do so? A shared knowledge treatment policy could incorporate the following thinking?

Tools/APIs

We can all benefit from sharing our information, and there is some information and tools we would all benefit from. We have common, yet loosely affiliated goals. Certain tools could assist with these goals. If we represent a common market, we represent a common opportunity. We should work together to identify these needs.

For example, both www.localeyes.org and www.schoolofeverything.com would benefit from a community space tool, that allowed for the identification and easy booking of freely available local spaces. Why not take it a step further and apply it to underused spaces (ie. night clubs at certain times, churches, etc.)

Users

By nature of their engagement in community based projects, largely the users that most sites draw will be the same, why not allow them to easily migrate from one to the other and form their own independent communities. Our sites are merely tools, set the communities free.

Vision, publicity and representation

I believe that social enterprise sites represent a series of shared goals, and shared vision. A shared identity and manifesto, and a movement that the public can identify with can only serve to further enhance public awareness for us all (and therefore traffic and funding). We need a collective banner that distinguishes us from the likes of facebook and myspace.

“Anti Social” behavior

Ever since Thatcher denied it’s existence society has been in decline, like a Discworld god that no longer has a following.

I found this great quote in the Private Eye this morning…

“The government was concerned about ANTI SOCIAL BEHAVIOR and in 2004 passed a law about it. This law allows Police to break up and move on groups of young people who are gathered together in a public place.”

Herein lies a key element of our problem, social behavior is against the law. For all of the talk of community empowerment and how we can rebuild community somehow we’ve forgotten that a community is a group of people interacting. The law is currently designed to stop such events happening.

This perception of Anti Social behavior has come to be pegged automatically to groups independent of their behavior, it presupposes intent to be disruptive by virtue of wanting to hang out with friends in a public space.

The question that we should be asking with respect to groups of people hanging out on the streets, is why is it just the “youths” that are doing it? We should all be doing it. We have to encourage the public into “public spaces”, we all need to be hanging out and being social outside of Pub and Café environments, and talking to people in the streets.

Streets are perceived as dangerous more often when they are empty, not when they are full. We need to fill them with people not police.

As an aside (no doubt to be blogged further in the future), we also need to address some of the reactionary policies and media campaigns that over the years have further eroded society by placing divides between generations. The very way that we attach behaviors to and define “generations” automatically creates an artificial friction, a perceived lack of commonality and understanding. This coupled with media generated paranoia – all gangs of youths are dangerous mugging hoodies, and adults talking to “youths” are most likely pedophiles, drives a wedge between potential intergenerational communication from both sides as perception works both ways (ie. people sensitive of how they may be perceived by others, this perception of self is also shaped by media fed convention).

So if you want to encourage community, encourage social behavior (don’t outlaw it), bring back the street party.

One night in 11 ideas: Word wiki-spelling plugin

It’s half twelve now, so I’ll be brief – Plugin for word that links to a wiki spell tool that allows users to upload new word uses and lingo. Like wiki and plugin for example.

One night in ten: Distributed postal service

Stemming from the communities talking to each other conundrum, but with a little of rising fuel costs thrown in.

Do we really need mail delivered to our door?

What if it was 5 doors down, and I had to pop round (or they did by private arrangement if I’m really lazy) or the end of the street?

What if we allowed trusted parties to hold our post (would make DHL and other deliveries easier)?

What if we were able to coordinate transport through people’s daily routes?

Is it possible for anyone to sell stamps for their service or create an alternate payment system?

Difficult issues here are service signup (both provider and user), and distribution of payment – or would people do it for nothing if they all got service for very little cost – exchange of service.

One night in ten ideas: Street sales rights

This stems from another musing on why we are so threatened by teenagers on the street.

Aside from the media portrayal that is

The real question is – Why is it only teenagers on the streets?

Here lies the problem, how can we have community if we stay in our houses?

So one answer is street rights.

Allow people (or promote if already so) to sell in front of (or from if blocking the street) their houses. Encourage entire streets to show, sell and share. Get people out and talking.

One night in ten ideas: Tag Linking

Tool that links delicious tags with your blog page, so when people add tags for your page, they add them to your page.