In which I put my faith in humans

This is the write of up of the session I ran with Davy Jones at CityCamp Brighton in which we asked three questions: What is the simplest thing we can do to connect all the many excellent civic networks we can find in Brighton? How can we give that network of networks a stronger voice? Is the process of connecting these networks repeatable in other places – what can we learn? These questions form the basis...

Disintermediation and Community Engagement

I was at the excellent Digital Futures event  in Shropshire on Monday and spoke about Community Engagement – here is the presentation from the event if you are interested: It was an excellent day and hats off to @ashroplad for his curation of the day.  Lots of great presentations but the standouts for me were Carrie Bishop talking about digital by design not default and minimal use of technology and Alison from...

Consultation as unfashionable knitwear

We had a really great We Live Here project meeting earlier this week and so this post started as an action research one – however it got a bit out of hand as ever its also influenced by a couple of other things I have been up to this week hence this post turning up instead! If you find that a bit dull then you can just jump here to the WLH stuff. I was at the launch of the SEEMP Localism and Accountablity...

Affordances of civic spaces

I couldn’t seem to find a quick description of what I mean by online civic space and thought I’d better pop up a definition.  The purpose which I prescribe for a civic space is:  to provide an environment in which any citizen who chooses to can observe, audit and participate in democratic debate and decision making However we also need to look at the affordances of that space to define it –...

Local Places for Local People…..

This is by way of a short overview of the session I ran at CityCamp Brighton on Saturday proper post on the whole event to follow. Being chair of the judging panel meant that I could’t pitch it so I am hoping that the write up at least will be of use. The basic premise is the fact that people do not live in postcodes or wards and they definitely don’t live in lower supra-output areas. Neither do they...

Crowdsourcing or crowdpleasing? Thoughts from #fdem10

Bit of an odd week with all this snow – sadly I ended up stranded in London rather than snowed in at home as our train line gave up completely – and am feeling a little cheated that as soon as I did make it home the snow all disappeared. In common with many other people I spent a lot of time cursing the lack of real time information about what was going on – and would recommend a read of Paul Clarke’s...

So…how do we make decisions?

Before getting started here – large thanks to Anthony Zacharzewski from DemSoc for putting me right on a number of things – all mistakes still existing are clearly my own…. One of the things I like most about working through the blog is that a piece can start off as one thing and become something quite different. I thought this post was going to be something fairly straightforward documenting decision...

Co-production – what’s that all about then?

So – after much conference attending and gadding about the place I am back to some thesis writing – the whole work / academic balance having been rather upset by my diary planning. However – its interesting how being out and about and talking about these ideas helps clarify my thinking – and by speaking to the kind of variety of people I have spent time with over the last month or so you start to see...

Policing 2.0 – slides and other thoughts

I was at the excellent Policing 2.0 conference on Monday – big congratualation for the team for a very well planned and executed event – and especially for keeping the webcast participants involved as well – great job.  Here as promised are my slides from the event: I focused on talking about the challenges that pressure from the network society brings for all of government and tried to frame...

Let politicians be politicians – and make way for the banana eaters….

This post is focused on exploring the differences between civic and democratic behaviours and was drawn into focus by some really interesting conversations I have had this week while doing a short but perfectly formed trip to Yorkshire for various projects. One of the major elements of the model which I am trying to develop is the drawing of a distinction between formal and informal modes of behaviour. This is...