Thinking and doing: theory and practice

Welcome and thanks for visiting.  This blog is where I write about projects I am working on, capture my research in progress and generally organise my thinking in public.  It helps me enormously to have a place to do this – I hope you also find it useful.  If you are new to this space you may find it helpful to read my ‘why I still blog blog‘ but suffice to say that this a place where I share my thinking in public but that means its subject to change and may look quite different when its actually applied in my role at Dorset Council.

I tend to roam between designing for democracy and more general thinking about technology driven change and the digital mindset.   I’m increasing thinking about systems practice as well as my own leadership practice.

If you are looking for my professional bio then you need to head over to LinkedIn .

Dr Catherine Howe

Here are some of the things I am currently working on:

Latest posts

PepNet summit and some general thoughts

Bit of a change of pace as this is a note from an event I was at last week – normal academic service will resume soon (am reading The Myth of Digital Democracy so that you don’t have to….). I  wrote this while at Hamburg Airport waiting for a delayed ...

The Network Society and your local neighbourhood

The ability to reach the other side of the world without leaving your sofa brings changes beyond saving the cost of a stamp. The ability to share data and content without doing so in person or setting it in the aspic of print gives it a life of its own ...

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 ...

Space, Place and an exploration of the term hyperlocal

This post is an attempt to come up with a robust definition of what we mean when we use the term hyperlocal – I realise that other people may have different definitions so would appreciate comments on this. When I try and describe my research area I tend to say ...

Virtual Town Hall – long overdue update

You have all been too polite to ask but some of you may have been wondering what has been happening with the Virtual Town Hall project that kicked all of this off. This post is intended to explain where are with the project and why things have been rather quiet. ...

Categorisation and other exciting details…..

Scarily enough I am now starting to write up my thesis – the aim is a chapter a month – and I have been blogging a bit less as a result (though have a few posts queued up – its addictive you know.  Below is some of the ideas from ...

Enhancing Local Democracy

I ran a workshop at the Enhancing Local Democracy Conference on Friday and wanted to share my slides: You will be relieved to know that I prepared far more slides than I made people listen to……and we ran the sessions in a fairly loose way – many thanks to Dave ...

LGA Annual Conference Observations

I was at the LGA Annual Conference last week and just wanted to capture a couple of observations from it.  Firstly, I found it genuinely inspiring to spend time with a group of people who, whatever their motivations or political convictions, are deeply committed to helping their communities  – and ...

Republic 2.0 – reading and appreciating

It is hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present low state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar (J.S. Mill) This is a proper essay I ...

 
 
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