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. I try and maintain a running post with some definitions and background reading that may be helpful.
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. You may find it helpful to read this ‘why I 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 Adur and Worthing.
If you are looking for my professional bio then you need to head over to LinkedIn . If you are trying to find me online for a more research orientated discussion then you can find me on twitter as @curiousc. If you want to contact to me about speaking at an event then you can contact me via either of these routes.
Dr Catherine Howe
Here are some of the things I am currently working on:
Latest posts
Social Web Framework: Version 0.5
This post is really about trying to explain the mental framework by which I ‘organise’ the social web into different categories of behaviour and types of technologies. This is very much my own view but builds on frameworks and analysis by others which I referenced. I have written it as ...
Social contracts for social websites
Though I am getting very excited about the technology for the virtual town hall (sad I know) the real challenges are I think in the social elements of creating a permanent civic space – a local public sphere (yes – lots of Habermas read this weekend). There are three main ...
Social networking policies
I’m trying to get a list together of published social networking policies – or at least published drafts). At the moment I have: Warwickshire Devon I am sure I have more of these lurking in my inbox but would really appreciate hearing from anyone else who can add to this ...
#tal09 – good piece in the guardian
Good piece in the guradian about the Talk about Local unconference – you can read about it here. Perhaps its my reaction to reading the Coleman book this weekend but I think this hyperlocalism is very important and very much the approach we are taking with the virtual town hall ...
Literature Review of new Coleman / Blumler book: The Internet and Democratic Citizenship
I’ve just finished reading “The Internet and Democratic Citizenship; Theory, Practice and Policy (by Stephen Coleman and Jay Blumler) so this my research note for my literature review so there are some observations and then a wrap up from me….this is a long one so you may just want the ...
myconservatives? Or someone elses??
Perhaps it is just because I have only started twittering this week but there did seem to be a lot of talk about the new conservative party website – but perhaps the twitterati are always this vocal! Of the articles/blogs I’ve read today I thought the futuregov one was probably ...
Hoping for the iPlayer effect with social media?
Interesting article today from the Guardian – talking about the fact the BBC are planning a major website re-write with social media at the heart of things. You can read the article here. At Public-i where we do a lot of work using video for democratic projects we really saw ...
Facebook sign up Sport England….
Busy week as we had the kick off meeting for the Virtual Town Hall pilot as well as getting EU funding bids finalised. Both went well! I also met Liz Azyan who, part from being a huge source of knowledge about what people are doing online via her blog has ...
ePetitions Round table – lots to learn
I’ve been spending lots of time on petitions this week with a Consultation Institute round table on Thursday and a workshop for members in North Lincs. Both were really interesting with a lot of points raised. It does seem that with the Local Democracy Bill looking like it will get ...
Quick post from edem09
Just been at the eDem09 conference in Vienna – I will post properly once I am on a proper keyboard and not the phone one but just wanted to capture the headlines: * lots of talking about social networks and I think a big question was posed as to whether ...
Digital Leadership All posts
Government Digital Service redux
This is a quick ‘hot take’ as the kids say about the launch of the ...
Field Notes All posts
Democratic dreams
Another post with some dreams – very much from a personal perspective and as someone ...
NHS Citizen All posts
NHS Citizen design – agile but structured
I wanted to capture my first reflection from the final NHS Citizen design workshop last ...