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. 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

Conferences and co-operation in The North

I have been out and about again over the last couple of weeks and the deadline for my research proposal is looming hence the lack of posts. I spent most of the weekend in the back of a VW campervan (hired from the excellent VWCampervans) on the Isle of Wight ...

Evaluation – You know you want to really….

However tempting it is just to dive in a set projects up in the social web I you need to consider stopping to think about how you will measure and evaluate success. It’s a big part of using these new tools to have a positive impact rather than just creating ...

UK Petitioning cluster meeting – in fact a cluster muster with lustre!

Europetitions update We had the second meeting of the UK ePetitioning cluster for the Europetition project this week – and who can fail to have enjoyed a meeting with a group of people who are prepared to work the word lustre into an EU project meeting?? The aim with the ...

The evolution of power and internet dog years

This is just a segue from the research proposal work of the weekend……. Manuel Castells talks about the fact that institutions will evolve to accomodate new power structures. I think he’s right – very few institutions are foolish enough not to change and one thing that a universal media age ...

Literature Review – structure

I am attempting to get my research proposal into shape which is proving a challenge as I can’t seem to get the literature review to work at all. Below is an attempt to try and give it an outline that I can then build on: The decline in democratic participation ...

Why the talk about informal and formal democracy?

I have been talking for some time about a split between formal and informal participation in democracy. I draw this distinction in order to show the difference which acts which are politically aware but not linked to a formal decision making process (ie informal participation) and formal acts which are ...

CitizenScape project meeting; Slovakia!

I have just got back from a trip to Slovakia for our latest CitzenScape project meeting. As ever on these trips the hospitality was amazing and we got a lot done – we also seemed to drink rather a lot but that’s also typical of these trips! Some general observations ...

Habermas: The public sphere

Jurgen Habermas a pre-eminent social and political theorist whose ideas around the “Public Sphere” have influenced much of the contemporary thinking around the information or network society. Habermas describes the public sphere as a shared public conversation which encapsulates political, social and cultural debate. He argues that this public sphere ...

The Network Society and a whole new load of reading….

Busy weekend with lots of literature review as well as proposal writing for EU funded projects. I have also been reading around ideas of co-creation as well the Network Society this weekend. Both of these are going to be fairly central within my literature review. The network or information society ...

Council rules of engagement for the social web: V0.0

Well the good thing about this research proposal writing is that it does get me thinking about other things in a massive work avoidance scheme. That and the fact the day is so beautiful means that progress on the main project is slow!! Anyway, I have been thinking more about ...