So its been a been a while since LocalGovCamp Lincoln but its never too late to share all those juicy details for all your reading and viewing

I managed to catch up with Helen Williams who is a Socitm Insight Associate as well as a Better Connected Report Reviewer and ask her thoughts on social media in local government.

It was certainly interesting to learn that the Better Connected report will also be reporting on local government social media usage in next year’s report! This is really exciting news for local government from my point of view because as its important to see how we can better local government services online, isn’t it just as important to have a proper and ongoing evaluations on emerging trends and technologies that have an impact on our communities?

The first session was run by Fraser Henderson (Founder and Director of Particitech) who discussed the issues surrounding e-Petitions. Now I wasn’t in this session myself, as I was in the “social networking sites” session (where else would I be …? hehe ;o) ), but I’m gonna have a go at reporting it based on the twitterstream and my own knowledge on this subject! Haha let’s see how well I do ay?

With budget cuts looming, there is a greater need to be more innovative in delivering public services online and self-services can be used to deliver more for less. So local council website s are looking like a more attractive channel to move away from the costly business of servicing customer enquiries via the phone or face-to-face to self-service through the local council website.

So as you guys already know, I was at the LocalGovCamp in Lincoln last Friday and was fortunate enough to talk to Andrew Beeken (in video above), who was “the man of the hour” and ask him about what he thought about the whole unconference. I mean, I personally thought it was great and definitely different from the previous LocalGovCamp in Birmingham just because it was a smaller crowd and we had more time to chat to everyone who was there. Having the capability to network rather effectively and have a more open table discussion, certainly made this LocalGovCamp a more cosy and intimate affair.

Being a student and possibly sometimes out of the loop on innovative things like this, it was refreshing to listen to Joss Winn talk about WriteToReply.org…

A site for commenting on public reports in considerable detail. Texts are broken down into their respective sections for easier consumption. Rather than comment on the text as a whole, you are encouraged to direct comments to specific paragraphs. The full texts for comment are listed on the right under ‘Texts’.

Its quite interesting to see throughout my research that there are still some traditional web ‘thinking’ going on within the public sector that deters them from fully exploiting the new web’s potential and opportunities. But this is not due to the lack in sufficient technology or gadgets.

It all comes down to insufficiency in skills and knowledge on how the new web is demanding more softer social skills and specific technical skills to enhance public services and public sector’s relationship with citizens on the new web.

I recently attended the Digital Engagement Event organized by Ten Alps Communications and managed to catch up with the Ten Alps Managing Director to ask about what was going on their website that supports their events. They have some improvements lined up that they wish to share with delegates. Hope you’ll find this useful!

An interview with Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. Over the past thirteen years, Mr. Bernoff has become one of America’s most frequently quoted research analysts. His analysis, which aims at a deeper understanding of people and how they use technology, has been cited by sources from The Wall St. Journal to “60 Minutes.”

He is the co-author of the book “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” which offers myriad data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies like blogs, social networks, and YouTube.

Dave Briggs writes about digital engagement and community building for government. Dave is Learning Pool’s Community Evangelist as well as a freelance consultant.

Digital Democracy has been working for two years with the Burmese community in Thailand,Bangladesh, India, and China as well as with resettled Burmese populations in Indiana, Washington, DC and New York. D2 staff have published and presented research on Burma with an emphasis on technology use by displaced Burmese groups. In addition to Burmaʼs borders, we have conducted research in Cuba, Armenia, Mali, Zimbabwe,South Africa, and Israel.

This interview covers the following issues and questions:

Steven talks about his most recent project – Neighbourhood to neighbour engagement.
Steven talks about how local authorities get involved within this online neighbourhood.
Citizen to citizen engagement and value.
Does the local authority make themselves known as an authority to the public within the online community?
Mix of email and online forum.
What are the main tools that you use? Groupserver.org
People need to choose their own technology.
What does it mean to you to have an open government?

I met Peter while I was in NYC attending the Participation Camp (PCamp) and Personal Democracy Forum 09. Its funny how it might seem that I just bumped into him on the street but actually we were on our way back from PCamp and walking towards the subway when I asked Peter if I could do a quick video interview with him. And he was kind enough to agree to do so eventhough the rain was starting to pour ! (Thank you Peter!). We talked about alot of different things.

I managed to catch up with Stuart Harrision/Pezholio this morning from Lichfield District Council to ask him about his new exciting development/mashup called Twitterplan. You can listen to the telephone interview here.

Just in case you wondering who else is working on some exciting mashups, have a look at Warwickshire Councils R&D website. They’re working on some interesting projects with me in the near future. You could find their Web Services and API Dump here. Look out for a post featuring their projects here on LGEOResearch soon.

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Mayor Newsom hosts a conversation with Twitter CEO Evan Williams and co-founder Biz Stone about the future of technology in government.

This post features a compilation of citizens mised reactions on UK local councils on Twitter. There’s videos, twitter status image, audios and some other exciting conversations.

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About a week ago I met up with Stephen Dale at Layden House in London. It was such an honour to finally get to meet Steve after months of admiring his work in local government.  Steve has published a couple of articles which you can find below. We had a lovely and insightful chat about the role and challenges of social media and web 2.0 for UK local councils. Steve also mentions his thoughts on Twitter, which I think you might find interesting. I managed to capture some of it …

We are now living in a new age where the Internet is not just another source or another tool. Its become our way of life. People will not only learn to read, write and do maths in school. They will need the knowledge to deal with our changing culture today. We are not all just consumers anymore. What skills do we need now?

NEWSLETTER FEAT. INTERVIEW WITH HUGH FLOUCH FROM HARRINGAYONLINE.COM DOWNLOAD HERE

So, this post officially launches my first PDF newsletter featuring Hugh Flouch from HarringayOnline.com.
Hope this interview with Hugh will raise more awareness on the positive impact of community websites such as HarringayOnline.com and encourage healthy partnerships with local councils
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE NEWSLETTER HERE.
Other interesting related articles:
Harringay – not Haringey
“Talk about local” plan looks promising

Straight from the Horses Mouth

Lichfield District Council Planning Twitter: http://twitter.com/ldcplanning
Twitter stats followers: 19
Twitter stats updates: 138
Twitter Fact: Lichfield DC is one of the councils who have setup a twitter account for a specific service (Planning Apps). An interesting approach to using Twitter for local councils. Definitely one to watch!
This interview was conducted with:
Stuart Harrison
stuart.harrison@lichfielddc.gov.uk
Webmaster
Lichfield District Council
www.lichfielddc.gov.uk

Why did you decide to setup LDCPlanning twitter?

It was an experiment really, I’d been doing a lot of work screen-scaping our planning system to try and improve the functionality and accessibility and had already …