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So I spent Monday at the very swanky Savoy Place for the Reboot Britain conference put on by Nesta and the team that ran the 2gether conference last year. There was a mix of traditional talks in the lecture theatre and more eclectic sessions throughout the building which was ambitious but seemed to work quite well from the chatter I picked up on. I stayed in the main lecture theatre throughout the day, mainly because thats where a number of people I was interested in hearing were speaking but also because I was carrying a pretty heavy bag after a weekend in London and couldn’t find the cloakroom 
The day was a bit mixed for me if I’m honest but for the most part I enjoyed it and got a lot out of the day.
Some high points;
The two young guys from Battlefront doing their micro presentations, Alex Rose and James Mummery. They both gave compelling talks and were amazingly confident for guys just out of their teens. Impressive.
Tony Ageh gave a talk on Mining the (BBC) Archives where he talked about the ‘rich seam of coal’ waiting to be exploited as the BBC alone has 400,000 full programmes in their archive as well as 100,000 hours of sports coverage – some of which has never been shown (there were other impressive stats as well!). He talked about the need to make this content remixable and taggable and about the new skills needed to make this happen as well as the new opportunities for new incomes this would create. My background with JISC and libraries etc means I am a sucker for this sort of stuff I guess but this was a great presentation as far as I was concerned. Tony also had the second best shirt of the day!
The session from Jon Gisby, Director of Future Media and Technology was also interesting. The idea of a Content/Games/Platforms/Tools plus hybrids axis of digital media was cool as was the run through of the projects 4iP and C4 Education are running. The fact that Skins has a larger audience online than on tv was also an eye opener.
Charlie Leadbeater was good fun (and had great trainers). His line about the government thinking peer-to-peer meant the House of Lords was quality as was his little dig at the mornings Chair and his assistant (calling them the 6th form debating society!). He highlighted a problem that I think goes beyond just talking to government types – the fact that the language we (geeks) use often alienates and confuses people even when we think we are ‘dumbing down’. His ‘Mutual Media Manifesto’ looks like it might be on to something so I’ll watch that with interest. He gave mentions to a couple of sites that I have a particular interest in as well; LibraryThing and The Student Room.
Alan Moores (no not that one!) talk seemed like a rapid run through the buzz words of today while name dropping as much as possible but he did have one gem of a slide about the idea of “The Morality of Enough” which I think I need to think about a bit more but seems to be a great idea.
Paul Miller of School of Everything (rather than Semantic Web stuff) did a talk split between the ideas of School of Everything which is interesting but that I have heard before and the really quite cool idea of turning Social Innovation Camp into a YCombinator/TechStars style incubator for ‘public service start-ups’ (that was the first time I’d heard that term used as well which I like). It sounds like an ambitious plan but a worthwhile one so I’ll watch that with interest.
Lee Bryant from Headshift gave an interesting talk about ‘How people power can reboot Britain’. My notes on this are a bit slim as I was tired and it was a very good talk. It was certainly the most on topic talk I heard all day and despite the lack of connectivity for his laptop meaning he couldn’t show his slides he did a remarkable job. He also gave the most British, self-depreciating intro I’ve ever heard.
Unfortunately I missed the majority of Howard Rhiengolds talk but from what I did see and hear he was on top form as always (and had the best shirt/jacket combo maybe in the history of conferences!)
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A couple of quick low points;
It was a pity there was no Q and A in the morning for the speakers.
The afternoon Chair rather dominated proceedings.
The amount of brown-nosing around the ‘Traveling Geeks’ was embarrassing in my opinion.
The way the Nesta CEO kissed up to (the very good as it happens) Jeremy Hunt in the morning demonstrated a little bit more politicking than I was comfortable with.
Martha Lane-Fox is obviously a bright and successful woman but the idea of someone that posh being in charge of inclusion of any kind just seems laughable (in fact this entire event was on the upper end of middle class at times).
The talks from Jeff Saperstein and Julie Meyer were just not my cup of tea at all. Jeff Saperstein in particular was peddling a set of ideas several years out of date some of which seemed to have long since been disproved.
There was also an arrogance (for want of a better word) amongst some of the attendees that I wasn’t comfortable with. This idea that the people speaking should be the people listening is all very well but at least the people speaking have (in the majority of cases) done something more than just talk about what they would do.
I also think the event could have been called Reboot London as it was pretty London-centric as ever.
All said and done though I’m glad I attended and think Steve Moore and his team did a fantastic job running the event and I noticed the Switch New Media guys working their magic again which means I can revisit a few sessions.
Mike has announced the dates and venue for this years Big Bathcamp – the full on barcamp version not to be confused with its monthly meetups little bruv.
This year the event is taking place at The Bell Inn, Buckland Dinham near Frome. Now this is seriously the back of beyond for those of us who don’t drive but there are plans afoot for some kind of transport from the Bath/Bristol areas if there is enough demand.
The venue offers free wifi and has camping and other facilities and the idea apparently is for an al fresco style event making best use of the unique location. There will also be some BBQ action and live music so all in all it sounds like it should be a fun weekend.
In the interests of full disclosure I should admit that I have already booked into a local B&B (Jukesie don’t camp just like Charlie don’t surf!) and there is a better than fair chance you’ll find me propping up the bar in the Bell for long stretches of the weekend. That said I do have every intention to do a talk this year and have offered to help in anyway I can in the coming weeks.
This video has been doing the rounds for a few weeks or more now and the reaction to it has been pretty amusing from many folks on Twitter and beyond. Mike has written a short but useful post reacting to it and I agree with the point he is making. The fact is the great majority of people in this world might well use the web but simply don’t know or care about many of the things that those of us who live online take for granted. If you want any new web service to be a real success then it is these people you are building for and you need to understanding where they are coming from as well as where you want to take them.
In a funny way the success of Twitter and things like Barcamps, Geek Dinners, Hackdays etc might actually be making this ‘us and them’ situation worse. Now more than ever it is very easy for a web geek to surround themselves with people with a similar outlook of the world to themselves and the echo chamber effect comes into play. I think it is important for people to take a reality check every now and again and talk to be people for whom the web is little more than a necessary evil and probably only consists of half a dozen websites.
For better or worse I’m surrounded by these people. Most of my friends and family will never understand what I do but they do use the web every day; just a slightly different version of the web to me. The web is just the web to them, there are no version numbers and phrases like social media are gobbly-gook (thank god!). I’m constantly thankful for the insight they offer (and god knows they are a cheap source of beta testers!) but to come back to the original question in the video I’m betting that less than half of them would answer correctly (despite the fact that almost all of them have at least 2 browsers on their PCs after I made them install Firefox!)
So my last day at Jiva will be July 20th and as to all intents and purposes this is also the most appropriate time to mark my leaving Bristol (that will happen in stages over the next several months but I certainly won’t be around much Monday to Friday) so I thought I would make it an open invitation to anyway who fancies a few beers on a school night (and maybe the odd over priced Rum!) and the occasional geeky conversation. The Jiva crew will be out and I’m hoping to tempt a fair few of the JISC Comms gang to come out and anyone else is more than welcome.
The plan is for a quick pint in the 7 Stars as that was after all where I was interviewed for this job at Jiva then move on to the Old Fish Market – a pub that I love as not only does it serve great beer and show sport but it also serves lovely, pretty authentic Thai food! The final stop will be the very chic Rummer hotel. I have created a little Google Map below if you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about but if you do fancy a little drink then the more the merrier.
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These are some notes from the presentation (no slides) I had to give as part of my interview at Becta; reading it now I’m a little disappointed with it – certainly not my best work but it does cover some of my thinking about what I’d like to do. That said it does amazingly skip all my ideas about using the social web alongside press, events etc which is a bit odd as thats what I usually bang on about
“Becta is an Non Departmental Public Body, working in an environment influenced by political and economic circumstance. Taking these into account what would be the Digital Strategy you would recommend for the next two years.”
The key to any digital strategy in the current economic and political climate is agility. The age of large investments in monolithic IT systems is passing and what is required now is a much more flexible approach embracing open source technologies, the social web and future proofing developments by using stable, mature, open standards.
Use of open source tools requires thought and the creation of an appropriate technical foundation but they give the ability to respond much more quickly to changing demands and to embrace other new technologies much more quickly than attempting to integrate new aspects into traditional content management systems etc. A fine example of this is the ‘Sandbox’ created by DIUS – before the merger! – (http://bit.ly/sandbox) that has allowed them to generate WordPress blogs for campaigns quickly and cheaply in-house, use Commentpress (I know DIUS were using Commentariat but I forgot at the time of writing) to release reports and consultation documents as genuinely digitally native, live websites with commenting enabled section by section.
The reality of the social web is that no one company or organisation controls their own message online anymore. People are talking about you on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and dozens of other websites. This requires a response. At a basic level understanding when and where to enter the conversation and the tone to take in responding is vital. The US Air Force produced an incredibly useful flow chart that should be the basis of any policy in this area (http://bit.ly/airforce). Tools like Radian6 enable monitoring and measurement of activity on the social web that adds a useful addition to traditional web analytics.
The traditional ‘corporate’ website gets little love these days and is often seen as a burden as much as a benefit by insiders. That said this is the most important element of any organisations digital portfolio and as such must be treated with care. As most of these sites are managed by large commercial CMSs they are often difficult to customize and require regular upgrading just to stay in site of current best practice let alone future proofing. Despite this it is vital that best efforts are taken to ensure that the corporate site is not left behind when focus is shifted to opportunities where a clean slate is possible. Elements like usable cool URLs, RSS, microformats and the ability to embed external media are just some of the things that your users (and likely staff) will expect to be available and a lack of these things will damage credibility.
Digital is not a silver bullet for communications activity though, it is best utilized as part of a blended offering, supporting and enhancing traditional channels like events and media relations. A common error with digital communications is to neglect traditional methods in the race to implement the shiny new tools. While increasingly important digital channels are not the best option for some audiences, even for a forward looking organisation like Becta and its community. Also the move to use of the ‘free’ tools of the social web and open source communities should not disguise the fact that these activities are often resource intensive as far as time and people.
