Getgood Guide

At the National Digital Inclusion conference I noticed a few tweets from attendees about people in prison using the internet.  I wasn’t actually in the conference hall at the time, so I’m not sure why this conversation started or what the original discussion was.  It just sent me slightly off on one in my head.

I’m a massive fan of Radio 4 and I remember hearing a documentary ages ago about prisoners who were given tape recorders so they could tape themselves reading bedtime stories to the children they’d been separated from.  It was a lovely project – it improved the prisoners’ literacy and helped them to continue their relationship with their loved ones whilst they were inside.

So it got me to thinking – is there no way they could be allowed to use some social media/networking tools to help with the same ends?  I voiced this to Nick Booth, who’s had some experience working with prisons and he told me that prison-based projects should fulfill these aims:

• Increase future employability by giving prisoners skills they can use in the workplace.
• Reduce prisoners’ inclination to reoffend by reinforcing their connections with the outside world, such as their families.

Both of which social media could help with.  Of course there are obvious obstacles, the chief one being how to retain an element of control over prisoners’ use so they don’t abuse it.

I’m sure a lot of people can think of a lot of reasons against this idea and probably think I’m bonkers for so much as suggesting it.  But for me, social media is largely about connecting people.  Which is the one thing a prisoner can’t do.  So if these tools could somehow be used to help them sustain their relationships with loved ones, which means they’ll have a support network when released, and teach them a skillset that could attract employers, it might be worth thinking about how the obvious obstacles could be overcome.

Nicky Getgood on Digbeth and local blogging at WxWM from Jon Bounds on Vimeo.

It’s time for my very long overdue post about WxWM, brainchild Shona McQuillan’s local alternative to SxSWi. What was most amazing about it was that, within the space of about a week, a BarCamp-style event with back-to-back interesting panels had been organised.  My very favourites were:

Nick Booth: Me and My Troll

A necessary reminder that the internet isn’t Narnia and, just like in life, there are mad and bad people out there who may want to do you down.  There was an interesting discussion around how some environments (such as YouTube) are more tolerant of this behaviour than others (like Flickr).

I feel that I don’t really make an effort to conceal much about myself or my life when writing on the internet, figuring no-one will be nasty or bothered enough to use the details I give out in a negative way.  Some of the stories that came out of this panel were therefore quite frightening – not only how malevolent people can be, but also how ineffective some online communities and the police can be at dealing with it.

Jon Bounds: Internet Memes

The funniest of the panels, not least because of the last-minute editing Jon had to do to protect young, innocent minds. The theory behind the meme is that if you pop something on the internet, people will want to make it have one or all of the essential meme components:

• The rude
• The weird
• The cute

The time this takes to happen – the ‘time to penis’ – is becoming shorter and shorter.

Jon’s parting note was truly inspirational – that we, as the type of people who do Meaning of Briff, are guardians of the rude, odd and weird.  We should let memes evolve without fear of our bosses or parents and, above all, BE WEIRD. Oh, alright then, since you insist.

Ben Whitehouse: Once Upon a Time

An absolutely lovely talk on how we can tell stories and tall tales online.  This has been quite recently demonstrated by Dull Accountant on Twitter, who for a few days had us believing he’d nicked the company credit card for a G20 summit protest bender before admitting it was a well thought out April Fool’s prank.  Ben was most interesting when he was talking about Twitter, and how the people we follow and interact with is us reading the stories of each others’ lives.  I was horrified when he asked the question: ‘What happens when one of us dies and that character is gone forever?’ A sobering thought.

A local blog for local people

Not a favourite (because that would be horribly big-headed), but my panel talk about the local blogging journey I’ve been on with Digbeth is Good (film narcissistically inserted at the top).  The discussion afterwards was interesting, especially when it got around to where things should go next.  Peoples’ (very welcome) suggestions prompted John Hickman to ask Whose Blog is it Anyway?

It made me realise that, thus far, Digbeth is Good has had the freedom to grow quite organically.  But now there sometimes seems to be an expectation to follow certain types of models, be it a Created in Birmingham style handover or Kings Cross Environment style team building (which I’ve actually come round to and am working on).  I suppose John’s post reminded me that, although I can take advice and look at others’ best practice, there is no law that says I have to go down a set path.  In fact, Digbeth is Good got interesting for me when I stopped following the hymn sheet and made the blog more of my personal take on the area.  So perhaps straying from path is no bad thing, even if I do sometimes get a little lost.

Other interesting points raised were:

• Monetising the blog – If anyone has any further advice on this I’d be grateful.  One of the biggest obstacles I’ve hit with Digbeth is Good is finding the time to commit to its development.  Finding a way of being paid for the time and resources I’m currently giving to it for nothing, without detrimentally affecting the editorial freedom, would be brilliant.
• Quality not quantity – Andy Mabbett really struck a chord when he told me he’d rather read one or two good posts a week rather than a daily stream of them.  This made me realise I should slow down and concentrate on creating posts with insightful content rather than trying to keep up with everything, which is just impossible.

Phew.  It seems that no sooner do I have time to stop and take stock of the first WxWM than the next one is being organised – Moseley Barcamp, part of Mozfest, is on 29th June.  There’s also a BrumBarCamp on the cards.

Before Christmas Birmingham City Council released the Big City Plan, a lengthy consultation document about how Birmingham should be developed over the next twenty years.  The document was also put onto the Big City Plan website for members of the public to comment on.

But there were more than a few problems with it.  The document was not only massive but written in impenetrable management speak, it made me glaze over after a couple  sentences – hardly writings that would capture peoples’ imaginations and motivate responses.  It as also full of unexpanded acronyms and references to other key documents that weren’t explained.  It had weird ‘options’ at the end of each chapter that seemed to be mutually exclusive, ‘pick one’ choices but apparently weren’t.

The Big City Plan’s website initially gave the impression that all comments posted would be  published, but they seemed to think better of that later on, so only a few selected comments were published.  This meant that people had no idea if their comments were being listened to and, more importantly, that no conversation around the document could take place – no-one could react to a point another respondent had made and have a discussion that others could join in with.

The way the consultation was conducted bred a fair bit of cynicism.  I often heard people saying they felt their opinions didn’t matter, that ‘decisions have already been made’.  Some felt it was more of a PR exercise than a genuine consultation and incidents such as missing the promised consultation bus didn’t help. People I spoke to felt alienated rather than engaged – a comment on Digbeth is Good calling it a ‘pointless “consultation” scam’ spoke volumes.  I really don’t believe that was the intention, but I can understand why people felt like that given the flawed way in which things were executed.

The Birmingham blogging community felt that something needed to be done to enable a better understanding of the Big City Plan and an open discussion around it.  A few of them knocked their heads together at the Christmas Birmingham Social Media Cafe and it began to take the shape of Big City Talk – a blog with all the sections as individual posts with a plain English translation alongside.  All comments (within reason) were published so people could discuss other people’s responses and ideas.

When I heard about Big City Talk I thought it made perfect sense and offered to help out.  So, along with Jon Bounds, Nick Booth, Julia Gilbert and Michael Grimes I got started on translating sections of the writing into plain English text.  I kept my translations pretty much local, working on the Digbeth, Eastside and Highgate chapters.

It was horrible, slow work, I don’t mind saying.  Not just translating the words into plain English, something I’d never done before, but also trying to work out what they were meant to be saying in the first place.  I’ll never forget me and Michael Grimes, who listened to my cries of woe and helped me out with the Digbeth section, spending half an hour trying to translate one sentance.  It took a phone call to Jon Bounds to finally get there.  I was incredibly relieved when it was all finished.

I was even happier to hear that the work hadn’t been in vain.  Big City Talk collected 274 comments, all of which will be fed into the Big City Plan.  Debra Davies, Birmingham City Council’s PR Director, thanked us for going the extra 9 yards and was pleased at the level of input and discussion.

Here’s related posts from the others involved in Big City Talk:

Jon Bounds has written about the whole process in a series of 4 posts:

• Part 1 – Constructive Activism
• Part 2 – Why?
• Part 3 – How?
• Part 4 – the results (which, admittedly are far from settled at this point)

Michael Grimes talked about exactly why it needed doing.

Nick Booth talks about how it’s a perfect example of Brummies using social media to make a positive difference.

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Finally, after weeks of nagging poor Pete Ashton like a fishwife for FTP access to the Digbeth is Good blog, he’s on it. So whilst I wait for every ISP in the world to change, and relish the prospect of total control (mwah-ha-ha) I’m going to use poor, neglected Getgood Guide to do the downright inevitable and blog about bloody blogging. It happens to the best of us.

Antonio Gould’s been telling me for a while I should write a post about things I’ve needed during my induction to bloggery. I’ve kind of listened to him. And decided to do my own thing, which is write a post about things I wish I knew before I started. Here we are then.

I’d need to know a spot of HTML

A couple of years ago, I did an Open University Web Design course, which consisted of learning the basic principles of web design and using these to build a site out of HTML about a saucepan company, of all things. I hated the programming more than I did those stupid pots and pans and after passing, threw away all the books and notes, vowing never to touch HTML ever again.

I didn’t realise my mistake until quite recently. There’s no getting over it, WISYWIG can only get a girl so far. I’ll really need to re-learn a little of that horrid HTML if I want my posts to look not too squashed, not too spaced but juuust right. Arses.

Techie Stuff

There’s a whole, head-spinning world of Wordpress Plugins, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, RSS Readers, Delicious, Analytics, Feedburner etc. And all this before I’ve even considered podcasting or Flip-ing filming. To be honest, a lot of this stuff isn’t that hard to learn and it just needs a good explanation to get the hang of it. I think what would have been useful is a step-by-step guide of the stuff that new bloggers need to know. Like an online course or post explaining things like image copying, film embedding, linking and the like. The simple tools one needs to get started.

Luckily this type of support is starting to emerge with blogging workshops, the surgeries started by Pete Ashton being duplicated elsewhere, and Ultra Local blogging expert William Perrin’s genius ideas for a UK-wide blogger-starter resource, which I don’t doubt will become a reality.

Where’s my life gone?

I never leave Digbeth anymore. I live and work here but before Digbeth is Good I had been known to occasionally socialise elsewhere. Now, when I’m not going to local launches and events, I’m blogging about them. Venturing to the Jewelery Quarter to see Stan’s Café’s The Rice Show felt like a new mother’s first night out.

When Pete gave me Digbeth is Good, he gave me a rough brief of covering all the arty cultural happenings within the place. There’s a hell of a lot of that going on. And I can’t not mention the regeneration activity or the music and pub culture if I’m going to give the place the overview it deserves. I think I’m spending roughly two days a week on this, on top of my full-time job. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t. It’s just that occasionally I’d like to have the time to do other stuff, like clean my flat or talk to my family. People have advised me to take step back but that’s easier said than done when you want your baby to be perfect.

It also means I don’t have the time I’d like to look at it strategically and think about how it should develop. On October 13th Hyperlocalblogger expert Matt McGee wrote a post about What Makes a Great Local Blogger, which I duly bookmarked. 10 days later and I still haven’t managed to read it.

I discussed this problem with William Perrin yesterday when I had the pleasure of meeting with him at the Hello Digital conference. His solution was to relinquish some of that total control I’d been celebrating – get others with something to say writing on the site. I can see how this would widen the scope of the blog and be a nice way to engage and give a voice to people. But I must admit to instinctively hating the idea of letting anyone else help look after the precious baby I’ve nurtured. I’ll have to think very long and hard on this one, about whether or not I could stand it.

Brum Bloggers: you can be a little scary sometimes

I was nervous about writing this for precisely this reason, but I felt the fact that I felt this way was important, so sod it.

When I first started blogging my friend Will Buckingham, who was Birmingham Words before moving to Leeds, wrinkled his nose and asked if I’d become part of the Birmingham Blogging Mafia. I said I didn’t realise there was one. “Oh yeah,” said his girlfriend Elee, “and they meet up and everything.” (I love the meet-ups – it’s great to get to know people you’ve met virtually.)

Then the Surface Unsigned debacle happened. Surface Unsigned sent Created in Birmingham a scary legal letter. Pete Ashton put out an online call to arms and the answer he received, from myself included, was deafening.

After that came the ArtsFest Twitter debate. ArtsFest were experimenting with social media with their new blog and a volunteer started an ArtsFest Twitter account in a way Birmingham Bloggers felt was wrong. They duly commented on Twitter and wrote blog posts debating the issue.

I’m not disagreeing with the verdict, but the way it was done made me feel slightly uncomfortable. It left me, rightly or wrongly, with the impression I that if I made a similar boo-boo it would be discussed and dissected very publicly. I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong, the only way we’ll learn is to share but as a newcomer it’s bloody daunting. It made me kind of terrified of making a mistake.

But of course I did, because learners inevitably do. Luckilly a friend noticed it first and rang me to explain the error of my ways, because that’s how friends tend correct each other – they take you aside and have a quiet word in your ear rather than exposing you. Of course we need to share and learn from each other, but sometimes the way it’s done can make this Brave New World feel a little unfriendly.

But no friend knew or thought to tell me all of these things before I started on Digbeth is Good, which is probably just well because if they had I wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole. I know I’ve used the blog-as-child analogy a little too much here but it’s totally true – it’s taken over and completely changed my life, but I wouldn’t be without it for the world.