Category: interesting things

Playing around with Posterous – and finding that it might just work for me

If you haven’t checked out Posterous yet, you should. Inspired by Steve Rubel’s move to this service, I’ve been playing around with it and loving the functionality. In essence its a very simple blogging platform that allows you to post via email, beautifully presents your media content and allows you to syndicate it easily to your other online presences.
I’ve always been a casual blogger (though 150 posts in two years isn’t too shabby, especially as I haven’t really spent much time writing here for the last six months) and before Whitehall Webby I had a few different blogging sites set up that allowed me space to blog about non-government stuff.
Now that I am no longer a civil servant, I’ve been rethinking how I might use this site. I’ve been working on a refresh of the design that is almost complete (guess what webbies. Its the content thats not quiet finished – sound familiar?).
There are a lot of things I want to highlight that aren’t about my work, but Whitehall Webby has always been a space for me to talk about work stuff and I’m not sure that I want to expand that focus just yet (though of course, I’m not working at the moment). Whilst Posterous is incredibly flexible, it doesn’t quite give me enough in terms of customisation that would persuade me to move my main domain there.
But I still want to capture stuff, comment on things, or highlight items of interest to me. So I’m going to give Posterous a go for that kind of content.
I’m cross-posting this but I’m not planning to regularly re-post stuff on Whitehall Webby from my Posterous site.
Whitehall Webby is/ will remain my work thoughts / portfolio / site for the time being. Jezzag.com (an old nickname if you want to know) is for the other stuff. You can subscribe to a feed there too if you are so inclined but if you are in any way connected to me online you probably don’t need to.
S’all for now….

Back to blogging

Well kinda, sorta, not quite yet…..

Its been almost four months since I left Whitehall – at the same time its both flown by and feels like a lifetime ago. Now I’m pretty settled I’m starting to think about gov things again and taking keener notice of what’s going on (and there’s been quite a bit…..). But that can wait for just a little longer.

In the meantime, there’s a fantastic literary festival taking place just down the road from me next week and a couple of intrepid irish bloggers are doing their best to provide online coverage for the events. It seemed churlish of me not to offer to give them a hand given how much free time I have at the moment.

Listowel Writers Week is in its 39th year and has an amazing line up of authors and workshops.  I can’t believe that such a brilliant cast list is assembling a couple of miles from me, and I can’t wait to help Paul and Patrick capture some of the flavour of the festival. Its quite a while since I’ve done anything resembling social reporting and I’m quite excited about it.

As well as the fringe blog, we’ll be using the usual array of tools and channels to push out the content far and wide across the web. Now all I have to do is try and locate my Flip camera which has mysteriously disappeared somewhere into the depths of my house 😦

Its a bit short notice but if you’re reading this and want to come along, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to help you out.

Us Now – go see

I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to go and see Us Now at the RSA on Wednesday night.

Us Now, by Ivo Gormley, is a film about the power of online collaboration and communities – and what that might mean for future government. Its very powerful, highlighting some excellent case studies and interviewing a range of experts (its worth seeing for Ed Miliband’s appearance alone I think).

Others have already written better reviews than I could so all I will say is – its fantastic, go and see it.

There’s another preview viewing next Wednesday evening in London and there are still (free) tickets available. If you’re around, I highly recommend going along. This is one hour of your life you won’t regret giving up.

Ticket details here.

Free legal web project barcamp

I seem to be permanently in a state of writing about things a week or so after they have happened at the moment and trying to play catchup.

This is a case in point. A week last Saturday (18th October) I went along to the Free Legal Web barcamp. The event was set up (and part sponsored) by Nick Holmes to bring together those intersested in creating an online service that pulls together legal texts (primary, secondary, rules. procedures, judgements etc) and commentary.

Its a brilliant idea. A small, but perfectly formed, group of 24 met at the RSA. It was a room of real enthusiasts – lawyers, hackers, civil servants – all more or less geeks with an interest in improving the availability and quality of legal information online.

I went along because my employer publishes a fair amount of information online that might be of interest to this project. But to be honest, much of what was discussed was over my head so I didn’t stay until the end.

However, it looks to me like the beginnings of an excellent and worthy project. With enough goodwill generated on the day to agree to meet again in mid-January.

You can find out more about the barcamp on the project blog, the email list, and the wiki if you want to follow its development or be part of it.

Another phrase that sends shivers down my spine in the office

It was remiss of me not to point to Tom Steinberg’s excellent piece on ‘one pagers’.

Barely a day goes by when i am not asked to produce one of these (often by someone who has already requested, and received, a paper on the same subject previously…).

Whilst I enjoy the discipline of containing an idea or proposition to one side of paper, the request to ‘do me a one pager’ invariably makes me feel quite ill – I generally feel like replying with a two worder.