Category: public sector blogging

Why I’ve been a bit of a twit(terer) recently

One of the reasons I’ve been quieter than usual here (apart from organising, and then getting over, the barcamp) is my reappraisal of Twitter.

Twitter, for the initiated, is a micro-blogging tool that allows you to send short messages, about the length of an SMS. These messages are almost immediately received by others who subscribe to your updates. You, in turn, can follow others’ updates an instantly connected community.

So what’s so good about that? After all, on first glance it just looks like the status update tool in Facebook. When it first launched a year or so ago it didn’t seem to have much to it.

When Facebook added status updates to user profiles and the ability to update via mobile, it seemed to me like Twitter was becoming just a little bit superfluous.

Now though things are different. Facebook seems to me to be much quieter than before and most of my interaction there is via private messaging rather than status updates or writing on pe and public messaging. And Twitter is proving to be much more than just letting people knowing what you are doing at a particular time.

Its beauty is its simplicity. Twitter’s proposition is that you have just 140 characters to answer the question. ‘What are you doing?’. So far, so Facebook. But if you observe tweets from other users, you notice a marked difference to Facebook updates. What you are doing doesn’t just mean your current status, but also what you might be thinking, planning, debating, or questioning.

That’s where its value starts to shine through – quick updates, testing ideas, advising friends and colleagues what’s happening.

I’m increasingly advising people that blogging is hard work and labour intensive as a discipline. it needs careful thought, and commitment. Because of this its generally not instantaneous.

Twitter on the other hand is immediate – a short message delivered and received either  via a webpage, an rss feed, an SMS on a phone, blackberry, iphone, instant messenger… Hell, you can even update your Facebook status using Twitter

I’ve tried various ways of using Twitter. At the moment I recommend the Twitbin plug-in for Firefox, though I’m tiring of it because its not comprehensive enough.

Bloggers I have followed for a long time, like Jeremiah Owyang and Steve Rubel, make great use of Twitter, almost to the detriment of their blog posting in terms of frequency and depth. With Twitter, they can throw out an idea and get a very fast response from their readership.

So, what does this mean for the public sector. How could we make use of tools like Twitter? Well, the key is in its convenience. As I said above, I’m increasingly advising people not to blog because of the time and effort commitment. Twitter gets around that problem by lowering those barriers. That in itself is a bonus.

But Jenny Brown put the case for Twitter much better than I ever could in her presentation at the Barcamp. Its well worth a view.

POSTSCRIPT: Since I wrote a rough version of this piece a few weeks ago (thus proving my point above that blogging can have a huge lag from draft to publish) I’ve noticed a raft of articles around the subjects of ‘why twitter is still relevant’ or ‘how business can use  twitter’. Which proves one thing, when people are talking about it, it can’t all be hot air.

How appropriate or helpful are anonymous comments?

Amongst other things recently, I’ve been involved in developing some moderation guidelines for a project. A vexing issue is what do with anonymous comments in an online conversation. When are they appropriate and how do we handle them in the context of public sector debate?

I don’t know the answer. Clearly there are online communities where anonymity is one of the central planks they are built on. But what about debates where the other participants are identified? Is it appropriate for unknown individuals to join in?

My personal feeling is I prefer people to identify themselves, at least to the moderator, to establish their genuineness. Otherwise I wonder why they won’t declare themselves – are they agitators? Do they want cause trouble? What is their agenda?

I was thinking about this last week when I came across a new blog by a civil servant who chooses not declare their identity. Its entertaining and a pretty accurate description of life inside a Whitehall department. But two problems come to mind:

  1. It will be too easy to say something inappropriate on the basis that no one knows who you are, and
  2. If the blog gains traction you can bet your bottom dollar that people will do their best to work out who it is – and eventually they will, causing problems for the author.

Most of the good corporate blogging policies that exist are pretty flexible and forgiving, provided the author doesn’t contravene rules around inappropriate comments about the company or other people. ‘Inappropriate’ of course is interpreted differently by different organisations, and I’m not suggesting that the civil service would be the most liberal.

But if you identify yourself as working in a particular place, but don’t reveal your own identity, the clock is probably ticking. Or am I just being too cautious?

I’ve got an unmoderated comment sitting to be approved for my blog about the recent barcamp at the moment. It raises some good points and is a useful part of the debate. Its not controversial but constructively critical.

But for some reason the commenter has chosen to anonymise their response. Can’t for the life of me think why, unless they are embarrased to say what they’re saying in public. Don’t know what to do with it. Will chew it over. My instinct is, no anonymous comments, but does that unintentionally censor the debate? After all, stuff written here is hardly life or death.

Wow! Blogging platforms are so good, for everything…

[I was going to title this post ‘blogging platforms are for life, not just for blogging’ – but thought better of it 😦 ].

I’ve been playing with blogging platforms quite a lot recently, specifically WordPress. Its a great tool and as well as its most obvious application, it is flexible enough for a variety of uses. Don’t want to go into too much detail for obvious reasons, but these are some of the things I have been involved in (not all originating at my end, or for my work):

  • A simple campaign microsite, using tags and feeds to aggregate views on a range of related subjects
  • An organisational news and information site, designed to be managed by non-web and non-communications people – they can publish to the site via email
  • A staff engagement channel drawing in multimedia content
  • A small, closed consultation group
  • A market research focus group, led by a facilitator
  • A team blog, to share insights, links and clippings

Some of these projects will see the light of day shortly and I’ll let you know when they do.

I can in no way be described as a ‘techie’, and I have no web development skills to speak of. But I am able to build sites in WordPress with reasonable ease. What’s more, if can live with a little inflexibility, the hosted WordPress solution allows you to create a blog/site / tool at zero cost other than your time and skills. I’d definitely recommend you having a play with the functionality if you haven’t yet tried. Of course, if you want the result to be more professional then its certainly worth considering finding someone to help you..

Two other implementations of blogs worth noting as well. I’ve previously referenced the Darzi review blog built by Simon Dickson (using Typepad). Version two is now live, in WordPress. Take a look – it doesn’t look like a blog does it!? Just look at the design and functionality, thats the kind of sophistication you can achieve if you know what you are doing. But at the same time it retains the great features and functionality of a blogging platform: automatic syndication, tagging, archiving, easy integration with rich media sources (Flickr, YouTube etc).

Another one: Defra using a blogging platform (WordPress again) as a campaign diary to allow ministers to update stakeholders on preparations for, and progress on, the UN climate change conference – I’m guessing for all the reasons mentioned above. Deployed as a sub-domain off the corporate website

Although many of these examples are still testing the waters, they show a growing maturity in the use of these tools. They are quick and easy to set up, and sometimes put expensive ‘enterprise’ CMS applications to shame in their ease of use and functionality.  By the way, I’m no apologist for WordPress. I’m sure the others are just as good, its just I don’t know how to use them (yet). I’ll demonstrate just how bad my blog building skills are at the barcamp if nobody better comes forward (come on, I know you’re out there…).

Talking of the barcamp, hope to be able to announce the location in the next few days. Watch this space…

Ross Ferguson is back! (sort of, virtually…)

For those of you who can’t quite place the name, Ross was until recently the director of edemocracy at the Hansard Society. Amongst other things, he was responsible for the excellent digital dialogues initiative which explored online ways of engaging citizens with the democratic system (disclaimer: funded by my department, though not out of my budget or in my influence).

Unfortunately, the lure of north of the border was too much for Ross and he has returned to Scotland, now working as a senior development manager at Dog Digital. He’s also just started blogging. I look forward to reading what he has to say, and suspect we haven’t seen the last of him in Whitehall.

Another government webbie blogging

Darren Taylor, head of the central web team for the Northern Ireland Civil Service, has recently started blogging. Darren’s got a particular interest in accessibility so it will be interesting to follow his thoughts, especially as his technical knowledge appears to be light years ahead of mine.

He’s already posed a few thoughts in response to my recent post about government beginning to get social media, including a social networking site for MPs and a pan-public sector wiki for publishing FOI releases. Like the last one in particular and have heard others mention this before as a good idea.

Darren also makes a pertinent point about the flavour of the month social networking sites (Facebook et al) and asks ‘has much changed since Geocities’? Thinks may be a bit more sophisticated now and there’s more scale to the audience but I think the nub of his point rings true.