Dissident World

I’m looking forward to attending the UKGovWeb barcamp this coming Saturday 26th January - though  not quite sure what to expect, this being my first barcamp event. However, I’m encouraged by the fact that  the organisers (and primarily Jeremy Gould) have done this sort of thing before and have avoided getting bogged down with over-prescriptive planning at the expense of delivery. Judging from the list of  presenters and topics noted on the barcamp wiki and the very active forum discussions in the Google Group,  there is enough creative energy to carry the day and make it a worthwhile learning and sharing experience for everyone.

Time and scheduling permitting, I will be presenting and discussing the work I’ve been doing these past two years in introducing social networking and Web 2.0 technologies into local government in order to  improve inter-authority collaboration and provide learning and sharing opportunities. The ultimate objective being to improve council services through smarter ways of working. The following is a brief synopsis of what I will cover:

“Social tools and technologies are changing the KM landscape, making it far easier to connect with peers and experts, and facilitating far more effective knowledge sharing and collaboration. We are moving beyond the factory model of ICT, which focussed on centralisation, standardisation and storage to a more diverse and less regulated environment.

For some, this provides the opportunity to break out of the silo working practices so prevalent across the public sector, and encourages a more productive and collaborative approach to online knowledge sharing. Others see this as undermining the integrity and quality of established (and centralised) knowledge repositories and best practice procedures, and equate social networking with purely leisure and entertainment activities.

1. moving from a culture of knowledge repositories (people-to-information) to one of knowledge collaboration (people-to-people),
2. introducing a sceptical and mature staff demographic to the concept of virtual collaboration using social computing/Web 2.0 facilities and
3. creating, developing and growing effective communities of practice in local government, where command and control systems are prevalent.” 

I would be interested in hearing from anyone at the barcamp who has tried a similar approach for encouraging shared learning, or is considering doing so in the environment they work in. I’m happy to share the lessons I’ve learnt, and anxious to pick up any hints and tips from those who have already trodden this rocky path.

I’m particularly interested in any anecdotes from delegates on how they have addressed the three points mentioned above.

I’m also interested in hearing views about how important the technology is in encouraging communities of practice or interest to develop.

You can follow the planning for this event (and presumably the outputs from the day) on the aggregated Pageflakes page that Dave Briggs - “the Web 2.0 dynamo” - has set up.

One for the kiddies…

Dave Briggs has posted details of an event being arranged on 26th February as part of the Community of Practice for Social Media & Online Collaboration. This will be of potential interest to anyone working in (or for) the public sector who is using - or thinking of using - social media/social networking applications to support improved collaboration shared learning. The event is both an opportunity to see and learn how others are applying Web 2.0 technologies in their departments and as a showcase for anyone wishing to contribute information about their pet project. I’ve been a member of this particular CoP since Dave started it off and can highly recommend it to anyone who is currently struggling with the breadth and scale of the technology options available to them in this particular domain. Full details of the posting here:

Members of the Community of Practice for Social Media and Online Collaboration are meeting up at the Learning and Skills Council National Office in Coventry on 26th February 2008 between 10am and 3.30pm for a day of Web 2.0 fun and frolics, including:

• The benefits of using social media in the public sector, real life examples
• Building social web sites: blogs, wikis, forums and social networks
• Making social online video
• Group discussions on where the potential is for social media to make a real difference and a “how do I?” : Matching tools to problems
• Future developments of the CoP

If you aren’t already a member of the community and you feel it would be worthwhile attending please join us here and sign up on the wiki to say you’ll come.

I guess most people choose the conferences they attend with care. There’s nothing worse than having shelled out good money (my own in most instances since I work as an independent consultant) on a 2-day conference when you realise within the first day that the general level of knowledge and expertise is at best equivalent to your own, and at worst, somewhere below your own level of competence. In other words, you’re not going to learn anything you didn’t already know. I accept there are still networking opportunities to be had, but this doesn’t always compensate for the time and money you’ve already invested in attending the event.

I was intrigued therefore by the recent avalanche of fliers and emails I’ve received since the start of the New Year advertising conferences on the general topic of ‘Web 2.0 in Government’. Even more intriguing was that most of the speakers seem to be from various (UK) government departments, and not – as I might have expected – renowned and acknowledged experts from academia or the private sector. Please excuse my cynicism, but I’m not sure how much I would have gained from one particular session entitled “Web 2.0 – was is it?” that was being led by a senior civil servant from the Home Office.

On digging a little deeper into the backgrounds of some of the ‘expert’ presenters, I found a fairly common theme – they have all implemented Sharepoint somewhere within their departments (usually their Intranet).

I find this slightly worrying from a professional point of view since some delegates at these conferences may come away with the perception that Sharepoint is an exemplar for Web 2.0 technology. I’ll admit that Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 – or MOSS 2007 – is a quantum leap ahead of its predecessor (Sharepoint 2003), but if anyone seriously thinks that the integration of a few collaboration tools and an improved content management system make this a serious contender for ‘Web 2.0 application of the year’ then they are sadly misinformed.

I can’t quite put my finger on why (once again) Microsoft have got it so wrong, other than they have taken a simple concept (networking and collaboration) and made it so complex to implement. What would take weeks to set up using MOSS can be implemented on something like Ning in a matter of hours. They also appear to have missed (or misunderstood) the difference between teamwork collaboration (which MOSS can do fairly well) with the development and support of communities of interest or communities of practice etc. In particular, the cost and complexity of using MOSS for supporting unbounded communities would be phenomenal – and why would anyone bother to even contemplate doing so when there are ‘proper’ Web 2.0 products out there such as Ning (previously mentioned, Community Server, Blogtronix or the hundreds of others too numerous to mention?

Maybe it’s a case of re-applying the old adage that “no-one ever got sacked for buying IBM” to Microsoft. However, I feel that some organisations will be regretting their choice very soon, and particularly if they really want to exploit the ‘community’ approach to learning and sharing – as we’ve done for the communities of practice in local government.

So – choose your conferences well. Unless you adopt a blended learning approach, where conferences are just one of many information sources, you may not know when you are being misinformed!

Euan Semple comments on the topic of social network analysis  (or measuring the immeasurable!).
Euan identifies two points that make him nevous about SNA:

“The first is because the activity is invariably couched in terms of one group - managers, the business - mapping the relationships of everyone else - the people prepared to open up and use the social tools in the first place.

The second is because they seek to make explicit something that is much better left implicit. We can all work out what the network is and where the good guys are from the using the tools and inhabiting the environments they create without having to have it drawn out for us.

If I felt that someone else was mapping my conversions and the relationships they represented - and wasn’t prepared to have the same done to them, I would soon stop talking.”

As I have commented on the blog, I detect a form of management paranoia; they don’t really understand what social networking is all about, they don’t want to dip their toes into what they consider to be muddy water, yet at the same they want to understand it in the only way that makes sense to them - numbers and statistics.

What worries me are the conclusions they may draw from this imprecise and flawed method of evaluation!