stevieflow

I noticed recently there there were some works taking place by the underpass / subway that connects Hulme with the city centre.  

Great, I thought:

• Fixing the street lighting?
• Repairing the broken pavements?
• Some landscaping even?

But no - it's a tower to show adverts for pants to drivers on the Mancuian Way:

Maybe it's an urban design masterplan type thing.  

Yesterday I went over to Salford Lads Club for the social media surgery.  I think it was the eighth one we've held over there, or something.

On the SMS+ website, only Kate and I had "signed up" to the surgery, so my expectations were probably a little muted!  

Nevertheless:

• John from Recycle-IT, a local social enterprise, raced over.  We planned how he could consolidate his two websites into a single wordpress
• Leslie from Salford Lads Club was on hand.  Kate looked into effective ways to use the Facebook timeline and milestones to highlight the history of the club.
• I also talked Leslie through the Youtube non-profit channel status that had just been approved for the club - and we made a plan around their video content for June
• Kate had an idea for Recycle-IT to post images of the vintage computer stock they collect - as a way of engaging people via Facebook.  John said he'd start that asap!
• Kate then showed me a website/page she'd be working on to explain social media surgeries to our local audience, built upon the We Make Jam project she co-ordinates
• We also found time to share some thoughts on of the upcoming surgeries at the BBC  
• John nipped to the Smiths room at the club, to take some photos!

A really productive and interesting couple of hours!

Zero Expectations isn't the starting point

Earlier this week I took part in an NTEN tweetchat (hosted by Claire) around the idea of Zero Expectations and commnity organising - building up the (now) seminal post by Nick.  

Some people understood that Zero Expectations was an integral factor to the design and planning of any event/initiative.  In turn. this would cause issues in terms of gaining supporters.  I can understand this hesitancy, especially when we can be chased for outputs or targets.  

For me, Zero Expectations only kicks in when you've arranged the date/room/possible speaker and invited people etc.  Once you know you've done everything your resources (time, and maybe money) allow, then it's time to let it happen....

Your commitment to doing all this is the main factor.  It *should* bring in others, but we are a fickle bunch.  

Thankfully, Rachel posted this TED talk to help further my thinking....

Following up from the post about community engagement last week, I wanted to focus a bit more on the general vision of NetSquared, currently posted in draft format.  Specifically, I wanted to pick up on something I mentioned in the last Global Leadership Council (GLC) call about the fluid nature of our network...

(Why) Are We Building The Brain?

(Image of Z3 computer on wikimedia)

My impression so far is that this vision is a centralised idea.  Of course, the notions of showcasing, linking and facilitation do feature, but I have concerns that we are trying to over engineer.  Equally, this vision seems to suggest what a central team would do, rather than how the wider network could engage.

It's true, that a call amongst the GLC was that we didn't have a common vision, or unifying set of aims and objectives.  Without these, we reckoned, it would be hard to mobilise.  

On reflection however, I think we've sent ourselves down the wrong path... why not let chaos be the order of the day?

NetSquared = Local Spaces, Loosely Joined, Globally...

So - that isn't the most catchy slogan, but bear with me!

This is how I see NetSquared:

Local organisers will all have their own networks and circles or influence.  Around once a month some of these configure and pull together, at various scales.  Some of these may continue during the month, but the cyclical nature of our organising means that we will inevitably have to pay attention to other things.  

It's the connections that we make and foster in these moments that are important.  These are not hardwired, or short-term - they require ongoing cultivation.  But - they often take place as conversations or discussions.  Our nodes on the network flash on and off.  Just as the web is a huge mass of interconnected documents, we're adding links and annotations to our network - but at various speeds, intensities and focal points.  

So, could NetSquared facilitate a flow of signals rather than a repository of content?

A shiny and unified vision across "non-profit technology" is a rabbit hole we might want to sidestep.  The people organising, attending and discussing these issues are far more important - let's embrace the lack of rulebook or grand theory! 

I'm aware that such conversations inevitably get trapped into a focus on tools and platforms, so I'll try and rally against that in the next post :)

Apologies if you stumbled here looking for a 1980s band

As part of the Global Leadership Council of NetSquared we've been talking about the vision of NetSquared and what value this can bring to the network of people that voluntarily organise regular meetups about non-profit technology.

There are lots or words and thoughts over at the NetSquared blog.  I'll admit I'm a bit lost as to where it is going. Therefore, I plan to respond via simple and potentially cheeky blog posts - this being the first of them!

When Global Networks Don't Engage

I'm a "member" of various global / national / local networks that want to make change.  On the whole, I value and respect their work and approach.  

But - sometimes I have my head in my hands....

So - If you want to build a global community network, maybe:

Don't Take Me For Granted

Yes, Avaaz, I understand that the causes are important.  I understand this network is millions deep.  I'll do what I can. I care.  But I ONLY get emails from you to sign a petition or contribute some money.  I sign the campaign.  And then get another. And another. Is that all I need to do?  Just keep on clicking...

38 Degrees. People, Power. Change. Again, I sign their petitions.  One day, I got this email from them:

However, hidden deep down in the email footer was:

Ah, OK, got it.  You just want me to make you look good on tele!  Honestly.

Don't Pretend You're Really Here

The Open Knowledge Foundation are doing some great work around open data.  I go to their conferences/festivals, and welcome their news and discussions.

They also claim to have a "chapter" in Manchester, founded in Novermber 2011:

Meanwhile, Open Data Manchester continues to meet and develop open data initiatives locally. It has done for over two years.  Pity the OKF didn't enquire beforehand...

What Can NetSquared Learn About This?

Engagement is tricky.  Don't think it can happen when you jump/email/setup a meetup group.

R.I.P MCA

Here's a list of names and addresses:

I quickly did the map of the local election candidates after noticing/guessing that only one was with a postcode within Hulme.

Would you vote differently if you saw this?

On one hand, that sounds a tad Royston Vasey.  On the other hand, shouldn't people wanting to represent an area have some connection to it?

Granted, the postcode provided may be administrative.  Who knows.  I just put some pins in a map.

Man Takes Media Celebrity to His Head and Attacks Cyclists #1

In September 2009, z-list celebrity chef James Martin wrote an account of how he ran some cyclists off the country lanes, whilst test driving some sports car. The Mail on Sunday - who for some reason paid him for his words - received lots of complaints.  Twitter went crazy.  James apologised:

It was never my intention to offend the many cyclists who share our roads across the country. What was intended to be a humorous piece was clearly misjudged. 

Unfortunately, said apology is no longer to be found on his website - but it was all just a joke, so who cares.  You crazy cat James.

Man Takes Media Celebrity to His Head and Attacks Cyclists #2

This morning (April 2012), twitter rumbled again to the news of London taxi-firm boss John Griffin.  He has his own magazine.  Plus he's been on Secret Millionaire and had his cabs featured in The Apprentice, so a step up from Saturday-morning fodder jester James!  

John brings the wisdom that the roads of London are busy.  He's instructed his 3500 drivers to use the bus lanes.  If they fail to notice any cyclist (especially a new one!), and hit them, then tough - they had it coming.  Nice man.  After some outrage, he claimed:

I accept that the tone of the article was perhaps a little too inflammatory. It was meant to entertain and generate debate...

Excuse us John - forgive me for not including your in-cab Add Lib corporate magazine up there at the forefront of journalism "opening up debate".  You own it.

Believing Their Own Hype

As any cyclist will tell you, the attitudes of Mr Martin and Mr Griffin are far from unusual.  But - blantant disregard for the law and safety of others isn't usually something you'd write about.  Or publish to the world.  

John somehow forgot that some cyclists may actually also use his cabs.  Or - that they might cycle into work for companies that have a corporate contract with him.  #boycottaddisonlee is starting to put some of that into sharp focus.

These individuals think they can spout off such thoughts and get away with it.  I'm not too surprised.  

As good a chef our James might be, he's got gas hobs named after him, danced in Strictly and writes about sports cars for a Sunday rag.

John may be successful business man, but we've let him think he exists as a higher being via Secret Millionaire, whilst his £250k donation to the tory party meant access to government ministers.

No doubt, when you start to exist behind firewalls surrounded by Yes Men you'll believe your immune from anything.  

Time to wind down the window and smell their own exhaust fumes.  Until they are sick.

Whilst in New York, I bought the kids This is New York by Miroslav Sasek - we've a small collection of his books from other places.

Whilst reading it, I noticed a small illustration about New York as a port:

I took a peak inside and found a football game in progress:

On Sunday I woke up to a feature in the Observer around coding for kids, including a manifesto for teaching computer science in the 21st century. Excellent.

I was then lucky enough to point Daniel, CEO and founder of TechSoup (our host in SF), to myreflection on working with Young Rewired State in Manchester.  He shared some thoughts on thedynamics and tensions for change makers - including an inspiring link to the story of Vlad and theResource Center for Student Organizations.

On Monday I met Steve from SAP.  He runs a programme that brings SAP technology staff, skills and resources into non-profit causes across the globe.  Steve wants to work with NetSquared, which I organise in Manchester.  I was reminded of DJ, who develops SAP projects, but also bought pizza for Manchester Young Rewired State last year!

Blimey - how things connect

Creating Space

I've been talking a lot with my fellow #net2glc bod Aysegul about how making, curating and maintaining a common and open space is important for the conditions for change.  Booking the room, opening the doors and holding the coats... For me, this is crucial.

An Open Space for Coding for Kids

With all this floating around, I'm more hyped to take forward the idea of maintaining a space for young people to mess about with technology, but outside of school.

The campaign to change UK education is admirable and needed, something I fully support.  But stuff like the MadLab, 826 Valencia, Young Rewired State and Net Squared happen outside of established institutional timetables.  Let's make sure that alongside much-needed school changes, there is a space for access to people, skills and resources via free association.

How to push it?

Two immediate ways:

1 - Join us at MadLab on 30th April for a planning meeting about Young Rewired State.  Find out more, and meet some of the YRS'ers.

2 - Pledge support for YRS nationally.  This year, there is an amazing ambition of 500 participants across 50 centres - bringing them together at a "summer of code"

See you there

Despite it being a shorter train journey from Manchester to the Lake District, it's a shame that I make less often.  This time around I had two reasons to visit, both highly rewarding.

Cumbria Social Media Surgery

@midhal has been organising social media surgeries around Cumbria for a while.  When last visiting the Langdale & Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team (LAMRT) I'd mentioned to LAMRT team leader Nick about the possibility of hosting one there - which Nick and Mohammed promptly did.  

At #cumbriaSMS I spent most of the evening as a patient, which was a welcome change.  I met Liz, who runs *several* twitter accounts for various niches.  From village life to maths teaching to (not) the Westmorland show, Liz gave me an thrilling insight into twitter.  Services such as GrabInBox, JustUnfollow and Twiteriod are a part of her growing repatoire or tools to effectively manage her tweets.  

What was particularly interesting was how this was 100% Twitter-based.  Maybe, years ago, such community publishing initiatives would have been based in Dreamweaver courses, or community directories, or perhaps podcasts.  Liz demonstrated how the stream of Twitter is enough - energy is spent on content and audience rather than build and production.  This led us to some of the writings of Stowe Boyd and "liquid email"... a small gesture of something new I could add to the conversation! 

Analysis Exchange

@caprenter and I then picked our way to through to the youth hostel that Nick runs, when not rescuing people.  Connectivity and signal were low, so we set up a conference call via a landline phone (!) to ta

lk to Peter O'Neill and Tristan Bailey about the web analytics they'd undertaken on the LAMRT site.  Huge thanks to Peter and Tristan for taking us through each and every detail of their findings, right through to 11.30pm!  

We'd registered a project for LAMRT on the wonderful Analysis Exchange, a platform to pair non-profit web projects with students and professionals of web analytics.  The triangular dynamic of non-profit>student>mentor works really well - and this project was no exception.  The evidence and recommendations presented were really clear - directing LAMRT to create more content around donation stories and safety messages, plus signposting an active Facebook community back through to the site itself.

Fresh air

Even managed to squeeze a morning walk in, before discussing actions to take on the LAMRT site with Nick.  Remind me to go more often.  

When I walk my kids to school in the morning we navigate a crossroad junction busy with commuters going to work, shoppers going to Asda and several buses normally arriving at once.  There aren't any controls for pedestrians so we - and countless others throughout the day - try and make it across in the split-second between the lights changing.  

The next step could have been a petition and wider campaign to highlight the perils of the junction, but for now I've turned to the data.  I'm interested to see if the council are "right", or at least try and have a discussion based upon some facts.  I knew that via DataGM, datasets of road accidents since 2005 had been published, so I started to take a look through them.  It's resulted in a map of accidents in Hulme - but I wanted to share some wider concerns and observations about using opendata specifically in this post.

1 - Data use means making editorial decisions

The published datasets are quite large in terms of coverage and values. I had to think about how to segment and group this according to the analysis I wanted to undertake - settling upon

• When (dates, time etc)
• Where (geographic and administrative geography)
• What (number of vehicles and casualties, etc).  

The wider point here is that alreadyI was making editorial decisions on a raw dataset. 

2 - Transforming and cleaning opendata takes time

I spent a lot of time in Google Refine:

• Transforming the published Eastings and Northings values to lat/long, postcodes and then administrative geography elements (ward, local authority) - using regine URL lookups and the uk-postcodes API
• Building upon the published datetime stamp to isolate values for year, month and day - and also group times into arbitrary time slots through the day
• Converting the numeric codes for each question into the text/English version - in order that
  the end user could navigate the data easily

So - Ive made a lot of adjustments to the original data.  Ideally, I'd like my derivation to be openly published (currently via Google Fusion Tables), but more important is sharing and attributing the steps I've gone through.  Again, in my usage of the open data I'm moving beyond the raw data via subjective decisions I make.  What happens to the "added value" I'm creating?  

3 - Sub datasets only make part of the story

I've created a map of Hulme using the Exhibit software and scripts.  That's all very well, but I'm aware that this area is pretty meaningless outside of local politics.  Ideally, I'd like to lift the whole dataset onto such a facet browsing platform (if someone can help with Exhibit 3.0 then please shout) - but I'm aware that people may want to split and view the data via other factors - bus routes for example?

This data is derived from the Stats19 dataset, which requires each accident be recorded into a standard way.  So far, roughly one third of the scope of this datasets has been published via my source - DataGM.  There are potentially tons of other insights to be gleaned from the details on the accident, according to the forms that are in use.

4 - Did I chose the right dataset?

It figures to look at accident data when looking at road safety - or does it?  What about data on traffic flows, bus routes, cycle and pedestrian throughput? Or wider data around local services and demographics?  At this point I start to get into the "overwhelmed by opendata" state - and cling back to my initial little map.  But how do we take this further and engage people?  I posted the map to the local email news forum - not a single response so far.....people probably have far more interesting things to do.

This has been a great process to get to grips with a few things personally.  In the meantime, I'll keep on jumping the lights ....