Posts Tagged ‘web 2.0’

Topics for a Social Media Unconference

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Tomorrow morning, I’m heading up to Stirling for a Local Gov Social Media Unconference, kindly arranged by the Improvement Service, under the banner of the Customer First programme (enabling councils to deliver better, faster and more efficient services to a wider section of the population).

The day will bring together people from local authorities across Scotland who are using social media (or at least thinking about it) to offer better customer choice and engagement, improve access to services, and reduce costs.

Being an unconference, delegates are expected to bring their own suggestions for topics to shape the agenda on the day. People then vote with their feet and gravitate towards the discussions that interest them most. The emphasis is on collaboration – everyone will have the chance to contribute and share.

A starter for ten

I’m sure everyone will be bursting with ideas, but I thought I’d get some of my own thoughts down here, as a bit of a starter for ten.

Read more about the topics I plan to discuss

Social Media Surgeries to help communities go Web 2.0

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Tonight I’m popping along to an introductory meet-up to find out more about a series of local social media surgeries to be held across Edinburgh, aimed at helping communities get online and make the most of Web 2.0.

Organised by multimedia journalist Tom Allan and Greener Leith’s Alistair Tibbitt, Edinbuzz is asking for experts to volunteer as ‘surgeons’, offering one-to-one coaching on the use of social media.

The aim of the surgeries is to take social media tools to community groups.

Blogging, Twitter and Facebook are all great tools, which can be used to campaign, debate and raise issues with local politicians and decision-makers.

Tom Allan quoted in the Edinburgh Evening News

I plan to volunteer my time to support this worthwhile cause, and look forward to seeing what sort of appetite there is when the events kick off in the new year. Any other locals wanting to get involved can check out www.edinbuzz.net to find out more, or pop along to Joseph Pearce’s Bar on Elm Row tonight (7th Dec) from 18:30.

Election Count 2.0 in Edinburgh

Friday, May 7th, 2010
Election map showing Twitter updates

Twitter Election Map

Over the past year or two there has been a palpable surge of interest in using Web 2.0 in the public sector, and in most cases that’s a very positive thing. The added value that such platforms can bring to the services we deliver is obvious, opening new channels of outreach and improving engagement and involvement.

During last night’s election count, the City of Edinburgh Council were putting Web 2.0 to marvellous use by keeping citizens bang up to date with progress of the count taking place over at Meadowbank Stadium.

The following is a summary of what the council did on the night.

More about Election Count 2.0 in Edinburgh

2009 on the web – some retrospectives

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

As we glide gracefully out of the noughties, here are some of the best retrospectives of the past year on the web.

2009 on the web – some retrospectives

Software Engineering and Web 2.0 Accessibility

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

The blog has been a little quiet recently, but will certainly fire up again after next week’s Accessibility 2.0 conference in London, which I plan to live-tweet (#millionflowers) and blog about afterwards here.

Engineering Software for Accessibility

Engineering Software for Accessibility

In the meantime, here’s some useful reading courtesy of Microsft Press – Engineering Software and Accessibility. This is a free 100-page download, covering three key questions:

  • How do you plan for accessibility?
  • How do you design your software for accessibility?
  • How can you implement and test to your software to confirm it meets the accessible design?

Also worth a visit is IBM’s technical library, which has a new section on Accessibility in Web 2.0 technologies, introducing WAI-ARIA and looking at accessible Web 2.0 design principles.

Happy reading, and I hope to see some of you in London next week…

Event review – Web 2.0 in Libraries, Edinburgh, 2nd July 2009

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
National Library of Scotland - image courtesy of yellow book ltd

The National Library of Scotland - image courtesy of yellow book ltd*

I avoided today’s heatwave by sitting in the relatively cool setting of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh for an event put on by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland (CILIPS) – Enterprise, engagement and new communications: Web 2.0 in the Library.

I decided to live-tweet the event (or the morning session, at least, as my N95, which I was using as a modem, ran out of battery during the lunch break). Accordingly, here’s my coverage of the event. I used the hashtag #web2libraryevent so you can also see the Twitter results for that term.

Read the rest of my coverage of the Web 2.0 in Libraries event

Cybersquatting 2.0 – protecting your name in Social Media

Monday, June 8th, 2009

The rise and rise of Social Networking Sites has brought about new risks to an organisation’s online brand, but whilst my last post explored Web 2.0 mistakes which organisation could make themselves, another type of risk is what others may do with your brand if you don’t get there first, through Social Media Cybersquatting. The risks of cybersquatters in a Web 2.0 world

Social Media lessons learned the hard way

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Barely a week goes past without another news story about some hapless individual getting into trouble as a result of Social Media. Accordingly I’ve decided to keep a record of some of these tales of woe.

See the list of Social Media gaffes

Tales of a Web 2.0 city

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

I’ve recently been made aware of a really interesting project that Edinburgh Council’s libraries service has been involved in. It’s a bold venture into Web 2.0 waters, under the umbrella brand of Tales of One City.

The whole thing is brought together by a public page on Netvibes (a personalised web portal, similar to iGoogle). You can find it at www.netvibes.com/talesofonecity.

Netvibes screenshot

Tales of One City Netvibes page

The page has a customised theme (with an image of books as the header) and an embedded Google Search bar. It then serves up 12 widgets, pulling in information from various sources.
Read more about Tales of One City and the benefits and risks of Web 2.0 in local government

Event review – Web 2.0 in the Public Sector, 16/04/09

Monday, April 27th, 2009

On Thursday 16th April, various public sector web types converged upon the Scotsman Hotel on Edinburgh’s North Bridge for a Web 2.0 event, hosted by The Gate.

The day was an interesting and varied one, mixing high-level summaries of web 2.0 technologies with plenty of real-world examples and discussions of the opportunities, and challenges, presented by this brave new(ish) world.

The presentations from the day can be found at http://nondev.com/web_seminar – below is just a brief summary…
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