Talk About Local » hyperlocal labs

Working circles of kindness

clare white — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:12:53 +0000

Two very inspiring events yesterday give me the chance to update Small Circles of Kindness.

First up was Scraperwiki’s Birmingham Hackers and Hackers Hack Day (#hhhbrum). A mixture of journalists, ex-journalists and bloggers with their own different missions came together with friendly developers, most of whom had no particular preferred subject but a burning desire to mess about with data. A real life gathering with plentiful food and a competitive edge was the ideal way to focus groups on developing some sort of tool. It gave the likes of me who live in awe of developers a chance to see them in their natural environment: hunting down the prey, tearing it to pieces, mashing up different things and regurgitating them as a neat package (sorry, analogy probably taken too far there).

The teams swiftly zoomed in on common themes of interest to communities with health, education and council services coming up high. Our health team realised that the potential scope was so wide it would be difficult to keep it simple. We had strong temptations both to create something that was newsworthy and something that was useful for communities, which created a bit of a dilemma. The day-long focus on mashing together something that worked brought into sharp focus many incompatibilities and problems even with datasets that you might expect to be relatively simple. The end presenters bravely boiled all this down into two key points: a UK-first GP map to which other details can be added and proof through data of the most and least “scaredy-cat” places. Watch the presentations to find out more and see the other very impressive projects from the day.

The problem-solving and combination of people from different backgrounds that could test and challenge each other made for a very stimulating environment and one that could be useful for all sorts of different contexts. Far from being just about building tools for communities or journalists, we also found ourselves looking at how the big PCT-to-GP handover might affect communities on the ground and how data could be used to make that process more transparent. We strayed into some nervy territory about the risks and pitfalls of handing such massive population-wide health responsibilities over to groups of GPs who were difficult enough to hold accountable now, let alone when massive restructuring and regrouping makes the current data largely irrelevant.

I hope to write lots more about the day, but one of the most useful things I learnt was that Scraperwiki gives a great platform for people who can see “stuff” they want to do something, with but inadequate knowledge to get started, another place to ask an incredible community of developers for help. You can also browse the current list and blog posts from the days as they make their way round the country for inspiration on the sorts of tools you might want to get help to build in your own area.

Too soon I had to leave Birmingham for an unmissable invitation to see the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu at Stoke-on-Trent’s Civic Centre as part of our city’s 100 year anniversary. As a very modern Archbiship, he did not turn down the chance to plug his new website, Acts 435, which personifies the sort of useful tool that hyperlocal communities can work with. Its basic premise is to connect people who need help with the people who can offer it. It works through networks of trust, in this case churches, many of whom are already working with the most vulnerable in communities. All the donations do to the person asking and any gift aided additions will support the running of the site. Key to its potential success is the fact that it widens out the donor pool from a small church in an over-stretched area to Christians nationwide (if not global-wide) and gives their small donations greater power. The platform is simple and hearteningly the Archbishop said that there were more people offering help than asking for it at the moment.

I hope his initiative does well and leads to more small donor exchange platforms like this in the UK – I’ve always hoped someone will build (or tell me about) a British version of Kiva to support microcredit programmes here, for example.

Two different websites, both bringing together exchanges of help. If you’re reading this and wondering if you have a place in these circles then never fear, here’s a suggestion. Many people are still offline, with problems and needs that go unheard. Hyperlocal bloggers are ideally placed to make connections, utilising the connections and networks they can make online and also helping offline people to make their first steps online in pursuit of their interests, whatever they might be.

The Exchange: techy corner / knowledge sharing / geek garden

clare white — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:56:41 +0000

At one of the very first sessions of #tal10, @countculture pinned me with a pointed look. “Talk About Local need to do something to bring together the geeks and the non-geeks”. And as he is the man who made council websites a million times better, who was I to argue? Through the day, I made notes of many wonderful ideas but it does seem true that there is no one platform bringing them together and many tools are being built for one hyperlocal context that could easily be reused, adapted and improved in other settings. So, we’ll have a go…

The web is brimming with free resources, tools and communities working together to solve problems and build stuff.

With your help, this section of Talk About Local Labs will make links between the techy and the non-techy to share knowledge, help answer questions and think about suggestions for when a tool or data can help overcome a hyperlocal problem.

Although paid-for services are quite fairly being developed for the hyperlocal blogging community, at this stage the focus of this section is to ensure offline communities can make the most of the free, open web and the tools published under open licenses that many of us enjoy every day to make tasks like publishing, reporting potholes, collaborating or looking up council agendas quicker and easier. In addition, we want to make sure that developments to free public data benefit all communities.

Many off-the-shelf resources that don’t need high-level technical skills can be found in our Step-by-Step and Quick Tips sections and we’re always looking for new ones to add.

This section, therefore, is for people to find out how to learn more advanced skills, or ask someone technically-minded for help. The TAL team and anyone else working with offline communities can also use these resources to ‘translate’ community issues into the sorts of problems with parameters that developers love to get their teeth into. We don’t want to reinvent any wheels, so please use this very simple and friendly questionnaire to ensure we’re not missing anything that already exists, or if you prefer dive straight into the editable Google document of this page to add content.

The proposed sections so far follow and as this develops sections may move into separate pages, wikis, forum threads, tag lists or even some sort of magical developers’ garden that I haven’t even imagined yet.

Geek exchange
Ideas for bringing together geeks and non-geeks to make cool things happen in communities, plus networks and camps of developers looking for projects.
Social Media Surgeries | Friendly Geeks list on Twitter | data.gov.uk Local Data project | Speed-dating | Pimp my Geek | Scraperwiki

Web building step-by-step
Recommendations, tutorials and links to communities for people who want to move from free hosted platforms to self-hosting, installing plugins and into development.

Help
Where community problems get developed into programming/data problems that can be solved, or people post up requests. Also links to forums and tags where people are helping each other.
TAL10 Google Group | Lazyweb tag on Twitter | Friendly Geeks on Twitter |

Showcase and Ideas
Developers like to see their work used, so this will include things they have developed, or offers of things they would be willing to develop if enough people are going to make use of it.
A page of bright ideas | Openly Local council info widget |

Community surgery: how to tackle the problems that could kill your blog

clare white — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:25:27 +0000

Modern websites are not just a set of pages sent between computers and consumed by passive pairs of eyes. The best websites are living, breathing communities, full of ever-changing content and lively debate, witty exchanges and with a bustling calendar of real-life events. The problem, of course, with communities, is, we hate to say… people. Putting your flag in the virtual desert of your local area and inviting everyone around you to come and hang out is risky, but the effort brings great rewards.

If you’re one of those people ploughing a lonely furrow; the only person in the village who knows where the ‘on’ switch is on the computer and how to find people’s long-lost relatives on Facebook, thereby cursing yourself to hours transcribing and sending them hastily scribbled notes ever since the Post Office closed last year, as well as running the village website after a stern command from the chair of the resident’s association who gets all her digital knowledge from the Guardian; then this corner of talkaboutlocal is for you. If you would like to suggest your own problems, or examples and solutions to any of these, please add them in the comments and we’ll add them in.

The anonymity-causes-idiocy problem
Symptoms: An idiot is posting abuse
Try these treatments:
- switch on moderation so that posts need to be approved before they appear
- add a note about acceptable behaviour at the top of the site (example)

The Control problem
Symptoms: you started off with a friendly community, but now everyone is whining and there’s a palpable air of tension in the forums and round the church tea. People start saying the site is badly designed and they can’t find anything, that the articles are too long or too short or too pompous. That it would all work a lot better if we were all working to one unified ‘vision’. Their vision.
Try these treatments:
- encourage people to take the lead on their own area of interest by creating smaller groups
- don’t be too locked in to your own vision of the site. Once you switch on a community website, it belongs to your community. Only if you’re elected can you have any claim to be speaking on behalf of your community.

The ‘we’re too small’ problem
Symptoms: nobody’s contributing and nobody knows what you’re doing.
Try these treatments:
- have patience. Everything has to start somewhere and particularly in areas where internet access is relatively low, you can expect it to take a while – at least a year to eighteen months, maybe longer – for you to establish the name of your website in the community
- talk about your site everywhere and show it to people. Printouts are handier than pulling out a full projector and web connections, so don’t get too technical. Try Vistaprint for some free cards to give to people and if local schools and organisations start to take an interest, ask them if they can print out some information sheets and posters for you as well.
- when people are talking to you about their burning passion, ask them to write, take photos or videos about it. Most people don’t just write in when you ask them but they are happy to share their interests.
- make your methods of contributing as simple as you possibly can. If you’re getting no response to email calls to contribute to your wiki, it’s almost certain nobody understood what you were talking about and possible that the link you sent them didn’t even work (I’ve been there on this one). Never mind snazzy technology, give them a beer mat to write on.
- don’t forget to ask people for help in really simple ways, don’t assume they know and just aren’t helping. People love to help, especially if helping takes the most minimal amounts of time. This is the way to draw people in to bigger amounts of time, but don’t worry – one hundred volunteers giving an hour a week is pretty much equivalent to the full time team of most modern newspapers.
- find the people who are already online in your area, they will be easier to get hold of. Pubs or local faith and community centres are your offline equivalent.
- keep in touch with small traders. They know everything that is going on and generally a bit of time to tell it to regular customers (like you).

The ‘we’re too big’ problem
Symptoms: everyone’s contributing to your site, everyone has a view on it and moderating it is going to kill your marriage. Your dog, let alone your son, hardly remembers who you are.
Try these treatments:
- remind yourself, and others if necessary, that’s you’re running the blog voluntarily. Restrict the time you spend on it.
- don’t get pulled in to lengthy wars in the comments or forums. Your excuse that you need to go to bed might just prevent someone saying something they regret.
-ask for help so you can distribute the workload – on a WordPress site you can give members different levels of editing rights.

The business-plan problem
Symptoms: having got wildly popular, everyone’s saying you should turn the website into a full time job. You formed a committee. You’ve all been bogged down in funding proposals for the last eight months. Meanwhile, people have drifted away from the site.
Try these treatments:
- carefully consider all the different funding options for your site and your time. These include advertising, grant funding, low-interest business loans if appropriate, consultancy work, again if appropriate.
- a tip I learnt from an old journalism book: just because everyone says there should be another local news outlet, doesn’t mean they will help fund yours. In my experience, it’s true.
- make a clear choice: if you want to go into business, concentrate on that. If you’re happy keeping it volunteer-led, make sure you keep it fun. Many a good community activist has burnt out, unappreciated.
- balance committee work with strong leadership. Times will come when you need to make decisions quickly and if your group doesn’t trust you to make those decisions, they probably don’t trust to you to be in charge (see the “Control” problem, above)

Updates; thanks to those who commented below.

The Get-your-blog-off-my-lawn problem
Symptoms: it’s getting like Midsomer murders round here. The Village Times (published continuously since 1742) is spitting feathers that you blew their exclusive with your Twitpics of the Spring cake competition. Although your detailed IP logs make it clear that *everyone* is glued to your blog, the elite have taken to laboriously pretending they don’t know your name.
Try these treatments:
- before you go into all out war, think twice about whether you need to be in competition at all. If your drive is just to get information out there then maybe an approach to the incumbent to work together will be well received. After all, for all their bluster, they are often volunteers themselves.
- if this isn’t well received, just carry on. Be persistently friendly, make generous references to their ‘in-depth’ (verbose) coverage of the elections and don’t worry about it. After all, there’s enough space on the internet for all of us and it’s so Old Media to fight.

The ‘I scare people’ problem
The symptoms: you’re Clarke Kent trying to hit the story, they’re just trying to make pizza.
Try these treatments:
- hold back those journalism chops. Describe, don’t interrogate. Your old instincts will soon come in handy when an election comes up. What makes many hyperlocal blogs so wonderful is that mix of hard and soft news. Not flower show pictures shoved in to make the advertising department happy (joy! you don’t have one!), but because your readers care – this is the glue that knits your community together. Reading about unknown activities on your blog might entice someone who feels scared to go outside into the community centre and become a volunteer themselves. So you’re making connections and bringing something previously hidden, because the mainstream media can’t turn it into a pithy two minute news package, into the open.
- take your time. Again, you’re not under a time limit. The first few minutes of what people say to interviewers are what they think they should say, it’s only after a while that you start to get the real conversation. If you don’t want very, very long video interviews, here are some good tips from Nick Booth.
- find the questions that work for your subjects. Funnily enough, the time-honoured questions that journalists love aren’t always the ones that real people like to answer. Much as those interminable questions in questionnaires don’t really get your real views, they just get your reflex reaction as you click on through to reach the prize. Have a look round at other techniques like the Oxford Muse or NLP, or others. Equally, if you’re not from a journalism background you can learn a lot from journalists, just maybe not, in this case, Jeremy Paxman.

So how do you get it just right? There will always be issues, but the best community web editors I’ve seen know how to keep their websites enjoyable, whether their definition of enjoyable is bloody scraps down in the comments or warm, supportive swapping of recipes. They are relaxed about what goes on the site, encouraging to contributors, patient and persistent and, perhaps most of all, brave enough to keep the thing going, post by post.

What advice can you add?

Small circles of kindness

clare white — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:51:29 +0000

One of many ideas that really appealed to me in David Halpern’s Hidden Wealth of Nations, which I’m reading at the moment, is Fureai kippu, or ‘caring relationship tickets’.

This is a community currency which operates in Japan, creating social structures to replace family and community units which broke down as people become more mobile. A simple illustration is that someone who has an elderly parent in another part of the country can look after an older person locally and then exchange the credits they earn for doing so for their parent’s care.

The first question, asked as soon as I tweeted the link, was “would it work here?”.

The conclusion from a brief and interesting exchange with @genzaichi and @priddy, was maybe, with lots of caveats too long to tweet, and at the very least only with strong networks of trust and possibly only on a hyperlocal level. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on the subject claims that exchanges of help on the internet is not a valid use of the term. They are talking about face-to-face care, possibly backed up by technology. I wonder if that might change if the evidence for positive psychological results of online interaction builds, but that’s something for another day.

What I found most appealing was the idea that complementary exchange systems could suddenly make some of the most disadvantaged people, under current systems, rich again. Cashless trading systems like LETS are growing in popularity and I like those too, but I think this is slightly different: rather less about replacing services you can buy, rather creating a parallel system of kindness which complements paid-for (or cashlessly traded) services. Timebank is a high profile example of a site which helps match volunteer opportunities with volunteers, but without the credit element for the people putting in the work.

Let’s say we could record 12 hours a day that a carer spends. At the moment, carers are often financially disadvantaged because they have given up work and their allowances may not cover the costs of caring. They also often suffer from health issues like depression, not at all surprising when you consider the emotional and physical effects not only of care, which can be very hard, but also due to concern for the suffering of their family member or friend. Isolation and lack of opportunity to look after their own wellbeing – which perhaps they don’t see it as a priority – might be another problem. The worst prospect is that the person they care for dies, leaving them alone and without recourse to their own carer.

Now, while the carer probably won’t ask for anything in return for caring, they do have a whole host of needs that they might take up if it was available to them, things like respite care, help with housework, shopping or cooking a good meal, someone to talk to, somebody to walk with. Their 12 hours a day would effectively make them rich in such a system, recognised and valued for something that currently is often neither.

Equally, there are plenty of people who give just one or two hours of their time just because they want to help others in a community they care for. The unemployed, rather than being judged as they were jobseeking, could offer a great deal into such a system, giving them opportunities to meet people and remind themselves that they still have something to offer even if they don’t have a job at the moment. The lonely retired would have a way of connecting with their neighbours in a way that doesn’t make them feel like they are asking for help, for example helping the kids next door with their reading or maths homework.

There is a huge amount of this kind of work going on anyway. The disconnect is in the idea of exchange, generally because people doing good things don’t normally shout about it and people don’t always think to ask for something in a society that is used to marketplaces. If you can’t afford it, you can’t have it; you should work harder. Kindness is rarely reported in the media and if it is, it is probably accompanied with shock that ‘this sort of thing’ can happen in ‘this day and age’ – if they’re really laying it on with some implication that the inflictor of kindness will get themselves sued or knifed.

In contrast, it is my experience that where the platform and agenda is built in particular ways, online communities run on a great deal of generosity and users are quick to create structures of support and recognition, and, importantly, spread awareness of the communities they are enthusiastic about. Many neighbourhoods retain the generosity and the inventiveness, but not necessarily the offline equivalent of something like Spread Firefox.

Such a system would have to be very simple and accessible, I’m thinking very simple ways to record time spent to exchange for credits, methods for community members to verify/recommend/acknowledge time, invites/connections of trusted friends and the marketplace of offered services. It might ideally be an extension of platforms where people are already, eg through Facebook and iPhone apps. (Digital mentoring could of course be one of the services offered). Virtually all the interactions would be real-world but an online dimension that is as easy as a game enables information, needs and feedback to be expressed, recorded and responded to in a way that doesn’t always happen in real life. In this case hyperlocal is best – adding information and creating matches for people in existing communities that know each other, venturing into wider circles, or bringing circles together, only if and when trust is built.

It’s not the talkaboutlocal way to rebuild tools or reinvent wheels, but to ask questions and try to bring together experience and expertise. Do you know of existing web tools that could support such an idea if a neighbourhood or group wanted to try it, or could it work on existing platforms? Do you know of such schemes running that interested groups could learn from? Have I missed my chance to submit something to Sicamp?

Add GroupsNearYou.com to your WordPress blog

philip john — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:00:46 +0000

There’s a great site for finding social groups in your area called GroupsNearYou.com. Just type in your location or postcode and it shows you what’s close by.

Now you can provide that very same ease of use to your own local blog. I’ve just finished the first phase of a new GroupsNearYou plugin for WordPress. It provides blog owners with a new widget which, once configured, will show the groups in your area.

Below is a video showing how to set the widget up and there are also written instructions. The plugin itself can be downloaded from my website where you can also subscribe to updates. Once you’ve downloaded the plugin, follow these instructions on how to manually install a plugin. If you have any suggestions, questions or comments please use the comments section.

Instructions

Go to Plugins
Activate the GroupsNearYou plugin
Go to Appearance > Widgets
Drag the GroupsNearYou widget to your sidebar
Configure the settings according to your own location and your preferred display
Check your blog and you should see the new widget added to your sidebar

How to add Twitter to your WordPress blog

philip john — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:00:53 +0000

If you run a local blog there’s a good chance you might be on Twitter, as my some of your neighbours. This creates a ‘back-channel’ that can often go unseen. So in the interests of enhancing local blogs with this back-channel, below is a video which shows you how to add both your own tweets and the results of a Twitter search to your WordPress blog.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please leave them in the comments section below.

Instructions – adding someone’s tweets

In the WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Widgets
Drag the Twitter widget onto the sidebar
Add the twitter account name you want to show
Configure the remaining options to change the display
Click Save
Refresh your blog and you should see the new widget on your sidebar

Instructions – adding a Twitter search

Go to search.twitter.com and perform a search.
On the right hand side, right click on the link that reads “Feed for this query” and select Copy link location
Go to your WordPress dashboard
Go to Appearance > Widgets
Drag the RSS widget to your sidebar
In the first box, paste the link you just copied from Twitter
Configure the other options according to your preferences
Click Save
Refresh your blog and you should see the new widget on your sidebar

Add WriteToThem.com to your WordPress blog

philip john — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

If you’ve not heard of WriteToThem.com before, it’s a great site by mySociety which makes contact politicians really easy, whether that’s your local councillors or your MP, regional assembly member or MEP.

To make it even easier for readers of your own blog, I’ve just finished the first phase of a new plugin for WordPress. It provides you with a new widget based on WriteToThem.com which will provide an easy way for your readers to get in touch with their politicians.

Instructions

Go to Plugins
Activate the WriteToThem plugin
Go to Appearance > Widgets
Drag the WriteToThem widget to your sidebar
Configure the settings according to your preferred display
Check your blog and you should see the new widget added to your sidebar

Adding local information to your blog using RSS

philip john — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:00:53 +0000

There’s a lot of useful information lying around the web that has local relevance but often people don’t know it’s there or even how to find it. For example, the NHS Choices web site provides the public with a way of rating and reviewing their local health services.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have this information on your local blog? Well, you can! The video and instructions below show you how you can take feeds from sites like NHS Choices and have them display on your own site, using WordPress.

The principles will allow you to add all sorts of information to your blog using RSS and Atom feeds, where available. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please use the comments section.

Instructions

Copy the link (URL) to the RSS or Atom feed.
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Widgets
Drag the RSS widget to your sidebar
Copy the URL into the first box.
Configure the remaining options according to your preferred display
Click Save
Refresh your blog and you should see the new widget appear in your sidebar

Add TheyWorkForYou.com to your WordPress blog

philip john — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:00:23 +0000

TheyWorkForYou.com is a great site built by e-democracy charity, mySociety. It provides an easy way for citizens to keep an eye on their MP. You can sign up for e-mail updates whenever your MP speaks in the House of Commons, for example.

So wouldn’t it be cool if you could also put this stuff on your local blog for all your readers to see and keep up to date with? Well, know you can!

I’ve just finished the first phase of a new plugin for WordPress. This first version provides you with a new widget. Once configured, the widget will show the latest activity from your MP and is available both as an addition to your blog for the benefit of your readers but also as a dashboard widget so that you can see the latest updates everytime you log in.

Below is a video and written instructions on how to set the widget up. The plugin itself can be downloaded from my website where you can also subscribe to updates. Once you’ve downloaded the plugin, follow these instructions on how to manually install a plugin. If you have any suggestions, questions or comments please use the comments section.

Instructions

Go to Plugins
Activate the TheyWorkForYou plugin
Go to Settings > TheyWorkForYou
Configure the settings according to your own MP and your preferred display
Click Save options
Go to Appearance > Widgets
Drag the TheyWorkForYou widget to your sidebar
Check your blog and you should see the new widget added to your sidebar

Map the local web using Delicious

clare white — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:01:38 +0000

The thing about websites in local areas is that they’re often not very well linked to one another. I found in Stoke that I would struggle to find websites I’d seen on a shop sign unless I remembered the exact address, because Google wasn’t aware of their existence (see How to get the top of Google). This annoyed me, because I have replaced by memory with Google.

Social Stoke was started to combat this problem and it has two sections: a straightforward blog and a delicious map. The blog looks nicer than a delicious page and means I can add pictures and longer articles, but mainly it is just an aggregate of delicious feeds.

The tag cloud is more useful. As it builds, it creates handy lists of different subjects. For example, here are our local pottery firms and here are some museums. As noted elsewhere, the lists can automatically become RSS feeds for embedding into other sites or tracking on a feed reader.

The easiest way to open this up to collaboration – and it’s great to do this because if you don’t have a passion for fishing clubs, you can be sure someone in your local area does – is by asking people to create their own delicious account and start tagging, including ‘for:socialstoke’ (or whatever your username is). This means you can keep the tags consistent while still sharing the workload.

It doesn’t take very long to make a really useful tag cloud and it makes those Saturday nights watching the X-Factor with your laptop on feel so much more productive!