The other day I was talking with a UK online centre trainer about how the people she had engaged on the talk about local project were finding the WordPress interface quite difficult – the group haven’t been using the internet for long and are just getting used to using email and the like, so were finding WordPress a bit of a leap.

So I started thinking about platforms other than WordPress that are a bit easier to use.  By far the easiest I can think of is Posterous, which publishes emails you send to the site’s email address as blog posts.  A quick run-down of what it does can be found in the Posterous FAQ section.  Posterous also support autoposting to other platforms such as WordPress.

Some good examples of interesting Posterous sites are creativeopenworkshops.com and the community website for Central Birmingham grounds.posterous.com, which takes advantage of one of the best Posterous features – with the correct settings it can allow for contributions from anyone who has the website’s email to post address, whilst the site administrator keeps full control over what does and doesn’t get published. They will receive an email every time someone submits a post, and can check it before releasing it to go live on the website.

The interface on Blogger is a little simpler than WordPress and there are some good community sites that use this, such as welovelarkhall.com and alexandraandainsworth.blogspot.com. A demo video on how to set up a Blogger website is above. However Blogger does have a limited number of themes, so it may be hard to get your website looking exactly how you want it to.

Both Posterous and Blogger have a good import/export feature, so you can import the content from blogs created on other platforms to them, and export to them to again to another platform later if you want to.  For instance Wrote Under Publishing, a Birmingham creative writing and spoken word collective, originally started a website in Blogger, but exported the content from Blogger to a WordPress blog once they felt they had reached the limitations of the Blogger platform.

Another platform is Tumblr.  I’ve not had a terribly long play with this as yet, but from my use of it, it seems to have a very easy-to-use interface.  However, it has a kind of ‘scrapbook’ feel to it, and seems to be purely a place to post content to – you can’t really add a great deal of extra features.  An example of a community website created with Tumblr is kingsheathen.co.uk.

Jonathan Davies has written quite an in-depth article that discusses the pros and cons of using Tumblr – The Blog Herald: Should Your Blog Be On Tumblr? is well worth a read before you start using it.

Other useful posts that go through the pros and cons of different blog platforms are:

• Dave Briggs’ Way To Blog – ‘There are a number of great options available now to start your own blog, for free, with just a few clicks of a mouse button. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses and here I run through five of the best ones.’
• Podnosh’s Where to blog: WordPress vs Typepad vs Blogger? – ‘Blogging packages are like cars. They all get you from A to B but some get you there quicker, some are easier to drive, and they all come in lots of different colours.’

Over the next few years Stafford is going to be suffering real problems. We know that there will be a lot of redundancies, and a lot of cuts in public services. We will need to find ways of creating new opportunities for ourselves. By connecting online we can get through this. An active Hyperlocal site will give us some of the tools we need to do this.
[Diana Smith, Stafford Direct]

After William’s presentation he, Mike and myself will be remaining to help deliver a social media surgery that goes on until 7pm, so if you’re in the area and would like some advice on using the web to communicate, connect and organise, then please come along and say hello!  You can find further details on the Stafford Direct website.

We believe the best advice is contained within real people’s experiences, not in official support packs. We also realised that no matter what your job or industry, lots of us do go through similar emotions when we’re made redundant.

Our aim is to grow Retooled into a really useful resource for anyone around the world who is going through redundancy, or who is supporting a friend or relative in this situation.

To work with the team on building the Retooled website, Antonio Gould and Lizzie Ostrom (who are producing the project on behalf of Maverick) pulled together a group of digital mentors to help with web development, graphic design, photography, content and social media.  I was their ‘social media person’, which just meant I introduced the group to some simple ways in which they can use the web to organise and communicate, with quite a few hyperlocal websites serving as examples of how to use easy social media tools to tell a community’s stories.

During yesterday’s session Retooled team member and ex-Rover employee Bob Oakley told us a particularly interesting story, about a quick-witted secretary who collected the names and details of everyone within her department before the factory closed for good.  The information she gathered effectively kept the community that had built up around her department connected and proved to be enormously useful – Bob himself said that he never would have found out he was entitled to an early pension (‘It was never announced’) unless someone he was in touch via the contact list had told him.

Community or ‘hyperlocal’ websites can be just as effective when based around communities of work as well as neighbourhoods, especially if the workplace that binds those people together is under threat.  Everyone on the Retooled team agreed that their network of contacts was invaluable to them when going through redundancy and looking for a new job.  A community website for the workplace could help keep that network intact after employment, and would be really useful in preventing isolation amongst workforces facing large-scale job losses.

MayoToday.ie - Latest News From County Mayo

Whilst I was enjoying a weekend break in Westport, County Mayo last month I took the chance to meet Anthony Hickey, the manager of the Mayo Today website, which has gone from strength to strength since it started just 5 months ago in February 2010. The blog actually grew from a Twitter account Anthony created for the area, @Mayo2Day:

From there I decided to set up my own local blog, Mayotoday.ie. It’s been very enjoyable and very successful.

Its focus has been very much keeping the county connected with local news and an upbeat outlook:

It’s local news basically, it’s a community news website and I put as many pictures on as I can…and local photographers, they’ve been very good to me, sending me photos. Community news in terms of just what’s happening locally in meetings, drama groups….I try to keep a positive slant on things.

'Family moment at Ballina Heritage Day'

Although the front page has news for the whole of Mayo, Anthony ensures the site works on a more localised level. Readers can filter down the news stream for just ‘Your Town’, thanks to the site’s use of categories, and there will often be a local town bulletin post, such as this June ‘Ballina Beat’.  The website also includes lots of useful listings information that benefit residents, the businesses and in turn, Mayo Today itself:

I have dedicated pages. I have the local cinema listings, local arts, local museums, I update those listings weekly. And that’s been good because I’ve linked in with those people and their reaction has been very positive too and some have linked from their website to Mayo Today, which has been good for me.

Anthony is also experimenting with a local directory – Mayo.tel.

I think that’s an interesting service that I can provide because ‘.tel’ is optimized for mobile phones and I think the mobile web is going to be very important. You can also get Mayo Today on your mobile phone. The local directories, it’s business community phone numbers. That’s going down pretty well too, there’s some interest in it. It’s something I can manage myself. Its cheap, doesn’t cost me much. No hosting cost and it’s very easy to update. Even I can do it.

Although Anthony has created a wonderfully useful and professional-looking website at minimal cost, the demands on his time for its upkeep means he is looking for a way to gain some sort of income from it.

That’s the problem, how do you monetize your website? Time-wise, it’s time consuming. I’ve tapped into a lot of PR agencies, a lot of community groups, the Local Authorities, I cover some Local Authority meetings myself and I have to write that up. I go to local events and festivals and do reports, take photos. You’re talking about certainly 7 days a week, can be 10 hours a day some days, if I want. And how I make a living out of that, that’s the question?

'Kenny donates Parliamentary Debates to Mayo County Library'

Despite there being no obvious answer, Anthony is positive that a solution to this well-discussed issue will present itself.

I think it’s something that’ll probably resolve itself, in time it’ll evolve. The answer will come as the site becomes more of a niche and gets a solid following and we’ll see how it goes from there, but as of now it’s a bit of a mystery alright.

Anthony is finding he’s started something of a trend in hyperlocal websites in Mayo, and sees some opportunity for Mayo Today to work with the smaller community sites that are emerging:

I’d like to link into community groups. I see a lot of smaller communities now are setting up their own community websites, like even down to parish level and little villages and towns and sports clubs. I’d like to link into those and possibly, maybe I could be a hub or a portal for a lot of those and introduce other people to those websites.

And where those websites don’t yet exist or are in need of a helping hand, Anthony is looking to offer his support:

I’ve learned a lot in the last year, in terms of using social media…maybe I could link into those websites, the people who run those websites, help them out and see what I can do there.

It as at this point I suggested the possibility of some Social Media Surgeries in Mayo.

Mayo Social Media Surgery, that’s something I would certainly look at and see if I can do anything.

You heard it here first.

Ballinrobe Races from Nicky Getgood on Vimeo.

When I returned to the UK I had a clumsy first attempt at an audio slideshow from an evening I spent at Ballinrobe Races, which found its way onto Mayo Today’s dedicated Videos page of locally relevant online films.

You can listen to my recorded interview with Anthony below.

Chatting with Anthony Hickey of Mayo Today by getgood

Last Tuesday I paid a visit to Bristol to visit the cluster of UK online centres in the city that are part of the talk about local project.  Whilst there I met up with Don Jenkins, one of our busiest UK online centre trainers in the Bristol area, whose hard work has resulted in some great local websites such as the Kingsley House, created by The Kingsley House Tenants Association to try and improve the upkeep of the council-maintained apartment block and gardens.  Above is a little video clip of Don talking about his experience of delivering the talk about local training.

Well don’t be downhearted because Talk About Local are listing the UnHundred, a slightly tongue in cheek but entirely legitimate & serious list of the top 100 people and sites from the hyperlocal and alternative on-line media communities. Like the Talk About Local UnAwards but better.

We want the people who run the sites that make you laugh, sites that make you think & sites that help you with your hyperlocal projects or people who have done something for the benefit of their community or the wider hyperlocal community, or just something that you like. We are looking for things like:

• On-line community radio stations
• Local Twitter feeds
• Message boards
• Facebook groups
• Podcasts
• Using Video
• Using Pictures
• Local news sites
• Satire
• Most helpful person
• Useful resource sites

If you nominate a site try and tell us who it is who is behind it, the awards are for people after all, if you don’t know don’t worry we’ll try and find them for you.

There are no categories that you need to fit in to, it is totally open to any sites that fit in to the basic criteria of, not being mainstream media and should be predominantly online.

We’ll have a panel of judges from the hyperlocal & on-line media communities who will discuss each nomination and compile the final 100.

Nominations are open now by leaving a comment below. All we need for you to nominate someone is a name & a URL but the more info you can give us the better and 1 or 2 sentences about why you are nominating them.

The top 10 of the UnHundred will win a VIP wristband for the next Talk About Local Unconference.

I have an unusual perspective – long experience of community action using the web and 15 years working in central government in the UK.  I run effective local campaigns and have seen what happens when campaigns hit state institutions – bits of government etc.  The issue isn’t with the web tools it’s the state institutions.  The institutions haven’t adapted yet to the web – they may offer online public services but that is very different to responding to policy issues and engaging in dialogue.

The C19th underpinning design principle of state institutions and indeed legislation is the postal service.  Long phase, slow, low intensity communication with the public.  In the late C20th the institutions adapted to the telephone for service delivery although not policy dialogue by establishing huge contact centre estates.  But have not yet made the necessary adaptions for the internet and indeed the C21st.

With a new generation of younger more internet aware leaders there is a golden opportunity for them to direct their institutions to change and tap into the wonderful outpouring of interest in policy issues online.  So with TED I drafted the TED global Internet Pledge for leaders.  It’s short and simple.  We know that done properly adapting to the internet need not be expensive.  I hope the TED community will campaign for leaders to sign up to it:

For my government the internet is now the primary means of communication with the public for policy formation and service delivery.

We shall extend basic training and support to people who cannot use the internet  enabling them to do so.

Our public institutions must change themselves to make this happen within existing budgets, within 12 months.


Thanks to Newcastle Rocks (which is developing brilliantly) for alerting us to the fact that voting is now open for the Total Politics Best Blog Poll 2010.  The votes will be compiled and included in the forthcoming book, the Total Politics Guide to Blogging 2010-11, which will be published in September.

Rules for nominating websites are as follows:

1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and ranks them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

We at talk about local can think of a few hyperlocal websites that would fit the bill for this, such as Pits n Pots, Parwich.org, W14 & SW6 London or Newcastle Rocks themselves.  If you can think of 5-10 blogs, local or otherwise, that you feel have an important political theme or impact, get voting!

I know I have asked for information from the police for my own site, and been given printed copies, when I said that I could scan them and put them on-line as PDF files I was told it would be better if I didn’t because of the publishing issue.

The question this morning was very definitely about getting information on ASBOs and putting all the information on-line so people

A. knew about the ASBO being in place
B. could then let the police know if they saw it being broken.

I don’t know what the answer is so I asked a couple of press officers and this is one of the responses.

This is a tricky one because current national guidance on this is under review and due to be published.  ultimately it’s down to each force, but Every decision on publishing details of an Asbo must be made on a case by case basis and the risks to the subject, witnesses and community has to be assessed before deciding how to publish.

I have had a case were there were real risks that if we had published a leaflet the subject could have caused harm to themselves, and the risk of breaching the asbo was low, therefore I didn’t authorise the release of the leaflet.

The asbo guidance states that publicity should be localised to the community affected by the actions of the subject, with the principle being that we update those affected that action has been taken, encouraging members of the public to report breaches of the asbo within the affect affected. Its important to remember that an asbo almost always geographically based and all publicity should be proportionate and timely.  This is particularly important as many asbo are issued to under 18s whose identity is normally protected under criminal law and the asbo specific recommends publicity.

This is were the human right act comes in and were a number agencies have faced legal action when it has been argued that the publicity has not been proportionate when publicity has been seen outside the specific area and some time after the court case.

That’s why the leafleting works, as we can demonstrate the area of distribution, timescale of distribution and clearly demonstrates that we have taken action without risking legal action.

The risk with web site publication is we can’t protect the area of distribution and re can’t protect the republication of the image, so difficult to show how you prevented republication.

Larger news organisations print articles as court reports and as they have larger budgets for protecting themselves from legal action are rarely challenged for publishing.  They also only publish contemporaneously which offers protection.  I know that locally the sentinel run asbo stories via there staff lawyers before publishing.

With this in the background we are also being urged to publish more and more outcomes of cases to improve confidence in the justice system but the clear guidance needed is not forthcoming so we will continue to carefully assess each one but it’s clear the leafleting option works well as the public like to receive leaflets and we can control it.

It would recommend that any editor of a local site speak to the police press office for each and every case before deciding to publish and they doing knowing they are responsible for that decision. [emphasis mine]

So over to you guys, should we publish ASBO information on hyperlocal sites? What are the risks? I’m hoping that from the discussion we can come up with some basic guidelines for publishing stuff like this, the most important one being

“It would recommend that any editor of a local site speak to the police press office for each and every case before deciding to publish and they doing knowing they are responsible for that decision.‘

Discuss..