In my scarce spare-time, I’ve started work on a non-commercial ‘hyperlocal’ website in my neighbourhood. It has brought home to me just how near-yet-far local social networking is from achieving what it could do. It’s in it’s early stages, but go and have a look at Finchlinks and tell me what you think? The whole [...]

I’ve just had this article published by The Telegraph. Sometimes, it’s only when you read yourself elsewhere that you see that you buried your more important point under less significant ones. “Since the 2005 election, we have raced past the tipping point. Facebook has 23 million British users. About half of the eligible voters are [...]

If you will permit me a small plug for some work I’m doing, I’d like to tell you a bit about The Centre for School Design – a project that was launched on Monday evening by the British Council for School Environments (BCSE). I’ve been very interested in Ty Goddard’s work for a while now [...]

Via Mick Phythian, I’ve just seen this (shorter version: people don’t use interactive services because it undervalues their time, ‘valuing it at zero’- face-to-face is a more reliable ideal, and the utility calculation has to be positive before people will take online options. If buying something online saves you £20 then you may take the [...]

So: It’s now official. Local authorities are going to be obliged to promote democracy (and the bill is quite prescriptive about the role that the internet will have to play in this). It should make for an interesting seven months. There is often something of a dialogue of the deaf between those who have spent [...]

Here’s a bit of advice for local councillors on how to (and how not to) use Facebook. Following the PICamp event at Reboot Britain in July, a number of disputes have been bubbling away around the question of whether local authorities should be producing their own newspapers or not. Here are a few dips into [...]

Since the launch of PICamp in late May, a number of important themes have been highlighted and addressed. The main one, it seems, is the small-p political nature of  many changes that are happening at the moment – changes that are brought about by the rapid take-up of usergenerated content tools. These have been fleshed [...]

In Belfast earlier this week, working on the inaugural PICamp – the Political Innovation Camp alongside Amplified 09. We had some great coverage from the BBC’s Hearts & Minds programme – Nothern Ireland’s Thursday evening political slot.     This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required [...]

On Tuesday, I’ll be in Belfast (un)organising an Unconference called PICamp – the Political Innovation Camp. I’m working with the Slugger O’Toole weblog and Amplified ’09 in doing this, and we’re hoping to have sixteen sessions (that’s how many we have time and space for) – each one initiated by attendees. The most exciting thing [...]

I’ve written a post over on the Common Endeavour political weblog about the problem with policy-deliberation and how it may result in the ideal solution to the people-won’t-pay-for-content-anymore problem. Psst – viral marketing doesn’t work – pass it on!: