The big news:
Another Local by Social?: Stay tuned for exciting news about for a possible national Local by Social and a hack day in June or July. To register your interest and ensure you’re notified first if/when tickets become available, please sign up here. In the mean time, you’ll want to check out what we did this month at the Local by Social site. We did some amazing stuff in Sunderland and Blackburn.
Other cool events:
ReWiredState Norwich – a weekend hack making better use of data in Norfolk – 7 May. Visual Camp – better visualisation of policy, concepts and government data – an evening gig in central London, 5-9. MailCamp – making better use of email and such like – 12 May in Central London, late afternoon to early evening.
Councillors even better connected: Using social media is important way for practitioners to share information with each other, but it’s also a key way for councillors to engage with citizens. Using social media well will help you to get even more out of the Knowledge Hub. To support this -we’re issuing a 2nd edition of the popular social media guide for members: Councillors Connected. Check out the open consultation draft here – which allows you to comment at paragraph level, add your comments, reflections and examples here.
We’re moving!! Hey guys, we’re moving. We’ve been given that tap on the shoulder and the Social Media CoP is going to be one of the first to move from the Communities of Practice site to the new Knowledge Hub. It will probably happen mid-to-late May and will give more details in the next update. But there’s an automated content-slurper (that’s a technical term!) so DON’T stop contributing. Not that you would…we’re one of the most active communities on the platform – once again THE MOST ACTIVE.
Why us? Because you guys are so awesome – active and knowledgeable – and we need your input to make the Knowledge Hub work for local public services. If you have any questions, check out this thread in the discussion forum.
Can you help:
- Social media and record keeping
- Even more local social media policy/strategies added to wiki. Can you share yours?
- Adrian Short advises you to reserve your council’s Twitter ID and the single vs multiple Twitter accounts debate is still running
- Great tips for finding local online communities – what have you done?
- Facebook and purdah…what are you doing? Lots of great stuff on pre-election social media.
- Using social media for internal comms
- Embedding a Twitter stream in a council web page
- The silent Tweep: using Twitter without Tweeting – and other ways to monitor local activity on Twitter (an important thread!)
- Social media with no resources – a really down to earth discussion about helping smaller partners use social media (or could apply to under-resourced departments)
- Any thoughts on social media for social care? Some potentially thorny issues to unpick.
- Can you help Ben with some engagement widgets? Or what to possibly put at the end of the link?
- Using FixMyStreet and other third party services for issues reporting
From the blogs!
Openness and Engagement: Vote like an Egyptian! from Tanya Ashworth of Preston Council – going viral to promote voting. Dave Briggs writes about micro-participation. Be sure to check out all the comments on Never mind the words, look at the pictures.…from Richard Overy. Liz Azyan writes about publishing contracts and tenders on council web pages.
Improvement and innovation: Liz Azyan blogs on getting the basics right. Carl Haggerty is worried about social media folk in local government. Don Morley writes about the open public services white paper. Lesley Thomson writes about public sector blogging in Scotland.
Cool tools: The much commented on: Have QR codes died before they lived? from Jamie Kirk. Spencer Wilson writes about Webcasting the net just a little bit further.
…and Public sector workers unemployable – shock, horror
And a personal note from me….
Before you hear it from anyone else, I’m leaving Local Government Improvement and Development. For a whole range of reasons, I’ve taken voluntary redundancy. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing yet, but I’m exploring some exciting possibilities -some of them I think you’ll probably like to get involved with – and I’m always keen to here about other possibilities.
I’m hoping to be able to continue facilitating this community. I certainly plan to support you through the transition to the Knowledge Hub (my last day is 19 June and I’m looking at support options). And, of course, I want to stay in touch with you! Why not connect with me through LinkedIn or on Twitter.
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