As with most Facebook functionality the default option is that you fully opt-in to the service, which will allow you to use GPS to share your location. There are a few of these location-based services duking it out at the moment – Foursquare, Gowalla – but these have you opted out of sharing your data as default, unlike the Facebook approach. And let’s not forget that Facebook is by far the bigger network and therefore any changes to privacy settings is affecting far more people, most of whom are not uber-savvy early adopters.

I’ve noticed lots of people in my Facebook network posting instructions of how to ’switch off’ Facebook places. The step-by-step they suggested led you to untick two options in the Notifications tab. This struck me as being only part of the process if you really want to opt-out entirely.

An email from a friend along the same lines led me to dial up my interest and have a proper look at Facebook Places.

Turning off the options on the Notification tab only stops Facebook from notifying you when you or a friend in your network is tagged with the Places system. Your friends, applications and applications used by your friends will still be able to use your location and share this information. Clearly if you have concerns about having your location shared this is the bigger problem – in fact you’d probably want to be notified, especially if you’ve tried to opt-out.

And how do you opt out? Well, there are some good instructions in this Mashable article – check the What About Privacy? section.

So, what are the things to remember right now? Well, firstly that Places hasn’t rolled out to the UK yet. Secondly, like Fourquare and Gowalla it is intended to be used from a Smartphone. Thirdly, switching off the notifications does just that – you need to change your custom settings to stop yourself being tagged with locations.

What Facebook Places means for businesses and (in my case) non-profit organisation Pages remains to be seen – alongside all the other changes Facebook plans for this area of the network.

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1. What I use and why

So, as a way of breaking the seal and getting back to posting here is a catch up post on what I’m using right now.

Technology

I’m afraid I don’t do technical specs or anything like that but this much I can tell you:

• Mac – still running Tiger and in desperate need of an update. Usually use Firefox as the browser and barely look at Safari these days.
• PC (work)
• Netbook (Dell Inspiron Mini 10″) – running Ubuntu, Open Office and Firefox. Tend to use it for writing when away from home or at (un)conferences.
• iPhone 3g – probably my most used bit of kit now. Used for casual social network browsing at home as well as when out and about. Rarely use it as a phone though!

Platforms

That’s not a great heading but hey, I’m out of practice. I really mean the places online I am to be found most often at the moment.

• Twitter. Still my favourite social network. Is the first online thing I check in the morning and last thing at night. I use Tweetdeck for iPhone and on the Mac, Hootsuite for the work stuff and have also been trying out Twitter for iPhone in last week.
• Facebook. But mainly for work purposes and to keep up with people who are only on that network. And for pictures.
• Foursquare. Have been trying this out on the iPhone. No real pull for me as an individual but can see some possibilities for use at work.

Once in a blue moon

Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, email (I tend to forget about my personal email although I still received loads at work) and websites…yes, websites

Online is all about people and connections for me at the moment and I’ve noticed I’ve been spending a lot less time on information, news or e-commerce sites.

What are you loving or loathing at the moment?

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To be honest, I hadn’t really thought through the detail before throwing the tweet out there (there’s my JFDI streak coming out again) but it seemed to gain a little momentum.

My idea? How about sharing case studies, work in progress, lessons learnt etc through short video clips. A local gov version of the TEDx presentations if you will.

In response Ingrid Koehler called for people to make suggestions of who they’d like to see a video from or a subject they’d be interested in. Suggestions were forthcoming but for big names like Martha Lane Fox. A great idea – and I’d watch that video – but my real interest would lie in getting contributions from local gov officers working at the coal face of digital (so to speak).

A three-minute video sharing a how to on something like setting up social web monitoring, how an authority has got some value out of using social bookmarking, success at selling ideas internally, step-by-steps to ‘techy’ sounding things explained for non-techies. I’m sure some of those things exist already but if they’re done by local gov officers if gives a point of call for further information or referencing.

I guess it assumes we all have access to to a webcam or Flip  or can screencast what we’re doing and that without the prompt of a social reporter can speak on a subject without clamming up. Maybe someone has suggestions for how we might overcome these sorts of issues?

I wonder also if presenting ideas and case studies in this way might help reach some of those working on digital in authorities but who aren’t (for whatever reason) engaged with Communities of Practice or informal networks on Twitter. It’s a way of passing on the knowledge in a way where they can still be passive.

A start could be to aggregate all the videos of local gov people and information that is already out there into one place. Or maybe I should have vodcasted this post to kick things off?

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1. Crisis comms online
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3. Getting the conversation started

With so much to pack into a day we were asked to use just one word to describe why we’d come along and what we hoped to get out of the day as we did a round of introductions. My word was ‘change’.

Here’s a quick round up of the sessions I made it to:

Mapping

Headed up by Peter Olding this session showed off Bournmouth’s web mapping as well as illicited plenty of discussion about GIS, open data, consistent formats, displaying cross-boundary information and including information from across public services.

There was also a good little chat about ‘the OS copyright issue’ and what impact the changes that are coming in April will have on local gov mapping.

I also talked about my dream (obsession) with mapping Derbyshire’s grit bins.

Accessibility of the social web

A good general discussion which posed the question ‘does anyone care about the accessibility of social media?’.

It’s an interesting discussion and there were lots of great suggestions for how accessibility can be improved around social media such as accessible Twitter and making sure you’re not offering something on a social media channel your’re not providing in a highly accessible format elsewhere.

I think a lot of people in the session (and following on the back channel) could benefit from the hugely useful presentation on social media vs accessibility by the much-missed Jack PIckard at PSFBuzz North East last year.

Libraries on Twitter

As I’m in the process of supporting Derbyshire Libraries as they set out on Facebook this was a really interesting session to listen in on and hear about how other libraries are using social media.

Haringey Library gave a great case study about how and why they got started, how they’ve grown and the benefits the channel is bringing to library users. They also shared some of the ideas they have for increasing their use of Twitter in the future.

Social Media and online communications for local elections

I put this session on to share how we made use of social media channels to deliver local election information and results in real-time in 2009. I’ve blogged this all before so check the archive for a summary of what we did!

Internal communications

Last session of the day in which we shared ways social media was being used internally, what problems is was addressing but also what barriers we were coming up against.

Session leader Hadley Beeman rounded up by asking us all to make a pledge about something we would have done at our own place of work by the end of the next day. My pledge? To stay motivated, keep being creative and continue to spread the word and try to enthuse those with more influence than I.

So, another great day filled with a lot of chat with hugely inspirational and enthusiastic public sector people who filled me with the need to get back to work as quick as possible and turn some ideas into a reality.

I did, however have a nagging feeling all day that me getting fired up and adding fuel to my desire to map grit bins (I’m at peace with my obsession) isn’t going to be enough. Or maybe it will be enough but this is a longer play than I initially thought. Either way I’m at a point where talk needs to become firmer, faster action if ‘change’ is to be more than the word I say in the morning.

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Having already renamed the A52 dual-carrigeway between the city and Nottingham Sir Brian Clough Way who would be next?

An online poll run by Derby City Council shortlisted three Derby-connected people and opened the vote to the world.

John Flamsteed (the first Astronomer Royal) and Merlin (after the Rolls-Royce engine) both lost out to a virtual child of the city – Lara Croft.

The star of the Tomb Raider games and played by Angelina Jolie in the spin-off films was created by Derby-based firm Core Design in the 1990s. While no longer coming from the city her inclusion clearly caught the eye of online voters around the world with 28,000 people backing her and giving her 89% of the vote.

So the Osmaston Road to Burton Road stretch of the ring road will take on her moniker (another stretch will be named Mercian Way after the army regiment which recruits from the area).

It’s interesting that the council decided to use an online poll to make the choice – a great display of letting people decide on issues in their own community. It was also interesting that they made it a poll open to absolutely everyone though. I wonder how many of the 28,000 voters are Derby-citizens?

A great PR opportunity for sure and the cynical may say that is why Lara was included in the poll – for the cult / youth / cool vote. However, I think it is great that Derby’s digital heritage is being honoured.

So her pixels aren’t still honed in Derby and she caused Core (and later Eidos) a few problems but her birth there is an important part of the city’s modern industry. She’s not a passing fad having been well-established globally in the gaming and movie markets.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the council use more online polls or means of engaging with local (and not-so-local) people for other decisions. Twenty-eight thousand certainly sounds like more than the average for consultations undertaken in traditional channels (I am guessing there though).

In the meantime let’s all hope that driving along Lara Croft way doesn’t involve a series of tasks which end up making you want to drown things.

If you’re interested in digital in Derby check out the Social Media Cafe and have your say about its future in our very own online survey!

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Al had some interesting experience and innovations to share around communicating quickly information on school closures, road gritting and any affected services.

The group talked about how in a rapidly occurring situation online communication was best placed to deliver information first and respond to any inquiries from the public. Indeed, in some councils the online communicators were delivering information out of hours before press officers and others were even aware of a developing situation.

This way of working was also discussed – online communicators working in isolation are an unsustainable plan for crisis communications. Too often they are left out of the loop and get information too late or not at all meaning the benefits of the online channel are lost.

Al shared his experience of being able to work out of hours with a line to chief officers and the on-duty press officer. He is also involved in emergency planning so the online work can be included in the plan but also he is aware of where the authority is at in terms of response.

The discussion strayed further into the territory of emergency planning bu eventually came back round to how online could be used to gather information into the council as well as disseminate outward. I briefly outlined a change we were planning on making to how headteachers report school closures, using our secure schools’ extranet to which they all have access. Bringing the information in from this source would mean we could repurpose and quickly send out by RSS, by SMS, and across a number of online channels.

We’re not the only council looking to make changes in this area. Along with us there are many others who are looking at making content delivery not just through the online channel but also make it mobile (I blogged about our stats on visits from mobile and other devices during the January snow). From this a discussion on digital inclusion began with differing views across the participants about whether online was a waste of time or not given how few people can access it well. Ally Hook gave some interesting information about the number of people joining the council’s Facebook page when an unexploded WW2 bomb closed parts of the city.

There were a number of interesting points I took away from the session in terms of developing our online communications in the face of a crisis as well as integrating more fully with the council’s general contingency plan. There were some great social web innovations around reporting the uksnow but these ideas could be applied to other situations. It has also helped consolidate the thoughts floating around my head about not just thinking of online as web, or social media, or mobile – it is all of these, none of these and more.

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This session was led by Eve Shuttleworth from the Ministry of Justice and was a great example of how an unconference can work; someone tweets a comment from an early session, leads to back channel chat, session suggested and duly added to the agenda.

The session looked at how journalism and traditional media had changed in recent times; newspaper sales declining, the number of journalists reducing but the set of skills they needed increasing. There was a lot of talk about how journalists in traditional media where increasingly becoming ‘content producers’ gathering information across a number of channels to form their story.

In some ways this lower resource in the newsroom has made a press officers life easier. as one person in the room put it: “Make a journalist’s life easier and they’ll bite your hand off.” I spoke about how increasing the amount and type of content we offered online for local elections 2009 had meant fewer enquiries into our press office on results day – the media took what they needed from what we’d already published.

A lot of the group expressed concern about journalists taking whatever they were fed without any other source being examined. Much of the time press releases were issued verbatim in the media and if any analysis was presented this was increasingly an opposing view rather than actual critical analysis. The group discussed how this shift in role for journalists, forced because of the decline in traditional media, was leading to a hole where the fourth estate used to be.

Or is it? Or are we just seeing traditional media failing in this role but haven’t noticed that there may be a movement coming along to take up the mantel. Hyperlocal blogging and citizen journalism are on the rise. They may not yet have the maturity in reporting that  media journalism does but in some areas they are just as, or even more, interested in what the press office can supply.

So how do press officers treat ‘new media’ journalists? Well, there is no consistent approach. Some provide information and answer queries on the same footing as they do for other news organisations, others see bloggers as amateurs and tend to forget they’re there.

The view that citizens shouldn’t be treated as journalists was put forward and in most cases this is true; the voice in a press release is different in tone (and rightly so) from that used in web content and different again from that when responding or communicating through social media channels. However, the hyperlocal blogger, slips somewhere between journalist and citizen and a press officer needs to build them into their contacts and speak with them in the right voice for them.

Communicating outside of the sphere of established media contacts seemed to be a sticking point for some press officers – not necessarily because they didn’t want to but because they didn’t know how. We heard from Neil Franklin of the importance of responding in a timely fashion in social media channels and from Alistair Smith on knowing when and where to respond. The flow chart to help make response decisions, by Michael Grimes, was also shared with the group.

The biggest sticking point though was attributing responses – should it be done in a personal name or could it be done under the banner of the organisation? There were some well-founded fears from press officers about putting their own name against responses or profiles. Also the issue of sign-off on communications was raised – a system which doesn’t lend itself to fast responses. Sharon O’Dea – who also blogged about this session – suggested ‘presumed competence’ may be one way round this.

There was no answers to where the future of journalism lies or what this will really mean to us as communicators. However, this session gave clear examples of how government press officers need to start developing their skills to keep pace with journalism, and the communication needs of citizens, right now.

Communication teams need a mix of skills – media liaison, listening, monitoring, responding. They need to be as comfortable creating ‘complete’ packages across channels suitable for the media or citizen consumption and they need to be aware of the benefits and potential pitfalls of communicating on the social web. And beyond this they need the support of senior management to allow them to evolve, quickly, in this way.

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1. Crisis comms online
2. LocalGov group hug*
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I started out as a journalist, became and intranet manager and now sit (sometimes uncomfortably) on the fence as an all purpose online communications officer. My role covers both our external and internal sites and I am beyond fascinated (nearing the city limits of Obsession sometimes) with how the social web can drive them both for communication and engagement.

This session on social internal comms was the second of the day for me at UK GovCamp and it was as interesting as I’d hoped to hear examples of how people are already using social internally as well as discussion around problems facing internal comms.

There was some good talk around the pilot Carl Haggerty and Martin Howitt had run in Devon. Not only did Carl share the way the project had worked but also the ways the idea had gained senior buy-in – from the language used to describe it (business network not social network) to the ways different employees had got involved and the savings it had made / could make for the authority.

The way internal communications was managed got some traction, particularly on the back channel, around whether for online internal and external should be looked after by different posts, different teams or lumped in together. The fear with the latter, as Sharon O’Dea expressed, is that internal becomes the eternal poor relation as energy and resource is favourably directed at the shop window of external sites.

The talk was fast-paced in this, like every session, and it felt like it could have gone on a lot longer. The idea of a barcamp specifically for internal communications was suggested and this is now well underway to becoming a reality.

One point that really got my pulse racing was the idea that social is what an intranet should always have been.That is ecactly the thought I’ve been trying to pin down for a while!

Internal is the perfect environment for social to thrive as communication, collaboration, employee engagement and empowerment environment. While staff get the benefits so does the organisation. I’ve been interested for a while in how much power and knowledge (and efficiency) an organisation could gain from allowing all staff to feed in and create a hive mind, an internal serendipity engine.

But that sort of talk is too much to really explore at the end of one session – exactly why a barcamp for internal comms is a great idea!

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The session was intended to share progress, experience and tips on social media,online and technology for local government. The focus was on how to get middle and senior management to see the value in social media for communication.

In this respect, for me, it was a familiar topic for a govcamp but this wasn’t a bad thing. It’s always useful to be reminded that we’re not all at the same point on the journey and those of us further ahead haven’t necessarily passed on all our tips to everyone just yet.

The session was a real mixture of people from those of us who’ve made some progress with projects or ideas and others who are struggling to do anything at all due to lock downs and risk avoidance.

There were some good tips shared on starting to monitor what is being said about an organisation and the Derby social media map by Tim Cooper and Paul Coles was cited as a great way of giving stakeholders a visual overview of the reach of social media. (You can find the social media map on the Derby and Derbyshire Social Media Cafe website).

Ideas around calculating opportunity to view figures and other marketing-style reporting of social media. Choosing a project and, here’s a GovCamp phrase, Just F**king Doing It (JFDI), in order to show benefits rather than presenting an abstract concept was also muted by several of us with stuff already underway. There are good examples of use by different councils and organisations and these could be tapped into if you can’t JFDI yourself – an example with a tangible result may take away the ‘Emporers’ New Clothes’ feel for risk averse organisations.

My raising of (another GovCamp phrase) ‘forgivness being easier than permission’ got mixed reactions in the room and on Twitter. In retrospect I may have sounded more blase about JFDI than I really am. It is a big step, and I’ve not got so many projects behind me that I’ve forgotten the fear and the risk of the first time.

A big part of my feeling able to take that risk is the support network and expertise I’ve found through GovCamps and networks like Twitter.The group shared some of the resource points we go to – Liz Azyan’s amazingly wonderful and extensive LGEO Research site, IDeA Communities of Practice, pubsectorblogs, Twitter and, hopefully in the future, the Knowledge Hub.

(I shared our Local Elections 2009 example as part of this discussion.)

The general feeling at the end of the session was that most local gov organisations are still at the stage of having only one, or a small group, of passionate people determined to move forward in the right way with online communications and social media. Through sharing across local government (and with the wider public sector too) we can support the individuals and provide evidence to enhance the confidence of organisations in communicating in this new channel.

Perhaps once communicating online seems more normal than innovative we can move onto engagement and other ways the social web can transform local government.

* No physical hugging took place as a part of this session

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The snow which had made a white Christmas a fun-filled festive treat turned the return to work flicker between tedious and treacherous on the disruption scale.

There have already been posts about how council services and comms coped with the bad weather – there is a good round-up of those by Kev Campbell-Wright.

In the last week, since the weather started cheering the heck up, I’ve been having a look at our visitor stats for the period. Yes, we got more visitors than usual, to the relevant areas of the website (latest update, gritting and school closures pages) and lots of them were coming via our social media channels (mainly Twitter).

What was interesting to me, and something I hadn’t fully anticipated, was the devices which people were using to visit the website.

While a massive 97% was coming from computers ( 92% Windows OS; 4% Mac and 1 % Linux) not so much the volume of traffic but the diversity of devices making up the other 3% was slightly surprising and certainly a big change for us.

Smart phones made up lots of of the list – following in the next four places in the chart were iPhone, iPod, Symbian and Android. Further down the list with under a hundred visits from each are Sony OS, Blackberry, Playstation 3, Samsung, Nintendo Wii, Nokia, LG, Playstation Poratble and Sidekick.

Plenty of mobile phones of both the smart and, erm, not-so-smart phones. I expected this although the range and the percentage, while still small, was higher than we’re used to seeing.

I hadn’t anticipated the traffic from gaming systems (and the iPod). I’d like to know more about who these visitors are.

We’re reviewing the online response we made in the cold snap to see what we could improve on in preparation for a repeat (or some other situation) and delivering content and information in a way suitable for mobile and other devices will have to be a part of that.

Has anyone else looked at their visitor traffic by device / operating system?

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