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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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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Sessions I went to and will try to post thoughts on soon included:

• Local Gov Group Hug  – an experience sharing session about ’selling’ the idea internally. Lots of positive examples of social media working beneficially for citizens and organisations.
• Social internal comms – is there a place for social web technologies to be used internally in the organistion?
• #uksnow – innovation used in recent bad weather and how social media / mobile could and should be used in crisis comms.
• The future of journalism – where is traditional media headed and how should a government / local gov press office evolve.
• Knowledge Hub workshop

There were loads of other sessions I would have loved to attend – lots of stuff about opening up data, what makes a perfect council website and the Downing Street response to the postcode petition. I’m always slightly disappointed I can’t be in more than one place at the same time. Excellent social reporting helped me keep up as the day progressed and soak up more details since.

I always come away from an unconference buzzing with ideas and re-invigorated to carry on with projects already in process. At several times yesterday though I did wish that I wasn’t the only one there from my organisation.

A lot of the sessions or discussions are continuations of those from other unconferences or that I am involved in online. Sometimes there is a sense of preaching to the converted. I’m not sure how much further I can move on certain things without more people from my organisation joining the conversation to allow some momentum to gather.

Yesterday there was lots of new conversation too – less about social media (perhaps this is moving toward being the norm) and more about opening up data. And the energy gathered from simply being around so many passionate people who are really thinking about changing the way we / things work is invaluable.

So, thanks to Dave Briggs for organising, Google for hosting us at their HQ and all the sponsors. Thanks also to Hadley Beeman and sponsors for the social gathering afterwards.

And well done, big thanks to Sharon O’Dea for raffling off epicvisionary.com raising more than £300 to be donated to the DEC appeal for Haiti. Whoever had the winning ticket I hope you use it well

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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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‘Be passionate, be pursuasive, persevere and share’

I think this has stood me pretty well for the second half of the year and is sentiment I’ll be taking with me into 2010.

This year has been a fascinating and exciting journey for me professionally and academically. I finally feel as if the freaks and geeks of my beloved online are starting to make a real difference. Slowly, with plenty of frustration, but also with imagination, creativity and insight I can only dream of.

Without gushing too much it has been an honour to share ideas and conversation with so many passionate and inspirational people. I’m truely excited to see what is built in 2010 on the foundations laid this past year and having more talk with more people about social web for social good (and no doubt banging on about why devolved authorship doesn’t work!)

Wishing you all the best for the 2010!

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I did. Bridesmaid for my friend on the 22nd and then the joy of my nearly-three-year-old bouncing off the walls with seasonal excitment. I had the whole of Christmas week off for these two landmark events. I didn’t think about the corporate twitter account at all.

But Boxing Day is pretty boring isn’t it? So I nipped on to see what had happened during my week off. And what had happened was that at least one person found it wholly unacceptable that there had been no corporate tweets during Christmas week.

I do agree. If we used RSS for our news / events etc there would have been one tweet. Or if we used something like Hootsuite I might have scheduled a couple of things in. However, we do it all manually here because we like the human touch. That did work against us last week though.

The question of whether we were the exception or the rule  roused my interest though. Who else had been tweeting to their corporate Twitter charge over Christmas? Well, Dan Slee at Walsall Council had for one. This account’s Christmas service was highlighted to me by several others on Twitter (thanks guys) and he had indeed been doing a sterling job.

Excellent tweeting had been done each time their gritters headed out. I wish I’d been as organised as Dan in getting the highways team to email me each time ours went out (something which has gone straight on the to do list this morning on my return to the office).

There were a few others councils also standing by to reply to @ messages – Hillingdon, Northampton and Richmond (BC, Canada rather than North Yorkshire).

Maybe there were more but this was the extent of the response I got. Whether or not more of us should / could have been tweeting more leads to an interesting question though: who is required to offer a Christmas social media / online service and how many of us did it out of our own goodwill?

Perhaps it depends on who looks after your Twitter. A press officer who is on call (and contracted to be so)? If I tweeted (and I did on Boxing Day just because there was something to say) it was because I felt, in myself, that it was the right thing to do and I was willing to log on and do it.

I’m not contracted to work out of hours or be on call. But online doesn’t recognise office hours, Bank Holidays. It is a non-stop real-time channel and so (in my opinion) organisations should be ready and able to respond as such. It’s a significant shift in thinking and ways of working, particularly for public sector.

It was interesting to look over the state of play though. It’s given me a few ideas for what I’d do differently given the time over as well as things I’ll be trying to implement to further improve the service as soon as possible.

I’d love to know whether anyone had any feedback from citizens / residents / followers on the service given? Or any thoughts generally on what the round-the-clock online space means or could mean for working patterns in council PR / online comms.

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GeoVation is the Ordnance Survey supported community to promote innovative uses of geography (please no comments about OS and innovation). The awards ask for ideas about how mapping could help address some of the world’s big challenges through entries that benefit society, the economy or the environment; although it is open to good entries on any subject.

The best entries submitted by the closing date will be selected to pitch their ideas at a showcase event hosted at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 26 January. There is also a cash prize for the winners – £10,000 for first place; £5,000 each for the two runners up and £1,000 community prize as voted for by the audience on the night.

So – if you’ve got an idea about how to map something take a look at whacking an entry into the GeoVation awards. Closing date for applications is 4 January and you can find out more and enter on their website.

I’m off to nurture the seed of my idea. Good luck GeoVators, may the best map win.

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