Puffbox

David Wilcox boasts about his (well-deserved) namecheck in a piece over at the Beeb about ‘politics in the networked age’. I’ve got some good news, in that I hear our Prime Minister In Waiting may be more open to the online world than some might previously have feared. He made some references to the internet and all that in a speech at Hay On Wye on Saturday, promoting his new book… but I still can’t find a transcript (and I’m not so desperate as to pay to download the audio). Anyone?

Friday afternoon’s session at the RSA – looking at the ‘Social Impact of the Web’ – was more stimulating than I expected. There was very little mention of technology, and a lot about community and communities.

Andrew Chadwick from Royal Holloway offered three things we should celebrate about social media, which all seemed to be the same basic point about consumers becoming able to produce. He went on to offer three negatives.

I take his point about the ‘social narcissism’ that can develop. When I saw ‘the shift to video’ listed as one of his negatives, I expected this to be a point about the extra time and financial commitment needed to do video, putting it out of the reach of most potential contributors. But no – his point was about the continuation of soundbite culture. And I’m really not sure about his third point, regarding the ‘production/consumption divide’. Guess what – most people aren’t blogging. Would we ever expect them to? For me, the new tools provide a means for people with something to say, to say it. Those most likely to use the tools, I’d suggest, now have the tools.

Which leads neatly on to Tom Steinberg from MySociety. Several speakers would later pick up Tom’s points that ‘it’s the tools which are transformational’; they argued that it’s the people who are transformational. But I think Tom had it right. It does take both… but we already have the people. Yes, it takes a train driver to drive a train, but all those people stuck at Reading station are going nowhere unless there’s a train in the first place. (And yes, I had a tricky journey home.)

Cass Sunstein‘s closing session didn’t sound gripping – does the web need a constitution? Er, no it doesn’t, end of. But his talk was mainly about the problem of group polarisation – where basically, if you put a bunch of likeminded people in a group, they tend to make each other more extreme. I’ve since found a paper he wrote several years ago on this topic, but obviously, the social web gives it a whole new dimension.

His references to Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory, and the need for ‘unexpected encounters with diversity’ struck a chord. We need public spaces, he said, where views can be expressed and exchanged – and you might come away thinking differently. It was suggested that the BBC might be that public space in the UK, but that previous attempts had fallen flat. I’m inclined to agree: there is a gap in the market for something like this. I guess Comment Is Free comes closest… but the Guardian brand means it’s off-limits to many. It sounds like Matthew Taylor has plans in this field for the RSA itself.

I am going to be attending Friday’s conference at the RSA about society, internet and government after all. If any loyal readers are also going to be there, do say ‘hi’. There’s still time to register; it’s free, and it runs from 1pm to 5pm.

I actually think it’s a very good thing for the Home Office to be giving out 20 video iPods for work purposes (as reported in The Times). It’s a perfectly valid method to distribute ‘e-learning’, via bitesize chunks of video content. I bet it’s more efficient than gathering senior staff into a conference suite somewhere, several times a year – and realistically, £9,000 is a blip in the overall budget.

Would critics prefer that staff brought their own iPods in from home, and charged them up with work-based content via the office network (and GSI)? Ask the IT managers if they’d be happy with the implications of doing so. In a lot of places, it’s a gross misconduct offence.

While we’re on the subject of blogs and DFID… if it’s true that DFID is funding a Research for Development portal that’s costing £360,000 a year to run, and getting only 3,100 visitors in the average month (as disclosed to Hansard a couple of weeks back), that’s pretty shocking. Surely there’s more to it than it seems…? (spotted on DizzyThinks)

Theresa May tabled a wad of PQs lately asking departments for details of the websites they run, and the costs incurred: I think this search picks most of the answers up, but don’t expect many great insights. In quite a few cases, departments have used the ‘disproportionate cost’ excuse.

I picked the right day to – finally! – sign up for Facebook: yesterday saw another very new media-literate speech by David Miliband, and another venture into YouTube. (Personally I wouldn’t have let him stand to do this; it does affect your tone of voice, and I think it’s to his detriment here.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw83heBf3mk]

The speech itself, at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, was a return to his pet theme of ‘how the spirit of the age requires a new type of politics, and how the new tools of the age can help deliver economic and social change.’ In truth, if you read the New Statesman piece, most of this will be familiar. But it’s still actually a little exciting to see a Cabinet minister – and potentially a future Prime Minister – talking about Web 2.0, Facebook, Linux and the like. (Er, we’ll overlook the spelling of ‘wikipaedia’ in the transcript.)

Miliband clearly sees this as his Big Idea. The speech touches on education, transport, environment, community… a month or two back, this would have been interpreted as his bid for Labour’s leadership. Since that moment has passed, and the job now unlikely to become vacant for a few years at least, we’re left with the conclusion that he actually believes it.

I’m fascinated to see where Miliband ends up post-reshuffle. I hear he has won a lot of friends at Defra, and they would be sorry to lose him. But if environmental issues are to be an electoral battleground next time round, as seems likely, don’t be surprised if he stays where he is.

Behold the power of referral logs! I’m not sure I’m supposed to know about the new Directgov ‘internal’ blog which was started last week by e-government veteran Paul Cronk. But since he linked to me, and since someone clicked on it, I now know about it. (Since it’s explicitly internal, I won’t link to it… unless Paul gives me the OK to do so?)

Its aim is to ‘communicate actions, changes and information around the content of Directgov’ – and of course, a blog is a great way to do so; good on them for trying this. My thanks to Paul for linking to me… but I think it’s a bit harsh to say the various external e-gov-centric blogs are ‘not comfortable reading… critical of Directgov’. On the rare occasion I am critical of it, I hope it’s constructive criticism. We all need a better Directgov; and I’m sure we’re all equally impatient about getting it.

Much debate over the weekend about comments by Owen Barder, a DFID civil servant on his blog. The Mail on Sunday decides to make a meal of his ‘astonishing website outburst… which compares President George Bush to Hitler.’ But we shouldn’t get carried away here: it’s the Mail, after all.

Owen has made a single schoolboy error. Like it or not, there are certain banned words in the English language… and ‘Hitler’ is one of them. Any time you use the word, expect it to generate blind fury, completely ignoring the merits (or otherwise) of your argument. That aside, there’s no story here… it’s just typical Mail bluster, which we shouldn’t take too seriously. Outspoken? Good, we need more of that. Sexually explicit? Hardly, based on the passages the Mail has seen fit to quote.

Tim Worstall does a great job of tearing the Mail piece to pieces: with lengthy justification, he describes it as ‘a mixture of gross distortions, garbled (and wrongly attributed) quotes and in general a hit job.’ Says it all. It’ll be interesting to see Owen’s perspective (when his blog comes up again), and any official response from DFID. I’m sure their press office will be seething… but since a large part of DFID’s role is campaigning, this attention may secretly be welcomed.

A bit of a surprise to see Labour deputy leadership candidate Alan Johnson presented as the poster boy for Twitter in a piece in today’s Guardian output. But then, of course, his campaign is being driven (online at least) by our own Stuart Bruce. I think Stuart’s absolutely right, incidentally: ‘We’ve taken a decision that Alan is not going to start a blog just for the deputy leader contest… It’s better to not blog than to do it badly.’

From there, the article becomes another ‘isn’t Twitter just a waste of time?’ piece. It’s a contention I’m gradually having more sympathy with. I’ve tried to get into Twitter, but I can’t. I’ve tried Jaiku too, and again, whilst there’s a lot to like about it (particularly the Flickr integration), I just haven’t got the spare time.

But I’m convinced that Twitter – as a concept – is definitely on to something. I’ve got an early idea based on microblogging, which excites me and seems to fit very neatly into one of my clients’ areas of activity. I just need to find time to develop it a bit more. (Which pushes Twittering even further down my to-do list.)

I knew that DWP’s JobCentrePlus website was a permanent fixture at the top of the ‘most popular sites in government’ ranking. I didn’t know it was also the country’s number one recruitment site generally – and by one heck of a margin. Hitwise data gives it a market share of over 14%, with Total Jobs second on less than 5%, and Monster on just 4%. (Figures quoted by silicon.com)