Tim's Blog

(The twitter post: Well, it had to come sooner or later...)

I've just returned from an event in Chester (YOMO's Practical Ideas for Participation gathering) where we were making use of a tool called twitter to collect and share instant feedback throughout the event direct from people's mobile phones. The image above shows the feedback we got at the end of the event, all sent in by text message.

This has been my first large-scale experiment with twitter, and so shared below you will find:

In this comment David Wilcox suggests that participation is a sub-set of collaboration.

On definitions of participation, whether it is usefully different ... I'm not sure any more. I think it only works as a sub-set of collaboration ... that is, all parties have to want it to.

I found I couldn't immediately subscribe to that characterisation, and the exploration it led me too helps, I think, to clarify some of what is specific about children and young people's participation, and about participation in statuatory bodies, as opposed to participation within voluntary membership organisations or as part of a wider engagement agenda.

Warning: post of provisional philosphical musings follows...

I'm understanding collaboration as involving:

If all goes well, I should be posting this just as we soft-launch the next of The National Youth Agency's* forrays into social media with the Aiming High for Young People: sharing, learning and developing action website. It's a companion website running alongside a series of regional events which are unpacking and exploring the recent Ten Year Strategy (Aiming High for Young People = Ten Year Youth Strategy) for young people launched by the UK Government.

The site, which should evolve and increase in interactivity over the course of the next three months, is based around three core elements:

In social change organisations we want to change things. Real world things. Things that make a difference to people.

If changing the numbers in our website statistics can contribute towards that, then we want to change those numbers.

But it can be far to easy (doubly so, it seems, when reports for funders are involved) to get trapped looking at the numbers, and to lose sight of how those are part of creating change for people.

I recently had the chance to put together a training pack/guide for Participation Works about web analytics, and how they can be used in a social change focussed organisation.

Much of the guide was specific to Participation Works, but a lot is, I hope, relevant to other social change organisations as well. And as I must acknowledge much debt to shared content from Beth Kanter and many others in putting together this guide, it only seems right to share what I can of it back freely to non-profit organisations.

I've had more free time than I expected this evening, so here is the second of my one-page guides to social media tools, prepared for a training course I'm currently running.

This time, social bookmarking with del.icio.us in one page of A4.

Each of these sheets aims to:

I've recently started creating a series of 'Social media in one side of A4' mini guides as part of an online course I'm leading to introduce social media into one of the organisations I work with.

I'm planning to tidy up the first few for a general audience soon, but, as I noticed mention of Flickr on the Fairtrade Towns Yahoo Group this afternoon (thanks to Stafford Area FT Group who have set-up a Flickr group here) I though I would get a copy of the guide to Flickr online now.

So, here is Flickr in one side of A4.

Flickr is an online photo sharing too - and a very powerful one at that. So, if you're interested in how you can make the most of your photos, do take a look.

I've just returned from a weekend catching up with friends, and have been struck again by how important the movement of One No, Many Yeses* is.

Social change requires co-ordination that takes place not (just?) through the market, but through individuals taking action because it is the right action to take. That means deeper conversations to creatively work out how we each play our part. That means understanding the real nature of our relationships with others and not leaving the £ sign to mediate in all our interactions.

It needs communities. And I've just been reminded by the loose community of bloggers whose work I read and on occaision interact with, that today is 'Blog Action Day'. A chance for a community to come together around On No (killing the planet) and Many Yeses (ways to live more environmentally friendly lives) and to reflect on environmentalism in their individual areas.

If I write a post about some facet of social media or reflecting upon blogging (like this one), two things seem to be the case:

• There are a lot of bloggers reading blogs (or a lot of blog readers blogging). This offers a shared experience.
• The 'objects' and 'spaces' I might refer to when blogging about social media are available online. I can pepper a post with links that you can follow for context. There offers shared space.

When I want to reflect or ask questions on learning or action which lacks an online component it is, it seems, far more difficult to do that through blogging.

I can't link off to the context on some other site. And without there being shared experience or shared space between blogger and reader, I either need to write in a lot of context for a post, or to risk it failing to capture the essence of the reflection or question.

Ok, so we're not going to have an election this autumn.

That's a good thing. It means the project I've been snowed under with that has kept me away from blogging doesn't have to be scrapped because of political purdah*.

But it also means I've now got to go back into overdrive on the project (after slowing down a little on the threat of an election...) so normal blogging service is yet to be resumed...

Just a quick pointer to the Children's Participation blog recently launched by Henk van Beers as a way of sharing useful links / resources and information around the theory and practice of children and young people's participation.

If you're interested in pointers to organisations and literature relating to children's participation from across the globe then it looks well worth subscribing to. Henk writes:

In this blog I will collect information, resources, materials, and experiences that relate to the theory and practice of children's rights to participation in the widest sense. Over the years, with a limited number of people. I have shared useful information that I came across. Through this blog I want to make relevant information available to a wider audience while at the same time building a site that can be revisited for useful information and links.