Tim's Blog

Social Networking Sites (SNS) are pretty complicated things. If defining them isn't tricky enough, trying to create a one page guide that communicates all the salient facts about Social Networking in general, and a social networking platform in particular, is turning out to be very tricky indeed.

For the research I'm carrying out into how Youth Workers can support young people's interaction with online social networks, and for a workshop next week, I've been trying to explore the common features, and the specific features, of different SNS in order to be able to support an informed discussion about the opportunities and risks each present.

For my purposes, I'm looking to have a tool to provide the shared understand that lets us explore questions like:

The Young Researcher Network are looking to create a real change in the way research on issues for young people takes place.

Rather than imposing adult frameworks and structures on the challenges young people face today, they're building the capacity for young people to be researchers themselves, and to use rigorous research methods to support moves to create change.

They've started blogging over here and to help welcome them to the social media space I thought I would capture and share a quick interview with my friend and colleague Sarah Schulman, who has been responsible for a number of fantastic youth led research projects in the US.

On Saturday at BarCampUKGovWeb I asked whether it was possible to use the data from DirectGov to direct website users to their local government services, without needing to send them via the pretty orange pages of local.direct.gov.uk.

Thanks for a tip-off from Paul Clarke, I got in touch with Andy Key from Hampshire who has helped out with a few pointers to some currently unofficial (but possibly soon-to-be-supported) ways of making use of Local Direct Gov data:

The answer is No, Yes, and Maybe.

Web services: not yet. This is something I've been asking for and the Local Directgov team are looking at doing. [...]

[Summary: just launched online consultation game on youth workforce development]

One of the many people I got a chance to meet at BarCampUKGovWeb this Saturday was David Wilcox. It was through David's work on Useful Games that I first started thinking about the role games have to play in participation and consultation.

And so, with the challenge of creating an online consultation to engage young people in thinking about the different training needs of leaders and managers in the youth workforce - I was drawn to thinking about how approaching the consultation as a 'game' could help us get good quality consultation responses without falling back on a long-and-boring e-surveys that would ask people to rank abstract attributes of leaders and managers, and to choose which detailed training packages 'managers in general' might need.

[Summary: To measure social media ROI we need to know about the ROI of paper-based outreach]

If you've ever handed out a leaflet to a class of school students in tutorial you may be familiar with then finding 1/2 those leaflets dropped in the bin on the way out (recycling bin hopefully...).

If you look at the piles of paper on most office desks - and then ask the desk inhabitant how many of these documents they've actually read - and how many they've responded to in any way - you may well find their desk is collonised by many unread and unresponded too leaflets, magazines, reports and papers. Even though all those leaflets had a tear-off slip, and the magazines had a letters page.

Printing 1000 leaflets doesn't mean 1000 leaflets get read.

But leaflets don't report back how many people have read it.

A blog post does.

I'm on the train back to Leicester after the first BarCampUKGovWeb and thought I should get down in blog form some of my early reflections.

6 Things I leant from BarCampUKGovWeb

• We need to talk (and commission technology?) in terms of narratives and stories of user experience: What do we want to do for people? Unless I can describe in technology neutral terms what it is I want to do, and unless I can explain a) exactly how technology will help me do that, and b) why a technological solution is preferable over any other form of solution - I'm probably not going to end up with the technology that fits my needs. Stories are powerful. And we should be using them more.

There is useful data in local direct gov - but can we get at it with a web service to create mash-ups for public benefit?

<warning - slightly geeky post coming up>

Last year we tried to raise awareness of the Youth Opportunity Fund and Youth Capital Fund with the Actions Speak Louder campaign. The campaign, targetted at young people - involved a national awards ceremony and publicity campaign - but the goal was to help young people find their local Youth Opportunity Fund grant making panel.

I've just been in a session at BarcampUKGovWeb where we've been talking about how government provides information to young people, and involves young people in conversation with government (although we ran short on time to get onto that second and most important one). There's a lot to be talked about here - and 20 minutes only got us started. Below is a quick mindmap of what I gathered from the discussion:

I'd be happy to share the mindmap with anyone else who was in the session who would like to add to it. And very keen to continue the discussion...

It's been a long time coming, and it's still got a long way to go - but finally this afternoon I've been able to set the new version of the Hear by Right website live with the newly launched 2008 Hear by Right resources and a brand new design and CMS back-end (drupal). I won't write too much about it now... as heading off to the pub to celebrate... but a bit of background for you:

The Young Researcher Network have just launched their programme of basic training for their network of 15 youth-led research projects (I created some resources for their launch conference in December last year) - and they're planning what training will come next. So far, with help from the Centre for Social Action they're going to be looking at:

My post on using twitter via text message at conferences has been one of the most popular on this blog.

When I wrote that guide I had thought that text-message feedback via Twitter cost only the standard network rate for UK mobiles - and so for those (like me) with inclusive text message bundles that never get used up - it was virtually free.

However, via a trail of posts leading to Tech Crunch (and checking against my own phone bill) I've just discovered that's not quite the case:

Note also that the 07624 in Twitter’s number (+44 762 4801423) means it is actually billed as “international” by 3 and T-Mobile, making it a pricey service for those who like to tweet via SMS.

Whilst I'm on the topic of upcoming conferences and events, two days before I'll be exploring how various speakers think we should keep young people safe online, I should be at BarCampUKGovWeb - an altogether different sort of event.

A BarCamp "an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees." Participants are encouraged to contribute short sessions to the event - and I've just been thinking about the sorts of sessions I could present.

The BarCampUKGovWeb focus is on:

I've just booked a place at Children and Young People Now's 'Keeping Children Safe Online' conference. It's not a conference title I'm entirely comfortable with. It appears to embody two key errors in thinking about young people and the internet

• An over-emphasis on risk
• The wrong response to risk

In exploring my concerns on these points, the provisional thoughts and explorations I've been working through emerged as this blog post.

An over-emphasis on risk

It's easy to talk about risks. When you're looking for the possibility of trouble - you can usually find it. And when you've identified trouble - the (cognitively) 'easy' response is to put up fences - block it off and 'protect' people from it. If you can stop one person from experiecing the 'risk' - then putting up the fences is worth it. The logic follows that risks are bad - and risks should be removed.

Two of the reasons I gave in my recent post '7 reasons why youth workers should be blogging' were to share resources, and to build networks.

Well, following some blog-based networking and discussion sparked by that post, I've just logged on to find Mas from the the YOMO Breakfast Society blog has drafted a fantastic 'getting started guide' for youth work blogging resource. And DK from MediaSnackers who has been taking advantage of his speaking gigs around the country to encourage youth service blogging is proposing a video intro as well. Blogging and collaboration in action.

This is cross-posted from 'Tim on Youth Work' over on the C&YPN blogs. If you want to leave a comment, that's probably the best place to head to.

On the back page of this months Youth Work Now Michael Bracey highlights the lack of engagement between youth work and new technology. Search online for 'Youth Work' and you find very little from anyone outside of the world of youth ministry. And I've not yet managed to find a single one of the 27,000 statutory sector youth workers out there blogging about youth work!*

Update: You can download the final paper here. Or head over onto the NYA website to vie a Voice Thread presentation with an overview of the key findings.

In my last Round Up post I mentioned a new research report on 'Positive Youth Development'. Well, I'm rather excited to be able to tell you we'll be having a 'research launch' for the paper on the 21st January 2008 from 10am till 12 noon at the Thistle Bloomsbury in London.

I'll be co-presenting with Sarah Schulman on what Positive Youth Development is, and we'll be looking at what it has to offer the landscape of policy and provision for young people in the UK.

And you are most welcome to join us.