Well – true to her word, she has – and a it's great to welcome a new blog to the participation scene. Here's what Alice say's in her opening post on 'Cased'

I don’t blog. I think blogs are for other people. That’s about to change…

I work for www.involve.org.uk on all things participatory (more about that later). You might think that would include online participation, and yes it does in the broad research sense – but on a personal level I have consistently put off starting a blog of my own for these main reasons:

1) Convinced I won’t have enough time or inclination to update it

2) What’s the use? I won’t have anything interesting or useful to say that hasn’t already been said by someone wiser.

3) Blogging is something other people do – I’m a commenter not a writer! It’s just ‘not me’.

But Alice has committed to a three month experiment to overcome those reasons why not to blog. She says:

So, I’m beginning this blogsperiment with these goals in mind:

1) To share my own learning

2) To help better connect public participation people and related ideas

3) To add a dose of realism to the world of the already immersed bloggers out there

4) To have fun and share some personal interests

I'm really looking forward to reading Alice's contributions, and to benefitting from that helpful dose of realism

So – um, if you're involved in participation, stakeholder engagement, blogging for learning etc, do head over and say hi.

I've been asked by Participation Works to put together a series of pages on 'Technologies for Youth Participation' – so I'm looking out for all manor of technologies and tools that can be used to engage young people effectively in decision making and creating change.

From offline electronic voting keypads and twittering at events, through to collaborative online forums that allow young people to influence a policy process over the long term – I'm interested in hearing from you about:

• processes you might have been involved in that have used technology to engage young people in decision making

  and/or

• new and existing tools that you think have real potential for young people's participation in decision making and why

Drop me a line or use the comments to share your stories and suggestions.

As an aside, it's great to see Participation Works getting ever closer to fully joining the social media world with the addition this week of 'Share This' links, and the news that Takover Day at PW brought participation workers blogging a step nearer.