London Region ICT Champion

In the previous post we highlighted a study which suggested that misconceptions amongst managers are perceived to be holding back the adoption of web 2.0 technologies. Web 2.0 - or social media as some call it - is a second generation of web based services and communities.

As we’ve said before, the key to adopting web 2.0 technologies is to understand the organisation’s mission and culture - campaigning, advocacy, youth, arts, etc and then match the technology to the job that needs doing. Read Deborah Elizabeth Finn’s great post on the 10 things every manager should know about ICT.

There are some great blogs and other resources to help you get started with understanding web 2.0 and other collaborative technologies. Here’s some of the best….

Blogs:

Laura’s Notebook: Laura blogs about using technology to help non-profit organisations overcome barriers and communicate their cause.

Beth Kanter: Beth shares her ideas and experiments about non-profit technology and much more.

Technology for the non-profit sector: Deborah Elizabeth Finn blogs passionately about how non-profit organisations can better use ICT to support their mission.

The Bamboo Project: Michele Martin blogs about non-profit technology, personal learning, empowerment and knowledge sharing. Michele has also written widely about non-profit adoption of web 2.0 tools here.

Read/WriteWeb is a popular weblog that provides Web Technology news, reviews and analysis.

Techcrunch: Entertaining and informative site dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.

Web 2.0 tools reviewed and rated:

Idealware: Provides candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits.

Organizer’s Tool Crib: A participatory directory that lets users rate and review online tools and resources.

IT Redux: Ismael Ghalimi writes about his attempts at using a generic web browser and a set of online services to provide all the functionality needed by a computer user - email, word processing, spreadsheets, calendars, etc. He calls it Office 2.0 and has a database of web applications reviewed.

Socialmedia wiki: Social media is a way of using the Internet to collaborate and share ideas. This site pulls together resources and tools to help organisations understand how web 2.0 and social media tools can be used to their advantage.

Released today, Web 2.0 - More than Social Networking, is a research study conducted by Bournemouth University that looks at current levels of web 2.0 adoption and understanding among UK businesses.

The study suggests that misconception amongst managers is slowing down the adoption of web 2.0 or social media tools.

• almost half of UK senior managers do not understand the business benefits associated with embracing web 2.0 technologies, while almost a third of IT managers lack an understanding of the capabilities of web 2.0.
• only 11 per cent actually purchased the technology to achieve increased collaboration, process change and more streamlined systems. The rest relied on the advanced web capabilities of such technology to improve content management and search facilities.
• less than 20% cited improved content and document management as a benefit

On the upside, 55.6 % of respondents cited working together more efficiently and uniting workers across different locations (52.9%) as the biggest benefits of web 2.0, while 50 per cent cited more openness in the organisation.

Capacitybuilders today announced details of the lead organisations it will be working with over the next three years to strengthen third sector support services for the benefit of diverse frontline organisations across England.

A total of £11 million has been awarded across seven priority workstreams. The successful lead organisations are all supported in their bids by partnerships with a range of organisations from across the wider Third Sector.

The seven workstreams that have been awarded are as follows:

• Campaigning and Advocacy will be led by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations
• Equalities and Diversity will be led by the Women’s Resource Centre
• Income Generation will be led by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations
• Leadership and Governance will be led by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations
• Marketing and Communications will be led by the Media Trust
• Modernising Volunteering will be led by Volunteering England
• Performance Management will be led by Charities Evaluation Services

The announcement went added, “The Grants Committee decided not to appoint lead providers for the Collaboration and Responding to Social Change workstreams.”

Folks who’ve been following this debate for longer than is healthy will remember that  the first draft of National Support Services originally placed ICT in the ’social change’ workstream.   ICT, along with workforce has since been shunted into a new programme called Learning and Innovation - for which we await details.

The biggest losers in this announcement would appear to be  NCVO, which was awarded just 2 of the 7 workstreams.  Although NAVCA has not emerged as a lead in any of the announced workstreams, we hear they’ve partnered up with at least one of the new workstream leads.

However, it was always likely that new players such as ACEVO and CES would emerge to lead the new workstreams, and this is an opportunity for us to take our agenda to them.

Cynics will also be entitled to ask if the new Capacitybuilders workstreams will be subjected to the same level of scrutiny and criticism as the out-going ChangeUp hubs were.

Either way, the emergence of new players onto the national support services stage means that the relationships with the current hubs and their delivery partners that we’ve all spent 3 years building up - will now be torn down.  So some innevitable re-inventing of wheels will be going on.

Lastly, congratulations to Nicole and all at Womens’ Resource Centre for getting the Equalities and Diversity workstream.  ICT and equalities is already written into the draft London ICT strategy, so hopefully this now means we can work together on delivering practical resources.

Declaration: In the interests of transparency, the London ICT Champion is funded by Capacity Builders and is based at Lasa, a delivery partner of the ICT Hub - which is also funded by Capacity Builders.

Anne Stevens of Channel 4 New Media has written an excellent introduction to the world of new media.  Read the article now on the Knowledgebase.

Issue 3 of the Circuit Rider round-up is now out and available for download (PDF 1.24MB).

• Chris Bailey on FOSS
• Jim Druce of JADe on remote support
• Dave Greenhalgh of Cumbria CVS on social enterprise development
• Aba Maison of Lasa on the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2007

After laying low for 2 weeks, the Champ blog is back again - this time after 11 days jury service at Southwark Crown Court.

Our court summons said that most jurors find their service to be a “rewarding experience” - our experience was one of continual frustration and after an unofficial health-check we left recommending that HMCS hire a circuit rider to sort out their IT issues.

• Open an Internet cafe with free wireless Internet access to fill the hours of hanging around
• Internet cafe computers could be refurbished with an open source OS and installed by circuit riders on probation or day release
• replace the antiquated VHS video system with a dedicated media server able to stream video clips direct to court rooms
• install 12″ tv monitors into the jury’s benches, similar to the monitors found in the back of airline seats, as not all of us can focus on a tv screen 20 yards across the courtroom.
• live blogging of trials

Here’s how we reached our conclusions….

The first thing that struck the Champ blog about Southwark Crown Court is that the building entrance bears an uncanny resemblance to Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s jaw, especially in The Terminator series. Obvious, isn’t it?

After running a gauntlet of defendents standing around outside to have a last smoke, things didn’t get much better inside - the coffee was undrinkable and the restaurant was beset by furry four legged visitors on at least one occasion.

On the upside, there was Internet access via BT Openzone, but the heinous fees of £6 (£12 USD) for one hour were enough to put off even the most determined laptop warrior. And there was us jurors thinking that that Internet access ought to be free since we were rendering a public service at no charge to the taxpayer. For those without the luxury of laptops there was a solitary PC of Windows 2000 vintage parked in the corner by the toilets.

Some 4 hours after arriving, we were eventually called up to the courtroom and with no preamble were presented with the prosecution’s key evidence - a video tape. Predictably, the tape was in the wrong place and the machine didn’t have a tape counter. After a break for lunch - with the tape now in the right place - the video player broke down and couldn’t be coaxed back into life.

The next day followed a similar wipe-out - hours of sitting around and getting a caffeine headache whilst HMCS wrestled with the video player. This raised an interesting question of legacy technology - does any serious electronics retailer apart from Amazon or eBay still sell VHS players? A lunchtime trip to Richer Sounds, just a 5 minute walk from the court, seemed to suggest the answer was no.

By day 3, the video player was now working and we got to view the key evidence on a 30″ inch flat screen panel at an eye-popping range of 20 yards - we kid you not. The next day, things improved again and we were upgraded to a bigger courtroom with a DVD player and a big screen closer to the jury. We were also treated to Powerpoint presentations from the expert witnesses - and there was the innevitable delay whilst one expert witness had to fetch their backup copy because the original had been lost.

Has anyone else out there been on jury service and do our experiences echo your own? Or are you interested in circuit riding and would like to help HMCS sort their IT?