It’s been almost a week since the dust settled like a shroud over the last ICT Hub conference - held at the cavenous Kensington Town Hall Conference centre - and we’re just rounding up some last thoughts and bones for you to pick over.

Keynotes:
We have to admit that an air of fin de siecle hung over the conference like a damp blanket - not surprising with the future funding of ICT so uncertain. Nonetheless, the Hub’s Nicky Thompson gave a rousing address to the ICT faithful gathered in the hall, praising “Lasa’s Knowledgebase as a quick and dirty solution”. Rather bizarrely, the second keynote speech was given by the Hub’s executioner, Capacity Builders’ Simon Hebditch, who was heard to say:

“…we are working with NAVCA on Business Plans for the Regional ICT Champions who can start on 1st July 2008 or, if they are wanting to be operational earlier, we can do that.”

“…[Capacitybuilders] will continue over the next three years to support ICT development.”

Does that mean a potential lifeline for the Knowledgebase and Suppliers Directory, which are currently not funded beyond 31 March 2008?

Moving along swiftly…

Publications:
The conference also saw publication of the ICT Survival Guide for Trustees by Preponderate’s Simon Davey. We hope to review it here as soon as copies are available from the Hub website or before they turn up on a Brighton market stall.

Presentations:
You can find most of the presentations featured at the conference here. The presenations will be up on the website until the end of March 2008.

A fevered Marc Osten went above and beyond the call of duty to deliver a great “Funding your future” workshop , which you can get here.

ICT Hub Awards:
You can also find out more about the fantastic award winners here. We were particularly impressed with one winner, Get Connected - which provides a free, confidential helpline for young people - and we’ll certainly be checking them out for the blog in the next few weeks.

Question time:
One more time…the panel (left to right: Nicky Thompson, Bill Freeman, John Davies, Simon Davey, Matt Legg) take questions from the floor.

Bill Freeman did confirm that NAVCA has been funded by Capacity Builders to manage a national programme of Regional ICT Champions from July 2008. However, the level of funding is such that regional champions will continue at a part-time level. Since the programme was announced regional ChangeUp consortia in London and the North East seem to think they’re off the hook for funding regional champion’s work. It’s also unclear at this stage just what agenda Capacity Builders envisage for regional champions - which may not be the same as that envisaged by regional consortia!

And lastly…
There are many things that could have been done differently or better, but nothing like the Hub model has been attempted before in the sector, and the Hubs have certainly had their critics. What the hubs did well was to leverage national economies of scale in setting up the Knowledgebase and Suppliers Directory as free resources for all. As a regional champion and a trustee of a volunteer centre, we have to say that some of the resources produced by the Governance, Performance and ICT Hubs have added real value to the sector through their publications. In fact, Capacity Builders likes the Hub model so much it’s decided to increase their number from 5 to 9 and rename them workstreams, that will no doubt see fit to re-invent the wheel.

The 9 new workstreams have just 3 years and reduced funds to bed-in - will they really be as effective as the Hubs? Will the resources they generate add value or duplicate? Will Capacity Builders be around in 3 years time. And what will be the state of sector ICT in 3 years time?

A big thank you to all those who took time out from providing technology support services to the sector to attend the first London network event on 4 February - the first of what we hope will be many network events and an opportunity for us to learn from each other.

For those who missed the event, we hope there will be another opportunity for you to contribute to the growth and knowledge of the network. We’ll be announcing the next network event for the middle of May - so stay tuned for news.

Some very powerful messages emerged from this first networking:

• We want to do this again! There are very few opportunities for circuit riders and other providers of tech support in London’s voluntary sector to network and exchange learning. We will also look to hook up with other networks for cross-fertilisation of ideas;

• Funding and sustainability of circuit rider projects is big concern - several circuit rider projects are coming towards the end of their funding, and whilst funding priorities may change, the need for circuit riders hasn’t.

• Funders need to acknowledge Total Cost of Ownership and that ICT is a legitimate cost of doing business in their grant criteria. this may mean working more closely with funders to ensure they understand the importance of ICT;

• VCOs need to acknowledge that ICT is a key organisational function (compare with e.g. financial management

Continue Reading »

It’s a little known rock ‘n roll fact that - almost 36 years ago to the day - David Bowie started his 1972 ‘Spiders from Mars’ world tour in the inauspicious surroundings of the Toby Jug, Tolworth (long since gone) before going onto the rather more glamorous Carnegie Hall, New York.

Obviously, we can’t quite compete with the glamour of a Bowie world tour, but the ICT Hub has 80+ ICT events scheduled around England between January and March 2008. We report from the London ICT Champion’s very-own mini-tour.

Continue Reading »

It’s finally here - if you’re an accidental techie, a circuit rider or someone who supports the ICT of voluntary sector organisations in London - this is the forum for you.

Join us for an informal networking session and learn about the great projects we’re each working on and get the latest on the wonderful world of voluntary sector ICT and circuit riding. Feel free to bring a laptop - we have wireless internet access. After the forum, we’ll be continuing the discussion in the more convivial surroundings of the downstairs bar - so please join us for post-forum refreshments!

If you know of colleagues who’d also be interested in coming along - please pass this invite on to them.

**Confirm your place**
Follow the link to book your FREE place: http://londonictforum.eventbrite.com/

**Why you should drop everything and come along**
It’s new, it’s different, it’ll be fun and you get to share ideas and knowledge.

* Networking and knowledge sharing
* Circuit Riding - all the latest news and projects
* Circuit Rider conference 2008
* Resources and help

**Where and when**
4-6pm Wednesday 6 February 2008
Conference Room
Bread & Roses
68 Clapham Manor Street
London SW4 6DZ

Directions here.

**Anything else?**
We’re hoping this forum will be the first of many more, and to make this forum vibrant and useful we want you - the community - to contribute to future meetings. So we’ll be looking for folks to share their knowledge and experience with us - it might be about a great project idea you have, or using web based tools, or choosing the right database, or community wireless, or open source or something else ICT you want to share.

See you all there!

In partnership with BTEG (Black Training & Enterprise Group) the London ICT Champion is hosting a FREE half day event that will help BMER, refugee and asylum seeker organisations to get the most out of ICT Hub resources - such as the ICT Hub Knowledgebase and Suppliers Directory.

Where and when:
09.30 to 1.30pm on 18 January 2008 at NCVO, Regent’s Wharf, 8 All Saints Street, London, N1 9RL

See map.

Who is it for:
BMER, refugee and asylum seeker organisations.

Workshops include:

• How to Cost and Fund ICT - get that database project funded! This session takes you through the steps of planning, costing and measuring the success of your ICT project.
• ICT Hub Knowledgebase and Suppliers Directory - don’t know where to start on planning that new website or database project? Don’t know which IT companies to trust? This workshop will get you started .
• How connected are you? - introduction to BTEG’s ‘Specialist Infrastructure” project.

We’ll also be distributing free copies of the ICT Hub’s Guide to Managing your Organisation’s ICT and How to cost and Fund ICT.

Booking:
Contact Lynette Grant at BTEG. Email: lynette@bteg.co.uk

Here’s a salutory lesson for all wordpress bloggers using third party web hosts - use the backup plugin within wordpress to make weekly/daily backups of your database downloaded to your desktop. When things can and do wrong with your blog - often through no fault of your own - you can’t always rely on the hosting company to have an up to date backup or get the restore process right.

When the Champ blog broke yesterday morning we (naturally) assumed a recent upgrade to the latest version of wordpress must’ve been the trigger. Some digging around and a call to our hosts soon revealed that our hosting company had confused an order to delete a redundant sql database (it costs £80 per year per sql database for the privilege with these guys) and ended up trashing the champ’s database instead. When we asked our hosts to restore our database they confessed to having a week old backup - for some of the more prolific bloggers this represents a hefty amount of lost time, work and energy. Our own backup, taken as a precaution during the upgrade process, was only a day old but still missing 4 posts.

Even when we sent our hosts our own backup, they still managed to miscue the restore process and leave us with a site slightly less broken than before. Obviously these guys don’t test. At this point, we decided that if you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself and proceeded to reinstall wordpress - and bingo, it works! We also had to replace the previous mistylook theme, which seems to have vanished from the web and doesn’t work with the latest version of wordpress. The new theme needs some tweaking here and there, but we’re saving that for the post lunch slump.

The last step was to try and get back the 4 missing posts, and for this we’re indebted to Lasa’s Ian Goodman for suggesting that we cut and paste the missing posts from our RSS reeder.

Let us know your wordpress horror stories - have you ever been caught short without a backup of your blog?

Here at ICT Champ Towers we’ve been busy Google mapping ICT projects supporting London’s voluntary sector. In order to keep it to a reasonable size we’ve only included circuit rider projects, ChangeUp funded ICT projects and Netgain centres that we know to be serving other voluntary groups - so if we’ve missed your project, let us know.

Whilst we’re discussing caveats, we’ve also decided not to include London based consultants and commercial support companies providing support services to the sector - they can be located on the ICT Hub Suppliers Directory.

You can also see Google Maps produced by fellow Regional Champs here.


View Larger Map

Continuing the theme of terrible blog title puns started earlier, the August 2007 London ICT Champion newsletter is now out and reproduced here. For the curious, the only connection here is that we liked the song title, which comes courtesy of country guitar troubador Tom T Hall. Well, it’s different…..

**STARTS**

Here is your monthly round-up of voluntary sector and other ICT highlights from the London ICT Champion. As always, click the links to find out more from the summaries below.

1. East London gets its first circuit rider

Hackney Voluntary Action is looking for an energetic, determined and innovative ICT Support Worker (Circuit Rider) to join their team. Salary £27,000 p.a. plus 5% pension contribution (full time post - 35 hours per week).

It is a 2 year post funded by City Bridge Trust and the project will cover four East London Boroughs - the City of London, Hackney, Tower Hamlet and Newham. The application pack can be downloaded from: http://www.hackneyvoluntaryaction.org/id53.html

2. Guide to Managing ICT in the Voluntary and Community Sector

This in-depth guide covers all aspects of managing ICT and contains over 100 pages of accessible, jargon-free information - that is useful for anyone whatever their level of technical knowledge - on budgeting and buying ICT, managing ICT, security, maintenance and policies and procedures. We think Scipmark did a great job and deserves a few beers next time we see him. The guide is free and can be downloaded as a PDF from: http://www.icthub.org.uk/publications/

3. ‘Sight impairment and computer use’ workshop - 19 September

We’ll be delivering a free half day workshop on setting up a Microsoft XP Computer for people with sight impairments. People will also get a chance to play with the latest in assistive technology.

More details at: http://www.lasa.org.uk/ictchampion/2007/08/06/sight-impairment-and-computer-use-workshop/

4. Symantec joins the CTX discount scheme

Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Internet Security is now available from the CTX shop. CTX is discounted software programme run by Charity Technology Trust whereby eligible UK-based charities are able to choose from over 80 donated technology products from companies such as Microsoft, Symantec and Cisco.

Charities are required to pay a small Administrative Fee to cover the costs of the programme, making savings of between 92-96% on typical retail prices. More details at: http://www.ctt.org/ctx/browse_products/symantec/default.asp

5. ICT Connect
We’ve recently helped connect organisations seeking help with setting up a circuit rider project, internet phone calls, websites, databases and wireless networks with other London based organisations as examples of good practice and expertise.

The ICT Connect scheme enables voluntary and community organisations to explore their ICT needs by visiting another organisation that is using ICT well or in an innovative way. More details from: http://www.icthub.org.uk/ICT_Connect/

6. Costing and Funding ICT Projects
Find out about funding for your ICT project with tips for writing an effective funding proposal and how to fully cost and fund your ICT.

For your free copy contact me at mmaier@lasa.org.uk or download the guide from: http://www.icthub.org.uk/publications/

7. Southall Community Alliance - ‘Know IT Project’
We recently spoke to Know IT project manager Janpal about their new project, which is supporting the ICT needs of 20 BMER organisations in Southall, west London. The Know IT project is building a community ICT hub website to share resources and good practice. More details on this site soon.

8. VOICE

VOICE is a powerful and free web-publishing toolkit available to local councils to help their local groups, from neighbourhoods to schools, to create new free websites - and develop them using tailored tools and templates.

As well as posting content, news, documents and audio-visual material, VOICE toolkit users can easily add interactive eParticipation and eConsultation toolkit options to their sites, like blogs, forums, surveys and petitions.

More details at: http://www.lasa.org.uk/ictchampion/2007/08/17/voice-web-publishing-toolkit/

9. Greener computing

This month the ICT hub is promoting greener computing with a case study from Ability Net. More details at: http://www.icthub.org.uk/articles/greener_computing.html

Find out how ICT Hub partner, AbilityNet use greener technology:
http://www.icthub.org.uk/caseStudies/abilitynet_casestudy.html

And if your organisation uses environmentally friendly technology, contact the ICT Hub’s Louise Brown with your story – louise.brown@icthub.org.uk

10. Free ICT Resources

For practical advice on ICT issues, visit the ICT Hub Knowledgebase at: http://www.icthubknowledgebase.org.uk/

Find local trusted ICT support in the directory of suppliers at: http://www.icthub.org.uk/suppliers_directory/

***About this email and the London ICT Champion*** This is a monthly email from the London Regional ICT Champion, distributed via project funder Capacity Builders and CVS networks.

The London ICT Champion’s mission is to promote voluntary sector ICT and support voluntary sector organisations to understand and use technology to better achieve their goal of delivering high quality services for all. You can find out more about the London ICT champion project and its work at: www.lasa.org.uk/ictchampion

Feel free to forward this email to your friends and give us your feedback by replying to this email.

Last in the current series of workshops. You don’t want to have to say you haven’t been to an ICT accessibility workshop, you are not going to be one of the crowd or even hip and cool. Any self respecting IT person should be in ‘the know’ and geeky on this stuff.

 Sign up for this free workshop, you know ,”……….. we’re worth it”.

19 September 2007, Happy Computers, London, E1

Objectives of the workshop:

• Deliver a workshop on setting up a Microsoft XP Computer for people with poor sight and sight impairments.
•  Deliver an introduction to computer options for people with sight impairments or no sight.
• Offer a display of some high visibility keyboards and mice.
• Give an overview of Individual Assessment options for Computer users at work.
• Offer a display of other Accessible/Adapted IT input devices and software.
• To distribute a free resource pack ; Easy, Free and Quick ICT Accessibility’ produced by AbilityNet and the ICT Hub.

Time 2.5 hours

Please note: the workshop is free, however If you don’t inform us that you are ‘not going’ to be able to turn up for the session by the day before the workshop, we will raise an invoice for £25 for you or your organisation to pay, unless there are exceptional reasons. We have had to introduce this condition to enable us to still offer the workshops free. We are finding up to 50% of people who sign up don’t turn up and don’t tell us they are not turning up for the workshop. When you book this workshop you accept this condition.

Book on line at www.happy.co.uk using the word ‘accessibility’ to search or go directly to the workshop page; http://tinyurl.com/2o2d8l  call 020 7375 7300 or Minicom 020 7375 7349.

Who is it for? Voluntary and community organisations, infrastructure organisations, circuit riders

Organiser: London Region Accessibility Champion

Just for once you can’t say we’re not first with all the news that matters.

The ICT Hub is today announcing the successful commissioning of a Regional ICT Champion in each of the nine English regions. The regional champions will enable the ICT Hub to work more closely with local infrastructure organisations and grassroots voluntary and community groups.

The full story will appear in next week’s Third Sector magazine.

In London, this means that the London Regional ICT Champion has been re-commissioned to continue through to April 2008. What happens after that is open to speculation, because as reported on this blog earlier in the week, Capacity Builders Draft National Support Services Framework is likely to significantly alter the ChangeUp landscape post April 2008.

London Regional ICT Champion Press Release (.doc 58KB)