Category Archives: What I’ve Seen
Huddle Gov Muddle
Huddle make some great collaboration software. I first met Alastair and Andy at Open Coffee more than a year ago and they’re very nice chaps. I’m also a fan of Mike Butcher. But when I read Mike’s piece on Huddle’s study of opinions of “public sector workers” I hoped that he’d just skimmed the press release badly and regurgitated it without thinking too much – entirely understandable – it’s nearly holiday time.
However the press release is available on the Huddle site too. Though the actual study and important details of methodology are not, we are told that it’s the result of talking to 202 local authority officials a few weeks ago.
My gripes are:
- The use of “public sector workers” to describe the study sample as in “more than half of public sector workers (52%) are disappointed with lack of innovation in IT services”. No. More than half of the officials asked maybe, but 202 people in local government are not necessarily representative of the public sector as a whole.
- Government with a capital G usually means central government and the executive in particular “One third (32.5%) believe the Government’s IT problems could be solved by buying from local, UK-based companies” So were these local government people asked about the Government’s IT purchasing policy or their own?
- The confusion of unwillingness to adopt social software in local government with Central Government IT overspends.
- No details of what sorts of local government officials these were – either in terms of service area or in terms of seniority or responsibility for decision making.
- An assumption that IT departments are the problem – is there evidence that those authorities that have banned Facebook have done so entirely on the say so of IT? Surely it’s more complex than that?
I want to make it clear that I’m sure I probably agree with most of the findings of this report and other people would find some clear facts about staff opinions in this area valuable , it’s the sloppy reporting that I find annoying – can someone who actually knows something about the subject give us a decent summary?
Uncertainty over the LU Busking Scheme
London Underground are taking the management of licensed busking in-house after sponsorship dried up.
Naturally, rumours, speculation and gossip have been circulating today. As far as I can make out though from the statement on the booking site and the buskers-only mailing list, the main points are that:
No new sponsor has been found to replace Capital/The London Paper – the sponsorship package of £1m+ has funded the administration of the scheme by Automatic Management who ran the audition/vetting process, employed Busking Site Managers (BSMs) to visit the various pitches regularly and ensure all is well, and managed the telephone and internet booking process.
The contract with Automatic seems to have been terminated with very short notice – while we all like to have a moan about how things have been run, they’re a good bunch of people and I hate to see the BSMs especially out of a job.
The internet booking system is to be discontinued and all bookings will now happen over the phone and rosters will effectively be fixed by 2pm the previous day as that’s when they’ll be faxed (yes faxed) to Station Supervisors. This is a killer for me. Because I fit my busking in around consulting, writing and facilitation gigs I rarely book more than 48 hours in advance. I pick up most of my pitches as cancellations or from the unpopular pitches/timeslots, either on the day, or the night before. It’s not clear to me how the booking system is going to work and it looks like a recipe for double-booking disputes on the one hand and pitches needlessly going empty on the other. I do hope that internet booking can be reintroduced (preferably a re-written system coded by someone who understands the web – and basic online security – don’t ask!) but I reckon I’m probably in a minority.
City of Men – Cidade dos Homens
Thanks to another @danlight & @sizemore collaboration I went to see a screening of City of Men tonight – it’s a follow-on from two things I haven’t seen so I can’t do the comparisons that others might, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It felt like Macbeth meets Romeo and Juliet in a very hot place with guns and motorbikes.
It made me think about being a father, having a father, being a let down as a father, being let down by your father, being let down by your friends, being a let down to your friends, the stuff everyone knows about you except you, finding hope in the smallest things, having hopes dashed repeatedly, motorbike taxis wtf?, not knowing what’s going on, losing everything, carrying on, the difficulty of attacking an enemy with an elevated position, what it must be like to shoot a gun, being in a gang, being on the outside of a gang, unconsciousness, what it must be like to be shot, to see a flash and have your flesh ripped by a bullet, how hot it can get, how good it is to shout in the sea.
So yeah, quite a lot really.
Photo from adman_as on flickr by-nc-sa
Clearing some headspace
One of those brain dump things where I want to write more than 140 characters but not enough for a “proper” post, whatever *that* is.
The not-so-obvious sign that twitter’s about to go mainstream is that the really smart people are so bored with it they are messing with the concept. This week has seen Hugh making the ultimate sacrifice and fairly swift resurrection. It’s also seen Andrew Baron trying to sell his account & followers on e-Bay (although he’s now deleted the auction) These are the kinds of one-offs that can’t be replicated, but hopefully will inspire some more interesting activity – Mark, how do you describe this sort of copying behaviour?
At the same time, it is becoming more and more like the playground with bullies and victims finding each other very easily. It’s a good job there are some grown-ups keeping things sensible. pfffft!
We’re trying to get the next couple of months of the Tuttle prototype settled with sponsorship – £300-£500 gets you fame and geek gratitude for a week, but on the basis that it’s often easier to raise a lot of money than just a little – you could book say the first (or second, or third…) Friday of the next three months for £1500. Helen’s done some work on polishing the value proposition for sponsors – go take a look and if you or your clients would like to play, you know where I am.
The Tuttle Breakfast next Wednesday sold out in a matter of days and now has a waiting list of 13 people. We’ll do more. Post your ideas for sessions on the wiki – we’ve already loads – I particularly like Mike & Mecca’s suggestions that we need to break out of the echo chamber – I’m hoping that Wednesday will fulfill some of that.
I went to MeasurementCamp last week – I’m still feeling uneasy about it. I just know that with hindsight if I was back where I was 12 years ago, with hindsight I wouldn’t have put so much effort into measuring public services. Or maybe I would, but would try to find ways of balancing the hard and the soft better. Social Media metrics enable and encourage gaming in place of authenticity but when you say it like that it sounds awful pompous and spoilsporty.
I still need more work and somewhere to live from 18th May. Shortest paragraph – greatest headspace. HALP pls kthxbye.
Oh dear
Oh God, I know, I’ve sat at the “centre” and written this sort of stuff – it needs a few more buzzwords to make it truly awful:
“BLAHBLAH has released enhancements to BLAHBLAHBLAH , its professional-networking website for support
of more effective collaboration and knowledge sharing across BLAH.
This is the first major refresh of the design since the platform was launched over 12 months ago and is the result of the feedback we have received from our growing number of registered users and the recommendations received from a detailed usability study commissioned by BLAHBLAH.
We are confident that users will find the new design more intuitive to use and will benefit from the enhanced help and guidelines that are available on the site. We anticipate making a number of other functional enhancements to the site over the coming weeks and will advise you about these soon.”
Clearly the excitement was too much for “users” of this “community” and they all tried to click at once…
Error 500: SRVE0207E: Uncaught initialization exception thrown by servlet
Bless her
I suspect that there’s only one thing worse for Adriana than admitting she’s ill and that’s to have to endure several hours offline 🙂
original pic by doc searls
derived from this shot under by-sa licence
New Moo Notecards
Now with extra added “Yay!”
In a hurry and doing a 100 other things (which is what I said I wasn’t going to do today *at all*) but here are a sample of the new moo product to complement their lovely calling cards which everyone I meet simply drools over (I said “simply” not “literally” – ewwwww)
They are Notecards – 100mm x 100mm square with a 42mm flap on the side to enable them to stand up. Of course I should have photographed them standing up. (Well I did, but I mean I should have made them stand up, not me – can you tell I’m writing this far too quickly?) On the back you get to print your contact details, but there’s a big space for you to write or stick labels on. They also come with their own envelopes so you can put them in the post or leave them on the mantelpiece for when the intended recipient gets home or something.
I already gave my first one away to Suw for her birthday on Sunday – she got a pile of fruit from Berwick Street Market on hers. This of course was before the romper-suit stuff came up and she started feeling uneasy.
You can now order them from the moo meisters perfect for totally personalised “I’m sorry I completely screwed up omgwtfbbq” or “I love you, you’re my best friend” or “Stop lying there so ill, get up and dance around” or even “You’re mad and I’m mad. Let’s do something completely insane together” cards.
Be afraid
From my twitter feed:
howardgr: friday the 13th. now where’s my hockey mask?
Sent at 1:49 PM on Friday
plasticbagUK: It’s conceivable I may kill everyone before this day is out. If you’re sitting near me, now is the time to start getting scared.
Sent at 1:55 PM on Friday
And they look like such nice boys
How many blondes does it take…
No, this wasn’t a queue for the Marshall Street Clinic in Soho. Wash your minds out with soap.
There’s a reality TV show (well, ‘reality’ might be stretching it a little) called WAGs boutique being filmed over the road where a group of young women who have some relationship to a sportsman get to run their own fashion business with a shop off Carnaby St. For some reason hundreds of other (presumably less fortunate) young women (and a few guys) were lined up over the street and being admitted in small groups. I assume they are going to have the thrill of meeting some of these superstars and end up on ITV2.
I saw Tamara Beckwith in one of the shops as I passed. I think I’d prefer a trip to the clinic myself.
Perfect Path 