Just a quick response to Tim Davies’ verygood post about ‘The Myth of Easy Engagement’. There is one argument that supports his general position that, I think, he misses. I’m sure that sooner or later, some will come up with a frivolous law (like ‘Godwin’s Law‘ or ‘Muphry’s Law‘) but if they don’t, let me [...]
Posts under ‘Consultations’
Designing your environment
Just a short observation, in the light of Matthew Taylor’s post about the RSA’s work in Chelmsford that is being launched today. “….a vision for the town centre must be based on a rich understanding of how people see and use the area and how they might be willing to change that view if the [...]
Strengthening local democracy, kinda
I’ve just read through the new Strengthening Local Democracy Green Paper, and I can’t sum it up better than Talking Heads did in their 1977 hit, Psycho Killer. Not the refrain “better run, run, run, run away”, but the verse: You start a conversation you can’t even finish. You’re talking a lot, but you’re not [...]
Against participatory democracy
Brian Barder’s excellent – and comprehensive – opposition to ‘participatory democracy’ has been up and commented-up for long enough to be worth a second visit if you’ve seen it already. My only problem with it is that posts such as this probably have an obligation to advocate consultation – in it’s most creative and energetic [...]
A think tank of your own
Here’s Joanne Jacobs on the Australian ‘Government 2.0 Taskforce’ making a fairly universal point: Even where a public fund is used to identify new tools, the majority of these will either slip into obscurity after launch or will be greatly applauded for a while but not widely adopted or contributed to, by the policy makers [...]
The Whitehouse is using MixedInk
Readers of this blog could be forgiven for believing that I’m on some sort of commission scheme for Debategraph and MixedInk. Like the best ideas in this field, these two projects have focused their energy on getting the idea right and the initial project out of the door. That’s a long way of saying that [...]
Lurkers, intermittent contributors and heavy contributors
Further to the earlier post about active citizenship, during a conversation with my mate Nick Buckley of Gfk NOP, he reminded me of Jakob Neilsen’s ’90-9-1′ pyramid. I’ve not looked at this for a while now but it makes the point, doesn’t it? There are only a few people that really warrant the title ‘web [...]
No longer a pipe dream
Here’s Will Davies on how what used to pass for blue skies thinking is now just down and dirty: “When David Cameron declared the need for a new constitutional settlement recently, quite a bit of this was based on the capabilities of new technologies such as youtube and text messaging. Leaving aside the overall quality [...]
Pro-social councils
Here’s the RSA’s Matthew Taylor making the case for a pro-social framework for local government. This bit may seem like a triumph of hope over expectations, but it’s interesting to ask ourselves why that would be: “Engage local councillors in a redefinition of politics and social change, moving from a government-centric to a citizen-centric model. [...]
Digital Britain – unconferences
For anyone interested in social inclusion and online participation, this is an exciting initiative. Go and have a look! Let me take this opportunity to tell my friends in Northern Ireland that I didn’t design the site though….