Blogging Ideas : Pakistani Spectator

A -kind of- festive post for you before the holiday season kicks off for real… I read a few international blogs through the excellent global voices and one of the active ones is the Pakistani Spectator. Ghazala Khan does a regular series of interviews with bloggers from all over the place and it was my turn last week: 

Would you please tell us something about you and your site?

I write about public involvement in decision making. This is actually takes in quite a wide range of different issues, from the tension between different modes of governance and electoral systems to how individuals collaborate on decision making in their own communities, both locally and online. I blog here.

    Do you feel that you continue to grow in your writing the longer you write? Why is that important to you?

I think everyone learns as they write more frequently – it forces you to order your thoughts in a structured format and to try and imagine how others might understand your meaning. Having said that, I feel that the most important thing is to get out from behind the keyboard and monitor and to speak with a whole range of different people to gain inspiration whenever possible. That’s where you find opportunities to grow as an individual and as a member of several wider communities.

    I’m wondering what some of your memorable experiences are with blogging?

My favourite recent post was an interview with an Obama supporter on London bridge – I took a quick photo of him with my camera phone and it came out so well – really capturing the enthusiasm and spirit of the moment. I was affected by the belief of an individual that genuine change can come from those at the top rather than the cynicism that is often expressed towards decision makers in the UK.

    What do you do in order to keep up your communication with other bloggers?

I use RSS feeds to keep up to date – attempt to keep my netvibes page which pulls all of those feeds together in good order. Then of course, I read and comment when I have some spare time.

    What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?

In politics, it has to be the Obama campaign in terms of excitement and the interplay between online connection and offline action. This was a very powerful mix and am very glad to see this strong emphasis on online tools continuing. See obamacto for an interesting take on what should happen next!

    Do you think that these new technologies are effective in making people more responsive?

I do think that new technology can make people feel more personally connected than ever before, and more able to respond quickly and easily to causes or issues that they are interested in. Not only this, I think that it can supplement our existing networks in new ways which are only just beginning to be realised.

    What do you think sets Your site apart from others?

It focuses on public participation and involvement from a personal perspective. I work for an organistion called www.involve.org.uk which is based in the UK – this enables me to look at public engagement and participation from a more analytical viewpoint during the day – then my blog covers the aspect I feel is often not covered so well – what do these ideas and projects mean for real people in their working and home lives?

    If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

Critical optimism!

What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

I’m not sure on this one – life is a journey and I’m usually looking forwards not back!

    If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s paid for – what would your top 3 choices be?

I like this question – I’d go to Tierra del Fuego to see lava pouring into the sea, then drop by Venezuela to see the Angel Falls, and then maybe to Dongtan to see the eco city… in a year or two.

   What is your favorite book and why?

I don’t have a favourite – I love reading and lots of books have strong meaning for me – one would be ….read the rest here

Enjoy the holidays! 

(Yes, I know the life is a journey line is a bit Forest Gump –  is tough not to be able to edit your words after you write them…!)

Permanent Secretary blogs?

Yes, its true- and its happening right here.

Marvellous!

Happy weekends … :)

My very own netvibes

After yesterday’s del.icio.us organising fest I’m feeling very sorted – so much so that I finally organised my own netvibes homepage into a more ordered and beautiful looking state now featuring a small grassy field ontop.

If you haven’t come across a page like netvibes or pageflakes before it’s worth checking out – very useful for ordering all of the information that flies at you every day – saves alot of time accessing different sites. Here’s a good explanation as to how it works.

Now I just need to clear up the 1490 unread emails up in the top right corner….. hmm

 Motto: Make the net come to you!

RSS feeds are at the heart of how pages like netvibes work.

See Phil Shapiro’s clear explantion of what RSS is/does for you.

There’s a plan?

Yes, the rumours are true – there is a plan…

I’ve been thinking how to structure this blog thingummy in a way that will make it a useful resource – and moreover to make sure it hits the spot somewhere between interesting and informative – hopefully managing both simultaneously! See my introductory post. 

So … I plan to split up the subject matter as best I can into three areas:

1.Public participation in all its many and varied forms (tag/category:pubpart)

2.How my blogging is going – documenting my learning and general web-based flailing around (tag/category:blogging)

3. A few links to interesting bits and pieces that I find lying around the wwweb – all work and no play is dull after all…. :) (tag/category:stuff)

To try and help you order this info I’m going separately tag all of my off topic non-participation related posts categorise as ’stuff’, then make sure that all of my public participation and blogging posts have either blogging or pubpart on there as a tag and category. Simple eh?

Er, yes you blogging novice, but what’s this pubpart thing?

Well, what it is not, is something to do with hanging around having a hearty drink, nor is it the opposite of privatepart. (Although thanks for those suggestions people!)

What it IS, is a way of trying to bring together all of the many diverse participation-related resources and information from across youth, health, development, community - all policy areas both online and off by marking them with a recognisable tag in a community tagging project. This could work much like the nptech tag monitored by Beth Kanter in this weekly digest or along the lines of the tag aggregator recently used by ruralnet in their co-design process.

Please check out Tim Davies’ far more considered explanation of how pubpart will work here.

A public participation community certainly exists both in the UK and internationally but as a whole is so loose and fragmented across a number of policy areas and interests that there are few places that draw together expertise from across the board.

[Check out www.peopleandparticipation.net for one such cross-policy participation effort. I think its a good start, but then I am quite biased as I do work for Involve! Let me know what you think about the site on here:) ]

The idea of using a community tagging system like pubpart is one way of further unifying the many different voices out there which touch on various aspects of public participation and involvement, be it edemocracy, social media, PPI networks etc.

I’d be really interested to know what you think about the idea and to know if you’ll be joining in yourself.

—-

My link of today: 

Do poor people use Yahoo and those better off use Google?

If this is so, what does it say about online cultures?

A blogging experiment begins…

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’.

So what made me change my mind?

Well, I met up with Tim Davies last week and had a very interesting chat about blogging, the barriers and the ways in which people use webtools in the context of real life. It got me thinking that it would be really useful to try out an experiment where somebody whose brain is not naturally prone to neatly categorise thoughts nor document them in a timely way (ie. me) to have a shot at blogging.

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 will run it initially for three months, trying hard to connect with others and write useful regular posts  and then let’s see where we get to!

So, thanks to Tom for giving me the final push and thanks to Lisa Sabin-Wilson for writing WordPress for Dummies.

I’m starting for real on Monday 18th and will re-assess in three months time on May 19th.

Over and out.