Parkrun : Running in Parks together

Ever wanted a bit of motivation to increase the frequency of your so-called “regular” (actually annual) jog? I need all the help I can get, believe me….

In fact, my entire exercise routine is more imagined than actual; for example, this morning I have been ‘doing yoga’ which has so far consisted of rolling out my yoga mat on the living room floor and looking at it in a vigorous fashion over the edge of my teacup.

Exercising ‘to keep fit’ just isnt my motivating factor – going to the gym just doesnt do it for me. After much study and failed effort to motivate myself, I realised the following factors work for me:

1) Arranging activities with people (so I feel obliged to show up)

2) Having some mild form of competition (so I feel obliged to actually ‘do well’)

3) Very very easy to do, and nearby (so I dont make some excuse to myself and cop-out)

Park run should then be perfect- its about local people getting together with sponsors to organise weekly timed runs together. It is run by volunteers as a social enterprise and organised through an online system where you can download your own barcode and then enter a timed 5k run near you.  The barcode logs your time, and then you get an email letting you know how you did afterwards… and all for free.If there isnt already a run near you, you can work with parkrun to set one up!

Nice, simple use of online tools and offline goodwill of enthusiast networks…!

Now, I just have to get there by 9am on a Saturday :/

Mad 2012 : 7 billion people : (The worlds most inspiring photo)

Speaking to young innovators and social entrepeneurs in Hong Kong at MaD 2012 conference. A fantastic experience to meet young people with ideas and projects to change the world for the better – one step at a time! PS. Carl Sagan is awesome.

Groupon for public services or social good?

Groupon : An awesome name for an awesome idea…

First of all, it does what it says: It is a ‘coupon’ for groups. People join up to the groupon site and get sent special offers by email Eg. a half price holiday or spa visit. If a certain number of them ‘group-on’ to the offer by signing up in principle to pay for the product/service then the company will provide the product/service at a hugely discounted rate.

The Groupon concept has some great features which could be applied to a public service or social context. I thought I’d write a just a few up below for you to think about.  I was wondering if anyone had come across similar incentive schemes or group buying in the public/social sector that I should take a look at?

Peer referral

The idea that you need to get a group of people around the offer before it goes ahead means that peer referral is strongly incentivised. This enables the groupon concept to grow virally and reach deeply into friendship or interest networks.

If you applied this to public services you could reach people that public services can find it difficult to reach in order to promote take-up of training or healthcare offers.

Targeting niche markets

You could use groupon to match user groups with very specific needs with tailored/bespoke offers made up of both financial and NON financial benefits. For example, those living with long term conditions in a particular geographic area might form a group to network AND buy support services at discounted rates. Those with rare conditions who feel isolated can be matched with others to purchase discounted specialist treatments that they need AND to provide peer support.

Pipeline for ‘new social services’ 

Services like Cool2Care http://www.cool2care.co.uk/ which provide specialist carers to families with disabled children could stand to gain through being able to better understand and plan for demand for the service by creating a pipeline of demand when people sign up to take on their offer. Personal budgets could be spent on this type of care OR cautious investors could be attracted to make investment once the provider has been able to demonstrate a strong market for their service.

Just a few ideas to explore…be interested to hear your thoughts.

Hometaping : Offline and online

Sometimes you just wish you’d thought of an idea first…

In the words of the Hometaping website:

“People think that only the talented or the beautiful should be able to make music. This is bullshit. Making music is something everybody can enjoy. And everybody has something worth making a noise about.

‘Hometaping‘ is a big effort to help as many people as possible to record an album of their own music in one month. It is a celebration of what happens when they do.

So if you can’t sing but do anyway, you are Hometaping. If you’re crap at the guitar but it makes you happy, you are Hometaping. If your saxophone makes you smile but your neighbours wince, you are Hometaping. If you’re convinced your songs are intricate masterpieces, you are Hometaping.”

Making a s hort album and posting it online, then showing up to play at a hometaping party (whether via skype from transylvania, or live in london) should sound rather terrifying. Somehow, the hometaping ethos kinda takes the fear out of the process – and makes it well, fun, to record your own music for the first time. Its not often that online hype and offline actions marry up so perfectly, but I think the team behind hometaping have hit the right note… its easy to join in, non-scary, and not too techie – but without the online streaming and uploading then the thing wouldn’t exist.

I think that too many campaigns or initiatives that use the web end up getting bogged down in making the tech too complex or the messages too official. You can learn alot from hometaping no matter what kind of community project you’re trying to run.

In fact, I liked the whole concept so much that I bought the company! Well, no, I didn’t but I did ask Basil, one of the people who set up hometaping to tell me (and all of you) a bit more about what it is.

Alice: Hello! Thanks for agreeing to tell me a bit more about hometaping…! The first question really has to be…..what is it?

Basil: We started out with the idea that making music is basically a pretty fun thing to do, if you want to do it. But that it can also be quite scary and quite difficult, especially if you’re worried that you’re going to sound rubbish. (Which you probably won’t.) So we wanted to create an environment where a lot of people were all making music in a specific period of time, which would hopefully make you feel like you were part of this community of ‘hometapers’ and hopefully make it a bit less scary.

Alice: So, where did the idea come from?

Basil: The idea of a group of people all undertaking a similar endeavour in a month has been around for a while. NaNoWriMo is probably the grandpa, where people try to write a novel in a month. RPM Challenge and NaSoAlMo ask people to do an album in a month, too. Pete (one of the four of us working on this project, along with Charlie, Josh and me) participated in NaSoAlMo and thought that it would be fun to set up a similar project but with a slightly different emphasis. So he told us the idea over breakfast and then we set it up.

Alice: How has it been received by people?

Basil: Well we had a lot of completed albums this year. They are absolutely brilliant. So that’s the main thing. But people also blogged and tweeted and YouTubed their process throughout the month, and then, best of all, people played live at the party at the end of the month, and dialled in to play live over Skype from all over the world (including Transylvania – awesome). So we were really happy with the response.

Alice: Why do you think it has it captured people’s imagination?

Basil: I think there is something quite nice about hearing music that was not made by popstars, and instead was made by friends, or by people you imagine are a bit like you. So maybe people liked that. And I think it’s quite nice that it’s not a competition. I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask them.

Alice:  Did you have a favourite this year?

Basil: It’s all brilliant. Some of it is witty, some is incredibly well-produced, some people have amazing feats of instrumentation, some people have mind-bogglingly good voices. Pete said that the idea that there is only a small number of people who can make good music has been destroyed by the sample of music up on the Hometaping website. I think that’s true. I’m currently listening to marigold and tmcw a lot recently. But it’s all brilliant.

Alice: Do you think that there’s room for a hmtpng regular get together, or do you see it as a one-off thing only?

Basil: I think it makes it quite special doing a big party once a year. But it’s always nice to to meet up in the pub now and then. Should we do that? I’m up for it.

Alice: Lastly, do you have any tips for potential hometapers out there?

Basil: Don’t worry about being rubbish, because you won’t be. And don’t worry about what people might think. They’ll almost certainly think you’re awesome. And tell your friends about it and get them to do it too. That makes it more fun.

Fun and Funding – Youth Funding Network

I spent a great evening yesterday with the Youth Funding Network who have a very simple idea for raising funds and gathering volunteers for a variety of different charities. I was invited along by Liz from Otesha (A v.cool youth led sustainability charity involving bicycles, theatre and educational projects!) who is one of the organisers.

A subterranean den of philanthropy - Fairy lights provided by YTFN!

We turned up at a mysteriously quiet location in a bar in Hackney to find a basement packed with people looking for drinks, conversation, cupcakes and an opportunity to donate and/or volunteer for charities.

The whole event is run very simply and effectively. It involves paying £10 on the door in exchange for a voucher and simple info-pack outlining the three charities who will pitch for funds from the crowd that evening. Drinks and cupcakes are first on the menu, followed by pitching from the three featured charities. Then, the pitching itself begins – with everyone having a £10 minimum donation (the door entry fee) to put forward to the charity of their choice.

There was a huge amount of energy and interest in the room, and everyone who attended got a buzz from connecting with and supporting charities in a very personal way. Additionally, a match funding round backed by particular audience members helped to really push up the value of the donations made on the night, so all the charities benefitted still further from the event…Imagine what the results of 10,000 such events would mean to local communities…

Of course this isn’t the answer to the cashflow issues and sustainable income stream building that small startup charities are currently being faced with. However, there was something very encouraging to see so many people pitching in their donation in person, making a direct connection with the charities  themselves. These participants were more than happy to take a chance on providing some seed funding which will enable great new ideas to get off the ground at speed, with little bureaucracy.

I spent my ££s on the Hackney Pirates – check out their site here!

UK General Election Turnout 2010: Waiting for a spike in democracy?

UK voter turnout for the past 50 years or so has been in a steady but relatively gentle decline…. well, that was up until the 1997 General Election, where it proceeded to tumble rather more rapidly with turnout eventually falling to around the 60% mark by 2001/2005 elections.

So, what’s in store for us this time around?

Stats from House of Commons Research Papers 01/54 & 05/33 
Courtesy of ukpoliticalinfo

This year’s televised leaders’ debates have gone some way to pique public interest in the 2010 UK Election, with the Electoral Commission reporting a spike in voter registration form downloads as the registration deadline approached.  This may well have been related to interest sparked by the debates; yet it remains difficult to know whether that indication of intent will be transformed into a corresponding spike in votes at the polling stations later today.

Yet even if turnout does increase this time around, would a spike in the chart above really indicate that the public have re-engaged in democratic politics in a meaningful way and that we are back on track to a healthy democracy?

I’m not convinced. There are a number of trends that may well continue to influence political engagement beyond the 2010 turnout stats; spike or no spike.

Patrick Dunleavy, Chris Gilson and David Sanders over at LSE have commented on a  couple of key long term trends which we ought to be paying more attention to, albeit perhaps after the 6th May when everything has calmed down a bit… These include the following points:

1. Over the longer term, people simply do not identify with parties the way they used to.

Stats from LSE election experts blog R.Sanders

2. A significant proportion of younger people consistently aren’t voting, or feeling a duty to vote.

I’d also add two further points to those;

3. There appears to be some indication of a hardening of the cynicism and distrust with which people view politicians (post-expenses scandal), as evidenced in the latest edition of the  Hansard Society’s excellent ongoing Audit of political engagement* .

4.  In relation to all of the points above, there seems to be what you might term a lack of relevance of Parliament to people’s every day lives. As Hansard Society Chair, Peter Riddell points out;

‘the main challenge for Parliament may be to show its relevance’… yet… ‘ there is little public interest in the various political reform proposals debated by MPs, think tanks and the media.’

I know I can certainly think of a few things I’d rather do on my day off than get involved in political reform initiatives, and I actually like that sort of thing.

If citizens and Parliament are to re-engage beyond May 6th then there is a need for more meaningful, longer term relationships to be built from both sides.

The kind of trust required to acheive this kind of attitudinal shift takes time and effort to build, and I’m not sure how much time and energy any members of parliament will have left over for the democratic deficit after dealing with the deficit.

However, that said, there’s one thing I’m hoping for on May 6th, and that’s a statistically significant spike… so to speak.

*Point of information, I'm featured in one of the Audits - but which year was it? Answers on a postcard to me please... first prize.... £10 book voucher (with which to buy your own hard copy of said audit)

5 tips to run better public participation /consultation events

I’ve been invited to turn out voluntarily for a few participatory events in my time to represent the views of the ‘Average Citizen’, whether it be for the local council, the NHS or various campaigns or charities. I have also worked on the other side of these events throughout my career.

Here’s some simple advice, there’s plenty more where this comes from, but five tips should give you a decent start:

1) Be clear about your offer and how my participation will make a difference: What am I going to get out of taking part? I do very many things out of the goodness of my heart, but getting involved in anything that feels like ‘arbitrary consultation’ is not one of them; especially if the subject is bin collection times. What is the purpose of this consultation, and how am I going to play a role in helping you change things for the better. Convince me that my participation will make a difference. Make me feel valued.

2) Refreshments : I’m serious. The right food and drink can provide you and your participants with the strength to get through the most worthy discussion of the local parking meter system. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be fresh, have a good vegetarian/halal/kosher option as needed. This means a great deal to those who give up their time to take part, and gives people a chance to chat and relax with each other – enabling you to get better results.

3) A friendly and accessible venue : I am very unlikely to come to your draughty town hall function room in the middle of nowhere from 7:30-9pm on a weekday evening. Be creative, if possible, and even more importantly be on the ground floor, and in a place near public transport. Leisure centres, libraries, schools all provide neutral community venues.

4) Respect my time as you would in a professional meeting: If this is an evening event, I’m probably coming straight from work, I may have childcare arrangements to consider; or I may not. But either way, ALWAYS use a great facilitator to run your event. You don’t have to pay out for a pro, you can train your staff in facilitation and learn better ways of managing consultation together if budgets are tight. This can make a world of difference, stopping discussions becoming dominated by the more vociferous elements that we all know and love.

5) Tell me what happened: After its over, tell me what happened as a result of  my participation. If you’re feeling really fly, you might even ask how the experience was for me, and what could be improved next time.

In short, make sure that your consultation is a pleasure to participate in, and not a pain in the *%@

Return of the Mack?

Yes, in the time honoured tradition of  Mark Morisson, and Slim Shady; I have returned. Indeed, I am back.

Where have I been these last 8 months or so?

Could I possibly have been over at NESTA, managing the final stages of the Big Green Challenge and helping set up Jailbrake with the team at sicamp, as well as taking on the role of Chair at OteshaUK whilst simultaneously storing up ideas for allsorts of exciting blogposts that I haven’t had time to write up as yet…?

That sounds about right to me.

Watch this space for some new news and some old news, but definitely no Huey Lewis and the news. There are limits.