This is not a political blog. As I’ve said in previous posts, I work hard to ensure that this commentary is a-political. I know a lot of other public sector bloggers, particularly those still in direct local government or central government employment, also steer clear of the “P” word. Maybe that’s why, despite columnists, broadcasters [...]

KEDDXSYFUXVE Today I was talking to several friends who have been, or are, involved in BSF (Building Schools for the Future) programme.  For anyone who’s missed the news the last few days, this was the former Labour Government’s plan to re-build every secondary school in the country, which has been put on hold and looks [...]

I was having a chat today with a student from Leeds University, who is doing a dissertation on brands in social media. This took me back a bit to my other areas of work but, also, during the discussion, made me think a bit about what we mean by brand. There was certainly a time [...]

Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of spending the day with an inspirational group of people at UK GovCamp 2010.  UKGovCamps, for those who missed it, are informal “un-conference” get togethers of people with a passion for public sector technology and/or social media.  This one took place at the, frankly, inspirational offices of Google in [...]

There’s a first time for everything and, this weekend, I joined in for the first time with a Barcamp in my home city of Bradford.  A barcamp is an informal meeting of innovation enthusiasts, where anyone can contribute or lead a session. I thought I’d be in for a  strange kind of day, possibly filled [...]

I don’t mean to boast, well, not a lot, but I got my Google Wave account today. I’ve only had a short play with it so far, so it might be remiss of me to say this, but it seems like a lot of hype for a worthwhile business tool that integrates everything we were [...]

I saw this news story today from Neville Hobson‘s (@jangles) Twitterfeed. I’ll let you do the reading, but, in a nutshell, it’s the report of a study that suggests young people could be damaged, emotionally, by using Twitter.  The reason being that we can process negative stories much faster than positive ones, leaving us with [...]

Snow.  I’m not sure if you noticed it this week.  It was hard to avoid, because it brought the capital to a standstill and meant many of us worked from home.  On Monday I did manage to get into work, though I left for home early having watched increasing reports with some alarm.  However, unlike [...]

There was a bit of good news for Web 2.0 enthusiasts in the MJ this week, with a two page spread on innovation (see the “How Innovative Is Your Council” post) and an article on the use of social networking.  Refreshingly, the Facebook article was written by a facebook user, meaning it looked at the [...]