I thought I’d be in for a  strange kind of day, possibly filled with seasoned barcamp geeks.  I was pleasantly surprised when about half the room had never been to a barcamp before and even more delighted to find myself being able to advise and contribute, as well facilitating a discussion around community development and technology.

So, it’s that subject that I want to the blog to focus on.

We started by asking whether geographic community still mattered, in a time when so many people in one geographic area belonged not to one but many different communities.  It soon emerged that geographic communities really did matter – especially to young people, many of whom define themselves on the school, college and postcode.  In fact, in Bradford, it emerged that groups of like minded music artists are forming groups and networks based on their postcode.  This, several people felt, was down to the fact that services are delivered to key postcode areas.  If you’re in a deprived postcode, you have neighbourhood services in common with other people there.  So, by defining neighbourhoods, are we actually defining people into communities ourselves?

However, what was also apparent was that people didn’t often define themselves based on the standard neighbourhood definition.  Wards and parishes seemed unimportant, and it was also clear that community facilities now moved to where people wanted them;  pubs, clubs, swimming pools and educational institutions.  However, it was acknowledged that there were also online communities forming, separate from geographic areas.

The SAVE THE ODEON campaign at Bradford was mentioned- a self organised group, almost entirely working through the internet.  A group of community activists that had gone, from almost no message to a loud message in a very short space of time, thanks, almost entirely, to a facebook group.

Another issue raised was the lack of connectivity in communities.  Both in rural areas and inner city areas, connectivity (and the apparent randomness of it that could mean one street could having speeds varying by several MBS from house to house) was a real issue.  Connectivity does exist in community venues, but many times this was either in community centres or libraries.  Both of these present differing barriers to communities trying to get online and the the lockdown and lack of public wi-fi in many of these institutions can also impede people getting online.  There were no online community development workers that anyone had heard of and very little monitoring by community organisations and local government of the social meida spectrum.

I mentioned social media surgeries at this point.  Nick Booth, of podnosh fame, started the concept in Birmingham, giving advice to local voluntary sector organisations around social media.  Recently, John Popham started  a similar trned in Yorkshire and I’ve been down to the Leeds and, later today, the Huddersfield social media surgeries.  I’m organising one for Bradford as well, so I’d better plug that here too.  These surgeries are clearly plugging an important gap, but they are not hitting the individual who doesn’t see why their organisation, or indeed they, should be online.  So how can we achieve more online takeup?

Mike Chitty raised an interesting point with me recently about why we try tos how communities the “benefits” of ICT, rather than simply helping them to achieve whatever they want to do.  This issue was raised at the discussion to, with a really useful suggestion: Why not just get ICT in communities, in pubs, in shops etc.  Then, if peopel can benefit from it, they’ll simply find it.

I agree with this, but don’t think its enough – I think we need to see local government, public sector practitioners and third sector organisations / other community groups engaging sensibly with those already using social media.  That way, people will soon see the benefits, like the Save the Odeon campaign already has.

I’d be interested to know anyone else’s comments on this…

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 doing already into a nice, neat business application.  Maybe I’ll see greater value in the future, but this is how it looks at the moment.  That’s not a bad thing, by the way.  After all, it should eventually make collaboration easier.

While playing with Wave, the following Tweet came in: “LinkedIn is the new Facebook; FB is the new MySpace; MySpace is the new GeoCities; @ GeoCities is dead”.

It got me thinking.   LinkedIn, the business social networking platform,  is indeed the new tool of business. But the communities around our country are not moving that way. They like facebook for the social features, the informal networking and, on occasion, the way it blurs the two.  Additionally, these same communities are using facebook and twitter to communicate and, occasionally, organise.  But, if they do organise, they are still taking their notes using pen and paper and have little use for Google Apps, let alone Google Wave.  When they talk, they don’t use visual aids, so SlideShare does little for them.  They don’t produce podcasts for other people, so I doubt thei’ll be using AudioBoo anytime soon.

“Ah, but you’ve missed the point”, one of you shouts, “Google Wave is a business tool”. Right you are. So are so many of these new social media applications.

Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not suggesting that social media tools for business are a bad thing. The opposite in fact. But I come from the informal education sector, a sector which, I have often argued, is tearing at the seams as it is driven towards a learning for work agenda.

Again, don’t get me wrong. Getting people skilled and into work is and will remain a major community development agenda. It should be on the radar of any informal learning tutor or community worker.   But, at the same time, there is far more to informal adult learning.  Indeed, if communities are empowered to make their own choices, to strengthen themselves, to skill themselves, many of them will find work anyhow, without needing a separate agenda.

The point was made during a debate on my facebook pages, around the subject of whether Bookcrossing would be a good tool for communities (I’ve reproduced that debate at the bottom of this post).  Bookcrossing is an activity in which books that have been read are left in public locations and logged on the net.  People can then pick up these books, log into the net and log that they have them, read them and then pass them on in the same way.

There’s no regulation to this.  Sometimes, people don’t pass them on.  Sometimes, people don’t log them on the net.  But that doesn’t matter.  On the whole it works well.  A community that chose to engage with this (there’s a fair bit in the debate about whether they choose to engage or not) could benefit as individuals if they got more access to a wider range of books as a result.  In learning how to bookcross, they could build up their digital and general literacy skills, learn a bit about geography and participate as a community.  There would be no need for them to use these skills for work.  They would have learned these skills for them, for a community purpose.

However, back to the world of learning and such is the back to work drive that the fun, social and developmental courses of informal learning have been, arguably, stifled.

I’m wondering if the same is true of social technology. So busy is the agenda over how money can be made, how workplace efficiencies can be developed that we’ve lost sight of the fact that social networks offer far more than a bit of help to business. They can network communities.

Here again is a sticking point.  I’m all for communities organising and I’m in little doubt that social networking is a catalyst for this.  However, a community can simply network and be empowered, they don’t need to be engaged with services to function.

As a result, if I can get some contributions as comments or emails, I’m going to a follow up blog post on ten social media tools normal people can use in their normal lives. I suspect GoogleApps and Slideshare won’t be on the list.

FACEBOOK debate:

Kevin Campbell-Wright Very sad: 1 in 20 homes has fewer than 10 books, & those with boys have fewer than those with girls” http://ping.fm/raRso

AR: I’m surprised it’s that good, actually – I would have thought 19/20 having >10 is quite positive?