Archive for the 'Participation' Category

CSS Naked Day

Visitors to my blog will notice something missing today. (on the 9th April only) It’s the third annual CSS Naked Day and over 1500 websites and blogs across the globe will have taken part.

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your

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Visualising information for advocacy: An introduction to information design

I’d highly recommend reading a copy of the new booklet from Tactical Tech which is also available as a pdf download. Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design is a useful guide aimed at helping organisations strengthen campaigns and projects through communicating vital information with greater impact.

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Article on making videos more accessible on blogs

Problogger guest writer Stephen Hopson helps to champion accessibility in making video posts accessible to the deaf community with a step by step guide to adding subtitles to a video post. Check out the insightful article and the interesting reader comments and conversation at Problogger - How to Make Your Video Posts More Accessible.
If interested in making all your media more inclusive to all, there are lots of useful resources and guides on

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Ideas and innovators for social change needed

NetSquared Mashup Challenge

Over on the other side of the pond, NetSquared is inviting you to take part in the Mashup Challenge. If you have an idea which can make a real difference to create social change with your unique mashup, you could also have an opportunity to win cash prizes and attend the NetSquared Conference (N2Y3). Submissions will be accepted until March 14, 2008.
Excerpt taken from the Netsquared Mashup Challenge page -

“This year’s NetSquared Conference will bring together a unique mix of people from the public and private sectors to develop and release Mashups designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities around the globe.

Those “people” are you — members of the NetSquared universe working on behalf of communities everywhere and the technical experts who care about these issues.

If we’re successful, we’ll learn something about cross-sector collaboration, meet new and interesting people, and build a unique gallery of Mashups that citizens, schools, and community-based groups everywhere can learn from, replicate, and build upon.”

Submission of your ideas is via a form available on the site, and you can find out more about the challenge and see some great innovative examples too. Check out the Netsquared Mashup Challenge!

…and there’s more - over here in the UK…

Social Innovation Camp

A Social Innovation Camp is planned for April in London.

Excerpt from the Social Innovation Camp Website:

“What happens when you get a bunch of hackers and social innovators together, give them a set of social problems and only 48 hours to solve them? We’re going to find out.
In London between 4th-6th April 2008, Social Innovation Camp will bring together some of the best of the UK and Europe’s web developers
and designers with people at the sharp end of social problems. Our aim is find ways that easy-to-build web 2.0 tools can be used to develop solutions to social challenges.”

You can find out more about the Social Innovation Camp and how to submit your ideas over at www.sicamp.org.

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The big picture - a site with great participation potential

I don’t usually write about my favourite websites, or websites that I think can really create ownership and participation with a big audience, but just yesterday a new website was launched that really deserves a mention.

The Big Picture is a project to create the biggest photo album in the West Midlands. Everyone can add their favourite pictures, with the innovation being the ease in which people can participate, sharing their photos and tell the stories behind them.

The project is being run by Arts Council England (West Midlands), supported by the BBC and will run until June 2008. Over the next six months, the project will aim to collect more than 95,000 individual images, which will be then used to create a giant, world record-breaking, photomontage of peoples stories and images of their life and locality.

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Getting the most from social media for nonprofits: what would you recommend?

The forthcoming Circuit Rider conference for ICT support and development workers here in the UK is being held at the end of February (see the conference page at Lasa’s website for further details). I’ll be delivering a session on Web 2.0 and social media for the nonprofit sector, along with David Wilcox of Desigining for a Civil Society and Nick Booth from Podnosh. We aim to use some of these tools and techniques to enable Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog (based in America) to join us too in the session.

We’re currently exploring what we should include in the workshop, and this is where you can help shape our session with your ideas.
The aim of the session is to introduce and explore ideas that participants can then take back with them to use when supporting nonprofit organisations with their advice and support.
So far, we’ve begun to discuss membership, inclusiveness and participation, fundraising and the benefits of social media.

This is where you can help -

• What social media tools should we include to highlight how social media can benefit nonprofit organisations and why?
• Do you have any examples (especially UK ones!) of how use of social media has made dramatic difference to an organisation; enabling it to better deliver its work to benefit its users, beneficiaries or community?
• What ideas do you have to increase participation and sign up, for example, for an organisation who may consider using social media to reach out to potential new supporters for a campaign?

I’m particularly interested in hearing about not only how to increase the participation and involvement from the intended audience, but also, importantly by the organisation as a whole. I know that this area especially, is a challenge that lots of volunteers and staff face in organisations - how to get the sign up, and support from their colleagues.

I look forward to hearing your ideas and inspiration.
I will also be using my other social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Seesmic to ask the same questions.
Either leave a comment or you can contact me direct.

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Free screenreader software to assist the blind and visually impaired

Over on David Wilcox’s Designing for Civil Society site, David recently reported about Roger Wilson-Hinds, who was demonstrating screenreader software at the e-democracy conference. The screenreader (known as ‘Thunder’) not only reads text out loud, but also can increase the text size for those that can see. It also helps with managing information, RSS feeds, podcasts and much more.

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Accessibility 2.0: UK newspaper websites featured in study

Today, I was contacted by Laura Oliver who writes for Journalism.co.uk - a leading website for journalists.

Laura informed me that their site is launching a series of features and articles that will be published throughout this week on the accessibility of the UK’s main newspaper websites to blind and visually impaired users. They’ve conducted their own study and assessment of the country’s largest newspaper media websites with a team of volunteers.

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Snack Attack

The Media Snacker Respect meme started by Jerimiah Owyang is now at my blog courtesy of Beth Kanter who tagged me. I’m not the biggest fan of meme’s but this one did make me stop and think as it’s made me aware of our shift into how we’re using social media tools to get our information snacks compared to using a newspaper or other traditional media for example.

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Netsquared coming to the UK

A new UK initiative for web-enabled social innovation began last week with a discussion to set up Netsquared in the UK, loosely based on the US Netsquared conference and community, which has now led to a host of meetups and other activities through which tecchies and activists find common cause and do good stuff for social benefit.
Read the full story at David Wilcox’s Designing for Civil Society website.

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