I can see people preparing New Year’s prediction lists for tech and government and the two combined.  All about how things will change in the New Year.  I’ve always been a bit suspicious of these kinds of lists because 1. it seems a bit faddish and 2. they’re way too easy to get wrong. It’s too easy to check back and prove to yourself that you’re not the visionary guru that you hoped you were.  The lists are literally hostages to fortune.

So instead of predicting a bright new future, I thought I’d draw on my natural pessimism to identify five things I think might happen in the New Year.  And if they don’t – hurray!  I can look back at the list and say: “Awesome! I was wrong.” I’m hedging my bets.  And if they do, well – I told you so.

1. Local open data stalls.

After an initial flurry of activity in January for expenditure data (see revised LG Group guidance here) and a bit more a little later on related to contracts (new consultation guidance here on publishing contracts and tenders).   Local government open data begins to stall.  This is a patchy prediction. Some councils are going to be absolutely forging ahead.  Places like Bristol (which is hosting the next Local by Social: Apps for Communities), a few places in London and some other bright stars in the data firmament begin using more and more open data and nurture their developer communities to make stuff useful to citizens and to local public services.  But the rest slow down, drag their feet and don’t really see the point and fail to get on the bandwagon when pressure from the centre dies down.

Some cool apps are developed in some locations, but because there’s little collaboration on open standards for what’s quite similar data, we don’t see the benefits spread over the sector as a whole.

2. Social media in local gov become the domain of Comms

A lot of comms people in local government have been resistent to social media, but 2011 marks the end of that.  Hurray, you say.  Danger! I say.  Social media works best where it’s a conversation between real people.  Comms teams work under a model of communication that facilitated messages going between monolithic entities – the council and the local newspaper.  Or where it was a more disperse model, it’s the council and broadcast only mechanisms like advertising and newsletters to a passive public.  This is the year that councils comms catches on to the free to use (but labour intensive) social media scene, but attempts to control the messages even more tightly.

Of course central communications must play a role, but the benefits of social media can only really be achieved when there’s a more federated model of communications.  Councillors communicating more easily with their constituents.  Local people sharing information among themselves and council officers sharing matters of fact and pointers to more information with local people.

3. More councillors get in trouble for using social media.

This one is a shooting-fish-in-the-barrel prediction.  Of course a councillor will get in trouble for his/her imprudent social media use.   What’s sad about this is that coverage will continue to focus in 2011 on the medium (Twitter, Facebook, etc) rather than the fact that some in elected office has said something rather silly.  Or rather than the fact that more councillors are using social media sensibly to engage with residents on matters from gritting to real discussion about the really hard decisions that local government faces this year, which is truly good news.  (There’s some good advice here on staying out of trouble online).

4. Collaboration slows

Over the past year in particular, I’ve seen a big shift in the way that people are using Communities of Practice.  People are sharing more, working more closely together, using it as a networking platform to get stuff done.

And the need for collaboration will be even greater as local government faces some tough times.  So along with a growing trend, greater need and the roll out of the Knowledge Hub a new and much better platform for sharing for local public services -  we should be well set to see some really great uses of tech-facilitated collaboration.  But instead  in 2011 we see practitioners drawing closer in, the value of content creation and practitioner led facilitation being questioned at ‘home base’ and people under threat behaving more like rats in a sack than team players across organisational boundaries.

5. Hyper-what? Neighbourhood and community networking doesn’t expand much.

For all the talk of localism and Big Society, there won’t be  much walking the talk happens when it comes to local networks and blogging.  Sure more sites get set up, but there isn’t much of an air of seriousness about it all.  Unless blogging by local people is taken to heart by local news outlets (i.e. the crumbling papers and whatever happens with local broadcasting) there won’t be the kind of exposure that local blogs deserve.  Local papers could easily set up a aggregating feed of local folks and maybe invest a bit of time into monitoring traffic and promoting stories of genuine local interest (letting cute pics of dogs in sweaters find their own traffic).  And the more these stories are highlighted and promoted the more genuine local interest blog posts there would be.  But that won’t happen.

And councils won’t take local blogging and social networks all that seriously either.   And why not?  See prediction 2.  Can’t have someone else running the story can we?  Can’t think of allowing bloggers to be emailed press releases, even though these are a) public documents or b) often a good way of getting the information out to a lot of people who live or work locally. And many councils still can’t be bothered to set up RSS feeds or start Twitter feeds to make up the difference where RSS is difficult to implement because of archaic content management systems.  So despite some stellar work on online neighbourhood networks sponsored by Capital Ambition – few councils take heed and start to exploit online networks in a good way.

I decided I needed to make some changes to this blog, because

1. I’ve decided to do my personal blogging elsewhere.  Why? Basically because I miss being able to express a political opinion and because my job is apolitical I need the digital footprint under my name to be largely apolitical, too.  So the other blog isn’t under my name, but it’s not a secret. No prizes for discovery.
2. I decided I needed a professional platform that just about me and not my employers.  No disrespect to my current employers and I’m happy enough with my work. More than happy – in fact – positively passionate and there’s loads more I want to accomplish there.  But let’s just say the future isn’t exactly certain in tight fiscal times.
3. I’m doing a internal session for colleagues on enhancing your professional profile online.  Can’t really deliver that unless I tidy up my own.  That means this blog, having a nice up-to-date CV online (soon!) and doing a few bits and pieces in LinkedIn.  And, of course, I’ll share the slide deck online, too.

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When I was child, I enjoyed childish things.  Like Scooby Doo and The Monkeys.  I loved Scooby, it introduced me to the concept of mysteries and crime fiction, something I love to this day.  I liked Velma’s irrepressible nature and her insistence on the rational.  There are no ghosts.  There must be something behind all this.  A man in a mask.  And through hard work and improbable traps, you can get to the bottom of it.  Oh, and we would have got away with it, too if it weren’t for you meddling kids.  Meddling kids and their triumph over conniving adults.

But when I became a woman, I put away childish things.  Until my own child became big enough to demand television.  And it was to my great delight that Scooby Doo is played endlessly on certain satellite channels and my even greater delight that my son loves to watch Scooby, too.  The original Scooby shows are still fantastic and one of the few cartoons that I can sit through without becoming annoyed.  Sometimes I watch them.  And sometimes I just let them flow over me, as comforting as a cradle song, while I do something else. There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about watching episodes about a man in a mask with an impossibly contrived scheme to bootleg records. Yes, actual LPs which were copied laboriously in a secret, creepy cave studio and then smuggled across a river by a henchman in  ghost pterodactyl hang glider contraption.   Oh, the days before peer to peer file sharing. If  you wanted a copy of Dixie Chicken live, you’d have to make a shady deal with a man who talked pterodactyl – Veek! Veek!

But these kids channels don’t just show the original Scooby and the series that followed in the original format. They show new modern Scooby, where Fred no longer sports a cravat.  They show a bizarre and poorly drawn spin-off which features only Shaggy and Scooby living in the home of their rich uncle with a robot butler that’s forever getting them out of scrapes.  And they show Scooby movies with complicated plots and commissioned soundtracks. 

Yes, they show those originals and they also show – on occasion – the ones with Scrappy Doo.

It sends a shiver down my spine.

Yesterday, there was a Scooby marathon and after they’d run out of the original and the next series and the movies, they showed some Scrappy Doo episodes as well.  Like every Gen-Xer, I hate Scrappy.  Scrappy is evil.  Scrappy is symbol of all things rotten.  And so Scrappy cannot be shown.  My son did not understand, but the channel was changed.

But watching Scrappy again as an adult as I did on one occasion not too long ago, I realise it’s not Scrappy’s fault.  Scrappy’s introduction to the show coincided with a complete change in format.  Instead of mysteries, it was random running around with ‘real’ supernatural elements.  No more looking for clues.  No more solving puzzles using ‘logic’.  No more nuance of personality from Fred and Velma and Daphne.  It might as well have been a different show.  And we Gen-Xers, only being young’uns at the time, didn’t see that they were dumbing the show down in a misplaced effort to salvage the ratings – instead we blamed Scrappy – who from an adult perspective isn’t as annoying as I remember.  It’s the whole show that’s annoying.  It’s a betrayal of Scooby and a betrayal of us as the audience.  There was no mystery to engage with, we were only being served up dross in the form of Scooby snacks to consume passively.   It was perhaps the first time we were aware of the entertainment industry treating us like morons – and we could never forgive the messenger. The live action Scooby movie even played on this – casting Scrappy as the ultimate villain (sorry for the spoiler, but honestly the film is pretty wretched).

The boy is only 3, so he screamed and wailed when I insisted that no further Scrappy shows can be watched in my house.  So long as I pay for the roof which shelters the tv that I bought receiving the satellite signal that I subscribe to there will be no Scrappy.

(Photo credit: fallentomato )

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It’s tempting to think that I could charge for the use of my pictures. But truthfully, although sometimes I take some great pictures, I’m not consistently good enough and I’m not willing to put in the effort to market my photos. And even if I were, the market for the kind of pictures that I like to take probably isn’t that big.

So when I started to get requests to use my photos from students or non-profit projects, I changed my license to a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license.  And then when I started to get requests from artists who don’t strictly fall under the non-commercial aspect or agencies working on behalf of local government or struggling bands or writers working on niche projects who were never going to pay me – I changed the license on some of my photos to a Creative Commons attribution license*.

Today I got a copy of book in which I have a photo credit.  It’s from a well known factual publisher and they never offered to pay me for it, although I was offered a free copy of the book.  (I was too lame and too paranoid to send them my address – I have my freaky moments).  Cool.

Pay me not for my peony

Today I also turned down the “opportunity” to have one of my photos featured in an online television show about teenage fashion designers  I was approached via my Flickr account and asked if they could use the photo with credit but without compensation – they just wanted to base some design elements off one of my peony pictures.   Fine by me.  Let me know which ones you want and I’ll let you use it.  Unless you want exclusive rights – in which case I’ll have to charge.

I’m sent a two page legal document with herefores and whereas and I have to give them my legal address (remember how I wouldn’t share my address to get a free book?).  Ummm, no.  If you want me to waste my time filling out your form, I really have to charge.  My day rate is not inconsiderable.

I get a buzz out of other people using my pictures.  But I take them because I want to.   I have no love of form filling.  I applied a Creative Commons attribution license to my peony pictures and told them there’s no way I’m filling out the form.

Use them or don’t use them.  I’m all about the gift economy and sharing knowledge and content.  But please, don’t shoot a gift horse in the mouth.

*Images of recognisable people, especially my son – I do not let people use for free.

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As I was reaching into my coat pocket to grab a camera for  a snap, the kitty door slammed open and my cat Fancy burst out of the door chasing after the fox.  Mr Fox is about three times as big as our Fancy and I worried for my little kitty.

I guess it was a draw.  This morning the fox was back and hanging out on our shed roof.

I’ve seen a fox on the top of our shed before, but this fellow let me get quite close.  Bold as brass, he is.  Despite the fact that I was wandering around our postage stamp sized garden and our cat was giving him the stare of death.

Glance of doom

I hope all this cat v. fox posturing ends with the fox moving on to someone else’s house and not with my kitty with her paw in a sling.

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Remember David Kelly, the UK government scientist who, was the inside source for exposing the dodginess of the dodgy dossier?  Just after he testified before the Parliamentary committee I saw him on the Underground, somewhere on the District line.  My guess is Embankment.  I’m notoriously poor at recognising celebrities so I stared at him extra hard.  He clocked me. And smiled broadly.  And I thought, well – that’s cool – he’s handling all this pressure really well.

Except he wasn’t.   He committed suicide and his body was found in a field near his home.

Or did he?

And you know the freaky thing.  The day I saw him was the same morning that he was found dead, having killed himself the previous evening.

Or did he?

I talked to my brother not too long after it happened and he asked me if the British public was awash with conspiratorial speculation.  Colleagues at work were stunned by the concept.  Although they shouldn’t have been .  Conspiracy theories were widely circulated a Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Baker ‘investigated’ his demise and had a lot of questions - implying that the British government (of which he’s a member of the loyal opposition) must have done him in.

If that’s the case, how could I have seen him in Central London on the day in question?  (Answer, clearly I couldn’t have.  I saw someone who looked a lot like David Kelly.  So much like him that I wasn’t the first person who ‘recognised’ him – and he was used to it).

Piss-up in a brewery

I’ve worked in and around government for a long time.  I know a little bit about how bureacracy works.  And it’s slow. And it’s difficult to get agreement on anything. And often you can’t get anything done at all. And keeping a secret?  Well, the best way to do that is to actually bury whatever little nugget of bad news it is in a whole pile of other stuff.

So when I hear about conspiracy theories in which some kind of government agency is the principal actor, I just have to laugh up my sleeve.   Look we can barely organise the things that people think are good things – you know like education or clean drinking water.  So, bringing down the Twin Towers?   Think of the competitor sites.  Think of the states which would have preferred to see a jetliner crash into some disastrous white elephant of a public building (think about how much Peter Mandelson would have liked some insurable disaster to befall the Dome by autumn 2001 if you need an example).   Contemplating the navigation of procurement rules alone for something like that  makes me shudder.

Twin Towers 2 by Andrew Coulter Enright on Flickr

True, I’ve never worked for agency that keeps black helicopters parked on its roof, but bureaucracy is bureaucracy.

For Christmas we received a copy of Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theories Have Shaped Modern History by David Aaronovitch.  The book singularly fails to live up to its title.   It isn’t really clear at all how they’ve shaped history – rather it’s an entertaining romp through various conspiracy theories  – e.g. the Jews have organised themselves into a worldwide cabal to run everything, Stalin’s show trials, JFK, Marilyn Monroe’s murder, 9/11 and a few more – and why these are so patently false.

In the introduction, Aaronovitch states his hope that the book will provide us with sufficient ammunition to dispel conspiracy theorists and I’d say it does a mixed job on that.  For example, only a bit on dispelling some of the crazy 9/11 theories (of course you can always go and check the Popular Mechanics piece if you want that), but an excellent expose on some of the 9/11 Truthers.

Only in the last Chapter does Aaronovitch try to bring the stories together into a revelatory narrative.  He gets awfully close to why these conspiracy theories are potentially damaging, but doesn’t quite hit on their greatest potential damage.

They are plotting

All human enterprise is full of conspiracy – or collaboration.  We’re often at our best when we work co-operatively to harness the skills, talents and efforts of groups of people.  We can buy people’s labour, but buying people’s silence is a more tricky thing.  Sure, people will often keep quiet about stuff for a while if they think it may help them keep their job.  They may even feel terribly conflicted about sharing information and try to leak it on the sly (like David Kelly).  But someone on the inside of a really big job will tell (at least in a relatively free society).   That’s why I don’t think that something as clear cut and yet so absolutely huge a job as ramming a couple planes in the twin towers is something that no one would ever tell about if it was an inside job.

Yet, clearly there was a conspiracy afoot around 9/11- more than one in fact.  Here are three, at least.

1. Al Qaeda conspired to cause mayhem and destruction.  It was a complicated and expensive plot.  But these people are fanatics not career bureacrats.

2. There was an ex post facto conspiracy (these are more common, I reckon)  in the US Government to cover up the lax way that Al Qaeda was being dealt with.  This conspiracy was probably largely uncovered through the 9/11 Commission – but it’s so complex that it’s difficult to comprehend.

3. There was a bizarre conspiracy among the Bush insiders to use the 9/11 attack as a means to attack Iraq.  This succeeded and it’s still being sifted through.

Spiked

Aaronovitch describes in the last chapter how he thinks that conspiracies are currently being almost accepted, mainstreamed.  For example, after the Katrina hurricane – there were a number of rumors circulating that the levees had been breached on purpose.  Basically to flood out the black people or some variation on that.

Now, I don’t believe that.  But I – as people quoted in the book – can sympathise with that point of view.  After all, there are people alive today who will have been alive when levees were dynamited to avoid damage to the City of New Orleans in the Great Flood of 1927. It wasn’t secret and people were warned.  But you know it was going to be the poor (black) areas which were sacrificed.  There was significant displacement generally and the conditions of camps housing the displaced were apparently ambominable.

So in a weird conflation of history you can see how the conspiracy theory arised.  But that really wasn’t what happened.  And it really wasn’t helpful for Spike Lee to present uncountered (nor supported) those theories in his film When the Levees Broke.

Because it lets people off the hook for the real conspiracy.  A conspiracy of inaction for which no one has really been held accountable.

Maintenance of the levees had been underfunded.  It was a Federal responsibility and though people had raised warnings, no one did much about it.  FEMA – the US domestic disaster relief and emergency management agency – had been brought under the newly established Homeland Security which was being run by a bunch of Bush cronies.  There’s little doubt in my mind they were unprepared and people died while they were trying sort their elbows from their posteriors.

But no one blew up the levees that time.    And wealthy neighborhoods of New Orleans went in the drink, too.   It’s just that the people who owned these homes had the means to get out and essentially enough trust in authority to take the hint to get out when they were told to.

Focusing on conspiracies which represent the depth of your anger – the truth that’s written on your soul – may make you feel better – but it diffuses accountability and wastes energy and makes it far more likely that lessons won’t be captured.

Too easy

Aaronovitch correctly identifies that believing in conspiracies can be a salve to those who feel they’ve lost out.  And he hints at the idea that they can be a salve to those who are uncomfortable with complexity and ambiguity.   It’s much easier to think that someone must be behind this rather than to accept that an assassination was a terrible event that the state failed to prevent through bad luck or just dropping the ball, or that there was a failure of policy and bureaucracy and people made a bad series of decisions.

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And I’ve made a good start here… this is post one.

And here are some links to some good posts: (Sorry can’t be a bit more artful about this…I have a headache)

Is there a bah-humbug term for New Year’s?

Newscoma – and blogging unity in Tennessee Party-D

When taking advice on sexual health from popular music, consider the source.

Reflections on the first year in a new era for the Volunteers.

And an inspirational post from Tessy Britton…just give it away!

I hope you and yours have a wonderful New Year’s Day and a healthy, happy and productive 364 more.

_____

oh yeah, and probably something about more regular trips to the gym – drink more water – etc.

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1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

And I thought to myself….well, that ain’t right.  I’m not exactly an early adopter – but I’ve been kinda making a career around this social media thing for a little while (particularly as it relates to local government – I know snooze – if you’re interested you can check out my work blog where my latest blog posts deal with the complexities of applying for government funding, a host of links to data policy and a ‘fun’ post on library policy in the digital age).

I like to think of myself as fairly open minded and willing to think of the possibilities of new tech as applied to 1. my life 2. public policy and locally administered services.  I struggled to think of things tech that were invented after I turned 30 that I thought were dubious.  Frivolous and probably the recipe for softening the moral fibre of society, yes.   In violation of the universal constants as we knew them, no.

But last night as I walking up Victoria Street – I saw an add for wireless charging.  I’d read about this before but this was the first time I’d seen a genuine ad on a bus stop.

Ad for Powermat Wireless Charging

And I thought That just ain’t right.

How does it know where to send the electricity?  Won’t the electricity just be floating around doing strange things to our brains and nervous systems and turn us into weird half-human, half-portable electronic device susceptible to marketing messages delivered via electro-magnetic pulses.

And part of me is thinking, hey that looks kinda cool.  No wires.  You just lay your phone, whatever – on the mat and you’re charging.   But it’s not that simple…you can’t just buy the charging mat – you also have to buy a receiver (which appears to be in the shape of a case for your device or a battery door for Blackberries for example).   So, slightly less cool – and anyway – no doubt a contributor to the dissolute nature of modern youth and against the natural order of things.

________

Read more about inductive charging on wikipedia.

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But it’s great to be reading all the stories my grandfather told me.   Mostly it’s been easy to identify chapters and divisions within the chapters because of his great story telling skills.  But occasionally there are these little snippets of stories that don’t really fit anywhere, often because I asked him a question that interrupted his flow.

On one occasion while the tape recorder was rolling I asked him about The Bloody Bucket.  It was a bar of some infamy in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee even though it must have been closed fornearly half a century before I ever heard of it.  I can’t remember how I did hear of it.  But, hear of it I did and, perhaps because of the name, it stuck in my mind.   And I asked my grandfather about it.  This is what he said:

Well, the Bloody Bucket, that was in Lawrence County, it was down there on Buffalo Road, George Stevens owned the land it was on.  And it was a very rough night club.  When I came to Lawrence County, they were just eliminatin’ the sale of beer in the county.  And I assume that they were or they had sold beer in the Bloody Bucket, anyway they fought a lot.  There were a lot of fights and people got drunk, and I’m not positive that somebody didn’t get killed in the Bloody Bucket, but they did in some of the beer joints around.  And it was just a place that had a bad name is all I know.

IK: Did you go in there?

BP: No.  I didn’t cull many places, but I culled that one.

Now, the funny thing about this is notthat there was a rough bar in Lawrence County, though when I grew up it was largely dry.  Yes there were some beer joints in the county, but you couldn’t buy nary a drop of alcohol inside the city limits and it was beer only even in the county.  Though Paul may have said to take a little wine for your health, the good representatives of Lawrence County weren’t taking any chances.     Rednecks are known to drink and sometimes they can get rowdy.  Nor is it that it was called “The Bloody Bucket”.  Though clearly branding in the 30s rural South is something different than what we know today (and apparently it was not the only drinking establishment by that name)

The funny thing is the last line.

My grandfather was a Christian man, church going, he studied the Bible and I never saw him take a drink in my life.  But he says “I didn’t cull many places…”  It’s hard for me to imagine my grandfather frequenting the  drinking dens of Lawrenceburg.   And I didn’t catch it when he said it, but when you’re transcribing you listen to every word.  It just goes to show that y ou tend to hear only what you expect to listen to.

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There are some benefits to smoking.  I do enjoy 90% of the cigarettes I smoke (there’s always a proportion that are done just out of habit).  In harried parenting to toddlers – smoking is an activity where I can create clear space between me the selfish adult and me the responsible parent.  (Mommy’s smoking – stay back).  There’s the whole nicotine networking aspect of smoking at the office – you get some really good info that way – but to be honest the extent of that network is dwindling.  And the biggest benefit to smoking is the incidental gardening.  As I step outside to puff away on a fag,  I can do a spot of watering or a bit of deadheading.

smoking in the garden

But really , as I think we all know, the costs outweigh the benefits many fold.  I don’t really have time to smoke.  Time I spent smoking could be better spent updating my personal blog or reading to my son or working.  It’s dreadfully expensive.  And then there are all the health benefits to me and the striking statistical evidence that children of parents who smoke are more likely to take it up themselves.

Breaking point

I’d been wanting to quit at the beginning of October, but I didn’t quite make it.   But then I came down with swine flu.  I’ve always been the kind of person who can smoke through almost any illness – so long as I can get to the store.   To be honest, my swine flu experience was pretty awful – but there wasn’t a single day when I couldn’t get out of bed.  I wasn’t able to finish a whole cigarette, but I was taking a few drags and then stubbing until I ran out of smokes.  I could have, with some effort, got into the car and driven to a petrol station to buy another pack.  But I thought I’ll take the opportunity not to.  So I didn’t.

The proper incentive

Maybe what a really need to help me quit is a replacement habit.  Expensive, part of your identity, slightly cliqueish.  Something which evokes a dubious glamor.   Like becoming an Apple Mac user.

I’ve been tempted by the Mac thing for some time, though it’s taken me a while to overcome my distaste of their closed and proprietary business model.   All the cool kids in the social media local government world I now inhabit use Macs.  (And yes, I do recognize the irony in the previous sentence)  And in terms of my personal creative endeavors, I really need a new IT solution.

So here’s the deal…if I stay not smoking until the 22nd of Decemeber, I can get a Mac (undecided as to what yet…).   As expensive as Macs are (they sure do know how to extract your consumer surplus) if I’m not smoking, it’ll pay for itself in no time.

And if I don’t stay not smoking, then Simon has indicated that he will take the Mac away and sell it.  And I think he means it.  And several people have lined up to be potential buyers of the 2nd hand Mac already.   (Thanks for the vote of confidence!)

Anyway, I’m really hoping that the user experience is as groovy and yes, even as addictive as all those Mac users seem to claim.

I never got a Marlboro tattoo- Photo from Powerbooktrance on Flickr

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