Lesley Thomson contributes a post to Week 21 about teacampscotland, how it worked – and how they drove cafe staff mad with their game of musical chairs. She also mentions the imminently forthcoming IslandGovCamp ( #IsleGC12 on Twitter – and one can attend remotely).
Week 20 proved to be one of the lighter weeks in number of posts, but there is more than one ‘must-read’ post amongst the nine submitted (unless I failed to spot any en route).
There was a bit of a work theme this week. Benjamin Welby’s post – Opportunity Knocks - announced that he has a new job, down in That London, working on what I what I consider to be probably the most excitingly challenging Web project in the UK at present. Good luck to Benjamin!
Kate drew a lovely picture in words with a carpenter’s pencil of her dad in Giz a Job. She shared a story from his past about her dad’s experience of getting a job when he left school, in the old days when getting a job could be less formal.
Ross Wigham, prompted by becoming an uncle for the first time, shared advice in Having babies that is based on his own experience. It is both a humorous and serious post about babies from a father’s perspective.
Feeding her baby in the middle of the night led Irena Souroup to contemplate the news and inspired her post For the Love of Brooks, an unusual view of Rebekah Brooks.
Carolyne Mitchell used her experience as a child and mother to channel Dr Seuss this week in her post Great day for blog, with apologies to Dr Seuss.
Dan Slee returned to childhood memories of a cartoon boy and his cat (who advised children to stay safe) and a more recent memory of a talk by Tom Watson as the starting point for his lively comms2point0 blog post: Charlie says here’s a history lesson to open up innovation in your organisation. Dan shares with us ‘The Management Innovation Refusal Timeline’ which puts in a more developed form an argument that many of us have employed in trying to persuade people to use and allow the use of social media.
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss was Simon Hope’s post on the same theme as underlies Dan’s, and very specifically aimed at local government people.
Matt Murray contributed a really useful blog on using the Camera+ app on an iPhone - Mobile photography with Camera+ app. His illustrates it with some of his own photographs, including a really nice one of Battersea Power Station. I have had Camera+ on my iPod Touch (which has a much worse camera than the iPhone) for ages and not used it much but Matt’s article revealed some things that I did not know so I will be
Finally, I returned to a colour theme as an online article about the use of colour when designing websites prompted me to write about something the author had forgotten, how not everyone can see: The Red and the Green.
I have already written the first of my Week 21 posts, about the first night of The Late Shows. The Late Shows are the Newcastle and Gateshead part of Museums At Night, a weekend in May when museums open late till 11pm. The Tyneside Late Shows included contemporary art, the performing arts, a tunnel, circus, a display of photographs in shipping containers, as well as museums. Perhaps the (entirely optional) Week 21 theme could be culture, or what our neighbourhoods are like in the evening,
You can join the Weekly Blog Club as an author (see the About page for the short guidance notes) at anytime, or you can be one of the welcome band of readers. Thank you to everyone who wrote or read posts this week,
For the Love of Brooks by Irena Souroup.
Opportunity Knocks by Benjamin Welby.
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss by Simon Hope.
The Red and the Green by Janet E Davis.
Charlie says here’s a history lesson to open up innovation in your organisation by Dan Slee on the comms2point0 blog.
Great day for blog, with apologies to Dr Seuss by Carolyne Mitchell.
Simon Hope writes about the need for local government people to use Twitter in his Week 20 post. The latest report on how many Twitter accounts there are in the UK indicates that it is becoming a medium not to ignore.* Simon gives reasons why it is so useful.
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss by Simon Hope.
*Yes, the people who need to know will not see this post promoted on Twitter – but you who do read it can pass the message on to non-tweeting colleagues.
Benjamin Welby’s second contribution to Weekly Blog Club contains exciting news about what he is going to do next in his career. Some of us* will be frankly envious of his opportunity to work on one of the most exciting and challenging digital projects in the UK – and wish him success in his new role!
Opportunity Knocks by Benjamin Welby.
[*yes, I'm one!]
Benjamin Welby has made his first contribution to Weekly Blog Club with a post considering the merits of local government people blogging.
I believe in public sector and local government blogs by Benjamin Welby.
Kate Bentham has written about the localgovcamp unconference organising experience and using social media for her Week 16 Weekly Blog Club post. Impressively, she has written it in the form of an A-to-Z – guess what is ‘W?’
S is for ShropCamp by Kate Bentham.
PS Thanks very much, Kate, for lovely ‘W’ entry in your ‘A-to-Z’ – and we appreciate each and every one of your blog posts.
PPS Kate might have mentioned cake in this post.
For her Week 15 post, Lesley Thomson asks an important question of Scottish gov and localgov (and related non-gov?) digerati: anyone for teacamp?
A must-read for those in the public sector in Scotland (and do comment eg you could ask if there would be cake at tea camp).
Do not be fooled by the title: this post provides more than it ‘says on the tin.’ Mark Braggins has provided very readable reviews of each and every one of the ten tools, and includes some consideration of their usefulness in a local government context (which would also apply to most regional not-for-profit organisations).
There were 14 contributions to Week 12 of Weekly Blog Club, despite some of the usual contributors being busy, and they were as varied as ever.
Hannah Chia writes the only sports coverage that I enjoy reading. Her Six Nations Final Weekend Preview: My Top 5 Players to Watch and Very Bendy Ladies are amusing to read, whilst her highly topical post Fabrice Muamba, Prayers & the Footballing Family is thoughtful.
Irena Souroup was also thinking about the week’s news in her posts during the week and, like Hannah’s, both also had a sports theme: hula hooping in First it was the Pigeons… and the Olympic sport of shopping how extended shopping hours on Sundays this summer will save the economy (or maybe not): Osbornes Emergency Olympic Shopping Directive.
I wrote a photo blog this week, also relating to health and fitness. Inspired by John Patterson’s moving post last week – Train-ing to overcome - about pushing himself out of his comfort zone, I thought my knee was finally ready for a challenge so tried walking down to the beach for the first time for months: Coastal views March 2012 01.
Most of the other posts this week were work-related and provided very useful information. It was great to see Lesley Thomson joining us as a writer-contributor at last. She has been a supporter of Weekly Blog Club from the beginning, pointing other people in our direction. For her first post, she contributed an update on forthcoming Scottish public sector digital events - Amazing things are happening in Scotland: Part 2.
If you have not heard about Island GovCamp by now, where have you been? Even those of us who are unable to go (I so wish I could go to that one!), are getting excited about it. It looks as if there may even be a road trip – 4 chaps in 1 camper van, fully documented on video and shared on social media (of course!). As a child, it was my dream to go to somewhere that exotic by camper van (really! we had an orange VW one).
John Patterson was leader of the pack, rather than going top the dogs,* in talking about a training exercise this week. He wrote about a method of considering what types people are, using dogs: Packtypes: Just another dog in the pack?
New contributor Simon Hope was the first to produce a Week 12 post. His was a reflection on the role of professional communications teams in our contemporary, social-media-switched-on world: Split Personalities Required. Janet Harkin’s post considered an unusual approach that Ireland has taken and the importance of good public sector communications: In praise of the post for public sector communication campaigns.
Matt Bond contributed another part to his really useful ”How to…Film” series for public sector types (also probably relevant to SMEs): Part 3: Producing your first film. Sarah Lay provided a very useful post that advised on how to deal with zombie pages on websites, and, as an added extra, how to deal with zombies elsewhere: Ghosts of content past.
Lastly, but never leastly, two quite different foods were mentioned in posts this week: cake in Kate Bentham’s Herman the German – A Tale of Cake and Friendship, and broad beans in Peter McClymont’s Refresh. Peter’s enthusiasm for broad beans (a vegetable I have tended to avoid) is almost tempting me to try them again.
The recipe for Weekly Blog Club changes every week, but is always worth consuming. Week 13′s [strictly optional] theme could be about supertstitions, traditional customs, or the power of numbers.
Thank you to all who contributed posts, comments and ‘likes’ this week. The readers are always as important as the writers in the Weekly Blog Club, and we hope to have lots of both again this week.
Janet
*sorry, I had to – the temptation was just too overwhelming!
Split Personalities Required by Simon Hope.
Six Nations Final Weekend Preview: My Top 5 Players to Watch by Hannah Chia.
Osbornes Emergency Olympic Shopping Directive by Irena Souroup.
Very Bendy Ladies by Hannah Chia.
Coastal views March 2012 01 by Janet E Davis.
Fabrice Muamba, Prayers & the Footballing Family by Hannah Chia.
In praise of the post for public sector communication campaigns by Janet Harkin.
Herman the German – A Tale of Cake and Friendship by Kate Bentham.
Amazing things are happening in Scotland: Part 2 by Lesley Thomson.
First it was the Pigeons…. by Irena Souroup.
Part 3: Producing your first film by Matt Bond.
Lesley Thomson has made her first contribution to Weekly Blog Club in Week 12. She writes about all the events for digital public sector people in Scotland that are happening over the next few months (some of us South of the Borders have been getting excited this week about one of them).
Amazing things are happening in Scotland: Part 2 by Lesley Thomson.
