Below is a quick interview with Matt Tee, the man who is effectively in charge of all communications for the British Government.

I managed to grab a few minutes with him today after he had spoken at the Local Government Communications conference in Sheffield.

I wanted to get on record his enthusiasm for transparency, data and the Power of Information Report (he even mentioned in passing (I think) Steph Gray, positively) and the business of setting free our data. Here he also talks about civil servants engaging online and shared responsibility for what happens with the data.

Sorry it’s out of focus, the flip is beginning to be flipping irritating.

Matt Tee, Permanent Se for Government Communication on the Power of Information from Podnosh on Vimeo.

Much, much more to report from Sheffield when I get a chance to catch up with myself.

• cybersoc.com: sell subscriptions to your blog to amazon kindle users – Blogs through Kindle will be, I suspect, quite a nice way for bloggers with good, regularly published, niche content – such as Shedworking – to earn some revenue from their efforts.


• Recommended social media guidelines for reporters – Invisible Inkling – Be honest. Be yourself. Assume that everything you say is public, even if you say it privately. If it’s not clear to you what’s public and what’s private, don’t participate.


• World Class Places from Living with rats. – The biggest challenge in the strategy, however, is the connection it makes with poverty. It deserves praise for not shying away from a conundrum that has foxed policymakers for centuries, but at the same time it could do more to explore the issues it raises. If you’re going to open a can of worms, you might as well have a good look at them.Here’s the key paragraph on poverty, right at the beginning in the section headed ‘Why quality of place matters’: ‘Poverty in this country is not just about poor education, unemployment or low wages, and lack of opportunity. It is typically associated with poor housing and poverty of place – badly designed housing estates or low quality neighbourhoods, with dysfunctionally designed, energy inefficient homes, unsafe passage-ways and poor public spaces.’


• Interactive Election Map from Cambridgeshire County Council – This is a very neat piece of work, technically elegant, but falls down because it isn’t embeddable or mashable. Imagine seeing this embedded in sites from across the county and perhaps allowing other to lay new data on top of the map to allow voters to see new stories.

Welcome to the almost revamped Podnosh website.

We’ve been working with Tom and Claire, our neighbours at Substrakt, to refresh a site which was first and last designed in 2005 by friend and close collaborator Jon Bounds. Needless to say, Jon has also been working on this with us and Michael Grimes has helped.

I toyed with changing the name altogether, but have grown so fond of Podnosh that I wouldn’t have know how to lay it to rest.

It is still a Wordpress site, but shifts the emphasis from us as a podcasting operation (which we still do) to the business we have become: specialists in social media, the public sector, democracy and neighbourhoods.  I also want to follow my own advice to clients, and more consciously tell the stories of the people we work with, hence the image at the top (which will begin to change, all in good time!).

I’m still working through a lot of the content to de-cronk it (if you find a wildly over-sized photo please leave me a message) and fit it to the new theme.  Why the rush Nick?  Well, I’m going to be in Sheffield for the best part of this week at the Local Government Communications conference and wanted to get this new site up for them.

I’m sure some of the talented marketing professionals there might tut at me for allowing something out before it’s fully titivated, but incompleteness is a social media virtue!

What’s missing, what else do you want to know about us, what doesn’t work? You tell me.

These are my links for May 17th through May 18th:

• The shape of civil society to come – a Carnegie Trust Inquiry | internet.artizans – The Carnegie UK Trust is running an Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland. Unsurpringly, the first phase identified new media as one of the “burning issues” meriting further futures work and asked Suw Charman-Anderson to look at the way social technology and the internet is going to evolve over the next 15 years, and what that might mean for civil society organisations. Suw has kicked off by video interviewing social tech luminaries like Chris Messina & Ross Mayfield.Carnegie’s report on The shape of civil society to come says that “The purpose of futures work is to ‘disturb the present’ and to help organisations understand and manage uncertainties and ambiguities. Futures thinking operates on an assumption that there is not one future but multiple possible futures, dependent partly on how we choose to respond to or create change.”


• Sutton Data -


• Mandelson on Globalisation and Localsisation – “Politicians are right to make the case for the benefits of globalisation. But we have to recognise that the reality is that globalisation can too easily leave people feeling disempowered. The credit crunch exemplifies that feeling. We have to help re-empower them.That means making sure they have control over the decisions that affect their lives in their community. Making sure that they can trust the financial institutions they invest or bank with. Making sure they have access to the training and education that will give them confidence. Making sure that they have an outlet for initiative and brilliant ideas and the chance to turn them into commercial products. And to make sure that the economic benefits of globalisation are shared.”


• Online news: the future’s networked | Media | guardian.co.uk – Not sure I agree with: “eventually someone will figure out a business model that works for online news. But it may take some time, and lots of outfits will fall by the wayside in the meantime. That’s capitalism for you.
  The problem at the moment is that the web is awash with free content, and in a competitive market the price always converges on the marginal cost – which is currently zero. But as providers disappear (or, like Murdoch, decide to charge), the supply of free news will diminish and something more like a normal market will emerge. Only then will we find out what people are willing to pay for news.”

These are my links for May 15th through May 17th:

• D’log :: blogging since 2000 » Museums & Society in 2034 – “What challenges will society and museums face in the next quarter-century? … Will the “real” survive the assault of the “virtual”? Will the number of leisure-time alternatives continue to grow? Will the lines between work and leisure, public and private, continue to blur? Most importantly, how will museums face these challenges and shape the future they will have to inhabit?”


• Walsall Council on Twitter – Almost perfect Local Governemnt use of twitter from Walsall Council: "Frustratingly, electrical faults have ruled out the full opening of Pleck Rd/Wolvo Rd junct. Temp. traffic lights in place. Delays expected."


• thedeplorableword by Tom Martin, Directory – competitive environments encourage cheaters. They also favour players who have more time to spend playing the game. You also run the risk of creating a divide between the elite and those with a low Tumblarity score, these users may feel disheartened. After all, what’s the point in playing a game you cannot ever win?


• Baby steps in Social Media News Releases at Helpful Technology – We’re trying out PressItt, a free hosted SMNR service, which Rhys used today to collate an SMNR about our minister’s opening of a new research facility – complete with high resolution images and a podcast of the minister’s speech. To my mind, it’s an impressive effort – simply converting and publishing the various components. And it’s step forward from our first attempt, which featured video clips of the launch of DIUS’ Learning Revolution – but which took 3 days to finally edit and publish.


• Peter Cochrane's Blog: Become a bandwidth scavenger – Networks – Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com – On one day our Prime Minister announces that every home in the UK will have 2Mbps broadband in 2011, and the next a Korean minister announces that everyone in his country will have 1,000Mbps in 2012.