Why they're both right.... And why they're both wrong... Maybe.

Confused of Yorkshire writes...

I'm not really sure this adds very much. I guess I'm just thinking out loud.

A wee debate has broken out between (and I choose that word very carefully) some people I know, about Open Data and how incomprehensible OD practitioners can be. 

Over in the 'Comms corner' is @DanSlee, who says Open Data people are naughty for (although I'm not entirely clear) what seems to be not making easier to understand their technical expertise in his post here: 

http://www.comms2point0.co.uk/comms2point0/2015/6/8/the-problem-with-open-data-is-open-data-people.html

By way of a response @blangry (less angry than his Twitter name makes him look) makes the equally compelling case that we've all had long enough in and around local and national government to have ruddy well learned it by now, in his post here: 

http://alexblandford.tumblr.com/post/121177313583/its-not-ok

And while I share Alex's caveat (in that I'm not entirely sure I agree with my own post, and want to try to add to the debate because it is worth having), reading both made me think about something irrepressibly clever (although it turns out it wasn't) I'd read about Open Data and the practitioners and the inaccessibility of it all some time ago. 

Then I remembered. It was me. My post after UKGovCamp in 2012:

http://www.ukgovcamp.com/ukgc12reflections/20-thunks-a-pound-a-piece-pseudograph/index.html

Unusually, I'm not entirely sure Dan is right. I've sat through those conversations and they can be almost wilfully exclusive. I have asked team members to support Open Data, partnering clever, charismatic, genuine people, and they have come back simply not able to 'get it'. But... The language of our clients is one of the reasons we comms people exist. We translate the complex, the technical, the statutory, the governmental and we get it to the right audience through the right channel in the right (comprehensible) way at the right time. We should and DO have a responsibility to learn to speak at least a little geek. In the same way we learned to speak a little lawyer, or planner or child protection officer or - dare I say it - Chief Executive or politician. 

We all know those people who speak fluent Chief Executive. And how well they get on. 

So I think maybe Alex is right - it is available to us all to batter our way through the walls of techno-babble that surrounds OD. It is. But Alex doesn't quite convince me either, because I stand by what I said in the 2012 post. Open Data cannot be an end in itself. It needs to introduce somebody much more important to the debate than the geeks or the commsies. And at the minute it feels like a debate only between geeks and commsies; glaring at each other down the pub like they really fancy each other but aren't sure they're all that compatible. 

I wrote then, and stand by it, that, "We perhaps need to think that we could have been asking for/seeking/aiming for the same behaviours a hundred years ago. Greater access to information; openness about our decision-making and performance; reuse of information; better inclusion of communities in democracy; more responsive services; better relationships with customers;  creating opportunities for growth for individuals and communities; working in partnership, and adding value are not really about 'e-anything'. They'd be as valid a set of concerns if we were still using scrolls... As @curiousc says, it's about social change."

And I think I'd argue three years on, that in terms of integrity, I'm not all that sure that it is all that convincing to bang on about 'Open' in a way that is knowingly Closed. 

It has to be about the customer. For both Dan and Alex; Comms and geeks. But at the minute it looks like an internal debate. I think (and I think Alex and I both agree with Dan here) that we need to be able to see what we want Open Data FOR; what difference it will make. We need avoid buiilding systems that suit *us* instead of the customer. I don't need to know how to build a telly to know what it is for and to want one, or to be able to explain it to others and have them want one. I would not expect the telly builders to insist I knew how to build a receivery tube thing before I could tell people how great it is to be able to watch the Coronation in the front room. 

So maybe a bit of both. But I am reminded of what Esko Reinikainen said at the GovCamp three years ago, "User focus is paramount. User focus is paramount. User focus is paramount. User focus is paramount."

It only FEELS like a lifetime... :)

Oh, this is going to sound so ungrateful. So ungrateful. But it really isn't. 

I don't know who nominated me for the @Comms2Point0 Lifetime Achievement unaward (though I have my suspicions) but I genuinely thank whomever it was. It's massively flattering that anyone might consider me worth nominating.

And it's such a massive honour, especially to be alongside Fran and David. But I don't deserve it. Honestly. I have been in Comms, albeit with two astonishingly bloody marvellous teams for less than four years now. I came in from customer services, with a background in the voluntary sector, and I love Comms to death. Utterly love it. Love it. And I hope I occasionally make a contribution, with my team, my council and with people who work in the same sort of stuff. I hope I sometimes have a daft enough opinion that I provoke. But it's four years, and I don't honestly feel like I have achieved enough to justify an award nomination with the word 'achievement' in the title.

I'd be ecstatic to win the award for Blog Post of the Year. I loved the reaction to the nominated post. 

But I'm actually proper ember arsed to be nominated against actual brilliant Comms people like Fran Collingham and David Holdstock. I know who I nominated for the same category, and I know I'm not fit to be on the list when they ain't. 

So I am grateful. Really grateful. Don't think I won't put it on my CV because I damned well will. I'm just unconvinced :)

So here's an UNcampaign to match the unawards.

Don't vote for me. When the rationales for nominations are published, have a look and choose which of the other two deserves your support and vote for them.

But please do please vote for my blog post please (if you like it).

http://ow.ly/Evg8S

Radio silence

I just spent four days at the 2014 Green Man festival, deliberately unconnected to the rest of the world. Here are ten of the things I learnt while I had no twitter...

1) Neutral Milk Hotel not only made the single greatest album in world history, but they are also the greatest band in the world. You will all disagree with that and you're all wrong.

2) I can drink a pleasing amount of rum daiquiri and wake up without a headache. Although I recognise that this finding - based as it is on only one serious experiment - needs further research to be properly confirmed.

3) Anna Calvi is a god; a total rock star god.

4) Not knowing the football scores until Sunday morning when you find them out by reading somebody else's paper (upside-down while they don't seem to be looking) is actually very pleasant.

5) People seem to have stopped going to live music events to see bands; they seem to have gone only so they can say they were there at all, and because they think the rest of us paid to hear them talking. Loudly. During the quietest parts of Daughter's set, FFS. Oh, and shouting "Freebird" at a band because some have long hair is not even funny the first time...

6) I Break Horses, Poliça, Other Lives, Angel Olsen, Eaves are all artists I will buy stuff from soon. You probably should too. And I need more Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

7) My daughter is right, and fairies don't have arms and legs. At least not Ffolky Ffelt fairies. 

8) First Aid Kit are going to own the world. Brilliant, clever, attractive, soulless, corporate pop tunes that we will all have to own by law by Christmas 2016. The new Mumfords. 

9) It isn't always going to hurl it down with rain, even when I am utterly convinced it will. Although that doesn't mean leaving my wellies behind is a sensible option. They may have to be worn on the train just to sit in the tent, but they come along with good reason. 

10) I can do a Stroop test in under twelve seconds when sober and I could have done it faster if I'd realised it was so frigging competitive. 

I'll be back next year, Green Man. And I'd like early consideration given to booking The Decemberists. 

Thanks. 

Vivid and in your prime...

I missed the apparently now annual @commscamp dust up over the Press Release this year. I may have inadvertently started it (and run away) last year, and I think I was supposed to kick off a brawl about it at an LGComms fringe event last year too, but sort of declined. Sort of. 

But there it was, in all its #commscamp14 glory. The 'new guard / old guard' row. Like Labour in the 80s; a bit of insular, self-serving policy debate as the rest of the world looks away, faintly embarrassed, shuffles along and gets on with modern life. 

"The press release is dead, because... social media"

"No it ain't, because... what I do."

I have sometimes expressed a belief that newspapers are probably finished, but don't think I have ever made an argument that traditional media brands are dead. Far from it. I think more people carry more news brands and look to more sources and individual articles, images and writers than ever before. It's easier to pick the little bits you want on a phone than to wearily wade through the whole local rag, a daily, good-for-you-and-now-without-extra-hacking national, and 'the Sunday that lasts a month' every week. We'll soon reach a point where even TV and radio news broadcasts are available as story by story nuggets online, rather than as a whole show (yes, I mean *you*, the BBC).

Thing is - in terms of the Press Release debate - that we may have forgotten, not for the first time, to ask *cough*... the customer.

I've been in a new job for just a few weeks, and the editor of the local news brand (plural actually; he manages what I think a journalist would feel obliged to call a 'stable of titles') was good enough to meet me. He asked me not to be precise about his physical, hard copy circulation figures, so I won't, but they were a bit lower than I would have guessed and I'm the prophet of doom when it comes to newsprint. However - and this is massively important - his daily readership figure is the highest it has been for a hundred years. 

Check that. The highest readership figure that that local news brand has had for a century. 

With your twitter, and your telly, and your crystal set (digital with a global reach, natch), and your rolling, twenty-four-hours-whether-you-like-it-or-not news channels, he has more pairs of eyes on his content than for a hundred bloody years. Wow.

Why? How is he doing that?

Because - drumroll - his readers are online. And he is segmenting his audience, understanding that some parts of his readership have no interest in brand a, but will read brand b and c. And he's driving an integrated digital content strategy, through twitter, and Facebook and Instagram and apps, and driving people back to the brand's (plural) online services.

I think he's doing what we should be doing. Building trust, moving away from one-size-fits-all, understanding audiences and their preferences and delivering high-quality digital content to his customers, to inform and engage. He doesn't believe for a moment that the paper is the only channel he should create content for. Not for a minute. 

He's a dangerous radical. ;0)

And when I asked him for his view of us (I meant the council, but he took it I meant the comms team) his answer was short and telling; "Frankly, it feels like we've left you behind".

He doesn't really want press releases. He wants us to publish video, audio, digital images, interviews, information... digital content designed to build trust, to move away from the one-size-fits-all, and to inform and engage our customers. He wants to be able to use our content; says he WILL use our content; and that means it reaching the same audiences we want to reach (as part of our full understanding of ALL the channels we have to hand). I suspect that means we need to find a way to manage a broad partnership and a critical friendship, with a changed outlook and a new set of behaviours.

So why do some insist that the Press Release is still key tool number one? (Worse  there may be some who think it the only tool worth picking up). I'm not sure. I suppose 'we've always done it that way'. But increasingly, it seems, the industry we think it helps sees it as a sign that we have been left behind. 

"They called me Mister Glass"...

So, I'm occasionally given to incoherent, controversial outbursts. Here's another. Possibly unfair. But it's been bothering me.

A few days ago, I decided to unfollow Comms Hero on twitter. I did so publicly, partly through my usual egomania, and partly because I actually wanted to let them know why I had. 

It's not personal. I don't really know who is behind Comms Hero. I know people who appear to be associated with it and they all either seem to be, or are, lovely. It's about the behaviours.

I told @CommsHero that (and I know I am far from alone in feeling this - people have told me they agree via twitter and in person) the whole #CommsHero campaign had begun to seem spammy at the very least. 

I said: "Am going to unfollow @commshero Sorry. Lovely idea, but an incessant bandwagon-jumping, credit-taking sales attack is simply becoming spam."

Actually it had seemed to me for a while that at worst it can a bit of a manipulative power play. But it had, frankly, also just been getting on my nerves.

The final straws that night were tweets aimed at, around and through the Digital Leaders awards and Helen Reynolds. Helen had won one. Much deserved and wholly under her own steam. To me, the Comms Hero account seemed to bombard it all with their own branding; claiming a winner (Helen) as one of their very own. I have not discussed this at all with Helen, who may feel very differently, but it offended me a bit that they pitched in to her success. 

Success by association. Brand enforcement. Sales. It felt like a kind of hijacking. A kind of tweet-bombing.

And there's just a bit of that. Lots of busy-bee bombardment of tweeps, hashtags, events with the Comms Hero 'brand'. This weekend it happened again with the lunch provision at The Big Yak, for Heaven's sake.

"@theICcrowd: Lunch is served at #thebigyak pic.twitter.com/o56h7M8rKy" ++ a meal fit for #CommsHero types. Hope it's a good day so far

That's nice. A lovely sentiment. 

Was the branding REALLY necessary?

I expect CommsCamp to be similarly 'associated'. It's a big sales opportunity.

I need to be clearer. I first expressed my concerns at Comms Hero before their first event. It felt, just, y'know, wrong. Couldn't put my finger on it. But wrong somehow.

I was a bit gobsmacked at how quickly they announced their second.

Here's my latest feel for that wrong:

I don't want to be a hero. I never have. I hope to lead and manage a team of communications people who feel safe in their jobs, confident in their creativity, properly supported in their work and skills and satisfied in making a difference. 

I don't think we're heroes at all, even if we do all that. Look, I know that many, and probably most, of us have been through some really tough times, and Comms Hero is designed to make us feel good about ourselves again, and maybe this all makes me a miserable old sod. I am a miserable old sod. But what we do isn't actually about us at all. It's about the people whose lives we're seeking to improve. The people we serve. The people we need to find relevant, resonant, persuasive messages for. The people we need to engage and inform.

I don't know how capes, and school hymns and a load of lovely, but pricey-looking, branded business cards (for people whom I assume already either have business cards or have chosen not to have business cards) helps us with that. I don't know how we justify branded donuts, while we cut the money we spend on comms: while we cut jobs. The core message of Comms Hero, deliberate or not, conscious or not, seems to me to be that product is lovely. I don't think what we do ishould be much about product. 

Sometimes, possibly, maybe I could be persuaded. Maybe. When product is appropriate and effective and needed and affordable. But not to make us feel good about ourselves, surely?

For me the heroic posture is all wrong. The outcomes, insofar as I can see them, are badly aimed. The messages are skewed. It makes it all about us. And all about product. For money. 

These are good people and the learning opportunity is undoubtedly important. But CommsCamp doesn't seem to need paid for capes and branded donuts and individually prepared and printed superhero cards, and theme tunes. Perhaps we could go there instead.

So here's a question or two: I don't know this, but who is getting paid for all that product anyway? Who is getting paid for the (quite pleasing) individualised design work? How can we justify the costs of that to a family living on ten quid a day?

Ach. Enough. I'm ranting again.

Probably not the most popular position I've ever taken. 

Tin hat on.

Voyage of the "Damned if you do..."

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy”.

 

Sometimes it just seems to be the role of the comms and marketing team to try to make the best of somebody else’s bad job.

 

I suspect that anyone who has ever worked in a local authority comms team has, at least once, found themselves looking at a 'client' who has just announced the launch of something, almost certainly in the next few days, and is now demanding a ‘marketing plan’.

“You know… a logo, a catchy name, a few key messages, some posters and a press release. Oh and if you can get us some pull-ups for the launch that would be great.”

 

What happens then is that you say things like,

 

“Okay. Who is your target audience”?

“Okay. What are your key outcomes?”

“Okay. How will you measure that it’s worked”?

This is the point at which it becomes fairly clear that none of the above can be answered. None of the above has even been thought about. They’re here because “something must be done”.

“Yeah, well the target audience is really sort of everyone who lives here, you know, and the outcomes are that we really want a kind of brand, to get people to sign up to stuff”…

It’s an approach to comms and marketing which means the collateral is an end in itself.

 

‘What did you do in the war on ignorance and disease, Daddy?’

‘I got some people to design some posters’.

‘How did those help?’

“Well, I think some people saw them”.

 

Baselines? Outcomes? Pah. Who needs them? We put some posters up. And did a twitter thing which is ace. We were seen to be doing something and something needed to be done. What more could there be?

 

It’s comms without product and comms without purpose. Comms as an end in itself. We already know the effectiveness of comms can be hard to measure in the first place, but it gets so much harder when the client has nothing particularly effective to communicate; no real product; no idea of what they are trying to achieve or for whom.

 

When confronted with such a ‘campaign’ or ‘product’; or worse still, an idea that “we need an umbrella brand for the whole range of stuff we’re going to do”…

 

(“Oh. And what is that?”

“We haven’t actually decided yet. We kind of want a brand, and we want people to sign up and then we’ll send them things when we’ve worked them out.”)

 

… you have that moment where you really should take the Dragons’ Den approach, put down your pen, look them square in the eyes and say, ‘we’re out’.

 

But it isn’t like that, is it? Because all they’re really doing is trying to deliver some cockamamie idea that probably started life somewhere else, with somebody else, designed as someone's pet project, without reference to evidence or audience, customer need or channel. It’s not thought through, and you know it’s doomed to failure.

 

But something must be done.

 

So there’s an assessment to be made, isn’t there? You have that terrible comms team choice to make - ‘do we stay or do we go’? Do we involve ourselves in this?

 

If we don’t they’ll only go and do it themselves; badly.  But if we do it… Shudder.

Confronted with this very dilemma recently, a colleague and I worked out the answer.

 

It’s the local government communications team Credit Matrix. Or the "Damned if you do; Damned if you don’t” theorem. 

It looks like this:

Wake up and Sheikh up

“It’s been too long since you blogged, man”, read the accusatory DM from that @danslee.

Foolishly I replied, ‘Give me a topic’.

Almost as if he’d already thought of it (*suspicious face*) Dan replied, “Some say digital will take five years to be properly embraced in local government. I say that's too late.”

I say that’s too late.

I recently spoke at a ‘summit’ on social media use by government. I said things like,

“We have not been listening to customers”.

“We’ve been ignoring private sector best practice, where business understands audiences are made up of individual customers and different groups with different needs” and

“Social media lets us reach a range of audiences across services, and - with a good ‘web site’ and a range of online customer tools -  is massively important in how we meet customer demands”

The usual stuff.

It’s almost incidental – but it is Dan’s fault - that the summit was in Dubai, and while I was there I got into a few conversations about the UAE’s new drive to online service. Put simply, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, has announced a new "government vision of the future". Its aim is to provide information to people any time and anywhere.

That he did so on twitter, after meeting a thousand government officials, tells its own story, but it’s a story for another day. Today’s tale is this:

Sheikh Mohammed tweeted "The Government of the future works 24/7 and 365 days a year. It is as hospitable as hotels, fast in delivering and strong in its procedures".

Who doesn’t want that?

While we are asking if the NHS ‘will become paperless by 2018’, his aim is for government to reach people.

"Through their smartphones we can make their lives easier. The Government of the future is innovative and adaptive. It improves the quality of life and helps people achieve their happiness. Today we want to move government information and service centres to every phone and every mobile device in the hands of users, which will allow them to place their government request from their phone wherever they are and without waiting," he said.

Tellingly he has given officials two years to get it sorted. Failure will not be tolerated. Officials have been told that if they fail to deliver mobile services, they will be given a "farewell ceremony".

Two years or fired.

The crisis of finance facing local authorities in the UK, in my view, means that we don’t have the luxury of five years.

We may not have three.

As I was drafting this post, Dominic Campbell appeared in the Guardian (like he does) saying ‘councils will collapse unless they embrace tech’. 

That may not be true everywhere, but for those, like mine, which face another 40+ million pounds cut in the next two years, his warning that “most councils can see the next couple of years ahead financially, but there is a gulf appearing after which – if they do not act now with very different thinking – they are going to have to stop services rather than reinvent them”, seems terrifyingly real.

We all know the change is needed. So what holds us back? What? Really?

Our customers are not ours alone. They already use online tools; payment stuff and booking stuff, self service and information gathering stuff in every other sphere of their lives.

We are not asking for the radical any more. We’re asking for what is now ordinary for most customers.

And delivering it won’t stop us providing services to those for whom digital exclusion is an issue. We may need to invest for them, to provide training and assistance. Or we may need to put some of the savings driven by the ‘new model’ into the remnants of the old model to ensure we support the most vulnerable.

But we just don’t seem to be doing it. I have seen first-hand that Dom’s right when he says, “there is a lot of flirting with something which is a good idea but then (they) do not actually go ahead with”.

And this is not the starting line. We're well past that. This isn’t new this week. It’s been there for years. We’ve mostly been not doing digital for years.

I think that giving ourselves another five years is to avoid the issue.

More ‘flirting’.

Parkinson’s Law repeated first as tragedy then as farce.

If we really think we have five years, I’d say that’s because we have not been listening to customers and we’ve been ignoring private sector best practice. Social media, a good ‘web site’ and a range of online customer tools is massively important in how we meet customer demands today. 

And that's before anybody even thinks about changes in the technology that will occur in those five years. Are we actually planning to be out of date?

The Sheikh has it. "A successful government is one that goes to the people and does not wait for them to come to it."

Embargone?

I briefly featured in a local paper recently. In the long-standing political editor's weekly, hilarious, 'Off The Record' column. Because, he said, I had broken my council's own embargo.

(Now, aside from the obvious question as to whether - given I manage the team - that means I broke "my own" embargo and whether in some philosophical way I might be wholly entitled to do so as that would be a matter for me... I probably had. Kinda.)

Here's what happened. My team were responsible for a press release (I know, I know) announcing that Hull's Ferens Art Gallery had saved a very important painting for the nation. The story is here: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/jul/16/pietro-lorenzetti-christ-saint-paul-saint-peter

The National Gallery had apparently asked for an embargo, (and the team tell me they resisted that to no avail) because for whatever reason, it seemed they wanted the Guardian to have it first. 

The Guardian duly obliged, and published well before the (corny, I'd say) 00.01 embargo, with the first readers' tweets pointing at the story not long after 5.30 in the afternoon; some six and a half hours before the embargo expired. 

I saw the link in a tweet from a Hull-based photography firm owner and tweeted it myself at 22.06, leading to the story in the #deadtreepress. Oh silly me.

But, but, but....

 

For me it raises some questions.

First, in what world is it proper for a local authority media team to seek (or more accurately in this particular case, to be asked to seek) to hand a commercial advantage to any particular media brand? I'm not sure it is, and I think we might need to ask ourselves some tough questions about that.

Second, in what world is it appropriate for a local authority comms team, with tools now available which allow us to publish directly to customers, to keep back publicly-held information when it is ready to be released, and put it into the hands of the news media first? 

Third, once the embargo was breached, isn't it just all over in terms of maintaining it in the modern 'twitterverse'?

Fourth, and if it is all over once (as in this case) an embargo has been broken, or has served its purpose, or both, in what world should the very team that issued the release be the only people in the world who cannot then share it on social media? Some three hours before I tweeted, the Guardian story was tweeted by an arts organisation in Shanghai.

And fifth, doesn't the ability of the news media to publish almost instantly online render the whole embargo idea just a wee bit redundant? I guess it may have had a purpose in the days when newsprint hit London pavements at some shallow hour of the morning, and the breakfast table at about the same time you put the radio news on, but what purpose does it really serve now? And at 00.01? Really?

It perhaps seems to me that there are too many who still think slapping an embargo on is actually somehow a fundamental part of drafting a press release.

But why? 

I don't know. I only have questions at the moment. But it does feel to me that, if the story's ready for your customers to know, shouldn't you just tell them, and tell them first?

I've had this bobbins in my head for months. Better out than in...

John Torode, bake me scones

With a paste of abalone,

dressed in ginger.

Mount in marmite.

Bake me scones, John Torode..

Un-like us

I've been lucky to have attended a few unconferences over the last three years. They have shaped my learning, changed my thinking and helped me to develop a network of people I respect and collaborate with, in communications and marketing, customer services, across local government and outside of all of those.

What I discovered recently is that they've shaped my expectations of conferences too. I found at LGComms Academy in Cardiff that I struggled a bit to stay with the old format of speakers - however brilliant (and they were) - talking to, and sometimes at, us one after another after another. 

Unconferences, done well, allow for more collaborative learning approaches; more listening, exchange and engagement and I recognise that - as a (terrible and incessant) talker - my learning style prefers that.

So when @lloyddavis arrived at LGComms to run an all-too-brief unconference session as part of the Academy it felt like a bit of a relief. 

Until he asked me to pitch a session. 

I'd never done that before. But he and @allyhook said I had to, in case it all went 'too quiet', so I did. 

And I loved it.

Ally suggested I run a session on how we might take up Alex Aiken's offer, made the previous day, of moving into sexy and leadership jobs in central government comms. So I asked a group of people who fancied that decussion how we might take him up on his offer.

It started brilliantly, not least because people who knew Alex explained that he meant it: and as a consequence of @garethdn and his genuine enthusiasm for the idea. He led us into some of the obvious and not-so-obvious practical responses. Ring up and offer to go and muck in. Volunteer to work on the news desks. Look for short term contracts (if that's open to you financially).

We recognised that some of those ideas might not work for some people, depending on geography or other commitments, but as we started to look at the barriers to those practical ideas, what we discovered was quite saddening. 

We largely agreed that we have become riddled with self-doubt, as communications people, and as public sector workers. 

We confessed that too often we lack the confidence to apply to new jobs in ANY sector. 

Not one person in the group (of 15 to 20 by that point) was prepared to back themselves in an application to the BBC for example, in spite of believing we share at least some of the skills and behaviours that BBC staff require. 

Very few felt the private sector would entertain us. 

Many felt applications to government would meet with a response summed up as 'sniffy' (while recognising that some of us can sometimes be sniffy in our own way towards those from "lesser" councils...

What we came to realise was that we have perhaps internalised too much of the stuff that has been poured on public sector workers for what feels like ages now. We've come to entertain that debilitating, nagging doubt at the back of the brain; 'Maybe they're right... Maybe the TPA are right. Maybe we are all rubbish; in non-jobs; time-servers; blockers'. 

We recognised that we have become self-limiting, and we decided that it's high time it stopped.

We agreed that we communicate for everyone but ourselves; that we enable collaboration between groups of everybody but ourselves; that we sell everything but ourselves.

And we agreed that we need to try to regain some pride, to trumpet our value, and to support each other to show that we are the dreamers of dreams, the creatives, the innovators, the narrators, the meaning-makers and we can work anywhere we damned well want to because we're proud of who we are.

Cough.

And then it all went quiet while we tried to work out if we really believe that and if there is really a way to make that happen. 

Don't be surprised if we do. 

Journalism Day

When invited by Dave Windass, leader of the FdA in Digital Media Journalism and BA (Hons) Journalism & Digital Media courses at Hull School of Art and Design to address a conference - Journalism Day - on the future of journalism some weeks ago, I thoughtlessly said 'yes'. I said yes because Dave's a really top bloke, and we try to support him when we can, because I'm mostly happy to help, and I assumed it was to be a low-key local affair.

Two days before the 'gig', I found out I was closing the show, and following Martin Bell, Alastair Brett (the former Legal Director of Times Newspaper Ltd) political journalist David Torrance, and BskyB's senior news editor Dave Betts, and frankly it all got a bit 'squeaky bum time', as I believe Manchester’s old people say.

So I did what I knew I had to do. Dressing it up as, 'Eddie's talk seeks to ask questions about the future of news, and to raise what he thinks might be the challenges for both local authorities and journalists in the modern world', I went for provocation and told 200 journalists that 'Public Relations Is Dead'. The first refuge of the scoundrel.

Oh, and - just for good measure - that newspapers are dead too. Or at least damned close to it.
I tried to be a bit more sophisticated than that. Whether I succeeded is perhaps a matter for those who were there, but the feedback was pretty good.

I started by suggesting that HMV, Blockbuster, and Jessop's did not go under because nobody wants music, movies or photos any more. They failed because a tipping point was reached as a critical number of customers - but not all - stopped wanting physical product and the shops became unsustainable.

Then I showed them this video

And because (in the same way) it won't take until the last person who has the Times ironed at breakfast to die,  for papers reach that same tipping point, I told them newspapers were dead too.

But I also said that there is probably a growing demand for news brands and journalism. Customers have online access to so much more than the one paper they used to buy each day, and use it.

I went on. What we increasingly know about customers is that few much care about The Council (capital T capital C) any more, if they ever did. They care about those parts of it that touch their lives; the road closure, the school closure, the theatre ticket, the bin collection. And I implied that may be true for news items too. Customers have become information nomads, choosing where to find out about and access services. And as more and more services are online they have become online nomads too. And that means we have to communicate and deliver services across those online choices.

I suggested that local government has to learn that the massive range of online tools that customers can use,  along with their own presence online, means that they are connected. Not just council to customers, but customers back to councils and to each other. All of it connected. The days when we could send a one-size-fits-all council 'magazine' have gone. Customers want granular. They want the information, news, service, and events that they are interested in; not an homogenous communications department idea of what they might want, or worse, should have.

And in that connected space, customers write back, and bite back, making us all accountable in a way we have to get used to, and learn to learn from. I talked about Julie Burchill, Jan Moir, the News Of The World, Urban Outfitters and Amazon and how the accountability that connectedness enables is as much an issue for news brands and journalists as for anyone else. It is not without its challenges - not least to ideas of freedom of expression, and whether we have a right not to be offended - but it is happening anyway.

And before I demanded they follow him on twitter, I talked about the changes in behaviour we need in our  communications teams, and quoted Dan Slee that …

"A press release is no longer your gateway to the media.

"A press release, web update, a picture of a nature reserve posted to Twitter on a mobile phone, a sharable Facebook image, a Soundcloud audio clip of a politician speaking or a LinkedIn group contribution from a named officer is. But the thing is. It’s not always all of those things. Knowing the landscape means knowing which will be relevant."

And I ended with my prediction of the future for journalism; that it will be fast, fast, fast; that stories are everywhere, not on a Press Release; that everyone can be a journalist (not necessarily a good one, but everyone can break stories and has the tools to publish); that journalists have become a brand in themselves; that  broadcast without response is dead; that there will be ever more accountable journalism, more easy disgust, more easy offence and that accountability is every organisation’s to handle, and that there are more easily targeted campaigns and more moral tensions. activism is clicktivism and that might mean more and more difficult challenges, to freedom of expression, politically unpopular views, financial security, even – when wrongly done - to personal safety.

And then, to end, I introduced them to Emer Coleman and read them two bits of her recent post:

"There are those who seek to uphold their own silos and empires even though they don’t face the electorate at the ballot box... Remember the scene when Morpheus offers Neo the red pill or the blue pill. If he takes the blue pill everything stays the same – if he takes the red pill (like Alice in Wonderland) he falls through the rabbit hole and sees things like they really are. We are at a juncture in society and technology where the system (and government) keep taking the blue pill struggling to deal with a new generation who swallowed the red one years ago" and:

"If I have to name a sector to whom I want to give a special shout out then it has to be to the journalists that I have worked with over the past year... They have been amazing critical friends. They have not offered an easy ride but they are not the stereotype of “gotcha” either. If the mantra of of Silicon Valley is “you have to collaborate to compete” then my mantra for government and media is that we have to “collaborate to comprehend”.

Then I finished with what I hoped was good advice. As well as suggesting they take the red pill, I went with a Facebook meme attributed to Gandhi, and with Emer. Like you do.

I told them I thought they should,

"Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

"Be yourself. Collaborate to comprehend."

And they clapped and they were nice, and I left. But not before I got my photograph taken with Martin Bell, even though he did confess that he had not understood half of the words I'd used.

Stop taking the pills - Some #CommsCamp13 thoughts (at great length)

I was 'nudged' recently by @Comms2Point0 to post my thoughts on #CommsCamp13, but as so often I found that talking about it was easier than writing it down.

I must apologise to people at work for the talking about it... And thank @danslee and @annkempster again for a very fine event.

But then, in a brilliant post today to mark an exit from government (into what will doubtless be an equally brilliant private sector career) @emercoleman said something which set me off; about public service systems taking the blue pill and those in them who take the red one.

I'm not much given to Matrix geekery. Those who were with me in a fantastic #commscamp13 final session, led by @curiousc, in a challenge to comms folk to see that they can too often be the blockers, will know I'm more of a Doctor Who fan.

(Excitingly, when suggesting that communications people need to become the voice of the customer and drive organisational learning, I actually got to say 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow' in a public place. Yes, I know;  I'm pathetic.)

But Emer's idea of the 'juncture' at which we work seems spot on;

"... remember the scene when Morpheus offers Neo the red pill or the blue pill. If he takes the blue pill everything stays the same – if he takes the red pill (like Alice in Wonderland) he falls through the rabbit hole and sees things like they really are. We are at a juncture in society and technology where the system (and government) keep taking the blue pill..."

I'm finding blue pill dependency to be on the rise.

Behaviours (and for me, as I never seem to stop saying, it's always about the behaviours and not the shiny toys) seem increasingly to seek top down, controlling, non-consultative, 'manage the message', 'manage the media', "only answer if you have to" responses.

Those are the responses learned through so many tired decades of unlearning, disempowering public services, too often easily characterised as having no actual interest in the public being served. Years and years in which it was all about structures and hierarchies and the right to make decisions without challenge and you being bloody grateful for what you were given, and not having choices or complaints taken seriously and blah, blah, blah.

You know, there's a ton of academic research that says that in spite of the perception that the public sector is close to its customers... It just isn't.

And - to return to the task at hand - that all put me in mind of @nickkeane's 'theory' at my first #CommsCamp13 session: 'twitter is now useless', where more than one person expressed an almost sneering belief that, because customers use them to ask for stuff, management of organisations' twitter accounts "should 'just' be handed over to Customer Services".

Nick suggested that tools of engagement have altered customers' approaches to public services; have altered expectations of access and treatment and accountability. Customers expect to engage horizontally - directly with the CEO, ward councillor, or communications team; but they are still met by vertical hierarchies.

I'd reckon that the days when comms teams merely broadcast and didn't listen and respond; when complaints were left to rot at the office being complained about; when the journalist was the most important character in town because they could damage your reputation more than any individual customer; when elected representatives could fail to consult, or ban tweeting or filming in council meetings, and so many other of those old behaviours could be maintained... I'd reckon those days are gone.

And if anyone's still fighting that, I'd reckon it's only a matter of time before the customers change your mind.

They will expect a say in how we design public health responses; to be heard as we agree budgets; and to advise on how our services perform. And the tools will make sure they get it. Letter by letter, call by call, online petition by online petition, and - arguably - most powerfully and crucially, tweet by tweet; they will change the behaviours.

And so they should. When did we ever have the right to ignore complaints, to not answer questions, to fail to learn from customer experience, to meet and make decisions in private (saving the exemptions of the 1972 Local Government Act, natch) or to keep the spending figures away from a public whose services they actually are. When?

I think Nick's right. Emer too. At the risk of being a bit pretentious ("You, Eddie? Really?") the issue seems to be that decades-old, Weberian models of government are no longer fit for purpose. In a world with social media, Open Data and the looming possibility of instant reputation destruction by one aggrieved customer on twitter, the hierarchical responses have to change.

Tragically, the Francis report tells us that much more clearly than I could ever hope to. The not listening has to end. The not learning has to go. The behaviours have to change.

Not broadcasting, but representing and learning.

Not remote from the public, unfilmed and untweeted, but open and learning.

Not Press Releases, but consistent, equal approaches to communicating information which treat all stakeholders equally. Being human. And learning.

I'd reckon it's all customer services now.

"A man without a smiley face should not open a shop."

I have seen it claimed that there is a Chinese proverb which says, "a man without a smiley face should not open a shop."  I don't know if that's truly a Chinese proverb, or one of those internet things people repeat so easily, but in any event it strikes a chord.

We mostly know that Customer Service can often be all about first impressions. And that sometimes it's about being pleasant and human. And that actually, most often, it's about those two things working together in some kind of apparently quite hard to achieve, seamless, harmony.

We've all encountered people who should do Customer Service well; and don't.

This post has nothing much to add by way of wisdom. I just wanted to show you a small collection of signs I "found" recently on my way up a steep hill to a national literary landmark (I just about sneaked that in...) All in one shop window. Well, two windows really, but the same shop and two windows of no particular size.

The first is a little brusque, but no more than that - in isolation. There may be better ways of putting it, but on its own, it's not terrible...

But just in case you thought it might be a problem with the door... Here's another. It effectively says - get stuffed if you have children. Which puts the first into a bit of a new light.

And in case you missed the point, here it is jabbed hard into your pathetic, touristy, parenting face. We'd rather have dogs in the shop than you and your crappy children. Get it?

So maybe it's that they don't want money from parents particularly. Perhaps they just think dogs spend more? Oh, no. They ain't done yet...

...They really don't like anyone much. Coming in here with your stupid customer conversation. Don't bother coming in if you want to, you know, talk.. There is a wee bit more of that in the second photo. I'll wait here while you go back and look...

Cool eh?

And just in case you're still in any doubt about our general attitude to you, your vile child/ren, your stupid chitchat and life in general, here's a cheery seasonal message. Stick your Xmas where the sun don't shine.

Unless you're a dog perhaps. Happy bloody Dogmas, Shep old bean. Happy bloody Dogmas. Best friend indeed.

I took the photos when the shop was closed, and I was walking up a hill past it. Three hours later I was walking down the hill, and it was open . Amazingly, with the exception of the owner, nobody was in the shop. Amazingly.

And then I chose not to go in. Odd, eh?

20 thunks: A pound a piece

I like this http://curiouscatherine.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/my-20-things-from-ukgov12/

@danslee (who loves me "4 eva") has a brilliant knack of coming up with simple and effective ideas. That people who went to #ukgc12 should post about 20 things they thunk is another of those.

Mine won't be more original or clever or inspiring than any one else's. They'll probably be less so.

And they'll probably all be wrong.But here they are.

1) Trains from Hull to London run bang on time to King's Cross and can be bought for as little as £10 for a single ticket. Please see title. Sorry @pigsonthewing, burritstroo.

2) The public sector has more friends in the private sector than many in it sometimes care to remember or admit.

3) We need to find a way of putting good practice in an easy-or-easier-to-find place. And then start reporting it.

4) Management of our personal vs. professional online identities is a growing issue. It's not new but it's not resolved by a long way. @Puffles2010 is asking some good questions and this  http://weeklyblogclub.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/my-view-and-not-those-of-my-employer-really-created-expectations/ is a good post about it by @philjewitt

5) There are still too many people who want to make it about tools, organisations, and systems rather than outcomes. I went to a session broadly about information for citizens and spent an hour listening to people talk about themselves and their own ideas for apps.

6) We perhaps need to think that we could have been asking for/seeking/aiming for the same behaviours a hundred years ago. Greater access to information; openness about our decision-making and performance; reuse of information; better inclusion of communities in democracy; more responsive services; better relationships with customers;  creating opportunities for growth for individuals and communities; working in partnership, and adding value are not really about 'e-anything'. They'd be as valid a set of concerns if we were still using scrolls... As @curiousc says, it's about social change.

7) 'e-Comms' doesn't really exist; it's just 'comms' using new tools. It will quickly become 'comms' or we will have failed. The people doing just 'comms' need to get, use and understand the tools of the people doing e-comms, run it through some understanding of who our customers are, what they need and how they like to be talked to, and we should measure how well it works by the outcomes.

8) Hull needs a #teacamp or a #brewcamp and I hope @HumberHull and I will go about making one happen. We need to have more conversations and more people involved than we can get along to Microsoft's splendidly cool HQ. We will perhaps want to start asking inspiring GovCamp people to come along and talk to us. Please see point 1.

9) I probably need to blog more. It won't be any good and it won't help anyone, but it might do me good.

10) I right enjoyed the social, even though it made my head hurt the next day because I lie to myself about Peroni doing me good. It was great to see @Baskers again.

11) @Puffles2010's bestest buddy is a very composed person. And a very interesting one. I wish I had knowingly met @WeLoveLocalGov

12) I'm going to see if it's possible to be of more use to communities (including mine) with hyperlocals and some Print 10 practice. I will be talking to @PalmerMagicTM, @sarahkatenorman and @getgood about these things as well as local partners.

13) Unlucky for some... Spending £32 for a bed in a #dump like the Corbigoe Hotel, because I know I "only need somewhere to sleep and a shower", is false economy.

14) We need to avoid repeating the big public sector mistake of building systems from the inside out, systems that suit *us* instead of the customer (our useless, monolithic CRMs, and our officer-use-only A-Zs), and making ourselves "special" in the process. As @DelibThinks put it, "we need to focus on what the end users wants from a council homepage rather than designing from the top" or @reinikainen, "User focus is paramount. User focus is paramount. User focus is paramount. User focus is paramount."

15) Demand-led Open Data might be complicated but we (by which I really mean I) really do need to get on with it.

16) We may well need to see more politicians in the room. When they find out you can get an ovation just for being one, they'll all want to come...

17) @sarahkatenorman makes bloody gorgeous rocky road chocolate stuff.

18) I think I need to think more about how to understand the complexities of networks in communities and how engagement is difficult if you don't map those networks of networks or  if individuals or organisations take an "I'm (we're) all the democracy people need" attitude.

19) I'd like to get more of the people I work with to govcamps and not just the ones I sometimes think of as the 'obvious' ones.

20) As I think I may have tweeted at some point (although I think I stole it from @carlhaggerty anyway) it's not about shiny tools. It's about behaviours; it's about treating customers properly, being accountable, learning, talking...

Pressed on the subject

An interesting blog post at the lovely welovelocalgovernment had got me a-wondering about (social) media stuff and the impacts it might have on how local government officers behave as citizens to the extent I was considering a (long overdue) blog post on that subject anyway this morning, when I was made aware of this event at the Hull Central library tomorrow night.

Thursday Night Live
presents a talk by

Angus Young
(Local Government Reporter for The Hull Daily Mail)

Hold the Front Page
- a life in media and politics

7.30 pm 8th September
Food For Thought Cafe, Central Library, Albion Street. Hull.

Tickets cost £2.00 from the Lending Library counter or at the door on the night.

Angus Young has been a journalist at the Hull Daily Mail for over thirty years writing on general news, education, crime, pop music and local government. Since 1994 he has covered council news from Hull and the East Riding. He is also the author of two local history books: Murders of Hull and More Murders of Hull and is currently working on a third title about historical scandals of Hull and East Yorkshire.


Well worth a trip, I'd have thought.

Why don't you grow up?

I warned you several posts ago, and quite overtly so in the last one, that this was likely to get mawkish; and self-indulgently so. That it would be o'er-run with graphite stuff at some not-too-distant point.

So here's some more. Turn your head away if you don't like it. It's okay, I won't mind. But then it's kind of, you know, meant for others to read, anyway.

42 days remain until the proposed teleport completion date of the graphite. Being a lazy graph, I felt no need to look beyond the worn cliché that number now represents and to think very much, so - in some trite and tedious meaning of life type bollocks - I've asked Mrs Graph and Steppy II what they would want the new person to be or become throughout life.

What do you definitely want him/her to be, what are you indifferent about them being, and what do you definitely not want them to be?

I guess it's a kind of friend identi-kit. Some stuff you really like people for; some stuff you aren't bothered about one way or the other in people; and things you'd really prefer to avoid - the stuff that would largely put you off people.

So here are our answers.

"I would want graphite to be..."

Me: Passionate, Creative, Progressive, Articulate

Mrs Graph: Adventurous, Courageous, Musical, Considerate

Steppy II: Sporty, Fun, Quite Loud, Funny

"I'm not bothered if graphite is..."

Me: Gay or straight, in any particular job, scientifically minded, very bookish

Mrs Graph: Tall or short, Academic, Male or female, Artistic

Steppy II: Ginger, A football supporter or not, Nerdy, Someone who likes fish & chips

"I would not want graphite to be..."

Me: Scared, A Tory, lonely, Unduly Lazy

Mrs Graph: Shy, materialistic, Vain, A Fussy eater

Steppy II: Veggie/Vegan, Boring, A Golfer, A soap opera fan

So there. Be warned, graphite. This is demanding stuff.

Actually it's 41 days, but that wouldn't sit well with the thing, would it now?

A found memorial poem, being of little or no artistic merit

"It's the nasty rubbery mouth" - Pavel Konnolsky, Smolensk

In Memoriam, Lord Sir Matthew Grove 1826 - 1894

Auburn Neophyte, legate from the heath,

Stalking the benches of green and leather,

He did away with (altogether) the

Tiresome waste; the Poor's schools and teachers,

Which withered 'neath his noble features.

School funding he gave its funeral wreath.

With utmost clarity he saw, no doubt,

That only those with Pater's cash to bet

Upon themselves, and unafraid of debt

Could hope for success in the schools he'd free

Or get through University.

So wisely he kept all the others out

All rubbery, robbery, public school snobbery

It ill behoved the men who strove to mock what drove Matthew Grove

To Offices of State more wholly

Fitting to his grand demeanour,

Did this red son of Aberdeen, A

Worshipper in Scotland's Kirk,

(Turned Church of England's knighted berk)

Rise up. Thus Grove rose from work so lowly

As to become the Secretary for

Home Affairs, where at his escritoire

He drafted the Bill that gave him power

To continue in his own tradition

And close the borders, save extradition

Of those least likely to work in Britain; the Poor.

All rubbery, robbery, public school snobbery

It ill behoved the men who strove to mock what drove Sir Matthew Grove

Once more rose he to the Chancellor's desk.

His budgets outlawed those poor as a mouse,

Swept through with the full support of the House,

Legislating that only men of means,

Could make claim to be subjects of the Queen

Victoria; the beggared deemed grotesque.

He'd saved the nation from education;

Made one-way only the nation's borders,

He'd rewrote the bankers' Standing Orders,

Built England for the few not the many;

Gave chance of gain to those with plenty.

The House of Lords was his elevation.

All rubbery, robbery, public school snobbery

It ill behoves the men who strove to mock what drove Lord Sir Matthew Grove

All manner of retrogressive votage

Became his personal goal in ermine;

Against modernity he determined

To act. Whenever it raised its youthful head

He'd seek to smash it back; stop its spread -

Ever more resolutely still in dotage,

Which came quicker than one could foretell

And left the lately great politician

At the mercy of his own physician

Who, quite appalled at all Groves's doings

Treated him with peculiar brewings

And sent his Lordship down to burn in hell.

All rubbery, robbery, public school snobbery

It ill behoved the men who strove to mock what drove to devil's stove that Matthew Grove

Geoffrey Meacle Twyford - 14th March 1894

Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.