GoodGNUs

FeedingManchester #3

Just back from Feeding Manchester #3, an attempt to co-ordinate everyone in the business of sustainable food production in the city, and keep the city council and its ambitious plans for local food on track. Although I do a bit of sustainable and community IT in Hulme, and social media training in the Northern Quarter and elsewhere, I was really there on behalf of Congleton Sustainability Group and of Sandbach Re-Imagined, to see what could be learnt.

And while yes, there was a lot to be learnt (which you’re probably best finding - as it appears over the next few days - on the Kindling Trust website), and I was able to offer some points (despite my rural perspective ;)  - the best thing I heard today has to be comments from Lydia of Sustainable Levenshulme Underground Gardeners, that many of these local efforts to tidy up one’s patch and grow food there for the community are oppositional, and “kind of naughty”, and the fun can go when the authorities are involved, as it’s no longer “fun and a bit deviant”.

If you’re based in Manchester, and concerned with local food, you might like to join in before Feeding Manchester #4 in the summer but, wherever you are, stay naughty, and happy St Valentine’s Day ;-)

It's behind you - robot fun at #bcMan2

This weekend saw the 2nd BarCamp Manchester - an unconference that carries on through the night. Like all unconferences, attendance implies participation, and therefore giving a talk. I gave three.

The first, on permaculture, sustainability, & forest gardens, was quite poorly attended - not something one worries about in general at barcamps, as there’s so much going on it’s impossible to be everywhere. However it did lead to some discussions late into the night on the disconnect between the techie community and those working for a more sustainable future (something we tried to address with #SmallSteps, & will return to in the future). Sorry, NO SLIDES, but plenty of info online.

My session with Paul Robinson of Vagueware on collaboration, co-working & virtual boards, entitled Profitable Collaboration for Freelancers, brought together freelancers eager to learn more about co-working, and to build better businesses through smart collaboration rather than taking on more employees. This is something the local tech sector really gets, but those paid by the government to support small businesses don’t seem to understand at all. It also made me realise I should probably get round to joining Fly-the-Coop.

Saturday night’s revels (which didn’t stop at all during the 6 hours I slept) meant Sunday morning started fairly quietly, but still brought a number of people to my third session, on organisation “for those who are really bad at it”. In this I count myself, which is why I have developed systems to allow for that, as well as adopting GTD. Conversations between two of the participants on this were still going on when I left the event an hour later.

Again, no slides, but this poster is more than tangentially related. Also, you can:
buy David Allen’s GTD book [affiliate Amazon link].

"Sleep is ones & zeroes"

Far better than running sessions is going to others’ talks, and hearing about things about which people are really passionate and knowledgable. Also the talks which lead to great discussions, leading you to new areas of familiar topics. Even better, the conversations in the bars & corridors, as BarCamp brings together 200 great people with so much to say.

There’s far to much to list the highlights, so I’ll just mention the very first session I went to on Saturday morning: the Surrealist writing exercise. This involved writing nouns (techie & abstract) & their meanings, then swapping them round with often startling results.

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End of the first day: catching up on micro-blogging [CC by-nc-sa image from yajamesu

There’s been a lot of coverage of the death of local papers, but does this have to be the end of local reporting? Recently hyperlocal blogs have arisen everywhere from villages to inner-city postcodes to plug the gaps in local coverage.

Sticky notes on the white board describe the session you'd like. Similar sessions are grouped together & given a room & timeslot. Unconference sorted :-)

These aren’t just replacements for local freesheets, but use social media (blogs, & micro-blogs like Twitter) to harness the power of community reporting. Refrigerators dumped on the pavement, dog mess, lack of facilities, secret council decisions - all are aired in public & councils are having to take action. Not all councils are happy about this grassroots-driven transparency, & many are not giving hyperlocal blogs the same access as print journalists.

Against this background comes Talk About Local, an Unconference held last Saturday in Stoke-on-Trent that brought together 88 community bloggers & other hyperlocal activists.

An unconference is built on coffee-break networking

In informal sessions participants shared lessons learned - such as using short interviews & live cameras to get blog posts from those who had much to say but, often thanks to our lamentable education system, were unable to articulate it at the keyboard.
One thread I noted was how online activity drove more meeting & co-operation in the real world, and many successful projects combined these with drop-in centres giving access to computers and training in social media.
I attended not with my community training hat on, but as someone looking at launching a local site this autumn, & went away inspired, and carrying several pages of tips, contacts, & practical suggestions. Best thing about the event? The wonderful diversity of people there - not self-identified social media gurus, but people dedicated to improving their communities by linking up local people and giving them a platform.
Thanks to Will, Nicky, Clare & Mike for organising such a serendipitous event - despite the hiccough with the vegan food, and the train problems, I got so much from the day that I’m still digesting my notes. Watch out for more activity from Talk About Local. If you missed the event but want to get involved, join the mailing list.
Want to see some of these great community blogs? They’re linked from the social bookmarks of the ‘tal09 event (which saves me the invidious task of choosing which to single out). Videos are listed on this YouTube playlist.

Most days I’m either sat at the keyboard, or I’m out and about and meet a handful of people. Few enough that I can usually remember who they are, as I file away business cards & write short follow-up e-mails the next day. Some days are different.

At networking events (OpenCoffee, Social Enterprise events,Unconferences, etc.) you can easily talk to a dozen interesting people in a morning, or twice that in a day, with whom you find a common interest, and think you may be collaboratig with at some point. How do you keep track of these conversations until you have a chance to follow up? How do they?

Tick the Boxes

Time for a bit of DIY. I printed off a form with tick boxes for all the likely areas of conversation (relating to projects with which I’m involved), and for follow-up action or contact. After a conversation you add the contact’s name, & tick the relevant boxes, as well as making a copy and handing it out to them.

Here’s one I did for the Ubuntu Launch party last month, at BBC Manchester:

Aide Memoire    Fri 24 April 2009

Tonight, at the Ubuntu Jaunty Release party at BBC Manchester,
I talked to @RichardSmedley about:

• Third Sector IT
• Cloud computing
• Hackspace NorthWest
• “Small Steps to Sustainability”
• Permaculture
• Co-working
• Credit Unions
• A new website
• Consultancy work

__________________

I will be:

• Commenting on http://goodGNUs.org/
• e-mailing rs@m6-it.org
• phoning +44 (0)77 94 56 07 14
• following twitter.com/RichardSmedley
• following Identica.com/RichardSmedley
• connecting to http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsmedley

Notes

So, there you go. A bit Heath-Robinson? It’s a simple, low-tech solution to an organisational problem. If it works for you, please feel free to copy and pass on. If you think it’s a daft idea, feel free to laugh, laughter is healthy :-)

This morning saw the re-launch of Manchester Open Coffee, now pencilled in for the final Thursday of every month, in the café at Urbis.
After some confusion with a b2b event for Co-op Finance sharing the same space (grey men in grey suits), we all had a topic to break the ice.

The Urbis WLAN was down, so everyone concentrated on networking. No bad thing.

The coffee crowd

I met a really great crowd, including Zulf Choudhary, doing things with social banking that parallel my next project (more on this at a later date); Hwa Young Jung & Dave Mee of TANDOT; Ian Moss of Fly-the-Coop; & Asa Calow of ensembli. Ended up staying long after the official finish.
Talk ranged from Ruby internals & the Seaside web framework, through cloud computing, to Low Carbon Computing, and my attempts to bring a hackspace to the North West (more on that in tomorrow’s post).
Lots of other interesting people - sorry not to mention you all by name. Well done to everyone behind this - Manchester obviously needed #OpenCoffee back.

FACT Gallery’s Climate for Change exhibition runs from 13 March - 31 May, 2009, and explores “how humans can be invested in the change needed to sustain civilization and examining the multiple crises affecting the world: ecological, financial, food, housing. Is society itself becoming unsustainable?”

The idea is to involve local communities, projects, people, and make links, and I’m trying to bring some of the themes of sustainability - particularly where it links up with technology - together in a series of 11 café events.

Small Steps to Sustainability poses the question “Can technology save the world?”, and looks for answers - in the face of crisis - in a more connected world

One step at a time

Each week (on the non-alliterative “Sustainability Wednesday”, at 6pm) we’ll meet in Gallery 1 with beer or coffee. A four minute presentation (in the 20:20 style) introduces the 11 themes, and the rest of the hour is open discussion around that weeks theme.

It’s called Small Steps… as it’s about both small steps we can take to sustainability, and about stepping through the themes to see how all of these things link up in different ways.

What I’d like to do is bring in local groups, individuals, and businesses, involved with social enterprise, sustainability, and the themes mentioned each week, to contribute. Particularly those already a part of Climate for Change.

Social Media

I’ll put up more detail on the workshop (including the slides) next week. At this stage I want to gauge interest in joining in: I’m sure other people have far more ideas to share than I do, so please get involved. Either e-mail me, or talk about it on Twitter (or Identi.ca) - please tag your posts #smallsteps.

Earlier today I spoke to Andy Dearden about my contributions to the forthcoming PRADSA (Practical Design for Social Action) event, New Understandings, New Communities, New Practices, on 16 March, at NAVCA in London.

Little GTD

I’m doing a poster (if I can get one out on time), but it was the workshop that needed discussion, as I have two I’m developing that I wanted to try out. Option one is a workshop idea that I’ve had brewing for a while: “Keeping the Activist active: Organisation for hopeless procrastinators, and people who can’t see their desks”. This stems from my re-discovered passion for all things GTD and zero inbox, as well as the de-cluttering ideas that feature so prominently in Tim Ferriss’ works.

The idea is how to declutter your mind, and concentrate on Getting Things Done using various simple techniques. Specific tools are mentioned, but these will be personal preferences for most people, so the emphasis is on techniques and where to go for more information and help with such ways of working.

Keeping active?

The need for such a workshop? I’ve noted that I’m not the only activist who suffers from perennial procrastination, accumulating to-do piles, and information overload. I’ve been working hard on dealing with this over recent months and:

1. Want to share what I’ve learned
2. Want to gain from others’ productivity tips that may be shared in workshops

Meanwhile I note the continuing rise of GTD on mostly word-of-mouth, and take that as some confirmation that it really works for a lot of people.

And what works enables us to segué seemlessly to the other option, based on my forthcoming Social Cafe, Small Steps to Sustainability, at FACT’s Climate for Change exhibition. This uses the 20:20 format - 20 slides each given 15 or 20 seconds of commentary to introduce a topic without boring to distraction on areas of no interest to the audience. Leeds GeekUp often features two or three 20:20s, and recently O’Reilly’s first Ignite to be held in England was held in Leeds with 18 such talks.

Social Café

I sugested to FACT a “Small Steps to Sustainability” exhibition, highlighting 11 areas linking technology and environmentalism, over the 11 weeks of their Climate for Change exhibition, in an “11:20″ format, and highlighting one area in each week to showcase with other activists. They took the idea and ran with it until it became an after-work Social Café with beer at 6pm on what I non-alliteratively refer to as Sustainability Wednesdays. If you’re in Liverpool come along - more on this nearer the time.

Meanwhile, PRADSA: A workshop slot at New Understandings, New Communities, New Practices, suggested an opportunity to rehearse this workshop and, ideal for PRADSA’s aims, to discuss the 20:20 format, and other technology-driven trends in presentations.

Will talk for beer

So, two workshops in progress, one of which will be developed and delivered throughout spring. The question: does anyone want to book one of them for any third sector events? We also have the ever-eager Speak to a Geek panel looking for opportunities to help at such events, with answers to a volley of IT, web & social media enquiries. Call us ;-)