GoodGNUs

What can I say? Speaking twice, on two different topics, in a week where I had major deadlines on three other projects is an unfounded faith in my time and project management skills bordering on wreckless! :^)

Somehow I survived, delivering a talk on the Monday session at Manchester’s Madlab, on the madness of Fractional Reserve Banking (though not having time to more than mention the alternatives), and on the Thursday, in Liverpool, on City of Abundance: Hacking the urban landscape for food.

Reviews of the Liverpool event are at:

http://www.mcqn.net/mcfilter/archives/liverpool/ignite_liverpool.html

http://bulletinthemessenger.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/ignite-liverpool-2010/

http://www.ldpcreative.co.uk/2010/03/ignite-liverpool-is-showcase-f.html

Ian Forrester’s recording of the Manchester event is up at:

http://cubicgarden.blip.tv/

Although not all of the talk videos seem to have uploaded correctly. As always with these events, there were a number of great talks - so I’m not singling out any!

It’s Good to Talk

Chief outcome? To be reminded what a great format the 20:20 or pecha kucha is. Distill a subject about which you’re passionate about to 20 slides, and talk for just 15 or 20 seconds on each. Not just a vehicle suited to the attention-deficient, but a challenge to the audience.

After all, it’s easy to switch off in a 40 minute talk and remember nothing afterwards, but five minutes done just right will push key points into your brain and leave you thinking about the subject days afterwards.

Could be a great marketing tool - sponsor a conference, and only demand five minutes’ attention in return. Just make sure that you follow up with a page of links and info somewhere memorable online, or take-away printed materials, for those hooked by your passion.

I’ll write up Ignite week more fully after the Liverpool event on Thursday night, but as Ian Forrester has put up a video of my talk on Re-Inventing Money at Monday’s Manchester event I’m embedding it below:

Thanks to Ian for filming the whole night - see the other talks at http://cubicgarden.blip.tv/

I’m travelling back from the Connecting 2.0 Communities event held this afternoon and evening at Madlab, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. An MDDA-sponsored event to give technical and social media advice to community groups. I was arm-twisted into giving a short talk, so rapidly prepared an item on Social Media tactics and strategy culled from our 3hour course.

Firefighting IT problems? Get some IT strategy in your Org!

However the first speaker, Matt Haworth, did such a great job on exactly the same subject, with the wonderful local example of Manchester’s  Lesbian & Gay Foundation’s viral response to US hate adverts, that I mentally ripped up my improvised speech, and settled on the least interesting topic under the sun: IT Strategy. IT Happens, I told the unfortunate audience, it drops from the sky as meteorites of randomly-funded PCs, and volunteer-coded websites, and leaves organisations busy fighting fires as IT fails to do what it should, instead of concentrating on delivering the front-line services for which they have so much enthusiasm.

So, what’s to be done? Organisations with chronic IT problems tend to be those which don’t just lack an IT strategy, but often don’t really realise how essential it is to any modern organisation. These groups usually lack IT expertise not just in staff and volunteers, which is understandable, but in their boards of governance, too. In an age when hardware and software is effectively free, IT funding should first go into bringing in outside help to assess an organisation, and help to draught its strategy; something that would pay for itself in a very short time.

Back in my M6-IT days (and before that at BVSC’s MOST project) we ran courses on IT strategy for decision makers in Voluntary Sector groups. In both cases we relied on carrot and stick from partner organisations to bring in attendees who most needed the courses. What can be done? I’d love to hear ideas for reaching groups (other than springing them on an unsuspecting audience like today ;), otherwise third sector groups will continue to fight fires, instead of using IT to grow and support their organisations.

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

Wonderful to be spending a bit more time at horticulture and permaculture again - both with looking at the IT systems for Gaia University and, more practically, getting back into a bit of Edible Landscaping work. Yesterday I gave a talk on Edible Landscaping at Soutport Flower Show. It’s adapted from the 3 hour Edible Landscaping course I ran at HDRA in the mid-90s, and as I feel much useful content is omitted to makethe talk, I’m putting links to useful sites and books below (and in the comments) over the next few days.

The talk will also run today at 2.30pm (come along at 1pm to hear David Bellamy!), and tomorrow at 11.30am.

Books

Plants for a Future: Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier World

Creative Vegetable Gardening Joy Larkcom

Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists and Vacant-lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today. by Chris Carlsson

Websites

Heritage Seed Library - old & endangered varieties of vegetable seed

Plants for a Future - practical experiences with 7000 different useful & edible plants growing in the UK

As more of my GTD-based system displaces my natural chaotic style, and leaves me relaxed & more on top of work, I’ve been trying to distill this sytem into a workshop for people busy with social action, and contributing to the commons, yet not as effective as they could be with the right system of organisation.

Buzzword bingo

One problem with taking systems traditionally favoured by vice-presidents of multinational companies is that activists are very wary of anything that smacks of management bull***t. In a directly-delivered workshop humour can be used to work past this, to the useful elements of systems like GTD. For example, buzzword bingo can be played, giving prizes to the first one to collect all the management-speak.

But when I attempted to turn the course into a poster, I found myself feeling very apologetic about the whole thing, and pushing the humour too strongly.

In the FOSS spirit of release early, release often, I attach the poster here - looking for useful criticism. E.g.:

• Does it get its message across?
• Does the humour (inc. crappy graphics) kill it?
• Is it meaningless - i.e. it really needs the workshop to explain it, and a poster isn’t an appropriate format?

This week has been one of those rushed weeks, lots of little things, and very little project work advanced significantly. Nothing to write about, in fact. But last week I attended four events, and had several interesting meetings. I’m never going to get around to reviewing all of them properly so here’s a brief summary:

Monday 16 March 2009

PRActical Design for Social Action: PraDSA’s final event I’ve already mentioned. Please go to the website to read up a little on this project. I introduced the 20:20 concept - 20 slides each put up for 20 seconds. A powerful tool for presenting ideas in bite-sized chunks to audiences of mixed levels of interest in the topic.
It’s a popular format in geek circles - often used at GeekUp meetings, and there were 18 given at O’Reilly’s Ignite-UK North in Leeds a few weeks ago. nevertheless it has yet to gain much traction in academia.
A bonus of the day was, in the company of Andy Dearden, getting to go out for a beer and a meal with Doug Schuler, the author of the inspiring Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution

Tuesday 17 March 2009

Design Patterns for Civic Empowerment, at the London Knowledge Lab
Part of the Planet (Pattern Language for Networking) effort, and linked to the previous day’s PraDSA event. Using storytelling we had a chance to work through a problem, then use patterns from Doug Schuler’s above-mentioned book to apply design patterns for social action. Some pictures here.

At lunchtime I gave an impromptu tutorial on Twitter, other social media, and how to link it up, to Ann from the TUC. Some very interesting people there, including Sabine McNeill of the Forum for Stable Currencies.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

The first of my Small Steps to Sustainability events. 20 people talking about their experience of Open Knowledge / Open Access / Open Source & Free Software. The art gallery location produced an art gallery crowd, which gave great examples of peer-to-peer mentoring, but we must think about how to get a wider community through the door for the other events.

Thursday 19 March 2009

Manchester, and DEP’s Social Enterprise network event at Innospace (and an unfortunate clash with IT innovations in the Community in Shrewsbury - which would have been a great chance to catch up with contacts from the MOST Project’s Shropshire donations). An interesting group of social entrepreneurs, all with an interest in education, working through creative collaboration exercises and having opinions sought for the NWDA’s North West Regional Strategy

Next a quick meeting to discuss practicalities behind efforts to produce Free Software for Credit Unions. A growing field, badly served by current offerings.

Not much time for work, except on rail journeys, meaning the next week was a constant round of catching up. Time to think about out-sourcing something, perhaps?

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 ;-)