GoodGNUs

One of the “watercooler conversations” at Talk About Local (see post below) was the legal action taken by Royal Mail to force ErnestMarples.com to take down its extremely useful site converting postcodes to geographical information.

This service being forced down has had a knock-on effect on all of the voluntary-sector projects that use it, like Job Centre Pro Plus and The Straight Choice (”Live Election Leaflet Monitoring”), removing functionality or disabling them entirely.

Have you paid to use that postcode?

Unless Lord Mandelson’s New Labour get the chamce to sell off Royal Mail before the next election, Royal Mail is a publicly-owned company. It may feel it has a duty to maximise revenue by charging huge sums for access to our postcodes (without which it refuses to deliver our letters), but joined up government thinking would suggest thatgiving free access allows web entrpreneurs to build an infrastructure & eco-system around postcode services that could not only lead to paying customers for more sophisticated premium Royal Mail postal code services, but create more wealth in the economy, and hence more taxes to prop up Royal Mail until it gets better (& less over-compensated) management.

At the very least they could make the data available under a freely-licensed arrangement for not-for-profits. Not ideal, but better than throwing solicitors at good citizens. Indeed, so outrageous is Royal Mail’s behaviour that even a Labour government minister is taking them to task for it, then again Tom Watson is an honourable exception amongst politicians, given his understanding of the digital world.

Oh, and why Ernest Marples? After the postmaster general behind postcodes.

And to see where we could be going with publicly-owned data, look across the Atlantic.

Postscript: There’s a petion up at the No. 10 petition site: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Encourage the Royal Mail to offer a free postcode database to non-profit and community websites.” & a Guardian article on the affair. Thanks to Aidan McGuire for pointing out the petition.

Alternatively, route around the problem, and help out at Free The Postcode, the user-genertaed postcode database.

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.