Barriers to Digital Engagement

Whilst on holiday in Melbourne, i managed to spend 45 minutes or so with Despina Babbage from DIIRD (Depart for Innovation, Industry and Regional Development). We had an interesting conversation about digital engagement, social media, web 2.0 and Melbourne as a place to live. Afterwards my thoughts turned to the same question that has been bugging me for some time now.

Can we really do Digital Engagement, or will it only ever be tokenistic?

I see a kind of resistance in the area of digital engagement that doesn’t seem to be there with general communications and i believe that is because the communication professionals who are now embracing such tools are not be followed in the same way as the professionals who deal with public opinion and policy creation.

The issues as i see them are:

Can we really provide a platform for electronic engagement which ensures that real people can contribute, participate and debate real issues in online spaces that are formally recognised as engagement spaces by either government or local councils?

And

How can we facilitate, nurture and foster such spaces whilst avoiding council ownership and maintaining the fluid and social nature of online spaces?

I am not arguing that people are not capable of engaging in such spaces, or even want to engage in such spaces with us, in fact there are a good number of examples in my own council (youth participation, libraries etc) where social networking sites have broadened the reach and and scope of participation. BUT when you talk about what engagement really is and what democracy is all about, we need to ensure we truly understand how representative democracy and participative democracy can unite to provide a REAL agenda of digital engagement.

Also how do people intend on evaluating such engagement activity and manage the process of receiving multi channel responses, within current skills sets. Has anyone or any council embarked on a training and development programme around this activity?

I fear that digital engagement is less about technology and more about skills, trust, faith, competencies and need i say it but REAL LEADERSHIP.

What i do see is that the way to reach people is not directly broadcasting from the top of an organisation but to use the existing connections that real people may have with services and develop new channels into those avenues to maximise and to leverage the opportunities of social media tools for digital engagement.

Digital Engagement for me at least is about connecting people with services through new technologies and enabling them to contribute to service improvements and decisions – this can happen now and must be encouraged at every opportunity and where practical.

This must be supported with an agenda of business change which addresses the culture and skills required to move it to a more mainstream environment.

For the wider and more strategic issues of engagement, i’ll wait for the director of digital engagement to provide some steer.

Daddy Day

A short round-up of the day……The plan for a BBQ was postponed due to rain, but that didn’t stop us enjoying the day. We made a scarecrow for our allotment to protect our sweetcorn, it is only a small scarecrow and is wearing a pair of Ewan’s old jeans and an even older waterproof jacket, don’t want him to get too wet!!

Being father’s day I received some excellent drawings from Ewan who had even managed to write “To Daddy, Love Ewan” in the father’s day card he made me. Finley painted lots of cats on the front of his card, not sure of the relationship to father’s day but still it looked great.

Sharon and i were dreaming about Australia earlier and i started to go a bit over the top…I was thinking about what things could be like if we had won some money on the lottery. I would like a large bit of land that had a apple orchard, so i could make cider, a vineyard for wine, large allotment plot, tree house for kids and a huge garage/workshop for the campervan and doing odds and sods. Sharon wanted a garden nursery space and a shed for making pottery… It was a nice thought, however unlikely…..

Well my only thought for today is, if you think about something hard enough do you end up getting it or driving it further away?

Evening Sun

Today has been a very relaxing day, spent most of it with the kids and Sharon, just doing stuff and playing.

I am now sat with the dog (Charm) with the evening sun just chilling and reflecting on the whole week.

Last weekend i was planning the trip to Coventry which i was looking forward to as i had heard from a colleague Tim Davies that the chair/facilitator for the day Ewan Mcintosh was inspiring and was great at opening eyes around web 2 and social media. So my expectation was quite high considering most of the time my expectation is quite low for any event i go to as they tend to tell me what i already know. But I was not let down, i found myself inspired and i actually learnt new things which was great and i now find myself a week later with a Twitter account and writing a blog about, well just about anything.

Whilst i enjoy, what seems like the last bit of sunshine before the rain comes, to be honest i don’t mind as the garden needs it and as Billy Connolly once said “there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes“. I find myself thinking back to when i was in a band (Redi).

I played the guitar (rhythm not lead), not great but with the rest of the band we collectively sounded good, well i thought so. We wrote a song called Evening Sun and it was one of my favourites and sat here right now i can actually remember the first timed we played it at a gig and this is the type of night that for me it was dedicated to….

The reason i am no longer in the band is that when we had our second child, we started to think about what our next goals would be. We contemplated a number of things, working and paying off the mortgage, studying, or emigrating. After some time we both felt very passionate about emigrating. There was only really one location for us although we had also considered Ireland as we had been there a number of times and just found it a wonderful place to be. But our eventual choice was Australia.

Now i have never been to Oz but was already reading every book i could get my hand on, visiting websites about all types of places and checking out property prices and dreaming about great locations close to excellent surfing beaches. Within 4 weeks of deciding we also realised that studying was also something we should do between now and when we hope to go (2-3 years) depending on application timetables.

But that meant that the band would become very difficult to manage alongside the additional study, so made the very difficult decision to quit, it was even harder than it should have been because we had just recorded our first album and were all positive about what could happen. But there were also a number of other issues which i am not going to go into detail about which also caused friction between us all and also distracted our attentions from making the most out of what we had just achieved. But that is now a different time and a different place.

Anyway, the Australia choice starting gaining momentum and we were using the web to decide on a likely destination when we “hopefully” emigrate. It was also coincidence that on the BBC at that time they were showing a programme called “Wanted Down Under” where they sent families from the UK to Oz for a week to make a final choice about whether or not they would make the decision to emigrate, to say i was hooked on all things Australian was an under statement.

We first looked at the surrounding areas of Sydney, but found house prices and job opportunities, all be it a few years in advance off putting, so we then started to focus on Melbourne and its surrounding areas. We then found a superb place, which i decided to even take a virtual tour in google earth, a place called Geelong. It is the state of Victoria’s 2nd largest city and is also very close to the Great Ocean Road and the famous surfing location of Bells Beach and surf coast.

So whilst i sit here chilling and reflecting on what has happened, my mind ponders the future and all the opportunities that could bring.

Rebirth

The difficulty i guess in writing a blog is knowing what not to write, but as i said i will use this as a opportunity to share my thoughts and stuff.

So on we go – We own a 1972 Westfalia VW Campervan (called Tidgy) and he is a pride and joy, but for the last 4 years it has been sat in a garage partly restored, well to be honest in a very rusty state.

We bought it before we got married (to sharon) and we paid for it with our savings for our wedding. The plan once we bought it was to honeymoon around Europe for 6 weeks over the summer and see what happens. We ended up only doing France and then getting an 18 hour ferry to Ireland.

I include a picture of what he looked like before we sent him for restoration:

But last weekend it came home, not complete but it came home none the less. We have been getting help this week on the jobs that need finishing: engine, brakes plus some basic internal cosmetic stuff. But it will soon be back on the road.

Now we have 2 children (Ewan and Finley) and they have never experienced any time in Tidgy, but on Sunday we spent nearly 8 hours cleaning him, eating a small picnic in him and the boys played with their trains in him. It was such a joyful experience to see our children being able to have fun in Tidgy (Although he was parked on our Driveway!!)

The interesting thing about all of this is that the company who we had paid money too, went bust, so we were almost for a long period of time facing the possibility of losing him to the scrap yard, the money which was significant but not as important was also lost! But to cut a long story short, we managed to negotiate some additional work to be done at no cost…..

Now many friends have wondered why we bothered waiting and have often said “why don’t you buy a new van” “why is it taking so long”. Frankly even when we told them the whole story they still didn’t understand.

We have been through a great deal of stress trying to get to this point where he can come home, i was never going to give up hope that he would be able to come back. Tidgy is like our 3rd child, the sentimental cost is incalculable. I am reminded of a certain credit card advert. Cost of a new van £8000+, Cost of Tidgy to us PRICELESS

This is a picture of how he looks now without his new protective raincoat, we are very pleased with what we have and are grateful that he didn’t end up on teh scrap yard like many other customers vans.

We are even planning on taken him to Australia (if we can emigrate in the next few years – more on this in future thoughts) so he will face a better climate and rust will be a thing of the past

Now i guess my question for today is can you ever really quantify sentimental value?

I’m sure insurance companies will have a view, but in our experience losing Tidgy would be like losing a member of our family.