SCIP

I'm planning some workshops for a local community group that wants a website. Rather than selling them a website they've asked for some training in how to build and run their own. Now we have to work out what to teach them. Here's an update on progress.

I'm working with Libby Davy for the first time - a local social media person who crossed my path in various ways and seemed like a good choice when the person I've worked with before on web design sessions said she was a bit too busy. Turns out she's a great choice: we're both full of ideas, and have complimentary skills and experience, so it's been a very creative and enjoyable early process.

We'll be working with a neighbourhood group in Brighton - a resident's association with no staff, supported by a community development worker who has been the link to SCIP until now. They have a Council grant to fund this - £1000 - and we'll be working in a swanky new library building on an estate on the edge of town [which shall remain nameless as I'm not working with them yet].

Now Libby and I are planning the sessions in detail, as we have the beginnings of a timetable, with two sessions planned in November to be followed by four or five sessions in Jan/Feb/March. Yesterday we had a great time mapping out topics we want to cover, so here's my version of what we've got in our long list [in no particular order]:

• how to use wordpress.com [our chosen software solution]
• passwords, permissions, getting a webmail account
  
• storytelling skills
  
• teamwork/working with others/collaborative skills
• getting to know the internet - trends, demystifying, searching, etc
• why do it? how can a website help a community association
• roles and responsibilities of a community web site team
• planning: aims, milestones, processes, resources
• planning your site: what it has on it - page structure
• planning your site: what it looks like - pictures, colours, fonts, logos
  
• promoting your site
• working with pictures
• working with sound
• a guided tour of someone else's community website and how they run it
  
• working with video
• building links with others/community networking
• how to get other people involved
  

I've got some really good stuff via the UK Circuit Riders email discussion forum and another regional ICT Champ who has run wordpress training, but none of it encompasses such as broad set of training outcomes. So Libby and I need to work out how to teach that lot in six two hour sessions and we're now working on lesson plans, course outline and handouts.

More soon.

Looking for inspiration for your presentations? Now you can check out the world's best presentations at www.Slideshare.net who have announced the results of the Best presentations Contest 2008. The winning entry is called Thirst [see below] does an excellent job of explaining the impending global crisis in water resources.

Slideshare is an excellent website that hosts your presentations for free. It's a useful tool for sharing presentations before and after events, and it's also a good place to look for ideas when planning your own presentations.

Take a look and see what you think of the winners. You'll see how they all use strong graphics, and it's also interesting to note that many of the slide shows selected relate to not for profit activities and campaigning. Perhaps they're easier to judge than the typical sales-oriented business presentation?

Results of the World's Best Presentation Contest 2008 - SlideShare

Google is about to launch a new open source web browser. Read about what it does - and why - by reading their comic book style story, and then sit back and see whether the might of Google can dislodge the monster that is Internet Explorer.

Google Chrome

A Facebook group has been started by a campaign in Brighton that wants to close down Starbucks newest coffee shop in the city. As well as rejecting the corporate giant in favour of the numerous small independent coffee shops the group is also raising awareness of the fact that Starbucks is choosing to ignore the fact that it doesn't have planning permission to be there.

This is one of many campaigns being developed through new social networking sites, but it remains to be seen whether it can make a difference when faced with an intractable corporation. It's also worth noting that facebook funds itself through advertising - and when I visited it was a credit card company paying for my eyeballs to cross its path.

Facebook | Stop Starbucks from Opening on St James Street

Recent years have seen many voluntary and community sector infrastructure bodies spend five figure sums on database projects. Some have been successful, others have not.  The flood of such projects is now slowing to trickle, which may explain why one of the biggest suppliers has pulled out the market, leaving its customers across the UK without support for their products.

Such projects are always complex, especially when the client has little experience of how to get what they need. The databases being commissioned are shared information systems, helping to promote better co-working between agencies in a local area. They may also be linked to shared website systems, which include the ability for member organisations to build and manage their own sites.

I'd estimate that at least £1m has been spent in the UK on similar products in the space of three years, and one of the most popular suppliers has been Uniservity.

Not only did they have a good product and recruited staff with experience of the sector, they came with an endorsement from NAVCA, the lead body for CVS Chief Officers in the UK. Now they've pulled out of the market, and suggested that their customers switch to other suppliers for product development and support.

Informal research suggests Uniservity has a reasonable share of the market, so this will be a big problem for lots of people who thought they were investing in better information systems for the long term. NAVCA's decision to give them its blessing could also be seen as a dent in the reputation of the sector.

Below is a message from the NAVCA Chief Officer which explains its position. It's good to see someone so senior saying sorry, and let's hope others who backed Uniservity - and other suppliers - will be just as candid about the perils of their national clout skewing the market.

Procurement and investment
On the other hand this is a complex issue that deserves ongoing attention, well beyond a review of NAVCA's relationships with suppliers.

From the supplier side Uniservity certainly seemed to be a credible option. I assume that there are financial reasons to withdraw from a market in which they are a leading player, which perhaps reflects a lack of ongoing income from their initial sales. There are very few new clients beyond the Consortia which had ChangeUp funding for these projects, and few of them will have budgeted for spend beyond years one or two.

I'd suggest Uniservity's withdrawal is a symptom of bigger problems on the client side. These include unrealistic funding deadlines, lack of focus in the face of a blizzard of "urgent" issues, and the shortcomings of the procurement and project management expertise at a local level?

I have also been surprised at how few people spending the money have spoken to one another either before, during or after the procurement process - and there are suggestions of large discrepancies between what was paid for similar products.

Leaving aside whether the money would have better spent on projects other than databases or websites, this is a very common problem when budgets do not follow through the implementation process. Even if implemented perfectly first time [ha ha] all databases and websites need to grow and change as they are used, which means more money in years three and beyond.

The current problems also shows how valuable independent advice and support is for the sector - and how carefully that independence needs to be patrolled at national, regional and local levels.

What next?
The network of regional ICT Champions is being asked to help review the situation and support organisations affected by Uniservity's decision. I hope we can look beyond Uniservity's clients to all similar projects and how they're progressing.

We can help quantify the size and nature of the problem, share best practise, create a collective voice with the remaining suppliers, encourage peer support amongst people with the same issues and identify key factors that make such projects a success.

Amongst the support available is a popular workshop I delivered in February about how to choose a database, as well as the wealth of guidance about choosing and using databases in the ICT Hub Knowledgebase. I'm sure we can also come up with more help specific to the ongoing implementation of these complex systems, perhaps involving volunteer support through IT4Communities.

Expect to see more on this over the coming year...

= = = =

Dear Chief Officers

I gather from a recent email conversation with Steve Place, Chief Executive at Dorset Community Action, that support from Uniservity is becoming more and more difficult to obtain.

NAVCA's relationship with Uniservity over the past four years was discussed at the recent Trustee Board meeting in the context of new "guidelines for ethical business development" agreed by Trustees.

I would like to offer my personal apology for the way Uniservity turned out. I was responsible for the early discussions with Uniservity and for the subsequent "partnership" with NAVCA.

At the time of the early discussions Uniservity was highly recommended to NAVCA by two members in the North West. They had both bought the Uniservity database product and were very pleased with its implementation. In presentations to NAVCA Uniservity representatives were convincing - they had a real grasp of the needs of NAVCA members and seemed committed to developing and sustaining the product.

Hindsight is always a great thing as we know. However, it is fair to say that I should have been more circumspect about the Uniservity offer. It was a small company with a limited track record outside the NAVCA members in the North West.

It has turned out badly for too many NAVCA members. The learning we have taken from this sorry story is that we will not enter into a partnership of this sort again with a database supplier.

Good wishes

Kevin
______________________________

Kevin Curley       
Chief Executive
NAVCA (National Association for Voluntary and Community Action)
The Tower
2 Furnival Square
Sheffield S1 4QL   

Jill Ferguson at Hastings Voluntary Action [HVA] has posted a useful reminder that grant funding from Government remains a vital part of the funding mix at a local level. She welcomes a recognition of the role of grassroots activity at a neighbourhood level but fears that the emphasis on contracting services and tendering for funds will undermine funding for work which is best delivered on a small, very local scale.

This echoes a campaign being led by NAVCA called Sustaining Grants - why local grant aid is vital for a healthy voluntary and community sector and thriving local communities.

Jill's article can be found on HVA's website: HVA - paper_030

More details of the NAVCA Campaign can be found on its site http://www.navca.org.uk/publications/sustaininggrants/

I love email and I get loads of it every day. I filter it off into various folders and try very hard to only read messages that require an action - and leave the rest until I have set aside 10 minutes or so for catching up. And now I love SendMeRSS, for sending RSS feeds sent straight to my email in-tray, giving me all sorts of news and updates as they're added to the web.

I love mailing lists and discussion forums because I can dip into specialist networks and keep track of trends and ideas, just by running through a folder full of emails. I also love having email on my Blackberry because I can ignore stuff as it comes into my in-tray on my computer at work, but then catch up later [usually as I put the kids to bed].

I also love pootling around websites but find that time goes very quickly and I always end up promising to go back to something - and then never do. So I've signed up to a load of RSS feeds, that mean I can see the latest stories as they're added to a website. The RSS Feed Reader built into my browser [Flock] is fine, and you can also get RSS or News Readers as standalone applications. But I want all the information I can get coming into my one place  - and in my case it's my email in-tray.

Some websites offer an email subscription, so you can receive news regularly. But many sites don't have this facility, which means you  need to check your RSS Reader or go off surfing on the off chance that something's been added.

SendMeRSS lets me sign up to receive emails every time a website is changed. So I can keep track of any page that has an RSS feed [which is a lot of them these days] and then receive an email containing the story as it is added.

There are other tools like this out there - www.rssfwd.com and FeedMailer.net amongst them - but this has worked the best so far. I get an account lsting my feeds and they come through nice and promptly. Oh, and it's free...

Send RSS feeds to your email | Home

Drupal is a powerful open source tool for creating websites that can be managed by people without a high degree of technical skills. It is a very popular tool with a large community of users, and it is free.

Many people around the world use Drupal to set up sites for not for profit organisation - we've been using at SCIP for several years, including our own site at www.scip.org.uk. The initial set up stage still requires a specialist web developer, but once it's in place it can offer very powerful features to anyone with basic keyboard and mouse skills.

These sites are becoming increasingly popular for small and medium sized community organisations, alongside the growth of personal sites such as Blogger. You can change content quickly and easily, add photographs and useful links to other sites, add news stories and tidy up loose ends, such as when staff or job titles change.

Drupal has developed thanks to the commitment and collaboration of a wide range of people across the world. This conference in Coventry in late August is for web developrs with a specific interest in creating sites for the voluntary sector. It's just £15 and is being organised by Illuminate ICT.

Our Drupal Conference | www.illuminateict.org.uk