Disruptive Proactivity

In a few weeks, a subset of people get to vote on who might be the next Prime Minster of the country. They’ll need to battle out a general election first, but whoever is Labour leader on 26th Sept is somewhere around 50% likely to be the next PM.

You can still register to vote in this election – it’s only for labour members, so you have to join, which costs about 20 quid (£1 for under 27s). And if you join before around the end of August, you get a say. Yes, I’ve joined temporarily.

My local MP is a relatively useless/harmless libdem; and the local labour PPC is a party sycophant. Previously, that may have been substantially conjecture (certainly according to her supporters it was unsupportable untrue conjecture) – but she’s currently managing Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign – so the chances of Lucy Powell doing what’s in Withington’s interests over those of a Miliband are precisely zero. As a result, there’s little chance that the representation of Withington in the House is going to get much better any time soon; which suggests that it might be useful to engage where possible in other things.

As I have no desire to be a member any longer than necessary, I will be resigning my membership shortly after the result is announced. But, with a chanced to influence that decision, I’ll take it – because would you leave it to the people who want to be members of the labour party to choose the next PM?

If you’re interested in doing the same, and want a resignation reminder, fill in this form and I’ll email you. Although it’ll probably be in the news a bit when it happens, so I’d not worry too much about missing it.

I wonder whether there’s something more fun we could do with youtube…

Since there’s not an opentech blog, I’ll put this here:

What story would you tell about your experience of opentech?
Why did you go (or are going), or what did you get from it?

Post in a comment here, or elsewhere and the trackback should pick it up. Hopefully we’ll get enough for this to be useful…

If you could leave your 2 sentence note here before 15August, we’ll include some in an interview with www.OReillyGMT.eu about OpenTech.

If you read my blog, you’ll probably want to come:

    * Ticket reservations now open - Please Redistribute Freely *

                       Open Tech 2010
                  sponsored by data.gov.uk

        Saturday 11th Septmber - ULU, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY

http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2010/

  Open Tech 2010, from UKUUG and friends,
  Saturday 11th September
  ULU, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY

  Tickets only £5
  Students Free Entry

  Welcome to OpenTech 2010.

  40 talks across 3 tracks over 7 hours, on crowds, earthquakes and
  battlefronts, which hope to challenge, inspire or talk about something that
  makes you want to get involved.  OpenTech 2010 includes earthquakes of the
  metaphorical and physical kind, ForTheWin, enlightenment and the environment,
  and with plenty of time to talk in the bar after sessions which challenge,
  inspire or talk about something that makes you want to help how you can. The
  last two times we have sold out in advance, so you are strongly advised to
  pre-register.

  This year's line up features...
       * Another 500 years of Enlightenment from Bill Thompson
       * Tales from the Battlefront from No2ID
       * For the Win: Game-space and Public Engagement
       * Just Do It: The Documentary by Director Emily James
       * Climate Change: how screwed are we? by AMEE
       * OpenGeoScience: not just earthquakes
       * Keeping the web open - Mozilla Drumbeat
       * 10:10 global from Technical Director Robin Houston
       * Crowdsourcing Data Context from Hadley Beeman
       * Lessons and futures from data.gov.uk
       * Today's Guardian
       * Who's lobbying?
       * and much much more besides

  The full schedule is at

http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2010/

  Brought to you by UKUUG and friends. Sponsored by data.gov.uk

  Tickets are £5, paid for on the door; but you should pre-register yours online at

http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2010/registration

  * Want to help out? *

  OpenTech is organised by volunteers and we are now looking
  for volunteers to help out on the day. In return for free
  early entry and our eternal gratitude, we're in need of a
  few people to show up a bit earlier and help us set the
  venue up, and a few people to help with the audio recordings.

  If you're interested, or have random other questions, email
  us on opentech@ukuug.org

  One thing we're doing this year is giving everyone related
  to OpenTech the chance to post their projects on a page,
  and say what help they need. Offline or on, whether you're
  after tech people or just more helpers, you can ask the
  OpenTech community to help out what matters to you:

http://ukuug.org/opentech/friends

  Final programme may be subject to alteration. OpenTech is a
  not for profit event open to everyone so please help spread
  the word online and offline. Thanks for reading!

  Saturday 11th September- ULU, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY

http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2010/

  When signing up for your tickets online, why not tick the
  box to hear a little more from us, or just send an email to
  opentech-info-subscribe@lists.ukuug.org . Your address will
  only be used to contact you about OpenTech and will not be
  passed onto third parties.

   Saturday 11th September - ULU, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY

http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2010/

   Final programme may be subject to alteration. Thanks for reading!

[this is a braindump, so may not make much sense, but posted to inform various conversations going on]

One of the things coming out of various side-conversations from Young Rewired State, when people are bored on what they’re supposed to be talking about, but need to get distracted for a bit, is what to do for outreach to schools.

Ken Robinson comments that everyone has an interest in education in his famous TED talk. I remember sitting at a previous full-Rewired State and listening to two developers, half my age, talk about their experiences of their school, in between doing work as good as anyone else at the day.

One of the other comments I’ve heard, I think from Cory Doctorow, is that the explosion of online talks means that it should now be getting orders of magnitude harder for the school system to beat ambition out of some kids who aren’t necessarily sure that what they want to do is achievable, and who don’t necessarily have a support framework around them yet.

I said here a while ago that I wondered what would happen when the tools available to university students – the traditional bastions of revolt – start getting used by school kids. But one of the things about University lecturers is that they often have some level of interest in what they’re teaching – since they research it (especially at the end years of degrees/PhD; I don’t mean 101 style intros).

In the context around rewired state, what I’ve been thinking that should exist is some sort of guerilla poster. Which has a few interesting things on, including a website to find out more. A site which encourages kids to engage, learn more about the crazy diversity of what they’re interested in, and basically do an end-run around bits of the school system that are demotivating for certain people at certain times.

This could never be an official project – I’m not entirely sure that the Teacher’s Organisations would be willing to promote a site which included talks on civil disobedience. A group who spend a lot of time reading about Civil Disobedience is not something you necessarily want in your classroom, even if the principles of such topics can be good for a society as a whole. A large part of what TED, Do, and the many other related sites talk about is empowerment and engagement.

All it would need, in the first instance, is a simple site set up to signpost to resources – TED, Do, and a few others, to get new 11 year olds into knowing they exist. Plus a simple poster that they can print 2 copies out of, and put up on a wall for people to see, and let other people find this, without having to already know it exists. It would also have the advantage that it could serve as the base network for things like Young Rewired State; where the biggest problem is having people who are interested find out about it. Without the internet, Rewired State wouldn’t be possible. I doubt there’s a high school in the UK that doesn’t have one student who would be interested in Young Rewired State – this year has less than 30.

Plus, this shouldn’t just be for students.