What you do matters far more than what you say.

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.

Last week, the new Government announced that DirectGov would be moving from DWP to the Cabinet Office. And, related, Martha Lane Fox would be taking over responsibility for it.

I’ve long been poking fun at DirectGov, and varing from critical to utterly scathing. However, with new political overlords, with new management, and a new basis, there’s a possibility for change.

I believe that were “Team DirectionlessGov.com” to suggest meeting Martha or whoever relevant for a coffee, that would happen. If we were to then go in with a set of actionable suggestions, we can probably get them at least read.

What would you like to be on that list?

Ideally, blog this question, and your answer, on your own site, and then add a link to it here. I’ll collate ideas and see where it goes. It might be a complete waste of time of whining on the internet with no one listening. But we’ve been doing that for nearly 6 years, it might be worth doing it again, now, when there’s a possibility that, just for once, hope may triumph over experience.

What would you like to be on that list?

Update: If you have any documents of interest to this that should be in wider circulation than they are, my email is s@msmith.net, or visit www.wikileaks.org

Yesterday was ORGcon, the first annual conference of the Open Rights Group with whom I’ve worked since before they actually existed (they started to be formed at OpenTech in 2005).

It was a successful day, not just because of the sessions, but because of the conversations. ORGcon was a gathering of most of the most politically digitally engaged activists in the UK.

There was an interesting panel with Tom Watson MP, Julian Huppert MP and Eric Joyce ex-MP. But despite the high level interest, there’s one thing that really stuck out in contrast to the rest of the panel. I agree with the vast majority that Tom said, in what was a very good speech to a friendly audience who gave him a rousing round of applause as introduction.

Tom Watson was talking about his hugely admirable work on the Digital Economy Bill. He made a joke to thank a colleague on the panel, for helping him draft amendments and process. The punchline of the thanks was for showing him where the amendment office was, and telling him that he was due to speak about them (tomorrow).

My textual delivery is no match for Tom Watson’s personable and passionate delivery (it’s easy to see why he’s a popular MP both online and in his constituency). But the thank you got the laugh it intended from the audience.

Initially, I also found it uncomfortably funny; and on a second reflection saw why.

Tom’s been in Parliament for 9 years. And while he’s also been a Minister for a good chunk of time (Minister’s have staff for amendments), Tom’s position was that this ignorance is normal, indeed, amusing – it was the punchline of the joke. And the entire room of 200 people agreed with him. But if that’s the level of engagement we get from backbenchers, why are we surprised at the level of amendment and engagement that happens with issues. If that’s the level of expection that the most politically active group has on digital issues, there’s possibly also something wrong with that group’s expectations.

Tom tweeted after the vote that it was the first time he had rebelled in 9 years, and he felt sick at doing it. I see why he felt that way, but the main question is, in 9 years, were there no votes where the best interests of his constituents were to go the other way? While his personal interests are aligned with ORG, and while he and I agree on a vast amount of this, how was that vote representing his constituents any better than any others?

Julian Huppert responded to one questioner that indignantly asked why he hadn’t used his first BIS question in the House on an ORG issue, but he instead used it on something else for his constituents. The questioner got the response they deserved, by noting that ORG is a special interest too, just one that everyone in the room happened to agree with.

In summary, the take-away seemed to be “Find an MP whose interests matches yours, and hope they rebel against the whip”. Which is no way to run a party, policy or Government; Minority interests will always get trampled. Which, in summary of that session, seems to be why the Digital Economy Bill became an Act.

#fail

The last post ended abruptly and somewhat unedited when I read clay Shirky’s new book and it changed and connected various things that I had previously not.

Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest, and the associated website WiserEarth.org, talks about how all NGOs are at some level connected, and on some level don’t contradict each other. Child Poverty is related to Health which is related to Air Pollution which is related to Global Climate which is related to Indigenous Peoples which is related to… You can get from any one to any other.

Cognitive Surplus is mostly a guided instructional tour on the potential of what could happen if 99% of TV watching didn’t change, but 1% did. The entire of wikipedia has taken the cognitive load that is spent in the US, in one weekend, watching adverts on TV. That has a profound scope for changing things without much effort.

One of the groups I spent time with is various environmental groups. Its amazing how much is done by so few; and how widening that gap and gaining the interest of disparate groups will do. And one of the things the internet brings you is different point of view in a way that previously would have been impossible. Acting with support of others and networks, 2 people (full disclosure: one is a friend) have effectively, currently temporarily but hopefully permanently (consultation is still open) stopped all peat digging in Salford: http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=618

But if everything is connected, then that begs the question what joins these ideas, and is there somewhere that these connections discussed? And it turns out, that there is. The Long Now Foundation has a long running seminar series – “the slow conference” in the words of Paul Saffo, it just has a big intermission between each speaker. And over the last few years, the seminars, all of which are available online, has served as a shining example of something that might only be possible in a communication based society. http://www.longnow.org/seminars

I saw this earlier this week: http://infovegan.com/2010/06/24/why-developers-are-so-important/ Just as the cost of a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables is nearly 10x the cost of a conventional diet the cost of a high-fact, low-opinion information diet is too costly for most of society. Developers, as the new gatekeepers of information, can change those economics by not only building better tools for people to process that information, but by making it easier to become data literate.

The thing that surprised me most from this budget is that the BBC calculated the financial cost to me of last week’s budget is £3 per year (excluding the VAT rise). Given the high cost that those who will be hit harder will pay, there is interesting potential for engagement here. Last time, there wasn’t the communication networks to make this voice heard: http://deeplyflawedbuttrying.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/single-parenthood-and-victimhood.

One big difference is not that those connections can be made – they always could – but they can now be made by far more people. Shirky references the South Korean protests about beef imports, and how a significant proportion of the protestors were teenage girls who read about it on a boy- band fansite. The UK Government is currently asking for input on it’s budget plans which would cut a lot of spending on the young, and spend more on the elderly. Partially based on the fact that the elderly vote, and school/college/university student can’t/don’t. But maybe they don’t need to. Completely coincidentally, the labour party is running a leadership election, and is letting anyone under 27 join for £1. The labour party has a membership of 200,000. I’m pretty sure that there are internet forums which have a young UK readership higher than that.

If Ed Balls wasn’t so far behind, I’m sure Guido would be pushing his readership to be members and vote appropriately: http://order-order.com/2010/06/26/saturday-seven-up-37/

The UK government is asking for people’s opinions on things; what happens when they start to be provided,not just in the form of feedback into your freedom, but other service that use that as the start, not the end…

While you think of that, for now, I’m off to find a gin cart…

Update: Tom Watson reports that the labour membership has grown by 25,000 since the election and 1 in 3 are under 30. There’s roughly 10% of an increase in the party. And Ed Miliband wants votes at 16, almost all of whom will be affected by current cuts. Assuming that the next election is in 2015, if that happened, everyone in secondary school now would have a vote then, and they would have all grown up with the networked tools everyone else is figuring out how to use – to them, they’re not “new tools”, they’re just tools, and they’ve not been indoctrinated into the conventions of political games. They may also have the biggest motivations for long term education and opportunity. Do school cuts, or discussions of university funding, look a bit different now?

Cognitive Surplus is mostly a guided instructional tour on the potential of what could happen if 99% of TV watching didn’t change. The entire of wikipedia has taken the cognitive load that is spent in the US, in one weekend, watching adverts on TV (roughly 20% of airtime). If 99% of TV doesn’t change, then 1% does; that is 10 wikipedia sized projects per year.

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I’ve never watched a huge amount of TV. I’ve never really been able to explain why, it’s just something I’ve never really done. But Clay Shirky’s explanation in this talk really resonates (talk posted by Jeremy Zawodny); I tend to want to play with the mouse.

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