Disruptive Proactivity

mySociety Manchester October - postponed

2008-10-03T23:05:00.001+01:00

The October meeting of mySociety Manchester has been postponed. The next one will be on November 19th in the Briton's Protection at 7:30pm. All welcome.

Manchester Withington, and Students

2008-09-17T22:06:00.005+01:00

Manchester, Withington is one of the most closely fought constituencies in the country, and the most marginal in South Manchester. In the 2005 general election, the previous Labour MP was replaced by Liberal Democrat John Leech http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/john_leech. This victory was partially attributed to a large amount of effort put in by students campaigning in the constituency, and

Twitter & the Labour party conference

2008-09-05T19:29:00.004+01:00

I've got a twitter account for posting stuff that I can't be bothered writing a blog post about. The Labour Party Conference is also in town in a fortnight. I'll be wandering along to a couple of things that seem interesting and have caught my eye

Democratic convention

2008-08-27T23:19:00.002+01:00

Given that there's stuff on each of labourhome, libdemblogs and conservativehome about the Democratic convention, has anyone seen anything that looks at the similarities/differences in what those three are reporting about the same event?

Which CMS do you use?

2008-08-22T15:02:00.003+01:00

Those great people at the sunlight foundation have posted an answer to the question they get asked, of what CMS did you guys use?, as a better answer to that question than I've seen elsewhere for a while. Mainly posted so I can find it again the next time I get asked that question by people pushing their pet system which solves a different problem.

mySociety Manchester - 20th August

2008-08-16T11:29:00.002+01:00

The next mySociety Manchester Meetup will be on Weds 20th August in the Briton's Protection at 7:30 till 9ish. Informally covering the range of

CommentOnThis.com improvements and new document

2008-08-09T20:13:00.003+01:00

There's a new document up on CommentOnThis.com, which is part of the UK's National Union of Students' consultation on reform. "NUS Reform- The Way Forward?. You'll also note a large number of improvements to all consultations on CommentOnThis - thanks to Emily from TalkToNUS.com for providing useful and valuable input which benefits all the documents we host.

Watch the students

2008-08-07T22:57:00.004+01:00

My friend Alasdair does a huge amount of stuff, all of it well, but one of the best pieces of advice he ever gave was "watch the students". His argument being that students have a relatively unique combination of things - lots of time, access to resources, and little money. These, when also spending large amounts time around friends with similar interests (and alcohol, which probably matters

UN and email alerts

2008-07-29T22:14:00.007+01:00

Julian does an outstanding job (mostly alone) on UNDemocracy.com parsing all the PDFs they hide away, and making it all googletastic. One of the big lessons from TheyWorkForYou.com was to push stuff out to people - RSS for the more geeky types and for reuse, and email alerts for everyone else who are the vast majority of people. While it's not yet visible on the undemocracy.com site (which will

SpinDifferent - US Election Edition

2008-07-17T18:54:00.000+01:00

SpinDifferent.com lets you compare what the Whitehouse, Downing Street and UN are saying on any issue you like. SpinDifferent.com — Election Edition (www.spindifferent.com/election) does the same thing for Obama and McCain (and the Whitehouse). Put your search term into the site, and you can see what each of the three say, and how often they talk about it. www.spindifferent.com/election.

"Communication is a force for good"

2008-07-16T22:59:00.006+01:00

"Communication is a force for good" says Gordon Brown. Recently, Labour ran a consultation on policy, and some within the Labour Big Tent processed the documents for CommentOnThis.com which was then linked from the Labour Party internal website for their members. Apparantly it's a pirate website (insert obligatory Yarrrrrrrr!). While communications may be a force for good, it's how you use

mySociety Manchester

2008-07-09T22:28:00.000+01:00

Meet up with the some of the friends of mySociety in Manchester for a social evening in the pub in Manchester. First Monthly meet up is on the 16th July 2008 (third Wednesday of the month, and probably the same from then on) in the Briton's Protection by the Bridgewater Hall (map). From roughly 7:30 until around 9 - but the times are as informal as we are. Informally covering the

"Are you democratic revolutionaries or just another interest group? "

2008-06-24T08:35:00.002+01:00

Matt Leighninger asks PdF attendees. Worth a read, probably more so as replies appear over the next few days.

OpenTech 2008 - 5th July

2008-06-23T14:38:00.003+01:00

there will be some interesting announcements: * Ticket reservations now open - Please Redistribute Freely * Open Tech 2008 sponsored by BT Osmosoft Saturday July 5th - ULU, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2008/ Open Tech 2008, from UKUUG and friends, is an informal one-day conference about

traffic to BNP and UAF online.

2008-04-09T22:23:00.003+01:00

The below contains a number of questions, and few answers. A few weeks ago, a chunk of my Saturday was taken over by reading this pamphlet, the bulk of which is a well written article, with a sensationalist top level headline about the BNP. Looking below the headline, we can check alexa (which they didn't use) and find that the traffic matches what they reported from their (commercial) sources:

NUS draft new constitution

2008-04-09T17:00:00.007+01:00

There was a proposal to replace the constitution of the UK's National Union of Students which didn't pass, but hasn't yet died (it's just resting...). I've put a copy up on CommentOnThis.com. This isn't the current constitution, but a somewhat controversial proposal to replace it. I'll put the current one up if someone sends me a copy.

Comment on This in Minnesota, US

2008-04-01T17:47:00.003+01:00

I got an email from someone at the Minnestoa Environment Protection Agency asking for a copy of the CommentOnThis code; and this is what they used it for internally on their intranet:

Moving on from Power of Information

2008-04-01T12:12:00.001+01:00

This is going to be very good.

OpenTech 2008

2008-03-30T13:27:00.002+01:00

Just a reminder that the OpenTech call closes tomorrow, although we'll probably leave the form up and working for a few days afterwards while we finalise the programme. So if you want to offer a talk at an informal, low cost one-day conference on technology, society and low-carbon living, featuring Open Source ways of working and technologies that anyone can have a go at, go for it.

Some meandering thoughts on "The Vision Thing"

2008-03-30T13:08:00.007+01:00

Amongst friends of a friend, there's a conversation going on about "the vision thing" and how their (IT) industry has lost it's way: original post, a reply, roundup. Paul comments that most of the pitches he hears are derivative - but 95% of everything is crap, and you find a good pitch, generally you don't have time to listen to any more. More so when you consider that there are so few new

introducing theyServeForYou.com

2008-03-15T16:45:00.011Z

One thing I've been working on recently is a method for doing the TWFY-thing on pretty much any committee of any type that takes minutes of meetings:

DirectionlessGov heckled?

2008-03-13T14:26:00.000Z

Amusing, but not suprising...

Interview about Spin Different

2008-03-06T00:08:00.002Z

Maybe I shouldn't reply quite so quickly to interview questions. More tea anyone?

Manchester Withington, and "the infighting is so vicious as the stakes are so low."

2008-03-03T17:01:00.003Z

I've talked previously about doing something about constructive engagement in my constituency of Manchester, Withington. In the 2005 election, it was won by the local students getting out to/the vote, and engaging and winning on something close to the merits of an argument and the issues. But is it no longer more important to be right than it is to win? The current crop of young, local LibDem

Direct.gov.uk Terms and Conditions

2008-02-22T18:24:00.001Z

Anyone got any ideas for some fun we could have with this on www.directionlesgov.com