From time to time there’s a highly relevant posting on the Neighbourhoods blog from Kevin Harris. A new one is ‘The problem of scale: neighbourhoods and participation’ where he discusses the relevance of a presentation by Anthony Kelly of Oxfam Australia:

“too much of our UK community sector is getting sucked into the delivery service paradigm; and that we get into confusions because we look to establish participation at the same scale as service delivery. We somehow assume that the same values, terms of engagement and democratic style should apply.”

More here.

New research on discussion forums run by public bodies is due to be published next month, according to E-Government Bulletin. This week they have an item anticipating this and, while there aren’t very many examples to chose from, does say that “one of the most impressive examples of best practice with online forums singled out for praise in the new research is Highland Council in Scotland’s sub-site entitled thinknet.”

It’s worth a look, although you could hardly call it the most active forum ever (and it probably requires cookies to work). We can talk.

I’ve set up a new Links category, for examples of web sites from voluntary organisations which make use of open source Content Management Systems. That’s web server software which makes it easy to keep content up-to-date without any technical knowledge. Blogs like WordPress could be seen as a very basic type of Open Source CMS, but we’re thinking more of Drupal, Mambo/Joomla or Plone. (This week I went to a really good seminar on these run by Open Advantage in Birmingham - organisations in the West Midlands region should check them and/or MOST out.)

So far, only American examples found but hopefully British ones to follow.

A two-way exchange on the role and success of social enterprise between China and Britain gets a write up in China Daily: Social enterprises to play bigger role.

Another imaginative use of ‘new media’ technology:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Podcasts reach Peruvian villages

UK charity Practical Action has married old and new technology to podcast twice-monthly [agricultural] updates to eight information centres in the Cajamarca region [of Peru].

An interesting example fo e-learning on information management:

“The Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) is a partnership-based e-learning initiative to train individuals and support institutions and networks world-wide in the effective management of agricultural information. IMARK consists of a suite of distance learning resources, tools and communities on information management.”

More such imaginative uses of the web, please!

Link sourced from APC Newsletter - see APC News . Readers may also be interested in Wireless Networking in the Developing World - not theory but learning from experience.

A fairly obvious use of the new Google Video facility. As ITN videos are on there, I’ll assume its easily available this side of the pond.

From npMarketing Blog:
Google Video Experiment

“….. asking if we could host a video they could use to recruit more event participants… after thinking about what services we could provide them internally, we decided to try an experiment…

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=leukemia

I think we’re going to do more of this… and I’m not sure that Google Video shouldn’t be utilized even more by non-profits - it’s cheaper and way easier than trying to host video ourselves - and it gives us a chance to reach a much wider audience who might have never found us…”

Learn More about Google Video.

An interesting piece about social firms - social enterprises where at least 25% of workers are disabled or have health problems - in today’s (Scottish) Herald:

New spirit of social enterprise - The Herald

Net squared, a newish American set up billed as ‘remixing the web for social change’ is beginning to have some interesting stuff on its blog. Here’s what I’ve just picked up:

• The first time I’ve seen anything sector related on flickr, the photo sharing/tagging website: International NGOs.
• The ability to create mini-charts of how often words have appeared in blogs recently. Here’s an attempt at a link to ‘social enterprise‘ - below - it ought to refresh automatically.
• And a blog from a real frontline charity worker which has been going for a while: Urban Sprouts School Gardens, in San Francisco. is a project getting the youngsters involved in growing food.

Posts that contain Social Enterprise per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Blogs, social enterprise and the health service - an interesting combination. Not quite the same as most blogs, and maybe not quite the same as most social enterprises, but an imaginative use of the concepts anyway.

Kable.net reports:

Patient Opinion has been set up to provide an independent outlet for patients to share views, experiences, complaints and messages of thanks to NHS staff. It is being run on a not-for-profit basis and is free at the point of use.

Users enter opinions into a weblog while a built-in social tagging system operates in the background interpreting simple language, such as the word “bones”, into medical terminology.

More: Kable - Blogging patient opinions - 20 January 2006