Shine weekend

We’re just back from the Shine Unconference. Lib was there for the lot, but I was only there for Sunday. I’m a bit tired to say much about it this evening.

But.. it was great and inspiring hanging around and chatting with a lot of people who are really going with their passions and doing great and good things. It was a very warm and friendly space, and I really enjoyed the sessions we did today.

Lib ran a short discussion on Authenticity Online which sparked a robust discussion of a bunch of issues around social media, free content, risk management, online reputation and online tools. There are a lot of questions out there around social media and the third sector. We collected some meaty questions which we’ll post over on the authentic blogging community in the next couple of days along with the beginnings of some answers. Thanks to all who participated in that discussion and hope you join us over on the community to work through the issues.

Busy afternoon — we then whizzed over to the “What’s in a Name” session being run by Neru. Lib and I are working on rebranding, so wanted to get some tips on choosing a new name for us. Interesting ideas from there. Thanks to the Neru team and all who threw in their thoughts. We’ll keep working on that new name and see what happens.

It always seems a long train ride home to Brighton on a Sunday, but when we got home it was still sunny and the air was fresh. It was quiet. You got the sense a lot of people had satisfying weekends and were now relaxing at home. I sure did.

I wish I’d done this ages ago

I picked up a Efergy real-time energy meter for £39.95 from Maplin. At this kind of price it finally seems worth it, and after bringing it home and quickly installing it, I’ve now got a sense of how much power the house uses. I’m very happy with it so far, easy to use and nice clear display. It sits in the kitchen.

With all the lights off and the fridge idling, there’s still a little over 100W needed to keep the place running, which is mad. That is going to be a bunch of plugpack transformers (wall warts) that are just making heat while doing nothing. More of those are going to get switched off now.

Turning on the kettle is a shock. I know the kettle is going to use up energy like mad, but watching the display go from 0.100 kW to 3.100 kW was more shocking than I expected.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m hoping this will give us all enough awareness to drop our consumption of electricity about 20%.

Social Media – A Learning Journey

By Michael Leunig

Suggestion 1: Think of your blog and other social media in this way.

Suggestion 2: Always relate things back to the real world, meeting yourself and others face to face.

Catalyst Awards & Social Web Innovators Connecting

I rarely repost other people’s blog posts here, but this one needs sharing. David Wilcox recently came into focus when Tessy Britton invited him into our new online social network for social innovators.

David is what we call a “node”, a hub, a connector and maven. In other words, a kindred spirit. I haven’t even met him yet, back very much look forward to.

Here he writes optimistically about the new Catalyst Awards, about how change agents are using the social web and getting together. The Catalyst Awards are brought together by some great people with real form in this emergent area – like Mark Your Mark, UnLtd, NESTA and the Minister for the Third Sector.

“We’re looking for inspiring stories of people who help their community by using social technology* in new and exciting ways. Can you or someone you know show how technology is already enabling people around them to connect with each other in new ways and do good things?”

So glad there is such a large amount of energy coming into this space. Makes our job of creating and sharing a body of knowledge and positive practice a lot easier.

Spread the word about the awards, enter before 16th June 2008. and consider using them as a point of reference for developing your own best work.

A wealth of other information on David’s blog around this space. Check it out. Will definitely be adding David and Dr Dan to the blogroll on the new site.

Authenticity Online at Shine this Sunday

Some tickets are still available for the Shine Unconference for social entrepreneurs this weekend in London. Having just heard I will be running a session on Sunday, seems a good idea to let people know about it.

Do come in and contribute to the discussion if you are there, take home some new insights, find a path on which to travel. Rather an expansive and wonderful topic. Many of us touch on these core issues and opportunities – or are hit over the head with them. Now here is a chance to go deeper.

Tickets are still available and start from just £20 per day. There is much to be learnt and passionate, happening people to meet.

Authenticity in the New Online World

* Who: Libby Davy
* When: 2:00pm – 3:00pm SUNDAY
* Where: Classroom

Description

How to be yourself and make your social media become a path for learning and becoming – for personal, team and enterprise expression.

To show your facebook page or not? How to be real without looking like a prat.

How to use your blog as a magnificant learning tool, that helps you find and travel your path, plus connects you with likeminded people along the way.

Authenticity Quotes – which resonate with you?

Truth, authenticity, integrity. Big stuff. But where would we be without it? Which one’s resonate most with you? Any more to add?

“No one man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.”
- Hawthorne

“Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea – the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost.”
- Al Watts

“If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.”
- Horace Mann

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”
- Winston Churchill

“Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.”
- Mother Theresa

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
- Shakespeare

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
- Mark Twain

“The men who succeed best at public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
- James A. Garfield

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
- Socrates

“How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.”
- Edward F. Benson

“There is no wisdom save in truth.”
- Martin Luther

“What is true is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that one can see clearly.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
- Albert Schweitzer

“Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.”
- Everett W. Lord

“Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of tricks and duplicity than straightforward and simple integrity in another.”
- Colton

“The sincere alone can recognize sincerity.”
- Carlyle

“Just be what you are and speak from your guts and heart – it’s all a man has.”
- Hubert Humphrey

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
- William Shakespeare in Hamlet

“How shall we learn to know ourselves? By reflection? Never; but only through action. Strive to do thy duty; then shalt thou know what is in thee.”
- Goethe

“All worthwhile men have good thoughts, good ideas and good intentions – but precious few of them ever translate those into action.”
- John Hancock Field

“Best keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the world.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.”
- Robbie Glass

From http://www.integro-inc.com/authenticity_quotes.htm

Nice Job: Web/design manager with social media for charity

My favourite environment charity and excellent client, Global Action Plan, are looking for a Web and Design Manager, based in London. This is a nice role — you get to manage the design side of things for the organisation, but also manage websites, and lead the organisation into the social media world. This is the sort of role where you can practically make a difference by getting GAP’s messages out there more widely and have a lot of fun in new media land.

Web & Design Manager – London £28,000 plus bonus (3.1) Inc LW

The Web and Design Manager is responsible for maintaining the quality of the brand for all Global Action Plan communications, both off and online. This will include writing a comprehensive web strategy, developing the Global Action Plan websites (including monitoring and reporting) creating electronic communications such as newsletters and delivering print design across the organisation. You will need a minimum of 3 years marketing experience in developing and designing print and web materials. You need to have proficient IT and CMS skills, including knowledge of basic web packages, have a strong attention to detail, be capable working under pressure and to deadline. Experience working for a charity would be advantageous.

More info at http://globalactionplan.org.uk/jobs.aspx Be Quick if you are interested. Applications Close this Friday 9th.

RSA (Renewal, Sharing, Advancement)

Gra and I went up to the Royal Society for the Arts recently to hear Charlie Leadbeater talk about his new book We Think. We were also keen to find out more about the RSA as they have approached me to become a Fellow.

Mum bought a copy of We Think while she was visiting… keen to get her head around the space we are in, and perfect for her ilk, among others. There are many major ommissions and doesn’t come much from deep, personal experience (Charlie doesn’t blog or facebook), but is a fine point of reference for many at this point in time. I am recommending it widely.

Highlights of the evening were…

Blogging as Gardening

Talking with Charlie and Tessy Britton afterwards about blogging. Our message that “the first audience for your blog is you” (blogging as a reflective, learning tool or private/public path on which to travel) got Charlie mentioning “zero-audience blogging” and gardening as a metaphor for why and how some people blog, ie. the cultivation of your blog is a meditative pleasure in itself, towards the cultivation (and harvesting?) of the self… plus others can stroll by and enjoy it too.

Mary Harrington (aka Seb Mary) from School of Everything has talked about this in the past and present too. Interestingly, her garden is out back and not visible to others except when invited in. Mine’s a bit like that too. Maybe I could do with a bit of improvement out front (aka let’s finish the upgrade!

What’s Happening in The RSA

Looking around the crowd afterwards, I spotted Felix Velarde from Underwired. (To be honest, I was just looking for a model to do a nice juxtaposition shot and vox pop, note: interesting facial hair and piercings). He had many positive things to say about the benefits of RSA membership, as did Tessy, who we spent an expansive evening with.

The RSA, it turns out, are making special efforts to attract new media folk, new paradigm folk to their hallowed halls. When I first got their letter, I thought it was a mass marketing effort. Turns out they are serious about engaging Fellows (erk, the feminist in me gasps) in opening up debate and moving forward a very progressive, authentic, connected vision.

There is much emphasis on education which resonates deeply Glad to see Roland Meighan and friends trying to keep them on track as outspoken agitators working from within… Ian Cunningham is also a Fellow.

They are about “removing the barriers to social progress” and state their recently revised manifesto challenges as:

• Encouraging Enterprise
• Moving Towards a Zero-Waste Society
• Developing a Capable Population
• Fostering Resilient Communities
• Advancing Global Citizenship

If we were courting each other, I would have to say the feelings are strongly reciprocal and we will be getting hitched, if for no other reason that to follow Richard Sennett’s call in The Craftsman to cultivate our skills and higher self in the company of like-minded people.

I used to think the UK was impossibly BIG. Now the multiple connections between RSA, School of Everything, Richard Birkin (Biff), Ian Cunningham, Richard Sennett, Michael Fielding, Tessy, Roland, John Grant, Andy Gibson, Seb Mary, MA in Person Centred Education, blogging, progressive education, and Everything are so rich in the potential patterns they create – it’s almost fractal in it’s beauty. Feeling very connected and safe within the spaces opening up and the paths between them. In permaculture terms, there is edge, there is diversity, the soil is rich, the system is in harmony.

Spring has sprung.

Free School Joins Dots

Really enjoyed (as you can see) experiencing Free School this week. Congratulations to Seb Mary and all from School of Everything for making it happen. Some fine folk took a short course in Advanced Raving & Merriment to be sure. We also learnt and taught some very tangible things about…

• Public relations and marketing (thanks Heleana)
• Social media, authenticity and learning
• Taking egalitarian education to the streets.. cafes.. anywhere, anytime.

Find out more here.

Better still, try getting along to the next one.

Recommendation Ventures powers ahead: IceTV recommendations live

I haven’t talked a lot about Scouta for a bit… We’ve been internally capacity building. And we’ve been focussing on providing recommendations as a web service to web and media companies with members and content that can be enabled for recommendations.

We do this under the banner of Scouta’s real company name, Recommendation Ventures, which you’ll hear a lot more about in the coming months.

There’s a lot of specialist knowledge around providing good recommendations, and packaging a recommendation services as a set of web services makes a lot of sense. We can take a set of content (URLs) and some identified members and visitors, and produce personalized recommendations in real-time to embed in a website or provide on a set top box, mobile etc.

But, the big news today is that our recommendation services are powering IceTV’s new IceTV Recommendations. IceTV say:

IceTV customers can now automatically receive intelligent suggestions on TV shows that may interest them based on their favourite TV shows, series recordings and similar recording decisions made by fellow IceTV users.

IceTV Recommendations are provided to IceTV users on an ongoing basis thanks to a recent partnership with Perth based Australian start-up, Recommendation Ventures Pty Ltd. The two pioneering companies have teamed-up to give users intuitive recommendations, based on the individual user’s tastes. When combined with the existing value-add features of IceTV, Recommendation Venture’s intelligent technology will allow user’s to receive truly personalised suggestions and as a result, an even greater TV viewing experience.

We’ve had some good press coverage. It has been picked up by TechCrunch and Gizmodo

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