UK.gov appeals for developers to mashup 1,000 datasets

October 1, 2009 at 5:19 pm · Filed under political communication, politics

UK.gov is calling on developers to consult the Cabinet Office on its prototype website that will open some government datasets to the public.

It wants the developer community to get involved in shaping what apps, data sources and features the website should contain.

“With over 1,000 existing data sets, from seven departments (brought together in re-useable form for the first time) and community resources, we want developers to work with us to use the data to create great applications; give us feedback on the early operational community; and tell us how to develop what we have into a single point of access for government-held public data,” reads a post on the government’s digital engagement blog (link).

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Google Earth climate change 3D map

September 28, 2009 at 10:18 am · Filed under politics

Explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet Earth and find out about possible solutions for adaptation and mitigation, ahead of the UN’s climate conference in Copenhagen in December (COP15). Choose a tour from the list below and click the play button to see it unfold, or you can also view these tours on YouTube (link).

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Social Media vs the Dictator – Clay Shirky

September 22, 2009 at 1:02 pm · Filed under political communication, politics, social media, web2.0

Lessons learned. The social context of technological-use is as important as the technology itself (try telling that to the practical minded Dictator!)

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Progressive state reformers v ideological state retrenchers: framing the electoral choice between Labour and Conservative

September 15, 2009 at 4:08 pm · Filed under politics

(The LSE have a number of public events with high-profile academics and public figures. The recording of these events are available as PodCasts Online).

Speaker: Lord Mandelson
This event was recorded on 14 September 2009 in Old Theatre, Old Building
With less than a year to go before the next general election there is an urgent need for progressive policy debate and discussion in the Labour party to show it has the ideas necessary to meet the social, economic and political challenges of the next decade. Peter Mandelson, one of the government’s key figures, will launch Progress’s autumn lecture series by setting out how he sees the political divide between the main parties. Lord Mandelson is First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills, and Lord President of the Council. He was previously European Commissioner for Trade, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Secretary of State for Trade & Industry.
Available as: mp3 (25 MB; approx 56 minutes)

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Headsup

September 15, 2009 at 4:01 pm · Filed under political communication, politics

(Another online political engagement innovation from the Hansard Society).

HeadsUp is a moderated, online space for under 18s to debate the political issues important to them. Young people share viewpoints with their peers and decision-makers up and down the country (link).

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Number 10: Turning story Number 1

September 13, 2009 at 8:06 pm · Filed under politics

Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” – PM

The Prime Minister has released a statement on the Second World War code-breaker, Alan Turing, recognising the “appalling” way he was treated for being gay.

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TheyWorkForYou.com

September 13, 2009 at 6:23 pm · Filed under political communication, politics

On of the best online political engagement sites in the UK is the TheyWorkForYou.com which is a system that monitors your local Member of Parliament’s voting patterns/speeches (in my case Meg Hillier in Hackney South/ Shoreditch).

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PM apologises to Turing (but he is already dead!)

September 11, 2009 at 2:31 pm · Filed under politics

Thank you for signing this petition. The Prime Minister has written a
response. Please read below.

Prime Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection “ a chance for
Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who
came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred
in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British
experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to
honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches
of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which
have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take
up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am
both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists,
historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and
celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of
dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on
breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that,
without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could
well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can
point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt
of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that
he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of gross
indecency in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence “ and he
was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical
castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own
life just two years later.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Compass: Directions for the Democratic Left

September 10, 2009 at 10:01 am · Filed under politics

We are at a historic turning point. The electoral successes of the last decade have been unprecedented, but underneath lies a deeper story – of profound economic and social change and the breakdown of no-end of assumptions and political orthodoxies.

Put simply: what does Labour stand for any more? (link) (John Cruddas’ Summer Lecture)

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Lords of the Blog: Life and Work in the House of Lords

September 9, 2009 at 9:42 pm · Filed under blogs, political communication, politics

Lords of the Blog is a collaborative blog written by Members of the House of Lords for the purposes of public engagement. The aim of the blog is to help educate, raise awareness and engage with the public on a range of issues relating to the role and business of the House of Lords. The blog is authored by a group of Members from across the House. Each Member has their own profile and personal section of the blog. A ‘homepage’ provides an at-a-glance digest of the latest post from each Member

(An initiative from the House of Lords and the Hansard Society).

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EngageMedia

September 7, 2009 at 3:04 pm · Filed under politics, projects, video, web2.0

EngageMedia is a video sharing site about social justice and environmental issues in the Asia Pacific, located in Melbourne in Australia, just a few doors up from my old house in Napier Street, Fitzroy. They also distribute their own developed plug-ins. This is a sophisticated crew that know their social software.!

EngageMedia uses the power of video, the internet and free software technologies to affect social and environmental change. We believe independent media and free and open technologies are fundamental to building the movements needed to challenge social injustice and environmental damage, as well as to provide and present solutions.

EngageMedia works with independent filmmakers, video activists, technologists, campaigners and social movements to generate wider audiences for their vital messages and move people to action (link).

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I want to be straight!

September 2, 2009 at 9:49 am · Filed under politics, video

The gay marriage debate is complex and I am not sure if the institution of marriage is the end point of gay liberation. Some black people want to be white, some females want to be male, some gay people would prefer to be normalised. Feminism in the ’80s looked very corporate, gay lib in the naughties looks a bit too straight for this young man!

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Nicolae & Elena Ceausescu

August 5, 2009 at 2:01 pm · Filed under politics

I was in a bar in Budapest recently talking to a bloke (about the same age as me) about great moments on TV. He said his was seeing the Romanian leaders Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu being executed. It makes for grim viewing

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Stop Internet Censorship…

July 9, 2009 at 3:44 pm · Filed under internet, politics, social media, video, web2.0

An add from that wonderful crew Getup.org.au. They are waging a campaign against internet censorship in Australia.

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Building Social Media Infrastructure to Engage Publics

July 9, 2009 at 10:23 am · Filed under communuity informatics, political communication, politics, web2.0

An interesting new report from the Centre for Social Media at American University is Washington DC.

This field report traces how a committed group of volunteers harnessed the micro-blogging tool Twitter to create innovative public media 2.0 experiments—first to actively engage users to report on their voting experiences in the 2008 U.S. election, and then to document their experiences of the 2009 presidential inauguration. Along the way, these two projects demonstrated how journalists and advocates can effectively leverage a range of both commercial and open source social media tools to organize, publicize and implement citizen reporting projects, creating infrastructure for related future projects. Organizers have since worked to archive and repurpose the code and collaboration materials from these efforts for use in 2009 election monitoring initiatives in India and Iran (link)

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