Citizen Power Peterborough

Social media in Peterborough

Hi, I'm involved with the social media strand in Citizen Power Peterborough and want to explain some of my ideas. I'd be grateful for any feedback on them.

Firstly, a few principles:

Locally, we want to use social media as part of the Citizen Power project to:
  • Ensure transparency for this project
  • Create local networks at neighbourhood level
  • Getting people more fully involved in their neighbourhoods
  • Provide a service to other Citizen Power strands
The bigger picture is that if we can make this work, we can help with movement of people who are trying to put the "social" into social media. See www.socialbysocial.com socialreporter.com etc.

We need also to accept from the start that Peterborough isn't actively looking for a socially-driven community website - at least not at the moment.

In fact community websites here tend to have fairly low participation. Though there have been some great efforts, like Positively Peterborough, they've foundered because of a lack of uptake. Freecycle Peterborough is great but it has relatively low activity given the size of the city. [Freegle Peterborough does have a healthy and active membership.] And though there are a couple of local neighbourhood sites, they're generally evidence that those particular neighbourhoods are functioning pretty well.

The fact is, when people use search terms online including the word "Peterborough", they're generally looking for something specific; an event or some expertise.


Most of the online transactions that you can witness about Peterborough are pretty much along those lines.


Ideally, we want to see people doing more of the orange bits on the chart above - telling more stories about their lives, exchanging information about taking part in their city, and using social media as a way of deliberating about the future they want. But we're not going to get there by building cool websites.


That's going to emerge as part of a longer process - and only if we manage to attract the attention of the best social media communicators Peterborough may have to offer.


So first we need to co-build a decent social media community here.


Some of this is about getting stuck in ourselves. Social media depends on people turning opinion and information into virtual goods - pieces of information that can be passed around the network. This film at the Showcase cinema is great. The Cresset Theatre is closing down. There's a guerilla gardening meetup on May 1st. The museum's running a short story competition. And so on.


We're working on ways to increase the flow of those simple virtual goods around Peterborough. The Connect Locally and What's On? tabs at the top of this page are a very modest start, as is our @citpower Twitter stream.


But, actually, one of the great things about Peterborough is it's full of potential information to be passed around. Though the online "commons" is still small, there are dozens and dozens of siloed websites in that Connect Locally list - sports clubs, social clubs, car clubs, gardening clubs - all of which have an online presence, and we've only just started adding them. There are inevitably even more we haven't yet heard of.


So some of this is also about showing those people how they can join the conversation. Leaning on the expertise of our RSA Fellowship, we're planning social media surgeries in Peterborough. We want to invite the key players in these organisations, clubs and societies to take part in those surgeries so they can learn the ropes and increase the flow of information. When we've found some funding for a local network manager, we're going to start reaching out to these organisations to start building a decent shared calendar, and creating decent bundles of info about what's going on in Peterborough - from sports events to cinema listings.


And into that information stream, we'll also be pouring news of all the events and activities allied to things like Citizen Power Peterborough, Peterborough CVS, PECT, Peterborough Community Radio, Peterborough Advice Integration Project, the user-centred drugs project, etc etc etc.


It's important to note this isn't a single website solution. Although this Ning will hopefully play a part, it's as much about what goes on on Twitter, Facebook and on people's phones. It's about increasing the value of the traffic going around Peterborough.


And only when and if we reach a critical mass can we can start to do the really exciting stuff, like piloting Pledgebank networks, building an accessible social participation map, experimenting with forms of mapping in which residents define their own communities, work on co-creating online democracy projects and so on...


Anyway, your thoughts please on this small start...


Tags: media, peterborough, social, twitter

Views: 85

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kate Hall on August 7, 2010 at 21:34
Kevin

I doubt I'll get a chance to reply before Weds - so here's one thought, or two.

Yes, why not more than one person to get paid - and it would be a big undertaking (doesn't mean it shouldn't happen though does it - small thinking is what has got Peterborough into the state it is in) - especially as it would need to be a What's On for the whole of Peterborough - and would encapsulate how every individual is themselves a diverse bag of tastes - I myself would be on the look out for Theatre, Live Music, Reviews of Eating Places, Walks, Kids stuff, political and community stuff, festivals ... i might do ballet for my daughter, and have only been to the opera twice, and never by my own initiation.... See what I mean - it could be any flavour and it won'tserve all the people all of the time, but if it could connect some people some of the time......

I think the driver would be to support the exisiting activity that is already happening - make that thrive and survive, make it easier to put on and more viable, and then there would be more of it (whatever that would be...)

How many times have you heard of something happening in Peterborough, the night after, the week after it happened - but you missed it, because there is no information infra-structure in Peterborough.

The rest of what you say i am sure has some truth in it - but I am usually an eternal optimist and believe that there are some people out there who can grab some crusts off the table and make a difference on ground level - sometime you just have to jump high and be sneaky.

Kate
Permalink Reply by Kevin Roddis on August 11, 2010 at 12:23
Kate

I've been back to the calendar for "What's On" and this time decided to look back instead of forward. Going back, there are listed events. In fact you can go back to when the calendar appears to have started and find quite a few. You only have to follow it's progress to see how the interest dwindled (boxed ticked, 'We have an exciting, valuable, world class calander of events to talk about at our conferences' ) and now there is nothing. Why? Because after contemplating 'our' navels and indeed every bit of fluff within said navels 'we' have come up with an idea. 'We' know how great it is because 'we' all agree that it's a great idea. It's all talk no selling. As I've said before people buy what they perceive to be a benefit, an empty calendar certainly is not that.

I notice that despite this site supposedly being such a glowing beacon of excellence only you have replied to my posts. I can see little evidence of activity on the site as a whole from those at it's centre. Why? All away for 2 months of the summer in some far flung enclave of chattering class mediocrity?

Kevin
Permalink Reply by Maggie on August 11, 2010 at 12:51
In May I suggested that rather than the project trying to resource a listing of its own, it should link to other listings - both local and national - instead.

https://www.wherecanwego.com/whats%20on/whats%20on%20p/Peterborough/...

https://www.peterborough.net/calendar/

https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/lifestyle/the-guide/what-s-on-li...

https://www.visitpeterborough.com/events/thedms.aspx?dms=12&msg=... whats on

Or the project could encourage some of those who do not go for the mass audience to feed in their events:

https://www.peterboroughartscinema.co.uk/Ribbon.htm

https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/music/related-events

https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/history/related-events

https://www.callup.org.uk/learning_providers.html - Open Lectures programmes from PCAE and the University

Still seems the right approach to me, rather than duplicating the array of things already out there. Parallels with mumsnet and Facebook.
Permalink Reply by Jamie on August 11, 2010 at 16:20
Hello all (particularly to Kevin and Kate!)

Thanks so much for helping this site to become a more active forum. You’re right that this site has been under-used by us (and probably a little bit abstract) so far. But it’s been great to see the number of people signed up to the site rise after the launch event for Citizen Power a couple of weeks ago, which indicates that a lot of people are interested in the potential of this project. Fantastic.

We’re looking forward to using this as an effective forum for talking about Peterborough – please bear with us as we get more “quality” content posted up! However it would also be great if you felt able to contribute, for example Kate’s idea for making more of the “what’s on” function would be fantastic. You can add events by clicking “Add an Event” on this page – do let us know if the technology doesn’t work for any reason. Also, thanks to Maggie for the great list of existing Peterborough calenders, we’ll see if we can find a way to link to those.

In the mean time, do poke around the site a bit more for the more recent additions. We sent out a message earlier today to all the people signed up letting you know about two of the recent publications that are leading into the project (a paper on the concept of “recovery capital” which is guiding our project on addiction services in Peterborough and a summary of a recent seminar on measuring civic health). Technically these are both stored on the RSA’s main website, but it would be great to hear your thoughts on either of them by starting up a conversation on this site. The Recovery Capital group or the Civic Health group would be a good place to start either of these discussions!

As far as the functionality of this website itself goes, it’s built on the Ning platform which in our experience are fairly good – they are “off the shelf” websites which have limited potential for customisation, but have the big advantage that they are very cost-effective.

The Citizen Power project is a two year programme of work, partly funded by PCC, partly by the Arts Council, and partly from other resources that the RSA is contributing or fundraising for. The project’s aim is pretty well-defined in the introductory booklet that we used for the launch event I mentioned (which I think Kate was at!), which I’ve just uploaded here, but you can find much more info in the scoping report (which you can find in a “Scribd” box at the bottom of the front page of citizenpower.co.uk).

Thanks again for your thoughts - and do keep the discussion going,

Jamie
Permalink Reply by Kate Hall on August 12, 2010 at 9:35
Hello

Maggie - I think you are right - there do seem to be alot of What's On websites already. But I do think something that reaches out and provokes participation is what is needed to stir up apathy in Peterborough. The problem with websites is that they expect you to go to them - whereas the success the things like Facebook etc is that you are alerted when something new goes on - which you might be interested... But as I don't run any of those websites I don't know if they have the tech capacity to run such a thing.

A shortcut around this maybe a weekly round-up of interesting looking events which reminds people to look at these websites and draws their attention to the top quality things. I passionately believe that it is essential that if people are to engage with the world outside their castle that their first engagements needs to be top quality, whilst they develop their own antaenna for what is going to be useful, interesting, entertaining etc. As well as developing the habit of doing things outside of Work, Home, TV, Sleep.

So whether it be a good community/political meeting (apart from a dull one), a top professional musician, a great family event or a walk through a wood when it's at it's best - an e-newsletter could provoke people to think about trying it out, or looking at one of those websites to see what else is going on... A sort of weekly Freecycle but rather than reducing landfill what the customer (that's for you Kevin) would get out of it is "Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead? " (now I am showing my age)

Again - we are back to manpower issue - but surely this is more manageable than trying to create a definitive website....

Are there any models out there of things like this?

Kate
Permalink Reply by Jamie on August 12, 2010 at 14:31
Hi Kate - this is a bit of a London-centric example, but what do you think of Talks & Lectures for Londoners? I think it automatically collects events from a number of sites (like the Royal Society and Gresham College) and will email you once a week with a summary of what's coming up. Could this be a good model to imitate?

Jamie
Permalink Reply by Kate Hall on August 12, 2010 at 14:38
Have you an example of the weekly summary?
Kate
Permalink Reply by Maggie on August 13, 2010 at 16:11
I suggest having a good look at Peterborough.net, as it is an excellent community website run by dedicated people who really love Peterborough and who know their IT. They have established their What's On listing and it is properly resourced. Their newsletters are monthly and I'd be surprised if they can't justify why that is the frequency - rather than weekly. There are always lots of users online when I am.
Permalink Reply by Kate Hall on August 13, 2010 at 16:38
Maggie
Sounds good.
Maybe the RSA can promote it as a tool.
I have to admit I have never heard of it and and nor had been been mentioned to me by anyone else who has complained about the difficulty of finding out what is going on. So there is obviously some potential for a wider readership.
I suspect the monthly output is due to manpower - I know I respond better to the weekly updates I get from the email newsletters I get for various things. From a marketing point of you a weekly news letter can be a challenge to schedule in, but not impossibe.
Will have a look.
Best wishes
Kate
Permalink Reply by hugh jones on September 8, 2010 at 22:22
Well comrades the links page you talk about is this one:
https://www.citizenpower.co.uk/page/community-and-news-websites

And the most notable thing about it is that as of 22:04 on Wednesday 8th September 2010 the link to the Peterborough Evening Telegraph listing points to the Peterborough.net website. And Pottyborough gets a mention. Oh dear.

Everyone's lining up for a slice of the cake. It's horses for hay time again.
Permalink Reply by Maggie on November 16, 2010 at 11:35


Maggie said:
In May I suggested that rather than the project trying to resource a listing of its own, it should link to other listings - both local and national - instead.

https://www.wherecanwego.com/whats%20on/whats%20on%20p/Peterborough/...

https://www.peterborough.net/calendar/

https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/lifestyle/the-guide/what-s-on-li...

https://www.visitpeterborough.com/events/thedms.aspx?dms=12&msg=... whats on

Or the project could encourage some of those who do not go for the mass audience to feed in their events:

https://www.peterboroughartscinema.co.uk/Ribbon.htm

https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/music/related-events

https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/history/related-events

https://www.callup.org.uk/learning_providers.html - Open Lectures programmes from PCAE and the University

Still seems the right approach to me, rather than duplicating the array of things already out there. Parallels with mumsnet and Facebook.
Permalink Reply by Scott Webb on December 21, 2010 at 18:44

G'day,

I've just read through this entire thread and the statement sticking in my mind is from Kate:

"there is no information infra-structure in Peterborough"

And there is lack of social media in the Social Media in Peterborough group?

I say give the power back to the citizens of Peterborough. Let them create the content. Let them entertain us. As a group, we must be facilitators. We know how to use social media networks to distribute and promote their content.

Shall we start with a film making competition. Something to engage their creative minds?

If you monitor the social networks, you'll see them at work whilst we contemplate - uploaded to YouTube yesterday.

Together, let us create a rich social media website for just Peterborough.

Dave, Kevin, Kate, Dan. Are you interested?

Scott

PS I'm new here, so be nice :)

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