Social action. Honest exchange. Grounded learning.

Our Society Ideas now mapped

Over the past few weeks we've been developing ideas, commenting and voting on suggestions over here for Our Society as a network, and also Our Society on the ground - thanks everyone who contributed so creatively. Here's my previous post summarising the process.

With the help of Drew Mackie, who specialises in network mapping, I've now developed a graphical display of how the ideas can be clustered. It is slightly arbitrary, because I drew the lines connecting the ideas, and the software followed through (under Drew's direction). They could have been mapped another way - and if you want to have a go the free software is here, and I have attached the datafile below, together with outputs saved as pdfs.

I think that the ideas - as mapped here - fall broadly into four clusters

1. Local Our Society .... the ways that a range of activity could come together in an area.

2. Innovative methods for thinking about the future and doing better with fewer resources

3. Developing networks, gathering resources, telling stories, and helping people develop their skills

4. Giving citizen more control over local services

The clusters do not reflect the votes cast - that's another issue.

What's next?

What happens next depends on how people in this network want to take these ideas forward. We don't have paid staff or other resources to take on many ideas centrally. My suggestion is:

If your idea is on the map, drop a comment here inviting other people to join you in helping move it forward. Look at the other linked ideas, and see if you can amalgamate.
Even if you haven't contributed so far, feel free to add a comment with ideas on moving forward
In addition, the core group here will take a look at the ideas for developing the network.

Depending how the process goes, we can then form groups and see if it is possible to meet, or conference online, and whether we can do some fundraising or find other ways to gather some resources.

And if you have an idea of how we should develop overall, please let us know.

Tags: ideas

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Permalink Reply by James Derounian on February 28, 2011 at 15:55

I am very keen to develop, trial/'pilot' a BigSoc Gap Year for students pre university; in exchange for a contribution to their 1st year tuition fees.

Do make contact if we can progress this together.....

jderounian@glos.ac.uk

James

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Permalink Reply by Cathy Aitchison on February 28, 2011 at 15:55

Hi David,
The map looks great. Where would you put the following idea/thought, which I originally wrote in brief but didn't explain very well:

"We need to take on board and value the vast amount of informal unpaid care which already goes on everywhere, largely unnoticed. It can't be right when women/people who are bringing up young families or caring for elderly or disabled relatives are generally seen as somehow 'shirking' if they need public support to do so. It also can't be right that they feel compelled to seek work only to then spend a disproportionate part of their earnings on childcare/other care costs. Of course it's better if they don't need public support, but they should not be penalised as if their unpaid caring work counts for nothing. Developing a more positive attitude towards them might also help develop a more tolerant, less financially driven attitude in general."

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Permalink Reply by David Wilcox on February 28, 2011 at 16:14

Hi Cathy

It's in there as "Recognise unpaid caring" linked from Local Our Society, but slightly obscured by shading. Hope hat's OK. It should be clearer if you download OurSoc3.pd

David

Cathy Aitchison said:

Hi David,
The map looks great. Where would you put the following idea/thought, which I originally wrote in brief but didn't explain very well:

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Permalink Reply by Cathy Aitchison on February 28, 2011 at 16:47

Thanks, David

I see it now - close to 'People Centred Local Economic Development', 'Local Help in Kind' and 'Better With Less Methods'.

That all makes sense

Maybe links to those three, as well as being close by.

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Permalink Reply by David Wilcox on February 28, 2011 at 16:51

Thanks Cathy

I'll redo the diagram if we get a lot of suggested links

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Permalink Reply by Joe Taylor on February 28, 2011 at 21:44

I'm all for developing networks - anyone interested drop me a line please

Joe Taylor - info@nwcan.org

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Permalink Reply by julian dobson on February 28, 2011 at 22:50

Hi David

Thanks for your work on this. I'm very happy to merge my suggestions on stories with other people's and to contribute to development of this strand. Similarly happy to merge the idea of a resource hub with the reference library idea and to contribute to that.

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Permalink Reply by Toby Blume on March 1, 2011 at 9:48

thanks David - really interesting to see the mapping (i'll be taking a look at the software and having a play!)

i'm commited to facilitating an exploration of the idea i submitted on citizen generated feedback on public services - http://oursociety.uservoice.com/forums/100797-general/suggestions/1...

We're currently exploring this idea with a number of people and orgs from a range of interests and sectors. There is another online space where the idea is being debated - on the DotGovLab Innovation Hub (an online platform for digital innovation).

Although you need an invite to register on the site (it's still in beta version) it is open to anyone who wants to join - so if you'd like to contribute to taking that idea forward drop me a line - toby[at]urbanforum[dot]org[dot]uk or @tobyblume - and i'll send you an invite

cheers

toby

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Permalink Reply by David Wilcox on March 1, 2011 at 15:04

Toby - are you in touch with Consumer Focus? I did a workshop on Digital Public Services last year, and I think they are following up. http://digips.wikispaces.com/

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Permalink Reply by Toby Blume on March 1, 2011 at 15:13

David Wilcox said:

Toby - are you in touch with Consumer Focus? I did a workshop on Digital Public Services last year, and I think they are following up. http://digips.wikispaces.com/

thanks David - useful nudge! i was in touch with a policy guy there a whilst back and we'd said we ought to meet up - about something i now cant quite remember! will get back in touch about this!

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Permalink Reply by Catriona Robertson on March 1, 2011 at 15:54

In the purple box I would add co-production near citizen commissioning - they're not quite the same. Co-production results not only in better public services, using community expertise as well as that of public sector, it also results in shared knowledge (between the two) and public sector learning.

I'm jumping in here - not been part of previous discussions - you may already have considered this.

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Permalink Reply by David Wilcox on March 1, 2011 at 16:12

Thanks Catriona - that's a very good point which hasn't really been highlighted before. There is mention of co-design in the Doing Better with Less idea, but it needs to be pulled out separately. Could you possibly spare a minute to add it to the ideas platform?

We could do with someone to champion that area ...

I'll remap everything when we have a few more ideas.