I spent much of the last week in Cornwall with the family. We pitched up at the excellent Treen Farm Campsite, where I am indebted to Kevin for recommending I purchase some storm pegs! Busy working week ahead with two trips up to London, beginning tomorrow.
Just returned from a weekend camping with some friends and their dog in North Devon. Wonderful site in Morthoe. Already looking forward to Cornwall next week. Not long for my wife to wait for her wrist-watch, which got left in a side pocket before we packed away our tent.
Three months ago today, Cyclone Nargis slammed into Burma making more than one million people homeless and killing upwards of 125,000 people. Or had we forgotten that?
Earlier this week I gave a talk to about forty Action Aid staff members on social media, subtitled “does it mean we have to change our jobs?”
Thanks to Joanna Juber - the charity’s Digital Engagement Manager - for inviting me to speak on a range of topics I will be blogging about over the coming months. Fundamentally, how technological innovation has always necessitated institutional innovation and how charities need to learn to be agile (the technology won’t slow to their pace).
Here’s the link to the presentation on slideshare for those of you picking this up in your feed reader, with the caveat that one or two slides make less sense without the narrative.
On my way back to Somerset on the train, I read that E. L. Doctorow once said writing a novel is like “driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
It struck me that this is much like the journey we’re all making with social media. Charities need to learn to be agile enough to get into driver’s seat, and brave enough to take the wheel and move out of second gear. It’s going to be an interesting ride. Baggsy be the co-driver.
Summer returned yesterday and while on a family walk in the Walborough Nature Reserve at Uphill, I spotted this cow that had strayed from the herd. It reminded me of those Osborne billboards you see dotted about the countryside in Spain and Mexico (and probably many places besides).
This is where I’m going to be for the next two days. Looking forward to it.
I’m particularly looking forward to introducing Hoop MD, Sean O’Halloran who will talk about the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP). Sean has a close family link with the project.
MAP is funded by the Wellcome Trust, and is led by Professor Bob Snow at Oxford University. Malaria is one of the world’s biggest killers – but it is preventable if the right steps are taken. MAP charts the prevalence of malaria throughout the globe, and Bob’s team eventually want to make real time data available online.
Sean is as excited as I am about the creative potential of social technologies to mash up and interpret the data (through mapping, visualisations, etc.) and will be joining us at 2gether on Wednesday morning to frame the enormous challenge of eradicating malaria and perhaps bring some new energy to MAP with a big dose of collaborative thinking.
