About Social Media Today
The IDeA’s Communities of Practice space has been a big success, it’s nearing 60,000 members. There are over 1000 communities, used for a variety of purposes. In my work on policy and performance management, customer insight and social media and now with efficiency, too – I’ve found the space absolutely invaluable in terms of gathering, supporting and sharing local government sector learning.
But we’re not blind to its problems and its glitches. There are things that we wish it could do better. And since its development, the world has moved on. Facebook. Twitter. The rise of YouTube. The expectation that online networking should be easy and to some extent, fun, even in professional settings.
We also know that we need to create better links between our own resources, like the IDeA website – and the huge array of government department resources, toolkits provided by the Audit Commission and so on and so on… Not to mention taking advantage of initiatives like data.gov.uk and local initiatives like the London Data Store.
That’s why we’re developing the Knowledge Hub.
But we can’t do it without you.
Next week we’re meeting with suppliers to finalise procurement. But that’s just the beginning of the story. We want this development to be agile, to reflect the needs of practitioners in local public services. And so we’re going to be working closely with stakeholders and users throughout the development and roll-out of the Knowledge Hub.
We’ve already started working with the people who will ultimately use it through our advisory group. And now with facilitators of leading communities of practice to make sure that whatever we get meets the needs and expectations of those vibrant communities which are already sharing knowledge. On Tuesday we held our first co-design workshop. We were looking at tech features that facilitators expect to see, the tools that they know their communities want and the behind-the-scenes admin features they need to support them online.
It was all pretty low-tech. Paper. Stickies. Markers. Frankly, the best workshops still rely on these tools. But if the Knowledge Hub is about anything, it’s about bridging the divide between the online and the face to face. Making sure that we’re able to share the learning and collaboration more widely.
So not only can you see the outcomes of the workshop in a shared mindmap, everything that people recommended – you can participate, too. Vote on the ideas that the workshop participants came up with or add your own at our UserVoice page where we’re taking ideas about how the communities of practice element should work. The Knowledge Hub will be much more than a conversational space and a professional network, but that’s the bit most people will see and the part where success or failure will be determined. So add your voice now!
