blog.

I have had the pleasure this morning to support Les Compton of Bristol City Council with presenting our website Go Places Do Things at the Engage event at the Watershed.

The workshop was arranged to discuss digital tools for participation and active citizenship with participants from the UK, Germany and Denmark.

ENGAGE is a continuing professional development programme for European youth workers who wish to understand the new ICT-enabled culture and explore how web 2.0 and social media tools can help to extend and enhance their practice.

Les and I went along to talk about our participation with young people while developing and evolving the GPDT site, as well as discussing the challenges that we have faced and the plans for the future. We discussed the access we have given to youth workers and other activity providers for adding their own events and direct feeds that have been set up from the BCC events online and 1 Big Database.

After Bristol the programme will move to Aarhus, Denmark and then on to Hannover in Germany where participants will continue to develop their understanding of how developments in ICT and online technologies can amplify and extend the voice of young people in European society.

The session was really interesting and we had the opportunity to discuss the other online solutions that people have set up, as well as talking about how to get young people to participate and engage as young editors on website content.

I will certainly be following the progress of the programme via the Engage website and will be looking to keep in touch with some of the participants at the workshop.

Working with Bristol City Council, we relaunched their Go Places to Play website at the end of last week.

The updated site carries much more information for parents and carers of young people about Bristol's parks and green spaces, including the ability to search for the nearest green space to you through a postcode finder feature.

With many new parks and green spaces opening in Bristol throughout the Summer, try visiting the site to find your local play area. You might be surprised!

Today sees the launch of Portsmouth City Council's Play in Portsmouth website, to showcase play areas and adventure playgrounds across the city, funded through the Government’s Play Pathfinder project.

It was a great project to work on, and the site really reflects the principles of ‘play’; that it should be bright, fun and inclusive. Having worked on similar projects for Bristol City Council (Go Places To Play), we were in a really good position to understand their requirements and use our experience to deliver a site that not only looks great, but does everything it needs to.

One of the tenets throughout the project has been that: “Play is one of the defining characteristics of a good childhood and all children and young people have a right to play.” Judging by some of the big kids we have in our office, I’m not sure I’d limit it to just children and young people! Web developers like to play, too... 

On Tuesday evening Emily and I attended the launch event of the Bristol City Council Pledge to Children in Care, which is supported by their new RVoice website – designed and developed by Focus.

We had lots of positive feedback from people at the event including Annie Hudson, Strategic Director for Children, Young People and Skills, who gave us a special thank you in her ceremonial cake cutting speech – which was much appreciated.

The site and The Pledge document have all been created with the same graphics and style – created by Simon Mosse our designer.

Now that the site is up and running we’ll continue to work closely with the Children in Care Council, Bristol City Council and Reconstruct to ensure that the content is kept up to date and interesting, as well as reviewing the usage, stats and goals for the site to keep it moving forward.

The Children in Care Council’s (CiCC) RVoice website went live today, after a year’s hard work and collaboration between the CiCC members and Reconstruct, Bristol City Council and Focus.

We carried out a workshop with the CiCC members to establish what was liked & disliked for the look and feel of the site as well as the functionality and information to be included. They were a really pro-active group of young people and very easy to work with, which is why I think we've ended up with such a great looking site.

The CiCC members, including 16 year old Becca, who is the chair of the council, have been actively involved in contributing content to the site and the administrators have been busy adding and tweaking the text, images and files via their new administration system.

Here's what Becca has to say about the new site:

The website is amazing! Its got a really good design which we children helped design. It's got everything you could need to know about being in care on there, and most important of all - it's got My Blog! I'm very excited about having my own blog and it means that other young people can read all about what me and the Children in Care Council are getting up to on their behalf and what changes we're making in Bristol.

The site's live now, so please go and have a look - it will be launched officially at the end of March.

The new Family Information Direct  programme (until 20 January 2010 the Parent Know How programme) has been set up to provide information, advice and support to all parents, carers and families on issues they may face with bringing up children.

All Local Authorities are required to submit their family information and childcare data to the national directory which can then be searched via a number of sources such as Direct Gov and now
1 Big Database.

The programme was officially launched in London on Tuesday 19th January where the DCSF recognised 1 Big Database as being ‘ahead of the game’ as it can already accommodate a search of the national information via the local system.

The Family Information services at Bristol City Council, Bath and North East Somerset Council and South Gloucestershire Council all keep their local information up to date via the 1 Big Database system, which has an automated feed to the national directory.

We’re dead chuffed that the hard work has paid off and been recognised on behalf of us and the whole 1BD team.

According to a survey in the US, the average age of a Facebook user is now an ancient 33 - meaning today's youths are flocking over to have a good Twitter instead:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/MostRead/964910/Youth-flock-Twitter-Facebook-users-start-show-age/

An interesting article this morning from NMA about how brands are failing to connect with young people.

The research, from Youthnet, shows that young people want to interact with the brand rather than be broadcast at about it - a concept that most marketing people are struggling to come to terms with. Our own work with young people through projects such as Go Places Do Things has always been interesting and when consulting with them they've always favoured functional elements such as forums, polls and news articles that allow them to leave their comments.

The article also mentions that 39% of teenagers go to a web site on the recommendation of a friend - only 1% behing Google - indicating how effective a viral campaign could be.

The media have all jumped on the same bandwagon this week, with reports condemning social networking sites - such as Bebo and Facebook - as unsafe websites for children to surf. 

Publishing of the Byron report at the end of March seems to have precipitated this avalanche of comment.  Its author, Dr. Tanya Byron, clearly points out the vital role that parental control needs to play in keeping children safe.  The notion of "nurturing a shared culture of responsibility" is also explored, along with empowering children themselves to make safe decisions online.

The impact of this report will take some time to sink in, affecting as it does the gaming industry, social networking sites, schools, central government and the consciences of all concerned parents.

The consequences for our own business relate specifically to this notion of shared responsibility.  All websites we've designed for young people have firm 'house rules' to protect users from harrassment; moderators of our forums are trained to recognize online abuse by experienced professionals; we also provide clear links to information and policing sites that both discourage potential predators and give guidance to young people wishing to stay safe online.  Yet there will always be new ways in which safe use of the internet can be promoted, something that the Bryon Report has helped to highlight in the minds of the general public.

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