It only takes 4 months ...

... to clean up a life. We've been working on and off in my mum's appartment, packing, dividing, giving away to Kringwinkels, driving to the recycling parks ... last weekend we really finalized, last stuff, cellar, cleaning up, seeing the landlord, handing over the keys ... a very difficult moment and a very saddening one because we were closing that door for the last time . It only takes 4 months to pack up and disperse with someone's life. Even if you keep things, honour them ... there's an awful lot you have to throw out because you have no room/use/ feeling for it. What would she have said, that Wednesday November 26th, if we would have told her that on March 28th her appartment would have been completely emptied out?

Catch a Glimpse and ....

someone very, very, very dear to me - and thàt is an understatement- has finally found the time to start blogging. Not much happening as it is only the first day but check it out on a regular basis, this Catch a Glimpse of ... great stuff, I promise.

Afterthought

Why do people find it so difficult to engage? Why does everybody turn away from politics, from his or her democratic right to do something, to participate, to change things? Could it be because politics themselves have made it very discouraging for those who do act, to achieve something? Leaves active citizens with the sense of having hit his/her head against a brick wall? Of not getting anywhere? Of not understanding the politics speak and the way things are defined and communicated? And will new participatory media actually make a difference?

What's the point of being a benchmark country ...

... when all your efforts, everything you do to earn the 'benchmark' epigraph, sizzle out because ... euh ... no-one's interested?

Take the UK.

Considered something of a forerunner in the area of e-government. Policies defined in a hefty document describing the e-Government strategy. Country of great initiatives like Show-us-a-better-way etcetera. A recent article on PublicTechnology.net dryly notes that just half of the UK population has used Internet in the last year to access information about government or local council services ... or to complete a government form ... or to process online ....

So much for the UK e-Government take-up. Unless you are motivated to participate, unless you feel strongly about something, thén you start moving. Otherwise you couldn't care less.

Now thàt is something no e-Government strategy will ever be able to fix ... talk about a challenge!

Walk the talk (3)

Unbelievable. One of our MP's has gotten 300 something emails in an organised action by Test-Aankoop, our consumer organisation. He clearly has no inkling that writing emails to your MP -even in a coordinated action with standard texts- bears reference to old snail mail stuff like 'writing letters for Amnesty International" in the old days. Imagine the arrogance! Imagine the completely uncalled for 'I don't need this shit' reaction of someone who has been elected ... I'm flabbergasted.

Walk the Talk (2)

Still, some things really amaze me:

- ex cathedra speeches from leading eu. officials, reading stuff instead of (at the very least) having some kind of overview in ppt.

- a eu.official explaining about the importance of the post 2010 Information Society Policies' highlights, announcing a 'public consultation' starting on May 15th this year on policy issues that are important. Everyone of us meanwhile has been passing hours listening to the importance of new social media and the role they can play in empowering the public, resulting in more transparancy and an better democracy... So someone does ask the Obvious Question. "Are You Going To Use A Social Media Means To Organize This Public Consultation?"

The answer is, to my ears at least, rather unexpected: "Of course not! This is a big event! We can't possibly let the result of it depend on what the public is saying." Or words of that meaning.

Now, this really made me feel that the gap between the Thinkers (Social media will help solve the democratic deficit, enable citizens, empower them, ...) and the Reality (the EP, nor the NHS, nor the average Football trainer want peeping toms) is very much a Gap indeed.

Mind the Gap.

Walk the Talk

Spent a full day at the eu.practice workshop on public services 2.0 and how to implement user driven open innovation in public services. Clearly being the odd one out (not being a civil servant nor having a lot of experience in civil servant matters) , the whole thing turned out to be fairly interesting.

There is of course an inspirational side to it: the 'small' projects (small certainly in a European way of measuring things) were endearingly well conceived.

One of my favourites certainly was debategraph.org, based on the mindmap principle, offering some kind of externalized brain. Or rewiredstate.org, a concept I'm going to mail to my boss.

There was a lot of social economy going around in most of these grassroots initiatives, e.g. OnRoadMedia who use ning to create platforms for marginalised groups in society (best example being Savvy Chavvy ... read the article, I can't link to the project itself, it's a closed network).

But still, this is a European event. The (important) fact that all these 'small' projects cost next to nothing is not something we apparantly did want to get into too much.

More shocking was a Romanian project aimed at analyzing and visualizing the voting behavior of the 5-some Romanian European MP's. And if you start doing thàt, you might as well analyze and visualize the voting behavior of all MP's. After all, voting roll calls can be found on the site of the European Parliament. When clicking on the appropriate page you get a ... 170+ pages PDF listing who voted how on what. OK ....

So the Romanians wrote a script scraping the data to be able to show what they wanted to show. When asked how their financing was organized, the reply was 'US money'. Yes, they did apply for a European grant but the EP found the application ... not relevant. And, more importantly, the site ad gone offline for lack of money some time ago.

So yes, this is a European event and the fact that the EP is NOT interested in walking the talk and allow for transparancy ... not really something anyone was really shocked about. But on the other hand I'm not really able to reproduce what these Romanian colleagues did during their presentation ... weird.


And there was also Patientopinion.org collecting patients feedback on national health related experiences (in hospitals, with doctors, ....) where the British NHS basically thinks this is ... euh ... not relevant.

Or the football club Ebbsfield story, shown in the Ivo Gormsly movie Us Now, where the Ebbsfield trainer basically is not really inclined to accept the advice of the 30.000 something supporters having their say in the line up of the Ebbsfield team that needs to qualify to get to Wembley. They do. They get to Wembley. You almost hear the trainer think 'yeah right, streak of luck'

But still ... this is a eu.practice group committed doing things differently. There is hope yet :-)

Proud owner of a bee poken thx to BGGD

Went to the Antwerp edition of the BGGD yesterday evening (a lot of blokes for a gurrrrllll event) and found a cute poken in my goodiebag, courtesy www.ibbt.be ... how long will it take before I run into someone who actually has one I want to high five with? I'm afraid I'll be high-fivin' with someone I don't know, just to be able to :-) But a great gift anyway and one that will probably amaze my very high tech guys @ work. Cool! And thank you, BGGD & IBBT.