Voicebox bid feedback from CLG

In the spirit of the open way in which we developed the Voicebox bid for Digital Mentors, I wanted to share with you the feedback we’ve had from CLG. There’s a lot in here which is positive and also some lessons which we need to learn. Overall, it seems that the Media Trust’s bid met more of the criteria for what CLG were looking for from the Digital Mentors project, so it must have been a great bid. We’re really looking forward to finding out more about Media Trust’s plans.

Download the PDF of CLG’s feedback on the Voicebox bid.

As I’ve said before, even though we’re very disappointed with the outcome, the process of developing the bid has to go down as our most successful failure of the last year. Open collaboration has now become an approach we’re embedding within our organisational culture.

We’re currently looking at how we can encourage decision-makers to move towards more open policymaking and support practitioners to share ideas and good practice via a Digital Engagement blog. Please come and take part at www.digitalengagement.org. In the coming weeks and months, we aim to use the site to develop a bottom-up Digital Manifesto which can be used by partners and presented to government to inform policymakers. We’re in the very early stages of this, so please let us have your feedback about ideas for shaping the blog.

Thanks again for all your support for the Digital Mentors bid and I’m sorry we’ve not been successful.

A new conversation

Helen has launched a new community blogging project over at digtialengagement.org which aims to be:

a collaborative space for all those interested in digital engagement to share ideas and agree priorities for action around digital engagement

This is of a much wider scope than digital mentors, and has the potential to be a real hotbed of interesting and vital debate. Helen writes:

By digital engagement we mean the use of social technologies for social good. What do you think we should do on digitalengagment.org? In the immediate future, we want to use this site to create a digital manifesto, what more could we all do, and do together to get more people online and engage in the right tools for them to help them in their lives.

I’ve helped out by setting the blog up, and will be adding my thoughts on digital engagement in due course. The aim is for the site to be as inclusive as possible, so see how you can get involved.

We are going to have some interesting announcements coming up, including how we are going to try and get this conversation going en masse at the Digtial Inclusion Conference in April.

Thankyou to all Voicebox contributors

I’m sorry to tell you that Voicebox was not successful in its bid to run the Digital Mentors initiative from CLG.  The call came in this afternoon, and to be honest, I’m still reeling from the disappointment.

The successful bidder was Media Trust, and so I’d like to congratulate their team who also worked really hard to develop the winning bid.

As you’ve read from the Voicebox blog so far, we’ve come such a long way since last autumn in terms of the understanding how an open and collaborative approach to developing bids can work, and so this wont be the last time we will use this approach to develop other opportunities that come our way!

A big ‘THANK YOU’ to all of you that contributed to the Voicebox blog. I’ve learned a great deal from you all and hopefully, some great contacts too.  I’m sure these links wont be lost!

In the meantime, I hope you will join with me in offering your support to Media Trust (and their partners) to ensure the Digital Mentors initiative help peoples in deprived communities in England develop skills in using social and community media.