Selected Works - my blogs from the past year

Source: davidking, Flickr

Following on from the personal triumph that was my first blog post yesterday I thought I would strike while the iron was hot (not to fall back on well-worn cliches) and write a blog which pulls together the policy and social innovations blogs I've written in the past year or so. Let's go.

The first work-related blog I wrote was for The Guardian Local Government Network, which launched last autumn. I had originally approached The Guardian's Society supplement with a view to contributing articles but when Jane Dudman told me The Guardian would shortly be launching a Local Government Network, I decided it might be a better idea to start off by writing a blog for the network.

You can read my first blog, which looks at what the Big Society has to offer Local Government, by clicking here.

Buoyed by seeing my name in pixels, I set about writing my next blog for the network. But like bands struggling with their 'difficult second album' I, too, struggled to come to terms with my new-found fame.* True, unlike The Stone Roses I had not been sidetracked by chemical temptations. Nonetheless, there were  moments when I felt genuinely unsure where the next 400 words of inspiration would come from.

Fortunately for me, early in the new year Lambeth Council published The Co-operative Council – Sharing Power: A new settlement between citizens and the state and, thanks to having until recently worked for Lambeth, I was asked to comment on whether the council's vision for the future could survive the unprecedented reductions in public spending.

You can read my blog on The Co-operative Council by clicking here.

In the spring of this year my blogging temporarily took a back seat as I got to grips with my new role as Communications & Policy Lead for the social design agency thinkpublic. Instead, I had to content myself with developing solutions to complex social challenges and writing formal service design and social research reports. But luckily in June I had the chance to write again for the network, this time on the findings of our work at thinkpublic with families with mutliple and complex needs.

You can read my blog on finding better ways of supporting families with complex need by clicking here.

Having gotten into blogging once again, I was inspired to write about my experiences at the Google-FutureGov Interactivism Hack event, which I attended along with my thinkpublic colleague @joesmithdesign. The event, which took place over two days on Brick Lane, brought together the best student developers, Googlers, designers and other social innovators worked in crack teams to hack a better web that overcomes the barriers that stand in the way of older people accessing the web.

You can read about my time at Interactivism, including details of my team's prize-winning Spotted  mobile app to promote real world accessibility for people, by clicking here.

That's it for now. I'm hoping to get back into blogging for the network and other sites in the weeks and months ahead. If you know of any good opportunities to comment on policy and social innovation matters, feel free to drop me a line.


* Fame for me consisted of a handful of friends and family saying well done AFTER I had sent them a direct link to my post. Not to be confused with David Bowie's Fame.