I made a new website and it’s not broken yet

Freelance Public Servant Diary #8

Having a website is important for a freelancer — not just for the web presence branding, promotion etc but also having your own domain allows you to have a nice professional email.

That’s why I’m very pleased that I’ve been able to set up my first self-hosted wordpress site. Slightly anxious as well; whenever I’ve broken things in the past there was always a kind someone in our web team to help. Now there is less of a safety net but so far so good. I even know what FTP stands for now and what a c-panel is (Ok, don’t actually ask me).

I’ve gone with Wiser Hosting, a Devon company, (thanks for the suggestion Lucy Knight) and, while I spent far too long looking at possible wordpress themes, have decided that the Twenty Seventeen theme that comes with wordpress is absolutely fine for now (I think Dave Briggs said that).

I even had some ‘proper’ photos done thanks to a kind someone in our comms team.

I’m aiming to provide content that (I think) will be useful for public governors (councillors, school governors and any members of public bodies — there are lots of them) and I will be sharing a blog post about that shortly (although some generally useful ideas from Rachel Miller on that here).

Anyhow, I guess I’m still beta testing (is that what the cool kids say?) so, if you can please have a look at what I’ve done so far — any feedback would be much appreciated. The site is here.

Workwise

Last week we had our two scrutiny induction sessions. They both went really well judging by the feedback forms. As I think I mentioned before — we start from the assumption that there is already plenty of expertise in the room and our job is to facilitate some useful conversations between the experienced councillors and the newer ones.

We also see our induction sessions more as introduction sessions — giving people the broad outline as a staring point for discovery. There is a lot to take in for new councillors — I think it’s easy to over do it with the information we throw at them.

Today is the annual work planning conference for scrutiny — an interactive opportunity for councillors to consider what their priorities should be for the next twelve months. We have a format that we have tweaked over the years and we feel very happy with it — so I’m hopeful it will be a useful event.

Two weeks to go now — and Friday will be my last monthly pay packet.

Democracy Events

Some cool things coming up:

23 June: I’m going to Democracy #LOL :) : digital participation in local governance on Friday and looking forward to it.

29 June: Can’t make this Well Designed Democracy event by The Delib Team sadly but looks like a really cool event in a really cool venue.

30 June: Growing a stronger local democracy is the launch event for the Kirklees Democracy Commission and will be amazing.

15/16 September: Localgovcamp in Bristol. I got a ticket. Nah nah nah nah nah.

[Overuse of the word ‘cool’ in that section — maybe down to the current soaring temperatures]

Some Likes

Here is a list of some likes since last time (thanks to Neil Tamplin for suggesting IFTTT for linking twitter to google drive as a neat way of collecting these)

Some effective scrutiny tips spotted in @ADSO_UK evidence to @kirkdemocracy: http://www.democracycommission.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/43.Evidence-ADSO.pdf

There’s an app for that — the tech upstarts trying to ‘hack’ British politics featuring Sym Roe https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/06/democracy-theres-an-app-for-that-the-tech-upstarts-trying-to-hack-british-politics?

What a digital organisation looks like and how to turn yours into one: by Janet Hughes for @doteveryoneuk. https://medium.com/doteveryone/what-a-digital-organisation-looks-like-82426a210ab8

Why stickers matter. And yes, they matter. https://gilest.org/stickers.html

When you have a really tough problem, it often helps to expand skill domains beyond specialists in a single field”… https://t.co/hSNHj8BVDM via James Arthur Cattell