Another trainline fail

Booking train tickets is the bane of my life. I’m very lucky in that I have someone who can help book my travel if I’m organised far enough in advance to ask them to do so, however the reality is I’m not always as organised as I’d like – especially when I’m trying to juggle work travel with some sort of social life at home. This week I’m off to give a masterclass on research use in #socialcare practice at Kingston University. This makes my soul ache for numerous reasons, namely the eight hours travel (at least) on a Friday, the feeling of losing some of my weekend by being away from here on a Friday, the inevitable busy trains, the fact that Kingston is a good hour and a tube/bus/walk away from Paddington. Luckily, the subject matter makes my heart sing and I’m optimistic that the session itself will be good fun, and hopefully well received, and I was invited by Ray Jones who has been a staunch supporter of our organisation for years, so I’m delighted to be going, just less delighted with the travel.

Anyhow, why am I waffling on about this? Well tonight I decided to book my travel, and what happens:

I wasn’t allowed to book a ticket, the system didn’t tell me I couldn’t book, just that I couldn’t book accommodation – which I’m guessing means a seat. Please tell me the train companies are not allowed to now sell you a ticket without a seat? Booking train tickets has stolen so much of my life over the past few years I couldn’t face fighting the booking system. I decided writing this and appealing to the wisdom of twitter, was more likely to resolve the issue.

So any ideas for how to book my travel? Please? Or any offers of lifts door-to-door gratefully received!

Social media metrics: reach ≠ quality

I need to start this post by confessing that I’ve been wanting to use ≠ in a post for ages. For anyone who is thinking it’s a typo, it’s not it’s actually the symbol for *does not equal*, so indulge me with my quirk if you will and keep reading – anyone who got here already.

In fact let’s start right there – that’s me, that’s my quirk, that’s my indulgence. When I blog I tend to stay very true to me, it’s a personal blog, I write what I like and I don’t worry too much about who reads what. If I was blogging for work, or concerned about understanding or promoting something of mass interest, I doubt I’d start a blog like this, I’ve already lost at least half of you who stumbled here I guess. There is the point of this blog post – a reflection on social media metrics, and the challenges of measuring anything useful and the relationship between self and audience satisfaction.

50%

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I joined the #lgovsm chat this week and found it really useful, in fact I really enjoyed the fast pace discussion and challenge, you can read a write up of the discussion here. The bit that made it for me was hearing from new people, who only rarely fall into my social media path, and having some debate and discussion. I work in social care and in my opinion we’re a sector woefully short of social media influencers. In fact I’d argue those who may be considered to be such know very little about #socialcare – they may know about #socmed or about communications, but few seem to understand the intricacies of social care, and where they do they only occasionally have the opportunity to join in a lot of the social media discussions because their working lives doesn’t facilitate them sitting in front of a computer to participate.

At this point I  should declare (in case you’ve not noticed already) that this post is likely to be full of sweeping statements – I’m sure that’ll lose another 20% of you as I offend your own viewpoint, apologies.

70%

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Back to my last point, certainly most people working in #localgov social care are lucky if when they can access computer equipment, they are not on machines that are at least 5-10 years old, running IE6, without a sound card. Lots of residential care providers have been helped online through the Department of Health funded Get Connected project, but there is still a long way to go before most providers are active participants in social media. I’m not even going to consider those of us who use social care services, rather than work in them (and I know it’s not either/or) but I think that needs another post, another time.

Maybe this is the same in other sectors, or maybe it is particularly pronounced given how slow the social care sector has been to embrace technology more broadly, and social media as one vehicle within that. I’m not sure, but I’m sure there are some social media experts who will let me know. Which brings me on to the point of my post that could make or destroy it’s reach – working on the assumption that I’ve only lost 70% of the readership already. The blatant opinion, that is likely to upset those people who have the most social media reach. These are the people who have the largest networks, and/or the most followers, and/or the most ‘influence’ (as measured by social media metrics).

95%

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If you’d like to know more about metrics and their measurement then take a peak at the post written by @Ermintrude2 that you can read here and that post built on an introductory one from @ClaireOT which you can read here.

There are so many limits to social media metrics, I’m not going to get into the algorithms (because the posts above do) but I’m going to offer three tricks, as I see them, for anyone interested in increasing their influence and/or extending their reach:

1) Follow more – invariably those with highest influence scores follow thousands of followers on twitter, or facebook, or linkedin. There is a simple reciprocity bias at play here, the more you follow, the more follow you – and therefore the more people there are to share your wisdom and musings with the world.

2) Don’t talk to the little people – one or two well timed interactions, with other similarly ‘influential’ types will boost your scores, chat and discussion with those lower down the food chain won’t. So you get more influence for hanging with the cool kids than encouraging and welcoming new people into your social media circles.

3) Re-tweet (RT) as much as possible, or better still take someone else’s tweet, add your own hashtag and mention them at the end with a hat-tip (HT) if at all. This will allow lots of people who follow you to think you’re adding to the discussion, they won’t necessarily know that it isn’t your contribution and when it comes to them RTing they’ll end up RT you not the person at the end of the tweet (where you remembered to mention them).

I believe all of those three tricks will help increase your reach and influence. What none of them do though is account for quality, and there lies the rub for me:

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reach  ≠  quality

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It seems to me that one of the great successes of social media is that it enables us to turn broadcast on it’s head. It is no longer about cascading information, but about disrupting and debating and reframing and building and contributing to information. It is about a living, breathing entity. Therefore I’d like to see any social media metric measuring engagement and participation, and quality of contribution within that. Unless I’m missing something the metrics just aren’t there yet. So I’ll keep my head in the sand and keep relying on my favourite social media metric – a word of mouth recommendation, or a discussion with someone who bothers to engage with me. I know that I’ll bias my own network like that, I know that I’ll make my own judgements, which may well not be as reliable as the algorithm, however I prefer my own judgement of quality over quantity or reach any day.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about klout or other social media metrics, I’ve never visited their site or awarded any scores to anyone. I try to follow no more than 100 people on twitter and my facebook account is full of photos of my mates babies. I am  NOT an expert on this stuff – I’m just throwing my thoughts into the mix. I do NOT wish to offend anyone, merely to promote discussion and to that end I’d love to know your thoughts and views. If any of you read this – thank you – I can’t believe you reached the end!

My arrows came from here.

It’s only when you need it that you realise what a gift it is #giveblood

Short blog from me after a conversation with my mum. On Tuesday this week my Dad had a blood transfusion. Dad has cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, and despite being generally healthy he had started to get breathless, become very pale, and lost energy. At his most recent consultant’s appointment we found out that he was anaemic and by the time he got the transfusion on Tuesday his haemoglobin level was down to 8, which essentially means that his red blood cell count was dropping.

Photo by cogdogblog on flickr (cc)

Having a transfusion isn’t that unusual in people who are undergoing chemotherapy (not that Dad is) or who have cancer. You can read more on the Macmillan site here. He said the whole process was completely painless, and only took six hours, during which time he was able to eat, drink, watch TV, read his book and so on. My mum was reflecting on the process the day after and had been really struck by what a gift it is, to receive someone else’s blood. Her exact comment is the title of this blog post:

It’s only when you need it that you realise what a gift it is.

I used to give blood as a student and when I worked in a university, because it was easy and only involved popping in when a donation session was happening. I’m struck by how lazy my approach to donation has been though and will be seeking out the next local donation session and getting myself down there, after all I don’t have much use for my spare blood….and most remarkably my Dad has already felt a huge benefit, he has even had warm hands and feet for the first time since he had a major operation 3.5 years ago. It could of course be complete coincidence, but I doubt it.

So next time you give blood please accept my thanks, it’s people like you who are keeping my Dad alive. That is something fairly awesome. If you don’t give blood maybe you’d consider it – check out the NHS Blood and Transfusion Service in the UK or the American Red Cross if you’re elsewhere.

If you’re feeling all manner of generous perhaps you’d also consider donating bone marrow. A good friend, Betty, donated her bone marrow this week and I my sense of admiration is so immense I can’t really describe it. I’m sure we’d all like to think we’d do the same, but to do so you need to give blood, join the register, and then undergo surgery. She is now recovering and will be 100% fit soon. I only hope that the person who received it recovers as well, the odds were narrow, but I hope that Betty’s gift affords them a new chance, like Dad’s transfusion did this week.

To the blood and bone marrow donors of the world – please accept my gratitude and thanks. You are all awesome.

Innovators are constantly asking why things aren’t done differently – the return of #innopints

A couple months ago, back in August, a handful of people (including @martinhowitt @fergusbisset @carlhaggerty @dalekdoctor @gerrynos and @samnixson) met at The White Hart at Dartington Hall for a couple hours of chat and a couple of drinks. At the time the loose connection was some interest (personal or by association) in innovation, hence the #innopints hashtag.

We had a great time, conversation was wide and varied including working lives and histories, Ken Livingston on Education:

…Devon CC Tough Choices campaign, access to university for people with disabilities, A-level results (expected), badgers, pizzas, a tiny bit about social care, twitter and other networks, school governorship….oh and a tad about innovation (I think).

We agreed to meet up again in a few months, which is looming now. We said we’d brave it in Newton Abbot (which I’m delighted about) and I’m suggesting we go for Mon 21 November. You now have two big choices ahead of you as you get to the end of this post:

1) Are you going to come – you know that you should. A tweet up, in Devon, with the likes of us, who wouldn’t!

2) Would you like to go for a) just drinks b) an indian or c) @pizzacafenewton

Look forward to hearing from you all…come on, say you’ll come.

**UPDATE**

The plan is to meet at The Eastern Eye in Newton Abbot at 7pm on Mon 21 November – all welcome, please let me know @georgejulian (or leave a comment) if you’re going to be there so I can book a large enough table! Don’t be put off by their website – it’s awful but that’s because they’re busy putting their efforts into making great food!

Reflections on #NCASC – let’s start with people

For the last three days I’ve been in London for #NCASC – the National Children and Adult Services Conference. A considerable focus of the conference was #integratedcare and the need for #health and #socialcare systems to work closer together, set within the current economic situation and reduction of resources. I think its fair to say that at times at conference you’d have been forgiven for forgetting that what we are all really interested in is improving life for people who need to use health and social care services. I guess that understanding is absolutely implicit, and the challenges are great at the moment, so much so that it would be easy to reach a state of being overwhelmed with the magnitude of the challenge, and disillusioned with what can actually be done.

So, I’d like to share a good news story.

While I was going about life at conference, back in sunny Devon unbeknownst to me (because my Mum didn’t want to bother me when I was working), my Dad was getting increasingly breathless. For anyone reading this blog for the first time, my Dad has cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer), and he has a terminal diagnosis. Just over a week ago we had an appointment with his consultant (you can read the post I wrote the day before we went) where he told us that one of his tumours had shrunk slightly (and the reaction). This is great news as we’d tried to prepare ourselves to hear that the cancer had spread to his lungs given his difficulties to breathe and recover from the slightest of physical activity. We were told that Dad was anaemic, and the relationship between tumours needing blood supplies and the tumour shrinking was gently explained. More blood tests were taken, the possibility of an endoscopy floated, iron tablets and vitamins promised once the results were available.

On Thursday Mum decided they could wait no longer, Dad didn’t want to hassle (neither of my parents ever do) but Mum balanced up the possibilities of Dad’s health deteriorating sharply over the weekend (anyone who has had to rely on our health or social care systems knows not to get ill at the weekend) and the need to just gently nudge the system. One phone call from Mum to the Oncology Dept revealed that they had the results and someone would phone back with them. Hours later a chance inquiry into Dad’s health by their GP when dealing with my 93yo Grandad led to him getting involved and prescribing iron tablets and following up with Oncology too. A day later Dad has a course of iron tablets and a blood transfusion booked for Tuesday because his haemoglobin levels were so low. I’m confident that we have that outcome for two reasons, because my Mum didn’t wait until things got worse and chose to take action herself (in spite of how uncomfortable that makes her feel) and because our GP knows enough about my family to ask about my Dad when dealing with my Grandad. I’d like to think that his information recording computer system is good enough that when he looks at my Grandad’s notes he is able to see that he lives with his 91yo wife next door to their daughter and son-in-law who provide them with care and support, one of whom also happens to be terminally ill. I know I’m pipe dreaming but you know what I mean.

So what has this got to do with NCASC?

Well, as I sit here musing on Saturday, the words that made the most impression on me were from people who I know and respect, all of whom focused on people as part of the solution. These were Councillor Sue Anderson from Birmingham City Council who addressed a session on Health and Well-being Boards #hwb and focused on the need to focus on good relationships rather than bureaucracy. She wasn’t suggesting that the systems and strategy are not important, she was however stressing the need to start with relationship building and trust.

Next up on my thought provoking list has to be Richard Jones. The Director from Lancashire CC and former ADASS President took the floor in the Think Local Act Personal session #TLAP on the final day and challenged #socialcare to focus, arguing that we were getting caught on second order conversations about #integration and #resources and forgetting the people at the centre. Making it Real the new publication from TLAP will prove useful for anyone working on #personalisation to judge their progress against the end results that citizens have identified they need. Sue Bott also talked a *lot* of sense in the TLAP session, with a humour and personality to her delivery that few before her in conference had managed – she even got a room full of conference weary delegates to raise a virtual toast to Making it Real!

My final sense talker has to be Peter Hay, the Director of Adult Services in Birmingham and this year’s ADASS President who took the floor a number of times at conference. He joined the panel in the final session that focused on #integratedcare and the work of the Future Forum and again brought the focus back to those who use #socialcare services, reiterating a challenge from Lord Crisp at the conference opening to build services around #life not around #care or #health.

Isn’t that all a bit naive and over simplistic? 

I’d like to think not. We are without doubt in need of large scale system change, #Dilnot challenges us all to consider our own future and how we will provide for our old age or social care costs, whatever your view on the Health Bill the creation of Health and Well-being Boards present an opportunity, our demographics are changing, as is our technology, our family life and our expectations. None of this is new though, not really, the likes of @RichardatKF can tell you all you need to know. Surely, we have known for long enough what works and doesn’t work with regards to integration and we must know by now that people just want to feel well and live their lives as independently as possible. Maybe it’s just me but I’ve yet to meet someone who cares which budget their support comes out of, people just want to live their lives.

So what can we do?

This was my third time at NCASC and each year I leave exhausted with a lot more to think about (and a head full of more ideas) than when I arrived. I usually meet a few people in person that I’ve not met before, my favourites this year were @jaimeelewis @mroutled and @philblogs and I was also delighted to see far more real life networking inspired by twitter connections. [As an aside I do believe that the #socialcare sector is finally realising the potential of #socmed]. I’m sitting here believing that change can happen, we have clear evidence around these challenges, we have enough people with enough experience to move on some of this. Personally I believe that this requires commitment and leadership, from those at the top of government (I too struggle to see how bin collections are more important than social care) to match those from the sector who I’ve mentioned above. As much as I welcome any attempts to engage people on the future of care and support (6 weeks left to contribute) I do wonder whether what we really need is a commitment to action.

The one consistent in all of these discussions and system challenges is the person who is trying to live their life. Start with the person, they (and their carers or family members) are the lynchpins in all of these systems and services. Let’s start improving services now, we can’t afford to wait.

NB: Just a thought, #socialcare readers of this might be interested in an earlier post What is Service Design? – the comments and discussion especially may help unearth some thoughts for how we can move on such large scale system redesign, without forgetting the end user or person who uses them.

Karen Darke – athleticism, inspiration, dedication

Those of you who visit here occasionally (I like to pretend that some of you are repeat visitors) will know that I’m often digging around for people who are inspirational. Top of my personal list would probably be my Dad (if you missed it earlier this week his tumour shrank slightly since his last scan so that was great news), at the moment a close second are Ollie and Megan, my cousin’s kids. Their Dad was killed in Afghanistan last month and they’ve decided to try and keep a positive focus for his birthday next month by doing a sponsored silence to raise money for 1 Rifles Swift and Bold appeal – you can show them your support and donate a couple quid if you like over here.

In both those instances I’m impressed by their fortitude, by their attitude to just keep keeping on. Cancer and grief are hellish things to have to deal with, never mind if you’re only a teenager (or not yet a teenager in Megs’ case). But what has this got to do with Karen Darke? Well she is another source of inspiration, in fact arguably one of the most inspirational athletes in the UK at the moment. I first heard about Karen a few years ago, 2008 to be precise, I was squatting up on the speakers ahead of the Do Lectures that I was luckily enough to be attending. One of them was Andy Kirkpatrick and his biog included reference to a trip to El Capitan that he’d made with Karen Darke. You can learn more about Andy here. When I returned home from the Do Lectures one of the first things I did was order Karen’s book If you fall and since then I’ve been following her life from a distance.

Since then, Karen and Andy have continued on their adventures. In 2009 Karen became World Para-Triathlon Champion, Sea-Kayaked in Patagonia,  won a Bronze Medal in World Cup Paracycling. The following year she joined Team GB Paracycling Team and she is now British Para-Triathlon Champion and in training for next years Paralympics. The 4 minute film that follows explains better than I can – it’s well worth your time, go watch now

4square pizza – ideas please

I’ve blogged once or twice about the Pizza Cafe in Newton Abbot – they’re the absolute best place to get pizza for miles around. In fact I’ve had people visit from all over and I don’t think anyone has ever been disappointed, their pizzas are amazing.

The Pizza Cafe is small and independent, they have one restaurant and also offer a delivery service. They also have a dedicated fan base with over 3000 admirers on their facebook page and a thousand people interacting with them on twitter. They have yet to dive into foursquare and in a twitter discussion the other week I agreed to have a think about how they could use it and put some ideas together. The first three of these ideas are included below but I’d really appreciate other people’s thoughts and suggestions, so please do share and comment.

What is foursquare?

Foursquare is a social networking tool that allows it’s users to connect with each other, with locations, services and products through check-ins on the web. As of last month (stats from foursquare Sept 2011) there were over 10 million people in the community worldwide, over a billion check-ins and over 500,000 businesses using the merchant platform to connect with their business.

How does it work?

There is no point me trying to explain this when the following site from the foursquare site does it so much better. It’s only two minutes long:

How could Pizza Cafe Newton (or any other business) use it?

Idea 1 – reward for the mayor. The mayor is the person who has the most check-ins over the preceding 60 days. Some businesses offer rewards to their mayor, maybe a free pizza each month or a free side order for the mayor whenever they come into the restaurant. The Pizza Cafe already offer one free pizza to their facebook/twitter fans each month – drawn randomly, which is a nice way of keeping everyone engaged, this reward would be more focused on customers who actually visit the restaurant.

Idea 2 – special offer for anyone who checks-in on a *insert your day*, let’s go for Wednesday. This would allow those who come to the restaurant and check-in via foursquare a reward, they would need to check-in to get the special but the reward would be available for anyone searching foursquare to view. So if I was visiting Newton Abbot on a Wednesday and didn’t know where to go eat, it might encourage me to visit the Pizza Cafe.

Idea 3 – special offer Monday – the Pizza Cafe already have a great offer on a Monday between 6-9pm. Two courses, for two people for £19.95. Now that is already a complete bargain and they already offer free drinks to those who mention facebook or twitter when they book their table. They could have a similar offer for foursquare customers – some of whom don’t use twitter or facebook so wouldn’t know about the deal otherwise.

What to do next?

Step 1 – Claim your venue. In the case of the Pizza Cafe they already have a page here, so they just need to visit the merchant site to claim the page

Step 2 – Create a special to reward loyal or new customers

Step 3 – Visit the merchant dashboard to monitor statistics about how many people are checking in, total over time, most frequent visitors, gender breakdown, time of day most popular with foursquare users etc. I have a feeling that I might feature in this data! I’ve not seen the dashboard but I’m confident it could give useful data for any business.

Step 4 – Celebrate extending your social media reach with a pizza Sit back and let your customers do the rest.

It’s shrunk!

So the news is that Dad’s main tumour has shrunk slightly (only a couple of millimetres) and the other two have shown no significant change.

No conversation about chemotherapy either.

Not sure any of us can quite believe it. Can’t stop grinning. Not often you get good cancer news.

I’m dreading tomorrow

I took this photo just over four weeks ago, on my Dad’s 64th birthday. I’ve no idea what he was contemplating, if indeed he was, but I like to think he was thinking how awesome he is and that his fight to stay well is worth it.

Four years ago my fantastic Dad was diagnosed with Cholangiocarcinoma – never heard of it, you probably wouldn’t have, it’s Bile Duct Cancer which is very rare.  There are approximately 1000 new cases in the UK each year and prevalence rates are estimated to be 1-2 cases per 100,000 people in the Western World. Which just proves the point, my Dad is exceptional, in fact I’m tempted to add a zero and make him one in a million.

Last week he had blood tests, Monday he had a CT Scan with a contrast dye and tomorrow we (Dad, Mum and myself) are going to see his consultant. Dad’s condition is terminal and each time we see his consultant I never expect to see him again, but Dad amazes us all and has remained relatively healthy.

Just lately though Mum has admitted he is getting breathless without much exertion. Arguably it could be old age, or general lack of fitness but I think we all know that it is far more likely to be linked to the spread of his cancer. So tomorrow we’ll hear the latest results, we’ll  have more of an idea of how far it’s spread and where to, and I’m confident that Dad will be offered chemotherapy again. Six months ago he was offered it and after much thought turned it down, three months ago he was far more interested in decorating and enjoying the summer to want it, tomorrow I suspect he might feel differently.

Last week Steve Jobs died, and in the flurry of online activity that followed his death I found my way to his Stanford Commencement Address from 2005, you can watch it on YouTube here, it’s only 15mins and highly inspiring IMO:

 

Steve Job’s death, and the attention that followed it, brought home the reality (again) of loss and the impact that has on many people. There was one particular quote that has stayed with me and played on my mind all week, I thought I’d end this post with it as I think it’s always worth remembering – not just that we should all find the courage to follow our own path, but that death itself has a sense to it, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new

RIP L/Cpl Jon McKinlay

This evening I watched Young Soldiers, a new short BBC3 documentary that follows the lives of four recruits to the British Army from basic training through to frontline action in Helmand. Those of you who are regular visitors might know that I have the utmost respect for those serving in our forces, as much as I really struggle to understand their motivation at times, I am fascinated by it though. If you are anyway interested then the documentary is compelling viewing.

This week marked the 10th anniversary of the British Army’s arrival in Afghanistan, during that time thousands of civilians have been killed and injured, 382 British soldiers have been killed and hundreds have been injured. On the 10th anniversary L/Cpl Jon McKinlay was buried, he was the 381st soldier to be killed in Afghan and my cousin’s former husband and Dad to her two children. I’ve chosen not to blog about Jon, despite how openly I talk about most things, his story didn’t feel like it was mine to tell. You can read his obituary here.

That said I wanted to mark his death in some way on this blog, and I came across an article on the BBC site about a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North, called In our own words and it felt worth drawing people’s attention to. I’m going to try to get and see it, but take a look at the feature on the BBC – it explains the complicity of the conflict far better than I could.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

RIP Jon – Swift and Bold