This year the skill will be something web related and relevant to plans for getting Digital Youth up and running. I haven’t decided which particular thing I’m going to focus on yet but it’ll be to allow me to develop applications from scratch rather than hacking away at other peoples work.

Just for fun though heres a few ‘resolutions’ and their probability for success….

I should probably add a few more re. my bad driving habits. The paperless office one I’m confident about now that I’ve got hold of a Fujitsu scanner (very impressive it is too!).

The cycle across England I’ve been intending to do since the last sponsored cycle across North Wales. Originally I was going to do it as another sponsored activity, but I’ve now decided I’d like to do one without having responsibility for other people, so fingers crossed I can get it together this summer.

The not agreeing to pointless meetings may sound a bit harsh. I read somebody elses advice about this a while back and nodded away about how much time is wasted agreeing to meet people who haven’t really given any thought to whether they can actually do any work with you - they just want to meet and maybe ’something could happen’. Well experience now tells me bugger all ever does, and giving time and ideas away for free is really pretty dumb. Instead I’ll try and meet with people that either I can learn from myself, or who are able to suggest a good clear agenda & purpose for meeting (so please do still get in touch but have a think about that agenda first!), (and actually if I’m honest there’s a couple of people I’d like to meet sometime this year but I don’t have any real purpose for doing so!).

PS if anyone fancies cycling across the English south coast for a few days get in touch

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I’ve dropped the “work” from the original “Digital Youth Work”, partly just because its shorter and partly to broaden the appeal beyond the eventual programme being just a youth work programme. Initially my focus will still very much be to develop programmes for informal education, but now that my other resources are bing distributed to schools it seems silly to potentially alienate that sector too.

For the time being I’ve stuck up a holding page over on digitalyouth.org.uk The mailing list link isn’t up yet as there was a problem with the script I use for mailouts when I transferred domains, so I need to fiddle about with that and get it working again (very soon!).

Other than that not much progress has been made so far but I will be knuckling down to get some practical activity ideas up around early February time. Before that I’m developing a couple of new resources to try out with a group in January and I’ll get details of those up too sometime in the new year.

That’s the lot for 2008! Until 2009 have a brilliant Xmas break and enjoy the new year

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Thanks to Adam Sibley, Adam Fletcher, Carl Haggerty, DK and Tessy Britton for bravely putting forward their predictions/ideas/hopes. I say brave because of course in a years time we’ll be able to look back and see how close to the mark we were!

Overall there’s a sense of hope that Youth Work better embraces the web next year. I’ve slightly countered that with my more cynical prediction that still next year youth work in general will be slow to embrace the web. I started an online network for what was then the Young Movers programme in 2003, at that time internet access was a real issue for many of our young volunteers but even those without home access felt it was the best solution for being able to have a more ongoing relationship with us while back at their homes in various parts of the country. I felt then that what we were doing was maybe a couple of years ahead of the pack and that soon an online element would become normal.

Well 5 years later and things haven’t changed much! Except that young people are using the web prolifically - the social network explosion has integrated the web into young peoples normal social lives, but for all manner of reasons the services working with young people have largely been left behind.

I agree with DK’s thoughts that there needs to be so much more to developing the use of the web than trying to jump on board the social network train. For one thing the use of social networks is likely to change radically very quickly - my own prediction here is that there will be much more of a move towards open networks that allow people to take their data wherever they like and quickly move between networks instead of having all their films, photos etc. tied into facebook. If so this will provide some interesting possibilities for youth services online along with a few more challenges to overcome.

The use of twitter is mentioned a couple of times. This was something we’d considered with plans for OnTheUp - the idea of being able to get an instant evaluation from young people involved in projects is very appealing. I don’t think though that twitter is the solution to this though, at least not until mobile providers provide a free data plan as standard for mobile phones. What I can see happening is that it surely can’t be long before mobile phone services integrate sms, twitter and msn/instant messaging into one universal service - if this happens the instant evaluation idea could quickly become a reality, although there will still be the challenge of getting young people to be willing to do so (which may not be so difficult depending on how you approach it).

Despite my cynical ‘not much will change’ prediction I really hope they do - in fact I’m relying on it! I’m planning to throw myself into developing digital youth programmes in the new year and am very aware that as things stand there won’t be much of a take up. What I’m hoping is that as people like DK and Tim Davies spread the word and continue to inspire youth workers out there to explore the web I’ll be able to build on this and provide some nicely structured ideas for using the web in creative ways towards personal development and community involvement - so I really hope youth work does embrace the web next year!

So thats our thoughts - if you have your own predictions or have thoughts on other peoples please do add them in the comments.

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I downloaded the video from Mark Smiths session and listening to his views has made me wonder or not there actually is a place for detached youth work on the internet.

Theres been a few discussions over recent months that detached youth work may provide a good model for online youth work. If you view the internet as a space with areas where young people ‘hang out’, then reaching into those spaces may be the same as the detached youth work approach of engaging with young people where they are, rather than seeking to bring them into a youth centre.

Much of what Smith discusses however suggests that detached youth work is fundamentally against what online youth work would involve. Firstly he very strongly suggests that the amount of recording detached youth workers are currently required to do in their work with young people is an “attack on their human rights” - describing this as a ’scale of corruption’. He goes on to suggest that youth work should be a ’space away from surveillance’.

Straight away this poses a problem for online youth work. The nature of online youth work would if anything increase recording - partly in my opinion because it would be necessary from the point of view of protecting all parties, but mostly because every time you interact online you create data, and you do so in all sorts of ways, some visible and obvious and others less so.

Secondly he says something towards the end of his session that I found very interesting which is that [in youth work if you] ‘choose to be with them its not youth work’ - this being reference to the principle of young people choosing to engage in a voluntary relationship/role and not being forced or expected to.

This has relevance to the idea of using online networks to reach out to young people - if you do this are you choosing to engage with them rather than allowing them to engage with you? and therefore is this also fundamentally against the principles of the detached youth work approach?

Does any of this matter? Well maybe not! Why I found it interesting was to do with other online discussions to do with a service exploring ways to assure young people they are bona fide youth workers. They had suggested the use of photos and videos in official ‘uniform’ on their profiles but I don’t think this is a very convincing method. Instead I suggested they should place a link to all authorised staff social network profiles on their main website, and then for each individual profile staff could place a link back to that main page for people to confirm who they are and who they work for.

This is all well and good for local authorities who have easily verified websites. Not so good for smaller voluntary organisations who may not have a website, or have one that isn’t well maintained. I had been wondering then with all the discussion about adopting a ‘Detached Youth Work’ approach, whether there might be an opportunity here for the Federation of Detached Youth Workers to provide some kind of online ‘validation’ so that suitably screened workers could sign up to and have their official ‘professional’ identities linked back to a validation page on the Federation of Detached Youth Workers website.

Now I’m wondering if thats not so good an idea because they would view the idea of online youth work as involving too much recording/surveillance, not being a genuine youth work relationship and so on?!

Having said all that even if it was an idea they’d support, they’d maybe need to update their own website first!

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Of all of them its the vegetable marketplace idea (called Vegsy) that I can see some real use for although getting enough people signed up to make it useful seems highly ambitious.

For most of the others I’m bemused as to what the perceived social benefit will be or how realistic it is that they can actually be of use. What I took from the last Social Innovation Camp was that to be successful you need a very simple idea. The last winner was Enabled by Design which aims to link the needs of people who use adapted equipment with designers - technically its the sort of thing that could be put together in just a few days, getting it used of course is a harder challenge and I assume that’s what has taken it so long to develop since. The idea I took along was far too ambitious - it took the whole weekend just to develop the concept let alone consider how to go about technically achieving it!

I say the idea of a ‘one click social enterprise’ is ridiculous (in the context of social benefit), because I don’t see what benefit that is going to have besides providing the same service that lots of sites already offer to buy a company formation online (that benefit being profit for not much work). Its already very simple to set up a social enterprise - keeping it running as I know all too well is far from simple and I would strongly advise anyone to put a considerable amount of thought into planning, including a very detailed look at the format you choose and what’s written in your governing documents.

The idea of making your preparations to die online raises some ethical issues such as what happens if you attract young people considering suicide? (and the potential for some very bad publicity if you get linked to anything like that). More to the point though don’t you just encourage people to draw up a Living Will that includes details of how they want their organs dealt with etc. - is there a need to be ‘innovative’ when a very good system already exists?!

I do like the idea of supporting people to plan accessible routes (called AccessCity). This is already possible on the brilliant Transport for London site and I assume they’re intending to build on that and maybe that’s the reason for choosing to develop it for London first? Otherwise why you’d choose the biggest city in the country to pilot an idea seems odd - why not a small town, or one of the smaller cities like Worcester, York or Exeter? (who I’m sure would appreciate it much more than London).

It’ll be interesting to follow how the various ideas get developed over the next few weeks. I already have my own idea for the next Social Innovation Camp, this is to develop a system that allows the final ideas for future Social Innovation Camps to be selected by the public! The notion that a small group of people are more suitable to select from a broad range of ideas is very old fashioned. I don’t suggest this ‘idea’ sarcastically - I can understand why a public voting system hasn’t been used - it would just be a popularity contest won by whoever has the biggest online social network (or most friends in London), so I really do think it would be a project in itself to develop a fair system that does allow future selections to be done in the open.

You can see the full list of shortlisted ideas here

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I wonder if the same applies to other aspects of life. For example if you have a negative image of young people do you need a larger positive image to redress the balance? If so I wonder then on the wisdom of the Barnardo’s Children in Trouble Campaign.

The campaign includes a very well produced film showing hunters hunting down children while narrating comments that adults have apparently actually said about children. They’ve had a brilliant publicity launch - I heard Barnardo’s Chief Executive discussing the campaign on Radio 4 this morning, and even this lowly blog was sent pre-publicity well in advance with links to the survey findings, film and so on.

So a very impressive and well put together campaign - and one with a message I very much agree with. But somehow it doesn’t feel comfortable. Obviously its not designed to make you feel comfortable - you should feel uncomfortable thinking that adults speak so negatively about children and young people, but that’s not the cause of my unease. Instead I wonder whether actually this kind of negativity can reinforce further negative attitudes, hence my maths lesson at the start! -10 + -5 = -15, not good!

A more practical example can be heard in the short Radio 4 interview with children from Birmingham about their reaction to how adults view them having seen the film. You start to get the sense of a battle between children and adults. Undoubtedly there is a battle, and always will be, but how do you best go about bridging the divide - positive activities to bring people together? or hard hitting campaigns showing how bad the other side is?

What I think is really sad about this isn’t that some adults do feel this way (and it is only some if you consider that the 2021 people that took part in the survey accounts for 0.003% of the actual adult population in the UK), but that because of the way the media drives our society a large charity acting in the best interests of children feels the only way they can get good publicity for their cause is to try and shock.

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Originally I had hoped to find funding to develop our own subsidised programme similar to the Young Movers programme from which YoMo was formed. This never happened - partly because I was too tied up with other aspects and partly because there just doesn’t seem to be much in the way of funding to support very small organisations to deliver national initiatives. This is a great shame because we did have a lot to offer and the interest in YoMo whenever we attended events was obvious. I had hoped that even though funding was primarily going to large organisations and consortium’s it would still filter through to organisations like YoMo but in our case it rarely happened, it seemed if we weren’t in the big boys club we weren’t to be involved.

Besides that I’m not cynical - I’d have hated to have not given it a go and the experiences I’ve had over the past 8 years have been incredible. I look at Kirsty, Ezra, Maria, Jono, Vivienne, Niall and all the volunteers that have been involved with us and think how amazing to have been able to deliver training to people in all sorts of different areas here in the UK, in Ireland and Africa. Of course their own contributions have made that possible - YoMo would never have existed without them, and so many others. I’ll look back on the courses, the AGM’s, the sponsored cycles, the work in Africa with very fond memories and I’ve no doubt many others will too.

Some of the work will continue in different forms. Kirsty and Maria have both indicated they wish to continue to deliver training and I’ll support them to do so where possible. Some of us will be continuing to support the projects in Malawi through The YoMo Foundation which is an independent charity. Most of the resources I designed based on training methods over the years will be available next year through the Incentive Plus catalogue (and I assume their website).

Personally I’ll be available for some consultancy work and maybe delivering the odd bit of training and workshops. Mostly though I’m going to turn my attention to exploring ways that web resources can be used to support young peoples development and community involvement. I’ve really enjoyed starting to put together the Digital Youth Work Programme which has been very similar to the early days of designing courses for the Young Movers programme. Hopefully next year some youth groups will make use of the courses that get developed through that and I’m looking forward to shaping them based on real feedback. I’m planning to enrol on an Open University Course for e-learning methods and in the meantime am busy brushing up on my web development skills. I’ve spent some years hacking sites together and creating a website is no problem, but what I’d really like to do is begin developing new stuff. For that I need to get to grips with creating things from scratch, although no doubt I’ll still end up mostly hacking as there’s so much good stuff already available!

So please do keep in touch if you’ve been involved in past events in whatever capacity. If you want to sign up to the new mailing list to be kept informed about things I’ll be working on next year and also the work of the YoMo Foundation you can sign up here. (The old YoMo list will no longer be used so unless you sign up to this new list you won’t receive any more updates). You can also subscribe to this blog by clicking the orange buttons at the top - and if that confuses you watch the mini film in the bottom right column!

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This stemmed from me thinking that aspects of the Digital Youth Work courses could be activities that young people go away and work on, and if so is this similar to sending young people off to physical spaces for youth related projects? ie. if you were to ask young people to conduct a questionnaire in their spare time presumably you would seek parental consent for that and would take measures to ensure parents knew of what the activity involved.

If that line of thinking is correct should it be that guidance is provided for parents as to how to best support young people in using the internet?

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