Cost of Social Media

It has been a while since my last blog but here goes…..on 10^th September I was lucky enough to attend Digital Futures, a free event hosted by Shropshire Council at Theatre Severn; the event celebrated the work of digital champions across the country and even featured a live Skpe link to No 10 (which worked by the way!).

Vicky Sargent of Boilerhouse Media explained the financial cost of transactions and the benefits of channel shift to cash strapped local councils. Below is a quick infographic I produced using the Socitm data Vicky quoted and noun symbols (open source symbols from http://thenounproject.com/  which you can download using google chrome). The infographic shows a comparison of the average cost of transactions for the web, phone and face to face.

Average cost per transaction

Produced by Richard Overy. Data Source: Socitm Insight better Served February 2011, Symbols: CC-BY The Noun Project.

Of course channel shift is only one element of providing a service to customers and several speakers mentioned the issue of digital exclusion, Alison Smith from Pesky People www.peskypeople.co.uk was one such speaker. Alison explained the issues surrounding digital exclusion for customers who have a disability, for example 1 in 3 disabled users have never used the internet compared with 1 in 10 of the able-bodied population.

Just two quick snippets from Digital Futures, further information can be found on twitter using the following hashtag #digifutures12 and a link to an article from the Shropshire Star featuring Dan Slee is shown below.

http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2012/09/11/delegates-set-trend-at-digital-futures-conference

How productive is hot desking?

I was pleased to learn that my colleagues and I will be moving from Darby house in Telford Town Centre to the new civic buildings in my home town of Wellington.

New Offices on the left, Walker St, Wellington, Telford

The new offices are attached to the improved civic buildings which includes a new library, registry office, pool and gym; with the added bonus that the offices are 10 minutes walk from my home.

Not to mention the boost 200+ extra office staff will provide to Wellington’s local economy.

The only downside seems to be a 20% reduction in the number of desks and the dreaded words ‘hot desking’!

At a time when every council is feeling the pinch this method of working helps to save money on office space (often the second largest expense after staff themselves) but where did the idea come from and how does it affect productivity?

Wikipedia and several other online sources state that the term is a derivative of the term ‘hot racking’ used by naval officers who shared bunks for shifts. The term ‘hot desking’ became popular in the late 1980′s and early 1990′s.

One of my friends (Simon Latham from Wolverhampton Council) recently shared an article via twitter which explained that open plan offices were 66% less productive than private offices due to the extra noise, Julian Treasure provides some examples of how noise affects us in his TED talk. I wondered whether similar research had been undertaken into hot desking?

It seems several universities and the Institute of Work Psychology have carried out studies but the papers do not seem to be public, I did find an extract from a research paper by Kate Bonsall on the subject though.

On a related subject the Guardian published an article on desk psychology, here is a picture of my current desk for you to analyse and a quick mindmap I produced on pros and cons of hot desking.

Do you still use a cassette tape or a phonograph?

Copied from Communities of Practice

This is my last blog post to Communities of Practice. The site will soon become obsolete (31st March 2012); I am sad that the CoP site is coming to an end but I’m also excited about the brand new Knowledge Hub.

The Information Graphics and Visualisation Community is migrating to the Knowledge Hub this weekend; thank you to Mike Macauley and his colleagues for creating the Hub and for their help with the migration.

Last year I discovered Jung Von Matt’s Museum of Obsolete Objects on youtube, a video archive of obsolete objects; I still own and use many of the items in the Museum such as the phonograph, polaroid camera and radio receiver. I received a wind up Gramophone for my Birthday which I love, not only because it’s old and beautiful but I also have a reason to collect old 78s!

Thank you to all those who have contributed to the Information Graphics & Visualisation Community on CoP and I hope to see you on the other side at the Knowledge Hub.

National Map of Shared Services

The Local Government Association have used Googlemaps to visualise shared services  throughout England as shown in the map below.

Although shared services may not be suitable for every council or for that matter every service, the drastic public sector cuts we are witnessing mean major changes for every Local Authority. A search of the Guardian’s Government Computing web pages show how many councils are planning or implementing shared services

The colours on the map indicate which service is being shared, the stars indicate operational shared services.

The interactive map and the source data can be accessed via the LGA’s website

New Year Resolutions

For many 2012 will start with the usual New Year’s resolutions, Teresa Wozniak an Illustrator from Halifax, Canada produced the poster shown below with a few suggestions.

I didn’t really make any resolutions but finish every book you have started reading and spend more time behind the camera rang a few bells with me.

In case you are wondering what bangs refers to, I think it’s an american/canadian term for your fringe!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jocely K Glei Editor of 99% provides a different perspective on the process of making New Years Resolutions.

Visual.ly have also produced a visual guide to New Year’s resolutions using US data.

The 10,000 Hour Rule

10,000 hours is believed by many to be the magic number of hours needed to become an expert or the best in a particular field.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses the 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers, Gladwell states “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing that makes you good”. In other words becoming an expert is not about innate talent but rather about how much dedication you have to continue practicing a skill or a profession.

Gladwell is interviewed about his book and the 10,000 hour rule in this video clip.

Gladwell’s book cites K A Ericsson a Pschologist at Florida and his colleagues who produced a study called ‘The Acquisition of Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice’. Ericsson and his colleagues studied musicians at Berlin’s Elite Academy of Music. They grouped the violinist into three groups – those unlikely to play professionally, good and world class. They all started to play violin at about the same age but those who became the best increased the amount of practice as they got older.

The diagram below summarises some of their findings.

Source: K. A. Ericsson, Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-406

Not everyone will want or need to become an expert in their field however the old saying ‘practice makes perfect’ does seem to be true.

Painting by numbers

The London Transport Museum has a new exhibition of posters which opens on the 6th January 2012 called Painting by Numbers; as the title suggests the exhibition focuses on how graphic design was used to communicate statistics.

The example below was produced by Alfred Leete in 1915, an Illustrator who also produced the famous war poster of Lord Kitchener. The poster below makes a simple comparison of speeds  between the Underground and it’s competitors.

One of the other posters featured in the exhibition (shown below) looked familiar to me, then I realised I had seen a redesign of a very similar graphic earlier in the year.  It just goes to show there really is nothing new under the Sun!