This is an example of how it often makes more sense to let people protest, even if their messages are totally objectionable, than it does to make their message board illegal.

With the ban of Islam4UK, an organisation that openly peddles nonsense, hate and radical versions of their beliefs, we are possible scoring an own goal as far as the security services are concerned. Currently the authorities know who is involved and what their medium and message is. Forcing them to move will only make it more difficult for the security services to maintain effective efforts against them.

Instead: deny them the oxygen of publicity, and don’t create opportunity for their tale to be told.

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But as of today all that is changed. I’ve decided to declutter my inbox, clear my desktop and instead of being busy, being busy I’m going to focus on the important things in my communication strategy.

No longer will I sit there waiting for someone’s broadcast; from now on it’s Proactive Communications for me!

So if you want to de-clutter your day, tidy up your thinking and focus on what’s important then I suggest that you too think about who you receive mail from and why. You could save yourself many hours a day with an auto delete filter on incoming mail.

The “unsubscribe” button is now a great friend. Have an uncluttered day.!

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Image by Maia C via Flickr

As a result, I’ve watched, listened, wondered and started to question. And the one question that sits uppermost in my mind is: “what is the role of an elected member?”. Allied to this is the need to question what the job description for the role really is and some who’ve read my blogs may recall my views on job roles and tools for the job.

Anyway, back to my main issue: what is their role? I’ve always thought that politicians are elected to represent their constituency. After getting more interest in our political system I’ve begun to realise how naïve this view is. I cannot remember when an elected member that I’ve voted for has appeared to seek my views in order to represent them properly. Instead, his/her party has decided what my views are, or at least the views to be represented.

Now the party conference season has started we are hearing more about what elected members want to see. Statements like: “I want to see …” surely miss the true point of elected members. They are there to shout out loud that “the people who elected me want to see…” for it is their view that matter, not those of the elected member.

As social media becomes more pervasive and we, “the great unwashed” feel that we have both the right and capability to make our views known it really is time for the challenge to be made to elected members to listen more to their electorate.

Engagement is not about surgeries anymore, but about continued communication. And of course, communication is not about blogging or Twittering, it is a mutli-path dialogue that captures and forms opinion over time and sometimes in pretty quick-time.

In a real democracy elected members represent those who did not vote for them just as much as they represent those who did. And they should do this without worrying about the needs of their party machines that helped them to be elected to the role in the first place.

If the principle of the wisdom of crowds will have its day then it is going to use social media to do so. Wise politicians will realise this and then amend their stance to truly represent all those who elected them and will speak on their behalf.

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Anyway: today’s Western Mail talks about how Wales is being left behind in the broadband roll out plan. But they let themselves down in their leader article when confusing the need for broadband with the need for business web presence.

Anyone in their right mind that wants or needs to host a web site will not host it themselves (unless of course they are VERY big like the BBC) but will outsource it to a web host. The web presence should not be linked to a company’s broadband connection at all.

Broadband is of course an aide to content management, but it is not the be all and end all. I can manage content on some sites via my mobile phone browser.

In the past I’ve downloaded from the web at 9.6 kbps and was glad to do so. Connection is the important feature: speed is the desirable element. But sadly the slowest speed we will accept is the fastest we’ve ever used.

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The question is simple: why is that we can deliver (almost) free TV pictures to every house in Wales, yet we are unable to deliver paid for Broadband even though nearly every house has a phone line?

To my mind the answer is simple: BT is excessively domineering in this market. They drive the broadband agenda in Wales and spin their story so well to make some people think that they are doing the world a favour by making broadband available at all.

Sadly, this seems to be “bought” by the Welsh Assembly Government. Money is ploughed into schemes to provide faster access in some parts of Wales whilst others go without completely.

OFCOM appear to be as effective as a chocolate fireguard in forcing progress. Their recent report can only be described as a statement of the bleeding obvious.

What we need to do is realise that broadband internet access can be delivered over a variety of media, not just BT phone lines. Outlying villages can be served by the same technology as TV, to a base station and then through local distribution wirelessly or via physical connection. Mobile networks can also deliver effective solutions.

The WAG needs to challenge the providers to do more, and cut funding if they don’t. If that happens we will see the true expansion of broadband to be a truly universal service to the betterment of Wales.

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But then I re-read it and realised that the article suggests that the mistake had been made in translating from English to Welsh.

This may be true, but then it might not. Surely there are some sign writers in Wales who do want to have signs made in Welsh. And those signs can be mis-translated into English.

The fact that English appears on the top of the sign confuses the issue.

But at least it’s a little more accurate than the road sign that had an out of office email response on it as the translation.

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NOCCI in Aberystwtyth last night, was a meeting of about 25 people involved in the creative and cultural industries in mid Wales. Organised by Rhodri (@nwdls) this really casual yet effective first meeting was a joy to attend. Friendly, open and relaxed it was, yet with a clear purpose of helping those in the creative and cultural industries to form alliances and provide support to each other to everyone’s benefit.

It totally supported my long held views that “shotgun networking” is pretty much a waste of time, but meeting groups with clear common ground will reap huge rewards. And it also reminded me, someone who is normally based in Cardiff, that you don’t need a big city to find big talent.

So if you want to learn how to be a DJ then you’d be mad not to visit DJ Tutor, a fantastic example of how the web can liberate business from any part of the country to deliver to a global market.

Silverspoon Films make movies: promos, adverts, conferences etc and have a range of offerings that would suit just about any business. I was stunned by the one minute corporate video for SME’s priced for less than £250 that Richard told me about. 

It was a great night with a style and focus that many other networks would do well to emulate.

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Anyone who knows me will probably know that I’m not much of an “arts person”, but I’ve been helping someone get a new site going to support and promote the creative industries in Wales.

The site is called Cultural Enterprise and is run by Elin Jones.

It appears that there used to be some public funding for this work but that was stopped last year for some reason. Elin has kept this going and is now trying to deliver more value to her network of creative industries in Wales and beyond.

I hope she succeeds for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it will be  another example of how individuals can make a difference when Governments fail to support self employed and small businesses.

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Have you heard about Twitter, or do you use it?

I must admit that when I first saw it I thought it was an even dafter idea than many others that I’d seen on the web.  Then a good friend advised me to stick with it and I did.

And now: well I think it’s amazing, and in my opinion it is likely to change the way people communicate, possibly forever. Having used it for several months I want to share with you some of my thinking about the impact that this will have in the business environment.

If you don’t know what this is all about then let me briefly explain.  Twitter is what’s known as a “micro-blog”, where users can write free text about any subject they like just like a blog, but the “micro” bit is that it can only be up to 140 characters long.  So it’s a bit shorter than a mobile phone text message.

You can access to it through a PC connected to the Internet, by instant messaging and also through mobile phones.  That means its availability is almost universal.  Any messages you post is placed in a shared environment unless you marked them as being private and then only certain individuals can read them  So there is great potential here for people with something in common to share information, share ideas maybe even some gossip or generally just keep in touch.

Enough background: here are some of my tips for getting the most out of Twitter:

Tip 1 – Use it

Seriously, this is an absolutely marvellous business tool only by using it will you become convinced of that fact.  The fact that you can communicate directly with your customers and that they could respond directly to you makes your interactions with customers much closer. 

Tip 2 – exploit the brevity 

Because the message is a short people receiving them don’t mind receiving several.  That means you can keep people informed about developments, whether it be a new product launch or a technical issue and regular updates painless. 

Tip 3 – make it personal 

Even though your business, you’re communicating with individuals to try to make your tweets interesting and maybe even entertaining. 

Tip 4 – ask questions 

By posting short questions on Twitter you can undertake some rapid market research in both of those people who are following you and those people who are reading your postings in the general messaging area.  So your research is free and wide ranging. 

 Tip 5 – encourage responses 

You can encourage response to your questions with questions that can only be answered with a yes or no. If you make it easier for the recipients to reply the chances of them doing so higher.

Tip 6 – build a tribe 

The secret to Twitter is to develop a list of followers who have opted in to receiving your messages.  The fact that these people are opting in means they are interested in your products and/or services to try to turn them into a loyal band of followers. You might like to make them the first to know about any new products or services launching.

Tip 7 – used the timeliness

It probably takes about two seconds to Twitter a message to thousands of potential customers, so keep them interested, and try and stimulate the bars around what you’re doing. 

Tip 8 – localise when possible 

Because Twitter can identify where people are, you can target followers in certain areas. For example if you’re having a cup of coffee in the centre of Cardiff, there are tools you can pull on your mobile phone to identify the Twitter is near you that will allow you to create an instant common ground in your message to them.

Tip 9 – use it inside your business

If you’ve got a team of people working within keep in touch with them and had then keep in touch with each other by Twittering messages about what they’re doing.”going into a meeting with John”, half an hour later: “meeting over got the order” are just a couple of examples of messages that would make the day go well people feel that they know what’s going on in their business.

Tip 10 – use it at Junction 31

Junction 31 is an online business network that uses social networking tools like Twitter to create a richer experience for members.  So when you sign up to Twitter, you should also follow Junction31 and we will promise to keep you in the picture of all developments in online networking. We’ll also tell you when the site isn’t working properly and what we’re doing to fix it: as happened last week!  

And finally – when you do join Twitter – update your Junction 31 profile so that your posts can be included there for others to read as well.

See you soon at twitter.com/junction31

If I can help you understand this any more then please let me know or post a question at the Junction31 forums. Equally if you want to add to the discussion, please post your messages there as well.

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