I’ve assembled my first ever Hackintosh, following a variant of this ‘recipe’. I’m rather pleased that it booted first time. Now I need to think of a name for it. (At the moment, it’s named after its case: Phenom.) Continue reading
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Category Archives: personal
Food for thought
I enjoy the weekly briefing from the Scottish Community Alliance – 6 interesting and challenging articles about how we can make our society work better, leavened with the occasional salutary tale, and always a lot of potential learning. This week’s briefing is no exception. Here’s some highlights:
- Andy Wightman talks about challenges for Our Democracy
- How to influence planning policy
- Ideas about zero-waste housing.
Enjoy!
Splitting the difference
Until now, I’ve had one Twitter handle for both my research and my personal tweets, namely @myceliumme_CC. This handle was also used to auto-tweet both from this blog and my personal blog. It’s now time to split these streams:
- If you’re interested in my research, please note that @myceliumme_CC is about to become @Bruce_research.
- If you’re interested in what I do away from work, please follow the brand-new @BruceRyan_rants.
There’s nothing to stop you following both!
Au revoir!
Well it’s time to leave Napier for 6 months to pursue other personal interests. I’ll be back in October to work on the IL-DEM project with Peter Cruickshank and Hazel Hall.
For now a huge thank-you to friends and colleagues in the School of Computing/IIDI, principally in the Centre for Social Informatics.
Personal life interrupts this blog
A brief interlude from my non-work life. I guess that we might encounter some local government manifestations on our travels.
Elly and I have been spinning at the wonderful LifesCycle for four years to help keep ourselves fit enough to enjoy exploring the world on bikes. We are going off on our adventures later this year, but we know we are incredibly lucky to have the time and the security to do that. LifesCycle has been a strong supporter of Mercy Corps and we would like to add a little bit to their support of people suffering around the world, particularly refugees. If you have two minutes, this video will give you a little bit of insight into the people Mercy Corps supports. Continue reading
Fairer Scotland event for CCs: questions answered
The Scottish Government has responded to questions raised by CC members at a fairly recent Fairer Scotland event. Click the thumbnail to download the full PDF.
If you have any queries about the responses, it would be best to contact Kristoffer Boesen or Lynn Sharp of the Improvement Service (IS). In the meantime, I’m very pleased to see mentions of the work by Peter Cruickshank and me, specifically
- The community council location finder that I built under Peter’s management (answer 11)
- the digital engagement workshops (answers 11 and 16) – I’m still working on the report on these events. Watch this space!
The first shall be last, and the last shall be first?
My better half pointed out recently that I described the Scottish Government as the top/first level, and Community Councils as the bottom/third level. This is interesting for two reasons:
- it omits the UK government entirely
- I automatically relegate hyperlocal democracy to third place.
Fame at last?
Well I have my name on another paper – but not as author. Professor Hazel Hall and Robert Irvine have published a review of literature around success factors in information systems project management. Hazel has blogged about it here.
Progress?
Despite the CC websites I run not being all they could be, I think I’m working hard enough. I’ve just made my 300th post on Leith Central’s website, my 75th on Leith Harbour and Newhaven’s site and my 69th on New Town & Broughton’s site.
The averages are around 7, 4 and 4 posts per month, respectively. One reason for the difference is that Leith Central publishes draft minutes, so that a some account of its meetings is online within a week or so of the meeting. I think this is much better than waiting for minutes to be ratified at the next monthly meeting.
Fairer Scotland event for Community Councils: Introduction
The Scottish Government’s ‘Fairer Scotland’ national discussion has been running for a few months now. As the Scottish Community Alliance put it, this is an attempt to crowdsource policy. There’s a series of events around Scotland, at which the Scottish Government ‘wants to work with a broad mix of people across the country to prioritise practical steps that can be taken to create a fairer Scotland’.
But as well as talking directly with people across Scotland, the SG also wants to work with those who (should) most closely represent communities: community councillors. As Marco Biagi (Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment) put it, key questions are
- what issues matter most to you as a community councillor?
- what do you think needs to be done to help community councils create a fairer Scotland?
- how can your community council play a role in helping to shape Scotland’s future?
