I’ve done a lot of fun work over the last 10 years, here’s some of the work of which I’m most proud, along with some links for you to see more.
Formal Consultation
Citizen Space – My largest project of the last few years, working with 15 UK Central Government Departments to develop this open source online engagement and consultation system for them all to use. 18 months in the making, I was the account director and product owner, bringing in a 6 figure government IT project on time and on budget.
‘BBC 6 Music’ – I worked with the BBC Trust to help set up their online consultation platform, which led to the largest online consultation response ever seen in the UK, on the closure of BBC 6 Music
Severn Tidal Barrage – Working with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Welsh Assembly Government, I was lead consultant on the consultation about the Severn Tidal Barrage, designing and managing the consultation website, as well as handling all of the offline responses.
Online discussion
Your Freedom / Spending Challenge – I was Account Director and lead consultant on these two extremely high profile UK government crowd sourcing projects, working with the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. Both projects saw tens of thousands of people take part
It’s My Bristol participatory budgeting – I’ve long been interested in participatory budgeting, and as well as helping numerous councils with their Budget Simulators, this pilot project successfully enabled people across Bristol to allocate £15,000 of spending through the internet.
The City Together – The City of London wanted to engage residents in setting their corporate plan online, and rather than using expensive proprietary software, I worked with them to design an open source WordPress based solution with great results.
LDYS Forums - Back in 2003, I founded the UK’s first online youth politics discussion forums, run by Liberal Democrat Youth and Students, but open to all. I successfully ran and moderated the forums for 4 years, keeping the discussion discussion calm in the fractious world of youth and student politics. After I left, they sadly closed.
Online engagement
Glastonbury Festival – I recently worked with the onsite radio station of Glastonbury Festival to build their website and develop their social media strategy. We ended up integrating realtime news and information from the festival with Twitter, to improve access to information for festival goers.
Charterpelago – HMRC wanted to get people involved in setting their new customer charter, but knew it could be tricky. I worked with them to develop an online game which collected consultation responses as people played, which ended up being seen as an exemplar of best practice within the department
NHS London – With only two weeks until it closed, NHS London wanted to build engagement with an important pan London Consultation process it was running. I took them into Facebook, Bebo and Myspace, as well as designing a central hub for information and engagement in the form of an ‘Ideas River’, where participants could submit their ideas for improving healthcare in the capital.
