Socialreporter
Conversations for collaboration
SocialGo, Big Lottery, and local online
After writing the piece about Big Lottery funding for Your Square Mile – now posted here - I looked around to see what I could find about SocialGo which is the London-based company developing YSM sites.
I found that Big Lottery had already funded some local online initiatives with SocialGo, and the BBC, as part of Village SOS - see also clipping below.
Six village enterprises are sharing up to £3 million of BIG funding, and the SocialGo sites were designed “to bring the offline rural community online so they can coordinate and plan their community development strategies”. There’s also a Facebook page here.
Your Square Mile eventually aims to have online community sites across the UK – so the Village SOS project may yield some useful lessons. The first 16 YSM pilot projects should get their sites within months.
The Village SOS projects themselves are terrific, and in line with BIG philosophy of supporting genuinely home-grown bottom-up initiatives – something that will be followed through with further announcements at the People Powered Change event on March 25.
Sarah Beeny is going to present the six part BBC show, which will track project development over a year.
“In Village SOS for BBC One, Sarah Beeny follows the triumphs, tears and tantrums in six villages around Britain as they take on ambitious schemes to start new businesses and revitalise their local communities. Sarah, who maintains her own property and investment business and owns successful internet sites as well as being one of TV’s best-loved home improvement experts, follows the progress of the villages as they tackle the realities of turning their brilliant first ideas into viable business projects.
“The six villages, which were all awarded grants from the Big Lottery Fund to start their new enterprises, are filmed across a year as they kick-start their new ventures. The series is produced by Nicola Pointer for BBC Cymru Wales and the executive producer is Meredith Chambers and Pete Lawrence for the BBC”.
It sounds as if it will be great television, as well as bringing big social and economic benefits to the villages.
What didn’t surprise me was that most of the village SocialGo sites were pretty quiet, with little as yet on their noticeboards, and not much interaction that I could see. I think anyone who has worked on local sites know how much effort it takes to engage people, encourage them to post text, photos or videos, and develop conversations.
Things may warm up when the filming starts, projects get moving, and projects teams have something they want to share.
I wondered if anyone else had experience of using a SocialGo site locally? There was a bit of discussion here among the hyperlocal experts on Talk About Local, but that was nearly a year ago.
The big issue it raises for me, in relation to Your Square Mile, is whether there will be training and support for the local online community builders. I should think SocialGo can delive the technology – but it is people who create the content. Is anyone supporting the Village SOS online managers?
major initiative from the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) and the BBC. Six
UK villages with a great business idea have been teamed up with six
enterprising individuals to help them achieve their ambitions.
Together they will create a brand new venture that will bring life
and energy to the village. BBC will film the villages in
their quest to win with the programme being aired on BBC1 in early
2011.SocialGO has been chosen to perform an integral part of the
programme, whereby each competing village uses a branded SocialGO
network to bring the offline rural community online so they can
coordinate and plan their community development
strategies. These are some of the community
networks:honeystreet-villagesos.socialgo.com
caistor-villagesos.socialgo.com
newstead-villagesos.socialgo.com
tideswell-villagesos.socialgo.com
talgarth-villagesos.socialgo.com
westwemyss-villagesos.socialgo.com
howey-villagesos.socialgo.com
lochinver-villagesos.socialgo.com
ballygally-villagesos.socialgo.com
myddfai-villagesos.socialgo.com
villagesos.socialgo.comSteve Hardman, SocialGO Managing Director said “Village SOS is a
great high profile opportunity for SocialGO to demonstrate how
effective our software is at bringing offline communities together
online so they can communicate and share like never before.
The networks that have been created are great examples of just how
useful SocialGO software is for small communities.”
