Yesterday, together with the LSE, we ran the third in the Social Digital Research symposium series which, as always, brought together a group of very clever people, and gave them the chance to talk about what they’re doing, make connections with others interested in similar things, and answer some important questions that will help us do things better in the future.

• Ellen Helsper (@EllenHel) spoke about proxy users
• Martina Chapman (@ChapmanMartina) gave us a fantastic look at the latest BBC segmentation
• Martin Wilson from @Go_ON_UK spoke about a need for consistent measures
• Nick Breeze from @GDSteam told us about their work in progress looking at typography for helping people to transact with Government online
• Grant Blank from Oxford Internet Institute reminded us that young people aren’t all online
• Patrick Barwise made a very interesting, very sharp argument for increased investment in driving more people online to use digital government.

As well as hearing from a number of really interesting speakers, who did the job of getting everyone asking questions and sharing, we also came away with some really solid answers to where we go next with measuring digital skills, and in turn how we know whether what we’re doing is working.  

It’s great to see the fantastic progress that these symposiums have made – just six months ago, we all talked about the fact that the ONS stats were no longer the right measurement, and now six months later (and after only three symposiums) we’ve got a clear plan of how we can measure things better – in a way which will make a real impact to everyone working within digital skills, and which will hopefully go some way to securing some much-needed funding to support it.

All the slides from the symposium are on the Social Digital Research ning, and so if you’re not a member already and you’re interested in this kind of thing, I’d encourage you to sign up. It would seem a shame if our online symposium wasn’t just as lively as our offline one. Do go and have your say.