Wow! Thank you! Fantastic! Well I would say that wouldn’t I?

After all the planning and tweeting and general anxiety and excitement, yesterday it was our Digital evolution, local action conference.  170 delegates – ready to inspire and be inspired – packed into the BT Centre in London to hear how they can use technology to do more in their communities.
Three great things happened:
– the speakers were great and inspired people to think about what they could do differently
– 95% of what was said I hadn’t heard at a conference before, it was fresh– the speakers attended all or most of the day and in turn were inspired by the delegates.

Lord Knight who chaired the conference said “It’s been a fantastic day, and I’ve learned a lot not just from the speakers but from the delegates I’ve been chatting with.  We’ve had a day of talk –  now it’s time for the action. I’m looking forward to hearing from delegates on #dela2012 and on the Community How To about how the tips and tools they’ve taken away are enhancing their impact.”

But it’s probably best to hear from the delegates on what they thought of the day. Kim Wood, from Blackpool CVS said: “We heard from some really brilliant speakers and I’ve got some great ideas to take away.It was great to meet and spend time with other community organisations, and to feel like we’re all part of a bigger picture.  Everyone attending was willing to try every trick in the book – and on the internet – to do more for the people we work with.”

The reaction on Twitter was brilliant too, and these are just a few of the top tweets!
@benaldo: wanted to run on stage and high 5 Ken Banks from @kiwanja at the end of his presentation. #dela2012

@corganisers: #dela2012 finishes. Inspiring day. Now lets get to work. Using all the brill things we have learned today. Thx @UKonlinecentres

@thomtownsend: Thanks for the hard work @ukonlinecentres team-#dela2012 was great. See you again next year hopefully!

I certainly came away feeling really inspired about the great people I met, and the truly brilliant things they’re doing in their communities. One of the last things that was said on stage was that – when using digital tools for volunteering – it’s only 20% about the tools, and 80% about the people.  And I think it’s the same for the conference. Of course the tools are great, and it’s really important that we make the most of them, but it’s the people who are working in their communities, and the people they are supporting, that’s what I’ll remember from yesterday.   

So thanks to everyone who spoke – we’ll be sharing the full conference report, video and slides by the end of this week. Thanks to BT and Nominet Trust for their support in running the conference – we couldn’t have done it without you. But mainly, thanks to all of the delegates who came along and shared your views, asked the difficult questions and inspired all of us. It’s not every conference where the speakers go away inspired by the audience, which I think proves just how great the sector we work in is.  Keep up the good work – and I hope we’ll see you at #dela2013!

Here’s the Storify in case you missed it.

Ah, November. The nights are dark, we’re all wrapping up warm and enjoying bonfires and fireworks. Christmas isn’t the only thing I’m looking forward to – we’ve got an exciting conference coming up in a couple of weeks about my favourite things – local communities, technology and making things happen at scale.

Marcelle Speller from @localgiving had a massive success with Holidayrentals.com and now she’s using all her expertise and experience to make a social impact. After going on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire show she realised that there would be lots of other people who aren’t millionaires and who want to give to organisations in their own area, so she founded Localgiving.com – a site that lets you do just that. She really embodies the spirit of the conference – local + technology + scale.

We’re also really lucky to have Ken Banks from Kiwanja.net coming along to lend an international angle to the conference. Ken’s a real revolutionary and has done fantastic things with SMS communications in Africa – using the technology that’s widely available to reach the greatest number of people and having the biggest possible impact. I wonder if we can bring social innovation from Africa to UK communities?

Plus a brilliant line up of workshops that will give people really practical and useful advice that they can take back and use in their own communities. This is the principle we built the whole conference around, so I’m pretty pleased with the experienced and diverse group of workshop leaders we’ve got – from Lloyd Davis at #WeWillGather, who will talk about how this new platform can help individual people to find other people to make big and small things happen in their communities, to Will Perrin for Talk About Local, who has masses of first hand expertise about making the web local and has helped lots and lots of communities up and down the country to do just that.  Plus great people from Southern Housing Group, Lasa, Media Trust – and we’ll be running a couple of workshops ourselves.  Just looking at the list of workshops inspires me and I’m disappointed I won’t be able to make them all myself. I do hope if you’re coming you’ll find them really interesting (there are just a few tickets here if you haven’t got round to it yet).

And If you’re not coming, we’ll make sure you can keep in touch with what’s happening. You can follow all the action on the day using the #dela2012 hashtag, and we’ll be putting together a video and report after the event. I’m pretty confident that it will show that we’ve got a bunch of really passionate people in their communities who see the real step change technology can bring them. But we’ll just have to wait until the 27th!

Hope to see you there!

Back in 2010, Martha Lane Fox commissioned PWC to produce a report on the economic impact of digital inclusion. The Manifesto for a Networked Nation became the cornerstone of digital and social policy development. 

Today, Race Online 2012’s successor Charity Go ON UK have launched another seminal report – This is for everyone – again bringing together cross sector data to provide a socio-economic case for digitising the UK. I hope – again – that it’s going to shape future attitudes, decisions and investment. 

The figures here are compelling. The key number is the estimation that the UK could have increased annual national GDP by up to £63 billion if it had achieved global leadership as a digitally ‘mature’ country.  This maturity is defined with a complex matrix but amounts to a combination of digital infrastructure, online services, advanced human capital (educating the next generation of Berners-Lees – from whom the This is for everyone quote is taken) and usage (getting everyone engaged in the online world).   

It turns out that digital strategies are rather like buses, actually, because This is for everyone follows hot on the heels of this weeks’ Government Digital Strategy, which sets out how government will redesign its digital services to make them so straightforward and convenient that all those who can use them will prefer to do so.  While this provides action plan detail, the potential impact of improved government services is one of the strands which makes up Go ON UK’s £63 billion.  

The report is in fact broken down into several chapters, looking at Individuals – enhancing health, wealth and wellbeing in society, Enterprises – supercharging the economy by putting even the smallest of SMEs online, Charities – using technology to make a bigger impact for less, and Government – achieving universal digitisation for both services and citizens (already in hand in the GDS plan). 

Under each heading the numbers are equally fascinating  –  if not more so because they’re small enough to be comprehensible!  As you’ll see from my previous blog, I’ve recently been doing some of my own maths, based on the economic impact of UK online centres case studies.  This is for everyone cleverly ties economics with politics and social reform, looking at the potential of technology to improve education and pupil achievement, get people into work, and reduce social isolation and mental health issues for older people. 

Did you know, for instance, that 9 out of 10 students improve their grades when online learning is blended with traditional classroom work? Or that regular usage of the internet by people over the age of 50 can reduce depression by 20-28%?  Reading on we find that only one in three British SMEs sell their products online, 20% of charities have no digital presence at all, and less than half of central public services have been placed online.  For a stats-nerd like me, this is heady stuff – I actually had to have a little sit down.  

Each of these stats has an economic impact that adds up to that £63 billion. To start realising some of that lost potential, the report recommends that the UK needs to continue to build its digital foundations – the pipes, the platforms and the programmers. However, the more pressing need is identified as People – music, of course, to my ears. As Martha says in her introduction to the Report: “The lack of basic digital skills for millions means “digitisation” is unbalanced—we will increasingly fall short of the UK.’s potential if we do not start to address the problem.”

The fact is that to make sure this really is for everyone, and to ensure technology really does give the nation the lift this report dangles tantalisingly before our eyes, we’re going to need every single hand on deck. I for one am looking forward to getting stuck in. 

Read the full report here – highly recommended!

We’re in difficult economic times, which isn’t easy to forget with the news reminding us every day. Every pound the government spends needs to bring back many pounds of value and so it’s important that organisations like ours can measure the financial impact of what we’re doing – which isn’t always easy. 

I got thinking about this on the back of the European Congress on e-Inclusion, which I’m speaking at today in Brussels. If you’ve seen me speak recently, you’ll know that I’ve got a favourite figure that makes it into most of my presentations. The number is £157m, and it relates to the money we have saved government by encouraging 43% of 1m people to shift government transactions online between April 2010 and July 2012.

If you know me, you’ll know that I’m more about the people than the stats – although I do think this statistic is a pretty good one. Contributing to this £157m saving are 1m people, who have all been supported to do more online. They’re all individuals, with different motivations. Some of them have shifted contacts online, but they’ve also found jobs, improved their health, began volunteering, and even ended their own homelessness. 

Clive has found work since visiting his local UK online centre after being made redundant- and he says would be long-term unemployed without the support he received. Even with a prudent estimate of £8,000 a year saving if an unemployed person gets a job, Clive will save the government £80,000 over the next ten years. Our evidence shows us that 8% of our 1m learners have found work – which equates to a not-insubstantial 80,000 people. If these 80,000 people all follow a similar path to Clive, that will lead to a total saving of £650m – and that’s a prudent estimate!

Roger was homeless, but he gained the skills he needed to find work – and now he’s helping others to do the same. Our evidence shows that 2% of our centre users (20,000 people) are in the same position as Roger was – and I think he’s single-handedly helping a lot of them! One homeless person costs the government £26,000 a year, and so by supporting these people find a place to live the government is savings £520m. 

Cheryl is one of 20,000 volunteers within our network, who all give their time to support people to do more online. And although all of our volunteers are priceless, we know they all contribute at least £1,100 each to the economy – a contribution of £22m across the network. 

And that’s just three people. Norah’s health has improved so dramatically since getting online and losing weight, that her health has begun to clear up. An improvement in her diabetes alone will mean she’ll save the NHS £5,000 – not to mention her high blood pressure and arthritis.  (You can watch Norah’s video here).

For me, and for our network, it will always be about the people. These stories are so great because these people have changed their lives – they feel happier, healthier and more fulfilled. But when we do have to prove just why we’re doing what we do, and why the government should continue investing in us, numbers like £157m, or £650 million, doesn’t hurt.

You can take a look at my slides from the European Congress on e-Inclusion here. 

This blog may seem a bit out of date, but with Get online week, and a diary chock full of meetings, I’ve not yet had time to blog about the launch of GOV.UK. The new website  – a replacement for Directgov, but with an understated blue palette instead of orange – launched two weeks ago after spending a long time in both alpha and beta stages. 

Some have said that, colour schemes aside, the website isn’t really that different from its predecessor, but I don’t agree – especially as the user has been put at the very heart of the site. It has been tested with a number of different groups – including UK online centres and their learners – to ensure that the needs of the least skilled and least confident internet users are taken into account. 

The migration of government services online is never going to be universally popular, and it’s pretty clear that people without current skills and confidence will need face-to-face local support to gain them, as well as websites that are clutter-free, easy-to-use and work the way they should do. 

But the government’s position of embracing the user is a massively positive one and it’s even more positive that the process is ongoing and always improving. It’s my job now to make sure the needs of the most vulnerable users are at the forefront when building services like these, and we all must see the value of grassroots community support so everyone, and I mean everyone, can use them. 

Get online week might be over – but I’ve got one final tale to tell, and this time it’s my own! I was lucky enough to be able to attend a Get online week event myself on Friday, alongside Dido Harding, the Chief Executive of TalkTalk – who have been a fantastic partner throughout the campaign. 

The event took place at the Oaktree Community Centre in Acton and I left the event feeling really inspired – not least because of a lady I had met while walking to the centre in the rain. She’d picked up a leaflet about the event from her local library, and was a bit lost so we ended up walking together. She’d been going to weekly sessions at her local library, but was struggling to remember what she had learnt from one week to the next, and her husband wouldn’t let her use his computer as he was worried she would mess up his files. She’d just moved to the area from Coventry, and was feeling quite lonely and so wanted to get online so she could email her friends back in Coventry, and her children who had gone off the university. 

She was the first to admit that she had a long way to go to become a confident internet user, but she was willing to walk 3 miles in the pouring rain, so it was clear she’s got the determination  – and the support is there from centres like the Oaktree Community Centre, and many others throughout the country. 

When I left her I gave her my business card, and asked her to send me an email to let me know how she had got on once she felt confident.  Although it might take a while, I know with the support she receives she’ll get to this stage, and so I hope I’ll receive an email from her sometime soon. 

This is what campaigns like Get online week are really all about, and I’m sure there are similar tales of people all over the country who have taken the plunge this Get online week and made the decision to improve their skills. Thank you to all the centres who took part in Get online week, and to all the partners who gave their support. We couldn’t have done it without you. 

Yesterday, Roger Darlington – a member of our board – visited another Get online week event in London. You can read on to see his thoughts, and you can find his blog here. 

I used to travel a lot through the East End of London because I lived out in Leyton and then Leytonstone for a decade and my son was actually born in the London Hospital at Whitechapel. But, since I moved to north-west London almost three decades ago, I don’t visit the East End that much. Today though, I was over there to visit  the Stroudley Walk post office.

On the Get online week theme, here’s another blog – from our Communications Manager, Anna.

“But – when I did finally make it into the warmth, it was clear that for the people who did come along it was all worth it. They were sending emails, connecting with people on Facebook, booking tickets and checking train times. Seeing them get to grips with things really showed just how worthwhile campaigns like Get online week can be – and I hope some of the people I chatted to outside come to realise this too.”

As an organisation, we like to think we’re pretty good about getting out and about and talking to our learners – after all, most of what we do every day is about supporting these people to do more online.

“Speaking to Marilyn really demonstrated just what complicated things computers can be – whether you’re new to it, or you’re an old hand like me. Unfortunately, there’s not always an easy solution – you’ve just got to be prepared to persevere and ask for help, and hopefully you’ll get there in the end. Luckily for Marilyn – and for most of us I’d imagine – the benefits of technology outweigh the occasional problems, and so I’m confident she’ll keep on going and she’ll be surfing at home on her Netbook before long.”

Mid October may not be a traditional time for reflection and self-analysis, but in the run up to my sixth Get online week campaign (15 to 21 October), I find myself thinking about exactly how far we’ve come.  

Part of this, of course, is prompted by the publication of our latest Annual Review, which showcases just what a year April 2011 – March 2012 was for us – full of change and new beginnings.  If you read my blog regularly, you’ll know that last December we became a staff owned mutual running a social enterprise, which has had huge implications on what we do – and even on how we feel.

Before the very first Get online week was even a twinkle in the already twinkly eyes of former MP Derek Wyatt (a story for another time) the idea of being a self-operated, independent body was – at best – a pipe dream.  (Or given my views on people vs pipes, perhaps I should say a ‘people’ dream).  

The journey to becoming a mutual wasn’t an easy one.  We had to imagine the kind of organisation we wanted to be, articulate that in a competitive bid, and then establish ourselves as an independent body with a new board to steer us, a new strategy and new funding streams and partners to work with – and this all had to happen at breakneck speed.  But being a mutual has meant that we can be more responsive, more flexible, and more strategic about our work.  The buck stops with us, and it means we work harder and smarter to achieve what we want for our customers, consumers and network (although I’d like to add that I think we worked pretty hard before mutualisation too!)

The highlights of what we’ve achieved so far as a mutual – and in the lead up to mutualisation – are too numerous to count.  Our annual review shares a small number of them, as well as setting out our plans for the future as we diversify what we do, working in communities to inspire change through technology, and helping organisations and government prepare for the shift to digital – so everyone can take advantage of the huge benefits of technology.  Please give it a glance.

Last year, Get online week supported c40,000  people to improve their skills.  This year – our first under our own aegis – we hope to match (or beat) that figure.  It may have been a rollercoaster year – but there’s still time for you to ride it with us for Get online week.  If you want to visit a local event, get involved as a volunteer, or just help us spread the word, do get in touch at  help@ukonlinecentres.com.   I’ll see you on the other side with all the juicy #GOLW12 details….