Launch of realisegwireddu.com campaign

Getting started – the realisegwireddu.com campaign - launch 5pm on 5th January 2009.

This is my first blog; it is however not the only first that I’ve experienced over the Christmas period. I’ve collected content across a range of media, I’ve learned how to capture it, assess it, edit it, manipulate it and publish it - all skills that are yet to be perfected, but I’ve taken my first steps and I’m en route. En route to where you may well ask? En route to further ICT personal transformation. I have actively taken steps to take myself out of my familiar comfort zone, a place where it’s all too easy to lull around without venturing out only to find as John Lennon once said “ Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.

Over recent years as I’ve worked for Canllaw Online and the organisation has, it would be true to say under my direction, increasingly positively correlated its activity with the digital revolution; I have however, noticed a parallel negative correlation taking place with regard to my own digital competence, or at least a failure to keep abreast of new technological offerings. Yes I can use a computer and access the internet for information and research, yes I can shop/bank online, yes I am an avid emailer; what I was not though was competent in digital skills relevant to true media literacy. I was okay up to the point of ideas, research and a certain level of analysis. Full editing and publishing digital capabilities were, however, not being extensively developed – well just not developed. (beyond simple use of website CMS systems) Similarly, whilst respecting the emergence of Web 2.0 tools, I had had little actual participation in the use of them.

As Director of an organisation promoting information literacies and digital capabilities it’s very easy to just let others perform such tasks, whilst I could cast a strategic overseeing eye on what was needed and what I’d like to see come out the other end. I could easily put myself in the position of specification developer and end user/customer – the bit in the middle (which I have to say didn’t particularly interest me – the digital doing) I could happily leave to others. Others who are so competent that they are only too eager to help sometimes without recognising their over kindness actually dis-empowers, or even so frustrated by my incompetence realising that by doing it themselves it would take seconds not hours or days even if left to me!

I would say at some point or other all the Canllaw staff have been called to my assistance with things digital. Without stereotyping too much, I think it fair to say, the first time their help is required they are kind, patient (maybe a little smug too) but always in true youth work practice, keen to assist in enabling me to find the solution to the problem. Depending on the urgency of the task in hand, this participative approach can run its natural course if time allows. The second or third time problems arise there is a kind face and sympathetic ear with an accelerated approach taken to problem solving. By the sixth or seventh time, the despair in faces is clear and the principles of problem solving are cantered through at a pace of knots, by the tenth or eleventh time there are no faces to be seen and everyone is inextricably tied up in a task that was needed yesterday! At those times there has always been external help at hand through partners or suppliers – all too happy to go through the experience outlined above naively afresh! Again I’ve been very spoiled by the skills available from these externals – leading ICT experts at all levels.

Don’t get me wrong it’s not that I am a technophobe or Luddite; indeed the exact opposite is true I am totally open to the possibilities that ICT offers, indeed I recognise its need, see its value and can even at times talk about it confidently and competently. I recognise the urgency of it for the economy, for culture, for social inclusion, for education – in fact for everything! I totally understand the principle of ICT and transformation. I would like to think that in recent times I’ve been one of ICT’s greatest advocates – certainly for the youth sector in Wales. I realise that no or little or slow ICT transformation is just NOT an option.

So let’s get back to those digital doings and that old well loved comfort zone; those digital doings that can so easily be kindly taught / done by family members at home from my partner’s long standing digital support for and commitment to me (I’m sure he sees it as a lifelong part of the package – he’s always there to help even as I write this he’s reminding me over my shoulder of the benefits of the computerised spell check!) to the newly emerging technical abilities of my children; my son at the tender age of ten seems a born natural gently willing to teach his misfortunate mother in the art of digital usage, to my four year old daughter who has a more pragmatic (but equally confident) approach by saying,”If it doesn’t work switch it off and turn it back on again – then it’ll be okay!”. From game consoles to computers, phones to televisions and all the necessary additional accoutrement – no digital device is a threat.

With so much competence around me, why on earth would I want to remove the comfort and expose myself to discomfort or even to downright pain? Surely, I didn’t need to expose myself in such a way? Well I have been lucky to be surrounded by such ICT support and even my very baseline digital capabilities were probably slightly above the “average”. I recognise that I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to learn some of the right things, absorb by some kind of osmosis the knowledge of others and benefit from the opportunities on offer; I also recognise that not everyone has had such fortune or for one reason or another has missed it.

So what has happened so recently to activate this change in me?

Well as many will know, Canllaw Online is a Wales based charity that develops and supports information services for young people, its approach is one developed out of and fundamentally aligned to youth work methodologies. Canllaw Online has been the name associated with youth information work since 1985 – International Youth Year – when the first guide book was developed by young people for young people as a Canllaw Online project supported by European funds. As we now enter the European Year of Innovation and Creativity, Canllaw Online, as a Wales wide organisation entering its tenth year of independent existence, is at the leading edge of enabling ICT transformation and digital competence for young people. The years in between 1985 and 2009 have been jam packed with challenges, work, success, learning, ambition and sharing. The significant achievements can be summarised by the recognition given to Canllaw Online in the Welsh Assembly Government’s policy document “Extending Entitlement” (2000), the delivery of the Canllaw Online Entitlement project (January 2001-September 2004), the Credu project in partnership with Fujitsu Services (one of the big three ICT companies in the world!) (September 2004 - December2008) and the potential of Gwireddu – the new sequential initiative. All of the above have taken the experiences since 1985, learned from them, re-invested that learning, developed valuable IPR and progressively developed the next stage of the Canllaw Online story for the benefit of young people in Wales and those who support them.

So what’s so special / poignant / radical about now? Well as sustainability is always an issue for the voluntary sector, as far back as 2005 we were looking at the potential of Gwireddu. It’s planning and formulation has been careful and deliberate and included the experiential approach to development referenced earlier.

At a time of global economic downturn, the message is simple Credu has to date established 100+ digilabs across Wales that, through a unique programme that has involved the private, public and voluntary sector, has enabled the youth sector in Wales to be enhanced by ICT transformation. The successes that digilab hosts have facilitated for Wales are over 400 jobs being created and over 45,000 young people being positively engaged through numerous ICT initiatives enabled by the Credu digilab and portal presence. The portal alone has received nearly 8,000,000 hits. The societal and economic gains for Wales being immense.

Gwireddu promises to achieve even more!

The road to Gwireddu has been long and hard, but we have trodden it willingly and in the spirit of partnership and collaboration with stakeholders, recognising its potential contribution to Wales, its young people and those who support them. We have identified (if not yet secured) all the necessary funding to get it off the ground – including significant £ millions from the private sector. As we have been developing Gwireddu we have some how managed to maintain Credu (Gwireddu’s predecessing initiative) beyond its natural time span. We extended and got support to extend Credu’s life extensively, but its stretched, unnatural extension came to an end on the 31st December 2008 (RIP Credu). We had always planned for Gwireddu to be there, ready to pick up from where Credu left off and exponentially succeed – we’ve been putting the steps needed in place since 2005 for this.

Unfortunately, at the end of 2008 we were met with yet another frustration on the road to seeking public funding for Gwireddu - the only outstanding jigsaw piece not yet to be fitted. The closer we got to seeing Gwireddu the further we seemed to be getting away from the Gwireddu goal. As an organisation Canllaw Online’s strength was sapped yet again. This time, however, there was no more stretch to the elastic and running on empty was becoming more than a reality. We’d been creative, entrepreneurial and demonstrated an excellent track record and certainly had the buy in of the beneficiaries of our work.

It was at this point I knew the options that faced us. Spend yet another festive/holiday period away from family compromising a funding request document that inevitably would be weakened by tweaks and would go round another cycle of review that sceptics/doubters may delay or further frustrate or approach the problem in a different way. Up until now we had gained the support of stakeholders through programme engagement, sometimes dialogue, mostly letter and continuous correspondence; something more active was clearly now required. This wasn’t an excuse not to work at it even more – in fact the new approach has taken almost 24/7 commitment.

At a time of global economic downturn created in the main by systemic failures globally in the banking system, we were now faced by the prospect that Canllaw staff (who had fought off redundancy notices since July 2007) would face redundancy not as a small group of unfortunate workers in a healthy economic climate where new jobs would be easy to find, but as a minor group of redundant workers in a rapidly growing global recession. Their continued commitment and belief in the work they’d undertaken to be rewarded by failure; failure of all stakeholders in Gwireddu to make it a reality. All the ingredients were there – why couldn’t the i s be dotted and t s crossed? Having, along this road, already been forced to implement some redundancies, these current redundancies seemed unnecessary.

To me the Canllaw redundancies aren’t just another series of UB40s – or whatever the term is these days, but a reflection on failure to deliver services to young people that they need and should be entitled to and that theoretically so very possible here and now.

Despite the economic climate we are at a time of crucial change in the world and in the words of the world’s newest leader, Barack Obama, “We cannot meet 21st Century challenges with a 20th Century bureaucracy.”

I’m sure that despite its newness, this quotation is probably quickly becoming the world’s most over used! However, it is also rapidly turning into a cliché that we should respect.

The world needs a consolidated response to global recession and needs to learn from previous experiences and absolutely benefit from the most recent of revolutions – the digital one. An initiative like Gwireddu is exactly the type of thing that can hit recession head on, challenge it and work within it in preparation for the global upturn which at some point will inevitably follow. Using a holistic, citizen centric approach to learning, skill development, digital transformation and digital competence, Gwireddu can be one of the contributory enhancers and enablers that can offer the progressive digital change required for new generations – it can also through the newly acquired and continuing skills of the young people involved help those of an older age, who have not been able to grow up in a digital age and benefit for whatever reasons from its offerings, to develop new skills, attitudes and behaviours to ICT.

This brings me back to where I started – outside that comfort zone. So as appealing as tweaking or re-inventing a funding document over Christmas seemed (and I’m sure that fate probably lies ahead somewhere quite soon) the approach we have taken has been far more about doing than saying and proving the success of and demand for digilabs through an active peaceful campaign to help continue digilab existence in Wales. As I met Canllaw staff for their annual Christmas do in the days leading up to Christmas I couldn’t believe their continued support for Canllaw despite knowing that this time redundancies were really for real. The previous working day I’d broken the news to them that a funding decision was unlikely before Christmas and redundancies seemed inevitable. We’d spoken about what more we could do to demonstrate digilab success . The seed of an idea for a campaign was germinating. We didn’t want to wage war with anyone, we just wanted to seek a positive solution for Gwireddu. So we started to talk about ribbons and quotations. At the staff do their ideas were flourishing – everyone went off for Christmas not knowing if there would be a job there for them in the New Year, but strangely all still smiling.

Utilising the non formal experiential learning approach we have developed an online and offline participatory, educative campaign to engage young people and those who support them to help realise the continuation of digilabs. The idea is simple - utilise the Credu/Gwireddu colour of cyan/turquoise as a symbol for a ribbon and more and discover the words of others through quotations and to capture this digitally.

To be able to encourage the implementation of such a campaign from personal experience I needed to put that toe outside of the zone – indeed I needed to jump totally outside it. Hence I embarked on this new journey.

If a citizen centric approach were to be applied to me what would that involve? Well probably family, food, photography and writing – all things I get all too little time to enjoy properly. As luck would have it the opportunity arose for me actually to embark on new learning from this perspective when Santa delivered a brand new digital camera to my son – apparently there was a rush on bikes this year so the camera was the next best thing!

At home we were able to recreate the digilab experience: my children became the beneficiaries, I became the intermediary and my partner became the specialist, helping facilitator. A busy period of planning, researching, capturing content, analysing, editing and preparing for publication took place. At each stage learning occurred and progression can be demonstrated through the content developed and the increasing skill with which to utilise it. Everyone became involved. My process on getting back on that ICT transformation escalator was interesting to say the least with the opportunities offered by a mobile phone, digital camera, multimedia software and internet access.- there were funny times, sad times, desperate times, frustrated times. All within a very short holiday period. Everyone that I’ve come into contact with has a view on technology and has something to share – someone in Neath taught me to Bluetooth, two others explained my need for and the benefits of a dongle as opposed to a download cable, someone in Maesteg kindly showed me the benefits of widescreen on a phone camera. Whilst appreciating the concepts behind all of these things and more I’d never really appreciated the actual digital doings of them. I was now fully immersed in that digital doing thing, my ICT curiosity soared and even the vast array of social networking opportunities didn’t seem so daunting.

Whilst I was doing all this the Canllaw staff were all in the background pushing out of their own comfort zones every time a new idea came along. Through exploration, dialogue and laughter we’ve come a long way. In the space of less than two weeks we’ve developed a campaign with supporting infrastructure to enable young people and those who support them to demonstrate why they want/need digilabs. Hopefully, through the campaign we’ll show how young people can be right at the heart of the knowledge based economy creating and responding creatively to digital content that reflects their abilities and potential, their goodwill and humour, the natural beauty of Wales, a snapshot of the economic challenges ahead and a positive cultural feast of digital delights. Hopefully, we’ll gain sufficient support from new and old potential supporters – those with money who want to refresh their thinking on corporate social responsibility and invest in digilabs and the digital talent of young people, (rich) entrepreneurs who want to identify and support raw talent, public sector procurers who need to demonstrate value for money and politicians and bureaucrats who can see the potential and have the pens ready to help find the solution to putting the .s and -s in the right place.

Please may I ask for your support for this campaign?