The third learning exchange for the East Midlands Network was held on 18 September 2009 and focussed on engaging with Young People.

The day was split into two parts with presentations in the morning on some experiences engaging young people and then an open space session in the afternoon allowing attendees to discuss any young people topics they wished.

The morning saw two presentations from Derby Homes focussing on past experience of trying to run an online forum to involve young people and a more recent piece of consultation on the young persons strategy. (Available for download below)

Rykneld Homes also did a presentation about the video they recently made with the help of young people in their neighbourhoods.

The afternoon session was used for attendees to discuss any young people related topics they wished by way of Open Space Technology. This was something we haven't tried before at Derby Homes but we think it worked really well with some very good discussions happening throughout the afternoon.

The topics of discussion were:

• Dream Schemes
• Junior Wardens
• Social Networking
• Involving Young People in Rural Areas
• Meaningful Consultation & Impact Assessments
• Tenancy Sustainment and Young People

Notes were written on flip chart for some of the sessions and we have captured these for you to download below (more will be added when written up).

If you want any more information about the day or Open Space Technology, contact the TP Team at Derby Homes on 01332 711063.

Additional notes and links from online involvement session - by Paul

The presentation on involving young people online raised quite a bit of dicussion around the use of social media as a method of engagement. We couldn't possibly have covered all of the areas of this topic and because of our work on the Youth Website, we also keep getting the odd query through on email from outside of the RIC's network. Because of this, I have decided to add to this post and give you some links that will hopefully leave you something more concrete than just distant memories of the session.

Please note, this is included solely for your own research purposes and not an endorsement by Derby Homes or the Resident Involvement Champions of any right or wrong way to engage with customers online.

What's Social Media?

OK, I want to start in a logical order, inspired by a post from Carl Haggerty from Devon County Council on a Social Media Acceptance Model. So for all the people who are completely new to Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Flickr, the internet or even computers, here's a great collection of 'One Pagers'  by Tim Davies to introduce you to the staggeringly huge world of social media. These are available to download on Scribd as either PDF or editible Word files.

Further reading...

Some Blogs you may want to browse at your leisure.

Carl's Notepad Personal thoughts from a Devon County Council employee and his experiences using Social Media. Good stuff, like this post on their jouney so far.

Tim's Blog Social media, youth participation, e-democracy & social change. A huge wealth of information and resources from an independant consulter and researcher. He's also co-author of a Youth Work and Social Networking Research Project. This report is probably the most useful thing in this post so I recommend you download it and have a read through. It contains fascinating data on how young people are actually using social media. 

Simon Wakeman A Public Sector slant on social media and websites from the Head of Communications and Marketing at Medway Council.

LocalGovCamp The website of a national event that opened my eyes to the enormity of social media. The original idea for which came from Dave Briggs, who's blog also features some great content on technology driven change.

Local Government Engagement Online Research Blog Want to know how many councils use Twitter, Facebook or YouTube? Now you can. Lots and lots of very useful content to give you an idea of who is doing what and if it's working. A good varied mix of content here including video interviews and links to even more Blogs.

Interesting Posts

Let's turn off the web The (approximate) impact on services if Lincolshire County Council switched off their website.

A strategic approach to using Twitter in Government Interesting table, showing  different stages/uses against business areas.

Twitter follow etiquette for Councils Debating the intricacies of interaction in the microblogosphere. To follow or not to follow...

Local Government shouldn't be on Facebook Should you or shouldn't you? Social Networks are different places, do we have a place there?

Starting out and keeping up to date

Things change fast. When we started working on the Youth website, Facebook had about 80 million users. Now it has over 300 million and there are an infinite number of other social sites popping up all over the place.

I would suggest you start using some of these technologies. OK, you may not be able to do this at work, so do it at home. Twitter is a good place to start, but can be overwhelming or misunderstood if you don't establish a good network. If you want to stay in the loop, find some people from reading around the links above and start following them (on twitter).

Don't force yourself down into an area you aren't interested in. Pick something that you care about. I followed almost everyone who attended the LocalGovCamp event. This ended up giving me a crash course in twitter (and twitter 'clients' like Tweet Deck and Hoot Suite), seeing more potential in it than if I had used it for purely social reasons. That's just my example, you may find something similair in a different area.

People are using this

Whatever anyone says, social media is not going to go away. People use it. People like it. Even if you're unable to try anything at work, it wouldn't hurt to learn about it at home, especially in your area. For example, here's a recent, positive news article from Derby Evening Telegraph on local Social Media use.

A friend and I also had a go at creating a 'snapshot' of what was on social media in Derby with interesting results. Have a look at what we found in the mind map link from City of Derby Social Media Map.

Anyway, that's me done. I hope you find something of use in this post. Happy reading!