A wall of Private Eye front covers. Editor Ian Hislop has picked his favourite one from each year of publication

The Friday Late event celebrated independent publishing, everything from zines, to tumblrs and typography.

The Victoria & Albert Museum threw open its doors until 10pm for amongst other things an analog tumblr, arty readings and the opportunity to create your own magazine.

Placing my 'thumbs up' in the analog tumblr. This was at the entrance to the event and allowed you to vote for pieces of typography you'd seen around the museum, or submit your own via your phone that you'd seen.

But the set piece, in my eyes, was a room dedicated to 50 years of Private Eye.

The magazine, currently edited by Ian Hislop, has been poking fun at the aristocracy and political classes for 50 years now and so the V&A felt it was time to recognise how the design of the magazine and the cartoons within it had played a major part in its success.

I took part in a tour around the exhibition with Elizabeth James who helped put the displays together. She was very engaging, explaining to everyone just how important the magazine is for cartoonists to get their work out there.

The cartoons on display include the work of Willie Rushton, Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe.

A cartoon from a recent Private Eye taking on the government on graduate unemployment and the new housing strategy

The Private Eye exhibition perhaps best sums up why it’s important to have such a free and independent media in this country today, poking into the corners of life where others would not dare.

The wall of front covers in the photo at the top of this post best sums up the impact the magazine can have, with its admittedly low-tech solution to publishing.

And there’s a good point. Often we’re focused on the new technology, the new way of doing something, when actually its about harnessing the technology to do something you want to do. As Elizabeth pointed out during the tour perhaps it is The Eye’s low-tech and low-production values which perhaps make it even more readable and has become an important part of its brand? It’s not over-designed and relies on very simple display methods, like cartoons or speech bubbles, to put across its witty message.

I would strongly recommend getting along to the V&A to check out the glorious 50 years on display, including the fascinating libel section with letters from The Eye’s lawyers refuting claims.

It runs until 8th January 2012 in Room 17a and 18a at the museum. More details on the V&A website.

Took a trip over to Portcullis House last night for an event titled ‘Parliament and Online Communities’ (part of Parliament Week) – it brought together a mix of people who run independent local news sites in South London, large online communities and messageboards like Mumsnet and interested government open data types.

The question we had to mull over was essentially how can Parliament engage more with online communities, and both make itself more open and also get good quality information from its select committee inquiries on a whole range of different issues.

Parliament faces a big challenge, as outlined by Matt Instone – its head of online engagement – how does it take the mass of information which is being produced by the institution and make it accessible to the general public, and at the same time make people aware of what Parliament is and what it does. And crucially, how it is different from the government.

He was essentially saying, how can Parliament serve a million and one niches?

How can local media, both hyperlocal and big media, engage with Parliament?

We were given an example of how Parliament had started working with an online community – The Student Room – on one of its select committee inquiries into service provision for young people. Sounds dry when you put it like that, but Jamie O’Connell, marketing director for the student site which attracts 4.5m visitors a month, said they had worked with the outreach team at Parliament to clarify the aims of the inquiry.

He described how the chair of the select committee had recorded a video asking people for their opinions, this had been embedded on the site on a special page on the Student Room with four discussion threads underneath all built around the four key questions they wanted answering – such as ‘are the youth services in your area good enough?’.

The inquiry ran for two months, the video was viewed 3,000 times and they had 80 posts on the threads giving all manner of opinions and some very forthright ones. As they discussed this an idea popped up in my head, if you can do this on the Student Room, surely you could do it on local sites?

There’s sites from Greenwich to Preston which have engaged readerships who would relish the opportunity to input directly into inquiry that can make a difference, on a topic they are interested in. Communities tend to be grouped around geographic area or subject area, so I my call to Parliament is come and talk to local sites – where the audiences are – about doing these kinds of consultations.

Parliament should be easier to filter

The second part of the night saw everyone split off into groups to discuss questions around how Parliament could do online better. The general feeling was that there’s lots of interesting information contained within the Parliament website, but its just a nightmare to find – especially if you’re accessing it for the first time with no idea of how it works.

Our group discussed how the Parliament website should be easy to search via location, topic area or date. It should show how related information is grouped together, and for me I said they needed to open up and allow us  to embed video, audio and documents from Parliament in the content we’re producing. If I’m writing a piece about the BAE Systems job cuts and the debate in Parliament, it would be great if I could time stamp the video of the debate and embed it into the content I’ve created about it.

Likewise with documents. We’ve seen when covering council business in Preston for Blog Preston how readers, well some of then, want more detail. So they want to read the full report, and then comment on it. If we were able to take the full reports and embed on our sites this would be a big step forward – rather than just constantly linking to PDFs which then get moved around and don’t exist anymore.

All of this relies on Parliament opening up its information and becoming more accessible, and it needs to create jargon busters to reduce the barriers to entry.

Widening access, but unfairly?

There was a warning made at the end of the event, and a good one too, about how the push for online engagement could leave offline forgotten. There still needs to be real-world consultation done, because there is still a digital divide. While everywhere you look in London there’s a smartphone, you go to more rural areas and you can barely get broadband. Consultations and information should not become the preserve of the digitally savvy, young, urban elite. It should be opened up to one and all, and that’s something Parliament should keep in mind and be working to achieve.

How do you think Parliament can engage better online? If you’re a local blogger or news site, what information would you like to see provided? Would being able to embed video clips or documents relating to your community be of interest? Would you run a consultation in conjunction with Parliament? Let me know in the comments below

Image credit to E01

Two events happening shortly in Cardiff which look interesting and will hopefully ask questions about openess and transparency in both central and local government.

The first is the Senedd 2011 event. It’s a bit vague on what the discussion will actually be on – the general theme of the web and transparency and the Welsh Assembly. The panel has some people with a track record of lobbying and opening up debates on issues, so what they have to say will be interesting.

There’s more details about the event, which is free, on the Vote 2011 website.

Then the Talk About Local Unconference comes to town. An unconference is a cool format where instead of being shoe-horned into a set programme of workshops and seminars, the attendees decide them instead. So, if you’re interested in a certain topic – e.g. making local councils more transparent – you put a post-it up at the start and see if anyone else is interested. If they are, you get a session and people share their knowledge and thoughts.

I’ve been to a Talk About Local Unconference before, and wrote this report – featuring Staffordshire oatcakes – in 2009 about what I learned from it. If you run a hyperlocal, community or blogging site it’s a really useful event to attend and I know it’s given me a lot of ideas and enthusiasm for what we’ve been doing with Blog Preston.

You can find out more about the event in this post I did for yourCardiff and sign up for free on the #tal11 Eventbrite.

I’ll be tweeting from both events, so follow me on Twitter @ed_walker86 and the hashtags #senedd2011 and #tal11 for all the latest.

Image credit to Michael Gwyther-Jones, showing the Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay

Seth Godin kicks off with a great take on what the elections meant for marketing professionals. He definitely believes that online is the place to be for campaigning.

Kivi was quick off the mark with what nonprofit organisations can learn marketing wise from the election. She focuses on the ability of the Obama to fundraise from a whole spectrum of people, small amounts building to one huge total. She also links through to the Getting Attention blog which has a good piece about what the election taught us about email marketing.

The Charity Place has a piece about what nonprofits can learn from the Obama campaign, and it’s more of the same. Engagement, make friends first and then ask for money – not the other way round. I think that’s an important one, build a connection and then ask for the money.

The post is here, or you can read it below:

First off, I’d rather have a million pounds (British Sterling) than dollars to save journalism with. But exchange rates aside, let’s get down to business.

My strategy would be to invest in people. Invest in getting journalists to do that saving. You can’t do things alone, you need a good team with good people. I’d probably shed some dead wood from the news room, maybe coax a few people to leave early and get some fresh blood in.

I’d keep the subs, but expand their role to include a lot of backroom stuff – like picture uploading, digital media production, video editing. I’d keep the print edition but I’d make it follow online’s lead. Maybe just have one good strong print edition per day, and throw everything into online.

I’d develop strong supplements based around local issues, and not be afraid of trying something new. I’d link these supplements with mini-sites online built around that issue.

I’d invest in training for my staff, I’d employ the Google technique of 10% time for my reporters. i.e. 10% to go off and cover what YOU want and what YOU think needs covering.

I’d put a bit of money towards having trainees in. Not expecting them to pay for everything. There would be a pot of money so that kids can come in and get experience, learn about being a journalist, in a good environment, and not be skint afterwards. You never know, they might even bring a good story in with them – and that’s got to be worth the money.

I’d invest in a CRM (customer relationship management) system for my newspaper, logging user comments, offering them personalised news updates, and beginning to build an idea of who my readers really are. So I know that Joe Bloggs in the North of the city responds well to this type of news. Then I have something to sell, I’ve got proof of effectiveness, readership and grabbing people’s attention.

So to sum up, good journalists, probably better paid, more of them, getting some 10% time, with a good online setup.

On a chilly night, I was watching the news and cooking my dinner and the doorbell went. I thought it was my girlfriend, as usual not bothering to use her keys, but instead it was my local councillor. I’ve just moved into the Sharoe Green area of Preston, Lancashire, and been here about four weeks. So while the world was focusing on America, my local councillor wanted to ask me about street lighting and crossing the busy road next to my house.

It was nice to be asked, give my view and the councillor looked like he gave a shit about what I was saying. He asked my opinion on a few other things and asked if there was anything else I could help with. We discussed housing/home buying (all the time him looking a bit cold, but still caring) and he gave me his card.

So, while the world gets wrapped up in the American elections and the outcome, spare a thought for the local councillors who are dealing with often small problems that have a big impact on local people’s lives. It’s also a lesson to politicians and journalists alike, get out there, talk to people and you’ll find out things. You can’t sit at a desk all day and expect it to come to you on a plate, or via the web, real people and real stories and issues are always on the doorstep.

Andy Dickinson made a good post about the value of journalists getting out onto the beat, and it’s a good one. While the social web allows you to interact with communities and find out issues on discussions forums, blogs etc – nothing will ever beat going to find a person and find a story and get opinions. People make stories after all.

The same goes for politicians. While we want them to be using emails, twitter, blogging etc – we still like to think that they are around on the streets, listening and making changes happen in the local community. Let’s hope that politicians carry on doing what my local councillor did. In this crazy age of global politics, raise a glass or virtual glass to the likes of Councillor E.P.Fazackerley.