Sally McDavid

I found this directory a few months ago online, it gives tradesmen that have been checked by trading standards after a bad experience with a tradesman I found it really helpful to be able to find trustworthy people on here. I was in a car park when I saw it being advertised on the back of the pay-and-display tickets. If you haven't been onto the website I would highly recommend having a look and adding it to your favourites.

The Home Service Directory

The other day I had the pleasure of going up to the Stadium of Light in Sunderland to talk to members from the North East Connects area. It was the middle session that they were running to help engaged members in more online communications with people in there areas and how they could help communities use tools such as e-voice to enable them to have an online presence. One of the main issues that was voiced from the members was that quite a few of the areas still couldn't received broadband which made it difficult to move such technologies forward. If you would like to read about the day a summary can be found on the North East Connects website.   The thing I find interesting is that we in North Lincolnshire have similar issues the main towns are wired up but the more rural you get the worse the service. We are doing all we can to try and improve this. 

Many large cities have started to look and implement wireless options to help "connect" the community and help people access technologies some take for granted. It seems that if you are a city, businesses are willing to invest as they can see that the infrastructure will help them. However if you happen to be a town or rural area, how do you then build a sustainable model? to me this seems to be the million dollar question. Until someone comes up with a wonderful solution I suppose I am just left wondering.

On friday I was looking round the direct gov website for some information on traveling to Northen Ireland and what form of ID if any did you need. I noticed in the bottom right corner of the screen a little picture and the words "direct gov kids" This website seemed quite fun.. so I thought I would try it out on one of our 5 year old daughters to see what she thought. Well it went down really well! In fact her sister came to see what we were doing as she had been on the Cbeebies website (which is excellent I may add) anyway back to Direct Gov Kids.. We ended up in the school making health option well balanced lunches and then we went to the school council who sent us on a secret mission somewhere (I wont tell you where she had to go.. that would spoil it). Jess was by this point quite excited about the mission she had to complete but alas as she entered the secret entrance the whole thing stopped and wouldn't go any where, Jess and I were slightly let down.

I think this is a great tool some of explanations were a little "adult" in there telling but I'm really not sure how do you explain in an easy to understand way what the "Houses of Parliament" are and what a "politician" is..

I would love to hear if anyone else has tried this site out, by the way Jess did ask several times over the weekend if she could go back on that "new fun website" I showed her. So it obviously has her vote..

It was a real pleasure working with the people from Birmingham City Council again, I bogged earlier in the year how we have spent a day promoting voice.

Well today we have been at the launch of Birmingham voice. Birmingham City Council had invited 200 community groups along to have a look at voice and what it can do.

Anna Tan from the CLG came along and gave the background to the project and we were all entertained by a the Jaguar Charity Pantomime Society who explained in a funny panto way (they were all dressed up!) what the internet was and how people could use it to help them promote what they were doing. I then gave a demonstration of how the site worked and some tips on what to keep in mind when building your site. Towards the end people from the different communities asked some great questions and then went on to register some of their sites.

Below is a gentleman from the Birmingham Irish Heritage Group and he is now online with the e-voice system and ready to build his website which I look forward to seeing grow.