In general, the data we are collecting and publishing via plings tends towards the local activities and events, that sit neatly underneath a local youth offer.  So – a youth club, sports centre, arts project, music workshop, dance group – tend to sit well within the local area that they operate within.  In terms of then publishing these positive activities our model of “what’s on near me?” works well.

But – we know that this is not the whole story.

Recently we have begun to talk to a few activity providers and projects that organise events and schemes that are of interest to a much wider population of young people.  Over the coming weeks we will start to publish more detail and interviews with these organisations, but to kick off, here are some thoughts.

Trip to the theatre

West End

Mousetrap theatre projects contacted us with details of their scheme for ultra cheap tickets for West End theatre, dance and opera productions and talks – aimed specifically at young people.  We’ve entered one such event into Plings, which sits it underneath Westminister.  Obviously, the catchment area for an event in central London is far beyond a local youth offer (could even extend to people from Manchester!) – so this starts an interesting issue as to where these activities “sit”.

Going away

Over the summer holidays, the Youth Hostel Association will be running a series of adventure camps for young people – called Doit4Real.  The very nature of these activities mean that those attending will not always live in the areas adjacent to the camps – so how would we promote these to “local” young people?

A festival of activities

Festivals

Coming up in October and November (phew!) will be the Juice Festival, NewcastleGateshead’s Festival for Children and Young People.  We’d imagine the programme and activities will be exciting and diverse, meaning that people would want to travel in from further afield – especially given the excellent Metro system locally.  So – where would the activities best sit from this?

Gone Fishing

At Substance, we also have  a major project researching into the social and community benefits of Angling.  Again, this “pasttime” is not always something that is organised within a local authority area..

How far is local?

Whilst we can most probably see some solutions at the presentation level for these issues – adverts, buttons, Facebook Fan Pages, widgets, etc – our interest is more around the relationship these activities have with the local.  Of course, this is then tied to issues such as transport, travel and resources – but the question remains “how far is your local youth offer stretching?“

Was it worth getting on the 7:07 from Euston on Saturday morning? Damn right it was.

The Plings team discreetly model their Plings hoodies!

Arriving in Huyton (Knowsley), I was greeted by our locally produced (it’s important to use local produce these days!), Plings street marketing team who were bounding around, full of excitement and enthusiasm about promoting Plings and the Boredometer to the young people of Knowsley.

With the Youth Bus positioned in Huyton, and later in Kirkby, our SMT (suitably attired in some pretty flash Plings hooded tops), bounded over to any young person they could see and waxed lyrical to them about all the great places to go and things to do in Knowsley … and as if that sort of Plings promotion wasn’t enough, they then enticed them on board the Youth Bus where we had a couple of laptops set-up so that young people could find out for themselves about Plings and the Boredometer.

Throughout the day, our SMT spoke to around 200 young people which hopefully means that a further 200 of Knowsley’s finest now know where to go to find out what’s going on.

Our Plings team in action

It was a great day with lots of interest from the public, a fantastic team of young people doing all the Plings promotion (peer-peer engagement = essential if you want to successfully get a message out), and not a cloud in the sky (well, maybe a couple!).

Hull also put on a Plings promotion day which was also a huge success and, with Salford and Newcastle being the next two authorities to have a promotional day, the whole world should soon know all about Plings!

A quick update from our project around reading and developing plings activity instances from the national Family Information Direct (FID) aggregation platform (we call it pling-o-matic!). All is going well in terms of data development, and we are on course for some good results, building on our initial feasibility study.  In doing this, we have spotted a couple of (minor) interesting data issues that we wanted to share – all around the time fields of the records from FID.

Start time only

1 – Records that are missing an end time A few records – of good quality otherwise – state a start time, but no end time.  For our testing, we are starting to use a one hour duration on these records, so we can convert to plings instances. 

Broad time only

2 – Records that have general times Mornings, afternoons, evenings.  We have isolated records that have good quality, but a very general indication of the time.  This presents an interesting dilemma for plings – in that our data is always built around being time-specific.  We could make a guess with these records, although we would not be 100% confident that it would be correct.  Far from it. To us, these issues start to highlight some of the implications of converting directory data into activity events.  Of course, this is to be expected.  The solution lies in improving the data at source, but we appreciate that people may not always have this available.  We hope that through this work, and eventually illustrating the benefits and results, we can then make a stronger case.

As a project about places to go and things to do, it is great to announce some activities we are more closely associated with organising!  Granted, not all of thse are aimed specifically at young people (and so in plings!), but here goes:

Plings promotion events, on plings!

Plings promotion roadshows – 6th March, Hull & Knowsley

Tomorrow (6th March) will see the first of a series of roadshows in some of the pilot local authorities, as part of the local research we are undertaking.

Whilst these events will help to spread the message of the positive activities available locally, we will also be paying close attention to the impact this marketing push will have in terms of take up.  By this we mean both impact of take up of the information, but also of actual events.  More to follow… but we’ve used Plings to publish the details of these events!

Update – we’ve also created Facebook events for both Hull and Knowsley

All About Plings event, 20th April, Birmingham

We have had quite a bit of interest from local authorities that sit outside of the DCSF pilot areas in recent weeks.  So – on the 20th April we are organising an event to start to inform and present the project, and our learning, to these audiences.  We’ve used eventbrite to publish this event and collect bookings (it is free).  So -if you have an interest in positive activity information and would like to understand how your local authority could start to participate in plings, then this is the event for you…

Regional meetings – mid May

As part of our ongoing work with 20 local authorities via the DCSF Information & Signposting Project, we have now arranged a series of regional workshops to act as an opportunity to get together and share, learn and plan in smaller groups – in mid May 2010.  We’ve used Wufoo to publish a form for these events – if you work within one of our pilot areas, please complete our form!

Developer meeting – 18th June, Manchester

Finally, just time to announce a provisional date of the 18th June for this years Developer Meeting.  Last year we were in London (at Google!), so this year we’ve gone closer to home, here in Manchester.  This event is aimed at those witha technical interest or involvement in plings – from local authority web and IT teams, through to those building feeds, apps and all manner of things!  As mentioned, this date is still provisional – so we’ve used Twitter to annouce it, and gather feedback! Please retweet…

More events and details to follow, but please get invovled in our plings if you can!

During February we made a few enhancements to the Plings statistics tool.

We’ve

• added ‘County views’ for local authorities such as Leicester and Norfolk (we’ll be doing the rest soon!)
• enabled CSV exports on the Things to do, Places to go, and Activity Providers pages (and the pages you get to as you drill down) – thanks for the suggestion (see http://ideas.plings.net/ideatorrent/idea/24/ )
• made some tables sortable – i.e. on the above pages, when drilled down into a particular activity, venue or provider, the tables are looking better, and columns are now sortable if you have javascript on
• added some links to plings.net e.g. for venues and providers, so you can jump out of the tool to see the latest data on something of interest.
• made a few changes in line with our new brand
• altered the ‘to’ and ‘from’ labels on the date search to make them a bit more user friendly
• added a filter by Plings/DCSF category option
• enabled users to hide the ward filter if they are not interested in using it

Hope you like the changes. We’re to hear any feedback on this.

The DCSF has just published two guides and a set of videos on using social media to promote positive activities. This is great encouragement from DCSF for authorities to take a social media approach to promoting positive activities.

Enabling the direct feed of positive activity information in social media spaces has long been one of the advantages of Plings (and you can find mention of Plings in the guide) – as the output API enables a whole host of approaches, from the Application-based Bordometer, to automated widgets and feeds of event listings to Facebook pages.

Here’s how the DCSF ‘Social Media Explained’ guide introduces itself:

Social media is here to stay and it is changing the way millions of people communicate. If you have not yet joined Facebook or Twitter, or watched YouTube, you may well wonder what it is all about. But for most young people using social media is second nature, so as professionals at the heart of youth engagement, it is important to understand it and be part of it. With this in mind, this guide is specifically for you, youth project managers, with the following aims:

• To explain social media technologies and functions using simple language.
• To provide you with the tools to increase interest and attendance at your project by working with young people and promoting your activities through social media.

The Social Media Explained guide is also accompanied by some old-school guidance on creating videos for the web, and a series of video clips that outline ways of creating a high-quality video clip about a youth project. Of course, as well as carefully planned video clips, ‘quick clips’ created and shared online (with the appropriate consent and attention paid to making sure they are shared safely) can help promote activities – and so we’re hard a work right now on identifying how the ‘PlingBack’ framework in development can build links between multi-media and Plings records, building on the photo-links recently added to the national Plings.net.

For more on using social media in youth engagement, you can also check out the developing online ‘Youth Engagement and Social Media’ guide and the Youth Work Online community, and if you’re already using social media in promoting your positive activities, then do drop in a quick comment on this blog post to let us know what you’re trying and what you’ve been learning from the process…

It was this good!

This has been one of the more straightforward ideas to come out of the User Centred Design workshops we have been running recently, whilst looking at the concept of “plingback” and positive activities.

Idea: If people leaving a positive activity could indicate with their hands how much they enjoyed it through a “hand scale” it could provide a quick and visual indication of feedback.

Let’s see if it makes it through to the next round of ideas testing!

Some early trends and discussion points seem to be:

Quantitative and Qualitative feedback
A ratings and thumbs up/down widget or function may help us, and will be much needed – but what about freetext? How can this be managed and acted upon? We were expecting all these discussions, so it has been a welcome dilemma.

Direct feedback and safeguarding

James in Nottingham pointed out that via Plings, we have started to collect and publish the details of the activity provider and contact, as opposed to the general contact.  This could be interesting in terms of feeding back to this person/people.  Giving feedback to the person directly – or at least knowing where you feedback is going to – could be a key driver.  Of course, there are then implications around safeguarding and roles & responsibilities – which is why we are in such a phase of design and consultation.

Positive feedback

As the quick example shows, feedback doesn’t always have to mean negative responses.  Indeed, we have begun to discuss and post-it ideas around positive-led questions.  “What was your best bit?”

Reflective feedback and context
What if someone really enjoys one session, but then three weeks into an activity they have a negative experience? Does this affect their initial feedback? Does this then relate back to the provision as a whole? These discussions have begun to tease out the fact that we are often thinking and feeling sentient beings! Blimey

Our process
From the initial workshops we are holding, our next steps will be to work with Neontribe on the concepts and ideas, test them again, “paper prototype”, test, reflect, build something and – yes – test it again. This process really fits our “action research” approach, and was also well suited for Boredometer.  Plus, it is fun

We will continue to feedback (sic) through the blog, so feel free to add any comments and thoughts to this quick debrief…

Just time to announce (via copy & paste!) a couple of unrelated projects that could be of interest to readers:

Jailbrake
Each year around a hundred thousand 15-17 year olds get caught up in the criminal justice system. Once they come into contact with this system, many are likely to re-offend; to remain part of it and to go on to become part of the adult criminal justice system.

Simple web and mobile tools can empower people to take more control of their lives by providing new ways of organising, mobilising and communicating. Young people are early adopters and this technology provides a way of reaching people who previously were hard to access.

Jailbrake is a competition to find and support great ideas that could slow down or stop the cycle of youth offending using simple web and mobile tools.

More (including a reference to Boredometer!) at www.jailbrake.org – including notice of an ideas event in London on Monday 22nd Feb

Chance to be Chancellor

‘Chance to be Chancellor’ challenges 14 – 19 year olds to take on the role of Chancellor by drafting their own mock Budget and delivering their vision for the future of the UK economy. Chance to be Chancellor engages young people on the big issues of the day from recession to public spending with the competition materials including a lesson plan alongside this years Budget policies. All would be Chancellor’s must prioritise those policies they would choose for public spending and justify their vision in a Budget speech. Along with other great prizes the winning entry will be published in The Times around Budget day to give a young persons perspective on the Budget. Chance to be Chancellor is a great way to deliver citizenship education on the big economic challenges of the day and the deadline is 26th February – for details check out www.payingforit.org.uk/chancellor.

User generated competitions
It is great to see a couple of initiatives that attempt to “crowdsource” ideas and solutions, especially with the involvement of young people. This is building upon a growing trend, including Show Us a Better Way and The Learning Revolution competitions within our domain.

Any ideas on ideas for a positive activities app/solution competition? We’d be interested…

Just before Christmas, Pete Nickless of 1up design combed through the data available in the Parent Know How Database (PKHD) and compared it to the data available in Plings. Pete was searching for positive activities contained within the broader PKHD data. And there were some to be found. As Plings.net moves to provide a national service, being able to draw on the data within PKHD and to turn descriptions of provisions into real activity records, could turn out to extent the information we can offer to young people.

You can read Pete’s full feasibility study here (PDF). As you will see, whilst there is positive activity data to be found in PKHD, it’s not always in standard formats, nor is there a uniform amount of information available across the country. However, being able to find perhaps 50 key positive activities for a local authority are is better than nothing, and provides a start to a broader Plings service.

So, Pete and his team are hard at work now building a prototype tool to integrate PKHD data with Plings in some of the Plings pilot local authority areas, to evaluate in practice the possibility to linking the two systems.

Making the links, however, does raise a number of key issues:

• PKHD describes providers and their services, Plings describes activity instances. The prototype import system uses a complex mix of regular expressions to try and locate activity, date and time information on the free-text activity descriptions of PKHD.

  Because different system suppliers offer different interfaces for uploading information to PKHD, and because local authorities collect information in different ways, accomodating all the different ways information is expressed can be a challenge.

• When we turn a description like ‘Badmington every Friday at 5pm’ into instance data (i.e. a set of entries on the calendar), how far ahead in the future should we project the activity? We’ll be checking PKHD every day for updates – but if we only project forward one week, people browsing for things to do in a couple of weeks time will miss out on discovering an activity that is very probably taking place.

  And what should we do about holidays? If a record doesn’t specify – how do we work out whether to display it during school holidays or not?

• How do we handle assertions about the safety and security of an activity. Right now, Plings activities come from trusted local authority partners, and we link activities back to those partners. However, with activities coming from a wide range of sources, and with PKHD containing basic information about the extent to which the authorities responsible for services have checked the information is correct, we need to think about how to carry over these indicators or ‘trust’ and ‘assurance’ into Plings.

If you’ve been exploring any of these issues in your own work with PKHD or other systems – then we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch via the comments below…

In our last blog post we reported on the different groups that the PKHD-Plings Data Quality Working Group had identified as holders of positive activity information. The group also discussed a range of different strategies and messages to secure support for sharing positive activity information amongst different groups…

Overall message
The overall message the group identified was that all parties need to be engaged with: “Better managing and sharing information to benefit the user, the organisation & the wider community in line with legal duties & local priorities”

Different approaches
In any context though, that message needs to tailored to specific needs. The working group identified approaches for Strategic Manager, Other Team and Third Sector or other activity providers:

Strategic Managers

1. Identify senior level managers to champion information sharing
2. Create a clear and inclusive message about the benefits and additionality:
   • Better meeting needs of users (safeguarding, choice, access)
   • Responding to legislation, responsibility & expectations
   • Showing the service worth – effectiveness, efficiency & relevance (VFM)
   • Knowing your service and using it’s data effectively: planning, needs, gaps analysis
3. Emphasise access to support & guidance in dealing with requests for information / claims about lack of services in area

Other Teams

1. Identify ‘operational champions’ to act as a key point to hold, manage and promote information within each service (focus on skill set not status)
2. Identify a champion service / or aspects to promote
3. Create a clear message about the benefits:
   • Free publicity, service mapping & service intelligence
   • A network of support & skills – workforce for service & individuals development
   • Helping to meet service duties and expectations

Third Sector / Providers

1. Identify voluntary sector information sharing champions
2. Create a clear and inclusive message about the benefits and additionality:
   1. The users needs (healthy lifestyles, support, access, choice)
   2. The organisations needs
   3. The needs of the wider community
   4. Get the message out and own it:

Planned approach ‘fit for purpose’ for the audience
Appropriate and creative methods, newsletters, meetings, events, website, publicity, social media
Keep the message alive with working groups/focus groups (champions)

What strategies are you using to encourage colleagues and other organisations to better manage and share their positive activity information?

The second meeting of the PKHD-Plings Data Quality Working Group took place a few weeks ago. At the meeting there was a lot of discussion about how to find additional sources of positive activity data. Whilst the responsibility to collect information on activities may be with one local authority department, there are groups right across the local area who run activities, and who have activity information.

Reflecting the 0 – 19 focus of PKHD (as opposed to the core youth focus of Plings), the workshop identified the following groups as potential sources of positive activity information:

• Business Sector
• Local Employers
• Childminder’s Association
• Museums
• Children’s Centres
• Music Groups
• Church groups
• Parent Partnership
• Cinemas
• Play Service
• Citizens Advice
• Police
• Community Development Officers
• Pre School Learning Alliance
• Community groups
• Private music tutors
• Contact a Family
• Riding Clubs
• Councillors
• Schools
• Cultural Services – Art services
• Special needs networks
• Domestic Violence Support Services
• Sports Clubs
• Drama and dance classes
• Teenage pregnancy
• Drugs/Alcohol Support Services
• Teenage sexual health services
• Early Years
• Theatre groups
• Evening classes
• Theatre School
• Extended Services
• Tourism Office
• Faith groups
• Uniformed Clubs
• Housing Associations
• Voluntary Youth Clubs
• Job Centre Plus
• Ward Co-ordinators
• Leisure Services
• Youth Services
• Libraries

How many of these groups do you currently collect positive activity information from?

Of course, knowing that there are many different groups out there to collect information from is different from finding systematic ways to make sure up-to-date information from them is flowing into your positive activity information system. That’s why the working group also explored ways to prioritize information collection, and to secure the support of key information providers

Setting priorities:
You can plot potential information providers on two axis: (1) the level of useful information; (2) the easy of developing links with those providers. That will give you a matrix that looks something like this:

You can then think about the order in which to develop links with information providers, and what you might need to do to secure the support of key information providers.

How your local matrix looks will depend on the relationship your organization has with other holders of positive activity information, and factors such as their current priorities and funding. Understanding what motivates the organizations you are requesting positive activity information from can be important in gaining their support and input. The flexibility of the Plings platform means that you can think creatively about what sorts of incentives may help you to engage some providers.

For example, could you show a local voluntary youth club how they could get a feed of all the activities they tell you about out of Plings – and how they could display that on their own website, and could share it with volunteers as an iCal feed to display in their calendars? That way – by giving you their positive activity information, they save time and get real added benefits – rather than it being an extra chore.

Securing support
In the next blog post well explore some of the different strategies that working group members identified for securing support from different organizations and individuals for sharing their positive activity information.

Today we released the latest work we’ve been doing on the stats tool, that local authorities can use to inspect their Youth Offer.

What’s new?

• Instances – We’ve altered the headline stats (top right) to feature ‘instances’ more prominently, as after all, that’s what Plings is all about!
• Charts – we have 2 new charts, a pie chart of activities that have been classified against the DCSF 8 categories of positive activities, and  an Instances over time profile, that shows how activies peak and trough over a time period.
• Reports Tab – We’ve added a new ‘Reports’ section – for now this shows the weekly breakdown of figures into morning, afternoon, and evening sessions, as required once again by the DCSF, but rather than just focus on one reporting period, we show this over any time period you care to put in.
• Maps – If you take a look at the ‘places to go’ tab, you can now see venues on a Google Map, or in a list.
• Latest News – tucked in down out of the way is our ‘Latest News’ block, that links back to articles we post here on the blog, that have something to do with the tool. Seems like a good way of keeping in touch!

The chart could help spot trends

What’s next?

We’ll be publishing our ‘roadmap’ ( a grand term, for what we hope to do next!) soon, as we’ve already got a list of new features we’d like to see in there. If you have suggestions for things you’d like to see and/or any improvements you think we could make, then please let us know.

We’ve got a big vision for Plings. We want any young person in the country to be able to easily answer the questions: “What’s on for me? What activities can I get involved in and how?”. We also want to pose a question to activity providers: “How can you help develop the talent and potential of young people who show an interest in the activities you are organising”. We hope the new look and feel begin to convey this message.

With the launch of a new Plings.net website this week, we’re a step closer to that vision – though there is still a long way to go.

When we started building the Plings positive activity information platform over two years ago, there were many areas where the data and information on activities existed only in peoples heads or locked up in printed flyers, and at best, in spreadsheets on someones hard-disk. Now, for many of the 20 local authorities we’ve been working with as part of the DSCF funded Information & Signposting Project, much of the information on positive activities for those areas is available through our output API ready to be syndicated to local and national websites, and used in any number of widgets and tools. Whilst we’ve brought activity information together in one central place, Plings is very much about supporting local information providers to develop new ways of collecting, sharing and amplifying positive activity information – and we continue to encourage local websites to make use of the data feeds of positive activities we provide.

Our vision though, is bigger than providing information in just 20 local areas, and so the new Plings.net website provides a space for young people from any area of the country to take the first step on a journey to finding positive activities where they live. Right now, if we’ve not got information for a local area, we try to signpost young people to the local youth websites that we’ve found and categorised. We’re also working with 1Up Design to identify activity information that has been added to the national PKHD directory, and to use that to start gradually improving the coverage of Plings positive activity information across the whole of the country (more on that soon…).

As we continually improve both our list of local website links (all suggestions always welcome), and, more importantly, the data held on local activity provision, Plings.net becomes a key launchpad for any young person wanting to explore their interests, or get involved in something new. But Plings has never just been about a website – it also increases the availability of data in our Output API for anyone to use and innovate with – presenting ever-more-ingenious ways of encouraging young people to find and engage in positive activities.

So, as, over the coming months, we transition from Plings.net as a pilot in 20 local areas, to a Plings.net that can serve young people anywhere in the country, we hope you’ll continue to share your feedback and ideas with us – and to join us on the ongoing journey..

A picture is worth a thousand words. Seeing is believing. Image matters.

For a while we’ve been wanting to find ways to add more visual appeal to individual Plings listings. We think that having a photo next to each activity listing could make a difference when it comes to young people discovering, becoming interested in, and hopefully getting involved in, new activities.

The main Plings website has had the option of attaching images to activities by way of a Flickr Machine Tag for a while now, but of course, images on an activity-by-activity basis are, at the moment, few and far between. So, for the launch of the new Plings.net, Ben Webb took up the challenge of creating a simple mechanism for attaching ‘generic’ images to activities based on their tags.

Challenge 1: Finding images to use

Gathering images of every possible activity in Plings is a big task. We needed a solution that allows us to incrementally build up a collection of images. And we need images that we have permission to use (no copyright restricted images!). Fortunately, many of the images on the photo sharing website Flickr have been uploaded under Creative Commons licenses that give permission for their re-use.

Challenge 2: Collecting the images

Once we found images on Flickr that could be used against types of activities (e.g. Football, Canoeing etc.) we needed a way to tag them as such. Flickr doesn’t offer an easy way to tag other people’s Creative Commons photos in the way we needed, so, we turned to trusty social bookmarking service Delicious.

Using delicious we can bookmark the pages that contain photos on Flickr, and can add our own category tags to our bookmarks – choosing tags that match the tags which activities are given.

Challenge 3: Displaying the images

Fortunately both Flickr and Delicious have useful APIs that we can use to get information back from them. So, whenever an activity page on Plings.net is visited, Ben’s scripts looks at the categories assigned to the activity, and  checks to see if any photos have been tagged on the Plings delicious account with these activity categories/tags. If so, by looking at the URL of the tagged page, and extracting the Flickr Photo ID, the script can fetch information about the photos referenced, checking that they are licensed in ways that allow us to re-use them, and then displaying them on the activity page.

If there is suitable machine tagged photo on Flickr for this specific activity, then that takes precedence over the general images.

If no photos are found, then a collection of general placeholder images are used to make sure that pages don’t end up looking dull.

A distributed – re-usable system

Both the bookmarks, and photos are public online resources – and so this solution could be used by anyone else providing information on positive activities.

If you’re interested in the code we’ve used, just get in touch. We’ll also be thinking about how we might add images more directly to the Plings data feeds in future – and welcome and thoughts and reflections on that.

How do you count the number of activities available today, that to young people age 13 – 19 could take part in if they wanted to? Furthermore, how do you count the number of activities taking place this morning, how many this afternoon, and how many this evening?

These questions matter, both for presenting information to those searching for activities, and when it comes to completing monitoring returns like those recently requested by DCSF.

To start answering these questions we have to decide on the time frames that define ‘morning’, ‘afternoon’ and ‘evening’. And we have to work out what makes an activity one that is ‘happening’ in the morning of afternoon. Does it just need to overlap with the ‘morning’ timeframe? To fall entirely within it? Or to start or end in it?

If we go with the definitions the DCSF is using for it’s monitoring exercise then we end up saying that an activity ENDING between 9am and 12.30pm takes place in the morning.

Here are the full definitions that they give:

Morning: ending between 9am and 12.30pm.
Afternoon: ending between 12.30pm and 6pm.
Evening: ending after 6pm.

But, whilst those might be pragmatic definitions for a monitoring exercise, they don’t work so well in describing the reality of provision from a young person’s perspective. Why not?

Well, think about a breakfast clubs that finishes before 9am? Where would that feature as an activity?

And what about a session that runs from 11am to 1pm. Clearly from the young person’s perspective there is ’something to do’ in both the morning and the
afternoon, but it would count in DCSF statistics only once – in the afternoon (as that’s when it ends). In fact, we may want to say that the extent to which the activity really is an activity in both the morning and afternoon depends on how ‘open access’ it is. Can I turn up to the 11am to 1pm session at 12.15pm and take part? If so – should we treat it as a morning and an afternoon session?

More examples highlight how complex this can get. What if I’m free saturday morning. On Saturday there are only 4 activities, 2 start at 10am and go on to 2pm, one is 9am-5pm, one is 11 – 1. If we only count when activities end, it looks as though I can’t do anything in the morning! But if we could only when activities start, and you are only free Saturday morning, we might end up showing you lots of activities you can’t take part in.

In practical terms, people often manually make sense of the data presented to them – and work out what fits with their availability – but there are interesting challenges both for the way data is collected, and the way it is presented.

There are challenges for anyone using positive activity statistics – particularly when they list ‘numbers of activities per morning’ or ‘per evening’ – to understand what the statistics being presented really mean. But there are also challenges for developers like me, manipulating Plings data, where we need to have an understanding of the consequences of statements such as ‘SELECT activity_id FROM activities WHERE (end_time>=9am OR end_time<12.30pm)’ and to reflect on whether, given the data, this really returns the sort of information we expected it might…

The DCSF want to know how local authorities are doing when it comes to providing positive activities to young people. In November Antony Hughes wrote to all Local Authority Directors of Children’s Services to announce a data collection exercise designed to “capture summary information on the pattern of provision of the youth offer over the week, including number of sessions provided on Friday and Saturday nights [and] including a breakdown of youth offer by activity and provider type”.

Of course, this is exactly the sort of information that exists within the Plings Platform, so for the 22 authorities currently involved in the Plings pilot, where the data is up-to-date we’ll be able to present the information needed to complete the DCSF monitoring spreadsheet with the touch of a button. Well, almost…

The categories being used by DCSF to describe activity types do not match 100% with those in Plings, but using the Tag-It tool we’re able to offer a quick interface for authorities to recategorise any activities as required – and then from an updated version of the Stats tool soon to be available, we’ll be able to present the information needed by DCSF.

With continued work to integrate the Parent Know How Directory and Plings (PKHD includes data on activity provision, but not ‘instances’ of activities for all local authorities) we hope that in the future we may even be able to generate these summary statistics for anywhere in the country.

Enable is a new Derbyshire-based Disability Direct project promoting independence and social inclusion for young disabled people aged 16-25.

Enable’s Young People’s Worker, Naomi Hope, talked to Plings about scouting-out accessible positive activities across Derbyshire, Strictly Come Dancing, and the challenges of out-of-date websites.

Naomi, tell us about what you do.

My role is to gather information about absolutely everything that is taking place in Derbyshire that young people may be interested in. Then when a service user comes to me and wants to know about what’s happening locally – where to see films, plays and concerts, sports events and groups, support services like counselling and health information, adult education courses and volunteer opportunities – I know what to tell them!

How do you go about finding websites listing positive activities in Derbyshire?

I start in the obvious places that give general information such as the City and County Council for their activities and links to other organisations. The Tourist Information sites have great information about local attractions and events.

If I’m looking for something creative then I go to the Arts Derbyshire website or if it’s sporty then the Leisure Centres and Derbyshire Sport. If I’m after something very specific then Google is usually the first place I check.

Which websites do you use on a regular basis to find information?

There are loads of websites on my favourites list, including:

Connexions helps young people with information about education, employment and training

Too Doo, a Derbyshire County Council website that lists activities for 11-19 year olds.

The Derbyshire Directory lists local groups and charities

Derbyshire and Derby City Councils have a great source of information about organisations and events. The City Council has a fantastic Learning Disability Resource Directory.

Tourist Information helps with local attractions and events

Volunteer opportunities are listed on do-it and vinspired.

I would love for websites like Plings and Disabled Go to have information about Derbyshire.

That’s a lot of websites to keep track of. How do you make sure the information you’re using from them is up to date?

Very often, courses and events are listed with dates that they are running. With other activities that are presumed ongoing, like youth clubs, I email or ring them to check that it is still active. Things change all the time – new projects begin, old ones end, current ones change the times or venues – it is very hard for everyone to keep their information up to date. I guess this is the problem with organisations registering their activities on lots of different websites – when things change it is a job remembering to update everyone else with the changes.

How do you decide whether particular positive activities are accessible to young people with disabilities?

There are some great websites like Derbyshire Sport, which has information about disability sports in the county. You can also find out which Leisure Centres are Inclusive Fitness Initiative (IFI) accredited so you know that the facilities and equipment are accessible for disabled and non-disabled people.

I work with young people with a range of disabilities, which can be physical disabilities, learning difficulties, sensory impairments or mental ill health. An activity described as suitable for people with disabilities may be suitable for one person but not another. Also, some people want to do activities with other disabled people while other want to access mainstream activities.

The best thing to do is to treat each case individually. I find that rather than make assumptions that something will be suitable and enjoyable, I do some research and contact the organiser to find out more information. I like to visit as many of the activities as possible to get first hand experience of what takes place. It then puts me in a better position for telling other people what to expect, as often trying something new can be daunting.

The good news is that I am finding out that there are a huge number of things to do in Derbyshire.

Which positive activity in Derbyshire would you most like to take part in?

Well I’m a huge Strictly fan and would love to learn how to dance, despite my lack of rhythm and two left feet! Derby has a fantastic dance centre called Déda, which has performances and classes to suit all dance lovers. My favourite dance to watch is the Argentine Tango, which they teach at Déda, so I really should go and sign up…

Anything else you’d like to say?

Disability Direct is currently in the process of creating our own directory of local facilities accessible to older and disabled people called ‘Do What You Want’.

We contacted hundreds of local organisations, clubs and venues to find out about what they do and their accessibility for disabled people. The information compiled from the answers given is being entered onto an online database so that anyone searching for clubs, groups, societies, self help, peer support, sports etc, etc will be able to find out exactly what is going on in their area and whether the location is suitable for their needs.

As the snow hit last Tuesday I spent quite a while – as I’m sure many other people did – trying to find out if our school would be open or closed. The school landline was engaged, the city council website wasn’t updated and so it was left to huddle round the radio, tuning into the growing list of school closures that were being read out. Both BBC Radio Manchester and Key 103 did a fine job in keeping this service going, quickly publishing the names of schools on their websites.

With the heavy snowfall it was probably obvious that any out-of-school activities and venues would be closed, but how would we know? Probably more tricky would be the status of these activities as the snow starts to shift and melt. Whilst the airwaves are open for alerting people about important closure to schools or postponements of football matches (which I had a ticket for!), it is the community-based events that Plings collects that become the focus.

Obviously heavy snow, burst pipes and icy roads are not a new phenomenon, and so I’m sure word-of-mouth and common sense would have prevailed in many cases – just as it would have done in the pre-internet age. The slight issue we have now, however, is that in the commitment to publish information, we are also leaving it there for people to find. At face value, the youth club may still be open. When you have online information, it’s important to make it updated and current online information.

A couple of examples have helped:

- Our friends at Primary Technology utilised Voice-over-IP technology (VoIP), whereby schools could request a phone call, to then inform a database that the school was closed. This happens very quickly and easily and as the call is from system to the phone number on file, it is verified but also requires less human intervention. VoIP could be a cheap and scalable technology through which to do this.

- Oxfordshire youth service informed me that young people were using Facebook to track, monitor and share the status of the youth club openings. This doesn’t necessarily come with the verification of the previous example, but does illustrate that the word-of-mouth method is also shifting to other spaces

As we move to publish more and more data, this aspect of editing and updating particular instances will become more interesting and of need. Whilst the snow is an obvious example, there will be many other examples. We will continue this theme through the blog over coming months…

Finally – any ideas on how snowman building can be a positive activity? I spotted this one whilst out and about – there are some fine snow sculpting skills out there!

The Tag-It Tool Version 1

What do you do when you have information about 100s of activities, and you need to categorise them all, but your current database won’t let you add new fields and information? Even if your database will let you add new categories to your data, going in and editing every single record can be a time consuming job.

That’s why we’ve recently re-purposed a tool we built as a pilot for the 2morro festival in the Summer to provide an easy way for users of Plings to add tags and categories to all their data.

Tag-It works by picking out unique activities, and providing users with a simple interface for adding keyword tags, and selecting from pre-defined categories that activities should fall into.

If tag-it detects that an activity is repeated, then instead of having to tag each instance of the activity, Tag-It applies the new categories to every activity in the series, and all the updated tags and categories are soon available through the Plings Output API

We’ll be rolling out the Tag It tool to partners in the Plings pilot soon – and making good use of it when it comes to categorising data ready for returns to the DCSF…(more on that soon…). Get in touch with the team to find out more about how you can make use of Tag-It locally.

The OPEN centre is a brand new world class youth venue in Norwich city centre.  It is the first of many flagship venues funded by the government’s myplace programme, which is being delivered by the Big Lottery Fund.

Plings got in touch with OPEN project assistant David Mill to find out what’s on offer at the centre, how young people are involved in running and promoting the venue, and its plans for the New Year.

Tell us about OPEN.

OPEN is a brand new, state-of-the-art youth venue for young people aged 12 – 25  The venue is drug, alcohol and tobacco free.

There are loads of different facilities at OPEN including a Live Venue, Café, Gaming Area, Climbing Wall, Media Lab, Dance Studio, Recording Studio and a Nightclub. In the Live Venue we have local bands who get a chance to showcase their music and big-name artists…in 2009 we had Kano, Example, Miss Bratz, Basshunter and Booty Luv all performing live at OPEN!

OPEN is owned and run by The OPEN Youth Trust, a registered charity which aims to improve the lives of young people in Norfolk.

Describe OPEN in three words.

Vibrant, Exciting, Unique

How did you involve young people in setting up the OPEN centre?

The project was launched in 2003 at which time a team of 40 young people formed the OPEN Youth Forum. OPEN’s ethos’s has always been to work with young people at every stage of the project. After all, how can you create something for young people, without asking them first? This diverse Youth Forum was made up of a whole range of people from different backgrounds and experiences.

In 2007, we decided that the Youth Forum needed to change because young people were moving to university, getting jobs and generally growing up. So a new team was made up of both old Youth Forum members and new ones. The Youth Forum has made many decisions to shape OPEN today. From selecting who was going to design the venue, to choosing different colour schemes around the building, and many other decisions. They also went to different events like the Norfolk Show to help promote OPEN, and planned different events including the Extreme Conference and a number of fashion shows.

And how are young people involved in the day-to-day running of OPEN

Several of the young people that were involved in the Youth Forum now work for the venue in various capacities.

We also get young people’s feedback from comments on Facebook, by meeting them within the venue, feedback forms and by email. We have been able to action their ideas about new events, deciding who should perform at OPEN and planning what activities and workshops to hold.

How do you promote OPEN?

We use lots of different mediums to let people know about the project. For instance, we regularly go in to different schools around Norwich and Norfolk, into their assemblies. We promote what the venue is, the different activities and new events coming up. We use is the internet widely. Facebook has big attraction to young people, also Bebo, Myspace, Twitter and Youtube.

Young people promote OPEN by running their own workshops and events, DJ Oblivion has set up his own Drum & Bass and Dubstep night and ran several DJ workshops during our launch week.

Another young person who has his own art and clothing label called Shhhh!, also works with us by creating new artwork for the venue and taking photos at events.

How do you make sure as many young people as possible from all kinds of social backgrounds can come along to OPEN?

We try to vary our events and workshops to attract different sorts of people. Also many of the facilities at OPEN are free to use such as the Cafe, Gaming Area, Media Lab and soon the Health Centre.

The whole building can also be accessed by people who have different disabilities.

What’s your favourite thing about OPEN?

My favourite part of OPEN is the Nightclub. We hold lots of fun events in there for under 18’s, covering a wide range of music styles and tastes. SNAP plays more commercial and chart based genre, whilst Bassment is our new Drum & Bass and Dubstep night. One of our young people who works with us closely, runs this night which is really exciting. Many more nights are being planned at the moment, including AJ’s which is going to be exclusively for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities. From UV Neon Night, to our popular Popcorn Party and we have also had a Foam Party which has been our biggest crowd to date! Other nights in 2010 include Heroes and Villains and a Pirate Party!

For more information about OPEN, visit the OPEN website.  You can also become a fan on Facebook by searching ‘OPEN Youth Venue’.