Big Society Community Noticeboards – Part 4

Just a quick post to update anyone interested on where the Big Society in the North has got with the Big Society Community Noticeboard.

Thanks to Paul Webster, we’ve taken another big step towards the Big Society Community Noticeboard, which is intended to collect information from offline groups, collate it via the web, and output it to places where offline people can see it.

We have some way to go before we can make a reality of this, but we’ve made a start, and it works like this.

You can call iPadio from any phone on 0203 384 2144 & enter the PIN code 4455. You can then record a message which will be uploaded onto the web, and, after moderation by me, appear here http://www.ipadio.com/phlogs/bsitnorth

Paul has done a bit of RSS trickery which means that the iPadio recordings are pulled through to appear on a Big Society in the North Noticeboard here http://bsitnorth.tumblr.com/

iPadio uses Spinvox automatically to transcribe the first minute of all recordings, and this provides the text that appears on the Noticeboard. The transcription is not that good unless you speak very clearly.

As I say, this is a very early prototype, and the really big challenge is going to be to output the information onto local community noticeboards. That is going to need displays in communities, and a way of localising information to appear on particular screens.

It would be useful, however, if we could start to put the word out and try to get some offline groups using it.. We will need to re-think if it really takes off, because I am currently having to moderate each individual recording.

Since writing this original post, I have been fortunate enough to visit the village of Wray and get a real-life demonstration of the Community Noticeboard in the village post office, delivered to me by no less than @cyberdoyle herself. It’s in the video below. I think this is definitely an idea worth replicating.