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Following a similar event last year and hot on the heels of Digital Mentors and Digital Challenge, I have received notification of a forthcoming national conference from colleagues at Sunderland City Council. If you have any comments, suggestions or would like further information please contact debbie.ross@sunderland.gov.uk.

Hi All,

A quick formal notification that the National IT in the Community Conference will be held in Sunderland for the second year this year.

This is a great interview of Dan McQuillan by David Wilcox at last week's UK Catalyst Awards which gives me real encouragement. It's a real pity that people in CLG will not be able to watch this (unless they do it from home).

Over the last five weeks of my part-time secondment I've been trying to join things up so that Government supported 'awards' and 'competitions' have pathways into funding for innovation and that one funding pot links across to another etc. I'd also like to see Government funding act in a catalytic way by helping the networks that build up around events (like 2gether08, Shine, UK Catalyst Awards) to maintain themselves on an ongoing basis so that ideas can feed off ideas, innovators can meet other innovators and investors, commissioners and so on.

Although, it has to said, that I have been pushing on open doors . . . there are still one or two barriers to be overcome. Watching Dan's interview is a great encouragement.

No time to read the whole white paper? Here are the keywords in the Empowerment White Paper: Communities in Control in a single graphic.

Produced using Wordle. The input text was from the core of the White Paper only. It excludes forewards and footnotes. The words 'will', 'can' and 'also' have been removed. Thanks to Steve Dale for drawing Wordle to my attention.

. . . . while the conversations go on around her. Well done CLG!

Visit CLG's pageflakes aggregator here: www.pageflekes.com/ewp

Hazel Blears' has started tweeting today and a blog is to follow shortly. You can follow her here: http://twitter.com/communitiesuk

The RSS feed is:
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15340496.rss

In order to help CLG track the conversations going on about the Empowerment White Paper and provide another demonstration of the power of the Web 2.0 tools we have at our disposal, I have set up a Pageflakes page to aggregate posts from blogs and Twitter with the terms 'Empowerment White Paper' or 'Communities in Control' in them.

My secret wish is that Hazel Blears will see these conversation and will want to get involved . . . . watch this space.
www.pageflakes.com/ewp

I was very grateful to have been invited to contribute to the inspiring 2gether08 event last Thursday. I attended with two hats on.

In my current role as secondee to CLG, I'd gone there to check out my hunch that this is the sort of event and network that local and national Government needs to engage with if we are to make progress with the Government's policy of community empowerment. My hunch was right and at the very, very last minute national Government did get involved with Tom Watson MP using the event to promote the 'mash-up' competion - Show Us a Better Way. Hopefully their involvement will be better planned and more strategic next year.

While I was there I also did a mini presentation and led a 'next steps' discussion with a group of people behind the Coca-Cola Campaign. More on this later.

At the event, during the coffee break, I got a surprise call from Jennifer Tracey (pictured!) who asked to meet to talk about what had happened since Radio 4's iPM Programme first featured the campaign in May. You can listen to an edit of the interview below or by going to the feature on the iPM website. Thanks are due again to the whole of the iPM Team who really helped to get this campaign off to a flying start.

Saw this and thought of you, as the old Post Office advert used to say...

http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=2060

I blogged a while ago on the excellent IDeA CoP platform about the potential of Second Life. Anyway, my council has given the go head to face the brave new world of...virtual worlds, hosting an event on SL on the 16th July.

We thought that it would be an interesting experiment for you to experience this event both virtually (if you can't make it down to Kent) or in real life. An even more interesting experiment would be to start a discussion "on the ground" on the potential of virtual worlds for public services and community empowerment.