Tag Archives: Shane McCracken

Empowering Voices Online (EVO): community leadership blogging

Evo-logo I’m working with my Gallomanor colleagues, Shane McCracken and Mary Reid, to deliver a series of one-day community leadership blogging workshops in the UK called Empowering Voices Online (EVO) .

Shane and Mary will be delivering the face-to-face sessions while I concentrate on the coaching and feedback via various tools, including the Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) on Blogging for Leaders.

First up on the 6th of February: participants from the city of Dewsbury in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England. They’ll be meeting at the Ravensthorpe Community Centre.

Another round of leadership blogging with my Brit colleagues

ukaid-largeFor over a year now, I’ve teamed up with a UK-based colleague of mine, Shane McCracken (his company is Gallomanor) to work with a federal agency of the British government called the Department for International Development (DFID), now also known as UKaid. It’s “the part of the UK Government that manages Britain’s aid to poor countries and works to get rid of extreme poverty.”

dfid-bloggers-banner
We’ve been coaching a growing group of DFID staff in several countries on how to use blogs to highlight the local work their office is doing. See the DFID group blog for more. We’re about to launch a new crop of DFID bloggers this fall.

Simon Davis and Shane McCrackenAlthough we work with several DFID staff at their headquarters in London, our primary colleague there is Simon Davis.

Simon and Shane had a meeting last Monday in the plaza outside the DFID office and I convinced them to take a photo and send it to me. Splendid!

The U.K.’s DFID blogging project expands

Last October, I blogged about the beginning of my blog coaching with the UK’s DFID Bloggers project, “staff blogs from the UK Department for International Development (DFID).” I’m part of Shane McCracken’s team at Gallomanor which has the contract, part of their CivicSurf project.

DFID was pleased with the results and expanded the project in January to include up to a dozen more bloggers in several more countries over the next few months.

Among the new bloggers in Africa who I’m coaching:

Martin Leach
Martin Leach, Head of DFID Rwanda and Burundi

Colum Wilson
Colum Wilson, Humanitarian Adviser in West Africa for the Africa Conflict and Humanitarian Unit

Ian Attfield
Ian Attfield, Education Adviser in Nigeria

More U.K. government bloggers: DFID launches a group blog

dfid-sshotThe Department for International Development (DFID) is “the part of the UK Government that manages Britain’s aid to poor countries and works to get rid of extreme poverty.”

They’ve contracted with a UK-based colleague of mine, Shane McCracken at Gallomanor, to work with a small group of new DFID staff bloggers who are living and working in five different countries. See Shane’s blog post about the project and the new DFID group blog.

I’m working with Shane to provide the blog coaching, including several how-to screencasts.

Simon Dickson from Puffbox built the DIFD blog site using WordPress. He’s incorporated several unusual — and impressive — features to it. See his explanatory blog post.