I keep seeing blog posts with colourful word arrays. So, thought I'd join in. Here's Wordle's take on our delicious bookmarks.



Essentially, this is a visual representation of what we have posted about the most, or at least the tags/labels we have used. It reminds me of some of the ways that cluster analyses are presented. There are some examples of these in Edial Dekker's slideshare on data visualisation - the Great War soldier visual is particularly effective.

Wordle also has the option to paste in text. I've seen reference to this being used with documents, and it makes me think it could be an interesting research tool. At least for demonstrating what is really being said. Perhaps as an initial indicator for consultation analyses...? Lots of possibilities!

Labels: consultation, researchtools, text, web2.0

PublicTechnology.net report on the Samaritans' plan to roll out a text service to improve their reach to the most vulnerable young people.

A pilot of the scheme was carried out during which over 10,000 texts a month were received, "with 63% of contact from people aged 10-24-years-old". They believe once rolled out nationally there could be a "rise of up to 1,000 texts a day by 2010 - that's one text every two minutes, every hour of the day".

Increasingly public and voluntary sector organisations are looking towards new technologies to identify, engage and maintain contact with harder-to-reach groups. Inspire Research Ltd recently completed a project with the Renfrewshire Workforce Plus Partnership (a collaboration between public and voluntary sector organisations who are working around the workforce agenda) to review current communication methods. This study also looked at organisations' and client's perceptions of communicating via new technologies, and investigated possible future approaches. For more information, please contact us.

The Samaritans are looking for a strategic corporate partner to help deliver this project.

Labels: digitalnatives, engagement, hardtoreach, sms, text, web2.0