I’m attending a conference in London today entitled “Communications for a Big Society” organised by the MediaTrust with speakers from the BBC, Guardian and Google. Do let me know if you have any questions on this topic and I will try and raise them.

I’m interested to hear the panel discussion, “A Big Digital Society: how can digital media give power to the people”.  In short, the answer is obviously yes.

Watch this space!

*Here is a brief update from the conference. I attended this event as chair of trustees for Headway Cambridgeshire after we were offered a ticket. I didn’t realise the Media Trust worked so closely with charities, and even distributes their press releases to the national media, as well as offering training courses.

The general feeling was that we have to work with the Big Society, though there was uncertainty about how those who are unemployed or face job cuts could be persuaded to buy into it. It’s all about working closely within your local community, having a say in its decision making, getting actively involved with projects in your neighbourhood; it’s a new state of mind which also makes government and local authorities being much more accountable.

The Editor of Third Sector, Stephen Cook, highlighted the public’s confusion about what the Big Society means to the public following a survey conducted for his magazine, with one commenter warning: “The Big Society will be this government’s Iraq.”

Mark Easton, BBC home editor, described it more positively: “I see it as an oxygen supply for the new way we should be governed.” And he said that David Cameron was “absolutely determined to transform democracy in Britain.” On the whole, the audience was quite positive about it.

Paul Twivy, of the Big Society Network, described some creative ways which digital technology could be used to embrace the Big Society include “buying in” to your local online community called Square Mile (perhaps set at £5 per person) and installing touch screen booths in public places for people to use and interact on Big Society issues. His ideas could totally transform the way our communities work together – on and offline.

Sarah Hunter, Head of Google’s Public Policy, said the huge amount of information on the internet meant that tools were now needed to organise it and improve the information flow, and this is now being developed to meet that need. We need to organise all those emails we get and other online info, and it can already be done, because Cambridge social media strategist Ian McKendrick was telling me about this yesterday and showing me how he does it. It looked really brilliant. Ian is always one step ahead of the game.

I’m scribbling a page of notes as well to discuss with our CEO at Headway tomorrow about what I learnt today and how to apply it for the charity. Not very digital media, I know, but where would I be without a scrap of paper….