We’ll try to collect everything that emerged from the conference on Saturday — thanks again to everyone that came, or contributed from afar.

Here are all the Tweets that were collected around the #diunconf hasttag.

And here is the process of working out the sessions and timetable, speeded up and set to the Benny Hill theme.

We’ve happy to announce the details of the Digital Inclusion Unconference. It’ll be held at the BVSC in Birmingham city centre on Saturday 23rd January 2010, (9am – 5pm).

The event is free, thanks to our sponsors — head over to Eventbrite to sign up.

Join We Share Stuff and other people working with those that don’t or can’t take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet for a free unconference. A day of discussion and talks with those developing new practices in Digital Inclusion that will leave you with new ideas to try — and a bulging contact book of like-minded professionals and volunteers.

The Digital Inclusion landscape is changing fast, policy and practise are altering as never before. As we are often working in isolation, despite digital connectivity, it will be valuable to join other practitioners and share more of your ideas and experiences.

It’s a chance to talk not so much about policy — and money which distracts from the work itself at many turns — but about the methods and techniques of how to best help people gain opportunities and abilities — in social, community and employment.

The unconference is a chance to work on the issues from the point of view of the practitioners. In an unconference the venue is the only thing fixed, attendees can create as many sessions as they wish on any topics of their choosing — it’s ideal for an event where sharing of practise and open discussion is the aim.

Taking place in central Birmingham, we expect civic-minded social tech experts, those involved on the ground in communities and Digital Inclusion workers to come together and push the debate forward.

Sponsored by

We’re really pleased to announce what we think is the first officially accredited course in understanding and using social media for those with no previous experience. We Share Stuff has developed the course and it’s now part of the OCN framework (WSS are an OCN Centre), as three units of 10 learning hours each.

As it’s platform agnostic (it doesn’t prescribe certain sites or tools) and also driven by the learners as to use, it’s applicable to anyone that wants to get to grips with the social web and gain the confidence to get involved.

We envisage it being useful to businesses, young people — almost anyone — with the bonus of a real qualification at the end of it. We’re now looking for opportunities to deliver it… the fun starts here.

Check out the full details and the course itself here.

Stuart was invited to talk at the West Midlands Regional Observatory’s ‘Sharing Information Digitally’ event.

You can listen to it onine here: Stuart Parker on Digital Inclusion

We have a 30 minute slot at this West Midlands Regional Observatory event, Tuesday 7th October. As their site says, “…exploring the whys and hows of making public data more accessible. We’ll also look at using social media to improve sharing data and information.”

I’ll be using the time to explore what digital inclusion actually means and to raise some stuff about how we might look at ensuring everyone benefits from the techno rush, not just those who are interested.

Courtesy of the wonderful (and sometimes rude) webcomic XKCD.

It’s funny and it’s target audience is web-savvy people who get asked for help on “computers” all the time, and who – mostly – will help people (with a World-weary air), but this flowchart is probably one of the best definitions I’ve seen of what I take “digital inclusion” to mean.

If you’re someone  that does the flowchart naturally then you’re able to perform the two things that I consider the activities of the digitally included:

• you’re able to experiment with technology to see if you can make it do what you want, without being scared
• you know where to look for help and when to give up and ask

And that’s it, I’ve never considered the phrase to mean anything more detailed that that – what do you think?

As an aside, think just how much help most digitally included flowchart followers are happy to give out, try pitching up at a Grand Prix and trying to get someone to teach you how to drive.

Having been inspired by the efforts of all sorts of people and organisations at the National Digital Inclusion Conference this year, we were immediately (on the train back to Birmingham in fact) thinking of how we could meet up with those people again and share more of our ideas and experiences.

More than that, a chance to talk not so much about policy — and money which distracts from the work itself at many turns — but about the methods and techniques of how to best help people.

We’re also aware that these conferences can be very costly to attend, we wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to the NDIC without the support of UK Online Centres — and the cost factor is a big issue for many smaller third-sector organisations. This conference is again very expensive.

So, who would be interested in an unconference-syle event for Digital Inclusion practitioners?

Proposed for late October, somewhere in Birmingham (central for the country, but also where we can organise it most easily), one day – with social event afterwards, barcamp style, as free to attend as we can possibly manage (attempting to attract sponsorship or free venue etc).

Leave a comment here if you’ve any ideas, or just to say that you’d be interested.