DavidWilcox

David Wilcox specialises in the development of innovative models for engagement and collaboration, and the communication systems to support them. He has over 30 years experience in the design and support of cross-sector partnerships, and community-based projects. These days David is blending that past experience with the use of new media to evolve the role of social reporter, which he writes about at socialreporter.com and socialreporters.net. He co-authored the Social by Social book for NESTA on the use social technology for social benefit. David has also written a number of guides to participation, partnerships and networks, and worked with Drew Mackie to develop games and simulations to design and support engagement. Recent projects include exploring the development of People Powered Change with Big Lottery Fund; the use of social technology for social inclusion with the European Media4ME project; a business planning game with Community Matters; rural networking with the Carnegie UK Trust; and two explorations for the Nominet Trust. One was into the engagement of young people in their communities using digital technology, the other into how we can use digital technology later in life. David spent the first 12 years of his working life as a journalist, mainly with the London Evening Standard, writing on housing, planning, transport and property. For some of that time he was the chair of the North Kensington Amenity Trust - now the Westway Development Trust - which has developed 20 acres of land beneath the west London elevated motorway. That provided inspiration for a move from writing about conflict in local communities, to exploring the scope for collaboration through new forms of partnerships. A year working on a book about London for Thames TV, and with the Silver Jubilee Celebrations Committee, provided time to plan the shift. David then worked on a Greater London Council contact to set up the Tower Hamlets Environment Trust, and Centre for Small Business. During the 1980s and 1990s David worked as a regeneration consultant, and helped set up some 20 local partnership organisations in England and Scotland, and established national support programmes for community-based regeneration, including working with the Groundwork Trust network. David headed the consultancy team designing the first Groundwork Trusts in the North West, and edited the first Groundwork operating manual. In the early 1990s David concentrated on distilling models of good practice for nonprofit organisations, and writing publications including the Guide to Effective Participation and the Guide to Development Trusts and Partnerships. http://www.partnerships.org.uk

He and Drew Mackie have developed games, simulations and other innovative workshop methods to facilitate partnership working, and to help people understand the potential of new technologies. David and colleagues have used these games in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Spain and Russia. Early work at http://www.usefulgames.co.uk David worked in Scotland during the 1980s and 90s, including creation of development trusts and re-launch of Rural Forum. David and Drew collaborated on the development The Regeneration Game, published by NIACE, to support community engagement in regeneration programmes, and also The Engagement Game. The latter enables stakeholders to plan together engagement processes likely to be most effective for their communities. In 1996 David was co-founder of UK Communities Online, a pioneering network for early initiatives to promote local online networks, centres and projects for community development. Funders and sponsors included the Department for Trade and Industry, BT, IBM and Marconi. Over the past fifteen years David has worked extensively in new media to provide online collaboration system for partnerships and networks. He and colleague Terry Grunwald designed and developed the community channel for Learning and Teaching Scotland, providing ICT advice to community groups. David has written a guide to the ways in which social landlords can use new technologies to improve their services. He is now practising and promoting the role of the social reporter - someone who combines the best of journalism with facilitation and the use of social media. At events this involves blending the use of video and other digital tools with facilitation processes, to create both a record of the event and enhance the experience of the event for participants. It also involves helping connect conversations across networks, and develop open research programmes. He writes about this at http://socialreporter.com and with others at http://socialreporters.net David is co-author of a handbook on social technology for social impact, produced for NESTA - the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. This can be purchased and also download free at http://socialbysocial.com. David has worked on how social reporting and social media can assist in radical efficiency measures in public services. This includes work with the IDeA on their Knowledge Transfer programme for local authorities, their Knowledge Hub, and the use of social media and social reporting in Tobacco Control Alliances. He worked with the consumer advocacy organisation, Consumer Focus, on how to ensure that consumer and user interests are at the heart of the design and development of digital public services. http://digips.wikispaces.com/

David also worked as social innovation reporter with the Big Society Network, during the early stages of its development. He was a founding member of the non-partisan Our Society network http://oursociety.org.uk which helped local people tell stories of community action within the context of Big Society from 2010-1012. David is co-author of London: The Heartless City (1977), co-author of Creating Development Trusts (1986), author of the Guide to Effective Participation (1994) and the Guide to Development Trusts and Partnerships (1998), co-author of Making the Net Work for residents and landlords (2002), and co-author of Social by Social: a guide to the use of social technology for social impact (2009). He lives in London with his wife Ann Holmes. David Wilcox david@socialreporter.com http://socialreporter.com http://socialreporters.net http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org +44 7970 621696 @davidwilcox