Comments on: Three cheers for the DFID bloggers (or DFID Officials: Unofficial)

By: blogging for dollars

blogging for dollars — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 03:46:49 +0000

Okay not to sound stupid or anything but, what on earth is DFID? I am not sure what that is. I would like to know though I am all for learning something new. I just happened upon this blog but, would love to learn more about what it is talking about. Thanks for any info you can give me on this.

By: Char

Char — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:45:38 +0000

thanks neil. good to see some gcn blogosphere solidarity (!!!)

By: Julia wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t mention it, so… « Whitehall Webby - digital media in government

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:01:41 +0000

[...] Neil has an excellent write up of the project, and also a round up of other coverage. So rather than repeat what he said, I shall point you there, here. [...]

By: Neil Williams

Neil Williams — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:27:46 +0000

You say program, I say programme… but I think it would be rash at this stage to call anything off.

Thanks for dropping by, Griff. Camtasia is good, we’ve had some experience of that. Basecamp I haven’t used, but aware of its powers and keen to use it when I get the chance.

By: Griff Wigley

Griff Wigley — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:01:26 +0000

Good to have you highlight the DFID blog in such knowledgeable detail, Neil. It's been quite satisfying to be part of the team working on this. (I'm the blogging coach.) I wish we had more of this happening here in the USA with our gov't! It's too early in the project, of course, to know how this will all turn out. But it's a promising start -- the bloggers are new at it, but they're all quite good writers already so they've been easy to coach. One aspect to it that's not visible (which I really should have included in my blog post) is that all the coaching and project management communications is happening via two projects in Basecamp set up by Shane. He and I have both used Basecamp for many projects over the years and find it invaluable... esp for a project like this where everyone is spread out over many time zones. Simon Dickson from Puffbox has deployed some real wizardry with the WordPress design/implementation on this project. See his explanatory blog post. Other tools not visible: I'm using Camtasia Studio to create a series of blogging how-to screencasts, which we host at Screencast.com. We hope the project continues to expand to include other DFID staff and that these screencasts, used over and over, will provide the foundation of a cost-effective training ~~program~~ programme. (Got to get better at UK spelling!)