Work
Fantasy CMS for government
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The good doctor’s brilliant piece on the tyranny of content management systems has spurred me on to write this post I’ve been contemplating for a while, about my own frustrations with WCMS software and what an ideal platform for government websites might be capable of right out of the box.
Having been close to the requirements [...]
The perfect page…
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A lot of my focus at work lately has been about how we publish to the web – who’s doing it, with what tools, and to what standard.
While the boss is focusing on what goes up when and how to make it more engaging, I’m mainly working on three things:
building the platform: merging two big [...]
How to read minds and influence people
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Knowing what your customers are thinking is the first step towards making them happy. But how do you know what’s in their heads (without being Derren Brown)?
I’m some way closer to being able to read my website users’ minds than I was this time last week – thanks to two unrelated events which turned out [...]
Gerry McGovern’s metaphor masterclass
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I’m a big fan of Gerry McGovern
I’ve read his New Thinking newsletter avidly for years and, in a couple of weeks’ time, I’m going to his masterclass on managing effective task-based websites. I can’t wait.
If you haven’t heard of him, Gerry’s a usability guru with a particular emphasis on writing and managing website content based [...]
What I (nearly) said at Government 2010
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As trailed, here come the notes of my contribution to the discussion about e-consultation at Government 2010 last Thursday.
The session’s title was “Digital engagement is everyone’s job: formal and informal consultation online” and also on the panel were Harry Metcalfe (Dextrous Web), David Price (Debategraph) and Kate Davies from YouGov (ably replacing Tom Watson at [...]
Government 2010: the gist
You could easily spend your whole time at e-comms events, hearing the same speakers say similar things to the same people. They’re two a penny, and it’s hard to know which will be the good ones.
But as others observed and the Twitter buzz testifies, today’s Government 2010 shindig was a best of breed conference about [...]
Survival of the flattest: how to futureproof your website’s IA
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Whitehall websites are built on shifting sands.
Reshuffles, changes to the machinery of government, and (until 2011) convergence projects mean that hundreds of pages of content could, at almost any time, suddenly have to be deleted from one government site and added (in suitably re-purposed form) to another.
With that in mind I’ve been thinking about different [...]
Speaking (and listening!) at Government 2010
I’ll be taking part in a discussion panel on online consultation at Government 2010 on 22 October – alongside Harry Metcalfe, Tom Watson and David Price.
The theme is:
Digital Engagement is Everyone’s Job: Formal and Informal Consultation on the Web.
I’ll be saying a bit about my experience and observations from the front line, setting up tools [...]
Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
