Under construction: behind the scenes of a government website (soft) launch
Website launches aren’t what they used to be. Back in the day, the birth or re-birth of a website would be heralded with a big ‘welcome’ story on the homepage, a press release, a section gushing about its new and improved features (probably none of which anyone had said they wanted) and – if you [...]
Found/interesting: 9 Nov to 24 Dec
I haven’t done one of these bookmark posts in a while, and I’m some way off posting anything new here. So here’s a look at what I found interesting enough to bookmark recently. The state of the UK gov blogosphere – Great post by Dave Briggs. Why websites matter less and less – “Summary: Our [...]
Found/interesting: 17 May to 2 June
Look what I found interesting. Crisis Communications for the Social Media Age – Also works as a guide to rebuttal 2.0 Swine Flu 2.0 : A Case For How Managing Social Media is a Matter of National Security – …and here’s a real-life case study from Ross Ferguson et al’s trans-Atlantic cousins Twitter’s hype is [...]
Your mission, should you choose to accept it…
…is highly ambitious, if not impossible, Mr or Ms imminent Director of Digital Engagement. Your job description – indeed this new job – is unquestionably the most exciting thing I’ve read and digitally engaged with since the last unbelievably exciting thing, in that it says: Within six months the Head of Digital Engagement will have [...]
No jobs for senior Whitehall webbies?
So Jeremy Gould is leaving. I’m personally gutted: Jeremy’s been something of an unofficial mentor for me lately and his faith in me has been one of the contributing factors to my starting blogging and stepping up a gear, not to mention a civil service grade, in the government web sphere. And he’s been a [...]
Avoid social media mistakes: forget the technology and focus on the task
Part of my job involves trying to get people enthusiastic about using social media. Another part involves trying to stop enthusiastic people using social media badly. It seems to be happening a lot lately. Some colleagues get excited about the idea of using a particular technology (let’s say: a wiki, a blog, or a social [...]
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. 
