UKriders

The City Bridge Trust have recently published a paper in their The Knowledge - Learning from London series which is on the Lasa Circuit Rider project which was funded by them and the Big Lottery 2005-2007. See http://tinyurl.com/6fcx2d

David Wilcox has posted a number of videos from the conference over on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DB87B12F0F5BDC9F We have an embedded link to the spectrogram videos over on the Welcome page in the Conference Agenda http://www.ukriders.info/conference/welcome

There's a brief report on the Conference over on the ICT Hub site - Birmingham Rides Again!

UKriders now has its own Flickr site - check it out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ukriders We'll be using it for your photos of the 2008 Conference. You can see photos from last year's event there

Effective Technology Advising training

We are running a training event at BVSC in Birmingham on 1st March following the Conference on Effective Technology Advising for Circuit Riders and other VCS technology professionals - download the flier (PDF file, opens in new window). Bookings are open now.

Round-Up, the Circuit Rider News Digest

This publication, mainly for Circuit Riders but of interest to other ICT professionals working in the VCS, is being produced on a bi-monthly basis and covers project case studies, Circuit Rider profiles, tools and resources, blogs and more.

Issue 4 (December 2007/January 2008 accessible PDF file 1.5Mb - opens in new window) - FOSS training and certification, Spiceworks inventorying software, event registration tools, the NOSI open source primer and various blogs, websites and more.

Issue 3 (October/November 2007 accessible PDF file 1.39Mb - opens in new window) - remote control software, another Circuit Rider of the Month profile and a report from the Grace Hopper Celebration of women in Computing 2007.

Issue 2 (August/September 2007 accessible PDF file 1.68Mb - opens in a new window) - the NetSquared 2007 conference, social enterprise in action and students providing ICT support.

Issue 1 (June/July 2007 accessible PDF file 1.23Mb - opens in a new window) - klir.com, online meeting tools, two Circuit Rider profiles, the Community Information Strategies Australia Conference

Lasa has organised annual Circuit Rider conferences since 2004. We brought delegates together to learn from each other by sharing ideas, information and experience. The conferences were designed to be practical and accessible so participants could take the knowledge they gained and apply it to their work in the voluntary sector.

The events are different from other ICT conferences  we are interested in technology because we believe it can help voluntary organisations achieve their missions – not for its own sake. So these are events where people:

• spoke in plain English and avoid jargon.
• offered solutions which are relevant to small voluntary organisations.
• discussed issues and learnt from each other rather than passively listening to "ICT experts"
• celebrated the independence and diversity of the voluntary sector

Notes and evaluations are available for the following conferences:

• 2004 Conference - held at Kings College, London, 13-14 September 2004
• 2006/7 Conference - held at BVSC, Birmingham, 15-16 January 2007
• 2008 Conference - held at BVSC, Birmingham, 28-29 February 2008 (Conference notes, materials, blogs, photos etc were uploaded as the conference progressed and are linked to the Conference Agenda You can also download a pdf file which compiles all the session notes along with the programme, delegate list and comments. The evaluation by the ICT Hub's evaluators Paul Ticher and Andrea Eaves is also available for download. You can also see photos from the event over at the UKRiders Flickr site)