Ed Russell’s Blog

Free the (mapping) data…

Published on: 26/11/2009 16:57:00 by Ed Russell

On the 17th November 2009 great strides were made towards the delivery of map based solutions to the general public.

In the UK we are in a bit of a weird situation that to access geo-spatial datasets for use on the internet (for example in our webSNAPS product) for things like postcode or ward boundaries has attracted a charge from the data owner. 

You may think that this sounds fine and dandy.  Why wouldn’t you pay for this kind of data?  Or rather you would think that right up to the point where you realise where some of this data has come from. 

An example of this are ward boundaries which are collected by local councils, who are funded by us, the taxpayer.  We’ve found this particularly odd when dealing with the local councils who then have to fork out money to display this information back onto their website, money which comes again from the taxpayer.   So they are in effect paying twice to be able to give the data back to the people who paid for it in the first place!

But this is now set to change: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/media/news/2009/nov2009/mappingfuture.html

Hopefully this may also pave the way for Royal Mail to consider releasing postcodes for free, at least to public service or not-for-profit type ventures, and stop threatening people who are providing this kind of service like the people over at http://ernestmarples.com.   There is a petition currently doing the rounds for this at: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nfppostcodes/ – sign it if you can…

Here’s hoping!

Co-operative Principle 6

Published on: 10/07/2009 13:54:00 by Ed Russell

Co-operatives have principles that say how they should work and one of those is Principle 6 or in English the principle is “Co-operation among Co-operatives” (to see a list of all of the principles see here). I’ve always been pretty bad with this one for a few reasons but at the recent UK Co-operative Conference 2009 I vowed to change my ways.

So when I need to source something from outside my business I’m going to look to other businesses that share my values and principles first. Sounds simple doesn’t it? A good idea for both the co-operative movement as a whole and for keeping within our ethics with all that we do… So why don’t we do it more?

I guess the reason I’ve been put off it in the past is because of two things:

• Firstly there was a bad experience of “co-operative working”: in a previous co-operative I’ve been viewed as a competitor when trying to sell services to another co-operative; the “we couldn’t possibly buy off you” type response which in turn didn’t make me want to explore working with other co-operatives and you get into a whole vicious circle.


• Secondly was more of an internal hurdle to get over. I like working with people geographically quite close to me. This is a bit silly really considering the business that I’m in, but for some reason I liked the idea that if something was going wrong with a piece of work I could turn up at the suppliers’ premises and somehow that would make things better. (I realise that actually this would probably make things worse.)

To be honest I should have got over the second reason pretty quickly. I’ve been banging on a lot about how people should use the best people to deliver a piece of work rather than picking people on some arbitrary thing like physical location, especially when there shouldn’t be such a need to meet in person with all of the communication technology that is now available. I even started thinking about setting up an organisation to put something together to help move this along (I have the domain, and the idea, just not the time….yet). But, in this case, it was more of a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of thing.

After talking to a lot of co-operatives at the conference it became clear that I’m not unique in this view.

As a movement we should be supporting each other wherever we can. Here is a map of most of the worker co-operatives in the UK that are members of Co-operatives UK which shows there are a lot of businesses out there to help with anything you might need so it’s not a lack of options (the map was put together for John Atherton to put on his blog here using our webSNAPS tool).

So, I’ve made a start. We’ve done some work recently which we’ve used Wave to do the design. It’s worked out really quite well, which is encouraging. I’m going to keep trying wherever possible to continue to use co-operatives, hopefully others will too and that can only lead to a stronger overall movement.

The next step is to make it easier for this collaboration to happen & for me that’s where someone like Co-ops UK should be directing some of their effort - something that I hope to be able to use my new Worker Co-operative Council position to effect. If not, I still have that idea under my hat. It’s just finding the time to do it!

I’m in. I’m officially a member of the Employee Co-operative Council!

Published on: 10/06/2009 14:39:00 by Ed Russell

Just writing a quick post to say that I’ve been elected to the Employee Co-operative Council.  I’d not expected to get in on my first time of trying but thanks to all of those lovely people for voting me in, hopefully I can live up to the reasons that you have selected me for the post. 

Hopefully I can bring my ideas about technology whilst learning more and contributing to the general co-operative debate.

Anyway, that was all I wanted to say for this post.  I’ve been a bit quiet of late as work has just been very hectic but I hope to get into a rhythm of blogging more regularly soon.

One last thing – if you want to see what our company is up to: head over to twitter and follow @cooperativeweb where we will be twittering all the things we are up to.  And if you fancy reading more blogs from Co-operative Web then head over to http://web.coop/geek where there are a few up now including a new one from one of our junior developers, Nick, who is attempting to write a computer game using Microsoft’s XNA development tools. 

Employee Co-operatives Council

Published on: 11/05/2009 16:49:00 by Ed Russell

So, even though I’m relatively new to a lot of the Co-operative movement having only been running Co-op Web for the last 3 years with a small stint in Midcounties / OSG for a couple of years before that, I’ve decided to put myself forward for election to the Employee Co-operative Council (ECC).   ECC is a group that meets to discuss issues & policy affecting worker co-operatives / employee owned businesses as part of Co-operatives UK which is the apex organisation for Co-operatives in the UK. 

I very interested in bringing some new ideas to the council and at the same time I realise that I still have things to learn about the wider Co-operative movement.  One of the things that seems simple and obvious to me is that there is a wealth of technology out there that could be used to better connect Co-operatives with their members.  Twitter is a great example for getting ideas on opinion, and creating dialogue between people in a fairly instant way.  Blogs, wiki’s, facebook, linkedin…  The list goes on & from what I’ve seen there is less take-up of these kinds of things within the Co-operative movement than I think there should be. 

It’s not just connecting with members either.  When we started Co-operative Web it was with the ideals of there being a better & fairer way to run an IT business.  Part of doing that was so that I could shout about Co-operatives and the principles to hopefully educate more people about what a co-operative actually is (see my post on how a lot people view us as a Co-operative as an example) and why it is better.  Again, technology is a great way of doing this and reaching out to a wide audience.  I realise technology isn’t always the answer, but something that can be operated in tandem with other initiatives to get more of the message out there.

I’m not sure I expect to get in on my first attempt as there are a number of names on there which I (and a lot of the general Co-operative movement) will recognise & vote for.  Rightly so as some of them have done some really good work for the movement in general as well as their own co-operative endeavours.   But it’s a step for me personally in the right direction as I try and get more involved with a movement that I feel passionately about.

If you are a Co-operatives UK member, and would like to vote for me then I thank you for your support.  If you have any questions that would help you make up your mind then feel free to email me (ed.russell at web.coop) or find me on twitter (@edrussell).

Twitter jobs

Published on: 29/04/2009 16:32:00 by Ed Russell

Twitter. There seems to be loads of talk about how to use it in business and all that jazz, but it wasn’t until recently that I found it a truly useful tool outside of chatting rubbish at/with people, and gathering some useful web links about green issues or something similar.

It all started with us needing a new developer to help out with our webSNAPS product. Usually this would involve us going to an agency or posting an advert on job site. Most agencies are money grabbing evil companies, we’ve spent ages using a number of them before we found our current favourite called “Big Red” who are generally nice people and actually do some work for the money. They still cost money though, as do most job sites, which in the current climate spending money is something that everyone is worried about.

So I tried a different approach. I created an advert on our site, and then twittered the link to people who follow me on the site. This was then sent on (retweeted) by a number of these people so spread to a wider range of people. We didn’t get a huge response which is understandable as it is still a smallish pool of people and we were needing a very specific skill set. But the people who did come back were all within circles of friends who we trusted so the quality was much higher than I’ve been used to when recruiting. We met with a few of these and hired Dan Squire – someone who we had previously worked in the pandaNET days.

All in all a fairly painless process which cost nowt and got us a developer we know we can trust. My first “real” commercial use of Twitter.