Monthly Archives: October 2014

0 Real Time Computing

One of my stories is about my Masters degree in Computer Science.  It dates from 1975, which I think was about a year before they  announced the discovery of silicon chips.

I studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK.  There was one computer in a tower basement.  It had remote teletype terminals.  Mostly we programmed using punch cards and our output was via a line printer.  There were a few on-screen terminals, all hard-wired to the computer.  There was one computer game I remember which was a dungeon exploration game.  I don’t remember anyone ever finished it!

The operating system had, we they said, a million errors.  Every month they received a disc with corrections to the operating systems errors.  The disc itself contained a thousand errors.

There were limits to computing.  If the Newcastle University computer were the size of an orange, they would have to keep it in liquid nitrogen because it would overheat.  I suspect a decent mobile phone today is more powerful than that old computer.

The main difference between then and now is certainly communications.  We had lectures looking ahead to IT and communications convergence and even some stuff about network theory, which nobody understood.  Although we didn’t rate it as particularly important.

We had loads of languages to choose from and learning languages was very much the core of using computers.  These days you need know nothing about languages.  My favourite was called Simula, based on queuing theory and Algol 60.  I enjoyed it because thinking in Simula opened up new insights.  You could visualise things you could not see without it.

Still Relevant

Which brings me to the main similarity between then and now, Real Time Computing.  Sometimes we called it Systems Analysis.  This was about the interface between machines and people.  Our course focused a lot on languages and how to program computers.  But their power is in their interaction with human systems.  I’m sure the manufacturers of hardware and software understand this.  I suspect many people don’t.

Computers are entirely dependent on humanity.  They have no purpose without us.  To allow hardware or software to determine our behaviour is to allow others to decide our lives.  We would resist it in other walks of life and so we should when using ICT.  There are loads of options available and it is our responsibility to choose how we use them.

1 How to Insert Media

We’re almost through my account of the basics of blogging and this week covers inserting media in WordPress. Most content management systems will have similar functionality, if not consider using one that does.

One reason I’m covering basics is there are additional options available depending upon your theme and plug-ins. Today I’ll keep it simple and consider how to insert an image.  There are hundreds of plug-ins that help you present images in various ways such as galleries and sliders.

How to Upload and Manage Media

So, open the post editor and below where it says “Enter title here” you will see a button that reads Add Media. Press it and the media library pops up.

If your blog is established you will see all the media you have previously uploaded to your website. You may see a mixture of images, videos, audios and pdfs. These are a part of your site and can be used as many times as you like on as many posts or pages as you like.

If you have a new image on your computer and you want to upload it to your site, click on the Upload Files tab. Then you can either drag and drop new files into the library or select files by pressing the button in the centre of the screen.

Reviewing and Editing

Return to the Media Library and then click on a thumbnail to select it. It highlights in blue, a tick appears in the top right of the thumbnail and a new section headed Attachment Details appears on the right. You can adjust the attachment details whilst the thumbnail is highlighted in blue.

If you hold down the shift key and click on another thumbnail, you will see the tick remains in the top right of the previous thumbnail whilst the new one is highlighted and you can work on its attachment details. This way you can add multiple images to a post.

Below the heading Attachment Details, you will see the image and then to the right some information about it, ie the file name, today’s date, the file size and the image dimensions. There are two links to edit the image and delete it.

If you press Edit Image, you enter a new screen where you can crop the image and rotate or flip it. On the right you can scale the image to the size you want or control the cropping to retain the ratio of length and breadth of the image.

Adding Meta-Data

Click cancel to return to the previous screen and look at the next 5 boxes.  These include meta-data, information about your media.  This helps your readers and also assists search engine optimisation (SEO).

1. The first, marked URL contains the image’s unique url. This means if a visitor clicks on the image they will be taken to a full size version. This might help them see its detail. The url is also helpful if you want to insert the image elsewhere on the site, eg in a sidebar.
2. The Title is the words that appear when you hover over an image. You can add extra information in the title, for example I often use the title for information about who owns the image.
3. Caption is text that appears below the inserted image. This is the information it is essential for all readers see.
4. Alt text has various purposes. If for some reason the image fails to download, the alt text will appear in its place, it is the words that users reading the site with a screen reader will hear and some search engines use it. This is the one box you must complete because it helps screen readers interpret the site. You need just a few words to describe the image. If the image includes text, it should be included in the alt text.
5. Description is sometimes called a long description because the alt text is the short description. Sometimes you need more than a few words to describe an image, for example a diagram with a lot of text.

Inserting Media in Your Post

Below this you will see Attachment Display Settings. Alignment determines whether the image is on the left, right or centred on the page. Link to determines where the visitor goes if they click on the image, ie the full size image (which is the default), the page it’s on or you can insert another url. If you set it to none, then you can’t click on it. Finally there are four size options. You can try these out and decide which size you prefer.

Click insert into post to add the image to your post. If you hover over the image in the post editor you can either delete the image or edit it, eg to change the display size.

Copyright

One word of warning.  For some reason copyright is a major issue with images.  My general rules are (1) I never use an image unless I am 100% certain I have permission to use it, and (2) where someone else owns the image, I acknowledge it, usual through the title.  See my post about copyright for more details.

1 Five Reasons Why So Many Sites Lack Purpose

Perhaps I’ve covered this several times but it is worth returning to the question, why do so many organisations struggle with the purpose of their website?  Why do their sites lack purpose?

The purpose of the organisation and the purpose of their website are different but closely related. I would expect the website to support the organisation’s wider purpose in some way.

Your website should be designed to meet some purpose of your organisation. If it doesn’t what is it for? The chances are you are being short-changed in some way. This can happen where you ask someone to design your site who provides technical assistance but has no interest in its purpose. Disaster looms when web design pools your ignorance with the designer’s.

So, here are some key things that can go wrong:

1.  You do not Know Your Organisation’s Purpose

When the client does not know their organisation’s purpose, it is a problem for the conscientious website designer or consultant. Where the purpose is not clear there are two possibilities; the organisation may be  unaware of its need for a purpose or else they don’t know how to express it (we’ll know when we see it).

The consultant has to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, where on the one hand they let the client down by designing a site that becomes a burden to them because it cannot possibly meet their unarticulated needs or else they risk alienating their client by intervening in a sensitive area.

2.  The Organisation Resists Finding its Purpose

If you think organisations are grateful for an offer to help them articulate their purpose, think again! It’s not easy for a designer to get access to information they need when their client does not think it’s any of their business. This may be a problem where the client has a clear purpose but doesn’t see why their designer should be interested in it.

There seems to be two intertwined problems here. First, many people find the process of determining their purpose, with any degree of thoroughness, tedious in the extreme. This is where marketing might come into play. Finding fun approaches to building a picture of an organisation’s purpose should be a possibility.

The other problem is that the client finds it threatening. This is harder to approach and the perception can come from many places. You can negotiate a needs assessment with one person and then find opposition comes from another once the work starts and they work out what it is about. I recently wrote a post about needs assessments and audits that explores why this sort of opposition arises.

3.  The Organisation may be Unclear About their Website’s Purpose

This can take many forms and may manifest as no clear idea other than wanting a website to the sort of site that includes everything including the kitchen sink.

If the organisation is clear about its own purpose, then this is a good place to start. Working through the organisation’s purpose, using a needs assessment, may help them identify the options. Options can then be prioritised and scheduled.

If you can get that far it is a major achievement. Your client will have a viable plan for their online presence. The next two headings are examples of what can go wrong.

4.  The Dash to an Inadequate Purpose or Design

People often come to the table with a clear idea about what they want. They’ve usually seen a someone else’s site and want something similar.

If so, they are not asking for a design. They are seeking technical assistance. That may be OK so long as the designer doesn’t get the blame when things go wrong.

If you take on this technical work, the problem  is mission creep. The real purpose of the site begins to emerge at the snagging stage when the client discovers they did have a purpose and their solution doesn’t meet it.

Taking time at the start to explore with the designer or consultant what their solution will actually do and other possibilities will result in a better site. Getting the client to see the value can be a struggle.

5.  Not Knowing What is Possible

This may be the most common problem and it can be the easiest to tackle. Technology has moved on so quickly that many people have been left behind. They simply don’t know what is possible because they have old models of web design, lack knowledge and perhaps are fearful.

For example, someone’s first video will not be as good as a video produced by a professional firm. The question for the client is, does it need to be? Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.  Whilst it might be possible for the client to produce their own videos there may be many reasons why it is not desirable. The important thing is to help the client make an informed decision.

Once the client has clarity about the purpose of their website it is much easier to make decisions about particular approaches to building and maintaining the site.

1 Evaluating the Marketing Worldview: Democratising the Economy

Last Tuesday I argued the emphasis on using marketing to raise money undersells marketing. Today I’ll show how marketing can be used for society’s transformation through democratising the economy.

I’ve shown how the biggest change we have witnessed is approaches to marketing that were once inaccessible to all but a few for reasons of expense, are now available to all. These tools have a wider application than it may first appear.

Selling Bread and Courses

You may think online marketing is for information products only. So, you may be an educational charity, video your courses and make them available online. However, if I am a local baker I can’t put my bread online although I can still use the Internet to promote my business. If I can get my customers’ email addresses I could have a simple site with a blog and use it to tell my customers about my bread, share recipes, or ask for feedback about the types of bread they would like to see. I could do a product launch about a new recipe loaf. It would be small-scale for people who can get to my shop but it might work.

A baker could use content marketing and their story. How did they become a baker? They almost certainly have a story to tell. Working out their story and how to tell it may take a while but it is worth it and can be very effective.

These are approaches small businesses might have dreamed of just a few years ago. Today the main constraint is they don’t know what is possible. Once you know what you can do it is a smaller step to find out how to do it.

Collaboration

These changes open up potential for small businesses to work together, build their local economy and link between local economies to build wider networks where cash flows between people and not into offshore accounts.

As new tools have become more accessible, the powerful have turned to new tools to entrench their power. They use the internet to bolster their power and that is at our expense.

Taxes

Small businesses should be happy to pay taxes. It is their contribution to a society that helps them to do business. When powerful corporations opt out by going off-shore they show their true nature. They have no need to market what they are doing because they are not dependent on customers as they derive their income from investments and debt.

Regulation

We are told regulation disadvantages businesses. Actually it levels the playing field by ensuring businesses stay small, it increases the interactions between businesses and this is what builds local economies. Legislation must support the marketplace and not dismantle it. We have the tools to make it work, we need a state that allows it to happen.

We need to ask of the people who claim to support small businesses if they support corporations. Massive financial institutions and companies that receive government contracts are proving to be a brake on the economy. It is not true that private business is good at everything. We need a state that supports genuine small businesses and closes down the back-door deals with big corporations.

Concentration of wealth in the hands of the state is at least subject to democratic control. Support for the so-called private sector is actually support for the establishment, politicians and directors of industry. The same people rotate between state and the giant corporations and do not support the local economy.

The question is how can small business, with charities and other organisations active in the local economy, network to form a coherent opposition to the corporations and their political apologists?  I believe that in the last few years we have found the tools we need to take that opposition to a new level, involving people who have perhaps never seen their work as political.  How can we make a start?

1 Is it Possible to Rebuild the Local Economy?

In the last few Monday posts, I’ve defined the local economy. Before I move on I want to ask whether it is possible to rebuild the local economy.

On Saturday 4 October 2014, the Guardian newspaper ran an item on its front page, “Outcry as Osborne rails against ‘anti-business’ charities”. The chancellor of the exchequer addressed the annual convention of the Institute of Directors and said,

“You have to get out there and put the business argument, because there are plenty of pressure groups, plenty of trade unions and plenty of charities and the like, that will put the counter view. It is, I know, a difficult decision sometimes to put your head above the parapet, but that is the only way we are going to win this argument for an enterprising, business, low-tax economy that delivers prosperity for the people and the generations to come.

There is a big argument in our country … about our future, about whether we are a country that is for business, for enterprise, for the free market.”

I doubt the Chancellor would recognise a free local market even presented to him on a golden platter with watercress tastefully arranged around it.  So, let’s deal with some of the myths in his statement.

Deregulation

The Institute of Directors are hardly equipped to make the case for small businesses and the local economy. They are not primarily pro-business in the sense of free trade and a level playing field for small businesses. The corporations skew the economy to the interests of the 1% who accumulate wealth and so take it out of the economy. They are not behind the parapet; they are the owners of the big guns that over the last few decades have blown the parapet away.

The Chancellor mixes all manner of things together. Of course we need enterprise and business and we need a government that allows businesses to develop on a local scale. The great corporations are not businesses as we know them locally and his eliding of economic imperialism with entrepreneurship is not honest.

The low-tax economy again betrays the prejudice against the entrepreneur who builds wealth for the economy and not personal gain. Why should we not pay taxes? Why shouldn’t the success of my business benefit others?  There was a time when business owners genuinely saw their role as benefiting wider society.  Granted they exploited their workforce but they also aspired to be public benefactors.  I think they used the wrong means to the right ends.  They exploited their workers because they believed they could benefit society from their own efforts.  It was the mutuals that actually built the institutions that created modern Britain.

Whilst we need to be for business and enterprise, the idea of the free market is the get out clause for the corporate world. Their watch word is deregulation because their free market allows them to extract wealth from the economy.  All the major political parties in the UK support deregulation, as an unquestioned good.  It shows the rhetoric of national sovereignty, beloved of the new right, is a sham.  Why care about sovereignty when you’ve sold the power to regulate to the corporations?

Mutuals

A regulated economy, creates the spaces where small business can thrive. Mutuals for example need regulation, so that the work of their members builds wealth for the members together.

Which brings me to the point: can we rebuild our local economies? In the middle to late 19^th century, the co-operative movement, a grass-roots movement did it. I’ve written about how so many of the institutions, now owned by corporations, originated from working people who built them as expressions of mutuality.

We know it is possible. The question is whether modern corporations are too powerful. The answer lies in the self-destruction at the heart of their practice. They’ve built their world on debt and we are it seems a hair’s breadth away from a second collapse of the global economy. The Chancellor has not learned the lesson (nor the opposition) but the people sense something is wrong. The popular answer in the UK is UKIP who, whilst identifying some of the issues, have not found solutions that can possibly work.  They are fixated on Europe, where the local economy has many allies, and do not understand the UK government has lost far more sovereignty to privatisation than it has ever lost to Europe.

We will get the politicians we need when we understand the economy we need. This will arise when we have entrepreneurs whose values line up with a new vision. And it is to values I’ll be turning next.

2 Good Leaders are Mortal

Something said during Citizens’ Organising training in the early 1990s had a profound effect on my community development practice.  At the time there was a lot of enthusiasm about introducing Citizens’ Organising in the UK.  For some reason it never took off and whilst there are still a few citizens’ organisations around they have had little overall impact.

One of the things I remember from the training was one of the characteristics of a community leader is they know their own mortality.  This means not only do they know they are going to die, they are constantly aware of that fact.  At first glance this may seem to be a disadvantage.  My observations over 20 years have found it to be profoundly true.

It leads to a practice citizens’ organisations call ‘sloughing’, where no-one occupies a permanent leadership role.  (The word slough (pronounced “sluff”, is usually used of snakes shedding their skins.)  When someone vacates a leadership role it is to occupy a new role, thus extending their experience of leadership and vacates a place for someone else to fill and extend theirs.  Good leaders share knowledge and experience because they cannot know they will be around for sure.  Their role is to pass on leadership, not to build their own power base.

In June 1997 I traveled the UK visiting economic development projects.  I visited only one place twice. On my first visit to Moss Side in Manchester my host, then chair of their development trust, was moving into a new office.  He was a Church of England vicar and had just retired.  He was moving into the vestry of a local church from where he could continue to support the work of the Trust.  I found he was someone who had taken the basic tenets of leadership to heart and so agreed to visit again in a couple of weeks to continue the conversation and visit the trust.

One year later I was writing a report and wanted to refer to my visits to Moss Side.  I needed more information and so I phoned my contact.  A woman answered the phone and told me he’d been incapacitated by a stroke.  She had taken on his work.

What was impressive was she knew who I was (she must have had some record of his contacts) and was able to answer my questions.  It was as if I had met her first.  She told me my first contact had prepared her for his own departure.  He knew he would not last forever and so he made sure his work would continue in his absence.

Next Friday I’ll explore what happens when leaders forget they are mortal.

0 Scheduling Posts

If you blog regularly, you need to think about when to schedule your posts.  There are at least two ways to do this. Whichever approach you use, your purpose is to publish your blog to be seen by followers and new people.

How and When to Schedule

Inside the WordPress post editor, top of the right-hand column notice box labelled Publish. The fourth item in the box reads Publish Immediately followed by the word Edit. If you click on the link you can set the date and time for your post to be published.

Do this and click OK, notice the label on the blue button below changes from Publish to Schedule. Finish editing, press Schedule and the post enters a queue to be published at the date and time specified.

This has a number of uses:

What Time?

When is the best time to publish? This is a difficult question. One issue is whether you broadcast to more than one time zone. If you are it probably doesn’t much matter what time you publish. However, if you know most of your market is likely to be in one time zone, you may be able to work out the best time to publish. Obviously, the same time will not suit everyone but it may be best to publish early to mid-morning so followers find it when they switch on their computers at work. Later in the day may be better for some people, once they have dealt with the back-log of posts from overnight.

Social Media

If you look again at the Publish box, you will find the last item in it reads Publicise. You can set up your system so that it post publishes on social media. There are various plug-ins that help you do this.

Email Lists

A second way to schedule your posts is using email lists. Set up your email service to monitor the posts you publish and to send out an email with all the posts published over a day, a week or a month.   You can specify the time, day or date when the email post will schedule this summary email.

This is useful if you believe your market is active at different times of the day or the week. So, if you publish from WordPress in the morning, you could set up your list to send a notice to everyone on your list in the afternoon.

If you publish a lot of posts, a weekly round-up may be more acceptable, so that you are not sending an email to your list every day. People on your list will know when it appears and so may watch out for it. If your posts are infrequent and not urgent, a monthly post may work. The service does not send an email if you do not post.

Think carefully about scheduling as it is an essential part of your marketing.

Have you any tips or tricks for scheduling your posts?

2 Your Website is not an Advert

It is important to know and understand the purpose of your website and to do that you need to understand your organisation’s purpose.  If you assess your organisation’s needs, you may find your website develops in unexpected directions.  In this post, I address the third issue that tends to cause organisations to lose sight of their website’s purpose.

Many people think of their website as an advert because they are not aware of what they can do for their organisation, . They have a website because everyone has one and it offers credibility. They can give people their website address where they can go and find out more about the organisation.

This may be all a small businesses needs. However, it is one option available after considering all the options and must not be your default option.

So, why do organisations fail to consider all the options?  A lot of it is about mindsets.  People have seen and want to copy certain sites, perhaps belonging to organisations similar to theirs.  This perpetuates poor designs across dozens of sites.  Finding a new direction requires investment of a lot of time and can be threatening, particularly if a lot of time and money has been already been invested in a poor design.

There’s No Point in Advertising

If you are in a competitive market, you will need to do more than simply advertise your presence. Even if you mainly drive business through off-line means, eg business cards, flyers, announcements at meetings; your competitors can still do better if they offer more through their sites.

The issue here is traffic and conversions. An organisation in a competitive market that drives the most relevant traffic to their site and then get visitors to respond will do best.

Websites are not like traditional advertising hoardings, where many people walk or drive past and see the advert.  Very few people see most websites unless they take steps to drive people to them.  What they find on arrival will decide whether they maintain contact and return to your site.

Not all sites are designed for new visitors.  Some sites are for members; they correspond with members and add content for the benefit of members.  A local group, for example, might do most of its recruiting through personal contacts and needs a site to aid communication.  They may be a community group whose members need information about their neighbourhood for example.

But the type of site that simply tells the world some organisation exists is not going to recruit members or attract subscribers.  A lot of time and energy can go into sites that drain resources from the organisation.  How many organisations use their site to effect change and not to simply tell the world they exist?

Not a Load of Old Minutes

Some organisations seem to think there is interest in their old minutes. There isn’t. Neither are visitors interested in mission statements or arcane discussions about the area the organisation covers or such matters.

If you need to share these things with your members use an email list, a members’ area or perhaps a blog post. Definitely keep this stuff well away from the home page.

Your website is not a filing cabinet. It is a communications tool and you need to learn to use it for that purpose. Why do you think your filing cabinet’s content is what visitors want to read?

What we see on such sites is a design failure. Yes, I know its content but content is a part of your design. Whoever designs your site, be it in-house or external really has to understand the purpose of the site. It is never a matter of bunging up a template and hanging a few baubles on it.  Your content needs to be good copy that will draw people to your site.

The Second Visit

The question many organisations need to ask is: why would anyone visit this site for a second time?

If there is no reason then the question becomes: why do you invest time and effort into something that is not designed to attract return visitors? For a few organisations there may be a positive reason but that is not an excuse for poor design.

Brochure sites aim to add credibility to an organisation and perhaps to enable a once and for all response. Even that limited ambition requires design. If someone visits because they’ve got your business card, what do you want them to do?

If you’re selling wedding dresses you may not expect people to pass through your site more than once. But you still have competitors and need to persuade the visitor to decide to run with your organisation.

You need good content including social proof and you need a strong call to action. The potential to improve your site’s performance is there even for this type of one-off business.

Where you do need return visits you will need to do more. To work out what you need to do you must understand your organisation and what it needs to achieve online.

Know Your Purpose

These are three examples showing what happens where organisations do not think through their purpose and default to thinking of their site as an advert. Knowing your purpose is central to good site design and next time I shall explain why.

1 Evaluating the Marketing Worldview: Ka-ching!

Over the last few weeks I have reviewed some major trends in online marketing. I have contrasted online marketing with traditional forms of marketing. Methods that were once available to a few are increasingly available to everyone with access to the internet.

In evaluating these approaches there is a wider context: wealth concentrates in the hands of fewer people. Part of the solution is in the marketplace but we need to be careful about how we define it.

This leads me to my biggest issue with marketing and that is ka-ching; the sound of a cash register, presumably. Marketing is big business, especially in the United States where desire for personal wealth motivates it. A few marketing gurus have done very well selling training in how to market and there are it seems many small businesses that have done very well applying these methods.

Now, I don’t begrudge their success – they have worked hard to get to where they are and that’s great. They are not the 1% élite who are syphoning public wealth out of the general economy. I don’t suppose there are many successful marketers using the extreme tax avoidance the financial élite use – if there are, I withdraw my support!

Ka-ching! Undersells Marketing

My problem with ka-ching, apart from it making my skin crawl, is that it undersells marketing. Money offers no vision of a better world but use it to change things for the better. Marketing is not solely about generating cash, just as local marketplaces are not solely about financial transactions.

To be fair many marketing gurus make this same point but my impression, after subscribing to several of them and perhaps some of the second rank gurus, is the over-riding theme is “get rich quick”.

But this is the point. Marketing is not a “get rich quick” method. There are tools that sometimes work if you put in the work and have something of value to sell. I think it would be more honest to sell them as get moderately better off slowly approaches but that also undersells them.

My point is we should see these tools for what they are: a means to get a message across. By all means charge for your message, I think the idea that everything should be free on the Internet is pernicious. We need to appreciate that if something is worthwhile then the person who created it deserves a contribution to their income. This is in no way similar to corrupt financial institutions and indeed I believe successful entrepreneurs offer us a glimpse of a viable alternative to the financial markets.

This is the first part of my evaluation. So that my post is not too long, I’ll deal with some more positive stuff next Tuesday.

0 More Reasons Why the Local Economy is Important

Last Monday I suggested large corporations reduce wages and use fractional reserve banking to extract value from the local economy. Today I cover why the local economy is important as an alternative to the neo-liberal economy.

Builds Community

The local economy builds community by developing relationships within a neighbourhood.  Does anything increase community in a neighbourhood more effectively than the local economy? What are the alternatives? Community and possibly faith related activities? Most community activity is for particular groups with shared interests; parents of small children, young people, the elderly are perhaps the most common. These activities exclude those who do not meet their criteria. Whilst there can be community forums for all residents in a neighbourhood, these will be occasional meetings. A strong local economy will be where the neighbourhood mixes and can do so for several hours most days of the week.  It is trade and other transactions that take place in a space everyone recognises that most effectively builds community.

Marketplace

The Local Economy as a marketplace at the centre of the community is a natural focus where people can meet friends, share experiences and encounter new activities. The place for voluntary activities is in the marketplace. It makes sense to plant what you’re doing in the place where people pass by. Community development needs to focus not so much on projects based in designated community centres, as participation in the already existing economy. We need imagination to do this. How can local traders take part in community development? Using online and offline methods how far could traders collaborate in building their trading centre as the heart of a distinctive community? How can traditional community activities be a part of the local economy?  Are there projects, eg a community café that might support local traders by drawing more people into the area?

Employ Staff

The local economy is where small businesses employ and support staff. I remember my father’s small business and the struggles he had to find and retain good staff because he could rarely pay them enough. He was a lifelong socialist and mortified to find himself on the wrong side of the unions. The reality is many small businesses in the UK struggle to pay the living wage.

Small Traders

The local economy is where small traders are in business because they are passionate about what they are doing. Whilst they would be delighted to generate more money than they need, many are content to continue to do what they enjoy with a low-income.  If they can generate enough income, the strengths of these businesses are in the business owner’s vocation.

Experimentation

The local economy is diverse with many small businesses and so will see rapid turnover. People will have confidence to try new things and will move on after a few years for many reasons. But a robust local economy will survive the failures. A small business closing will not destroy the local economy in the same way the closure of one major business.

Identity

Small businesses together contribute to making an area distinctive, a place to visit simply because it is good to be there. The big retail corporations have made town centres up and down the land practically identical. Now they are pulling out, leaving loads of empty shops no-one can afford. Meanwhile small shops in the suburbs or in small towns can do well. Where the rates are low and reputation draws people, small businesses can provide specialist stores and services. It helps if there is a major attraction but it need only be a park or a riverside walk.

Conclusion

Perhaps none of this is new but it is radical because the local economy rarely features in the practice of development workers. There are exceptions but a systematic community development approach to the local economy is overdue.

I’m hunting online for community development approaches to the local economy. As I find stuff I will share it.  Do let me know if you are aware of blogs or websites about the local economy.