#uksnow – is the youth club open?

As the snow hit last Tuesday I spent quite a while – as I’m sure many other people did – trying to find out if our school would be open or closed. The school landline was engaged, the city council website wasn’t updated and so it was left to huddle round the radio, tuning into the growing list of school closures that were being read out. Both BBC Radio Manchester and Key 103 did a fine job in keeping this service going, quickly publishing the names of schools on their websites.

With the heavy snowfall it was probably obvious that any out-of-school activities and venues would be closed, but how would we know? Probably more tricky would be the status of these activities as the snow starts to shift and melt. Whilst the airwaves are open for alerting people about important closure to schools or postponements of football matches (which I had a ticket for!), it is the community-based events that Plings collects that become the focus.

Obviously heavy snow, burst pipes and icy roads are not a new phenomenon, and so I’m sure word-of-mouth and common sense would have prevailed in many cases – just as it would have done in the pre-internet age. The slight issue we have now, however, is that in the commitment to publish information, we are also leaving it there for people to find. At face value, the youth club may still be open. When you have online information, it’s important to make it updated and current online information.

A couple of examples have helped:

- Our friends at Primary Technology utilised Voice-over-IP technology (VoIP), whereby schools could request a phone call, to then inform a database that the school was closed. This happens very quickly and easily and as the call is from system to the phone number on file, it is verified but also requires less human intervention. VoIP could be a cheap and scalable technology through which to do this.

- Oxfordshire youth service informed me that young people were using Facebook to track, monitor and share the status of the youth club openings. This doesn’t necessarily come with the verification of the previous example, but does illustrate that the word-of-mouth method is also shifting to other spaces

As we move to publish more and more data, this aspect of editing and updating particular instances will become more interesting and of need. Whilst the snow is an obvious example, there will be many other examples. We will continue this theme through the blog over coming months…

Finally – any ideas on how snowman building can be a positive activity? I spotted this one whilst out and about – there are some fine snow sculpting skills out there!