Does BCCDIY risk devaluing digital marketing?

I’m not sure what that phrase means exactly, but I’m guessing it’s along the lines of ‘if you give your time away for free that devalues everyone else’.

Here’s a comment I left on the article that’s not showing up yet:

Interesting article, and it seems to have sparked some twitter conversation - whilst I agree with many of your points, as one of the originators of the BCCDIY project I’d like a little bit more from you on why you think that the project could potentially risk “devaluing the commercial aspects of digital marketing”.

The project is an open source approach to designing a city council website using a user-centred philosophy.

I would say that having a strong open-source community adopting that thinking in a city is a good thing.

This blog itself is built on the open source Wordpress platform, which was put together by Matt Mullenweg and an army of volunteers. On one hand you could say that releasing an easy to use blogging platform harmed the industry - businesses at that point were building their own commercial systems and subsequently lost clients and saw budgets reduce.

On the other it is easier to argue that systems like Wordpress offer a set of tools that enable commercial activity built on them, create jobs, and expand the numbers of people who use digital media tools, and thus leading to higher demand for digital services like marketing.

Suggesting that BCCDIY is bad for the industry because of its open source ethos certainly sounds a little protectionist, as if pointing out that there are easy ways to achieve functionality that is good from a user’s point of view is a bad thing, because jobs will be lost. I’m hoping that’s not what you’re suggesting.

If you’re viewing BCCDIY through purely monetary ‘value’ (discounting the idea that if in some ways it’s better than the original then it must be worth more), we came up with a very rough estimate of person-hours put into the project over the two weeks it was created, and came out with a figure of £38,000 of equivalent agency hours, should the work have had a client to send a bill to. (I estimate ‘rough’).

I agree with Jo and think that viewing the project as a stand-alone outside of the community of people who got involved risks devaluing one of Birmingham’s unique selling points - that collaborative instinct combined with a supportive environment.

I would also most certainly hope that just the act of volunteering one’s time for a few hours for a project that one believes in is not something to be discouraged because it might potentially devalue the work of others.

Here’s a quote from Tim Berners Lee on how governments should be using the web, and is more than a little one of the inspirations for BCCDIY - link: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/GovData.html

Government data is being put online to increase accountability, contribute valuable information about the world, and to enable government, the country, and the world to function more efficiently. All of these purposes are served by putting the information on the Web as Linked Data. Start with the “low-hanging fruit”. Whatever else, the raw data should be made available as soon as possible. Preferably, it should be put up as Linked Data. As a third priority, it should be linked to other sources. As a lower priority, nice user interfaces should be made to it — if interested communities outside government have not already done it.

Please note the last part of that quote - interested communities. BCCDIY is at the front of what I think will be a change in the way that we use/reuse government data and information.

Viewing BCCDIY purely through the lens of digital marketing misses the point - this isn’t about a good looking website that markets something - this is about what we as citizens of a city expect from our local government through the web to enable us to interact with the city’s services and information in ways that suit our needs.