Bridging the digital divide

At the moment the message from Birmingham's digital media early adopters seems to be that online media of all sorts can be used to help improve society. Blogs can give the disenfranchised a voice and tie together communities; the Big City Plan could be developed publicly via a wiki; free wi-fi access across the city would drive business...

These may all be valuable things that should be pursued and there's nothing wrong with racing ahead. However, I see more value in the less sexy work of bringing those lagging behind up to speed. With this in mind I was pleasantly surprised to see the content of Digital Birmingham's current 'Get Into Digital' campaign.

As Digital Birmingham's about page says:

We want to help citizens, communities and businesses in Birmingham to use digital technologies more widely and in new ways, whilst recognising differing interests and varying skill levels

It's the last part of that statement that I like.

The campaign recognises that some people (in fact, I'd go so far as to say many people) haven't got a clue about digital technology and seeks to bring those people into the fold.

A series of courses and lessons are taking places in libraries across the city on easy, non-threatening, basic topics like 'how to set up an email account' and 'how to trace your family tree' - the kind of thing people might have a personal motivation for learning about.

At the same time, within the digital bubble, conversations are starting about how the early adopters can use their skills and knowledge to help people, communities and so on. They would do well to heed this example and consider the language and level of what they're pitching - talking about blogs, memes, social media, feeds, wikis, metadata and taking pride in describing it all as geeky will inevitably alienate people and send them running in the opposite direction.

It's about getting out of the bubble, using your audience's language, seeing what people need and finding ways to achieve that. It's not about jargon or pushing the latest fascinating thing you've found.

Digital Birmingham come in for a bit of stick - birminghamfiz? No RSS feed for their news? - but here I think they're to be congratulated because it's initiatives like this that will help to address the widening digital literacy gap.