YouthNet blog
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Monday Oct 15, 2007
Without trust, we've got nothing
Last Thursday I spent the morning with 100 or so people holed up in a hot room in Westminster talking about security, openness, access and diversity. I know, the excitement never ends.
We were all there for something called the Nominet Best Practice Challenge. A bunch of organisations – including YouthNet – were up for awards based around these four topics. Nominet wanted to reward organisations doing interesting things, but also take these examples of good practice to the Internet Governance Forum event in Rio next month. That way, they could potentially be replicated in other countries.
We didn't win our category ('openness') – our clever friends at MySociety did. Other winners included NetCraft, who have created an anti-phishing toolbar, ChildNet for its internet safety resource Know IT All, and Computer Aid International which refurbishes old PCs and sends them to developing countries.
Some strong themes came through in the morning, not just in the awards but in wider conversations. Security is seen widely as the key issue with regards to the development of the internet in the UK, encompassing concerns around child protection and exploitation, fraud and privacy. These and other problems risk eroding the public's trust in the internet as a safe platform to shop, bank, find information and network.
And once the trust goes, we're all buggered.
This is part of an outbreak of awards activity for YouthNet.
Last month we won the Best Use of Technology Award at the Charity Times Awards and next month we're up for Community Project of the Year at the Computing Awards.
(As an aside, the Charity Times Awards website hasn't been updated since well before the awards dinner; I can't begin to explain how much this annoys me. Most organisations learned that golden rule of web production years ago – websites need to be maintained regularly. More grist to the mill for those who think magazine publishers Still Don't Get It.)
Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 12:39 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]