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#CoMCommunity17

September 9, 2017

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Which, why, what & when?

Social media has become a trend over the past few years – everyone says you need to jump on board to survive – but as a mediator, is it a relevant marketing tool for your service?

The Office of National Statistics releases bulletins each year on Internet access by households and individuals. In statistics released on 3rd August 2017, it shows that during 2017 the internet was used daily or almost daily by 80% of adults (41.8 million) in Great Britain, compared with 82% in 2016 (41.8 million), 77% (39.3 million) in 2015 in sharp contrast to 35% (16.2 million) in 2006. In addition 78% of adults accessed the internet ‘on the go’ using a mobile phone or smartphone compared with 75% in the previous year. The communications regulator Ofcom publishes annual statistics for the UK, the latest (2016/7) showing that the proportion of online adults using social networking sites decreased to 61% compared with 72% in 2014. This has been replaced with activities including general surfing, emailing and online shopping. Online entertainment being one of the most powerful drivers of online media, with mobile devices seeing a huge growth with mobile display advertising reaching more than 51% of all internet advertising. We’ll also be revealing the most important device for accessing the internet – has the tablet has it’s day?

Next week we’re running a workshop at the College of Mediators Community Mediation Conference #CoMCommunity at Loughborough University. Its goal is to explore the latest and greatest social media and digital marketing tools that are available, and hopefully inspire some delegates to embrace rather than fear it for their mediation services. It is targeted at those who have had a little dabble or no exposure to social media and online marketing, and will provide a couple of key reasons why mediation services should be engaging with these platforms. The latest statistics from both the Office of National Statistics and Ofcom illustrate the increase in the UK population’s internet connectivity, frequency and duration spent connected.

As a practical demonstration of what can be achieved with social media, we created a couple of videos on YouTube prior to the conference. This has then been linked on a number of the social media platforms as a practical experiment. How successful will it be? Come along to the workshop to find out! You can watch the promotional video for the workshop here.

We’re running a social media review on one of the community mediation services who will be attending the conference, to see how they are currently doing, and what they could do to improve… Should be interesting!

About the workshop facilitator…

Paul Gadd became involved in mediation six years go, when asked for some IT advice from a family mediator. He has become passionate about spreading the ‘good news’ of the power of mediation in the UK. He started his first listing website findmediation.co.uk six years to ago to help promote family mediation, and has since launched findcommunitymediation.co.uk and findcivilmediation.co.uk

In the past two years he has helped organise and run Family Mediation Week (2016/17). and was on the UK Mediation Awareness Week 2016 working group using various digital media and social media streams.

UK Mediation Awareness Week

September 28, 2016

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UK Mediation Awareness week was the brain child of Dave Owen back in February this year, who wanted to showcase all forms of mediation available in the UK in a similar way to Mediation Awareness Week in Ireland.

After our involvement with Family Mediation Week in January 2016 (organised by the Family Mediators Association), we decided that it was a fantastic opportunity to assist having learnt valuable lessons in running online awareness campaigns – especially from a technology perspective.

In March 2016, the working group was formed, bringing together a unique blend of volunteers skillfully guiding by Andrew Burr acting as chair, who have all generously given their time. The group then developed a coordinated approach to contact mediation organisations, and thousands of mediators across the UK. Several organisations have devised mock mediation events, conferences, receptions, Q&A sessions to help raise awareness of UK mediation.

Watch the new video detailing all the events.

To see a full list of events happening over the week, visit the events calendar. #UKMAW2016,

#Givemeyourhands

July 29, 2016

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About the workshop…

#givemeyourhands

Social media has become the latest trend – everyone says you need to jump on board to survive – but as a mediator, is it relevant marketing tool for your service?

Last month, the Office of National Statistics released the latest bulletin on Internet access by households and individuals. It shows that during 2016 the internet was used daily or almost daily by 82% of adults (41.8 million) in Great Britain, compared with 78% (39.3 million) in 2015 and 35% (16.2 million) in 2006. In addition 70% of adults accessed the internet ‘on the go’ using a mobile phone or smartphone. The communications regulator Ofcom publishes annual statistics for the UK, the latest (2014) showing that the proportion of online adults using social networking sites rose to 72%. So why are so few family mediation services using it?

In keeping with the Family Mediators Association (FMA) annual conference theme of Shakespeare, the workshop is titled ‘Give me your hands and we’ll be friends” playing on the line from ‘A midsummer night’s dream’. Its goal is to explore the latest and greatest social media and digital marketing tools that are available, and hopefully inspire some delegates to embrace rather than fear it for their mediation services. It is targeted at those who have had a little dabble or no exposure to social media, and will provide a couple of key reasons why family mediation services should be using social media.

As a practical demonstration of what can be achieved with social media, we’ve created a video for YouTube two months prior to the conference. This has then been linked on a number of the social media platforms as a practical experiment. How successful will it be? Come along to the workshop to find out! You can watch the promotional video for the workshop here.

About the workshop facilitator…

Paul Gadd became involved in family mediation five years go, when asked for some IT advice from Sue West. He has become passionate about spreading the ‘good news’ of the power of mediation in the UK. He started his first listing website findmediation.co.uk five years to ago to help promote family mediation, and has since launched findcommunitymediation.co.uk and findcivilmediation.co.uk

This year he has helped organise and run Family Mediation Week 2016. and is on the UK Mediation Awareness Week 2016 working group using various digital media and social media streams.

Family mediation – a better way

November 28, 2015

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The story behind ‘A Better Way’…

This special Christmas video was created to highlight the benefits of family mediation compared with going to court. It was launched at the Heaney Watson DR conference on the 26th November 2015.

Family mediation – a better way

The concept for the video came towards the end of 2014. Since Christmas is an especially stressful time for families, it’s a key time for informing people about dispute resolution options – including family mediation.

The characters and background were originally developed for Protocol IT by Kerf Design was used in a video ‘Understanding Family Mediation’. Developed with Professor Elizabeth Stokoe, it highlighted the benefits of family mediation compared with the court system, and was later adopted by the Ministry of Justice. The Christmas video was released on the 31st December 2014, but due to short timescales, elements of the video had been compromised. In October this year I decided to give it a make-over ready for Christmas this year.

Lisa Parkinson is a leading authority in the UK on Family mediation, writing many articles and books on the subject. Her book Family Mediation has become the authoritative and practical guide to family mediation, and has become a primary resource for many mediators. She has graciously acted as a sounding board and provided valued assistance in the project.

Having recently developed special versions of ‘Understanding Family Mediation’ and ‘Understanding Community Mediation’ for the District of Columbia Court with English and Spanish voice overs, it illustrated the effectiveness of the spoken word. I decided to use a child’s voice to add weight to the subject material.

Since video has a Christmas theme, I wanted to create backing music to reflect this. I set about composing something ‘festive’ to accompany the images based on the traditional ‘God rest ye merry gentlemen’ but with a more contemporary feel. As the video introduces the concept of the mediator, the beat changes from a steady backbeat to a more up tempo dance beat. As with any film, the addition of the voice over and music plays an important role in creating an emotional connection with the audience.

All of the elements are covered by UK copyright law and must not be copied or re-used in any form without written permission. However I am really keen to see it used to promote family mediation, and would be thrilled to see family mediation services embed the YouTube or Vimeo links on they websites:

YouTube link – Family mediation – a better Way

Vimeo link – Family mediation – a better Way

You can also find a shortened 15 second, wide screen version on Instagram.

Best wishes for a very happy Christmas.

Paul Gadd – Director of Protocol IT

Windows Print Screen button – RIP

August 24, 2015

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Often during the course of a day, you’ll see something on your screen that is worth remembering. It might be a useful tip, interesting news item or a Microsoft Windows 10 error message…

Our brains are often too full or cluttered to remember but the Print Screen button is a quick way to capture it, and save it for later.

However, with the captured print screen only part of the screen will really be of interest. So either you edit it to select part of the area, or you end up storing a load of useless information.

Apple Mac’s have supported this functionality for years with the SHIFT + CMD + 4 (num) simultaneous key presses. Pressing this magic combination triggers a cursor on the screen, enabling you to select the area of the screen you want to capture. So what about Microsoft Windows 8 and 10?

Windows 8 and 10 both provides the Snipping Tool. Pinned to your taskbar, this can easily be accessed, then clicking ‘New’ which enable you to select an area of the screen to capture. You can then select ‘Save as’ to store this, or paste into another application such as OneNote.

Give it a try – your IT department might thank you for capturing that illusive error message that happens right before 5pm 🙂

Understanding Community Mediation

June 10, 2015

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Launched at the College of Mediators conference June 2015, the video explains what community mediation is and how it can be used to resolve conflicts in communities.

The collaborative project was developed by the following partners:

Liz Stokoe – Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University
Paul Gadd – Director of Protocol IT
Euan Lockwood – Director of Kerf Design.

The video brings together various components:

CARM text (Conversation Analytic Role-play Method) developed by Liz Stokoe in developing the script
Visual elements developed by Protocol IT and Kerf Design to depict various scenarios
Technical Prezi and video skills provided by Protocol IT
Background music developed by Protocol IT

To watch the video on YouTube click on the image above or the following link.

You can easily embed a YouTube player for this video on your website. Simply include the following code onto the HTML section of a page on your website :

Use of the video

The YouTube and Prezi files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the collaborative partners.

Email Disclaimer

April 23, 2015

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Paul Gadd

Director – Protocol IT Ltd

Telephone: 01509 278645

Email: info@protocolit.co.uk

Twitter: @protocolit

Visit our new website – www.protocolit.co.uk

Every effort has been made to ensure that any attachment to this mail does not contain virus. While Protocol IT has taken every reasonable precaution to minimise this risk, neither it nor the sender can accept liability for any damage which you sustain as a result of software viruses.

Protocol IT Limited is a company registered in England number 6442513.

VAT registration No. GB 910 0168 77

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

Email disclaimers – time for change.

April 23, 2015

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We’ve all done it – created lengthy disclaimers automatically appended to the bottom of emails. Thinking that somehow these will protect us from litigation if a viral message gets through, or warning that the email is intended for the named recipient, and if it asks you to delete it.

The effects spiral exponentially, both on the increase in the size of the email trail and information sent in emails. If you also decide to hit ‘print’ then this has implications on the number of tress consumed. So why do we included pictures and reams of legalese? I suspect it’s partly a branding exercise for some companies to create a specific look and feel, for others to conform to assumed legal requirements.

As more of the population moves to smart mobiles, email design needs to be adapted for smaller screens. If content is purely designed for the desktop screen, the knock-on effect on mobile devices results in font size being reduced in order for the full width of the images being displayed. Another point worth considering is that some mail programs are configured not to download the images to save the data usage on mobile contracts. Consequently the time and effort spent on the corporate look and feel is totally wasted…

Personally, I’m not interest in the branding rather the content of the specific message – and the quicker I can read the email content the better. Email signatures and especially those with images don’t align with this, and therefore by default downloading images on my smart phone are disabled.

In January 2015, MP Alan Duncan put forward a bill to Parliament, calling for an email to “useless” legal disclaimers at the bottom of emails. Sir Alan told MPs the disclaimers were a hangover from the early days of the internet and could be replaced with a link to an attachment.

I’ve decided to replace a lengthy disclaimer at the end of emails with something simple, linking instead to a webpage to view full information. Most people won’t bother reading the legalese anyway, so why bother using up disk space and paper unnecessarily? Maybe it’s time for change, and reduce our data centre footprint along with carbon paper footprint…

Red nose day – fund raising

March 13, 2015

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Friday 13th March and it’s #comicrelief Friday or #RedNoseDay. We decided to do something a little different this year to promote the work of #comicrelief. As well as the traditional cake sale at the Innovations Centre at Loughborough University, we wanted to combine the fun activities along with raising the awareness of Family Mediation as an alternative to going through the courts.

Clearly Family Mediation is not a fun experience for any of the parties, but we decided in the same way that #comicrelief uses the opportunity to raise awareness of other serious subjects (like dementia) we could help to do the same.

We’ve developed our own special Red Nose characters (based on people we know!), and have then re-used our street scene from the video ‘Understanding Family Mediation‘ and hidden a number of our special nosey Red Nose Day characters in the scene. Click on the link below to the full sized image to see if you can find them all! We’ve set a number of targets for re-tweets, and each time we hit one of the targets (25/50/100/200/300/400) we will donate £10 to #comicrelief.

Spot the Red Noses.

To find out more about Family Mediation or search for a local family mediation service near you, go to our FindMediation search tool.