There is an event coming up that will interest a lot of Scottish political bloggers. Political Innovation is taking place on 13 November at the University of Edinburgh’s Informatics Forum.

The Political Innovation project is a series of free-to-attend practical events at which people with ideas on political innovations can meet up with technical experts, journalists, bloggers, politicos and others with an interest in politics and public affairs. The event will allow to find about about innovative projects like these ones. You may even want to get involved in one of them.

It sounds pretty good to me and I plan on attending. It will be a good opportunity for bloggers to meet up and chat with others that are interested in this sort of thing.

As far as I know, it has been a while since there was a bit meetup of Scottish bloggers, and from time to time people ask me when there is going to be another meetup. The political focus of this event might not appeal to everyone, but it sounds like the ideal place for some of us to catch up, as well as meet other interesting people and discuss innovative ideas. Best of all, they will be supplying lunch.

Well after mulling over the options for a couple of weeks, it seems as though the option that is most likely to work is some kind of group effort. Many people volunteered to help, but few wanted to do so full time. So the next step is… er, to decide what the next step is.

Just now my plan is to have around half a dozen editors, with other regular contributors. For the time being, if possible I would like each of the editors to be in charge of a month. This would include editing a roundup one week, arranging the rota of guest editors for the rest of the month, then passing on to another editor to take over after four weeks.

Beyond that, I am hoping that as a group we can discuss how we should evolve Scottish Roundup for the future. A few really interesting suggestions have been thrown into the mix, and I think it’s worth considering them carefully.

I am thinking about the right sorts of tools to use. If anyone has any suggestions of good collaborative tools to use, that would be greatly appreciated. I’m thinking of using Google tools if possible, partly because I already use them for parts of Scottish Roundup anyway, and also because these are likely to be familiar to most of the contributors.

I will get in touch with those of you who have kindly offered to help out. And if anyone else is still interested in being part of the group, please do email me.

Also, if anyone is able to edit the next roundup (4 July), the door is wide open! Thanks.

First off, if there is going to be a roundup this Sunday we need to find an editor. So if you’re up for it, give me an email at scottishroundup@gmail.com.

Thanks to everyone who has responded to last week’s appeal for some extra help on Scottish Roundup. A few different perspectives have been put forward.

As such, this is a good time to discuss what sort of shape Scottish Roundup should take in the future. In the past year or so I have considered changing the format of this website in a number of ways, and now seems like a good point to consider changing the format again.

Before that, though there is the tricky issue of who to pass the baton to. Going by the comments on the previous post, there is a lot of backing for some kind of group-based effort, where a team of people chip in regularly.

There are a couple of things that make me reluctant about that. Firstly, there is the fact that this is exactly what we tried a couple of years ago — and it just fizzled out. There could have been any number of reasons for that, but one of the most fundamental reasons is human nature — when it’s a group effort, people are tempted to shirk.

My sense is that a group effort can work, but it still needs strong direction. We are not just talking about sharing the responsibility of editing the roundup once every few weeks. There is an email account, Twitter and Delicious accounts to keep on top of, responding to commends, arranging the rota, plus all of the other stuff that is involved in maintaining a website.

Perhaps something can be worked out whereby a small group of people look after these maintenance aspects, the email account, Twitter and so forth, and a wider group can take on responsibility for producing the roundup.

A couple of people have inquired about taking control of Scottish Roundup themselves. It would have to be the right person though. It needs to be someone who can be relied upon to represent the whole of the Scottish blogosphere with an open mind and without any particular agenda to push or axe to grind. Finding the right person would be very tricky.

I don’t know what the answer is, which is why I want your suggestions. I think there is momentum behind a group effort, but it has to work properly. Please discuss away in the comments and hopefully we can reach some sort of conclusion by next week.

As for the format of Scottish Roundup, there have been a few interesting suggestions.

I have thought in the past about taking the site into a different direction, where the focus is not as much on a weekly roundup. I have considered adding different features — perhaps focussing on new blogs, or particularly notable issues that affect Scottish bloggers. I have also considered (and experimented with) featuring fewer posts every week, but more in-depth and with more of a narrative.

One suggestion that I have received in the past week has been for Scottish Roundup to become a group blog. But rather than having a weekly roundup it could focus instead on showcasing others’ content throughout the week. The idea would be for a format more like The Browser, Kottke or Boing Boing.

I think it’s well worth having a think just now about whether this is something we might like to do. And if anyone else has any other suggestions, now is the perfect time to throw it into the mix.

So get commenting and hopefully by next week we will have found a good way to progress. And don’t forget, if you want to edit the roundup for this coming Sunday (27 June) then give me a shout. Thanks!

I have decided to take a sabbatical from Scottish Roundup. Since setting it up almost four years ago, I don’t think there has been a week where I haven’t been trying to gather nominations, arrange the rota of guest editors or actually produce the roundup itself.

But I have much less spare time on my hands than I used to, and I find it increasingly difficult to find time to do it. Also, I have realised that I don’t love blogs as much as I used to, and can’t cheerlead in the way I was able to in the early days.

However, I don’t think it would be right to just pull the plug on Scottish Roundup. So if anyone is interested in taking over the running of Scottish Roundup, please get in contact with me! Alternatively, if anyone could work out a good way of spreading the workload among a group of people, that could be a workable solution too.

If I think someone can continue to push Scottish Roundup forward in the right direction, we can make it happen. Just now I think that it is stagnating and I can’t do the Scottish blogosphere justice anymore.

Email me: scottishroundup@gmail.com.

Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s roundup. I’m afraid no Scottish blogs qualified this week, so instead we are having to resort to an Anyone But England roundup.

Not really. But the World Cup has been the major talking point among bloggers this week, and we begin with a couple of perspectives on the “Anyone But England” phenomenon.

In one camp, we have this post from Dear Scotland, which was featured in last week’s roundup. Then there is this from Clinically Fed Up. Both are firmly in the “Anyone But England” camp.

Is There a Plan B? responds to both of those posts:

This isn’t about football, or not really. I appreciate that anyone has a right to support whomever they like, and actually I don’t give a monkeys about the football. In fact, there’s a part of me that agrees with pretty much everything Mrs W and Billy Williamson say so well. To be honest I don’t really want England to win either. Can you imagine how unbearable it’d be to have to live with the knowledge of Sir Ashley Cole and Sir Wayne Rooney for the next thirty years?.

But the fact remains that this attitude seems to me to be the acceptable face of an anti-English feeling that in some cases goes deeper than just football.

Because you don’t choose who to support. You feel it.

From a similar perspective, Ellen Arnison adds this:

Ok, you can see how it might be a bit galling that your neighbour is having Christmas and you’re not getting any presents. You probably won’t even get turkey. However, it’s not the festive neighbour’s fault and neither are they munching mince pies to spite you. So really it would be exceptionally churlish to set traps to stop Father Christmas emptying his sack – blocking the chimney, poisoning the reindeer and sabotaging the sleigh are not going to stop him for long.

The grown up thing is to take it on the chin. Santa’s not coming, he doesn’t care about us. We didn’t get into the World Cup, we weren’t good enough. The neighbours have invited us to the party though, wouldn’t it be gracious to accept and, even, join in a little. You never, know it might be fun.

But Flying Rodent writes “in defence of the Scottish cretin”:

I have to explain that our behaviour is not entirely unprovoked. If I wanted to illustrate the Scottish football fan’s relationship with our English pals, I’d point to the following incident, which took place on the day of the play-off draw for the 2000 European Championships, pairing England and Scotland in a head-to-head fight for the one available place…

Read on to find out about the incident.

Following the draw between the USA and England yesterday, we’ll have to wait before we see whether ABE can claim victory.

With a separate take on the World Cup, Gary Sutherland looks back on his memories of previous World Cups.

A brief look at other topics now. Cartside is preparing for life as a mother of two. Lisa Gordon Scott longs to visit the Jura Lodge. And Neil Craig looks again at the cost of the proposed new Forth Road Bridge.

And that is is for this week’s roundup. As ever, get those nominations in either by emailing us at scottishroundup@gmail.com, or nudge us on Twitter @ScottishRoundup.

Update: It seems as though the contact form on the right has stopped working. Many apologies if you have nominated something using the form — but it seems as though it is not actually passing them on to me. I will investigate the issue, but will remove the form for the time being.