In 2009 we expect to be working hard on bringing the magic of Patient Opinion to the world of mental health services. (Indeed, we're already getting a fair bit of feedback from mental health service users.)

So this seems like a good time to jot down my "five-a-day": five things which help keep me stay sane and grounded in my daily life (as promoted by the excellent Mindapples site).

In no particular order:

1. texting my children (and getting a reply!)
2. sitting on the sofa with my wife rewinding each of our days
3. a run with my friend Mark (but not everyday, sadly)
4. a little bit of gardening - instant calm
5. and yes, writing a bit of C# code: very relaxing!

What about you?

 Some really great video clips put together by Ivo Gormley and shown under the ‘Us Now’ rubric at the RSA last week. A kind of pot pourri of all your favourite web gurus and harbingers talking about how the social web is changing the world

Lee Bryant from Headshift talking about the effect on the social life of the office.

William Heath on how Government is – or is not –getting in on the act

Clay Shirky with his usual pin sharp analysis of where and how and why hierarchies are groaning under networks. Plus George Osborne, Charles Ledbetter and many more.

Got me thinking about how to get into the real world and make some of this stuff happen. If you start with a thoughtful posting that we published a few days ago – some good care at   Leeds General mixed with some really bad, thoughtless stuff that no one should tolerate, least of all when you’re feeling ill. This feels like a classic hierarchal organisation in which people, all individually good and well motivated, some how conspire to give care that they know is substandard.

How could we use the new tools of the web to nudge them into doing better?

Let’s assume that

a. its patients not staff that are most highly motivated to changing these micro aspects of care and

b. that we have a set of ‘Us Now’ tools to help them. What might happen? What behaviours might change the world? Relatively easy to think of social networking mediated things that would have an effect. A clip from a mobile phone of the woman reportedly crashing around at night on the wardin this recent posting  would surely get the hospital’s attention if it were posted on YouTube or (in time!)  Patient Opinion. But after the 15^th clip was posted about the 15th incident would the hospital still be so bothered? And what of the woman who was videoed – would she thank us for putting her vulnerability on the web for all to see even if it is for the ‘greater good’?  

Seems to me that the harder trick and the real challenge is to build platforms that really are about ‘Us Now’, that work with staff and not against them, that enable them to post their side of the story.

I was wondering whether perhaps we'd been a bit over the top with Wordle on this blog.

We previously had a few posts showing the "big picture" of recent postings and responses on Patient Opinion. The we added one about the promises people made after our event in Rotherham.

And now our Christmas Card features a rather nice Wordle in the shape of a Christmas tree. Perhaps that is too much - but it looks really good.

So imagine our delight when Justin Kerr-Stevens let us know that even Obama has drunk the Wordle juice. Maybe he reads our blog?

OK... back to work.