So, right now I’m working on the first draft of mySociety’s fifth ODPM-funded project, GiveItAway. The site will let users tell local charities about stuff they want to get rid of but which might still be useful; in its first draft we’re going to aim for the simplest possible interface, partly because that’s the sort of interface we like, and partly because there are already other sites which address this sort of problem. There’s no point in pouring effort into the thing if we can’t do anything better than existing competitors, after all. More later in the week, anyway.

I’m just filling out my own questionnaire about the direction in which mySociety and UKCOD should head from now on. Interesting times, and I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else’s answers are like. If you’ve any thoughts on overall strategy, please post them here!

mySociety is now about half-way through building its five launch projects, and it is time to start thinking about strategy and where we’re going after this. To that end I’ve written and sent round a set of questions to everyone involved in mySociety, even those on the periphery. The reason is to try and understand what people want from mySociety, where they think it should be going, how we should link up with other projects, and so on. If you’d like to have a say, please contact us!

The next project on the mySociety schedule is currently called YourConstituencyMailingList. We’ve set up a handy page so that you can start using the site even though we’ve not built it yet. That’s the kind of folks we are, mySociety fans.