Month: September 2009

Understanding Finance for Business

I’m spending some time today doing some social reporting for EEDA, my local regional development agency, at one of their Understanding Finance for Business workshops. I’m taking photos and recording quick interviews with some of those attending, as well as the presenters.

Here’s David Gill, Director of the St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge, who are running the workshops on behalf of EEDA, introducing the programme and what it is all about:

UKGovCamp 2010 taking shape

After just one day, interest is already starting to build up for January’s barcamp. We have had a tonne of responses to the register of interest form, which is awesome, and have made significant headway in getting the venue arranged.

More on that as soon as I know it.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing some gardening on the community site we have set up on Ning. Deleting spammers, starting new conversations and creating some new groups.

We now have specific groups to discuss government data sharing and cloud computing – both hot topics. Make sure you sign up and jump into the conversations about these two topics.

Bookmarks for September 25th through September 28th

Awesomeness off of the internet for September 25th to September 28th:

  • Improving data visualisation for the public sector – "Good data visualisation can help users explore and understand the patterns and trends in data, and also communicate that understanding to others to help them make robust decisions based on the data being presented. This site supports public sector researchers improve the way that they visualise data, by providing good practice examples and case studies, practical and step-by-step guides on how to visualise data, and links to more detailed resources. "
  • Google Blog Directory – All of the official Google blogs listed in one place.
  • Global Neighbourhoods: Using Lethal Generosity in Social Media – "In today's competitive environment, you need to understand that the customer is in control. If you want to win, give the customer what the customer wants. If you do this often enough and credibly enough it will be brutal to your competitors–unless the competitor rises to the occasion and tries to "out-generous" you back."
  • What will Council 2.0 look like? « Business Analysed – "The most useful phrase that I have heard when describing new technology and the debate when to implement is that some innovation can be ‘a solution without a problem’. I feel that this is true."
  • The BCS: enabling the information society « Conradiator – Conrad Taylor's view on the big BCS rebrand.

UkGovCamp 2010 – #ukgc10

UKGC10

The previous two UK government barcamps have been wonderful events – bringing people together to start and continue conversations about how web developments affect the public sector in this country.

If we are going to run the event in January 2010, we probably need to start organising it now. So I have kicked things off a bit by tidying up the online community, adding a blog post ‘announcing’ January’s event and setting up a form for people to register their interest in the event.

So do head over to the community and start sharing some ideas, stories and experiences. And make sure you tag your stuff with ukgc10!

More on culture – Getting Real

To carry on the culture theme, I’ve recently been reading 37 Signals‘ book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application. For those that don’t know, 37 Signals are the guys behind simple but useful collaboration tools like Basecamp, Backpack and Highrise.

It may describe itself as a book about web application development, but so many of the lessons can be applied to any organisation – and that can (and should) include government of course. I ordered the hard copy of the book, via LuLu, but you can read it for free, online. I’ve picked out some of my favourite bits, and linked them below for your reading pleasure.

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