LocalGovCamp 2011

LocalGovCamp

Saturday’s LocalGovCamp was a marvellous day, entirely thanks to the superb organisation of Digital Birmingham’s Simon Whitehouse and Sammy Williams; and of course the 130-odd people who turned up on the day, giving up the best part of their weekends to talk about work.

Also: thanks to the great sponsors who made the event a reality:

  • Podnosh – “Our aim is to change the way the public and the public sector talk to each other”
  • Public-i – “Using the virtual world to make a difference in the real world”
  • National Association of Local Councils – “We are committed to developing the role of town and parish councils, in order that they can represent the communities which they serve effectively and be at the forefront of community leadership.”
  • LGIU – “Our mission is to strengthen local democracy to put citizens in control of their own lives, communities and local services”
  • Firmstep – “We help government to help citizens”
  • Talk About Local – “helping people find a powerful voice online”
  • Arcus Global – “Arcus provides software, tools and methods that help public sector organisations to run efficient, modern ICT environments for their customers and employees”
  • Global Crossing – “We are a leading global IP solutions provider with the world’s first integrated global IP-based network”

There were about 35 sessions in total, and of course many conversations that cropped up over coffee. There were lots of smiles on the day, and as far as evaluation goes, that’s good enough for me.

There’s been plenty of coverage and we’re trying to collect as much of it as possible on this Posterous-based site. You can easily contribute by emailing thoughts, links, ideas, videos, photos, whatevers to localgovcamp@posterous.com.

The Twitter hashtag, #localgovcamp, is still being populated and you’ll find plenty of resources, feedback and stuff there.

You’ll notice a certain amount of challenge in some of what people are writing. Quite right too! Nothing’s perfect and can always improve.

I’d only make two points in mitigation of some of the feedback. Firstly, LocalGovCamp is a volunteer effort and built on participation. So, if you see something that could be done better, volunteer, participate! If you get annoyed and blog about it afterwards, it doesn’t give anyone much of a chance to improve things.

Secondly, I think it’s important to remember what LocalGovCamp actually is. My definition – which of course carries no more weight than anyone else’s – is that it’s a very lightly structured space that is created for people to do stuff in. That’s it. It is what people choose to do in that space that counts – and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

And that’s okay.

Photo credit: Mark Braggins

Launching the public sector web network

The webIt’s only a soft launch, but a launch nonetheless.

Public Sector Customer Services Forum and Kind of Digital are coming together to develop a content and events focused online community for those that use the web in their work delivering public services.

So, it’s not a network just for those that work in web teams. We know that people in all sorts of roles are now heavily web focused in their activity and we want to reflect that in the events we run and the content we publish here.

Our first event is a social media themed conference in Glasgow in September – you can find out more here. It features presentations about the very latest good practice in the field, from practitioners making things happen within their organisations right now.

We’ll be adding more to the site over the next few weeks, curating and drawing together resources that are already out there, and generating some brand new content exclusive to the network.

Don’t forgot to make sure you are kept in the loop by signing up to our email newsletter, or grabbing the blog’s RSS feed. Of course, we are also on Twitter and you can follow us there as well!

What I’ve been reading

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

LocalGovCamp this Saturday

This has rather crept up on me, but this Saturday , 18th June, sees LocalGovCamp coming back to Birmingham.

Around 200 people from across local government will be getting together to figure out how we can keep innovating in this age of austerity.

Following some cancellations, there are still a couple of places free if you want to come along.

Various discussions about the event are happening on the discussion group – it’s easy enough to sign up and join in!

It should be an awesome day!

Photo credit: Arun Marsh