Online Info call for speakers

onlineinfo2010

My good friend Steve Dale is in charge of the Online Information conference this year, which should mean it’ll be an absolute belter.

The call for speakers has just been announced and you can propose a topic for a session here. I’ve republished Steve’s email below:

There is a growing recognition but not yet a consensus about integrating social media into an organisation’s workflows and business processes. There is a desire to develop more effective knowledge sharing and a culture of collaboration amongst staff, but little recognition of what this means in terms of organisational change.

Today’s organisations must be able to rapidly adapt to an increasingly volatile and economically challenging environment to remain successful, yet achieving an agile organisation that can deliver high quality products and services is no easy task and one which requires the right blend of people, processes, and technology.

The common goal that all these organisations are trying to achieve is culture: an information and knowledge sharing culture that enables the entire organisation to rapidly respond and adapt to socio-economic changes.
For most organisations, several challenges remain in developing an effective knowledge sharing and collaborative culture:

  • Geographic and cultural differences
  • Silos of information
  • Difficulty in easily publishing information across teams and departments
  • Information security
  • Workforce skills

Many of these challenges are a result of legacy information systems that aren’t built for today’s knowledge worker, yet there are still abundant opportunities for Information Professionals to prove value and demonstrate worth. Why not share your experiences at Online Information 2010?Is the semantic web part of the answer?

Will the social web foster more effective knowledge sharing across the modern workplace?

Is the collaborative revolution the opportunity for a surge in information productivity – or is it just a distraction?

We want to hear from organisations that have transformed themselves to be more agile and flexible by exploiting open or linked data and conversation streams. We are looking for exciting, innovative applications as well as lessons learned from the application of Web 2.0 tools and techniques. We want to showcase organisations that are using semantic web techniques to create new and exciting resources.

Do you have a story to tell?

  • Maybe you’ve been involved in creating a new application for Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google or the iPhone?
  • Have you made the move to the semantic web to deal with the digital explosion and the need for greater “intelligence” in your information?
  • Perhaps you’ve found ways to exploit new online tools to transform the way your organisation does its business?
  • Have you changed your management processes to cope with this “always connected world”?
  • Have you identified the education and training needs that will enable your staff to become more effective knowledge workers?

Then why not share it with others?The Online world is waiting to learn from the pioneers who have made it work. This is your chance to be seen as one of the leaders – with your story reaching a global audience from over 40 countries.

I look forward to receiving your proposal.

Stephen Dale
Chairman
Online Information Conference 2010

Big conference

Social Media World Forum Europe

On Monday (14th) I will be attending the Social Media World Forum Europe conference, at London’s Olympia venue. It looks like quite a big do.

I’m also going to appear on a couple of panels, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

The morning’s panel – at 10:30 – is a workshop on ‘What are Politicians doing in Web 2.0?’ focusing in on:

  • What tools Obama and his team used to gain success in social media space
  • Who’s tweeting?
  • Number 10 – how the prime minister’s office are embracing social media

I’ll be sharing a stage with Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), Scott Redding of the Green Party and my good pal Simon Dickson off of Puffbox.

In the afternoon – at about 5pm –  I’ll be discussing the use of social tools behind the firewall as part of the Enterprise Social Media Forum, in a session called ‘The integration of social business software with Social Media feedback to building your business and brand’.

With me on the panel will be luminaries of the enterprise 2.0 scene David Terrar, Andy McLoughlin and Per Rombouts.

Other sessions I’ve spotted featuring friends of DavePress are Ingrid Koehler, who will be on a workshop panel discussing the impact of social media on elections, at about 11am, and Jemima Gibbons, who is discussing how to write the case for using online communities in business, sometime in the morning (it’s not quite clear on the agenda – PDF warning).

Transformed by you

Optimus PrimeSimon Wakeman has blogged about the upcoming Transformed by You event in Medway, jointly organised by Medway Council and Kent County Council.

It’s a cross between LocalGovCamp and SIcamp, and looks like it will be a really cool day. Not least because of the involvement of Simon and also Kent’s Noel Hatch – two real innovators and thinker-doers in local government.

Uservoice forum has been set up to canvas ideas for how people’s local areas in Kent could be improved – perhaps by using the internet, perhaps not. You can then vote on the ideas you think will work best, and the top ones will be taken forward on the day, where they will be discussed and where real life geeks will put some prototypes together.

Simon writes:

Public sector organisations face growing pressures to deliver bigger and better services with far less money. Kent County Council and Medway Council recognise that by tapping into local creative thinkers they could go someway to resolve some of the issues that are emerging.

Digital technologies are effective at doing just this. More people are talking and sharing ideas online in ways that weren’t possible before. Technology also provides opportunities for individuals, businesses and other groups to create innovative models to meet these new demands.

You can sign up for a ticket for Transformed by You on the Eventbrite page. There is also a Ning site with some conversations and further information on it and the opportunity for some pre-event networking.

I’ll be there, and I think it’s going to be a very interesting and productive day.

LocalGovCamp London

Thursday’s LocalGovCamp in London was superbly organised by Anke Holst and her team.

I was involved in one session, which was to by about internet culture and whether that’s the interesting thing local government ought to be taking on board, rather than stressing about whether or not they should be using Twitter.

The Kulture Show

Flickr credit: Arun Marsh

Rather than just have me drone on for 45 minutes, I thought it would be more interesting to get some views from elsewhere, so I persuaded Huddle’s Kunal Contractor, IDeA’s Ingrid Koehler, and Microsoft’s Dave Coplin to join in for a bit of panel-type session.

It went pretty well, I think it had a different feel to a lot of the other discussions that I’ve been involved in at unconferences. There was plenty of interest and contributions from those in the ‘audience’, which was really nice.

Afterwards, David Wilcox grabbed us all for a chat, in his usual social reportery way:

http://qik.com/video/5272643

There has been a great deal of discussion about the event, on Twitter and on blogs, etc – SocialMention has it all covered.

Join the public sector learning community

Learning Pool’s annual conference is on 12th May, in London, and it promises to be a really great day. You can have a sneak peak of the agenda here (PDF warning).

One of the speakers I am really looking forward to hearing from is Rob Whiteman, who will be just about to take up his new job as head honcho at IDeA when he takes the stage. It will be really interesting to find out his views on how local government can meet the many challenges it faces at the moment.

Another highlight will no doubt be my double act with Cllr Tim Cheetham.

Don’t forget to take a look at our conference community, where you can connect with other people interested in learning and technology within the public sector. Even if you can’t make the conference, it would be great to have your online involvement.