An online notebook
I had a fun day today at NCVO running a couple of workshops involving the social media game, a great way to put tools into some organisational context.
A few participants asked where they could get a copy of the cards. The answer is here – there is a PDF to download, print out, cut up, stick together and then laminate.
Tim has other ideas, of course.
Tom Watson points us all to a new wiki for getting the next barcamp for UK (and elsewhere) government webbies going.
Sign up and start thinking about you could present about! I have already put down that I’m interested in running a social media surgery which worked so well at the UK Youth event in September, and which is being pioneered amongst the blogging community in Birmingham.
For a flavour of what went on last year, check out the aggregated stuff on the pageflake. For discussion of the event, last year’s Google Group is being used again.
I am really happy to promote and support this event as much as I possibly can – last year’s event had a tremendous effect on me, in the friendships I made and the developments I my career. It’s an easy and maybe glib-sounding thing to say, but I wouldn’t be where I am today without the Barcamp, and I encourage everyone to make as much of it as they can this time around!
Jeremy has now blogged it too.
I will shortly be heading down to London to eDemocracy08, Headstar‘s annual shindig for anyone interested in how technology and democracy can be improved by one another.
I actually have some involvement at this year’s event, having being generously invited by those friendly folk at Delib to share a panel session with Chris Quigley, Gez Smith and Steph Gray talking open source. Here’s the skinny:
Open Source in e-Democracy – How good can it be if it’s free?
Chair: Chris Quigley, Director, Delib
- Steph Gray, Head of Social Media, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills
- Gez Smith, Senior Consultant, Delib
- Dave Briggs, Digital Enabler, DavePress Ltd
Over the last few years, UK e-Democracy has been characterised by small pockets of piloting and ‘innovation’, often to the exclusion of demonstrable impact and software sustainability. In contrast to this, the wider internet has seen an explosion of participative software, free to use and open to be redeveloped, integrated and customised to suit individual situations. This session explores the role of such open source software in e-democracy. Featuring perspectives from central government, local government and the private sector, the session will look at the benefits and drawbacks of the open source approach, the value of software vs knowledge, and what all this might mean for e-democracy in the future. In the spirit of open collaboration, it will also hopefully feature a good participative discussion too!
Now, if that doesn’t sound like something you would enjoy then you must be mental.
Before these things, I always struggle a bit to think of what I am going to say. Part of this is that I just don’t know in which direction the conversation is going to head, and so having something heavily prepared might mean I end up banging on irrelevantly and irrate everyone present. However, in an attempt to do at least some groundwork, I thought I would put my open source principles to the test and try crowd sourcing the topic with my buddies on Twitter.
I got some good stuff back:
I’ll try and work as much of this stuff in as I can. My own thoughts include:
I’m sure more will occur to me over the course of today. Oh, and just to note – I wrote this post in WordPress, running Firefox on Ubuntu.
I have finally gotten round to posting up some of the content from the ReadWriteGov event in Peterborough last month.
Sadly there is no audio as the acoustics in the room, coupled with the lack of a lapel mic, meant the quality of the recording was, to be frank, piss-poor.
Click a person’s name to be taken to stuff from their session.
More of these events are being planned, so subscribe to the blog to find out when and where it’s next happening…
This Wednesday sees the first of hopefully many ReadWriteGov events taking place at Peterborough City Council.
It’s going to be a great day, with some excellent speakers, all of whom are working within the public sector trying to get things done. They are:
If you would like to come, there are still one or two places available – find out more here. Tickets are jolly cheap for this sort of thing, at just £25 for public sector folk.
Even if you can’t make it though, you can still receive some ReadWriteGov love. For instance, you can visit the blog, where after the event we will be posting content from the day, including presentations from speakers, audio, photos and maybe some video too.
We also now have a Twitter account, through which you can hear about what is happening and pass comments or ask questions during the day. Unlike a lot of events that offer this kind of thing, I really will be tracking what people are saying and making sure the less offensive questions get asked!
Just follow @readwritegov to join in!