Get rid of friction

If you want to get people to use your service, get rid of the friction.

This really hit home with me the other week, at an event I attended as part of my work at the Department of Health, which was about the patient of the future.

It struck me that what will make the real transformative change in healthcare (for example) is when people’s access to services, data and indeed connections is entirely frictionless.

Downloading an app is friction. Signing up for an account is friction. Finding a wifi connection is friction.

This is where I think internet of things stuff comes in. When your coffee cup has an internet connection, when lamposts have an internet connection, when wifi is everywhere, friction disappears.

This isn’t so far away. You can already get a coffee cup that measures the calorific contents of what you are drinking. When everyone, everything and everywhere is networked, everything changes.

The friction is replaced, of course, by a bunch of other issues – mostly ethical ones. Another, technical one, is how we handle and what we do with all this data.

#VirtualGovCamp FAQ

I’ve started putting an FAQ together for #VirtualGovCamp. Here’s the first effort.

Any more questions? Ask in the comments…

What is VirtualGovCamp?

VirtualGovCamp is an event which will take place online for people with an interest in improving public services.

What makes it a GovCamp?

GovCamp is an unconference – which means an open space event with no set agenda and no keynotes, where delegates can talk to one another about the topics they are interested in, not those of an organising committee.

What makes it virtual?

VirtualGovCamp will take place online, on this website (or rather, at this domain). People will interact on “sessions” which will basically be pages with comments where a discussion can take place.

Does that mean webinars?

No. VirtualGovCamp will live or die by its asynchronicity – which means people can interact when they want to and won’t need to be online at a specific time.

People organising sessions can make a time limited webinar or webchat part of what they are doing, but afterwards they will have to provide a means for ongoing discussion – such as embedding a video of the webinar session and allowing comments on that.

So no face to face stuff at all?

Not organised by me, no. But… if you want to run a local VirtualGovCamp party where people get together to enjoy sessions and talk about them together, then go for it!

So what does a session look like?

This still needs properly working out, but I reckon something like this: the person who pitched the session gets to create a page of content about the topic. It might be a video of them talking about it, or maybe someone else talking about it. It could be some text and links, or a Slideshare or Prezi. Maybe even a Storify.

They then facilitate a conversation in the comments to that page about the topic, encouraging people to get involved, share their views and ask and answer questions.

My current thinking is that a session will last a week. That doesn’t mean the comments will necessarily be closed, just that the active facilitation will cease.

Who can attend VirtualGovCamp?

Anyone with an interest in improving public services. It doesn’t matter what sector you are in, you are welcome to take part.

How do I pitch a session?

We will have a dedicated site for pitching and voting on sessions, which will be running on FutureGov’s Simpl platform, which they have donated for free.

Session pitching will begin in January 2015.

Can I sponsor VirtualGovCamp?

Probably yes, in two ways. One is in kind, by donating some technology or something else useful, like FutureGov are with Simpl.

I will also be accepting cash sponsorships, which I want to use to pay some people to do some online community management and other bits of support which are probably beyond what I can ask people to do as a volunteer.

Why is #virtualgovcamp a good idea?

Quick update – there’s now a placeholder site for #virtualgovcamp live at http://virtualgovcamp.org/ (it currently forwards to a wordpress.com blog) and a Twitter account @virtualgovcamp. At some point I will get all the content from the blog posts here replicated on the VGC site.

So why do I think #virtualgovcamp is a good idea?

  1. Scale – we can get the message to a lot more people by not having to fit them all in a room on a particular day
  2. Scale – we can have a lot more discussions and a lot more varied discussions by not being limited by the size of a grid and the number of breakout rooms available
  3. Diversity – we ought to be able to attract a much more varied bunch of people by running the event online
  4. Travel – no need for people to travel longish distances to the event – they can access it from wherever they are. That might even mean people not in the UK! Wowza!
  5. Time – we won’t be asking people to give up a whole day, whether in the week or the weekend. They can dip in and out as they please
  6. Serendipity – the law of two feet exists, but not many exercise it. Much easier online, and the existence of search means people will be able to find something else to get involved in much more easily. Or they could just do some work instead.
  7. Anonymity – still not sure where I am on this one, but being online means that there is the potential for people to be involved anonymously, which they may be more comfortable with

Do these things mean that the traditional GovCamp model is dead? No! Its just different. Both are needed.

It’s just that this one means I don’t have to get out of bed.

VirtualGovCamp

I’d like to propose VirtualGovCamp.

I’ve just been made aware that the lovely folks at LocalGovDigital are themselves working on a local version of a virtual unconference type event. That should be awesome, but I think my idea is sufficiently different to make it worthwhile running both. I will of course be doing everything I can to help LocalGovDigital’s event a success – and hope you do too!

It will be an online event, lasting a month – probably in February. The sessions will not be synchronous, that is, you don’t have to be online at the same time as a bunch of other people to get involved. So I’m not talking webinars.

Each session will have a page on the event website. The page’s content will be built by the person running that session – who’ll be called the facilitator. They can write some text, include some links, record and embed a video, or a slideshow, or Prezi, or whatever.

Each session is open for a certain number of days, which will be displayed on a calendar on the website. Whilst the session is open, the facilitator helps manage a conversation in the comments on that page. It isn’t real-time, so people can drop in and out as they choose and don’t feel under pressure to be online at the right time.

Before the event, I’ll run an ideas competition site to bring in ideas for sessions, which can be voted on to see which ones are most popular and will be included.

Everyone involved will be emailed on a regular basis throughout the month so that they can keep up with what is going on, and where they are part of a discussion in a session, they can sign up for alerts when new comments are added, and so forth.

There’s lots more to think about and get sorted, but that’s the idea. Is it a good one? If you think so, please complete this form and let me know how you’d like to be involved.

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