LocalGovCamp 2014 thoughts #3 – collaboration is key

I found LocalGovCamp a really refreshing and cheering event this year. I’m going to spend a few quick posts writing up my thoughts.

Mary McKenna brilliantly facilitated an excellent discussion on collaboration – why it is needed, why it hasn’t worked that well up to now, and how that might be fixed.

Some great input came from FutureGov‘s Dom Campbell, who spoke about the some of the challenges trying to implement their Patchwork tool across multiple agencies.

There was also discussion of the limitations of the traditional approach to partnership working – overly bureaucratic, slow to make decisions, agencies working individually to deliver what should be shared objectives, really boring meetings, and so on.

What’s needed is a more agile, responsive and flexible approach to working in partnership to deliver shared outcomes.

This needs to mean organisations sharing people, resources, systems, data and more – and not just tick-box style partnerships.

What’s also vital to to this working are grown up conversations are needed about who can deliver what with the resources they have. This is no time for pride.

LocalGovCamp 2014 thoughts #2 – don’t panic

I found LocalGovCamp a really refreshing and cheering event this year. I’m going to spend a few quick posts writing up my thoughts.

Another thread of discussion was around – as it often is – how do we engage more people with process x, or y.

Catherine Howe led a very interesting session on local democracy, and forming a more holistic view of what that actually is (clue: think active citizens; not politics, elections and councils). My takeaway was that we shouldn’t panic when something we do doesn’t seem to be important to people any more.

Things change, people move on, stuff dies. Something else replaces it.

It’s fine.

Don’t spend too much time and energy trying to prop up a thing that nobody else wants any more – find out what they do want, and build that – whether you’re talking democracy, services, products, whatever.

LocalGovCamp 2014 thoughts #1- culture

I found LocalGovCamp a really refreshing and cheering event this year. I’m going to spend a few quick posts writing up my thoughts.

Lot and lots of discussion about culture and culture change. This discussion has been going on since forever, and if we are being frank with ourselves, it isn’t going to change dramatically soon.

So what to do? Don’t lets make the culture change discussion stop us from doing things. Have a go, fix what you can right now.

It could be that by having enough people doing this at the same time the culture will look after itself.

Podcasts you might like

As well as making my own podcast, I also love listening to those created by other people.

Here are some of my favourites – maybe you will like them too!

Try Doorbell

Robert Brook and Lloyd Davis chanter on about technology, work, and getting old.

This is the podcast that inspired me to give it a go myself.

Go there now.

This Week in Google

Leo Laporte’s TWIT network is full of great podcasts, but the Google one is my favourite, mostly due to the co-hosts, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis, who really add insight to the weekly discussions about Google,
the cloud, mobile, social media and more.

Go there now.

The New Disruptors

A great podcast featuring weekly interviews with people doing new, creative things in new, creative ways. Hosted by the ace tech journalist Glenn Fleishman.

Go there now.

Cmd+Space

Myke Hurley chats every week to someone interesting who does interesting things. What can I say? I just like interview style podcasts.

Go there now.

In Our Time

Something a bit different – Radio 4’s In Our Time is just wonderful. Taking a different, often rather esoteric, topic every week, Melvyn Bragg teases a bunch of academics and experts for 45 edutaining minutes.

Go there now.

It would be great to hear what you make of these podcasts! Also, any crackers out there I ought to know about?

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