Events

šŸ”— Some links I’ve spotted recently

I sent out a newsletter today and included these links at the bottom. Popping them here for posterity…

Interesting links – 9 Feb 2021

More nuggets spotted online, shared for your edutainment.

5 tips on running virtual events – DWP Digital

One of the biggest learning points for the events team was that you canā€™t take a plan for a physical event and simply run it virtually instead. It just doesnā€™t work. You need to create a way to engage attendees remotely, while theyā€™re having to do most of their work through their screens, from their home. However, virtual events have a lot of opportunities for being inclusive and allowing people to join in regardless of whether they can travel to another location.

Link

Retail, rent and things that don’t scale ā€” Benedict Evans

Part of the promise of the internet is that you can take things that only worked in big cities and scale them everywhere. In the off-line world, you could never take that unique store in London or Milan and scale it nationally or globally – you couldnā€™t get the staff, and there wasnā€™t the density of the right kind of customer (and thatā€™s setting aside the problem that scaling it might make people less interested anyway). But as the saying goes, ā€˜the internet is the densest city on earthā€™, so theoretically, any kind of ā€˜unscalableā€™ market should be able to find a place on the internet. Everyone can find their tribe.

Link

Being Human – Catherine Howe

Bureaucracies are designed to protect themselves from harm ā€“ they have formal complaint routes and escalations and a hierarchy that is there to maintain the status quo. And when you look at a wider context you can see some of the drivers for this ā€“ the more we see a world based on risk and blame the harder it is for us to be human and authentic in our interactions.The first time fix of customer services is allowed for simple questions ā€“ to go there with more complex stuff brings levels of risks that most bureacracies are not comfortable with as it takes you to the place of difficult choices and trade off ā€“ the messiness of complexity.

Link

The Real Novelty of the ARPANET – Two Bit History

Today, the internet is a lifeline that keeps us tethered to each other even as an airborne virus has us all locked up indoors. So itā€™s easy to imagine that, if the ARPANET was the first draft of the internet, then surely the world that existed before it was entirely disconnected, since thatā€™s where weā€™d be without the internet today, right? The ARPANET must have been a big deal because it connected people via computers when that hadnā€™t before been possible.

That view doesnā€™t get the history quite right. It also undersells what made the ARPANET such a breakthrough.

Link

Covering events with Kind of Digital

One bit of work we’ve been doing a fair bit of at Kind of Digital is putting events on the web. One example is the seminar that took place in Leeds yesterday, run by Local Government Yorkshire and Humber.

The idea is that these public service type events are all about getting the message to as many people as possible – which usually is a lot more than those in the room at the time.

Rather than live streaming we take the approach of getting event speakers and organisations, and occasionally delegates, to provide short interviews about the event and what they will be talking about.

We also take photos, and can live blog and tweet, too. The content isĀ uploadedĀ to YouTube and Flickr, etc, and we can create a microsite to host the content too, if required.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the Kind of Digital media maven that is Andrew Beeken, who is a dab hand with a camera and editing video.

It seems to work well, and all our clients so far have been pleased with the cost-effective results. If you have an event coming up that would benefit from this, do drop me a line on dave@kindofdigital.com.

Announcing moreopen micro-grants

Cross-posted fromĀ the new blog over on moreopen.org, here Steph announces some small-scale funding available for public sector-oriented digital events and projects:

As UKGovcamp 2011 fades into the memory, and exciting events such as ShropCamp (19 April) hove into view, itā€™s time to formally lift the veil on our mini grant scheme to help get more great public sector digital innovation off the ground.

UKGovcamp was a great event, and we managed to bring in enough sponsorship to cover costs, and set up a small fund to support follow up events. So far, four have been supported:

  • ShropCamp: how social media and open data can help service providers to work more effectively at a local level in and around Shropshire
  • Youth Work Online: the third national get-together of people interested in using the social web for youth engagement and participation
  • Localgovcamp: the national get-together of local government folk, held in Birmingham, to talk about digital stuff at a local level
  • MailCamp [working title]: a show-and-tell seminar event on how effective use of email can help public sector organisations reach audiences more cheaply and drive engagement at scale

But to cut a long story short, thereā€™s still a bit of money in the pot, so weā€™re inviting applications from individuals and teams who have an idea for an event or project which ticks the following boxes:

  1. Is for people in, or interested in, the UK public sector
  2. Is about transparency, engagement or collaboration involving new technologies
  3. Doesnā€™t have much ā€“ if any ā€“ other funding or sponsors, and needs help to cover catering, venue or logistics costs
  4. Is run on a not-for-profit basis; ideally free to participants

So it might be that you want to run a weekend localgovcamp in your area. Or you might want to get together a group of people new to this stuff and run aĀ pecha kucha evening. Or you might want to focus on something specific like film-making or consultation or using Facebook effectively in the public sector, and get people to show-and-tell their experiences.

The application process is really simple: use theĀ application form on this site to tell us:

  • a little bit about who you are
  • what your event or project is about
  • what you need the money for

You can bid for any amount up to Ā£1,000, but we expect most grants for small events to be around Ā£250 or Ā£500: enough to cover pizzas or a large room if you canā€™t find one for free.

The grant scheme will be run on a rolling basis, until the money runs out, so donā€™t delay in making your application. Having a bit of seed funding behind you will hopefully make you a stronger candidate for sponsorship by other organisations, so the idea is to help you get the ball rolling.

FAQs

  1. Can you run the event for me?
    No, sorry. We just help with a bit of money. Weā€™re still knackered from organising UKGovcamp.
  2. OK, but can you promote it for me?
    To an extent, weā€™d love to. Weā€™ll tweet and blog about it here, and can set you up with aĀ subsite on http://www.ukgovcamp.com if you want. In any case, we recommend youĀ set up a group and get people talking about the event, to sound out interest and ideas for content.
  3. How big is the grant fund?
    Not very. A few grand altogether.
  4. Iā€™ve got an idea but Iā€™m not sure itā€™s what youā€™re looking for
    Drop us a line and let us know what youā€™re thinking about. Thereā€™s no harm in asking, and itā€™s a very informal process.

 

Bookmarks for April 5th through April 10th

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

  • Social Media Security – "We have found a huge lack of accurate information around security issues and awareness of social media. This website aims to help educate users of social media of the threats, risks and privacy concerns that go with using them."
  • E-government is not a financial cure-all – "Whoever is in charge after 6 May, I expect the drive towards "smarter government" (or whatever catch phrase replaces it) to continue. There are simply no other tools in the box. But whoever is in charge will avidly wish someone had made a bolder start while the going was good."
  • bantApp.com: Bant Diabetes Monitoring App for the iPhone and iPod Touch – Interesting iphone app for diabetes management, via @robertbrook
  • Two models of open innovation – "Based on our recent experience of working on open innovation projects, and also building upon a great paper by Kevin Boudreau and Karim Lakhani, we have concluded that there are two distinct ways of doing open innovation – creating competitive markets or collaborative communities"
  • Let government screw up – "I have the opportunity to speak to groups across government about the benefits, challenges and potential costs of social media. In the face of institutional anxiety, I’ve argued that social media is a positive environment that encourages experimentation. In fact, online users are willing to accept mis-steps and stumbles from government organizati0ns simply because it demonstrates initiative and ambition, if not expertise."
  • Project Spaces: A Format for Surfacing New Projects – home – "The event format I'm calling Project Spaces has emerged from working with various collaborators to facilitate events for communities actively engaged and committed to finding better ways to do things."
  • Can Open Office Escape From Under A Cloud? – "I do see a future for Open Office in the enterprise — one that’s closely tied to integration with collaboration, content management, and business processes and facilitated by the likes of Oracle and IBM."
  • A democratic view of social media behaviours – Interesting action research post from Catherine – plenty to chew on here.
  • Digital exclusion, porn and games – "I wonder if – as with mobile phones – there’s a certain, influential generation that see the technology as being more than just a technology. And instead, a marker for a whole way of life they just haven’t accepted yet."
  • Social media measurement – Great stuff from Stuart Bruce – debunking a few myths and some marketing BS.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Load more posts!