local government

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.

Learning Pool in Devon

Exeter bus

Right folks, here’s what is happening on Thursday.

At 11am a networking meeting will kick off at Buckerell Lodge in Exeter. You’ll get to listen to me talk about my latest obsessions in social media and Mary will natter about Learning Pool developments. Don’t worry if you haven’t bagged a place yet – a couple of people have dropped out, so just get in touch if you fancy coming along – it’ll be ace.

After that, we will be having some lunch, to which everyone is invited. Everything should be finished up by 2ish.

See, local gov *can* do Facebook

One of the highlights of last Wednesday’s LGComms event was hearing about Coventry City Council‘s Facebook page.

Coventry on Facebook

If you click to see the larger image, you’ll notice that the page has 11,321 fans (as at the time of writing).

11,321!

Remarkable stuff. As I wrote, quite a while ago now, it’s tricky to use Facebook when you are the sort of organisation nobody loves to love. Who wants to be a fan of their local authority? No-one I know.

How did Ally Hook and colleagues manage this feat? Pretty simple. It’s not the Council’s FB page…it’s the city’s. Tapping into civic pride is a great way of getting people to engage. Using your Facebook page to provide up to date information on weather related issues during snowpocalypse probably helps too.

In other words:

  • be relevant: don’t try and get people to want to join a weird club for the council, tap into what people want to belong to
  • be useful: use the space in a way that actually benefits people, rather than as just another comms channel

Facebook will continue to be incredibly useful for those wishing to engage with citizens. It’s where the people are, and the numbers keep growing. Just because it has been around for a while shouldn’t mean us social media geeks look down on it. Is it time you took another look at Facebook?

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