Reflections on a barcamp: turning the conversation into action after ukgc09
Saturday’s second annual government web barcamp was an amazing day for networking, sharing war stories, launching initiatives and swapping notes – all crucial activities for the small (and increasingly close) family of digital innovators in the government web space, and something we must all do more of.
But for all the impassioned talk of what online consultation/data sharing/open source adoption/unblocked access/embedded digital skills and all that good stuff should be like I couldn’t help but wonder where the solutions and action points were. Certainly in the sessions I went to the sense of “us and them” frustration was rife.
So it’s with some relief that I read Steph’s inspiring and on-the-money action plan, which bears repeating. The bits in brackets are my crude summary:
1. Build a proper business case and fight the argument for a strategic approach to digital engagement. (A bit like the FWMC has done in the US and the PoIT is about to do here).
2. Take a big tent approach. (Educate all public servants about the benefits of digital engagement and give them the skills and support to do it).
3. Be more assertive. (Use sharp elbows to get involved early in policy and comms work because that’s where digitally-enabled conversations can have the most impact).
4. Describe the roles and define the skills. (Recognise digital engagement as a specialist skill and describe it so we can improve training and recruitment and get those roles embedded so they’re not just in comms or IT).
5. Recognise that our opportunity isn’t just better engagement, but better civil society. (We’re not just doing interactive stuff with the web because it’s cool – but because the web has fundamentally changed society and we can use that to make government better).
Priorities of my new job permitting, I’m keen to get involved in any activity that helps take this plan forward. It’s vital we make sure that the conversation turns into action and that – come the next time we un-organise a govweb barcamp – we’re not still just talking amongst ourselves.
I sincerely doubt we will be, as Emma and Andrew have said: we have all the ingredients here for a top un-secret formula and things are cooking up nicely.
My UKGC09 day:
My joint session – a Tale of Three(ish) Twitties – went well in spite of the lack of wifi or projector which meant we couldn’t do the whizzy Twitter-powered back channel Q&A we’d hoped to do. But it began with a lightning review of 2008 from Jenny featuring Mars Phoenix, c4 news, breaking the Hudson plane landing, notable celebs and tweets from the Commons benches. Then Neil, Shane, Jasmin and I shared the stories of launching and running our three corporate government Twitter accounts. I re-visited the issue of promotion and etiquette first raised here and the sought group insight on how we measure the value of all this. There was a receptive, engaged bunch in the room and some valuable discussion. If you want me to write up in more detail, just shout.- An un-apologetically technical session about ways to get around or work within security rules when using online collaboration tools like Huddle, Basecamp, Zoho or Google Docs.
- Networking, networking, networking. More tweetups than I can recount.
- Quick-change artist Paul “proposition” Clarke on the Fix My Street pilot in Directgov.
- A session on using OSS. Simon has my thoughts exactly.
Stuff I’m gutted I missed:
I learned the lesson of barcamp scheduling the hard way, missing out on these gems:
- Jenny and Lloyd’s sessions on embedding listening dashboards and a virtual newsroom in MOJ press office.
- Julia on DIFD blogs.
- Steph, Harry and Paul on online consultation (slides here)
- The live launch of innovate.directgov by Paul “proposition” Clarke
- Paul’s usability session
If you’re aware of any write-ups of these, please point me in their direction!
All in all, UKGC09 was thoroughly good value for the cost of a Saturday and if the catalyst effect of last year’s barcamp is anything to go by, we can expect a cracking 2009 of online engagement and innovation in the government space.
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[...] model – so long as a bit of common sense is applied. Overall as Steph points out and Neil Williams builds on, these are exciting times and not just times for talking (and there was a lot of good talking on [...]
[...] Reflections on a barcamp: turning the conversation into action after ukgc09 How aspirations might start to turn into reality for social media. (tags: socialmedia government uk neil.williams ukgc09) [...]
Great write up here on the e-consultation session – http://innovationagent.co.uk/2009/02/04/online-engagement-take-27-join-the-fun/
Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
Looks like you went to all the sessions I was sorry at missing… and vice versa! But between us, we’ve got this government thing covered, dude.
Next year, we should really think about making everyone do a 60 second video summarising their talk. I had grand plans to do some video interviews myself, but never found the time! Plus I was scared at embarrassing myself, after Lloyd’s comment about it being harder than it looked.