• Twitter-related: 15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends – Twitter listening and trending tools c/o Mashable; Twattering – Banal and insipid tweets get the Speak Your Branes treatment. Hat tip Ross; Governments Experimenting With Twitter – Canadian government Twitter use on the increase – and some useful thoughts (some of which will be going straight into a document I’m drafting) about how gov can use Twitter; What is the Point of Twitter? – a name check I am particularly proud of; The G20 gets as taste of Protest 2.0 this weekend – Much was written about how Twitter was used during the G20 protests but my favourite was this idiot with a megaphone and a mobile phone:

Other stuff:

• How we got here – Ross has listed the sequence of publications which collectively set out the current government strategy on digital engagement. This will come in well handy.
• tvtv.co.uk – everything else is just tv – the online TV guide I’ve been dreaming of and so much more, c/o Mark O’Neill
• 50 swinish ways to annoy web users – a good bit of grumping.
• Teenager paints 60ft phallus on roof of family home – A Google Earth inspired teenage prank.
• Twenty Theses for Government 2.0, Cluetrain Style | Social Media Strategery – I’ve been re-reading this with new perspectives after a month of digital engagement envelope pushing in my new job, some of it fairly guerrilla and some by committee. Having all sorts of thoughts about this sort of thing recently, might blog on it soon.
• People like video – Thanks for this, Dave.

• Working Together – Crime maps, schools comparison engines – it’s all go in the world of digital government. Good to see RSA using Australia’s favourite OSS CMS as the online response channel for this consultation.
• Tweeting for twouble – 12 good men and true …oh and all those Twitter users too. Big oops, and a very real problem for today’s justice system.
• Free wifi in London – Good tips for the laptop Londoner.
• Seven principles for digital engagement (help me please) – I am stealing all of this. It’s gold dust.
• Twitter: the 13 types of tweet to take notice of – why businesses should have a Twitter listening strategy.
• The London Summit: Lord Mandelson on why the London Summit matters – An interview with Theo Paphitis off the telly to answer questions sourced from the public via Yoosk.com. I just may have had something to do with this.
• Six ways to make Web 2.0 work – A useful report from McKinsey, full of gems like: “[bottom-up web 2.0 tools for the enterprise] demand a mind set different from that of earlier IT programs, which were instituted primarily buy edicts from senior managers”. Obvious maybe but haven’t heard it stated before.
• BBC News, Twitter and suits – How BBC news uses Twitter. How other news organisations should.

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.

Edit: and here and here and here and here. I’m uploading photos now and will blog my reflections on the day… eventually. It’s going to be a busy week.