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 [...]
No jobs for senior Whitehall webbies?
So Jeremy Gould is leaving.
I’m personally gutted: Jeremy’s been something of an unofficial mentor for me lately and his faith in me has been one of the contributing factors to my starting blogging and stepping up a gear, not to mention a civil service grade, in the government web sphere.
And he’s been a pioneer. It’s [...]
Don’t cross the streams
Spengler: There’s something very important I forgot to tell you.
Venkman: What?
Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.
Venkman: Why?
Spengler: It would be bad.
My wife is a writer. A blog that she reads regularly, Scriptuality, has come to an end. It was written by Paul Campbell, a man trying to make it in TV scriptwriting. [...]
Love or hate the Communities and Local Government website?
We want to know either way via our survey, launched today.
It’s just over a year since my e-comms team (incidentally, the best team of webbies in Whitehall*) and I relaunched the Communities and Local Government website.
We applied the principles of user-centred design back then, and we’re checking what the users think again now. It’s all [...]
How to be an interesting civil service blogger (and not get fired)
Starting up your own personal blog is dead easy. Unless you’re a civil servant and want to talk about your work.
If you are, then you face this choice: play it safe and say nothing interesting ever, or do some homework to learn where the boundaries lie. As ‘Mr Newest Blogging Civil Servant UK’, I’ve been [...]
Putting my mouth where my money is
So here’s wordpress blog #3,714,201, which makes me extremely late to this party and probably a bit unwelcome. But I did briefly drop in earlier (c. 4 years ago), and have not come back empty-handed. I am back because I want to…
Put my mouth where my money is. A big part of my day job [...]
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. 
