Has it really been two weeks since I last posted here? Well, I’ve been busy, doing stuff. I promise.
Here’s a quick roundup of some of the stuff I would normally have been writing about here during the whirlwind of the last fourteen days…
DIUS and BERR are no more, and will now be called BIS. BIS already has a corporate website set up, within days of the creation of the department, all thanks to WordPress. Steph explains how. Neil Williams also played a big part as the other half of the BIS digital dream team
A bit of work I have been doing with Neil at what was BERR and now BIS has been involved with the Digital Britain report, and some of the online engagement around the development of that. This included the live blogging at the Digital Britain Summit a little while ago, and now incorporates a whole host of online stuff to do with the launch of the report next week, as I wrote up on the DB blog.
Following the fun of the PSFBuzz event in Manchester, another one is now planned in Newcastle in July. Once again, it has a stella array of speakers, and as no one else has volunteered, I’ll be chairing again. All the details are on the PSF events page.
More PSF news comes in the form of the PSFBuzz Government Web 2.0 Awards, a gloriously bonkers idea to reward the best in interactive government web stuff at a ceremony in December this year. Sounds like it will be a lot of fun, not least because I’ll be among the judges!
Very sad news that Tom Watson has resigned from his position as Minister for (amongst other things) Digital Engagement. He pushed this agenda much further than any of his predecessors, perhaps because he was the first to truly understand the brief, and what was required. Am sure this will not be the last we hear from him, though, and I’m excited to find out what he will be doing next.
The fact that Sir Tim Berners-Lee is helping out on ‘public information delivery’ has got to be a good thing, though.
LocalGovCamp is now exactly a week away and to say that I am feeling excited about it is something of an understatement. We have a full house of delegates, a load of interesting ideas for sessions and now a gang of people are organising social events for the Friday and Saturday night. Thanks, guys.
Even more exciting is that fact that Google have offered to support the event, and will hopefully be sending some of their guys along to help out with some of the sessions which involve their stuff.
Finally, if you are interested in how press offices can incorporate social web stuff into what they do, Emma’s post is essential reading.
