Flickr photo credit: Paul Clarke
Blimey.
The third annual unconference, or GovCamp, for government types went pretty well. Two main factors, marvellous and generous hosting by Google, and a terrific level of participation from pretty much everyone who attended. What’s more, nearly everyone stayed til the end!
Massive thanks to the other sponsors, including Huddle, Opportunity Links, Learning Pool, Boilerhouse, IDeA, Polywonk, Timetric, the Dextrous Web and probably others.
Huge props too to Tim Davies and Lloyd Davis for organising the agenda setting bit of the day – it really helped everything go smoothly.
Highlights for me were the sessions of getting internal communication and collaboration right – which resulted in the prospect of a spinoff event dedicated to these issues – and a session on discussing innovation in public services.
As always, how do we follow up on all this goodwill and enthusiasm? Let’s try by:
- sticking around the online community set up mainly for the event, but which has pretty much everyone signed up to it.
- Don’t forget that there is also the Teacamps – afternoon meetups in central london for government types. The next one is on the 3rd February in the cafe at the top of the House of Fraser on Victoria Street.
- A simple wiki is available for people to add content from the sessions they ran and attended, so those that missed them (or indeed the whole event) can still find out what went on
- Finally – the growing movement of ‘camps in and around government just goes to show that organising events that are useful, interesting and fun doesn’t need to be expensive or difficult. There’s nothing at all stopping you from organising your own, and there are plenty of people willing to help.
There’s lots of coverage online already, and will be more, I’m sure. I’ll keep the following list as up to date as I can:
- The event tumblog (thanks to BIS’s Al Reid for getting this going)
- Lots of photos on Flickr, including some lovely stuff from Paul Clarke
- Steph blogs about his session on the sustainability of digital engagement
- Neil got his notes up quicker than anyone, I think
- Kevin Campbell-Wright: Three Cs – Community, Crisis, Communications – My roundup of UKGovCamp10
- Sharon O’Dea is blogging loads of stuff. So far: a general post, and one about the session on web professionals
- Sarah Lay summarised the whole day rather nicely
- Mark Watson posted a very thorough overview of the day
- Paul Clarke’s post about his Hardwired State innovation process is here
- Anthony Zacharzewski on making the political sell
- Clare White is wonderfully comprehensive
- Graham Lally tells us about the sessions he attended
- Michele Ide-Smith blogs about the day, including the slides from her session on engagement with local communities
- Shane Dillon on Google Wave
- Peter Olding’s blog of the day…
- Robin Grant’s write up
David Wilcox grabbed Jeremy Gould and I before we left. It was Jeremy who kicked off this whole thing two years ago, and it’s been a privilege – as well as a pain in the arse – to have picked things up this year. Had Jeremy not stuck his neck out back then, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Anyway, enough brown nosing, here’s David’s video:
Photos! Well done to Paul Clarke for persevering with unreasonable Google security and getting to a compromise.
I’ve commented (ok, well, ranted) on the session on web professionals that we need more passion and better representation, rather than professionalisation, and I’d be interested in your view on it, as someone who has seen council webmasters from the other side of the councillor-officer divide.
Nice one Dave. It was great. The best yet (you don’t know how much that last bit stuck in my throat….
Thanks to Sharon O’Dea for raffling the much coveted & admired epicvisionary domain name. Learning Pool is delighted to be the winner of the raffle and a bit sheepish too – it wasn’t Dave’s raffle ticket that won but Maeve’s – honest guv!
In the spirit of true collaboration I’ve asked Sarah Lay to co-ordinate ideas for a collaborative learning project that the original epic visionary gang can work on with Learning Pool over the next 12 months. Sarah & I will publish the idea once it’s more fully formed & hopefully others will join us to work on it.
Just posted: The tough issues of user involvement – videos from Saturday, with analysis of the issues people raised on “how do you involve users in the design and delivery of digital public services”.
Brilliant stuff. I’m relatively new to all of this, but have enjoyed following it via #ukgc10 tag on twitter etc.
I’ve written some brief thoughts on David’s post above here, and would really appreciate any thoughts / responses.