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localgovcamp — 2 Comments
21
Jul 09

LocalGovCamp is coming to Cheltenham!

Following the success of Dave Brigg‘s LocalGovCamp in Birmingham, it’s great to see other LocalGovCamps springing up in other parts of the country, starting with Bristol, Lincoln and most excitingly for me (being lazy) in Cheltenham.

Jon Hyde is organising a LocalGovCamp focusing on project and programme management, which I think will be a really interesting progression from the original LocalGovCamp. He’s set up a ning group where you can find out more and get involved.

I’m hoping to find out more about how agile techniques can be applied to project management. But then again, being an unconference I could end up doing something else completely, which is actually the best thing about unconferences (in my humble opinion. which is probably not that humble)

I’m also looking forward to meeting up with some great people and hearing about all the great stuff they’re doing (and stealing all their ideas. to pass off as my own obviously)

And (inspired by FAILCamp, which I’m really looking forward to) I hope there’ll be an opportunity to talk about how not to do it and learn from some examples of project and programme management FAILs (I think I may have a few examples I’ll be able to share. or quite a lot)

So well done to Jon for picking up the LocalCampGov gauntlet  - see you there!

localgovcamp — 2 Comments
28
Jun 09

This one time, at LocalGovCamp…

So it looks like I’m even later to the party than I thought, what with Charles Arthur declaring that blogging is dying. Ok, so that wasn’t exactly what he was saying, but it sounds nicely dramatic so I’ll go with it

Anyway, now I’ve started I’d better keep it up, so I wanted to reflect a bit on last Saturday’s LocalGovCamp. This was my first unconference and also the first social media event I’ve been to in person.

LocalGovCamp logo

I’ve followed a fair few online but it’s definitely a whole lot easier to follow what’s going on when you’re in the room! And it was great to finally meet some of the people I only know through twitter or blogs (though my stupid shyness prevented me from meeting many others – sorry if you were there and I didn’t introduce myself)

But hang about – I don’t work in local government – so why was I there? Well I’m a huge believer in stealing sharing great ideas & ‘good practice’ from all over the place – local, regional & central government, & the voluntary, community & private sectors.

The day had a big impact on me – I’ve NEVER attended another conference where there was so much enthusiasm, energy and sheer desire to do things from all the people there – people giving up a major share of their weekend too. Not your average ‘it’s a day out of the office jolly’

I only caught a few of the day’s sessions so it’s great that the discussions are continuing online (Dan Harris has set up the Localgovcamp forum to keep the conversations going & Dave Briggs has pulled links to some of the activity together on the LocalGovCamp site).

Lots of people have carpe diem’d (I know that’s an appalling abuse of latin – apologies to any classicists out there) in true JFDI style & are building apps, setting up social media cafes, . I’m going to start with a few smaller steps:

  • start blogging (ok, that’s a cheat because that one’s already been covered) and start contributing more to online conversations
  • try (inspired by Ingrid Koehler‘s session on councillors & soc med) to persuade my local councillor of the potential benefits of using social media to engage with the local community (this is proving more difficult than I thought, considering we live together, but I can be persistent. or a nag, depending on your point of view. but I will win)
  • find the time to finish turning my CIPR diploma research into an online engagement strategy & guidance for my organisation (because they need it and I want to do it)
  • start using the apps I’ve installed on my iPhone to start capturing some audio/visual stuff and sharing it (once I’ve figured what the hell some of them are. I only downloaded some of them so I could have a little rainbow of apps across the screen. yes, I am that shallow)

I know that’s a short list, but it’s just a start  - I will do more. Because now I’ve re-discovered my enthusiasm for all this social media stuff. So big, big thanks to Dave Briggs and everyone else involved in organising the day, and to everyone who attended and made it a great experience

Oh, and I have to credit Justin Griggs for the American Pie inspired title because I totally stole it from him

localgovcamp — 11 Comments
24
Jun 09

Late to the party

So, I’ve finally started blogging

There’s already a gazillion blogs out there, and plenty of them are better informed, more articulate and far more widely read than my blog ever will be.

So why am I doing it?

  1. because it’s probably about time I did – I’ve been wittering on about the value of online engagement and social media and boring everyone around me for a while now
  2. because I have too many thoughts in my head, which go round and round and round and go nowhere, or I have a flash of inspiration which I then forget, or I…uh, I forget
  3. because I pledged to do it by the end of this week after Saturday’s LocalGovCamp, so I better had, otherwise I’ll feel like I’ve let down the all the inspiring, committed and downright brilliant people I met there
  4. and a load of other reasons that were floating around in my head but which I’ve now forgotten (see reason No.2)

So here I am, late to the party as always (in my head I like to think ‘fashionably late’), but I figure why not, no-one’s going to read this thing anyway

Oh, one last thing – I know it looks boring at the moment (again, in my self-delusional head I’m thinking ‘cool and minimal’), but I have plans!

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