Gadzooks! I missed my birthday :-)
As I’m going through one of my (reasonably regular) “neglecting the blog” phases at the moment I failed to recognise that somehow Whitehall Webby has made it to the ripe old age of one.
I started writing here on 29 April 2007, when I was helping the Cabinet Office to produce a report on government communicators’ use of social media. It was an experiment to demonstrate the opportunities of civil servants blogging (jury’s still out on that one I think…)
Since then I’ve published 91 pieces on the site, not bad considering I find it all so difficult, and had 336 comments (some of which, admittedly, are mine… ).
The most popular post over the last year has been the ‘about me‘ page, with over 1,100 views. However the posts I wrote on the civil serf affair got the most interest at the time (as most other government web related blogs experienced).
Over the last twelve months I’ve tried to to publicise examples of good government use of web, particularly innovative stuff. This includes the launch of the Ministry of Justice website, the Wales Office wordpress site, the Foreign Office’s social media big-bang, and more recently the excellent experimentation coming out of Number 10.
A common theme throughout my musings has been the role of webbies in government, and how we can organise ourselves into a group of experts who are recognised as such in Whitehall.
This thinking led to what has been my highlight of the last year – setting up the UKGovWeb Barcamp and bringing together civil servants, consultants, freelancers and others with the intention of encouraging the building of a community of committed people around government online.
So far thats bearing fruit. Many of us meet regularly at “teacamps” and colleagues in several departments are beginning to create self-organised groups in their organisations with the intention of working together to offer networking and training opportunities.
So, the future looks bright, and this blog has actually made it through a whote year – something I often thought wouldn’t happen.
End of term report completed, lets hope there’s another one next year.
Wishing you the happiest of birthdays, long may the intermittent blogging continue! We haven’t got a hope now the sun is out do we?
Congratulations! Between the blog and the UKBarcamp (and presumably other work if you get time for it
) I am sure you are having a real impact. Nice to see! Paul
PS Emma – don’t worry the sun will not be out for long
The sun is just yet another in a long line of distractions, working being another…..
Working? Whassat then?
Happy birthday. If you could only find a way to measure your conversational presence across other spaces, you could add that to your achievements. That’s where you’ve really made a mark, I’d say.
Congratulations, Jeremy, especially noteworthy considering it takes much more time to push social media in a public service context – and that takes away time to actually participate in social media.
Hmm Colin, not social media, more like Sisyphus media really.
Congrats. Not a small undertaking to produce a quality blog like this.
Ross, thanks for stopping by. You’ve been too quiet recently!