digital strategy – Whitehall Webby

Getting the language right

This wonderful world of the web is littered with jargon and buzzphrases. Terms like internet, world wide web, online, new media, digital, virtual, social media, web2.0, semantic web, collaborative web, conversational web etc etc get used – often interchangeably – to the point at which it can all become thoroughly confusing even to those who think they know what they are talking about.

I’m a marketer by background, and I love the challenge of playing with words to try and demystify something. Of course the opposite is what normally happens in that you just end up in creating new jargon to confuse people more.

The other side is to get all ‘expert’ in an attempt to educate people about the true meaning of the terms, but that’s often not much use either (just get a few drinks down me for a pedant’s explanation of the difference between the web and the internet… guaranteed sleep inducer).

None of this confusion helps.

All this is particularly pertinent for me right now. I’m having more and more conversations about the potentially transformative nature of the web, and helping non-web colleagues to identify how the tools and opportunities can help them do their jobs better.

One project is working with my press office. A project they called the ‘New media Working Group’. My immediate response was to blanch at the title. But that is really missing the point (because the actual project is great).

You can gauge a lot about the level of knowledge of a person or a group by their use of terminology.

Knowing which terms have resonance and currency with those you seek to influence or work with is a real boon, rather than demonstrating your own ‘superior’ knowledge.

Whilst it’s tempting to educate others, it’s only worth it where its important. Its equally important not to patronise or appear to be pedantic.

But even talking ‘tech’ can confuse the matter – it’s much better to talk in terms that your audience understands. For me that revolves around problems and finding solutions rather than talking blogs or wikis.

How do we solve a problem like gov2.0?

Had a great evening tonight discussing how government can embrace the opportunities of web2.0 with a bunch of interesting people – including ministers, senior officials, entrepreneurs and IT providers.

Hosted by the ever-genial crew from Ideal Government, the imposition of the Chatham House rules forbids me from going into detail about the discussion.

But the fact that we were even talking about it, and the fact that the group of people around the table all had a pretty sophisticated view on the subject, was to me a major step change. Twelve months ago I doubt we would have even been having the conversation at all.

Ideal Government will be posting a summary of the discussion shortly, and I don’t want to abuse their hospitality by stealing their thunder. So here are just a few thoughts that chimed with me:

A real recognition that innovation doesn’t have to cost a lot but we just need to just try things. I’d add that we also need to ensure that the good stuff that is already going on is identified and surfaced so we can learn better from each other.
A feeling that incumbent IT providers have little to gain from promoting free, open source (market leading) collaborative tools as it threatens their business models. Must admit I hadn’treally given much thought to this before but it certainly feels right.
We need to recognise that government won’t always be best place to deliver innovation around public services or information. We need to be prepared to cede control and create the environment for others to act as intermediaries or have access to our data so they can create value from it. This is crucial, we have enough to do just improving our basic services online and not be distracted by the cool stuff (I’m regularly guilty of this, new betas are sooo seductive…).

Thank you Ideal Government for hosting the dinner. The more conversations people have, the more often, the better.

Things I learnt at the barcamp

So, after lots of planning and stress, the Govweb barcamp took place last Saturday. Just over 80 people – a mix of civil servants, contractors, consultants, freelancers, hackers and critics – gathered at Google’s offices in London to talk government online.

Big thanks are due to Google for hosting us and snacking us up to the gills, ICELE for providing the lunch, Cable and Wireless for the polo shirts, Hudson for buying the after-event drinks, Emma Mulqueeny for the badges and bags, and all the helpers on the day who made sure the event ran smoothly.

It was a great experience for me: catching up with good contacts, finally putting some names to faces, tech demonstrations, interesting conversations, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream sandwiches courtesy of the Google fridge.

Dave Briggs has very helpfully set up a Pageflakes page to aggregate content about the event from a variety of sources including photos, videos, blog posts, forum discussions and tweets. This will no doubt develop over the coming days.

Now its all over, its difficult to know what to take away from it and what will/could happen next. So here are some initial observations:

There was a great deal of goodwill and willingness in the place to work together to improve government’s online stuff. Opportunities to connect, like this event, build relationships and break down mutual mistrust.
There are so many simple and good ideas floating around to improve online communication, tools and transactions. Cool stuff – and we need to find better ways to know about them and make them happen.
We need to find ways to make partnership between those inside and those around government easier – and promote it as as an alternative method to trying to do everything ourselves. We don’t know all the answers individually, but as a collective we can get closer to the ideal solutions.
If we in government want to innovate more, we should also behave more like innovators. The format and style of the barcamp was great and encouraged collaboration and thinking differently. There are other types of gathering and ideas generation techniques that should consider trying – like mini-barcamps, open coffee meets, social media clubs, geek dinners etc. Anything that gets us all out of the day to day work environment is a good thing (probably).
Ther is no shame in being called a geek. Im a geek and proud of it. I like the company of other geeks. There I said it.

Question is, how do now we sustain the momentum generated on the day?

Just over a week to the barcamp…

…and things are beginning to hot up, which is one of the reasons why this blog has been so quiet over the last week or so.

A group of volunteers are frantically trying to tie up all the arrangements – including trying to find a benevolent sponsor to pay for the lunch on the day. If you have a particularly friendly and generous corporate IT provider who’d like to support the event, please do let me know quickly.

Over the last week or so debate has been building up on the Google group about the format of the day and kinds of things people want to lead sessions on, or hear about. If you’re planning on coming to the barcamp and you’ve not visited the group, please join in the conversations and help to influence the day.

Most important: only those who signed up on the barcamp wiki page before we closed registrations are currently down to attend. If you only joined the Facebook group or the Google group then I’m sorry, at the moment you’re not on the list. You can apply to join the reserve list but I cannot at this stage guarantee you’ll get a place

If you ARE on the wiki list, then you need to check the page. A special email account has been set up that you need to send a message to. In return, we’ll check your name against our list and send you a ticket that will get you through the door at Google on the day. If you are on the wiki but you don’t email us by close of play next Wednesday (23rd) then we will give your place to someone on the reserve list. We’ve been forced to do this because we don’t have everyone’s email addresses.

That pretty wraps up this message. Hoping to post over the next few days one of the other reasons why I haven’t been updating this blog much over the last few weeks….

Gov Barcamp is coming together at last

After much running around, fingers crossed, and baited breath, the barcamp is finally starting to look like a proper event. I’ve had quite a few messages recently asking for updates on the organisational details for barcamp, I’m sorry I’ve not been able to confirm things before now.

So, let me tell you that:

The event is going to run on one day only – Saturday 26th January from about 9.15am until 5pm (and maybe afterwards for a drink or two)
Google has kindly agreed to host the event (small company, you may have heard of them… 🙂 ). This is particularly excellent news given many public sector organisations’ involvement with them to improve searchability of their content, use of YouTube to publish video etc. Its a great fit.
To help the many barcamp virgins across government (me included), and based on the areas of interest indicated plus subsequent conversations I and others have had leading up to the event, we are suggesting a structure for the day based on five rough ‘streams’ of interest. These are:

Creating web strategy – government-wide, organisational, channel/initative etc – a vision for future government web
New platforms and technologies – e.g. use of data, semantic web etc
New channels – how to use blogging platforms, YouTube etc, case studies of usage across government
Using social media tools in your organisation – practical stuff around requirements, guidelines, engagement, governance, getting approval
Government vs the private sector – lessons we can share, approaches to collaboration, what is good and bad about our sector etc

These streams are not meant to be prescriptive but designed to give a framework around which you can decide where and how you can contribute to the days’ success.

There are currently around 75-80 participants signed up to the event. With 25 slots in the day, it means that at least three individuals can be involved in the running of each session. Hopefully this reduces the pressure on some of the participants to contribute and will encourage collaboration amongst everyone attending.

If you are planning to attend, and you haven’t yet joined the Google group (thanks Dave) set up for the event, I encourage you to do so now. What you need to do now over the next week is indicate what you plan to contribute to the day and identify others via the Google group who you could share a session with.

The nature of the discussion forum means that we can all peer review each other’s ideas and between all of us we should be able to collaboratively create and shape a schedule for the whole event fairly easily.

The number of people who have already indicated they wish to participate is now quite large (but what a cast!) and we may have to limit entry to the event to those who are actively contributing to the day. So please begin the conversation as soon as possible.

As we get closer to the day, please update the schedule on the barcamp wiki page with your proposed session(s). Ideally we’d like to get that all finalised before Friday 18th January.

If you are a government webby, and still haven’t decided whether to come, hopefully the details above are enough to convince you. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to have a good mix of those working inside the government web sector, as well as all the great people around and outside our work.