BarcampUKGovweb – Page 2 – Whitehall Webby

More post-barcamp thoughts

At a few weeks distance, and after several caffeine fuelled conversations, the real benefits of the recent barcamp are becoming clearer to me.

First, it was really great that such a wide group of people came together for the day. That in itself was a good thing. Somebody said to me that evening that it would have taken them a year to meet all the people that they had wanted to meet if the event hadn’t taken place. So now we all know each other just a little better and that is starting to generate value of its own.

Second, there were some great conversations on the day, and subsequently, about the potential for collaborating between us inside government, and those round and about. Some great ideas, small on their own but with the potential to deliver real improvements to the way government transacts online, have been mooted – like having a consistent approach to publishing information about consultations.

These two things in themselves are fantastic outcomes – relationship building and idea generation / sharing.

But its equally important that we can somehow sustain and ramp up the momentum created by all this. There is still a great deal to do.

We’ve already had one afternoon coffee meet up (last Thursday) which in itself was a great event. Around 20 people turned up just to chat, chew the cud, bounce ideas off each others etc. I think its worth continuing these opportunities to catch-up and create other kinds of fora. Equally there is a rich social network of different types of events in the wider internet community in London (sorry if this sounds a little London-centric but that’s where I’m based). Encouraging government web people to participate in those events would plug us in to what else is happening in our area of specialism. Nobody knows everything and in this game things change so quickly, so its important to meet other people with different experiences and perspectives.

But many (most?) people working inside government on online stuff didn’t know about the barcamp as much as we tried to get the word around. So we need to get the word around that these kind of networking / sharing opportunities exist and encourage them to come along.

But we’ve all got day jobs and bills to pay so lets be realistic about what we can create and, most importantly, sustain as a small but hopefully growing group of people that want to improve the way we do things.

With all that in mind, I reckon we should try to make the afternoon coffee meet-up a more regular occurrence (but we are talking about government online after all so perhaps it should be afternoon tea? 🙂 ) . We were lucky with the venue last time, CafeZest in House of Fraser along Victoria Street in that it was reasonably quiet and it has free wifi. So unless anyone can think of a better venue, how about every first and third Thursday of the month from 2 til 4?

Anyone can come – civil servants, contractors, consultants, freelancers etc. Basically if you’ve got an interest in improving government online then pop in. Think of it as a drop in centre, you don’t need to come along for the whole time, or indeed every time. But if you want to catch up or try and find someone to help you with a problem then pop in.

I’ll be there next Thursday 21st Feb, hope to meet you there. It would be useful (but not essential) if you are thinking of coming if you could add your name to the wiki page thats been set up, and let us know in advance if there is anything taxing you or that you want to share. That way somebody out there who can help you might make the effort to turn up too.

Why I’ve been a bit of a twit(terer) recently

One of the reasons I’ve been quieter than usual here (apart from organising, and then getting over, the barcamp) is my reappraisal of Twitter.

Twitter, for the initiated, is a micro-blogging tool that allows you to send short messages, about the length of an SMS. These messages are almost immediately received by others who subscribe to your updates. You, in turn, can follow others’ updates an instantly connected community.

So what’s so good about that? After all, on first glance it just looks like the status update tool in Facebook. When it first launched a year or so ago it didn’t seem to have much to it.

When Facebook added status updates to user profiles and the ability to update via mobile, it seemed to me like Twitter was becoming just a little bit superfluous.

Now though things are different. Facebook seems to me to be much quieter than before and most of my interaction there is via private messaging rather than status updates or writing on pe and public messaging. And Twitter is proving to be much more than just letting people knowing what you are doing at a particular time.

Its beauty is its simplicity. Twitter’s proposition is that you have just 140 characters to answer the question. ‘What are you doing?’. So far, so Facebook. But if you observe tweets from other users, you notice a marked difference to Facebook updates. What you are doing doesn’t just mean your current status, but also what you might be thinking, planning, debating, or questioning.

That’s where its value starts to shine through – quick updates, testing ideas, advising friends and colleagues what’s happening.

I’m increasingly advising people that blogging is hard work and labour intensive as a discipline. it needs careful thought, and commitment. Because of this its generally not instantaneous.

Twitter on the other hand is immediate – a short message delivered and received either via a webpage, an rss feed, an SMS on a phone, blackberry, iphone, instant messenger… Hell, you can even update your Facebook status using Twitter

I’ve tried various ways of using Twitter. At the moment I recommend the Twitbin plug-in for Firefox, though I’m tiring of it because its not comprehensive enough.

Bloggers I have followed for a long time, like Jeremiah Owyang and Steve Rubel, make great use of Twitter, almost to the detriment of their blog posting in terms of frequency and depth. With Twitter, they can throw out an idea and get a very fast response from their readership.

So, what does this mean for the public sector. How could we make use of tools like Twitter? Well, the key is in its convenience. As I said above, I’m increasingly advising people not to blog because of the time and effort commitment. Twitter gets around that problem by lowering those barriers. That in itself is a bonus.

But Jenny Brown put the case for Twitter much better than I ever could in her presentation at the Barcamp. Its well worth a view.

POSTSCRIPT: Since I wrote a rough version of this piece a few weeks ago (thus proving my point above that blogging can have a huge lag from draft to publish) I’ve noticed a raft of articles around the subjects of ‘why twitter is still relevant’ or ‘how business can use twitter’. Which proves one thing, when people are talking about it, it can’t all be hot air.

How appropriate or helpful are anonymous comments?

Amongst other things recently, I’ve been involved in developing some moderation guidelines for a project. A vexing issue is what do with anonymous comments in an online conversation. When are they appropriate and how do we handle them in the context of public sector debate?

I don’t know the answer. Clearly there are online communities where anonymity is one of the central planks they are built on. But what about debates where the other participants are identified? Is it appropriate for unknown individuals to join in?

My personal feeling is I prefer people to identify themselves, at least to the moderator, to establish their genuineness. Otherwise I wonder why they won’t declare themselves – are they agitators? Do they want cause trouble? What is their agenda?

I was thinking about this last week when I came across a new blog by a civil servant who chooses not declare their identity. Its entertaining and a pretty accurate description of life inside a Whitehall department. But two problems come to mind:

It will be too easy to say something inappropriate on the basis that no one knows who you are, and
If the blog gains traction you can bet your bottom dollar that people will do their best to work out who it is – and eventually they will, causing problems for the author.

Most of the good corporate blogging policies that exist are pretty flexible and forgiving, provided the author doesn’t contravene rules around inappropriate comments about the company or other people. ‘Inappropriate’ of course is interpreted differently by different organisations, and I’m not suggesting that the civil service would be the most liberal.

But if you identify yourself as working in a particular place, but don’t reveal your own identity, the clock is probably ticking. Or am I just being too cautious?

I’ve got an unmoderated comment sitting to be approved for my blog about the recent barcamp at the moment. It raises some good points and is a useful part of the debate. Its not controversial but constructively critical.

But for some reason the commenter has chosen to anonymise their response. Can’t for the life of me think why, unless they are embarrased to say what they’re saying in public. Don’t know what to do with it. Will chew it over. My instinct is, no anonymous comments, but does that unintentionally censor the debate? After all, stuff written here is hardly life or death.

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.