The information in this message must be regarded as confidential and is intended for the addressee only unless explicitly stated. If you have received this message in error it must be deleted and the sender notified. The views expressed in this message are personal and not necessarily those of Walsall Council unless explicitly stated. Please be aware that emails sent to or received from Walsall Council may be intercepted and read by the council to ensure compliance with council policies or regulatory obligations, or for the purposes of essential maintenance or support of the email system. You should also be aware that any email may be subject to a request under Data Protection, Freedom of Information or Environmental Information legislation and therefore could be disclosed to third parties.
The Saturday before last Digital Birmingham were involved in putting on Local Gov Camp on its return to Birmingham. Actually, my Gov Camp started on the Friday night when 20 or so ne'er do wells turned up early to have a drink in The Anchor followed by a curry at Manzils in Digbeth. Already, it was invigorating to be part of conversations between such committed people.
Local Gov Camp is is run using the unconference format. Here we don't have any key note speakers, the attendees run their own sessions if they want to and the agenda is decided on the morning, based on people pitching the sessions they want to run.
If all that sounds a little unfocused and unstructured then well, that's because it is a bit. But what this allows is a flexibility and cooperative spirit that makes for a lot more creative and enjoyable experience. In my opinion that is.
I'd expected that helping to organize the event would be a lot more stressful than it turned out. There are a number of reasons for this:-
1. At an unconference you are responsible for a lot less than at a normal one. The attendees are responsible for making the event a success (or not)
2. I knew a lot of the attendees and so was confident that we were going to get plenty of interesting sessions
3. Sammy Williams, our events organiser, was fantastic. She sourced the venue, knocked them down in price more than I ever would have dared try and kept us all in line
There have been a whole heap of people posting about their experiences of the day. A lot of them are being collated on the LocalGovCamp Posterous account, which I heartily recommend taking a look at. It gives a feel for both the breadth of the discussions and the level of enthusiasm that was there on the day.
There are a number of events and activities that I know are coming out of the day. Some friends and colleagues who work in libraries were already planning a LibraryCamp by lunchtime. Digital Birmingham have already done some work with libraries recently, after KindleCamp, and we will be happy to help advise and support the organisers of LibraryCamp.
The next Brewcamp will be in Coventry towards the end of July. This time the organising has been passed over to Kate Sahota, Karen Ramsay-Smith and Sasha Taylor. The sign up for the event will be coming to an Eventbrite page very soon now.
And the same people are joining us for the second HyperWM unconference which we hope to hold in Warwick this autumn. With our established team of Andy Mabbett, Stuart Harrison, Mike Rawlins, Dan Slee and myself, we've got quite a collective going now.
I'm hoping that some of the activities such as Kate Sahota's idea of an extended Transport hack provide us with a project to come out of these events. At the moment I think that most of what we achieve is influence and networking. These are important things to do, and it could be argued that's what traditional conferences exist for, but it would be satisfying to see something tangible to come out of our discussions.
The day before I went to LocalGovCamp in Birmingham last Saturday, I was at the DS6 Digital Storytelling Festival in Aberystwyth, where digital storytelling practitioners from the likes of Digital Storytelling Asia, Patient Voices and StoryWorks spoke about their ways and means of gathering and telling stories – helping create a space where people feel comfortable and confident in sharing their personal stories and enabling them to tell them using very simple tech, either for a small group or the wider world. What really impressed me was that the emphasis was as much on the conversations that draw the stories out as much as the style in which they’re told. Natasha James of Breaking Barriers really hit the nail on the head when she stated:
Digital Storytelling is both a process and a product, with the ideal scenario that both are just as important as one another which is when the digital story manages to make people care about what is said and a connection with the story is made.
Towards the end of the day I attended Joni Ayn’s session ‘Digital storytellers, meet hyperlocalists', which rightly highlighted that people from both camps have much to learn from each other with their fondness for creating spaces where communities can share, talk and tell the stories that emerge from those conversations using DIY tools – ‘the bread and butter of the little hyperlocals’. I heartily agreed and the presentation was followed by a lively discussion on the characteristics of the two movements and how they might be bought closer together.
…the best bit about Lloyd’s adventures are the stories he tells about them, whether at events like LocalGovCamp, his live shows or the blogs and videos he publishes.
Indeed, this is the lesson that public services can learn from folk like Lloyd – that having the ability to tell stories, the platforms on which to do so and the culture where stories are listened to, is really vital for an organisation to be considered healthy.
He’s right – those in local government, hyperlocal land and beyond have plenty to learn from digital storytelling practitioners and vice versa, which got me thinking: wouldn’t it be great to have something where they can all meet, share stories and ways and means of telling them? I thought out loud on twitter (conversation on Storify) and it got a positive response from a few so I thought I’d write a slightly more detailed post on the subject and ask might #StoryCamp be a possible goer? And if so, how does one go about arranging a ‘camp’? JFDI?? :-)
The session I led at LocalGovCamp together, with fellow Barnet resident Paul Evans (who’d pitched for a session that was closely related), explored ways to make policy and data more visual and therefore more accessible. It built on ideas that I’ve been working on with Noel Hatch and others, including Louise Kidney and Ant Clay, who I was delighted to be able to join me in the session.
For me the starting point was a simple question…
If we are asking communities to get more involved in decision making and what happens in their area (à la Big Society), then how can we make public policy more accessible to enable people to get involved? Making things more visual – that is using images instead of, or as well as, words – is one method of achieving this.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ve seen from my own experience of working at Urban Forum, that more visual ways of communicating information are extremely powerful. Some time ago, we took a decision to move to a ‘mostly pictures’ approach to our presentations. The feedback from this has been universally positive. Building on that, we began to explore how we might encourage a more visual approach more widely – leading to a Policy in Pictures ‘competition’ that we held on the DotGovLabs Innovation Hub [as an aside…if you would like an invite to join the innovation hub, get in touch and I’ll gladly send you one]. There was a great deal of interest in this and a variety of interesting approaches that people used – ranging from my own rather limp effort to Ant Clay’s use of a business model canvas.
Noel’s idea of VisualCamp built on this, bringing together designers, policy makers and practitioners to explore how visuals could help public services and civil society better articulate the issues people face. You can see what happened next at the beautifully curated WeDoWhatWeSee website.
The session at LocalGovCamp covered a lot of ground (which was far more familiar to me than some other sessions) and interesting discussion. [nb quick disclaimer…this post is completely useless in accurately describing the discussion we had, it’s simply my ‘takeaway’ from it]. I found the discussion really helped me to crystallise my thinking on some important issues, as well as posing further questions to grapple with…
Data visualisation is very different to policy visualisation – using data presents all sorts of particular issues and challenges, relating to how you collect and manage data, design and communication skills, corporate culture and practice and purpose.
Policy visualisation – that is, presenting policy in a more visual and accessible way – is, I think, simpler to do. It’s about communicating potentially complex information in a friendlier and more inclusive way. It is helpful to bring good quality design skills to the process, but it’s not essential (at least my experience suggests this is the case – given the positive feedback I’ve had, despite being a design novice).
As important as the end product (ie the visualisation) is the deliberative process of exploring the issues and ideas, reflecting different perspectives and ultimately increasing understanding of the issue. This is consistent with the learning from Visualcamp – that bringing together designers, policy makers and practitioners (or ‘users’) and arming them simply with pieces of paper and pens, the process of developing a visualisation led to a rich and open discussion about the policy in question. The end point of that part of the process, was really more of an issues map than a policy visualisation and further work would be needed subsequently to identify appropriate technique to use to and develop the actual visualisation.
I threw in a question that I’ve been asking myself ; how do we get from where we are in terms of data/policy visualisation, to where we might aspire to be? It seems inconceivable that we can expect to change in one great leap – but rather expect change to come in a series of incremental steps. Helen Jeffrey suggested a rather nice idea of visual media surgeries – building on the social media surgery model.
I’ve been thinking about how things have changed over the last 15 years or so with how we use images in documents (like Word). When clip art was first released as part MS Word in the mid-1990s (I know that Apple were on the case some time before that!) I can still remember the excitement of suddenly being able to insert images into documents. Since then it has become ubiquitous – to the point that most IT literate people wouldn’t be seen dead using stock images to be found in the standard clip art libraries. Our aspirations and expectations for using images in this way have greatly increased as a result of the introduction of a fairly basic tool. I wonder whether something similar might be feasible for data visualisation.
There was widespread recognition that the skills required to develop policy and data visualisation are different to those needed for traditional policy development and performance reporting. However these skills are present in different bits of local government (and beyond) and that there is considerable scope to draw in the appropriate people if we see value in the approach and are sufficiently agile to do so. [For an excellent reflection on agile public sector working I highly recommend Catherine Howe’s recent post].
What it all boils down to, for me, is finding creative ways to equip citizens and voluntary and community groups with the information and support they require to have influence over what happens in their area.
If you’ve got this far, you might also be interested in the following:
The only difference between a stumbling block, a barrier and a stepping stone is the way you use them, apparently.
There were a lot of stumbling blocks talked about at localgovcamp in Birmingham. Many such obstacles were were from corporate comms. They were the corporate branded elephant in the room.
Heard the one about the comms team's response to snow? Instand updates via facebook or Twitter? Nope. Book a half page advert in the local paper?
Oh, how we laughed. As a comms person myself it was more a case of nervous laughter.
I believe strongly that there's an argument for having a light touch on the tiller from enabling comms people.
When you put online and offline channels together they can be incredibly powerful. You're delivering a similar message on the platform people want using the language of the platform.
But then again, if you're reading this on Facebook or Twitter you already know this even if you haven't admitted it out loud.
So, what's localgovcamp?
It's an event that saw more than 100 people giving up their free time on a Saturday to help make their corner of local government bloom a little more. It's Glastonbury for local government geeks. There was web people, open data people, comms people, hyperlocal bloggers and even an engineer.
Attending the first event at Fazeley Studios two years ago changed the way I think about my job. I've heard the same said from others too. It's been brilliant seeing the light bulbs going on above people attending their first ever localgovcamp.
Two years ago one of the main frustrations was some IT people who were keeping the social web in lockdown. Many, but not all, think progress ended with the Commodore 64. Of course, it goes without saying that the IT people I work with are all hugely helpful and forward thinking.
That battle to use social media seems to have be getting won. Slowly in places but the it's irreverable. The battle now is with unenlightened comms people and it's a subject I keep returning to.
For people in a PR job it's about waking up. For those not in PR it's about helping wake them up. And yourself and colleagues while you're at it.
So, because I can't write a blog post without a heap of links, here's a heap of links to help those who don't get it wake up...
A heap of links...
Whats the role for local government comms and social media?
Social by Social is a NESTA-produced landmark text that shows how the web can be used for a social impact both by government and individuals. http://www.socialbysocial.com/
How does the social web work in practice?
When a tornado struck Joplin killing 154 people the state support networks were overwhelmed. A website http://joplintornado.info was launched as a place to log missing people and phone numbers. It evolved into a place for info and help. More than 48,000 people 'liked' the Joplin Tornado Info page set up as a http://www.facebook.com/joplintornadoinfo?ref=ts
How can the public sector use social media in an emergency?
Stirling Council used a short video as part of their bag it and bin it campaign But it doesn't have to be broadcast quality. An apprentice gritter driver made this short film of how he helps treat the roads
Thanks to Ben Proctor for the crisis comms links, Corrine Douglas for Stirling Council YouTube.
Thanks Si Whitehouse, Dave Briggs and others for organising localgovcamp.
This touching book review on Amazon [1] cites the Wikiepdia article I wrote at Derby Museum [2]; and the presentation I gave at LocalGovCamp (#lgc30), which included the story of how it came to be written, as part of a GLAMWiki collaboration between Wikipedia and Derby Council's Museum & Art Gallery[3]. [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Rome-Dave-Sudbury/dp/1894965949/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Rome [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/DER Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
All work and no play can make the Talk About Local team a dull lot, so we were very grateful for the chance to have some collective fun, play and stimulating conversation at LocalGovCamp in Birmingham last Saturday. There was a large crowd and it was great to catch up with old friends we’d not seen in the flesh for a while, as well as meet some new ones.
Talk About Local were one of LocalGovCamp’s many sponsors so in the lead-up to the event, we had a little think and chat about what we might be able to do whilst there – with the emphasis very much on the ‘doing’. The conversation quickly got around to the value of those in local government finding and taking an active part in local online conversations – be they on hyperlocal blogs, Facebook profiles/pages/groups, forums or elsewhere. We were trying to think of fun ways of highlighting this when William came up with the idea of a Social Media Safari – helping people hunt (geddit?) for local online spaces and discussions and joining in with them there and then. Karen practically emptied Birmingham Nature Centre’s gift shop of safari animal goodies so we looked the part.
I was reminded of a story illustrating the perils of not participating in local online conversation told to me by Sharon O’Dea at LocalGovCamp 2009, so prepared some slides around The Cautionary Tale of The Wizard with a Cat, His Fans and Their Council. The story ends with a question – how could what turned into a farcical situation for Sutton Council have been handled differently? – which was the basis for a small discussion session early on in the day. I loved the guy (whose name I sadly can’t remember) who surmised it was a Rage Against The Machine Christmas No. 1 moment in that local people were taking back control over something they felt disenfranchised from. Some really interesting points were raised, the main one being council officers’ need to feel confident and enabled to talk to people online the way they are employed to do offline, yet are too often discouraged from doing so and told those forms of communication are reserved for the PR & Communications teams.
I had an interesting conversation with Kate Sahota around this at the Social Media Safari table/menagerie later, who spoke of local authorities’ ‘fear of getting involved at this kind of level’ where communication is ‘there and it’s permanent’ and very quotable, resulting in an inclination to try and avoid the risks this presents rather than manage them.
Despite that, it was a fruitful day with some interesting conversations and questions emerging from the exercise, if not as much ‘doing’ as we might have hoped for. LocalGovCamp was as brilliant as always, with people leaving full of excitement, ideas and future plans such asLibraryCamp that are already starting taking shape. To catch up on thoughts, reflections, photos, videos from from the day go to the LocalGovCamp Posterous site.
Simon Whitehouse’s hunt in Balsall Heath, Birmingham wasn’t quite so fruitful – there seemed to be very little online conversation in or around the area and its key places and groups. We were both quite surprised at this as Balsall Heath has quite a tight, supportive community and the skills are there – Podnosh have delivered several social media surgeries in the area. Despite that, we found very little besides an I Survived B12 group and Heavenly Desserts page on Facebook and a Friends of Moseley Road Baths website campaigning for the future of the Victorian swimming pool. Our post-hunt conversation pondered on why this might be, concluding quite simply that ‘it just hasn’t happened yet’.
Despite that, it was a fruitful day with some interesting conversations and questions emerging from the exercise, if not as much ‘doing’ as we might have hoped for. LocalGovCamp was as brilliant as always, with people leaving full of excitement, ideas and future plans such as LibraryCamp that are already starting taking shape.
If all that sounds a little unfocused and unstructured then well, that's because it is a bit. But what this allows is a flexibility and cooperative spirit that makes for a lot more creative and enjoyable experience. In my opinion that is.
