At the end of the day (#ukgc11)

So, a girl walks into the Microsoft building, right and....

UKGovCamp is still rolling on, somewhere in a pub near Victoria. I am on a train home to Lancashire, with a head full of thoughts, hopes, fears and smiles. As ever, I am just one voice. I will try and link to everyone elses posts once they start appearing tomorrow.

So, as per the last post, I had great expectations of this event but low expectations of myself. How did it go? Well, I suppose the measure of a day, for me, is how much time I spend on Twitter and how much time I spend actually talking to people and interacting. I have posted few tweets today. It wasn't for a lack of content, only that I was too busy having amazing conversation with amazing people. There is nothing lyrical here, only facts, but the facts will speak volumes, I think.

Firstly, thanks to someone who shall remain nameless rescueing a slightly nervous Lou (I knew no one out of the 200 people or so there today - well no one in the 'have actually met them' category - but we'll come to that later) I ended up having coffee this morning and meeting Chris Chant. I liked. Warmth in people is either there or it isn't and so is grace and politeness and I must confess to looking forward with some hope to what comes out of DirectGov next. Big big big task. I hope there is some fun to be had, as well as avalanches of emails.

And so it was that I walked into an unconference for the first time after attending two previously completely calm and already having had conversations about service redesigns and flowcharting geek identification arguments. Always a fantastic start to the day.  The Microsoft building was nothing like I envisioned and throughout the day others compared the surroundings to the two previous camps homes, Google and the Ministry of Justice. I get the feeling that who comes out on top in terms of hospitality is not who you think it would be. And no, I wasn't checked for an iPhone at the door.

One of the first people I met was @pubstrat, Stefan Czerniawski, who may be quietly spoken but should not be underestimated for quantities of fearsome intellect. Him and @curiousc, Catherine Howe, are quite some team when they get going - but again, later.

Introductions were concise, swift, decidedly lacking in ego and read like a who's who of central and local government sparky people. It reflected excellently a bunch of people entirely secure in themselves, who were simply there to learn, absorb, network, explore and question. In other words, I kind of figured at that point I was in good comapny, relaxed a bit, squee'd at Dan Slee who I didn't realise I was sitting next to and tried frantically to make a note of the faces of all the people I wanted to talk to. A lack of Twitter names on badges did make things a bit more challenging, but you know it wasn't the problem I thought it would be and as a result, people in this post are referred to by both Twitter names and real names and I think that can only be a good thing.


What I wasn't expecting was the need to pitch sessions. So I chickened out. Don't judge me. The presentation I was going to give will get uploaded at some point once I've run it past the powers that be (they're named in it, it's only fair).

The first sessions was Reworking the Public Sector, based on a book called Rework. I missed the beginning of the session because of bouncing madly at @shirleyayres - but I got a lot out of it nevertheless.

• Never assume IT want to block everything - there are good reasons
• Don't ask for the solution (Huddle, for example), explain properly the thing you want to do and the business case for wanting to do it (collaborative working across orgs/sectors)
• Pick your fights, don't pick a fight. There's a big difference. Concede defeat (and do it gracefully, I would add to this)
• Working inside government organisations requires you to be a intrapeneur not a entrepreneur
• @publicsectorpm aka Jon facilitates gently and with grace and ensures everyones voice can be heard
• @ingridk aka Ingrid Koehler has a really rather lovely way of putting things

Second session. Now. The mistake I've made at previous unconferences was to go at things at 110mph and emerge at the other end exhausted and bleary eyed, having learnt nothing because nothing had sunk in. I was determined not to make the same mistake again. So I stepped out for some more coffee, some contemplative cigarettes and some fresh air.

Lunch and #lgovsm hacking - it's not working, or rather it is working, but the sheer amount of work attached to it is something I am struggling with. Conversations were had with @carlhaggerty and @808kate, some mentions of ether pad were made, maybe hosting it on the Guardian Local Gov Network, but we concluded there weren't enough people involved in the conversation and Kate and Carl went off to post a session. Somehow this concluded with us crashing Ingrid's session on blogging - and I can honestly say I have no idea how that happened and in retrospect feel terribly rude for not actually taking control of the situation at that point but I'll know better for next time. Ken Eastwood and @kevupnorth aka Kev Campbell-Wright appeared at some point and were hugged, as were @scrumph aka Sebastian Crump and @pigsonthewing aka Andy Mabbett. Who also were duly hugged. Beards were admired, happiness shared, and a growing sense of finding kindred spirits grew and grew. I love geeks. Even people who aren't trad geeks, even people who don't self identify as geeks. Totally happy geek.

People wondered off. I had a moment of realisation that none of this was about friendships to be built and only about business transactions. Then I sat and talked at @robandale, Rob Dale, who works for the Local Government Information Unit and I the tone changed again, as did my own comfort with the subject matter. Which is absolutely not the way around which it should be, and which is something I need to sit down and have a long old think about, because I think we were so absolutely on the same page, though I could be wrong. If I'm right, teamwork in the future, however it may look, is going to be a very fun thing indeed. It also blew out of the water any preconceptions of how people who work for think tanks are. Yes, yes, yes. Lets move on.

I intended to go to the first Agile session on implementing it in an IT arena. I got accosted by the mobile brownie procurement module which was @paul_clarke who proceeded to take pictures which I hope, so very much hope, might be of me. The whole experience was serene, and it was lovely to see the world through someone elses eyes and understand that knowing beauty can be found in the strangest of places - in reflections, in mirrors, in light and in dark./ To add the icing on what was turning into a rather fabulous cupcake, @Dr_Black aka the infamous Sue Black walked through the door. I say infamous because quite frankly she is. If you know anything about Bletchley Park or the British Computing Society, then you know who she is and if you don't you damn well should. I'm stopping there, gushing doesn't become one. (She utterly rocks, just so you know). Then I bumped into @carrybish aka Carrie Bishop and well. I am afraid I sort of embarrassed myself somewhat by squeeing at her about potholes. Yes. You read that right. Sometimes I despair at myself. She was graceful and also didn't laugh at me, and that sums Carrie up just fine - and in speaking to her I found something else - another piece of the jigsaw.

Onwards and finally into another session - Agile applied to general central/local government scenarios. Stefan and Catherine are wonderful foils to each other, complimentary in both style, speech, expressions and their ability one, to express the problem and dissect it and the other, to procure and summarise solutions. It worked so well and was almost a serene experience in that the ease with which difficult concepts were dealt with and almost made to seem easy was deceptive - because we are not talking about easy, we are talking about challenging, work method changing, entire ethos of large organisations modifying approaches. Exciting. Really exciting. And that was the point where I realised I had stopped trying to prove anything to anyone and simply let it go. A moment of light. Found.

Again onwards, this time to Ingrid's blogging session which I enjoyed immensely and was shocked to find I was in the same room as Jack of Kent. Infamy, infamy, etc, etc. But wonderful points made, @davenbriggs aka Dave Briggs said something which wasn't organisational in nature within my hearing and simply enforced my already high regard for the bloke (yes, but it's...complicated and we both know it is but it's okay nevertheless). My favourite message from the session was quality aggregating of blogs and also more info on what the khub will and wont be capable of doing as well as the repeated message, and quite rightly, that the Communities of Practice website is a massively under used resource.

I'll tackle #lgovsm in another post because it needs it and because it wont be positive. And this one is for so much positive.

On to the closing session where it became apparent that large swathes of people had snuck off without saying goodbye (understandable, long day) and then to the pub in which I finally caught up properly with both Shirley and Helen Jeffrey aka @imhelenj - both of whom are an inspiration, and both of whom helped put yet more jigsaw pieces into the right place on the board. More cliffs, and more articulation of something I know to be true, know will definitely happen - and meeting @jacatell aka James Cattell simply slotted a corner piece in - in that we are thinking the same thoughts and along the same lines and yet we're both hesitating and for very similar reasons. @jonfoster also froze with us, and it was a pleasure to meet someone I'm not sure I've ever tweeted with but who spoke gently and with intelligence. It was enlightening and heartening if not a little chilly!

Also in the midst of this, I finally met two awesome people who I've wanted to meet for ages - Ann Kempster and Sarah Baskerville. Stars. Utter stars. I'm not saying anything else, it's been said before - but there was a reason Sarah got a very big round of applause this morning. I hope next time I'm in London they will do me the honour of drinking with me - because even in the brief time I spent with them it was obvious their company should be sought.

And then there's Puffles. Oh dear. Is this blog the place for a Dragon Fairy? Perhaps not. Only know that concealed behind the silliness is someone I adore already but barely know and that civil service talent spotting in the future should not, and hopefully will not, look like how you think it will look. I salute and admire and am honoured. Gushing over. But seriously - awesome.

So, here I am, rattling home. Questioning what that word means. Questioning my place, and my inspirations, conversations I enjoyed so very much and want to continue, disappearing posts and disappearing funding, questioning what I can contribute and which conversations I should be involved in and which not. But I found two things today, two sentiments written across an almost completed jigsaw puzzle.

Confidence.

I have nothing to prove, only aspirations to realise.

With thanks to @lesteph and @davebriggs for convening a fantastic collection of people and creating a box within which to enquire, inspire, aspire and acquire.

Resources

A collection of all web items tagged #ukgc11 - Buzz, Lesteph
Lessons learnt implementing Agile in local government - Slideshare, Michele Ide-Smith
UK Gov Camp 2011 - Flickr, Paul Clarke
Transcript of the #ukgc11 tag on Twitter - What the Hashtag, Carl Haggerty
Storytime at UK Gov Camp - Blog, @likeaword aka Ben Proctor

Take a deep breath (part iii)

Taking the stabilisers off. Us public sector kids don't tend to spend much time 'facilitating' sessions. I've never actually attended a workshop either. So, perhaps it wasn't surprising that the digital inclusion session I suddenly realised I was facilitating on Thursday night wasn't quite the success it would have been had Nat been running it.

However.

We all got there eventually, thanks to Nat and a lovely chap from Birmingham. It's a difficult subject, because everyone agrees inclusion is important, but selling that when there's no longer a legal requirement to 'include' anyone in the conversation is a little tough. I don't think a conclusion was agreed because we over ran, partly due to my ineptness and partly due to no one knowing where the room was and people arriving 10 minutes after start as a result. Okay, okay, my appalling facilitation was mostly to blame and I am really sorry. I let important people down, the people we're not including.

On a personal level, I managed to speak in front of people I don't know without my voice disintegrating into that horrible breathy awfulness that usually happens when I speak formally in front of people. But it feels like a personal victory at the expense of lots of other peoples time and I am mortified about that.

Anyway. A public failure but Nat and the fab chap from Birmingham sat and gave their time and explained and it was taken on board and I watched how others did it throughout the day and I understood. Step back. I was the wrong person to facilitate that session because I care too much. That doesn't mean caring too much is bad, it means I was the wrong person to facilitate that session. Lesson learned.

Onwards to the second session. Open data. Frustrating. Enormously frustrating. Central government has issued a directive ironically called Inspire which contains its own definitions of the metadata which must be attached to that. The open data movement doesn't undermine this, it supercedes it. As the not actually present but really rather wonderful Adrian Short said at the time, because local government has a directive which defers openness to 2018, we instead need a motivation to open up our data early, a reason. I don't have the answers, but I do know there is a steady drip drop of open data leaking from Councils and they are the baby steps upon which great leaps will be built. It's the same story with everything else, let the trailblazers lead and prove nothing bad will come from being at the front and others will follow through choice. Positive re-enforcement. It's inelegant and clunky, but show Councils what can happen when you open data up and the incentive will be there to open up more.

It was also at this point which I became almost crushed under the realisation that not only do people outside of local government not know about the realities of working inside it, with our ancient tech, our lack of flash patches, our locked down systems which often don't allow access to social media (BwD is ahead on this score), our IT departments mired in procurement and protocol and Gov Connect Code of Connection paperwork, our directives, our GIS systems and our desperate determination to try and innovate around all these challenges and the hard work and ridiculous hours we pull in order to do this and do it well - but some really couldn't give a damn, either.

Futuregov get it. But there's been enough embarrasing gushing in here for one day.

So. I sat outside the venue, smoked too much, ranted at the boyfriend who doesn't work in local government either and isn't a GIS geek and felt disheartened, alone and isolated.

Then someone who wasn't even at City Camp London popped up. Adrian Short has done wonderful things with open data down in Sutton. In fact before we go there, and in a related unrelatedness of relatedness, I met Charlotte, aka @chargihooly on Friday and she left an impression. Ballcocks in grit bins linked to sensers which transmit when the ballcock has a pre-determined drop in pound per square inch pressure over a point to indicate to a central point when a grit bin is getting near empty wasn't what I thought I'd be discussing on a Friday night in London but it was one of those moments where two people fizz at each other unselfconsciously and together find the beginnings of a solution to a weirdass problem. I'm taking it back and I'm asking the question of our Head of Environmental Services. Implementation costs need to be balanced against savings in fuel and carbon emissions. I'll let you know.

Anyway, Adrian popped up, tweeted about mapping and data and it helped. Someone, even not present got where I was coming from. Brain rallied.

On to the Big Society session. More lip biting. Not alone this time either, Louis arrived, frustrated glances were exchanged. As usual, I sat in the middle of all the conversation and noise and understood where certain people were coming from in feeling like the government had come along and put a name to something they'd been doing for years, unrecognised, but also that you can't disavow belonging to something which has the potential to be a juggernaut driving social change for the better of us all, because of the political colour of the party putting the engine in the juggernaut. Wonderful ideas about voluntary brokerage services came out of this, about matching people with an hour to a charity or person who only needs an hour. I hope it comes to fruition because it was one of many ideas which were muted this weekend which I would actually use.

In fact, lets examine that for a second. I wore two heads this weekend, one as a local government rep (thought not local to London), and as an ex-London resident. I'm not an innovator in the sense everyone else there was. In fact I'm not sure I'm an innovator any more. I contributed no ideas this weekend, mostly because I simply either couldn't get a word in edgeways, couldn't hear the discussion or couldn't get over the intimidation I was feeling. All my fault, it's important to note, but impenetrable. I had the ideas. I have the ideas. I just can't express them yet. What I need, of course, is someone to ask me questions, very many questions, relentless strings of them, to help me pull everything out of my head, but no one has the tie to do something so utterly pointless and self indulgent and selfish. So I need to find another way. It will come.

Anyway, of all the workshops I attended, the Big Society one was the most interesting and the most inspiring. Good expressions of collaboration, understandings of small cogs in the bigger picture. Good points about volunteering to gain experience and being looked down on. Interesting conversations about ladies who lunch too.

Onwards again, via a breather and a much appreciated conversation with Ingrid Koehler on......well there are some things which are not for blogging but it helped. It really did. Thank you.

Onwards to Procurement. I landed in that room entirely because there was no other session which really appealled. I probably shouldn't have attended but I wasn't aware of the correct protocols at the time. I really shouldn't have opened my mouth. Bad mistake. Huge mistake. I accorded some people the expectation of my mostly positive experience in environments like that recently and got slapped down quite neatly. Not the brightest end to the brightest of days, really. I wanted to explain how ridiculous the procurement process is, that peoples experiences of it from the outside is appalling. I don't think I can be arsed, to be honest. If you're interested, ask Dominic. It is ridiculous thought.

Evening. Exhausted. I've worked 10-11 hour days every day for about 2 weeks and bits and pieces on weekends too. I'm ill. That's not an excuse, that's a statement of fact. I'm temporarily disabled in random ways which mean that all the changes in lighting on Friday, for example, meant I emerged from the room the presentations were being held in struggling with staying upright and shivering madly. Just one thing which contributed to a frazzledness which led me to sit down and watch Pseudo and just switch off for a while. I heard conversations about me moaning about things being impenetrable and not making the effort and just died a little. If you take nothing else away from this post, take this: disability, diversity, whatever you want to call it, is not always visible. This weekend cost me more than money.

So. What did I learn? Well. I met some amazing people. People who inspired, who are role models, who I will keep an eye on in future to see where they go and what they achieve. I have many ideas about what we can do to bridge the gap between perception and reality. I have help with that already. I have faith that the projects which were pitched today and won will come to fruition and start to change the world in little ways. I have a renewed belief that we're doing cool things up our way, and big relief to be home. It's going to be a while, I think, before I jump into the fire again, but I did it. Costs aside, it was worth it.

Take a deep breath (part ii)

City Camp Ldn. I went because of many things. Futuregov fascinated me. Dominic Campbell inspired me. The concept made a little bit of my soul glow just a little bit brighter, the hope that people might convene and make things easier, not only for us local govvies, but also for the residents we are trying to serve in the way they'd like to be served? Couldn't resist.

I've only been to BarCamp Blackpool and the NWEGG conference before this. Ever. It was an intense experience, a little overwhelming, a little intimidating, but always challenging and therefore worthwhile. I don't see battling with things to be negative. I refuse to accept that trying to get your head around something is negative. Sitting saying nothing and then going home and bitching is negative.I don't do that. Ever.

Day 1. Started at the RSA, a beautiful building which remined my of the Courtauld Institute down at Somerset House. Same feel to the public spaces. Imbued with history, absolutely not my taste in art. Ah well. Plenty to distract from the art, with such luminaries as Kevin Curry, the creator of the City Camp 'brand' and Dave Worsell from GovDelivery. The note on my iPhone which I tapped on madly during these presentations say:

We need to create and focus on good in BwD not bad. Small things. Positive things. We tend to focus as a race on the negative, why not the positive? Small things, little wheels turning, like Boris' bikes. Fetes, carnivals, community events - can these be digital to reduce cost? An avalanche of small things creates the magic of the whole.

Barcelona website - nab ideas for the town centre website.

Harnessing those that care. Where are they and how do we use them and does digital inclusion mean a bigger army? Older people, for example, might have the time and willingness to help but not the know how or the access. Free eyes and ears to contribute.

Check out Fon for distributed wi-fi (I honestly didn't know about this, why aren't we all doing this? It's like seeding)

Don't see what we always saw, can we podcast bwd differently? The weird, wonderful, different and bizarre. We are diverse and different and many colours and backgrounds and interests, can we use that to create a sense of community by acknowledging what makes us different from everywhere else, turn challenges into positivity. Create treasure hunts through the town which are on apps but replicated on web so no one excluded by the tech? Can we sms broadcast in specified small catchment areas for example? Turn our town in differently layered space to explore for people? Do they care? How do you know when people want to engage? Is this a worthwhile way of spending public money and which directorate does this fall into?

By the time we got to John Tolva, Director of Citizenship & Technology at IBM, there was no brain left for spirals and instead I sat and let his machine gun delivery seep into my psyche. I grinned. I grinned some more. Someone who is so passionate and enthusiastic about his world, about changing his town planned world that he can't get the words out fast enough. Tripping and darting those words came out, relentless and fast, the slides seamlessly changing and progressing. It was one of the most exhausting presentations I've ever seen, but also, one of the most inspirational. And I am not, nor ever will be, into planning.

Somewhere in the midst of this the Chief Exec of the RSA, Matthew Taylor hosted a sofa interview with Caroline Pidgeon, Steve Reed and Paul Osborn. This was where the actuality of a Twitterfall behind the panel collided sharply with the ethics of such things, and two camps emerged, with Dominic Campbell having the rather horrible task of deciding whether it was morally right to be discussing peoples words behind the place they were speaking them, when they couldn't actually see them. An unenviable decision, to be fair. My person viewpoint? If you say stupid things I disagree with on something I know from personal experience, I'll call you on it. If you say something brilliant, then I will congratulate you on it. Equal opportunity of outcomes generated by the user content being produced.

I still stand by something which came out of this panel. If I contact a Councillor by Twitter, it does not mean I do not care about the issue I am contacting them about. It means Twitter has given me a voice I never felt I had before, and I am flapping my wings, using the tech to allow me to ask questions. Eventually I will ask the questions in reality. But for now, Twitter is my happy place and many others too, and to dismiss it as squawking is indicative of a collective viewpoint which does not use the tech, has no knowledge of the tech, wont try and understand the tech and therefore derides the tech, because that's easier.

I'd have admired him more if he'd asked the audience why they preferred to use it to talk to their Councillors and what was wrong with the exisitng systems of communicating with Councillors which means us, the residents, are not using them, but turning to Twitter instead.

Then, Nat McDermott spoke about Inclusive Culture and I smiled again. Nat is like a cross between a butterfly and a nuclear reactor. The projects she has been involved with cross in places with places I've worked and therefore know about, which helps. But you know that moment when someone speaks and a room pays attention and you know, you just know, that this is going in, that people are taking notice and that because the subject is quite dear to your own heart, you sigh a big sigh of a relief and just grin?

Yeah. Woman is amazing. Empowering disadvantaged groups to test their skills in communicating online in safe and accepting places before going out into the big wide world and using those skills to play with everyone else is just genius. Seriously inspirational and the highlight of the Friday for me.

Then it was time for socialising in the beautiful vaults of the RSA. I met a compound bow wound tight in the form of CEO of a company responsible for a website which helps compare womens clothing sizes but who also seemed to produce documentaries or films and whose name I never quite caught, and Louis Moseley who left an impression so complicated and profound that it's a little difficult to actualy explain. It's not often someone floors me, nor renders me almost speechless. It's not often I am disquitened yet so inspired. It's not every day I get gobsmacked by someones politics and it's not every day I have to examine my own reaction to the colour of someones politics really damn carefull and admit to some prejudices of my own and try and resolve them. To say an impression as left would be an understatement and I am slightly saddened that I am unlilkely to ever see him again, but if that's the calibre of mind and perception which Eden Valley is benefitting from, then bits of Cumbria are indeed in safe hands, something which was confirmed by a rather more local lady than I.

As a footnote to all of this......and without embarrassing someone too much, don't be sure your tweets are ignored if you don't get a response. Seems some people are causing ripples in places they'd never have had any access to, before Twitter came along. I must confess to grinning like a loon upon discovering this, because no one I know but have never met deserves the curiosity quite so much.

So. Day 1. I went to bed with Clay Shirky (I'd never heard of him before), a pounding head, but a hopeful heart.

Take a deep breath

I am writing this on the train as I travel home from London. See, even I haven't lost the novelty of being able to type that sentence.

I spent Friday and Saturday in the company of bright young things (well all ages actually, but their demeanour demands they are referred to as bright young things) as part of City Camp Ldn convened by the rather lovely people of Futuregov. I would like to make it absolutely clear at this juncture that I really do think the Futuregov crowd are stars - frustration may have been in my tweets from the event over the last two days but the frustration has never been with the organisers.

Someone also commented that they hoped I was being paid to attend the event. I wasn't. He was referring to my rather public confusion at some aspects of the event. I feel it necessary to explain something to those who are new to this blog and me. There is no bullshit here. No facades and no fakery. I am an honest person, I wear my heart on my sleeve and at 33 years of age this is unlikely to change. It allows me to connect with people on rather fabulous levels, it allows me to know who is shiny and who is not. The very public wrestling with the world that I do on Twitter is intentionally there and it's there for a reason.

I am not alone in the way I feel. I know this from speaking to other people. Therefore if I vocalise the things I am struggling with, it means others who are less comfortable with being quite so open don't need to. Also, hopefully, somewhere out there is someone reading this blog and my tweets who can see the things I struggle with and also the things which fire my imagination and who is wondering if they could stick their head above the parapet too. In transparency, maybe there comes an encouragement, to try, to dip a toe in the water?

I don't know. I do know I unsettle some people. But I also know that if I don't ask questions, don't persist, don't be relentless in this, then I will just give up everyone and everything as a bad job and I don't want to do that. I don't for a second believe I can change the world. I just want to. There's a difference. I'm not arrogant or egotistical, not deluded or deceptive. I know what I know, I am honest about what I don't, and I expect people to be civil if they can't manage friendly.

Having got all that out of the way, which feels negative even though it shouldn't be, I think I'll start a separate post on the weekend. I suspect it's going to turn out to be a bit of an epic, for ewhich I apologise.

Bar Camping in Blackpool

Yesterday I attended my first ever Bar Camp. The whole experience has left me very pensive, I think because I had no preconceptions about how the day would unfold, so as a result there has been quite a lot of information to process.

I am a geek and I am a girl. But I should have known when one of the attendees sent out a questionnaire before the event happened and asked are you 1) a coder or 2) a designer or 3) other, that my interest in social media/social networking/social something would not be at the forefront of the talks being delivered. I didn't know what to expect regarding the content of the talks at all, and so reading through the Board as it developed and grew throughout the day was very interesting. I attended two talks on social media, the first was a chap ostensibly marketing his new Tag Walk web interface via an interesting but necessarily short trip around user recommendations, tags and hashtags and their role in social media. I'm not sure he intended for the talk to come across as a pitch, but judging by conversations I heard later, it wasn't just me who felt it was, though the people commenting were doing so directly to the presenter and were deep in conversation about the server loads and future capabilities of the 'application'. I am glad of this, because the talk was delivered incredibly well, and whilst I didn't learn anything new, I still stayed and enjoyed what I knew being delivered to me slightly differently.

The second also suffered, I think, from time restraints but again had a delightful premise. Sociometry and social networking nabbed my attention straight away and I was intrigued. I suppose it might be less evident than I assume it is from this blog, but I have a very strong interest in the social dynamics at play within social media and a lifelong curiosity in psychology and sociology though I've never studied either, and this presentation didn't disappoint. I knew nothing about sociometry, and though timings meant I was left to draw the parellels between the thematic mapping of social interactions of real life interactions in the 60's and how it exactly mirrors how the thematic mapping of social interactioins of online interactions in the new century, draw those parallels I did, and quite happily.

Of course, life is not limited to representations in Powerpoint presentations and the sociometry was clear to see happening in the venue around me. There are leaders, hubs of their social groups, the alphas, and then there are the people who revolve around them. And then, of course, there are the people who are too damn old/independant/world weary/self assured to play such games and go their own way. It was fascinating to look around and see the sociology in action in real time around me.

Having said that, the whole experience was a very positive one. I learnt a lot, saw a lot, discussed and argued a lot and had no small amount of epiphanies. The talk about the future of reading where the speaker seemed to be intimating that the iPad was the future of reading provoked the most muttering under my breath about tools for jobs and not being able to take it to bed to read before I sleep at night, about sunlight rendering any electronic screen unreadable still in this day and age and how no one was going to mug me for my paper copy of Wired but this aside, I did have my kneejerk resistance dissipated somewhat by the demonstration of the Wired app which used neat little applets to demonstrate, for example, the mechanics of constructing a car from the ground up. I agree that this is the future of publishing, but I disagree that the world is quite ready for it yet. One for Generation Z perhaps?

Then there was the talk on genetic crypto analysis in which I discovered exactly how stupid I am. The talk on command line animation which I annoyingly missed because it clashed with sociometry. Or the Sharepoint one, the J Query one, the one on a CMS I can't remember the name of - I ended the day exhausted and I still hadn't managed to catch all the talks I wanted to.

But I did discover the existence of some fantastic tools which I will be using in the next few months. I did learn that Tag Walk might allow the tracking of PR drops, or communications being ramped up. I learnt through Tag Walk that more people interacted directly with the personal account of the organiser of Bar Camp Blackpool using the hash tag for the event than bothered to use the official account set up for that purpose. I'm still wondering if that little fact is the ground breaking and earth shattering revelation for our organisation that I think it might be. I am still trying to work out if I am brave enough to propose the ludicrous system I came up with in 10 minutes yesterday as a result of this revelation to deal with incoming interactions which are not urgent into our organisation through social media.

I learnt that other people want the same tools I do for Twitter. I learnt that some people think Twitter is only for social interaction and conversations and that they feel there is no place for companies, organisations, third sector or community groups. Until I mentioned being able to book a GP appointment  by Twitter, at which point as usual, everything went quiet. I learnt that I'm not quite confident enough to stand up in front of a group of people unprepared but that I wished I had been. I learnt that people can be welcoming and interested even if their appearance says otherwise and they look clique'd and involved in their own circles. I learnt that there's just no talking to some people so fixed are they on the people they already know. And all of this learning, discussing, musing and input didn't cost me a thing, meaning that start ups, small businesses and public sector paupers alike could sit in the air conditioning for a day and worry not about the cost or the implications of being there and simply listen and innovate.

Some bits of the day were more successful than others. Some talks were more successful than others. Some people were more cliquey than others and others more welcoming than cliquey. But on the whole, my first Bar Camp experience was incredibly positive and I would recommend anyone dithering about attending one to bite the bullet and go. Nothing can compare to over 100 other people thinking in different directions and outside of different boxes to you.