A few members of the Parliament Web Centre team are lucky enough – and I mean lucky after a Glastonbury-style scramble for tickets – to be going along to the UKGovWeb Barcamp 09 this Saturday.
What is it? To quote from the wiki page, this Barcamp is ‘for those working in and around, or simply interested in, UK government online’ and ‘an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment’. Or a great opportunity to meet lots of like-minded people working in or around government – and Parliament (!) – who want to make all that useful information we collectively produce, easier to access/more interesting/more open/more shared… just, more.
These words are in bold on the wiki page ‘be prepared to lead a session on something‘, which throws down the gauntlet.
We could talk about what we’ve done with social media, like our use of Twitter, Flickr etc… but that feels like it was a topic for the barcamp last year. But we’re happy to share our experience of how we started using these tools in Parliament, how we convinced people, successes and failures.
We could also talk about our use of WordPress for our news area – using Open Source was a new one for our team and Parliament (In the back of my head I just hear ‘Number 10 beat you to it…’ – but I have a caveat on that story I’m willing to share if you grab me).
Personally, I’d be interested in having a discussion on how you engage a massive internal audience and a public audience without having two versions of all your content, and striking the right tone for all…
Hopefully, my colleagues will chime in with what else they think we could offer – and please let us know in the comments what you’d like to hear from us. If you’re going, look forward to meeting you. If you’re not, we’ll report back here on how the day went.
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28/01/2009 at 10:47 pm
SimonD
Yeah, well, the Wales Office were a good few months ahead of Number10 anyway…. and the Our NHS review was running on WordPress in November 07, making it (I’m pretty sure) the first corporate site (ie not a pure blog) to do so.
I’m planning on doing at least one slot on WordPress – not sure if it’ll be a beginner’s guide. a ‘next steps’ or an advanced / surgery thing yet. More than happy to share the podium with anyone else keen to talk WP. Plus of course, it’s bound to come up in numerous other people’s sessions…
So what’s this caveat anyway???
29/01/2009 at 11:25 am
Jackie
Colleague chiming in: I’d be interested in discussing how to make sure that departments (or in my case Parliament) can be influenced to make sure that information added to the web is accessible and not simply a by product of the printing process.
I don’t have the answers but would love to hear from anyone that does.
29/01/2009 at 8:48 pm
Alistair Reid
What people have been telling us on Twitter about this:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%40ukparliament
A selection: bobertd: @UKParliament Any obvious one, maybe – but how might iPhones/Android devices (etc) impact on the way you provide info. New apps/widgets? http://twitter.com/bobertd/statuses/1156809644
nickclinch: @UKParliament I’d love to see more MP’s using services like Twitter. Perhaps you could discuss ways of getting them involved? http://twitter.com/nickclinch/statuses/1156823374
and… robertwormald: @ukparliament just not another CMS http://twitter.com/robertwormald/statuses/1156771186
12/03/2009 at 10:28 am
Neil Franklin
Only just found this… What’s the caveat then???