The first was BarCamp Wellington, where 50-odd people from all parts of the country gave up a Saturday to get together and share ideas and experiences about e-government.

I won’t go in to much detail about BarCamp as other attendees (BarCampers?) have documented the day in detail. For a thorough and thoughtful summation of some of the proceedings, I would recommend Mark Rickerby’s wrap up. There is also a wealth of tagged material distributed all over the web: you can follow the breadcrumbs from the wiki…

The other conference was an SSC event for senior managers from the Australian and New Zealand public services. Called, Driving Government Performance, it was themed around the Development Goals and user-centric design.

The convergence of ideas

As you would expect, the experiences of attending each of these two events were wildly different. The first was borderline anarchic, the second was planned with meticulous precision. One was loose and conversational, the other codified and hierarchical. One was by invitation only (to speak and attend), the other was a free-for-all (literally, I have the t-shirt to prove it).

These two events were poles apart, at least in terms of structure. As far as the content, though, there was not as much divergence as you might have thought; once the rooms were full of warm bodies, the conversations were encouragingly similar.

Highlights from DGP? Steve Hodgkinson gave a great presentation on the impact of Web 2.0 on the government workplace (Looking in the Mirror) where he talked about the shadow workplace of blogs, wikis, RSS etc. Charles Owen’s presentation was a fascinating look at design process, but at 80-odd (dense) slides was a bit like an information mugging.

Conclusions

Ultimately, what I took away from both these days was the conviction that Govt 2.0 is not the El Dorado of the information age, but is something that we are building together brick by brick — and there is a sense of common purpose as to how we design this thing (as we go …sorry Chuck).

What is most encouraging, however, is the sense of energy and resolve to come out of both days. You would expect that the BarCampers would be eagerly looking for opportunities to put some of their talk into action, but the senior managers I talked to were as just as keen to learn, experiment and engage.

And what a day it promises to be. Taking place under the watchful eye of a Kiwi icon, it has attracted a formidable array of talent keen to get together and share their knowledge, experience and enthusiasm.

There is still a month to get involved, so visit the wiki and see how you can participate. Just remember, the T-shirts alone will be well worth the price of admission (which is nothing. zero. nada. it is free).

And it is not just for geeks. Yes, there will be technical presentations, but there will be plenty of people there who are just as interested in content, knowledge management, the Internet and the full range of miscellany in between.

Public sector communicators would be well advised to have at least a basic understanding of the principles of Govt 2.0, and this BarCamp should be an ideal introduction. Plus, you will get to hang out with a bunch of smart, energised and generous people: what better way to spend a Saturday?

The details

BarCamp Wellington: Fronde, 3 Queens Wharf, Wellington

I’m afraid I can’t really share my overall impressions of the conference, much as I would like to, because the organizers scheduled this years conference (it runs every 18 months) the week before an annual event in government that tends to focus the attention of a lot of people, the Budget. Consequently I was only able to attend three sessions.

Fortunately, all of the sessions were recorded and are available as a rich media stream, so – provided you install the requisite proprietary software – you can knock yourself out watching some impressive presentations by the likes of Jon Udell, Tara Hunt, and Hans Rosling.

I was privileged to sit on a panel that discussed ‘Blogging in the State Services’ with Che Tibby, Hadyn Green and Matt Lane. We covered a bit of ground and, as people began to ask questions, moved into areas like OIAs and knowledge management (not stuff any of us are really qualified to talk about, but I don’t think any of us were game to disappoint an attentive audience).

I also spoke on the last day on Govt 2.0. The presentation is available on the Network site (it’s an s5 show you access via your browser), but it was under prepared and is pretty much just a ramble through some of the ideas I posted a couple of weeks ago.

One final observation: I am thrilled that all of these presentations are recorded, because it means they will be available to people who couldn’t make it, but the format is not exactly friendly. There are no URLs, so I can’t link to the individual presentations - you just have to find your way through the hideously inaccessible and not very usable list of all the presentations. Nice try, just not that innovative.

This was brought home to me at the Crisis Communications workshop we held in March when it emerged that the most effective way of getting information to rural communities during the Canberra bushfires was town hall meetings.

That’s right. Cellphone towers burned down. The heat was causing electricity mains to arc, cutting the power so it was a case of driving out to the communities and having a meeting in the town hall, RSL club or the local pub to let people know what was happening.

And it is not just in a crisis that this sort of channel is effective in a stakeholder relations programme. Getting in front of people, letting them see the way that you handle questions is invaluable. Social media are great in that they allow participation that is not dependent upon geography, but who wouldn’t prefer sitting down in front of a real live human being?

The reality is that it is most likely to be a mix of the channels that works best for your communications, so you would be well advised to factor social media into your strategy, where it is appropriate — and where you understand how to effectively deploy it.

This was all prompted when a colleague received an (unsolicited) email from Coca Cola New Zealand inviting her to participate in a stakeholder forum:

This is your opportunity to ask George Adams, Managing Director, CC-Amatil (NZ & Fiji) Ltd and team questions about things that matter to you. You might want to know what our company is doing about health, environmental, community or business issues in New Zealand. You can let us know about things that have an impact on you, your family, your community or your environment.

What interested me about this event was a) the fact that they were spamming people to invite them to their forum, and b) that there is to be an online forum opened after the event to facilitate discussion.

Once you get over the faux pas of spamming people that you would like, or think you would like, to attend your forum (and I will come back to this) it seems like a pretty good idea. Have senior management front to people (at Te Papa, no less) at a time when the industry is feeling the squeeze from nutritionists, health officials and consumer groups.

It is also a good idea to have people sign up for the website (if I keep calling it an online forum, I will just confuse myself). You get to harvest their details – so you don’t have to spam them next time – and you can capture any qualitative data.

I think they missed an opportunity by not opening the website before the event. It would have been a great way to take the temperature, to provide good input for what will be important to the people who do attend and, more importantly, really demonstrates a willingness to engage. It would have also allowed people to see exactly what level of engagement was on offer.

Opening the website after the forum is certainly the safer option. Less flammable. But it leads me to believe that it won’t be as interesting as it could be. It promises a forum where you can share your thoughts with others, which is vague enough to invite disappointment. I hope I’m wrong.

Combined with the spam approach, it leaves me feeling that they haven’t quite grasped the mechanics of enagement in the age of social media. But perhaps I am being overly cynical?

Before I get into my impressions of the workshop, I thought I should share the feedback that the other attendees submitted via the web form over the last couple of weeks.

Attendees were asked to rate five categories from 1 - 5, with 1 being poor and 5 an excellent. Those categories, and ratings recorded were:

1. Venue - 92% of respondents gave it a 4 or a 5
2. Presenters - 64% rated them a 4 or 5
3. Content - 64% 4 or a 5
4. Food - 70% rated it 4 or 5
5. Organization - 85% rated it 4 or 5

Those who submitted comments were similarly positive about the event. Most acknowledged that there was a tremendous amount of material and that they had come away with a better understanding of planning needs, structure of the response and tools and techniques to help manage communications during a crisis.

A common theme to emerge in the comments, however, was that the content was not particularly relevant to the public sector practitioner and was too focussed around crises, rather that more issued based case studies:

Presenters were well experienced and case studies best practice, however, the examples they gave were almost all of oil companies where resources were unlimited. It would have been good to have done a public service case study were resources (money and people) were limited and we had to prioritise a response - a workshop of a case study like this would have been good.

I did agree that the focus was all on situations that most of us would never have to deal with (oil tanker running aground in Wellington harbour and spilling several thousand tonnes of crude — nah, never happen here), but the more I have thought about it over the last couple of weeks, the more I have come around to the view that the event itself is pretty much irrelevant: it is the way you deal with it that matters.

As Kym and Dick demonstrated, the formula for the response is predictable. If you plan for an event like an oil spill, or an earthquake, or a pandemic, then you can roll out your plan for just about anything; crisis, emerging issue, it doesn’t really matter – you will have the tools and the training in place to effectively manage it.

And if you look at the issues that we have had to deal with in the public sector over the last several years, I think that you will agree that most — if not all — either were well managed using these principles, or were poorly managed and could have benefited from this approach. I am, however, keen to open this up for discussion.

As I mentioned late last year, the Network is hosting the first (of what we hope will be many) one-day workshop for members, on Strategic Crisis Communications.

You indicated in your feedback about the inaugural conference that you wanted more intensive, interactive professional development opportunities, so the Committee have begun putting together a programme of workshops for 2007 that we hope will go some way to satisfying that demand.

If you would like to have some input into the programme of these events, then you can cast a vote for one (or more than one) of the proposed topics on the poll in the sidebar to the left of this post.

We have invited Lynch Communications out to New Zealand to present this workshop. I saw Kym speak in Melbourne last year and was impressed by both the content of her presentation and the experience and authority she brought to the discussion.

From their website:

Lynch Communications provide expertise and training in the areas of crisis strategy, planning and communication. They are regarded as one of the most influential and experienced crisis consultants in Australia with long term clients including many large and mid-size corporations and government departments.

I think this workshop presents a terrific opportunity for public sector communicators to build their skills in crisis thinking, planning and training and to compare crisis communications plans and review case studies for best practice crisis communications response.

Registrations are open

As previously noted, numbers will be restricted to ensure that everyone gets as much as possible form the workshop. You can register here, I would recommend that you do so smartly - 20 places will fill quickly.

More information about the programme can be found on the comms@ site.

NOTE: A second workshop may be held on 2nd March if the first workshop is oversubscribed — but I wouldn’t count on it…

So, what did you say?

Most of you felt that the conference was a well-run, interesting and relevant event - and a great opportunity to network with your peers. The average rating for the event overall was about 3.5 (1 was “poor” and 5 “excellent”) - so I guess that we can officially declare comms@06 a success.

I have made up a dodgy Excel graph that shows you how you all rated the various components of the conference. I am not sure what the margin of error is but, given my aforementioned grasp of quantitative analysis, I would guess ‘high’ would be the correct answer.

In any event, the numbers are pretty conclusive: between 40-50% of you though that the presenters and the organization was excellent (5), and that everything else was around a 4.

The diversity of topics was great and provided a good balance. All the speakers were good at relating their content to the communications issues presented. I felt this was a real strength of Comms@06.
The good spread of attendees from across the government sector added to the value of the event.
Tony

There is also a graph depicting your responses to the individual speakers - which is not a ‘league table’, but it does give you an idea of how the different presenters were rated by those who chose to respond.

Again, the weight of opinion is solidly in the 4 region, with the exception of the remarkable David Slack who managed to rate as ‘excellent’ with 83.5% of the people who responded. Well, I guess that makes one of the decision’s about next year’s line-up a little easier…

I was impressed with all the speakers, who have a wealth of experience in their fields. In just one day I’ve learnt so much that will help me in my job. It’s nice also to have confirmation from the experts that I am on the right track in most cases.
Anon

Lessons we learned

Fortunately, through a combination of dumb luck and the good will of those involved, we managed to get quite a lot of it right. That is not to say that we can’t improve. More interaction was highlighted by a number of you - that might take the form of, for example, some break-out sessions or even a half-day workshop to complement the conference next year.

The whole ‘vegetarian incident’ is something we won’t let happen again: I can’t tell you how relieved I was that no-one went into anaphylactic shock; that is just what we need at a conference on issues management: an ambulance parked out the front.

You also made some suggestions around the small things, that actually make a conference really sing:

• Distribute a list of all the attendees
• More fruit for snacking
• Better audio/visual setup

…all of which we will do next year.

I think the final word (apart from any comments that you would like to add yourselves) should go to Kate, who -for me anyway- summed it all up beautifully:

An excellent, very good value event, head and shoulders above the crappy expensive ones we are constantly bombarded with invitations to!

On behalf of the Committee, I would like to thank all those who attended, with a particular mention to the speakers, who provided such rich and entertaining content on the day.

Approximately 120 public sector communicators came along to sessions on a range of topics and to network with their peers.

The qualitative feedback session at the Backbencher that closed the day suggested, at least anecdotally, that the day was a success.

I thought that all of the speakers were excellent, and that the stories that were shared and the insights that were passed on made this one day away from the phones and the desk a day extraordinarily well spent.

Over the next week or so, I will endeavour to post some preliminary thoughts and remarks about each of the sessions and the speakers, and I welcome any comments you have.

I would also urge you to fill in the online feedback form so that we can consider your comments as we plan next years conference, seminars and workshops.