ukgovcamp – Terence Eden’s Blog

Lessons learned from bringing promotional sweets to a conference

@edent — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 12:34:28 +0000

I've recently set up my own consultancy company and decided to sponsor my local UKGovCamp conference. That entitled me to a logo on the site, a shout-out during the conference, and place to put any promotional stickers. Everyone loves stickers!

But I decided to bring along something different - promotional sweeties!

I found a small business to print my logo with edible ink onto sweets and ordered some fizzy flying saucers, mint Mentos, and fruit Mentos. They all had my company logo and name on them.

Here was my working theory. If I were a bigger sponsor, I'd have a table and people would have been able to come up to me and chat in exchange for swag. But I didn't have a dedicated space. That's OK, I could make my own space!

If you walk up to people while carrying a big bag of candy and say "Would you like ~~a Jelly Baby~~ an after-dinner mint?" people react with joy! Most people love being offered a sweet. It's a great way to meet people and start conversations.

It was great! It felt like I talked to all 500 attendees, I gave away most of the sweets, and I told people a little about the work I do. People had smiles on their faces and were happy to chat.

But… Here's what didn't work.

The key flaw in my cunning plan is that once you give someone a sweet with a logo on it, they eat the sweet. Now they don't have your logo to remember you by! A sticker is like a business card - a physical reminder. A sweet is gone in an instant.

The sweets are quite small and, as a consequence, the logo and text are also small. A few people didn't notice the printing or thought that the mints were designed to look like blue eyeballs.

My site has reasonable SEO if you search for "Open Ideas Ltd" - but there was no URl printed on the sweets because they were too small. And they would be eaten straight away.

Compact disks of sugar aren't the most health-conscious snack. I made sure that the treats were all vegan and gluten-free. While the big tub of flying saucers had the ingredients and allergens printed on them, the Mentos didn't. Some people were (understandably) reluctant to take unidentified sweets from a stranger.

So, lessons learned? Bring bigger sweets, with more eye-catching designs, including a clear call to action, and which are sugar-free and inedible.

Stickers. I've reinvented stickers…

And yet… I'd probably do it again! I'm not a mega-corp trying to convince people to purchase my services. I'm just this guy, you know? It can be a bit intimidating to go up to strangers and say "TALK TO ME". But saying "Hello! Would you care for a sweet?" is a socially acceptable ice-breaker.

I enjoyed the experience and, while I don't think it will lead to a 10x ROI with enhanced EBITDA and hitting my OKRs, it was a lot of fun.

My question to you is this - what's the favourite swag you've ever given out?

GovCamp Rules - In Memoriam

@edent — Sat, 06 Mar 2021 12:11:45 +0000

The last year has seen an overabundance of death. Some of us got chatting about the various people from the GovCamp community who have died recently, and how we could memorialise them.

It used to be the case that we started every 'Camp with a reading of the rules. A gentle intro to let everyone be on the same page.

The "rules" started out as:

Whoever comes are the right people.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
Whenever it starts is the right time.
When it is over, it is over.

Over time, people added the rule of mobility (leave a session if it isn't for you), the rule of participation (listen more than you speak), the no-tourists rule (everyone must contribute). And so on.

Reading the Rules has fallen out of fashion, and some of the rules need updating. But perhaps it is time to bring back the idea of starting the day off with a common understanding?

I thought that it might be nice to turn an introductory rule-reading into a sort of legacy for our friends and colleagues. A way to let participants know that they are part of a community.

So, with apologies to those I've missed, here's the start of a proposal for a new set of rules.

In memory of David Pearson - take photos! Take many, brilliant, beautiful photos. Document the day and share it with others. Be respectful of those who don't want their photos taken or published.
In memory of John Popham - do something today to make someone's life better. Help people tell their stories.
In memory of Nick Keane - be open about yourself. Embrace who you are.
In memory of Hendrik Grothuis - plant a tree. Think about the environmental impact you're having today.
In memory of Rupert Bowater - Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

I am painfully aware of the inherent biases encoded in this list. I'd love it if you would contribute rules, memories, and suggestions. Perhaps, when all this is over, we can have a GovCamp to mourn our lost friends and celebrate those of us who made it through.

Notes from GovCamp 2020

@edent — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 12:15:14 +0000

I've been to a fair few GovCamps - the (mostly) annual gathering of Civil Servants who want to explore new ways of working.

For a flavour of what they're like, see scripti electronici passim:

It was great to see old friends (and how old we've become) but even greater to hear so many pitches start with "This is my first time at GovCamp!"

Movements like this only survive if we can convince new people to join. Otherwise we're just talking to ourselves.

I do worry about the lack of senior leaders. There were some, and some of us are on track to go pretty high up. But my fear is that the event is just us letting off steam and no one in a position of power takes it seriously.

We must, through our actions, model the values of openness and collaboration in our work lives. We have to be the change we want to see. I'm not even sorry if that sounds too self-aggrandising.

I've already written about How to Archive a GovCamp, so the rest of this post focuses on the session I facilitated.

NHSX

Along with Hadley, my boss, and my colleague Colin we talked about NHSX. I started the session with 3 ground rules:

Share but don't attribute. Tweet about the interesting things in the session, but don't attribute to any specific person.
Stories but not personal health. We wanted to hear stories of crap IT, but we didn't want to know people's detailed medical history.
Optimism not cynicism. It's really easy to say "that's impossible" - we're here to say "let's make that happen".

We came out with a bunch of useful information, and hopefully some eager recruits for new jobs.

The session was packed - and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Key points (for me) were:

Clinicians lean new medical knowledge all the time - they can learn new software
Patients expect these things to just work
Having jobs outside London is seen as a positive continuation
Clinicians are endlessly inventive and want to co-design software

Read the full session notes.

Thanks

Massive thanks to everyone who made the camp happen, and all the lovely people who blogged.

Perhaps it's time to move the next GovCamp far out of London. Perhaps a weekend somewhere rural, with no WiFi?

What Happens at #GovCamp Stays at GovCamp?

@edent — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 11:32:17 +0000

How do you archive a conference? A decade ago, I blogged about how to archive a BarCamp - I don't think anyone took up my suggestions. I tried to put it into practice, but in this post about 2009's BarCampBrighton4, half the links have rotted away, cool media-hosting startups have gone bust and eaten the video.

Websites die, tweets get deleted, media codecs become obsolete.

BarCamps, GovCamps, and other unconferences are part of our digital heritage. We should be proud of what we create and ensure that it is available for posterity. For GovCamps, this is especially true.

Anyone capturing a twitter archive of #ukgc12 ?

Richard Akerman

The GovCamp Community has radically changed the way government services are delivered. But we are unaccountable (?) and no one is looking at how we make decisions (?). Someone, perhaps in the future, will want to understand what we did and why we did it.

The National Archives want to preserve the content of all GovCamps. Technically this is quite easy. Grab all the Tweets that have a hashtag, find the linked blog posts, crawl Flickr and YouTube, check the content is accurate, then dump in the archives. Bread and butter stuff.

Legally, they can do that. Section 19 of the Data Protection Act allows for archiving in the public interest, in line with Article 89(1) of the GDPR.

And they can also preserve non-official records. Your Tweets and Blogs are fair game. How does that make you feel?

Did you expect those messages to be archived?

Were you expecting them to be ephemeral?

Are your Tweets from an anonymous account which, in 5 years time, will be unmasked?

Do advances in facial and voice recognition mean that your offhand comment at a conference can be instantly matched to you?

If a session is audio recorded, and then published, does your conversation become less free?

Here's our audio recording from the session:

We hand out special coloured lanyards for people who don't want their photo taken. Do people respect that? Does social pressure force people to wear a lanyard they don't want to wear?

Notes are taken - read the session notes on Google Docs - but they're usually only sketches of the conversation, and not attributed to any one speaker.

The National Archives don't have to make all this content available for anyone to see. They can keep it under lock-and-key, or only allow access to trusted researcher, or publish it only after we're all dead.

If we came to any conclusion, it was this...

The National Archives have the skill and resources to do this well.
They also have the legal right to do so.
It's important for preserving the record of our culture.
We should get Community Consent for this activity.
Participants should be informed / warned that their social media will be archived.
We'll have to accept that it may suppress some conversations.

Here are the broken archives of some previous GovCamps

Video archive is now up from #GovCamp http://ow.ly/5hLQA Gotta carve out some time to watch a few... #opendata

Marco Campana

Matthey Murray's GovCampQLD archive from 2012 is full of broken links.

(OK, using Pinterest to archive posts was just a weird decision!)

And, for luck, the late lamented David having the final word:

UK Gov Camp Weeknotes

@edent — Sat, 26 Jan 2019 10:14:14 +0000

I'm finally feeling like I'm settling into my new role. I spent my Saturday at UK GovCamp - an unconference for Civil Servants.

I ran a session on Acronyms in the Workplace. It was hillarious listening to people try to introduce themselves without any abbreviations. "I am the Chief Paperclip Office for the United Kingdom's Department of Stationery and Supplies" doesn't take much longer to say that "CPO for DSS UK" but you can certainly hear the mental gears crunching.

The overall output was a conclusion that excessive contractions were a hindrance to good communication, and often served as a barrier to new entrants. But there was a little bit of time-saving to be had - and it can be useful to identify who is part of the "in group".

I asked a question 11 years ago

Are you faster at speaking or typing?
Are you faster at reading or listening?

Most people speak faster than they type, but they are quicker at reading. Do you prioritise saving time for yourself or others?

This was the output as the result

You can also read the notes from the session.

Photo by Nigel Bishop. The "May The Source Be With You" t-shirt is available on Amazon UK

I've been so exhausted that I didn't get much of a chance to talk to people, or make notes of the sessions I enjoyed. I need to get better about making time for other people.

And more

Read some more eloquent posts about #UKGC19