‘Love will tear us apart’ is the title of a classic song by Joy Division. Apparently, the last song ever performed by Joy Division was called ‘Digital’. It was the final song of the last gig recorded on 2 May 1980 in Birmingham.
Sort of ironic that I spent Saturday 21 June 2014 in the same city debating most things local government and seemingly sharing the love of digital.
I attended #localgovcamp; an unconference. These are different to traditional conferences in that whilst there’s an overall theme, you don’t have a pre-set programme of speakers or sessions and you certainly don’t get preached at for the whole time.
The day is split into sessions and attendees pitch for what sessions they want to run or topics they might want to find out more about, if they are prepared to lead a session. That’s an important distinction. If it was all the former then it might be more a conference, without attendee input. The important point being if it isn’t the session you thought it was going to be, and your input can’t make a difference; then you can freely up sticks and go find another session that might be more up your street.
This year’s event was well organised by LocalGov Digital. It was billed as the ‘free unconference for local government, by local government’ – that is the part I assumed to be the theme. And this is where I’m probably on dodgy ground but it is the point of this post; it was promoted to ‘anyone and everyone who is involved in DIGITAL local government’. And I didn’t see the digital bit til I got to Birmingham.
Why is this relevant? Perhaps this is where me and a few others who attended were/are confused. This isn’t criticism of the event organisation, far from it – they did a top job; this is about me working out stuff and sharing as it might ring true for others too.
I therefore used my day in Birmingham and this post to unpick it.
Following a great session by Catherine Howe (@curiousc) entitled ‘Everything more democratic’, which wasn’t specifically about digital, I attended a session run by Sarah Lay and Catherine, again. This session was roughly titled ‘social media isn’t the whole of digital’. It was aimed at discussing moving from using social media because we can to what benefit it can bring, so not just tokenistic use. Perhaps there was a suggestion it is for comms teams to chill a bit and coordinate rather than control, another debate on its own.
Either way, it became a debate about the possible definition of ‘digital’, and also one where Catherine wanted the group to unpick an idea and try and determine some tribes of digital. Someone pointed out that different folk will always have a different perception of what digital is. That was my first ‘#localgovcamp 2014’ moment. Whilst this debate interested me, I got frustrated that perhaps debating and even using the term ‘digital’ might not be helping things.
I’m not a fan of the ‘digital by default’ term and perhaps in some instances maybe the word digital is used in a PR way to suggest ‘new’ or ‘different’. I’d be interested in other’s thoughts.
Purposely, the next session I went to was called ‘Luddite govcamp’ as it was sort of promoted as a session to discuss could we still do local government without new technology? That was where the discussion was had about a danger of there being a split in what #localgovcamp was and who it was for. I know it is for anyone to have a go and set up other events – frontline camps or Care Act camp or whatever – like I said this is not criticism, just comment. But this was the part when I realised that I’d not realised the day had been billed as for ‘digital’ folk. We sort of came round to the fact that it didn’t really matter – services still need to be provided whether they are online or analogue and it was right that self perceived non digital folk were present to champion the digital divide v digital by default debate, reducing as we all hope the divide is.
A final thought, when I packed my stuff to come to Birmingham, I brought my notebook and pen, 2 phones and a charger. I used my phones to see what others at the event were talking about, rarely tweeted myself as I was engrossed and contributing to the here and now of the sessions. Interestingly, I made no notes in my notepad but I did on my phone as they are easier to then send and develop into things like this post. Similarly in the Luddite session, and ironically, Lucy Knight (@jargonautical) produced this great drawing on her tablet during the session ans shared it soon after.
That is digital and channelshift (another of my pet hate words). Thing is; folk don’t always need to know.
Thanks to the organisers and sponsors, you did a great job and made people think…and then do. This is my thinking and doing.
#localgovcamp needs people who care whether they are digital or analogue. Let’s not tear the love apart.
June 23, 2014 at 9:30 am
Great post Phil.
I work in IT but I, too, get nervous about the whole ‘digital’ thing. Technology should be inclusive and should be just an enabler of excellent services – technology is not an end in itself.
I started writing a post along these lines a few months ago but got distracted, as usual. This is as far as I got….
“For all the current talk/hype about ‘digital’ you’d think that digital was in some way new. It’s not.
The word ‘digital’, to me, is evocative a simpler time – a bygone era of ever-lasting summers during which it seemed that we were on the cusp of a future filled with amazing advances and lives culled from the pages of science fiction.
Digital is old.
I was given a digital watch from my birthday in 1977. I loved that watch.
The 80s, of course, were stuffed-full with digital wonder – BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64. Sigh – I loved them all.
The 90s didn’t see any let-up in digital developments. By the end of the decade we had DVDs (the first ‘D’ stands for ‘Digital’) and then THE COMPUTERS STARTED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER and the Internet was born.
Of course digital isn’t new. What is new is that digital is no longer a domain occupied solely by enthusiasts and nerds (like me). After 40 years digital has come of age and now belongs to everyone.”
One day I will finish this (or, more realistically, I won’t)…
Thanks for the post.
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June 23, 2014 at 9:52 am
Thanks for responding Richard and sharing your beta post! I agree with you – technology isn’t an end in itself and perhaps we sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees, as my dad used to say.
I had a Sinclair ZX81 with a proper keyboard and then the ZX Spectrum. Never progressed to the C5 though. We are only as good as our last idea it seems 😉
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June 23, 2014 at 10:21 am
It was my first visit to LocalGovCamp. I hadn’t perceived it to have a focus on digital which is why I went along to Luddite GovCamp session. I’m still not entirely sure that I understood the point that Benjamin was trying to make.
The digital people that I met were there because they have a passion to make things better across localgov. Sometimes that might involve building some form of web service or app, other times it might be offering their problem solving skills at hack days and jams.
I must have skipped over the “anyone and everyone who is involved in DIGITAL local government” line somehow. I think it would be worth reframing how it’s billed in future years if that is potentially a barrier to “luddites”. It almost seems unnecessary to explicitly include the word digital near the word government these days anyway.
I really enjoyed the event, learnt a lot and met some great people doing fascinating things for the greater good. Oh, and somewhat ironically the Luddite session was the only one I attended which actually discussed digital.
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June 23, 2014 at 10:47 am
Nice to meet you on Saturday Ian. It was an enjoyable day. That session was the one that made me think the most.
Someone tweeted me back on Saturday to say ‘digital’ might be helpful as an adjective but not so much as a noun, a bit like ‘social’ and ‘creative’. That’s where I thought it definitely wasn’t helpful.
Good thing is that people care about providing good services and have a passion to make things better.
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June 25, 2014 at 2:46 pm
This has really made me think. Which is presumably why you wrote it (though not to make me personally think presumably).
I think I come at this from a slightly different perspective. Forget digital, think technology. Or forget technology and think language. Humans have always used technology to radically change the way we organise ourselves. From the moment we began encoding information as drawings on cave walls we have been able to store knowledge and understanding and share with with others separated from us by time or space. Arguably ever since then we have got better and faster at doing this. Seen on that continuum “digital” is nothing more than more paintings on virtual cave walls.
But technology allows us to do things differently. And it allows others to do things differently. And they will.
The reformation, the American and French revolutions, the creation of democracy and the destruction of monarchies. These can be seen as driven by the printing press, or by social networks, or by the unique eloquence of individuals (like Tom Paine), or the superior strategic thinking of military leaders (like George Washington), or the changing values across a wide population.
And of course it is all of these things.
Localgovcamp certainly needs non-digital folk. But non-digital folk need to be digital too.
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June 25, 2014 at 5:27 pm
Thanks Ben. It was my intention to write a think piece and to hear other views. Technology does allow us to do things differently, and rightly so.
I don’t mind ‘digital’ stuff, I really don’t and do stuff [digitally] and encourage others to do so. First and foremost though I do comms and as you say, this is probably more about interpretation, language and how we explain things.
Similarly, whatever we build, however we build it and then however it provides a service, online or otherwise, “build it and they will come” is where we miss a trick. Establish a need, include users in design, show people why it might help and that it’s available, explain how to use it if necessary, then and only then are people more likely to come…find it useful and importantly tell others.
Like you say; localgovcamp, and other camps for that matter, and local government in general need folk who can work collectively to share skills, challenge, build, explain and use what has been built to help folk.
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June 28, 2014 at 7:26 am
More interesting thoughts, Phil.
Just as an addendum to this debate, and in relation to your preference for digital forms of note-taking.
At Comms Hero in Wrexham, in the Q&A bit after my presentation I was asked how I found time to do social media, and how I managed to sit in the event tweeting while people were talking. My response was that the questioner had spent the day taking notes in her paper notebook, whereas I had spent the day using twitter as my notepad, live tweeting the bits of other’s presentations that I wanted to remember later, in the knowledge that they would be Storified.
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June 30, 2014 at 7:18 pm
Thanks John, great example.
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