Put a big bow on it and say goodbye

Last year during the course of my postings I made a few decisions/explored some random avenues and then disappeared off down other paths, seemingly willy nilly. This year I was determined to tie them all up and then move on.

Here are the three that haunt me:

Right back at the beginning I promised that I was not ‘blogging’ that has been proved untrue, as Dave Briggs pointed out, it was indeed a slippery slope. SO sorry!

I also said that I was going to build a social media toolkit I have since realised that there can be no such thing – it belies the medium and actually the best I could do was a decision tree to decide how online content should best be delivered according to who was needing to read the stuff. Not very clever, but realistic.

Finally, I made a big brouhaha about the online consultation deal because something small turned into something big. It has now turned into something monumental. This is exciting but it also beyond me and my blogging here until the people who are now doing this get to a point where we can help further.

I know that this last one is the most rubbish of me, I yelled for help, got it, then went silent. However, the name of the game is getting stuff done and if the work that I do goes any way towards getting that stuff done, then I have to be happy with that. And for all of you who contribute to discussions here, well… your time is not wasted either as all of it goes into the pot and is used to influence how we move forward.

It is better to be honest about this, so if any of the above piss you off then please accept my apologies. If my role is posting here about stuff that is happening, that then creates energy and conversation, it is not wasted. My role is enabling change and assisting the reality of that change; officials and Ministers do everything else. (That sounds lame, but I don’t mean it in a lame way – feel free to beat me up).

Well, that is the true beginning to my year. I look forward to another one that is going to kick arse in the government online space, not only in the UK but everywhere else too – it is an exciting time.

One giant step forward for online consultation, people

Just have a look at this: http://www.hmg.gov.uk/newopportunities/bloggers.aspx

No need to say any more

V-Logs from the online consultation meeting

Hermione Way, newspepper.com, interviewed some of the participants after the meeting on the 4th December. Whilst we set up collaborative areas for all of you to continue to add/develop some of the ideas that came from the day, I thought that is might be interesting for you to see what people said as soon as released from the room.

HUGE thank you to Hermione for doing this, and for highlighting what we are doing in this week’s (episode 3) techfluff.tv. She came in for the second half of the meeting and joined in on the discussion around social media and policy development. You may notice that I am not interviewed, this is because I am RUBBISH at being in front of a camera, much better at writing. Anyway, everyone else said it so much better than I could.

Steph Gray Department for Innovation, University and Skills (DIUS)

Mark O’Neill Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Mitch Sava Polywonk and David Wilcox Social Reporter

Matthew Cain Newscounter (Note the hesitation in the middle and the twitter conversation at end… diamond)

Alan Moore SMLXL

Euan Semple