GovCamp. An exercise in nostalgia for times past or a scene from Uncut Gems?
Everyones experience of a GovCamp is different. It all depends on the people you meet but more importantly the sessions you go to. One ritual everyone will experience is pitching. This is the un-conference ritual where people are invited to the front of the room to pitch a session. Once they pitch the idea those in the audience with a show of hands indicate whether it’s good enough to be put on the grid as a session. This show of hands vote reminds me of old television footage showing car workers in a field hands aloft approving the unions call for strike action. The campers as they are known are brave and brilliant for getting up to pitch their idea for a session. Honesty box, the pitching ritual is the right way to do it but even the brevity of pitches it takes awhile to get through. Thankfully we who have our hands raised are seated, this is not a stand up meeting. Praise the pitch but the longer it went on I would have put my hand up in support of anything from a session looking at SharePoint as a Platform (SAAP) to Why your laptop does not need to be covered in stickers.
One way of looking at GovCamp 2020 was that it was nostalgic. A look back not in anger and for some it was a look back to be proud of. The GovCamp community was a driver of so much change that contributed to gov.uk and the creation of the Government Digital Service. Even now it’s foot is firmly front facing with a session that is I believe having real impact that isFeminist procurement! Microactions to increase social good.
You could sum up the nostalgia with the feeling that the GovCamp community was a home for disrupters. The ideas that came out of GovCamp were ones that some would push back against. Now those disruptors are being disrupted. A spectre is haunting GovCamp, the spectre of a certain blog post, the blogger who posted it and what it all means. The way to deal with is to read, react, read it again and don’t dismiss it out of hand.
What you’ve read so far may lend an impression my GovCamp experience was a bit dull. Far from it, the whole experience was like a scene from the film Uncut Gems. Once the pitching is over I found myself bouncing from session to session learning lots as I went along. In some ways the best sessions at GovCamp are those you have on the margins, over coffee or just barging up to people to ask them a question.
Rather than give you a commentary on all the sessions I went to, instead some highlights. What I enjoyed most were sessions that were somewhat un-related to work. Like the the session ‘Society scale pivots’ that looked at changes that get whole of society buy-in. This is where populations don’t just see a policy as something handed down but instead one were they themselves participated in creating it. Everyone then plays a part in implementing it with series of nudges to help implement the policy and make it real. This may involve nudging people to use public transport rather than take the car.
Then there was the session about Open space whole group process. Getting everyone into the same space physical or virtual space to solve a problem. This could be whole department, organisation or right up to a citizens assembly. This was the type of session were your mind thinks how with all sorts of stuff keeping us busy in work. How on earth can you get people to come to sprint show and tell session. This was the kind of session that starts off with cynicism but by the end you think yeah this could work. Another session I went to looked at Financial Difficulties, Gambling and persistent debt. My initial impression was what has this got to do with GovCamp surely a session on TikTok would be better -) On the face of it this session had nothing do with social media but it other ways it had everything to do with it. The creators of the social media platforms we use today studied gambling in particular slot machines to get us hooked on their products. We keep refreshing Twitter to see the latest tweets. We through our use of social media are using the techniques of online gambling. All we lose is our time while the gamblers on can potentially lose an eye watering amount of money to a gambling app.
The only winner for my money is #UKGC20
