In response to an all delegate email, some people have started to share their learning and reflections, I’ve included some highlights below…

1) What one thing do you remember from the day?

Futuregov’s rapid presentation was superb loved the enthusiasm and also got a couple of gems from it

There was really some common ground on making local Gov more Social Media friendly

The one thing ringing in my head is Carrie Bishop  Open by default, digital by design. So what hit me was the importance of not getting carried away with how but having a clear reason why we should be pushing our conversations into a public space now that we have the means to do it. I think we (as public communicators) could be in danger of happily focusing on the technical capabilities of the digital tools we have rather than the principles behind having a strong citizen focus. Which will bring us back to the same old comms dilemma of having requests from policy colleagues like “I want to produce a leaflet and it has to be green”.  So the day was hugely refreshing in terms of the passion for open government shown by the speakers rather than purely a passion for digital. And I’ve taken the energy behind their ideas back here and tried to generate some debate with the comms teams.

Not a thing, a person – Carrie Bishop

The speakers were awesome. All different, but very interesting and valuable content and ideas from all of them.

2) If you had no restrictions or barriers which one idea would you go with?

I heard something amazing from a fellow delegate which I couldn’t get over – she is working in health and told me either that a project she’s working on or had heard of in mental health/drugs/alcohol was issuing laptops to drug users and those with mental health problems as these people found it easier to communicate online than face to face in many cases. If there was a way of ensuring wide scale digital inclusion via such a huge investment of money, trust and learning, that would be brilliant. But a bit of a pipe dream on a large scale I suppose.

DCC promoting and supporting online engagement, signposting to sites like patient opinion,( they are developing a Care Opinion one too)  NHS choices, fix my street etc, to help improve services and fix stuff; then establishing an open data community where commissioners, providers, service users and the public can collectively agree on trends within that data and its significance and link it to the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment data.

Shaped by us – would like to pursue that. My memory has dimmed, but I remember thinking that so many of the ideas and initiatives raised could be adapted to meet community needs through Highways.

More talks and debates on experiences in and out of the workplace on Social media

Shaped by us website

3) Are you interested in meeting again to further develop ideas and change something?

I am certainly interested to meet again, what I would like to do is perhaps look at mapping/workshop something out in terms of a deliverable for instance how do we meet the needs to cut across NHS and Adult care and support to reduce duplication, what would an ideal delivery mechanism be for that? Seem to have a broad attendance group and whilst I don’t mean a hack day but we could utilise the big brains in the room and deliver something fundamental.

Yes, I’d like to focus on areas were we could develop realistic potential within highways.

Yes and can we get some Joint Strategic Needs Assessment analysts along from the public health team?

Yes, definitely. I found the day really inspiring. A bunch of committed, agile, clever (and quite radical) people sharing their ideas. Loved it.

So what next?

So far there is huge support to meet again in various forms so I think we can safely say – Open Space South West will return. However I think there is also a need for a few specific events and activities under the umbrella of Open Space South West.

For me the biggest thing is shifting to an Open By Default, Digital by Design mentality and adopting that as a core principle of Open Space South West.

This week has been really interesting in relation to Open Data and after a couple of meetings and a couple of conversations  - I’ve already started thinking about how we might facilitate and encourage an Open Data Community locally across the South West – if anyone wants to be involved in helping to plan something or wants to share examples from elsewhere then please do get in touch via the comments.

The key thing for the next event is how we make aspects of it more practical so we can solve real problems…similar in style to a City Camp.

Thank you all, I’m already really excited about the next time we all meet

However I’d like to better understand how we can learn from the event and how we can move forward – therefore I’d like to ask you 3 questions and if you could reply in the comments or via email to me with your answers then i’ll start to share these via the website.

1) What one thing do you remember from the day?

2) If you had no restrictions or barriers which one idea would you go with?

3) Are you interested in meeting again to further develop ideas and change something?

A few people asked on twitter during the event whether or not the presentations, where used, would be shared so here are the relevant links.

• Simon Gough / Phillippa Rose – Directors at Redfront
• Catherine Howe, Chief Executive at Public-i
• Carrie Bishop, Director at FutureGov (9.46 MB)
• Justin Griggs, Head of Policy and Development at NALC (1.34 MB)
• Dave Briggs, Director at Kind of Digital [ no slides used ]
• Dr George Julian, Director at RIPFA (9.58 MB)
• Dr Andrea Siodmok, Programme Director at DOTT Cornwall (6.66 MB)
• Shaped by Us video

• Catherine Howe – includes link to her slides
• Martin Howitt
• Paul Brewer
• Carl Haggerty

My head is spinning with ideas and it is also trying to digest and make sense of the simply awesome speaker presentations.  I’m away for a week but will get the presentations loaded up as soon as possible on my return.

As I mentioned before, it is really important to capture people’s learning from this event so please do share your thoughts, reflections and learning either on your own blog (make sure you tweet a link into the hashtag #OpenSSW) or by emailing me [carl . haggerty @ devon . gov . uk ]

The photos of the event are here

I think we all need to think about where we go next, how we stay connected and how we encourage more events across the region which builds on the passion and creativity clearly shown today.

I’d welcome your thoughts on how we achieve those things…