A bit about our speakers - Dave Briggs
Posted on: 23 August 2012 by: Carl Haggerty - No Comments
With just over a month to go to Open Space South West – part 6 of the speaker series brings us onto Dave Briggs – Director at Kind of Digital
Kind of Digital is an online innovation agency, in that we support public sector organisations wanting to use digital technology to do interesting, different things.
This means lots of different kinds of work, from researching and writing digital strategies, to running training programmes, and building useful websites and online tools.
One recent project has involved building a social intranet for use between two councils with a shared management team. Another sees us advisinga council how online networks will help them attract investment and funding into the local economy.
We also run the annual LocalGovCamp unconference, which I’d like to think in some small way has provided a bit of inspiration for Open Space South West.
My own journey has taken me from assessing housing benefits claims at a council in Norfolk to the web team at 10 Downing Street, and now running my own business. What made that journey possible was the web, in particular social media like blogging and Twitter, and the networks it helped me to create.
My passion is for enabling innovation to happen within local authorities. I remember being stuck behind a desk, wanting to do things differently – better! – but not feeling enable to change anything. As Carl has remarked on his blog recently, caring about things can be a lonely experience.
Networks like Twitter mean that nobody has to feel lonely anymore. The strength and resilience of those loose, online ties continues to amaze. Any time you need help, or reassurance, it’s just a few presses of a key away.
Making innovation happen doesn’t have to be hard. Certainly, the technology is at anybody’s finger-tips. Getting people on board might be trickier, certainly across a whole organisation. The ease at which people can get the tools up and running, often at no cost at all, however means that small groups can just get on with it if they want to.
Public services need to find a way of setting free their innovators, their creative types, the enthused and motivated. Open Space South West promises to be an occasion where all the attendees will fit into at least one of those categories. I’m really looking forward to it!
Tags: Dave Briggs, Kind of Digital
