Conference reflections – local government, social media and mobile internet

Conference reflections – local government, social media and mobile internet

Had a great couple of days on the road at the end of last week.
Thursday took me to Birmingham’s Edgbaston Cricket Ground for the Public Sector Forums event on council websites.
Travel arrangements meant I was only there for a couple of hours, but it was good to meet the guys from Public Sector Forums and in particular Dave Briggs – someone I’ve communicated online with a few times and whose blog is a must-read for public sector folk interested in social media.
Dave’s presentation covered some great examples of social media in practice in local government and was an inspirational call-to-action to councils to start being creative in their application of social media in communications and engagement.
I talked about the mobile internet, why councils should be becoming more interested in it over the coming year, and what they should be doing with it. My presentation is here.
Then on Thursday night it was up to Manchester to hook up with Andy and Nicky from Don’t Panic event management and the rest of the speakers at Friday’s Don’t Panic Guide to Social Media conference. It was great to catch up with familiar faces and meet new people too over dinner.
Friday’s conference was at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester – the best venue I’ve spoken at or attended a conference at so far. A great building, lovely space and definitely the largest screen I’ve ever presented with:

I had to rush off after my presentation, so missed out on the rest of the day, but judging by the active Twitter backchannel provided by Sarah Hartley, it was a good day.
Simon Wakeman presenting at DPGSM, Manchester
You can see blogs posts so far about the day from Tom Murphy and Richard Bailey, plus a new blog started by a delegate inspired by the conference.
(images thanks to Andy at Don’t Panic)

About SIMON

I work with technology-centric businesses as an interim Chief Operating Officer (COO), consultant and advisor. I created the B3 framework® for scaling technology businesses and I write a newsletter called Build for leaders who are building brilliant companies.