Puffbox

At the time, January’s BarcampUKGovWeb felt like a breakthrough moment. Civil servants, specialist consultants, activists and volunteers coming together – on a Saturday, crucially – to share ideas and experiences, with the common objective of improving government web activity. And you know what? Looking back on it, you can trace so many good things from the past year, be they tangible deliverables or just personal connections, back to Barcamp. It worked.

So let’s do it again. 🙂

Announced last week by Tom Watson, we’ve set a date of Saturday 31 January 2009 for the second UK government Barcamp, and it’s great to see so many people rushing to sign up already. It’ll be the same basic Barcamp mix of talks, demos, discussions and (no doubt) drinks… with an expectation that everyone comes prepared to contribute, and ideally, to lead a session of their own. The more informal, the better: just stand up, and tell us about something you’ve done lately. And the truth is, in the past year, we’ve all done a tremendous amount worth talking about. This is our chance to share what we’ve learned.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re the sort of person who should be coming along. Simple as that.