It’s fast approaching – the Public-i usergroup, our bi-annual one-day get-together will be on Friday, starting at 10.30am. Quite apart from being the must-see event of the pre-Christmas period, knocking the Dr Who special from its perch, this will be a great chance to talk about many of the very important things that have happened recently. OK, so that Dr Who bit might be oversell – but important things have definitely been happening. In no particular order they include:-
- A new stats package for webcasting that has already been talked about by Lewis here.
- Serious progress on the Networked Councillor work – that we’ll hear about in an afternoon session which aims to address how our webcasting clients can get involved.
- News that the government is going to force English councils to allow people to film meetings with law.
We should have a chance to talk about some of these developments during the day (please see the actual agenda here) – but I also wanted to highlight before the meeting some of the great things that our clients have been up to, as they are all fantastic and may give food for thought to anyone thinking of joining us for the day or online.
And from our clients:-
- Sussex PCC held a brilliant Q&A with the Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne – following in the footsteps of clients like Bristol and Brighton and Hove who are using webcasting in similar ways for, respectively, their Open Door and Ask George events.
- Damian Beaumont at Cheshire West and Chester has been working on multi-site webcasting – and we hope to get a post about this from him in the new year.
- Swansea held its first webcast as part of an events package – while Torfaen has continued to webcast following a start in late September.
- Powys County Council held the fantastic Have Your Say Day, which saw webcasting of a multi-service event involving young people and children.
- Suffolk local authorities will be piloting the Networked Councillor programme – following the announcement made by Colin Noble at the East of England LGA’s Assembly.
Because our clients are getting up to so many interesting things, we really want to make more of their stories and see how everyone has the chance of sharing them. I have been talking to a few people about the idea of seeing how the usergroup could be more than just a bi-annual thing, and Lewis will talk more about that at the usergroup itself. But at the moment that really starts with the development of a dedicated site for the usergroup (and any related events) called Talk – where we’ll be webcasting the usergroup on Friday.
Taking part – joining online
If you want to take part we’ll be using Talk for a webcast and live discussion (which will be relayed to those attending in person). There will be a Twitter hashtag (#piug13) and we’d love you to visit and log in to Talk to take part in the online meeting. Please do this to watch the webcast, ask questions and contribute to the debate.
Simply visit Talk, go to the top-right of the screen and press ‘login’ which will allow you to choose one of a few options that are available (Facebook, Google, Twitter and others). This should take all of about 30 seconds. I promise…
