Yesterday I was doing some social reporting with David Wilcox and Steve Lawson for a really interesting symposium looking at how technology can help in (and get us out of) the current cold economic climate, organised by Jamie Young at the RSA.There is plenty more on the blog and the event wasn’t the end of the process as you’ll see in a second.

As well as the keynote speeches and panel discussion the main meat of the day was discussion of four papers that had been commissioned on Supporting Innovation, Sustainable Technology, the Interconnected Society and finally Public Services.  I was live-blogging the last two sessions using CovertItLive and you can ‘replay’ the session to find out what went on.  Jamie is busy gathering together all the feedback the results of this process will be published shortly

• My pictures
• David’s videos and my videos
• The Twitter backchannel (everything tagged #techcold)
• Kathryn Corrick’s write up of the Interconnected Society session

My first day with my own hat on for a while and in London for Media 140. There are lots of twittery people here – and they will be blogging more than me. But the back channel will be interesting…

Not so much breaking news, but spraining it – here is my blurb on last week’s excellent NFPtwteetup.

Organiser Rachel Beer, and Justgiving’s (lovely sponsors of the evening) Jonathan Waddingham, brought together about 60 non-profit types to Christian Aid’s HQ in London for a couple of hours of chat about Twitter and all manner of social media tools. We were also lucky enough to be able to boadcast live on Christian Aid’s internet radio station which I found myself presenting for a couple of hours(!). And very enjoyable it was too, once the inital shock had worn off. The collaborative slideshow that was created for the day is below.

On Saturday I went to my first Barcamp and was lucky enough that it was the UKGovWeb Barcamp hosted at the impressive sounding Ministry of Justice.

After whizzing round the room getting names and tags for everyone, Tim Davies gave us the rules for the day, sessions were organised and people just sort of got on with it. People showed stuff off, shared what worked and what didn’t, asked questions and answered a few too. Sessions I went to included Steph Gray’s on the trials and tribulations of DIUS consultation’s over the past year and Guy Dickinson and Simon Wheatley’s Ideas for my Council.

But like Carl Haggerty, (who I met for the first time and shared a Peroni or two with afterwards before he dashed back to Devon to start his new job)  I found the greatest benefit in meeting up with like minded government and non-government types looking to make a difference. I’m not a hard core government webster, but I didn’t feel out of place, I think because the idea of government websites sitting in splendid isolation is not a model that anyone attending felt was viable. It’s the fuzzy bits at the edge I’m interested in.  Where does consultation stop and policy co-creation and service provision begin? Is it a continuous iterative process that is being broken down as we speak, crossing over with local government, the private and Third sectors?

When it comes to consultation for example, tools like Commentariat are making this possible and the plain english Big City Plan Talk show that there is another way, even with a traditional consultation model – so long as a bit of common sense is applied. Overall as Steph points out and Neil Williams builds on, these are exciting times and not just times for talking (and there was a lot of good talking on Saturday), but doing.

Big thanks

Of course despite their apparently self-organising nature, these things don’t ‘just happen’, there is a lot of hard work behind the scenes and the likes of Dave Briggs and Jeremy Gould deserve lots of thanks for putting on a great day. Jeremy is already spending his first night in Ireland having literally left the building for the last time and although I’ve only met him in meatspace a couple of times, he’s obviously a top bloke, and I’ll add my voice to everyone else’s in wishing him good luck for the future – not that he needs it.

• UKGovBarcamp

• Twitter conversations

• Pictures on Flickr