Earlier this month I attended GovCamp, a conference for open government and open data enthusiasts and practitioners. A good breadth of speakers and panelists were loosely organized around three streams: gov tech & open data, public involvement & communications, and public service innovation. Dreamy!
The well attended conference did lose some of the free wheeling intimacy of the first evening GovCamp that met at the Toronto Reference Library in the summer of 2010. That event, dubbed an “unconference” for its organic approach to the sessions, had every presenter introduce their topic for 1 minute on stage. Attendees got a great preview of both the topic and the speakers themselves. This approach beat deciding to attend a session based on a 4 or 5 word title by a long shot. In the organizers’ defence, they had planned this but some opening speakers went over their time and the session introductions had to be cut. Also owing to its smaller size, the previous GovCamp was more interactive. Participants gathered to discuss particular topics at tables rather than listening to panelists and speakers in larger rooms. That being said, there were many interesting speakers this year, and the unexpected conversations were equally enjoyable. On to the sessions:
The well attended conference did lose some of the free wheeling intimacy of the first evening GovCamp that met at the Toronto Reference Library in the summer of 2010. That event, dubbed an “unconference” for its organic approach to the sessions, had every presenter introduce their topic for 1 minute on stage. Attendees got a great preview of both the topic and the speakers themselves. This approach beat deciding to attend a session based on a 4 or 5 word title by a long shot. In the organizers’ defence, they had planned this but some opening speakers went over their time and the session introductions had to be cut. Also owing to its smaller size, the previous GovCamp was more interactive. Participants gathered to discuss particular topics at tables rather than listening to panelists and speakers in larger rooms. That being said, there were many interesting speakers this year, and the unexpected conversations were equally enjoyable. On to the sessions:
