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Agenda for Transformed by You

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Labels: transformedbyyou

If you've signed up to ’Transformed by You’, then read on, if not sign up now! We hope it will be an interesting, exciting and productive day for all of us. The whole event will be interactive and fluid but to help move things along an informal schedule is outlined below.

Who are we?

Hosts: Simon Wakeman ( MC for the day) and Carol Patrick

Lead Facilitators: Amy Sample Ward and David Wilcox

Support Team: Charlotte Edwards, Adam Fox, Tracey Gleeson, Sean Hale, Noel Hatch, Leanne McMahon, Chris Orton, Tom Phillips, Ian Proctor, Kirsty Russell and Hollie Snelson

Centre Manager: Matthew Payne

10:00 - 10:30: Registration and networking (Foyer)

10:30 - 10:45: Welcome and overview of the day – Hosts (Darwin Room)

10:45 - 11:05: Warm-Up and Introduction - Lead Facilitators (Darwin Room)

11.05 – 12.35: Morning Session – All (Breakout Rooms)

12:35 - 13:30: Lunch (Foyer)

13.30- 13.40: Recap, Review, Recharge- Lead Facilitators/All (Foyer)

13:40 - 14:50: Afternoon Session - All (Breakout Rooms)

14:50 - 15:50: Storytelling – Groups reps/All (Darwin Room)

15:50 - 16:00: Thank you and What's Next - Hosts (Darwin Room)

Is the tail getting too long?

Posted on 13:18 No Comments
Labels: transformedbyyou

The words "crowdsourcing" come up time and time again as successful ways to involve people in co-creating the answers (and questions!) to the massive challenges we face in public services.

Let's not even pretend we can get anywhere near being as responsive to these issues as we'd like to. Even Google can't. But what we do need to watch out for is that we don't allow a divide to be created between the 1% which is allowed for the crowdsourcing but which doesn't impact on the real decision making processes and the 99% of the decision making to be made behind closed doors, which itself does have an impact on what and how services are designed. They shouldn't be separate worlds, but often they are.

Paul Clarke covers this debate well in Hard Wired State

"How many of these ideas are actually crossing the seemingly vast divide to become ‘production’ public services? We have a few ideas about why this might be the case: not enough will to change; would it scale?; procurement never works like that in practice; sure, you can design smart new services but can you sustain them?… And so on…"

And because of these tensions, many the people innovating at the edges feel the emotions above. To put this in context, this image was a visualisation of people's tweets on the Social Innovator launch at NESTA.

We don't claim to have the answers to any of this, but we thought that we ought to try and tackle what we can as early as possible in this journey. That's why we've hopefully been pretty honest that for this event we will seed challenges we've crowdsourced with staff that they can see are key issues. People can then vote them to the top of the table or relegate them to the dropzone, if they disagree with them or think we've missed issues out, they can even suggest their own. On the day, you will be able to pick a challenge and get into a group to come up with ideas to tackle it.

Why get people to vote? This is less about going for xfactor style democracy which is probably not the best way to tackle digital inclusion. No, it's building on the pledgebank principle, ideas are more likely to take off if the challenges they help tackle are issues which people actually believe in. So if we put one of our challenges up there and the participants don't vote for it, that gives us a pretty good clue!

It's not me, it's you...

Have a look here and you'll see the newes t challenges submitted. What do you think?

Do you have any better ideas? Add them on, it's as simple as writing your idea in the "I suggest you" box.

Tell us what challenges you want to work on the day. You can either vote on those we've put forward or suggest your own!

Manchester or Middlesborough?

The league table of challenges seems to be changing all the time. What we've found is that the most popular ones are the most general like "helping people share skills in their communities" or "finding out what's going on in your local area" whereas simila r but more specific challenges are mid table or in the drop zone.

Something that's been going around my mind today, is will the more general challenges mean people get more freedom to brainstorm what idea they want to develop that tackles that challenge or will it mean more time discussing what that challenge actually means and less time developing it into a prototype?

Videos, magical things and cupcakes - what type of event is this?

Posted on 11:47 No Comments
Labels: 24 hour thinking, transformedbyyou

On Saturday 20^th March, we’re going to be bringing people together for a day to develop ideas and prototypes that tackle local challenges that you think are important. Sign up here if you haven't already!

A few people have asked us whether this event is going to be like a conference, a consultation or even a crowdsourcing crowdpleaser. Well we can guarantee it won’t be either of the first two and we would need all the cupcake creativity of twuttle to be able to pull off the latter. Today is their first birthday, so this post is dedicated to them.

Anyway, there are different ways of organising events that blend socials and innovation - short meetups, all day events and even weekend camps.

Groups are organising meetups right across the county, with @canterburygeeks and @meejahub to name but a few, with some like @twuddle evening having its own special branch @twampon. We were particularly inspired after meeting #tuttle 101, themselves inspired by Lloyd Davis’ Tuttle Club.

Public servants too are self organising to get their heads around how to be more open and collaborative using the web. People like Dave Briggs have been helping them do that in really creative ways, with events like LocalGovCamp and UKGovWeb and in the third sector, NFP Tweetup and Netsquared have been leading the way.

Others like Steve Moore and Amanda Gore are getting together people from other sectors to get ideas around how technology can tackle critical social challenges, from 2gether08, Reboot Britain to 2morro.

And then there are challenge type events like SICamp and Netsquared Challenge, who work over a whole weekend or more to get people to come up with ideas and turn them into prototypes. It was my own experience taking part in this and meeting the winners of a recent SICamp that really convinced us to try mixing up the sociability of meetups with the impact of innovation camps.

Tomorrow, we’ll tell you a bit more about what we mean by challenges, but in the meantime let us know if you have any questions, or if there are any similar meetups, unconferences, barcamps going on that we should know about – we’d love for you to come down to Transformed by You.

Kent & Medway Innovation Camp - Transformed by You on 20 March

Posted on 12:00 No Comments
Labels: 24 hour thinking, innovation camp, transformedbyyou

Do you have ideas on how you can improve your local area using the web or other technologies? Do you want to get together with others to see how you can turn these ideas into prototypes of new online services in just a day?

Come and join us on 20th March where you will be able to do all that and more!

Tell us and vote which challenges you want us to put forward

Find out more in our frequently asked questions

Tweet about it using the hashtag #transformedbyyou

If you have any other queries, feel free to contact us on 01622 69380 (Noel) or 01622 696109 (Kirsty)

How will it work?

In advance of the event, we want you to tell us what challenges you want to work on the day.

You can either vote on those we've put forward or suggest your own! The deadline for voting will be 14 March. The top 10 will be the challenges we work on the day itself.

On the day itself, you will able to get into groups to brainstorm ideas on how to tackle these challenges and develop prototypes based on the ideas you come up with.

Is this for you?

We're looking for a wide range of people to come along on the day - you don't necessarily need to have technical, computer or IT development skills - your thoughts, ideas and active participation in the workshop could help make a real difference to services that are provided for people in Kent and Medway.

How can you get to the event?

The venue is located directly off the A229, which can be easily accessed by both the M2 (junction 3) and the M20 (junction 6). There are also good public transport links. See map here.

Call for facilitators!

Posted on 15:15 No Comments
Labels: transformedbyyou

Transformed by You on Campus

25 March 2010 from 9am-5pm @ University of Kent Digital Media Hub, Canterbury, Kent

What do we mean?

We are bringing student innovators together for a day to develop prototypes of online tools that tackle local challenges. See the presentation below for more details on the approach.

Local Innovation Workshop

View more presentations from Innovation in Kent.

Who do we want to involve?

We are inviting students from the Digital Arts and Engineering Course. Facilitators will be invited who can help out during the day to create the glue with participants, while critical friends will provide advice on how the ideas could work in a public service environment.

We want people who can create the glue with participants as well as facilitate the activities within the group and make sure activities are completed on time.

As well as facilitators, we will also invite “critical friends” to drop in and out of groups and provide advice on how the ideas could work in real life. We will also invite people who can provide general support on the day.

What does the analysis show us?

The success of this day will be based as much on the quality of relationships that are formed, as it is on the event itself. To incentivise people to achieve something, we want to let them experience and test out different ways they can get involved. The organisers will seed facilitators to lead discussions that captivate people.

There are different ways of organising “innovation camps” - from informal meetups like at Teacamps, all day events like at 2gether08 to weekends like at SI Camp. Whatever type of activity is chosen, there needs to be a balance between centrally coordinated and self-organising activities.

Bottom-up activities are very popular but they’re also very new to people, so we want facilitators to make it as comfortable as possible for people to self-organise, or if it senses people are finding difficult to do that, then playing a more “supporting” role by suggesting ways forward.

How would the day run if you were facilitating?

9am - Guest presentations

Organisers will introduce the agenda and approach of the day and the challenges set. They will also introduce you as facilitators.

10 - Group 1: Brainstorming ideas in response to client’s brief

Students work in teams of four to come up with ideas

Facilitators support the session

University working with teams

11:30 Coffee break – teams discuss initial ideas with mentors

12:00 Brainstorming session resumes

1pm - Lunch

Group 1 teams briefing Group 2 about their ideas

2pm - Group 2: Prototyping solutions to ideas

Facilitators support the session

University working with teams

3pm - Coffee break – teams discuss initial prototypes with mentors

4pm - Presentations of developed prototypes to the client

5pm - Close

What would you require from you prior to the day?

We are looking for a short submission response detailing how you will provide the above requirements and any other inclusions as you feel are appropriate.

The submission must include:-

1. Your background including any previous work in this area

2. Costing including VAT

3. Any ideas and feedback you have on the approach to facilitation and organisation of the day

4. Your name and contact details

All responses to be returned by 12th February 2010 at 5pm to innovation@kent.gov.uk.

The submissions will be evaluated based on previous experience, understanding of the requirements, cost and the best value offered to Kent County Council.

The successful applicant will be contacted by 19th February 2010. It is anticipated that an initial detailed meeting with the organisers of the event will take place within the following 5 days.

For any further details please contact Noel Hatch on 07515992174 or noel.hatch2@kent.gov.uk.

Are there any rules and boundaries?

Rules and boundaries are useful to ensure that you as a facilitator and the participants know where you stand. These are rules we expect facilitators to apply:

Respect others, no idea is a bad one! Listen. Feedback. Ensure everyone can take part and speak. Be trustworthy and build trust. Maintain any confidentiality if a participant requests so. Balance your speaking time to enable participants to take part. Prompt return from breaks.

What challenges shall we set the participants?

We will set the participants a variety of challenges. Although each group can only pick one, it gives people a wide selection they would want to brainstorm ideas based on these. Examples of challenges could include developing prototypes or mockups of ideas on how to “find out what’s going on in the local area”, “report problems, “help people help each other”.

What will the venue provide?

The venue hosts a room where the people can meet and network and breakout spaces where people can get into groups and develop their ideas. These all have wifi internet connection. There will also be post its, pens and flipcharts provided as well as refreshments.