Every years there are many conferences, forums and other publicly orientated events where public servants speak - providing views on their activities, successes and learnings across a wide-range of professional disciples.
The conference I have been at the last two days, FutureGov Hong Kong, is one example of these - where three Australian public servants spoke about our experiences and our presentations were distributed to delegates from approximately 10 countries.
Given that these events are public - anyone who registers (and pays a fee if one is charged) can attend, I have often wondered why more government departments do not make presentations given publicly by their staff - which do not contain sensitive or in confidence material - available online for the benefit of broader audiences.
Recently I found the State of Utah slideshare site, which does exactly this.
This is a great example of how to leverage government knowledge, sharing it across a department, a government, different governments and with the community.
Spreading this knowledge across the public sector increases its impact and value (and reduces the potential economic tax placed on its distribution by private sector conference organisers).
Are any Australian governments or departments doing this already?
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Why not make your department's public presentations public? | Tweet |
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
FutureGov Hong Kong - Day 1 LiveBlog | Tweet |
I'm attending FutureGov Hong Kong over the next two days and will be liveblogging and tweeting from the event as possible.
The event features speakers and attendees from countries across Asia-Pac, including Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China and should provide insights into Government IT and Gov 2.0 initiatives across the region.
We're just kicking off for the morning so I am opening up my liveblog below...
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Heading to Hong Kong | Tweet |
I'm leaving for Hong Kong today (in fact I'm scheduled to board the plane 3 minutes after this post is scheduled to go live) to attend and speak at the FutureGov Hong Kong conference on behalf of my department.
Depending on the availability of internet connectivity I will either liveblog and tweet parts of the event or post about it later.
The rest of the week I am taking as a holiday - so don't expect me to post (though I still might as ideas strike me).
This is my first trip to the province, and I am looking forward to the food, the culture and the custom-made suits.
I am also looking forward to 10 uninterrupted hours with the Gov 2.0 Taskforce project reports on the plane....
Friday, March 05, 2010
There's an online social network for everyone | Tweet |
The next time you or your colleagues dismiss the idea of attempting to develop a social networking strategy for a niche audience, consider that the internet is big enough (with over a billion users) for there to be many niche communities for unusual passions.
Network World recently published an article, Ten of the World's Strangest Social Networks, looking at ten of these niche online communities, including for lovers of exotic moustaches, for people who discuss their (sleeping) dreams, for karaoke fans and best of all a social network where everyone - and everything - is your friend (well ok, this last one is a spoof).