Thankfully I knew a few of the other attendees otherwise I’d have had a very difficult day. I felt as if a lot of the other attendees weren’t overly approachable. Perhaps this was because there wasn’t the underlying ‘buzz’ that should be present at a conference which allows delegates to talk to each other about something cool they just saw in a presentation. Instead during talks I saw people more occupied with their laptops, phones, staring into the distance, and rolling their eyes at colleagues at some of the ideas being presented to them. I know I spent a lot of the day on my phone social networking in a lot of the talks about the content.

Stephen you nailed the atmosphere of the day perfectly. In a few ways it a was relief to read your summary. I had worried that it was just me who felt disconnected from the rest of the group. I found only some of the talks being over relevant to my background and interests, I didn’t have a group of co-workers to mingle and gossip with during breaks and between sessions. I did float between groups containing people I knew but by and large felt quite separate.

I did meet and catch up with quite a few interesting people; some of whom I have kept in touch with since returning to Sydney. However the most engaging conversations I had during my time at WDG were with other delegates were on topics not related to the content. Having attended a number of conferences focussing on different themes and areas of expertise I’ve never felt the way I did at WDG before.

I thought yours was particularly relevant. The issues of usability generally and accessibility specifically are at the heart of providing access to information and services online. Especially so for government.

My issue with the whole day was not at all with the conference or content, but with the apparently disengaged audience. It really bugged me.

The presentation I made is one I’ve delivered on 3 different occasions and each time I received a lot of positive feedback both during and after the preso. But this time I found many people in the audience to be far less responsive, which threw me a bit.

One of the general comments I’ve heard about the conference is that the content wasn’t specific enough to government. I can understand that and have taken it on board for other events. But I would like to say that there were a lot of presos where the content could easily be directly applied to any industry. Mine’s a good example of that. I would hope that delegates were able to distil info well enough that they could apply it to their own work.

I do agree that it is the responsibility of the presenter to develop and present engaging content and you can’t please all the people all the time. But as a conference attendee I also think it’s up to me to take what I can from a session. There have been times when I’ve attended a session the sounded interesting but turned out that it just wasn’t my thing. That’s hardly the presenters fault.

I just wanted to respond to the above point of Patrick’s, given that he was responding to my comment that lots of things flow down the chain of command but not much is allowed to flow back up.

Patrick is right in that a big problem is direction (or lack thereof), but this is quite closely linked to the unidirectional flow down the chain and not the incompatible ideas that I think Patrick is saying they are (happy to be corrected if I’m wrong here…)

In the four departments I have worked in, one of the core transferable experiences has been a scatter gun approach from the pointy end. A high volume of requests/demands forces it way down the pipe with the hope that at least some of the outcomes will stick in a positive manner. There is little engagement with how the flow will be implemented, only that it will and must be.

It gets depressing to think of the amount of time I have wasted over the years implementing something that was requested from deep within the SES, only to have the outcome ignored or, worse, completely forgotten about.

I don’t see that the two concepts of one way flow and lack of direction need be exclusive ones.

I really should stop leaving blog comments late at night. I fear I make less sense this way.

However it is the lack of direction and governance flowing downwards that is really disempowering. There is not much point having staff with great technical skills unless you can tell them what the problem is that you want a solution for. What happens is that technical people solve whatever (given the lack of direction) they perceive the problem to be. Guess what? It was the wrong problem!”

I agree with this in general but do not necessarily think that SES are even aware that engaging with the public is could be done much better – especially with the younger generations – using social media tools etc, mainly because (and I generalise here) most of them are illiterate with respect to these tools. And since I believe we were at a conference talking about engaging with the public/each other from a social media perspective it seems like we are going to be pushing stuff uphill expecting SES etc to take a lead in this type of activity. They simply don’t get it. The people who are aware at only now working there way up. Its going to be a long slow process.

As for doing something innovative its seems like the general public pays such little attention to what our departments do that its should be fairly easy to be innovative in this space, since its going to be hard work to get people to notice in the first place naive? maybe but thats my perspective and perhaps part of the problem and solution all at the same time.

none of this is to say that we aren’t all trying – and that there aren’t good people at all levels – but the comms/information/idea sharing between levels/internal/external is happening in channels that are not open to discussion.

Yes, like many businesses, the public sector has enormous communication issues between the management and doer layers. I think that’s a huge issue that needs dramatic revolution. But revolution is hard (and there are hard decisions to be made).

I think you missed the point of my second comment. It wasn’t that we need to be in one place to be able to communicate. It was that if a government make a bold, innovative, “best practice” step it will be criticised. So if we want government to do this then there will be costs, mistakes, u-turns, all the things that come from innovation. I am just cautioning people to be ready to support government when it is costly, makes mistakes, back-tracks on things. Otherwise you are asking for government to be a long way away from the leading edge.