brain dump after Town Hall 2030 session

31 Jul, 2024

today i took part in a Town Hall 2030 round table which was really interesting, i love a fast moving session with lots of passionate people full of ideas!
if I had the pro version of bear blog (must upgrade!) i'd include a photo of my heap of scribbles i made before / during / after the meeting.

here's some excerpts an actions to be refined or done at a later date*:

• software user groups could be organised around business areas not software packages or suppliers. (not my original idea - this came up in a workshop session I was at ages ago!). e.g. there could be a finance software group with the discussion led by reps from finance depts, and all the big suppliers attend, but they don't run the agenda. it focusses on wider issues and priorities. too often user groups only discuss issues and bugs and we end up split by supplier and area.

• can we talk about digital without using the word digital? this one's been loitering on the ideas list for a while. can we describe the benefits of digital without saying anything technical? i think this is linked with getting wider buy-in for improvement and resourcing (by understanding the underlying patterns tech enables and their wider benefits) but can't explain it very well without trying it

  • TRY IT!

• place based I never really understood this until recently and maybe I still don't. i picture a cross between a conductor and a professional cat herder. for residents I think the sense of place changes on the context (at home place is my street, when I'm shopping its the local towns, when I think of things to do its the whole borough and beyond) and very few of them line up nicely with our administrative boundaries.

  • I think tech can help with this - vague idea here about data being given context instead of just presented and the context being fluid. THIS NEEDS A PROOF OF CONCEPT
  • UPGRADE TO PRO AND INSERT AI GENERATED IMAGE OF CAT HERDER CONDUCTOR HYBRID FIRST ACTION DONE ✅
  • do I want to understand place based leadership in an official sense or do I quite like my idea of it? 🐈🎶🎻😸

• councils have a difficult job with a huge, changing remit. on top of all the disjointed statutory stuff there is the vague sense of being responsible for the local area and the wellbeing and prosperity of those in it whilst not being in control of most of the variables or resources needed to affect those things.

• I've underlined INFLUENCE lots of times. not just in relation to a council's operations but also thinking about digital peeps wanting to create change and improvement. do we need to start looking at how social media influencers do it? 😂

• seriously tho - these conversations often happen between people who already know about and agree on all this stuff. but they aren't the people who can make the change happen or they would have done it. we spend a lot of time discussing what with likeminded people and not so much thinking about wh our target audience really is and how we get them on board. local govt digital service delivery and reform needs a marketing overhaul...

  • MORE THINKING REQUIRED

• lots of tech effort and sharing is spent on operational things - processes, and transactions. recently I've been thinking about how we could utilise it on a strategic level. I've got some rough thoughts on LLMs being used to translate concepts (vision / strategy) in a way that tailors the message for different groups. and something about reporting progress both upward and downward in a way that ties people's work in with the real value they are creating. all a bit fuzzy tho

  • MOST DEFO MORE THINKING REQUIRED LOL I love this idea, its been rearing its head for ages and I really want to crack it

• "unifying our approach through tech not to tech"

• "carrot not stick". funding sounds like a carrot but the effort it takes to bid and the odds of getting it make it not so carroty

  • SO WHATS THE REAL CARROT THEN? 🥕

• "lets service design ourselves" - I think this means these new behaviours we all want to be doing but somehow aren't doing... we need to follow our own rules. make it obvious, make it easy, make it simple, make the good behaviour the default without having to tell anyone they need to do it, design the way we work so the things we want just happen.

  • DEFINE "THINGS"...😅

• big respect to all the people that take part in these events because you can tell they put real effort into thinking and caring about this stuff and making the world a better place

* if I don't post something now I'll spend ages thinking I have to make it sound perfect and it'll never happen. I've already reached the "looking at new pens" stage of the ideation process where I convince myself that a stationery upgrade is the key to getting all my thoughts together

#OPINIONS #random thoughts