A group of enthusiastic CityCampers and a few new faces met last night to catch up on the CityCamp projects, new ideas, and what’s coming up in the autumn.
We started rotating the ‘chair’ of the session so it can always be ‘by the group, for the group’, many thanks to Rob Shepherd for taking the reigns and encouraging a great, wide-ranging discussion. Read on for a quick summary of all the amazing links and ideas and energy that exploded in the room! Or you can catch up on the tweets from the night.
Jo Ivens gave the latest from Demsoc Brighton on the exciting events coming up in autumn:
CityForum (also known as CityCamp 1.5) is an event Demsoc Brighton is running in conjunction with Brighton University where a diverse range of people will come together to discuss issue facing our City, and come up with practical solutions together. It will take place over the afternoon and evening of Wednesday 5 October and culminate in a pitching session where groups will present their ideas and solutions to a panel of local leaders, people who are in a position to commit to taking the best ideas forward. Already confirmed are Council boss John Barradell and Community & Voluntary Sector Forum Director, Gordon McCullough and we hope to also have Colin Monk, of Brighton University. Any other suggestions? Let us know via brighton@demsoc.org
The event itself will take place on at the Sallis Benney Theatre at Brighton University on Grand Parade, and there will be a month long online discussion as part of the Brighton Digital Festival . Everyone is invited to be involved with the event and with the online discussions – and this is being launched on 6 September at The Hampton pub in Hove.
As usual with the meet up advice and links were suggested: Brightone – the digital volunteering group might help with developing the platform for online discussions, and all CityCampers were asked to contribute, retweet, use their networks to link and engage people, any volunteers for moderating or encouraging debate are very welcome (thank you Benita Matofska for being the first volunteer!)
Demsoc are partnering with the RSA South East network of social innovators to put on another event during the Digital Festival – a Social Innovation Ideas Evening - a kind of dragons den for social good. This will be at The Skiff on 21 September in the evening and will also have an online component in advance. So people with killer ideas who want to pitch to the RSA Dragons for support and possible finance can build momentum and steal a march on the competition by workshopping their ideas on line!
Updated from CityCamp projects
iNoticeboard – Cat Fletcher described her recent experience of trying to get hold of data on bus stops in Brighton & Hove, including finally going through the Freedom Of Information route to find out number, location and ownership of bus stops…hard work indeed. Resources and advice suggested by the group were to talk to fellow CityCampers OCSI and Tobias Quinn, Emer Coleman at London Data Store, Andy Stanford Clarke, IBM’s Master Inventor (surely a contender for Best Job Title in the World) and looking at what data the Department for Transport have released on this.
It brought up a useful point – once you have all this data…how do you use, interpret, understand it? For the non-statistician, it’s a very daunting task.
Tom Smith talked about the DataBridge project – which is working with six VCS organisations to look at how they use their own data, existing public data and identifying open data to be released. OCSI are working with data from groups to look at service provision mapping, identification of gaps and visualising this. Jo Ivens is writing a report of the findings including recommendations for the voluntary sector and for the partnership. There was lots of discussion about how the City uses data from non-public service providers, how this could be improved and links suggested to It’s Time To Neighbourhood Plan powered by Nexters and Patchwork, an app being developed by FutureGov in Litchfield focusing on safeguarding vulnerable children.
Sue Korman sent a update – Learn Local First is now connected to Digital Education Brighton and will showcase curriculum links for creative technology in the classroom as well as factual local content. The website is underdevelopment at SCIP, thanks to Mark, Sue will Tweet when we launch. Thanks to City Camp, Laura & Andrew at Public-i for continued support. Please follow on Twitter at @learnlocalfirst
The winners of the £10,000 prize at CityCamp, My Urban Angel also sent an update. They’re setting up as a social enterprise, running focus groups, thinking about what they need from the design of the app and hope to have something to show at CityForum in October. Follow @myurbanangel and congrats from all the CityCamp folks to Pete who’s getting married this weekend!
Finally, Tom from OCSI presented their great new app, Numberhood for iPhone or iPad. Local statistics in your pocket! The app gives you instant access to data for the important local issues in your area, visualises and describes more than 80 indicators across 10 themes, and compares trends and current position against regional and national data.
Brains a-fizzing and connections forming all over the place – thanks for a great session and to newbies Benita Matofska from People Who Share, James Togut from Sunshine Bank and Martin Digon who came along for the first time, you were very welcome!
- By Jo Ivens / July 22nd, 2011 / Categories: 2011, Latest news Tags: meetup
