Picture by Paul Clarke

I spent Saturday (along with about 200 web, digital and social media types) at the UKGovcamp 2011 in London.

This ‘unconference’ has been run for the past few years and is a brilliant opportunity to get together with people who share interest in a wide range of topics around the broad areas of social media, open data, web development, digital communications, hyperlocal websites, online communities – you get the picture.

Its an incredibly popular event, and I was lucky to get one of the 200-odd tickets for the day. Contrary to what you might think from the surrounding chatter (the word ‘awesome’ is somewhat overused), the event is not filled wall-to-wall with geeks or sad people unable to have a conversation unless mediated through a laptop.

UKGovcamp 2011 was bursting with people who share excitement about the possibilities digital technologies present things to get done. For people. In a public policy context. One of the good things about an ‘unconference is that the audience not only creates the event, but it records it too, with lots of pictures, blog posts, tweets and presentations. These have all been helpfully aggregated at the UKGovcamp Buzz Aggregator.

Part of the reason I was there was to talk to people about a new project Boilerhouse is running for Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands called Making a Difference with Data. The project, funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government, has been set up to spread understanding about open data and transparency in local public services.

The project will be generating material on what’s happening with open data in the areas of health & social care; local authorities, housing; roads and transport; policing and criminal justice; and education, and will demonstrate how this information can be used by citizens to raise issues, campaign and otherwise influence things that affect local communities.

The project website www.madwdata.org.uk will be launched fully in mid-February, but if you would like to find out more, you can sign up for an alert when we launch, or you can follow us on Twitter @madwDATA.

Going back to UKGovcamp 2011, I should just mention the fantastic hospitality from Microsoft, who provided venue, lunch and an endless supply of coffee and tea. I doubt there has ever been such a concentration of A**le products in their office on one day before, but it must be said that the Microsoft team took this, and a certain amount of joshing about Vista, IE6 etc, with great good humour.