Local Innovation Camp

Local Innovation Camp Draft

Executive summary What do we mean? Testing new ways of bringing people together from different sectors with shared needs and interests to tackle local challenges Why is KCC doing this? We want to join up people with the skills and time – the innovators and social entrepreneurs – with the people with the influence and resource to make innovation happen – the service providers. We want to match those groups of people together on specific challenges (such as Backing Kent Business or Backing Kent People). What does KCC want to achieve? We want to bring people together with different skills to develop online based proof of concepts on specific challenges over the course of a day. This will enable service managers there to see local innovation at work and give them an insight into what innovative tools could do for their service. Who are the organisers going to involve? The organisers will reach out to people whose experiences, expertise and enthusiasm will really benefit the event and decide whether the “camp” is going to be open to everyone or invite-only. Partners will be invited who can help out during the day for back-up and create the glue with participants. What does the analysis show us? The success of a “camp” is based as much on the quality of relationships that are formed, as it is on the event itself. To incentivise people to achieve something, let people experience and test out different ways they can get involved. The organisers will seed facilitators to lead discussions that captivate people. How is the event going to be organised? Please turn over Research by Noël Hatch, Claire Matthews and Robert Bromley Image by Wordle

How are the organisers going to organise the event? What are the organisers going to do during the day? Warm up • Refreshments & meeting facilitators/speakers & checking out pictures/stories of local innovations on the wall (from Stories of Change and from other organisations participating, such as Medway Council) & blogging/video area Introduction of the day (weekend) • Introduction of agenda of the day • Speed networking session • Break Morning session • Introduction of speakers & issue groups • Group workshops • Lunch Afternoon session • Facilitation exercise • Break • Showcase by each group • Conclusions, feedback & next steps How are the organisers going to do it?

OPTION 1 Before the workshop (1 month) Adapted from SI Camp o o

o o

o

Get participants to think of an idea which could be used to tackle one of the issues. They can use examples of the innovations on iNews for inspiration. Give them questions and criteria which their idea needs to answer and enable them to post their ideas online – either on a separate website or a tool like www.uservoice.com - so other people can rate the ideas. Get people to rate and comment on the ideas online. Recruit participants into issue teams. Tell them KCC needs their help to develop innovations to tackle issues agreed by stakeholders. Each participant can join one of the teams - ideally a maximum of six people per team on a first come first served basis. Create an online group so people can check out who else is coming to the workshop, fill out their own profile and start connecting with people before the event via our event website.

Warm up (30 minutes) When participants enter the room, they ideally want to find •

•

Someone they know and can have a chat with. They may not know any of the other people taking part, so we need to o Make sure facilitators welcome everyone that enters the room Something they can do o Take a recyclable cup and write their name on the cup & face to drink refreshments (to be ready half an hour before the start of the workshop) o Put on a pre-made tag of their name & the interests/skills/issues (they told you about in the survey you send them before the workshop) in the tagging area o Look at the case studies on the wall (cut them up like CommonCraft) and blog their thoughts on the computer/s

When speakers enter the room, they ideally want to find • •

•

The same as what other people taking want to find as they are participants too! Someone from their organisation to check what they will be doing on the day Put up their own case studies and put them on the wall

Create a welcome area at the venue, which can include a space for organisations sponsoring or facilitating the event, a refreshments area so attendees can relax and browse and talk informally, a contact form/business card jar, and perhaps more innovative offerings also e.g. a blogging/video area. Before the workshop • •

Get people to submit & rate ideas on issues they would like featured in the workshop. Where there are similar ideas, merge these around a key issue. Feature the top four issues. Get people to then join one of the four “issue teams" in advance of the workshop. Provide them with the background to the issue and the ideas that have been submitted as part of it.

Introduction of day (45 minutes) Given this will be a different type of event to what people normally expect, they will want some reassurance of what the day will entail and that this is new for everyone (including Kent & Medway councils) and get people together into the spirit of the day with something a bit fun and humbling •

Introduce the agenda of the day (which will be on a wide screen or photocopied for everyone) (5 minutes max) Ask everyone to put chairs around the table (5 minutes) Get each participant to ask their neighbour for 2 minutes (and vice versa) about themselves, why they wanted to come along and what they hope to get out of the day & tag keywords on each other (5 minutes) When whistle blows, get them to go and meet another neighbour and repeat the exercise (without the tagging, which will already have been done) (5 minutes). Repeat this exercise another three times so people meet at least five new people and build confidence & focus in what they want to get out of the day (who knows, it may change in between exercises!) Refreshment/Comfort break (10 minutes)

• •

•

•

Morning session (1hr 45) •

Get facilitator to introduce the morning agenda (5 minutes) and all of the speakers (5 minutes) Work out each workshop with all speakers individually & collectively & by theme Work with each speaker on how they would like to facilitate their workshop

• • •

Play the game (refer to toolkit on this with “tool cards” – below is only a brief overview) 1.

This game1 is best played in small groups, so if there’s more than six in your group, split people up into groups of 4-6 people. If you are a small group, do it all together!

2.

Choose one of the exercises in Map innovation challenges to do with your group/s and then o o o

Discuss the groups’ findings using the flipchart to stimulate the debate. What do people think? What seems to be the most recurring issue? Can the group see any links between the people or needs? Vote on which issue your group/s want to event on

3. Get your group/s to choose from a pack of “tool cards” below to address the issue, but there’s a catch: o

1

Your group will have a budget of 25 points they can use and they have to use at least one tool from each section (highlighted in bold). Each “tool card” has a number at the bottom – this indicates how many points the tool “costs”.

The game was inspired by the social media game by David Wilcox

o

Your group can add its own “tool card” if they have an idea for the event. If so, ask them how much money, time and skills their ideas will require out of a scale of 1-3 points. Title of the tool Description of the tool. A tool you can try out. Number of points

4. Give each group a timeline to pinpoint what they are going to do over the course of the event. 5.

Although the aim is to guide the first part of the session around getting groups to come up with an idea that meets an “innovation challenge” (to be agreed by stakeholders) and using the second session to work out how to develop it, what is really great is for people to experience an accelerated simulation of an event in the space of a day.

6. Get speakers to drop in and out to advise & challenge the groups on their “innovations”. 7. Over the course of the workshop, ask facilitators to advise each group on imaginary "unexpected events" that will affect the innovation they're working on (like a council announcement on funding or a local incident that compromises the idea). Lunch (1hr) Food will need to be provided – including dietary options. It needs to be explored if lunch can be sponsored. Warm up After lunch, people will be digesting their food and probably exhausted by the energy and discussion, so they will want something to get them going again • • •

Get facilitators to ask everyone to put the chairs into a circle (and play musical chairs if there is a stereo) (5 minutes) Get facilitators to go round the room and ask each person for one word that describes how they feel the morning has gone (10 minutes) Get facilitators to introduce the next part of the day (5 minutes)

Afternoon session (1hr 45) • • •

Teams build on ideas developed in morning session, focusing on delivery of the innovation Ask each group to showcase & "walk through" their innovation (possibly in mock up Gateway and Library with real staff…and users) with opportunities for feedback from the other participants and speakers. Capture each showcase and turn the notes (and photo/video content) into an overview of the innovation that people can take away and even take forward

together. Conclusions, feedback & next steps

•

After the workshop • Webcam/Voxpops with volunteers to film workshops and ask participants a generic question relating to the event, which we could then package as a clip for the event and distribute through Kent & Medway councils channels and the media • People taking part can get together within their “issue team” and expand it to develop their innovation further. Kent County Council and other participating organisations can work with the four teams to see whether a promotional, supporting or brokerage role is best. This is all about creating the relationships needed to develop innovations and hopefully people’s ideas won't end with the day.

OPTION 2 During the event • • •

o o

Introduction by facilitators (10 minutes) Introduction to the event and the theme discussed Workshops (4 x 15 minutes) o Participants divided into groups of maximum 6-8 people with at least one designated facilitator o Facilitator/s encourage debate on each question (with use of photos representing theme or people’s needs relating to theme) o Rapporteur takes notes of the debate o Facilitator/s ask the participants in their group to write at least one challenge and one solution to each question o Participants post their answers on a whiteboard Facilitators feed back a synthesis of the debate in their groups (15 minutes) Conclusion of debate by facilitators

After the event • Post online a synthesis of the notes taken by the rapporteurs on each question, the post-its of the participants, the videos/photos taken of the event • Distribute synthesis and media content (photos/videos) to other participating organisations • People can continue the discussion online, commenting on the notes and the theme itself • Create a portfolio of the challenges and solutions to each theme fed through the events – from articles on our blog, post its, photos and videos of the events – an accessible, user generated and comprehensive snapshot of the day OPTION 3 Format: about 30-40 people with more turning up mid-day. Intro: • •

Come in and register by signing a sheet, teas, coffees and snacks available. Enter large room (1).

• • •

• • • • •

Room is laid out in typical conference style (rows of chairs facing a projector). The chairs have wheels to help move them easily. Icebreaker session: Go round the room give your name and 3 key words about your interests e.g. innovation, social media and research. Brief introduction talk: Speaker asks has anyone attended an unconference before? Then gets a member of the audience to describe what an unconference is. Speaker describes how the sessions will work and the code of conduct: people can move around, walk out of discussions and there will be no formal write up. The floor is opened for session suggestions. The Facilitator coaxes proposals from the crowd. Volunteers get up and give a brief description of the session they will run and write in on a post-it note. Post-it note is then stuck on a grid of timeslots and rooms. There are 6 break out rooms, 1 being the largest, 2 have projectors, 5 with large screen TVs. Sessions are not all decided at the beginning of the day and can be posted up during breaks and after lunch. The tag for Twitter is announced

The Sessions: • • • • • • • • •

In the first session: Everyone gives their background on the topic. The facilitator is needed much more in these initial sessions. There is always a facilitator in each room. This then leads into further discussion. Then brief tea/coffee in hall and moved on. Session 2 Lunch: pizza brought in and an alternative for those who don’t eat pizza Session 3 Quick review at 2pm Session 4: The Social Media Game (amongst other choices). Good timing as everyone is very tired in the afternoon. A larger number of afternoon sessions are run by the facilitators and preprepared e.g. games, presentations and how-to’s.

The Social Media Game: •

The room is split in two. Each team identifies a real problem e.g. Difficulties a novice faces in using social media.

•

The team then writes down, on flip chart paper, the scenario: o o o o

A description of the problems and opportunity. The location: scope of influence, is it departmental, national, international. The people: who is affected? Other considerations: what else is relevant?

•

Group are then asked to write down a number between 7 and 15, e.g. 8. If you write 8 you then have 8 points you can ‘spend’ on a solution to your problem. Cards are passed round picturing different solutions and points they are worth.

•

The team has to decide which solutions they want to spend their points on and what is in budget.

•

One of the cards is a ‘wild card’. Using this card the team can invent their own solutions and allocate a number of points to it.

•

At the end the teams present their solutions to each other.

With more time you would swap a team member to each team. There, they would act as a consultant and try to solve each others problems.

What do we mean?

Innovation camps are focused on getting people to develop innovations together and the idea of a “camp” brought out the image of getting people to produce something together that they could take forward after the event. I propose therefore to call them “local innovation camps”.

Why is KCC doing this?

KCC needs to get people better connected, especially finding ways of joining up people with the skills and time – the innovators and social entrepreneurs – with the people with the influence and resource to make innovation happen – the service managers. This is why I recommend the innovation camp to match those groups of people together on specific challenges (such as Backing Kent Business or Backing Kent People). What resources does the event require? Venue with PCs, wifi connection and photocopier (optional) Risk assessment of agreed venue Food Crèche facilities Facilitators Filming/Editing IT support

See Venues for Workshop document

KCC also needs to practise what it preaches and not just explore what it could do, but test out what it can do. It’s easier to show what’s possible than just talk about it. As such, I propose KCC gets people to not just discuss issues but work with each other throughout the day to turn them into proof of concepts by the end of the event. However, the event does need to be framed in a way that provides a story of what KCC wants to do in a way that transcends people’s day to day work. There needs to be a focus on a key idea around which people can form. The topic needs to be emotive enough to interest a large number of people.

The event needs to feel and talk differently, not just in terms of the activities but the language that’s used. KCC needs to form a narrative with the people taking part. This is why I recommend KCC builds on the principle of “24 hour thinking” by promoting the capacity of small groups to come together to make effective decisions. The TRT team is keen for groups that aren’t too small that they’re unrepresentative, nor that they’re too big that it becomes impossible to get any agreement. There needs to be periods of time which aren’t too short that it’s difficult to develop anything meaningful, nor too long that people lose focus on what they needed to achieve. People need to feel the more they take part the more interesting it will become. As part of this, several smaller informal meetings could be organised to create a buzz around the main event and give a taster of where meetings will lead. Ideas put forward at the meetings can also be taken forward for the main event. It needs to be borne in mind that with this approach of bringing people together, not everything can be predicted as to what might happen. KCC therefore may want to play a more “backstage” role, in a similar way that Birmingham City Council have done with LocalGovCamp. Equally, it could attract other organisations to sponsor the event – whether lunch, an exhibition stand or even sourcing suitable venues.

What does KCC want to achieve?

There are different ways of organising “innovation camps” - from informal meetups like at Teacamps, all day events like at 2gether08 to weekends like at SI Camp. Whatever type of activity is chosen, there needs to be a balance between centrally coordinated and self-organising activities. Ironically, KCC do need to plan how it can create an environment where people will be able to get together into groups to develop activities together – from ice-breakers so they get to know each other to refreshments to keep the energy levels high. While organised activities are structured in time, by definition self-organised actions are moments which last as long as the people want them to. Those “moments” are the best way for individuals to contribute in the way that suits them. Bottom-up activities are very popular but they’re also very new to people, so KCC will try and make it as comfortable as possible for people to self-organise, or if it senses people are finding difficult to do that, then it will play a more “supporting” role by suggesting ways forward or getting people into groups themselves. SWOT analysis of facilitators (including from KCC)  Commission facilitators 

How do you seed what themes would really motivate people to come? By seeing what’s already going on around similar events in Kent using search tools like Addictomatic, Netvibes and TwitterLocal, will give KCC a better idea of the demographics that it may want to target.

KCC will start promoting the event by blogging about what it wants to try and achieve and ask people online how it should go about it and who wants to be involved in organising it. KCC would act as “enablers of conversations” and “provider of resources” •

• •

• • •

enable people to post ideas online before the event to act as a sounding board for how it should be organised, how can be involved and what should be covered on the day o have a website which aggregates comments on the events so the organisers can quickly respond to feedback o give people a webpage and event network o enable people to take the information back into their online spaces go out and meet these groups in their spaces (where they meet) and tap into their goodwill get people who have already been involved in KCC’s innovation work2 to explain “how it works” to new participants invite existing communities of bloggers (even those who are critical) to talk about the issues we want to cover on the day get people to work with KCC

•

select audience in a way that ensures a mix of skills and experience send invitations to people KCC would like to be at the meetup to experiment with the “barcamp” concept identify the right people to champion the barcamp itself out of the different groups mentioned above o ConnectedGeneration, LocalGovCamp, RebootBritain, SICamp and Teacamp bring in creative people (UCA) – especially young talent (Greenhouse/Schools/Students) - to make the day exciting and productive host the event in a room with computers and/or wifi connection

•

advertise in the press and appropriate blogs

•

•

•

How do you motivate participants before the event? KCC will tell people a bit more about why it’s organising this event and how we want to take it forward. More importantly, it will tell them it wants them to help shape its future plans. Any public discussion that KCC may organise needs to be publicised to participants. KCC may consider to sponsor a social before the event or if we it doesn’t have time to do this, let them know there will be a social after the event. How do the organisers make the participants feel they can take part? People will come to an event because a speaker they really like will be there. However many amazing speakers KCC has, if the participants feel they are being “talked to”, they will quickly turn off. It’s like being at a dinner party and only a select few are allowed to speak.

2

Whether our Communities of Practice pilots, Catalogue of Innovations, Stories of Change and our events

Talks need to brief and interactive, e.g. introduction - what is an unconference? Facilitators need to be helpful in supporting sessions but not overpowering. Sessions need to be padded out by the facilitators. Ways need to be used to keep people interested, especially in afternoon sessions, like conferences and presentations. Not everyone will have web enabled phone/laptops at the event. As such, consider a mix of ways people can follow the event or feed in ideas, which can include social networking technologies like twitter & hashtags but as part of a wider offering. How do the organisers keep people motivated after the event? The organisers will thank them for coming, get them signed up by email so they can update them in the future and ask them for feedback on the event. The organisers could also enable them to stay in touch with people they’ve met at the event – through creating an online community. What if things go wrong? The organisers will think about back up plans to unexpected situations – like inviting “allies” or creating “rebel activities” that hadn’t been announced. This can be very useful if participants don’t find one of the sessions very interesting, or if speakers cancel at the last minute, or if energies are starting to wane. Enable extra sessions can be added at anytime

Who are the organisers going to involve?

Who do the organisers invite to help shape the event? The organisers will reach out to people whose experiences, expertise and enthusiasm will really benefit the event. The organisers need to decide whether the “camp” is going to be open to everyone or invite-only. Even if the event is invite-only, there may be people who have heard of the event through a friend that has been invited. If they are really keen to take part, consider if you want to invite them too – the fact they’ve gone out of their way to get in touch means they may be even more energised about your event than those you initially invited. The organisers may want to go on social networking sites to find out more about them and if it’s an event with a small group of people, they can contact them personally to get an idea of what they’d like to get out of and contribute to the day. The organisers need to work out how they assign people roles for specific activities, especially if they have different sets of skills – facilitator, mentor, writer or speaker. Who do you invite to the event itself? The organisers need to think about who they are inviting. People that have been to similar events before will experience it differently to those who are taking part for the first time. The organisers will encourage them to reassure newcomers about the types of activities they may not have been involved in before. Similarly, they might

find it useful to invite “allies” who can help them out during the day for back-up and create the glue with participants – either in groups or individuals who seem bored or nervous. The organisers need to consider the possibility that people may try and hijack the event – sometimes not even to damage the organisation but because they are so passionate about an idea they want to develop or discuss, it drowns out everyone else. Obviously no-one wants the former, but you do want the enthusiasm of the latter – channelling their enthusiasm. If the organisers know them, they can contact them and offer them a role during the day – presenting, facilitating or helping organise.

What does the analysis show us? The success of a “camp” is based as much on the quality of relationships that are formed, as it is on the event itself. Participants need to feel motivated to return again, and feel they can play a part in shaping and planning events. How do the organisers incentivise people to achieve something? Many of the people who have attended these type of events before are more likely to self organise without permission. However, most people won’t have, so it’s important to keep the event fresh and let people experience and test out different ways they can get involved in. For those that are disruptive, the organisers can nudge them into different activities to distribute the debate. Only a third of the people attending UKGovWeb Barcamp actually presented and the online groups created for the event were underused. However, many government web innovations were started up through conversations at, especially through collaboration between innovators and civil servants there on the day. It’s important therefore to instil confidence by seeding facilitators to lead discussions throughout the day that captivate people, rather than putting anyone on the spot, as well as capturing the value gained by the conversations the event enables. People like nothing more than to be recognised for their efforts. The organisers will think about introducing collaborative and competitive elements to our event, like getting people into groups to compete against each other. They could offer a prize to the group that’s won the activity, but also rewards for everyone taking part.

All contacts Thanks to advice and ideas from Dave Briggs Steve Moore Anna Maybank David Wilcox

Local Gov Camp Reboot Britain Social Innovation Camp Social Reporter