Teacamp is an informal monthly meet-up of Government and non-government digerati, in a café drinking tea, hence ‘teacamp’. It began in 2008 as an offshoot of UKgovcamp and we’ve been meeting monthly since then. It is open to anyone and everyone and our ethos is: share ideas, solve problems, and learn something new.
Each month we have speakers to share ideas, tell us about their projects and start discussions. Previous speakers have included Tom Steinberg (of Mysociety and the Public Sector Transparency Board), Blaine Cook from Twitter, Tom Loosemore from the GDS Single Government Domain team, Mark O’Neill from the GDS Innovation team and Steph Gray from HelpfulTechnology.
This month Dr Rufus Pollock from the Open Knowledge Foundation (and a member of the Public Sector Transparency Board) and Nicola Hughes from Scraperwiki spoke at the 1st September Teacamp. Rufus talked about the upcoming Open Government Data Camp on 20 /21 October in Warsaw. It is the world’s biggest open data event and brings together civil servants, developers, NGOs and others for two days of talks, workshops and project sprints.
He also talked about the Open Knowledge Foundation and its initiatives which include:
• CKAN software: (Community instance and powering )
• OpenSpending: (Information about software at Openspending's wiki)
• Bibliographic projects: Open Biblio including Public Domain Works and Bibliographica
Rufus also has a blog.
Nicola Hughes from Scraperwiki (@DataMinerUK ) talked about getting information from data and social media; using it to inform the public and the government with ways of looking at spending. Nicola also mentioned:
• A free course ‘Introduction to databases’ from Stanford University which she recommended for government digerati
• Code for America and suggested setting up a UK version, ‘code for her majesty’!
• Some reports on data that she is currently reading here and here
Nicola’s blog
October teacamp
Thursday 6 October teacamp is at 4pm – 6pm at Cafe Zest, House of Fraser, 101 Victoria St, London, SW1E 6QX and features…
• @Hadley Beeman and @GlynWintle talking about @Linkedgov
• @StevenRWilkes from the Home Office, talking about the digital engagement strand of the government ICT strategy
Next teacamps are: 6 October, 3 November, 1 December, 5 January, 2 February, 1 March. Come and join us! For more info, contact me via the contact sheet on the blog or:
@teacampLondon #teacamp and do keep an eye out for updates on teacamp.co.uk soon …
1 comment
Comment by publicsectorpm posted on
Dont forget #pm #teacamp in Cheltenham on September 30th. http://www.publicsectorpm.com/2011/08/pm-tea-camp-sept-30th-2011-cheltenham-uk/
Come on down. We're talking about transforming public sector organisations. Special guests include Sue Pritchard:
http://www.ashridge.org.uk/Website/Content.nsf/WebContent?ReadForm&Zone=CONBIO&SpecialTemplate=LongConsultingBioNote&Name=Sue%20Pritchard
and Dr David Fraser (via Skype) http://www.drdavidfraser.com/