#COMMSCAMP13: My 20 wishes and hopes list

So, here they are. To continue the list meme things that struck me after commscamp an unconference for pr and comms people.

I wish there was more of these.

I hope that some people who came to commscamp left as inspired as I did when I left localgovcamp in 2009.

I wish there was more time to stop and chat with more who came.

I hope people left for London with an inkling of why the West Midlands is good at this unconference stuff. It’s three c’s: cake, curry and conversation.

I wish that I’d have got those ‘stuff your press release’ stickers made in time.

I hope that our team meetings in future also run peer training which sees colleagues show others how they did something.

I wish that not just local government and central government share ideas better but fire, police, NHS and voluntary sectors too.

I hope that other events bring people from outside the comfort zone too with the confidence to point out things like that no, we’re not brands we’re people to a room full of comms people.

I wish Mike Rawlins could have been around for the punch up on press releases. What larks would have followed.

I hope that Kate Bentham knows how much I was grateful to her for being Official Cake Monitor. She was brilliant.

I wish to accept 1/135th of credit for the good things said about the event and deflect the rest to the other 135 who came. I’m pretty sure that Ann Kempster and Darren Caveney would say similar.

I hope that there is a localgovcamp in Brum again this year.

I wish good things to volunteers Alex, Kate, Pauline, Si, Kelly, Emma and Laura.

I hope the sponsors know how appreciative we are that the organisers don’t have to sell their cars to pay for it to Govdelivery, FutureGov, dxw, comms2point0, The Social Simulator, Claremont, NLGN, Improvement and Delivery West Midlands, PSCSF, Public i and LGA.

I wish that when people see spam on a hashtag they’ll react calmly and not click on the boob links rather than suggest we abandon the hashtag.

I hope that everyone who came did a little thing to change or innovate before they switch on their inbox every day.

I wish that people would stop thinking about traditional and digital and just think of comms.

I hope we have more people who become the organisation’s digital comms sweet sharer who scans the horizon, tries things out and encourages other less keen colleagues to come on in.

I wish people outside the sector could see that there’s real value in sessions that are about meat and potato issues. Not just horizon scanning.

I hope to do other things in the future with Ann Kempster.

I wish every event had a facilitator as good as Lloyd Davis and that I took pictures that make you smile as well as Paul Clarke.

Creative commons credits.

Microphone http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_clarke/8510151932/sizes/l/in/photostream/

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