Lac Carling from the Twitterverse

Lac Carling is an annual conference of bigwigs from the IT and service delivery sides of the Canadian public sector: federal, provincial and municipal. The first one was held in Lac Carling, Quebec and it’s moved around since then but kept the name. This year it was held in Niagara-on-the-Lake from June 14 – June 16. The theme for this year’s conference was “Govt. 2.0 – The Value Proposition”. I wasn’t scheduled to be there. I got an email on Sunday June 14, on the five-hour drive back from “Kids Read Comics” in Michigan (where my wife was a guest) asking if I could present at Lac Carling at 9 a.m. the next morning. Rob Dowler (my boss’s boss) had been in a bike accident and I was to sub for him. I got my first chance to go and it was a great experience, made especially so by the great people I met there!

Here’s my usual Twitter report to give you a taste of what it was like:

* remarkk: So far #LacCarling speakers have great stories to tell. Obama election, BC health consultation and NB poverty reduction
* remarkk: Key message: not us and them, but what can we do together. Move from public consultation to citizen engagement.
* LondonComms: Alberta Minister @lindsayblackett poses question to us all: who’s going to tell Canadian stories? Who will create Cdn content?
* david_tallan: At #laccarling pinch-hitting for Rob Dowler on #Gov20 in Ontario
* david_tallan: Eli Perell is channeling Glen Padassery talking about Ontario gov use of 2nd life.
* alex_butler: Government as a participation platform. Now there’s an idea.
* peterdcowan: LAC posted historical photos on flikr and asked public to share their stories. Tremendous response underlying power of sm
* peterdcowan: It is non viable to translate dynamic social media environments there has to be another approach
* shaneschick: Interesting theme at Lac Carling emerging: Does social media merely make vocal minorities louder? Who’s being left out?
* remarkk: @ryanmerkley Peter MacLeod speaks passionately about need to build a new democratic legitimacy for a network society.
* remarkk: Denmark offers a platform for mashups using public data. Many issues of creating clean datasets to meet demands.
* peterdcowan: Denmark is a web20 nation with 1 in 3 on facebook, active mashups and rapidly grown collab platform
* david_tallan: Nice framework from UK: accountability/transparency, relationships/dialogue, professionalism/services
* david_tallan: She would like to wiki Direct.gov.uk, lock official content but let people add and participate.
* david_tallan: Keep in mind the hygiene factors, while doing 2.0 you still need to keep doing the 1.0 right
* david_tallan: UK CivilWiki (beta); Civil Pages (beta) – Find, connect, share; Civil Blogs. Sounds familiar. We should connect.
* peterdcowan: UK web20 is about collaboration but by “appearing where people go” ie @DowningStreet on twitter
* david_tallan: Martha Dorris seems to be saying “Web managers rule!”. I can’t disagree.
* remarkk: Very cool to hear from Martha Doris about the Obama transition from whitehouse.gov to the GSA. Recovery.gov was up in 3 weeks.
* peterdcowan: US cio mantra Velocity with limited friction (minimal regs in place, just go)
* remarkk: Open gov initiative public consultation, going to collaborative policy around opend gov. Tools: Ideascale, WordPress, FixedInk.
* david_tallan: Hearing the real business value of YouTube access for learning resources
* peterdcowan: @mjmclean many depts block access 2 external sites ie twttr facebook. I wanted 2 know whether ths is the same in other countries
* alex_butler: enjoyed that – glad to know that a ‘find your nearest public convenience ‘ is as relevant in Denmark as it is in the UK.
* david_tallan: “The issues of identity and consent are second only to CO2 as critical issues facing our species today.”
* david_tallan: “So if the government can issue me paper ID, where is my [privacy protecting] digital ID?” Dave Nikolejsin
* david_tallan: Dave’s answer: user-centric, claims-based identity management.
* rob_giggey: Dave Nikolejsin: gov’t shouldn’t be in the Credential Services business, but instead the Identity Services Business.
* rob_giggey: #MISA will be adopting Govloop as their collaboration space. Good news for the organization
* davidjonah: Day 2 comment capture – challenge to “make government one organization of ideas” utilizing common web information sharing tools
* david_tallan: Finally someone talking about Gen Y who admits that they are less different than we think.
* LondonComms: Gen Y: career dev’t and ability to mix personal and work life are important. These should be possible in large public sector org
* david_tallan: To market public sector we need to show career dev opportunities of large org with team dynamics of small org.
* peterdcowan: You cannot engage gen y using traditional tools ie newspapers. You have to go to them using their tools.
* david_tallan: NRCan wiki: “Yes there is some risk there but I’m the Deputy and I can take it.”
* david_tallan: “It’s not lessons learned but learning as we go.” Marj Akerly
* david_tallan: “We rely on non-profits to do service delivery.” – civic ecosystem is critical to gov’t future
* david_tallan: “There is a big difference between engaging citizens and communications.” Al Hatton, President & CEO, United Way of Canada
* david_tallan: “Stakeholders and organizations can be important partners but are not a proxy for citizens” Al Hatton
* david_tallan: #laccarling is done. Had a great time, learned a lot, met great people and had great conversations. Worth the 2 hour commute!