Last year I kicked myself after Govcamp because I tended to talk to the people I already knew.
This year I decided that I would make the effort to be sociable and talk to ten new people – my ten new people challenge!
Here is the list:
1) Phil McAllister from Ofqual communications team who I sat next to right at the begining of the first day. We had a quick chat about publishing in education.
2) Layla Davidson from Southwalk Council. We were sitting on the top of a cabinet in a break-out room discussing data visualisation in local government. I took a picture of the mini cake she was eating. She also mentioned that she had a number of ex-NAO staff working with her.
3) Lydia Tar who was pressing one of the buttons to open the doors to let us out into a corridor. Lydia was a temp whose ‘day job’ is as a personal trainer with people in the expensive parts of London. She had just come back from Cuba hence the nice tan.
4) Chris Osborne @osbornec formerly of ITO world now of ESRI UK I had seen Chris talk at the last Opentech about his data visualisations so it was good to hear about what is was now working on.
5) Helen Olsen the managing director at UKAuthority TV. I cannot say I had heard of this company before so it was useful to find out more from Helen.
6) Ross Lyon @ly0nsd3n from the Scottish Government. We had a great chat over lunch about various bits and pieces. I was particularly fascinated by his description of how they used Yammer – extensively
7) Stuart Bruce and independent consultant who had worked in the past on a couple of Sure Start digital projects.
8) Lauren Lucas from the Local Government Unit – a colleague of Rob Dale. Lauren used to work in local government in east London and we spoke about how councillors wanted to control stuff especially social media.
9) Liane Farrer a strategic communications adviser in the Cabinet Office. Liane new people I knew such as Robin Riley who she used to work with at the Mod.
10) Ade Oshineye from Google+. We had a fascinating chat about how Google+ works, some current developments and of course about the fact the NAO had an account.
I was really pleased because at the end of the day (no the real end of the day not the cliche) I had managed to get to know ten new people, some new stuff and felt slightly smug.
It turned out to be a pretty good icebreaker to say to people ‘I said I would talk to ten new people today – tell me about yourself’
So if I can do it pretty well anyone can.
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