Why management wont come? #localgovcamp

People wont give up their Saturdays. Some wont because they go home at 5 o clock and that’s it, because they feel they don’t get paid enough to work outside of the office in the evenings, never mind on a Saturday. Other people wont come because weekends are the only time they don’t work – they spend every evening during the week working and catching up and the last thing they want to do is go and talk about more work at the weekend.

And the simple fact is – people above me in our organisation have clearly defined development and career paths and don’t need to raise their profile at a national level. They’ve got existing networks who advise them and send through information and links on new developments – and sometimes they have the time to read those things and sometimes they don’t.

But, ultimately, I can’t help feeling that if I can’t get anyone from our team of open minded bods to attend camp, the chances of getting anyone else at their level to do so is slim to nothing. I don’t think it’s anything to do with not seeing the point of attending or thinking that they would get nothing out of it – I just think that L G Comms is far more established across the industry and that unconferences are still seen as where all the ‘problem’ people who wont sit down nicely and shut up go.

Unfortunately, they’re right. And if I were middle management, I’m not sure that’d be an environment I’d want to give up a Saturday to attend either.