I hope nobody minds my quoting one of my own photos. This is one of two I managed to take of Lloyd doing his analogue countdown timer thing. He moved his arm up and down and visibly counted.
It was one of the coolest things at ukgc11 and I was thinking on the train, a day or so later: what if...?

What if someone made a virtual Lloyd analogue countdown timer, with Steph blowing the horn as the alarm?
It could be done as a series of stills turned into a little animation.

Then I thought, what if we could make things like that and sell them in a virtual shop to contribute to worthy things, such as GovCamps?
And then I had another thought - but suppressed it because it was going too far... ;-)

I will write more about ukgc11 anon. I just first wanted to share the Lloyd countdown timer with those who were not there - and ask if someone will make me a virtual one, please?

UPDATE: Jim Anning made one

Janet E Davis

Twitter: @janetedavis

Web site: http://web.me.com/jedavis/Janet_E_Davis/

So, Saturday saw my first ever unconference. And I have to say, I loved every single minute of it.

While that may seem a bit obvious to anyone who knows about Govcamp, I really wasn’t so sure. As a student, I probably wasn’t the original target audience, and wasn’t entirely sure I’d fit in. Discovering the size of the waiting list a few days before the event, I actually emailed the amazing Dave Briggs saying I’d be happy to give up my ticket for someone far more deserving! Dave (being amazing), told me (in politer words) to stop being an idiot and turn up – I am so glad he did.

Arriving Saturday morning at Microsoft (how crap was their WiFi by the way?!), knowing I think just one person, it was all still a little daunting. But within about 30 seconds of getting up the escalators I could tell it was a room of 200 utterly amazing people – and how lovely they all were with it. The day turned out to be a fantastic day of discovery and meeting new people – won’t bore you with all the details so here are my top 5′s:

Conversations
Talking hyperlocal and localisation with Will, Hugh and the crowd in session 2. This is fab.
Possibly the smallest session in the auditorium with @jacattell - really exciting to hear about groovy stuff (maybe) going on with Birmingham Council’s website.
The (remarkably) pain free and quick birth of the King’s Cross Social Media Surgery in the pub with Nick.
Chatting through London Social Media Surgery bits and bobs with Shirley – so much to think about…
Hearing about MyLearningPool – the price still makes my head hurt. Looking forward to the launch big time.

People
@davebriggs – All round legend – see above.
@lesteph – Can’t imagine the amount of work Dave & Steph put into Saturday, well done guys.
@amandaneylon – Great alternate angle on student protests, didn’t even know the riot police tweeted.
@loulouk – How on earth was I not following you on Twitter?
@podnosh – Continually inspired by social media surgeries and related stuff – some really useful bits on the website too.

I'm lucky enough to have attended four barcamps now. Two UKGovCamps, a LocalGovCamp and UXCampLondon. Each time I've attended a barcamp I've run or contributed to a session. I love sharing my experiences with other people, but sometimes I wonder why. Well on Saturday at #ukgc11 I realised it's because of the insights you get back when you share, which help you to learn and improve what you are doing.

I facilitated a session on Agile and shared some lessons learnt. I'm certainly no expert on the subject of Agile. But if you're open and put your hand up to say "hey we didn't do that quite right and this is what we learnt" it's amazing how willing other participants are to share their experiences and knowledge too.

That's why I love the barcamp format.

It's much quoted (by me at least) that Facebook is filled with people you once met for five minutes and never really want to see again, while Twitter is full of people you've never met, but would love to spend at least five minutes talking to. I've found this to be very true. One of the delights of UKGC11 was that I was able to put a face and a real personality to at least a dozen people I have been following on Twitter, and other bits of social media, for some while. And, of course, we all found new contacts we want to stay in touch with henceforth.

This was only my second "unconference", but I love this way of doing things. Risky, but with so many great talents available, the risk was more likely to be not having enough slots to fit them all into. I was astonished by then length of the line of people waiting in the introductory session, to make a pitch for a session they wanted/had been asked to run. I now aspire to be part of one of those lines.

The sheer good nature of the participants was a starring point of the day. If there was any "edge" or tension anywhere, I never saw it. 200 smiling, cooperative and amusing people gives you a huge lift! It also, ultimately, does your head in, but only in the nicest way. I had great plans to do a full set of five sessions, and crashed at the fourth opportunity (sorry Agile people). Just "sittin' and chillin'" with others doing likewise was great too, and geared me up well for the final lap to the day, in @ingridk 's well managed session on blogging as as support tool for colleagues. The mental filing box may have been pretty full by then, but it still had space for a few gems of ideas and solutions from this. Thanks to all.

As a busy photographer myself in a parallel life, I was very impressed with @paul_clarke 's work from the day, much of which is being trailed on the #ukgc11 hashtag. Candid photography like this is a real art. Trying to catch the "geist" of this sort of event, through the faces of the participants, is a job that is only worth doing well. Good one, Paul.

It is a sign of the maturity of a virtual community like this that in a Charles Handy way (remember him?), it has begun to develop its own heroes. The mutual cheer and applause in the morning when @baskers introduced herself was entirely genuine and spontaneous. Lovely moment.

Criticisms? Who am I to carp? Twitter ID on name badges, as well as real names, might have been good. And there might have been more conspiratorial 1:1s between people if the lunch-bag crisps hadn't been cheese and onion. But that's about it!

(Both via @paul_clarke)

With apologies to Lloyd for bending his format...

A tale of two grids. The first noted with (unbranded?) neon, the second in more subdued (3M?) tones and an additional track for demos. I liked that. I thought the corporate sponsorship was handled beautifully. Not a single product pitch in any session I went to.

What really strikes me, though, is that the second seems a bit more defined. There's a little more clustering of ideas, there's a little more evidence of sessions developing into strands, the single issue sessions a little wider in scope, the broader sessions more joined up, what to expect a bit clearer.

Maybe it's simply because my personal experience of the event was better this year. I think I learned more and shared more. But maybe there's a bit more to it than that. Maybe being a little bit bigger helped. But maybe, with experience and new faces, the UKGC community is simply getting a bit better.

It was an exciting little thing buzzing in my brain: using agile methods - a project management approach from the tech development world - applied to policy development and implementation. I had the idea as I was first read a book about agile in preparation for Knowledge Hub development. The approach intrigued me the more I knew about it - and I was sure that it could be applied to policy implementation but I wasn't quite sure how. I attended two sessions on Saturday which touched on this - using the ReWork approach for local government (more an overall philosophy than a project management approach) led by @J0nHyde. And then there was an actual session led by Catherine Howe @curiousc which she had wanted to do, but I found out about through a chance encounter with her on Thursday.

What's so fantastic about UKGovCamp and being part of that network is finding people who've independently come up with the same idea as you, but with different aspects and approaches. And then the opportunity to start bouncing ideas and gathering momentum about putting that idea into action.
Photo from @sharonodea

It's said that the unconference format embraces the reality that the best bits of most conferences are the coffee breaks, where people talk to each other, make connections and relax a bit.

Govcamps are no exception. But what I love most about the now-ritual annual gathering of the troupe is the gentle pattern of the day. It starts edgy and excited, like a first day at a new school. Tags chosen for laughs. Sessions pitched anxiously. The first session or two in the morning feel like formal seminars, with polished Powerpoint in big rooms full of serious faces: the corridors outside deserted.

But by mid-afternoon, it's a different story. The sessions have become informal conversations. Smiles are broader. And the corridors are filled with little huddles of people, hands waving in the air, talking and demonstrating and explaining and evangelising over laptops.

Microsoft were fantastic hosts, with attention to detail right down to the lunches, the visitor passes and the livestream feed. But when I saw the venue for the first time, I just knew it would work. It had great corridors.

Once again GovCamp proved that getting up early on a Saturday is worth the effort.  In terms of facilities the space Microsoft provided was even better than Google (2010). So thank you Microsoft.