Howto Government 2.0 competition and conference.
1 Is this for you?
Do you work at national level (at a ministry for example)?
Do you wish to organize a conference about web 2.0 and government?
Do you have some experience in organizing conferences for > 100 participants?
Do you have some knowledge already about web 2.0?
Are you at least a team of two?
Do you have an idea which companies could help you with organizing?
Do you like a lot of stress?
Answered yes? Continue.
2 Why should you read this then?
This howto explains step-by-step how you could copy our competition and conference. It took place last fall 2008. We think of it as a success. It may help you in avoiding some of the mistakes we made. Or you can use it as an outline for another kind of conference of your liking. We were inspired by showusabetterway.
3 What should be at your disposal if you decide to go for it?
Approval by your minister or state secretary (or equivalent) At least 6 months for preparation. The last weeks you and your collegue will be working almost fulltime on it. A company that does the actual organizing (like logistics) for you and knows how to attract attention to the competition and event (in the blogosphere). At least € 80.000 (for a conference for 250 participants). It cost us € 125.000. And money to fund your prize-winning ideas. We had 3*€ 25.000. Take into account any restrictions set by your own organization.
4 What else should you take into account?
Expenditures differ by country. The size and activity of the country’s blogosphere as well. Take into account the public opinion on government spending on web 2.0 activities. There’s a certain risk of not getting enough good ideas from the public. Be flexibel. Some criticism on the competition: ideas were sent in mostly by people that already had some interest and knowledge about web 2.0 and government, on the conference: it could have been more interactive.
5 Step-by-step
1. Get a team together. Make a proposal. Set the date for closing the competition at least 5 months further and the conference at least 6. Get the people above you behind it. Involve some peers of other sections of your organization but don’t expect too much of them.
2. Choose a company that can take as much of the organising as possible out of your hands and provides for an inspiring location.
3. Get your competition going as soon as possible (within 2 months). Construct a website (showusabetterway used wordpress, we used Ning – now we’ll have our own platform that you can use at overheid20.nl). Decide how open your website will be. Be open and explicit about the selection and its criteria (application should be open source, use social networks, be unique in your country, etc). Decide if you want visitors to your site to be able to rate the ideas of others. Our question: how could web 2.0 improve how government works (public services, democratic processes, surveillance, inspection). Focus the marketing on the blogosphere, don’t spend too much money on it (we did).
4. Send the invitations to your future conference participants. Decide if you want to, besides other civil servants, invite consultants (we didn’t) and other organizations (we should have invited more people from grass-roots local organisations). Decide on the program. Get a lot of speakers (we had about 25) if your theme is broad.
5. Select a jury (of 5: government officials, academic expert, expert of practice) that nominates a small amount of ideas (6 nominees, out of 17 ideas that our team selection with the criteria out of 124 sent ideas). Prepare the nominees to present their ideas on the conference.
6. At the conference, have the participants vote for the ideas. The best (e.g. one, we had budget for 3) wins, announcing it at the end of the conference. That makes your participants stay the whole day. Use your participants knowledge to make a wiki, which you can build upon later (we neglected to invest in it right after, which is a shame, though we’re still planning on putting it to good use). Present the wiki at the end of the day.
7. Don’t let your participants go but get the enthousiastic ones together in a smaller and more permanent setting. Start as quick as you can with the winners (our winners are still in the lead of realizing their ideas as project leaders, you may choose to do otherwise).
6 More information
Tjabbe Bos, Arnout Ponsioen, Chris Smissaert (Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations).
overheid20prijsvraag.ning.com
overheid20.nl
7 Feedback
Please let us (above) know if you have any comments, or if you used this howto.
