Welcome to the United Kingdom Government Camp (UKGovCamp) an annual event for people in and around the public sector.
I’m James the delivery manager (a.k.a lead organiser) for the event. My role is to help my fellow organisers deliver the event. Think of me as our servant leader.
Originally focused on digital, data and technology, UKGovCamp now has a much broader reach. The last event’s most popular session was, “What to do when your council goes bankrupt”.
On Friday 9 August 2024, I facilitated the UKGovCamp 2025 (ukgc25) organiser’s kick-off meeting. It was the first chance to talk about our hopes for ukgc25. In attendance was an exciting mix of new and existing organisers.
Here’s some things we discussed / agreed. Remember: UKGovCamp’s always at its best when the whole community’s involved, so please share your comments.
Date / location
UKGovCamp’s traditionally been in Central London on the third Saturday in January. We plan to stick with this for ukgc25.
Scale (how big)
The last event was held in a hotel. We had 700 sign-ups of which 340 attended. That was our biggest ever event. Final numbers will depend on the next venue, but we’re inclined to go for something smaller. Let us know what you think.
Venue preferences
One of our all time favourite venues is the Ministry of Justice’s London headquarters at 102 Petty France.
Its combined atrium and conference centre holds 200 people. It also has a lot of natural light (the hotel we used last time didn’t – it was basically underground). We suspect this had an impact on people’s enjoyment of the event. So we’ve decided to look for somewhere with lots of natural light.
We’d also prefer to use a voluntary, charity or public sector venue. This could include local schools, colleges and universities.
Our only other preference is getting the right number of breakout rooms. The more attendees we have, the more breakout rooms we need.
Accessibility
We’re always trying to make UKGovCamp more accessible. Over the years we’ve made iterative improvements so more people can attend and enjoy the day more.
As well as some of the things we normally do like provide a creche, and last year’s improvements to providing a quiet space, this time we’ve decided to:
- streamline the travel bursary process,
- only use alcohol free venues,
- organise a lunchtime walk.
Some post event feedback stated that people could not attend venues where alcohol was served, effectively excluding them from discussions. So we’re only going to pick venues and hold official pre/post event socials in dry venues.
We’re also thinking about how to make discussions even more accessible, possibly via facilitator training for campmakers (volunteers). This’ll give them skills and confidence to bring more people into discussions.
Organiser’s roles
There’s a lot to do to make UKGovCamp happen. As we haven’t paid a professional event organiser, people give their time for free. As organisers we all have to fit things around our existing jobs. This means we need lots of organisers to each be responsible for a specific thing.
The current list of roles includes:
- agenda creation,
- catering,
- communications,
- crèche,
- delivery management (that’s me),
- diversity, equality, accessibility and inclusion,
- finance,
- host / emcee,
- sponsorship,
- ticketing,
- venue(s),
- volunteers.
The agenda creation role is key to our event. Unlike traditional conferences where the agenda’s set in advance, UKGovCamp is an unconference. This means we create and share the agenda on the day. There are many ways of doing this, some more inclusive than others.
The ticketing role includes registration, lottery (more on that below) and ticketing. Plus making sure all the other organisers have the data they need to do their roles. This includes any special dietary requirements for catering and the number / ages of crèche participants. If you’re a workflow / data geek, this role will appeal to you.
Additional roles we’re thinking of introducing this year include:
- community management,
- flow (layout / movement on the day).
If any of the above roles interest you, please get in touch.
Attendee diversity
We’re always trying to balance the number of new and existing attendees. So we’re considering having 2 separate ticket lotteries from new and existing attendees. It’ll probably be a 50/50 split. This means anyone can apply, but we’ll split you into new or existing attendees, then randomly pick from both.
Another option is to release time bound tranches of tickets. Or maybe a combination of both lottery and tranches. This is yet to be decided.
We’re also really keen to invite particular under-represented groups. Over the last few years we’ve made progress in making UKGovCamp reflective of society at large. But we can always do better.
This also includes getting a better balance of people from policy, delivery and operational roles. If that’s you and you’re interested in helping, please get in touch.
Your comments
As always I welcome your comments and offers of help. Until the ukgc25 comms director’s in place, you can reach me via:
Please add #ukgc25 to your posts to broaden the reach.
Next update in 2 weeks.
#excited (-:
2 comments
Yes to smaller! Found last year’s event to be excellent but acoustically overwhelming
Thanks for your comment Neil (-:
Was it the number of people, the venue accoustics or something else, please?