Remote Attendees - Participation Plan

The IslandGovCamp 2012 weekend begins tomorrow, there are various things you need to know to make sure that your remote attendance works as well as possible, allowing you to engage and participate fully in #IsleGC12.

We are aiming to strike a good balance between the needs of remote attendees and those of the people who will be in Orkney in person for the event. To enable effective remote participation, we might need to have a few more ground rules for those attending in person than is normal at a govcamp. On the other hand, we do not want to over-structure the discussions in the room, as one of the good things about the govcamp format is that it is very flexible, and avoids over-structuring discussions. So, we need organisation and structure to make sure that those attending remotely can follow what is going on, but we need informality and flexibility to make the most of the whole event; we will need to try to balance these competing aims, and we will not get it right 100% of the time. This element of #IsleGC12 is new and experimental, so please let us know about the problems and difficulties you will encounter.

FINDING INFORMATION

All announcements, administration and important information will be given via @IslandGovCamp and #IslandGovCamp. If you have any problems, comments and enquiries about administrative and technical issues, tweet @IslandGovCamp. To avoid swamping this important information (especially for remote attendees), the hashtag #IsleGC12 (along with the event-specific hashtags, see below) is intended to be used for all discussion about the content of sessions (or any other discussion) between attendees.

SESSION PLANNING

Sessions will take place on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. We have four rooms available at Orkney College for sessions. Which sessions take place, and in what order, will be decided between 12.00 and 13.20 on Saturday; we will take all the ideas submitted on IdeaScale and any suggested on the day to this “session pitching” process.

Because the session topics have not yet been decided, the hashtags for each scheduled session (1 hour each) have already been allocated by time and room location (see the table below). The topics for each session will be entered into this table, will be posted on the Blog, and will be tweeted, as soon as the planning session has finished (approximately 1320).

FINDING SESSION ANNOUNCEMENTS

Once the session planning session has finished, the discussion topics for the first time slot (13:30-14:30) will be known, and will be tweeted (and put on the blog), along with links to the session broadcasts. This will enable Remote attendees to participate in the first sessions immediately, while the rest of the schedule is prepared and and published on the blog (www.islandgovcamp.org.uk), and links to it are tweeted by @IslandGovCamp

Before every subsequent session there will be a 5 minute warning announcing the next session to take place in each room and the corresponding hashtag (and a reminder link to the full schedule). When each new timeslot actually begins, this will be repeated.

SESSION PARTICIPATION

Each govcamp session will have:

• A dedicated hashtag (e.g. #papay3). This is for all discussion related to that session.
• A volunteer 'Twitter Monitor', in person in the room, to act as spokesperson for remote attendees at that session. (The Twitter Monitor will follow the session hashtag for comments and questions. All other in-person participants in the session are also encouraged to follow the hashtag, and take into account the comments of remote participants throughout the session).
• A volunteer 'Session Tweeter', in person in the room, to narrate (as far as possible) in twitter the discussion in the room, labelling each tweet with the session hashtag.
• At the beginning of each session, the broadcast link will be set up and tweeted out by @IslandGovCamp with the session hashtag.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch on Friday evening, or during Saturday by email (to islandgovcamp@gmail.com). Equally, if you have any questions or comments before or during the sessions, please tweet them if you'd rather (mentioning @IslandGovCamp and/or the #IslandGovCamp hashtag).

We are all looking forward to a great event, which we hope will be interesting and entertaining. Let's hope it all works!