A little while ago we welcomed Chris Lovell as our new chairman of the board – after saying goodbye to Roderick Corrie. Roddy’s departure gave us a moment to pause and reflect on just how far we’ve come in the 11 years he’s been with us. In that time we’ve gone from a handful of staff trying to prove webcasting was a good idea to the UK’s leading provider of the technology to the public sector.

It’s been quite a ride – and it felt entirely appropriate to give Roddy a decent send-off. In fact, it’s probably part of the reason why it’s taken us a while to get round to talking about it here.

Roddy’s critical, intelligent support for the company has helped turn a good idea into a thriving business; he’s a big part of the reason we’re doing so well. But things change: Roddy has new challenges to take on – as does Public-i.

And we know that Chris will challenge us – to make us think bigger and to start to consider the world outside of local government more. In fact, we’re quite sure that there is a great deal we can learn from him.

About Chris

Chris is now the owner and CEO of Golley Slater, which under his stewardship has grown to become one of the UK’s largest independent, privately owned marketing services networks, but he had a rather surprising start to his career.

After leaving school, he was the drummer for the band Jaguar, which in the late 70s and early 80s was part of the UK’s hugely popular heavy metal scene. Perhaps just as surprisingly, Chris says it offered him his first lessons in the importance of good organisation and management. “I could see that we were never going to make it big because we didn’t have the right management or infrastructure. We played with Def Leppard and I saw how they approached things and were really well managed,” he said.

The lessons were well learned. After stints at firms including McCann Erikson and Radio Rentals, he started his own business, building it into a successful marketing agency before selling up and later buying Golley Slater.

With such beginnings, it is perhaps not surprising that Chris’s interests are broad: he’s also a trustee at UNICEF and the owner of his own farm. He is even involved a company that runs the seed potato propagation for Walkers crisps. Sadly, he hasn’t yet brought any bags into the office. But we’re waiting!

Joining Public-i’s board

Having been introduced to Public-i some time ago by his good friend Roddy, Chris decided he’d like to get involved in the firm last year after meeting Catherine, our chief executive. He said: “I was then convinced this is something that could go places – it was the way in which she had put a plan together and I thought I could add to that by helping her thinking.”

Chris will be looking to offer his knowledge of sales and business development to Public-i at a time when we’re looking develop our market – with such marked changes to technology and to government.

In fact, some might call these exciting times for us, but Chris makes a good point to refute this: “I think that by definition being in a tech business you have to be in the game of where that tech is being used and is developing and adapting – so by definition it’s exciting times. It has to be exciting times – if it isn’t you have to worry!”

Tags:

• Chairman
• Chris Lovell
• Golley Slater
• Public-i Board
• Roddy Corrie
• UNICEF

At the Public-i User Group on Monday we spent our afternoon discussing ‘Rebooting Democracy’.

It was a stimulating, wide-ranging discussion that ended on a focussed note as we drew up a list of the things we’d change about council meetings and things we’d keep the same. I thought I’d draw the changes into a list, below. While we were shooting from the hip, I think a lot of people will agree that som are sensible and a few even possible! We’re in a period of real change for local government, with the Police and Crime Commissioners ahead of us and many cities considering elected mayors, so we think now might just be the time to start seeing how we can improve the central theatre of local democracy, too.

This is really about modernising meetings. We’re still carrying out our democratic process in much the same way that we did in the 19th century, despite huge changes in technology and society. Sometimes, in the case of Westminster perhaps, that can be treated as an indication of the process’s success. But I’m not sure anyone at the user group, online or in the room, would have claimed that we can’t do better!

1. Plain English: One of the biggest barriers in the way of more engagement in meetings and local democracy is the use of council jargon. Finding ways to remove jargon, or explain language when it does need to be precise, would make meetings easier for people to undersand and take part in.
2. Better timekeeping and shorter meetings: Anyone who has sat through council meetings will know that some have a tendency to… drag. While big decisions need to be made without pressure, we could still find ways to ensure they run to time and aren’t excessively long. As Lesley Blue from Camden pointed out, huge amounts of time, effort and organisation go into meetings. When they overrun it’s dispiriting and draining on those involved. It is also a problem for the public, who may find themselves leaving a meeting before the item they’re interested in is discussed, or having to return at a later date.
3. Change the representatives: We know that it’s hard for many people to get into local politics – and ensuring that people from different backgrounds, with different perspectives can become involved is essential to ensuring that meetings are a genuine reflection of the communities they serve.
4. End minute taking and…
5. Explain the process: While meetings are hard to understand, we may have to find ways of giving the public a better grip on what’s happening in them. Damian Beaumont from Cheshire West and Chester suggested that with a full digital record of council meetings now available (through audio and video recording) we may be able to do away with minute taking – and, instead, enable democratic services officers to do more to help guide the public – and act as advocates for them in the decision-making process.
6. Don’t hide agreements and decisions: Mathew Jellings, of Public-i, recalled an 11-hour budget meeting that was interrupted for a half-hour break in which oppposing parties came to an agreement. We should try to ensure that important decisions are made where possible in full view.
7. More questions! Make it easier for the public to participate: One suggestion was to look at how we can change meetings to take advantage of the web more – allowing people outside the meeting to influence proceedings, through questions and other input. Technology already makes this feasible – it’s law, procedure and possibly culture that are getting in the way.
8. Less formality: Matt Bond of Cornwall Council suggested we could look to hold meetings in less formal venues. He mentioned (and this in no way reflects on any of us, I promise) a pub – but finding venues that reflect the meeting and bring them closer to the communities they serve (when this is appropriate) could ensure a greater view of local democracy and soften and humanise the whole process.
9. Hold meetings before you’ve made a decision, not afterwards: We know that the real decision making and thinking may long precede the meeting. If the point of meetings is to make the process of decision-making transparent, rubber stamping should be stamped out.
10. Time to be agile: Meeting agendas are often set five weeks in advance of the actual meeting. While it might take an overhaul of other processes thorughout councils to do this, moving to a more agile system that allows meetings to better reflect citizens’ (and councils’) objectives could make meetings more relevant and councils more responsive.

Here’s Catherine summing up after the discussion:

Tags:

• Camden
• Cheshire West and Chester
• Cornwall
• Council Meetings
• PCCpolice
• PIUG
• PIUG12
• Rebooting Democracy
• user group

We had a brilliant, enjoyable user group yesterday at the Hallam conference centre in London. Quite a bit happened, so I’m not going to try to cover everything – there’ll be a chance to do that with some reflective blogging in the coming few days (and weeks).

But, before we get distracted, I thought I’d run through some of the points that were made… so…

In the morning

• Ady and Lewis took us through the technology roadmap. Highlights included plans for the release in May, in particular a responsive design enabling a single user interface for Connect and Citizenscape that will work equally well for all devices.
• Ady said we’re looking into how we can develop an open API for Connect and Citizenscape and mentioned our interest in offering open data from the platforms.
• The May release will see the launch of Connect Social, of which there’ll be more soon. I don’t want to go into this too much, because it’s a major release and should be communicated in more detail, but it will include new things, such as pay gate, user identity for interactivity and more.
• Catherine talked about our thoughts on the design of the player – and she’ll be blogging very soon on this issue!
• We talked about some of the developments that those at the meeting and watching online might like to see. They included:-
• • We talked about how iPads and other mobile devices (Android) can view the player. There was agreement that this is important, and there was a reiteration that this will be taken care of in the May release.
  • We discussed instant archiving: While Public-i felt this is possible, we did identify a need to investigate just how it could be achieved for clients in a simple and safe way. Andy Moynihan from Surrey suggested that it might be possible to introduce a check box for operators to tick when they are happy it’s OK to immediately archive a webcast.
  • We also had a good chat about how we might incorporate video conferencing into the webcasts.

In the afternoon

There was a round-table discussion after lunch on Rebooting Democracy – which Catherine introduced in this post last week. There were fantastic contributions from everyone, in particular Andrew Wallis, an independent councillor in Cornwall, who was invited to come down and help stir up debate (I’ll publish my video interview with him asap). We got through an awful lot, including:-

• The advent of the PCCs and elected mayors – and the impact this could have on local democracy.
• The need for us to find new ways to involve more people (and different demographics) in the democratic process.
• The role of technology in opening up democracy.
• How we might ensure that we are better informed decisions locally.
• The localism agenda – and to what extent it is genuinely transferring power down to local government.

We finished by talking more specifically about how council meetings might be improved in the future. There were some great suggestions and my next task will be to put these into another blog post, as a point for further discussion! If there’s anything you think I’ve missed here please tell me. And you can watch the whole webcast – accompanied by the live blog and chat from the day here. Thanks!

Tags:

• Catherine Howe
• co-production
• Connect
• Hallam
• Local government
• Police and Crime Commissioners
• Public-i Products
• Rebooting Democracy
• social web
• user group
• webcasting

We’ll be holding the next Public-i user group on Monday the 19th of March with the rather exciting theme ‘rebooting democracy’. Below I’ve set out a little bit about what we mean by that – and the agenda.

But first, the essentials…

• The user group starts at 10.30am on the 19th of March at the Hallam Conference Centre, 44 Hallam Street, London, W1W 6JJ.
• If you’d like to come along then please contact Jane Purcell – her email address is jane.purcell@public-i.info and telephone +44(0)1273 821282.
• To watch and join the debate online, visit our interactive player on the day. We’ll be webcasting and live blogging – so you can asks questions and put your point across to those in the room.

Rebooting democracy

We’re looking at a remarkable time for local democracy – with so many changes in the offing it’s hard to mention them all.

Close to home we’re seeing the creation of city mayors and directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners for England and Wales – as well as the independence debate and proposals for a single police force in Scotland. At the same time, of course, there’s a techonological revolution taking place that offers the potential to reshape the relationship authorities and their representatives can have with the public everywhere.

With so much (digital) disruption and devolution in the offing, we thought it would be a good time to debate how we might fundamentally re-shape democracy for the 21st century. We hope to have a wide-open debate about what we could dream of doing to make political decision making better and more responsive in the future. Such an exciting time, we think, calls for an exciting – and daring – debate!

The agenda

As ever, there’ll be the usual highlights to the user group, including Dr Lewis’s surgery, more news about our products and the development roadmap update, before we get on with the debate in the afternoon…

10.30am Welcome and introductions

11am Development roadmap:

• Update on Connect
• Opportunity to add to the roadmap

12pm Dr Lewis’s Surgery – Best practice exchange:

• Get technical questions answered
• Find out about or make requests for product developments

1pm Lunch

2pm Panel discussion – Reboot Democracy – Some ideas to get started:

• Do we need formal meetings?
• How do we create more direct representation?
• What skills are we going to need?

4pm AOB, drinks and twiglets

See you there!

Tags:

• Local government
• Online Communities
• piug11
• Public-i Products
• Rebooting Democracy
• user group
• webcasting

It’s been up for a while on the Wired Sussex site, but I thought it might be worthwhile reminding people that we’re looking for a sales support administrator.

The deadline for applications is the 5th of February, 2012, so you’ll have to hurry if you’re interested.

As the advert makes clear, we’re looking to appoint someone who can help our sales and account management team with their work on Public-i’s range of products.

• Booking client account management meetings and associated travel arrangements
• Tracking and reporting on client renewal dates
• Assistance with conference booking and follow-up administration
• Completion of invoice request forms
• Assisting with sales team expenses
• Assisting the sales team with ensuring the CRM System is accurate and up to date
• Providing general administrative support to the Sales and Account Management Team

We want someone who has good organisational and administrative skills, who’ll be joining a team looking forward to a very exciting year.

Find out all about the role here and, if you’re interested in applying, email Jane Purcell at recruitment@public-i.info.

Tags:

• Brighton
• Job Ad
• Jobs
• Local Governement
• Public-i Products