I attended the launch of the Lost Arts campaign in Westminster on Wednesday 15 June 2011.

The campaign includes a website that will record all the arts-related events, projects and organisations that will be closed due to cuts in public funding; including a running total of money lost to the arts and the resultant negative impact on the economy.

I was one of the volunteer helpers at Open Tech 2011 on Saturday 21 May 2011.

Pictured are attendees at the post-event social in the ULU bar.

Mant thanks to Sam for organising another fantastic Open Tech.

I joined the BECTU contingent on the TUC March for the Alternative on Saturday 26 March 2011.

We were joined by more than quater of a million protesters on the march from Embankment to Hyde Park.

Below Yvonne does a sterling job carrying her placard on the march.

The scene at 1512 in Hyde Park when I arrived.

I participated in the fourth annual UK Government Barcamp on 22 January 2011.

It was a great – many thanks to Dave Briggs and Steph Gray for organsing the day and the sponsors for their support.

You can find reports on the event at GovCamp buzz.

The Netroots UK conference, held on Saturday 8 January 2011, was an interesting day, consisting of plenary and workshops sessions.

The only disappointing element was the final plenary session, which, I think, should have pulled together the various elements of the day and outlined a common way forward. Instead a rather rambling session seemed to fizzle out and merge into the post event social.

However, still looking forward to the second Netroots UK.

Pictured is the data.gov.uk and friends session from Open Tech 2010, which I attended yesterday.

It was one of the sessions that made up part of a great and informative day.

Looking forward to next year’s OpenTech already!

I’ll be attending Open Tech 2010, the “informal, low cost, one-day conference on slightly different approaches to technology, politics and justice”, on Saturday 11 September.

After attending last year, I’m really looking forward to an enjoyable and informative day.

If you’re going – I’ll see you there!

I attended Rewired State: Culture on Saturday at The Guardian offices in King Cross.

The day itself consisted of two parallel strands: a hackday and, in the afternoon, an unconference, both looking at encouraging links between data repositories such as museums, broadcasters and the wider community, eg data.gov.uk.

At the end of the day both strands were brought together for a session where developers showed of the fruits of their hackday labours.

Many thanks to the organisers, including Emma Mulqueeny, James Darling and the DCMS team, along with sponsors ScraperWiki, for putting together a fascinating day.

I participated in the third annual UK Government Barcamp a couple of weeks ago.

The unconference for those involved, around or interested in the UK government’s online activities took place on Saturday 23 January 2010 at Google’s Victoria offices.

The schedule (pictured above) was put together barcamp style at the beginning of the day by those present.

Here’s my report of some of the hour long sessions I attended:

• data.gov.uk – Richard Stirling, from the Cabinet Office, outlined the origins, development and launch of the new data.gov.uk site, which “seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data”. He said the site, publicly launched two days beforehand, does not host data, but is trying to make data easier to find on individual government sites.
• WordPress – Simon Dickson led a session on the use of WordPress in government, outlining its expanding use, starting with the Wales Office, then Number 10, to it’s current deployment in government. Steph Gray spoke on his experience in using WordPress when rebuilding his departmental website in a few days when BIS was brought into existence. The speed of deployment and flexibility of WordPress, though the use of plugins, was a common theme through the session. I, of course, pointed those present to WordCamp UK to find out more and meet WordPress users and developers from across the country.
• Making the political sell: gaining support for innovation in political organisations – a session on making the case for digital engagement against a background of cuts. Steph Gray spoke on surviving 2010, whilst Anthony Zacharzewski presented making the political sell. In the current climate some areas of government might see digital engagement as an easy area to cut back without any significant impact – a mistaken approach in my view.

More reports of the sessions by others present.

One of the outcomes of the day is the possibility of organising an event around internal communications and collaboration.

Many thanks to Dave Briggs for organising a great day, Google for hosting the event at their offices, the sponsors for their support and not forgetting Hadley Beeman for arranging evening drinks in local licensed premises!

However, it falls well short of what could have been achieved, with no legal enforcement, and is frighteningly vague on important issues.

One important technology designed to address climate change, fusion power, needs to have a serious injection of funding.

Work has just started on building the world’s biggest fusion reactor in France

However the pace of work needs to accelerate on this racing certainty so that commercial fusion generation can go online as soon as possible.