Reflections on another great round of User Group events

Here in the UK we've got over 170 public agencies using our 'Objective Online' digital platform to collaborate on policy-making and engage with local communities and other stakeholders.

In total there are a little shy of 6,000 registered users of our 'uCreate' and 'uEngage' software, and we are constantly striving to help these professionals connect with us and each other.   We do this through a range of channels including a 'community library' resource of content, online forums, webinars, and by hosting physical meetings where we invite our customers to join us for half a day to look at our latest software developments, good practice case studies and to share stories of what has worked, or hasn't worked, for them.

For the latest round of these 'roadshows' we listened to previous feedback and held smaller and more interactive sessions in venues across the UK - Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, London and Maidenhead.  We also focused on practical demonstrations of some of our most recent software features in real customer contexts. And we encouraged people to capture at least one of those 'lightbulb' moments as 'Something that I will do differently when I get back to the office as a result of coming here today...'

Each one of those somethings has been lovingly transported back to Objective HQ in a velvet-lined box (ok, not really, but we did take special care of them) and has been allocated to one of our team to follow up on.  We've personally committed to working with those people as individuals to help them realise their special 'something'...engagement doesn't get much closer than that!

And listening to previous feedback worked.  100% of attendees said that the content of their session met or exceeded their expectations. 92% said that they would definitely recommend attendance to a colleague, with the remaining 8% saying 'maybe'. We can't wait to run the next round of events in 2014.

If you're reading this as an Objective Online user who made one of those pledges - we will already have been in touch to get the ball rolling on your 'something' and very much hope you'll join us to share your success stories next time;

If you're reading this as an Objective Online user who didn't make it to one of the latest roadshow events then why not pre-register here for the next round which we'll be running in May 2014; and

If you're not yet using Objective software for your policy-making and engagement work but are interested in finding out how you could join our community then please drop me a line at ian.morris@objective.com or connect via LinkedIN http://www.linkedin.com/in/ianraymondmorris

Oh. and I produced my first ever infogram to illustrate the story that's coming from the feedback survey results...really easy to do actually and definitely something that I'll be including more of in future bloggs.

Graphic Reflections on the Consultation Institute’s 10th Anniversary Conference

Doing it differently!  Some graphic reflections on the Consultation Institute’s 10^th Anniversary conference this week

With over 100 engagement and consultation practitioners from public, private and voluntary sectors gathered in London this week to celebrate the 10th birthday of the Consultation Institute.  We met, we engaged, we heard from a range of really interesting speakers representing organisations ranging from the World Bank, the House of Lords, Sainsbury’s, and several of tCI’s own associates and directors.

We brought  along a graphic recorder, Chris Shipton who sat in on many of the sessions and also spoke with delegates during the day to provide a graphic illustration of our reflections on ‘top tips for engagement’ raised during the day.

Here’s what he produced.  For those in the audience who are already users of our online engagement platform we’ll be picking up on some of these themes in our next round of User Group meetings across the country in November/December this year.

For those who aren’t yet an Objective customer, why not take a look at some of our customers and people’s other top tips in this blog, and hit the ‘find out more’ link to take the next steps or go straight to our website and take a closer look.

Enjoy!

 

Share your consultation Top Tips with us - Comment on this blog or get in touch...

Ian Morris

Principal Business Consultant

ian.morris@objective.com 

07833259224

Idea 4: Build your networks...

Similar to the ‘Fish where the Fish are’ idea (idea 2) - don't expect people to come to you unless you are willing to put some effort in to building your networks in the first place.

In the age of social media people are hanging around (online) all over the place.

You need to find them and then get involved in their networks on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr (and the list goes on.) So long as you share a common interest and speak to them in a genuine and transparent way they will invite you in.

So spend more time hanging around in other people's networks and when the time is right invite them to join yours. This way you can connect people to your social media assets and to your own website or engagement tools. 




Giant: 

Jonathan Bradley

Founder

Participate Ltd

jonathanbradley@participate.uk.com

http://www.participate.uk.com

0845 094 8191

Idea 3: Invest in something a bit special…

Information overload means that people are hungry for original and engaging content.

More effort and resource needs to be factored into producing this kind of content when seeking to engage people online. People need to start thinking of themselves as micro TV and Radio stations.

Their programme of engagement or consultation will need a schedule of videos, podcasts, infographics, images and surveys etc.

You don't need to break the bank doing this kind of thing either. But occasionally it may be worth investing in something special - if the issue is big enough. 

Giant:
Jonathan Bradley

Founder

Participate Ltd

jonathanbradley@participate.uk.com

http://www.participate.uk.com

0845 094 8191

Idea 2: Fish where the fish are...

One ‘problem’ that many practitioners get hung up on is how to drive prospective consultees to their online or offline engagement projects. In a social media context, many (most) Councils or Government Agencies have social media followings in the hundreds, or low thousands, but rarely of the sort of scale to provide any real confidence in reaching the wider public through social media channels. 

But there’s another way of thinking about this: fish where the fish are!

In any given area there will a wide range of groups and agencies that have a much wider network of social media followers, and you can usefully consider how to promote your key engagement messages through those networks. In one recent example of a local authority that we are working with, the corporate facebook and twitter network of just under 5,000 likers/followers (many of which may be duplicates) but their wider partnership organisations (police, fire & rescue, college, newspaper, football club) had almost 110,000 follow/likes between them. Again, many of these will be duplicates, but even so...

Getting these partner organisations to retweet or like Council engagement messages could potentially increase the network of consultees from 5,000 to 110,000 with no need for additional resources or budgets.  Now that’s got to be something worth considering!

So when you’re mapping your stakeholders for a particular engagement process, try asking yourself not how to bring those people to you – but where do these people meet and engage already and how best can we tune our message to that audience and place?

Giant:
Ian Morris

Principal Business Consultant

Objective

ian.morris@objective.com 

07833259224

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/ianraymondmorris

Idea 1: Use the 6 P’s...

The old adage ‘proper planning prevents piss poor performance’ certainly applies to community engagement activity.

Here at Slough we have a developed the following 8 staged checklist to help staff get the most out of running their local community engagement activities:

1. Set your objectives

• Do you understand the context for your engagement activities and what’s driving them? 
• Do you understand where your engagement activity sits within the Councils policy/planning cycles?

2. Set project parameters

• Have you identified all of the goals, outputs and outcomes you want to achieve?

3. Understand your community

• Have you undertaken enough research to understand the communities you need to engage with?
• Are you clear what you need to know and from whom?
• What level of engagement do you need to use with each groups?

4. Set up your engagement activities

• Have you chosen the right engagement methods/techniques to reach the groups you need to engage with?

5. Identifying and managing risk

• Have you developed plans to deal with all of the risks associated with carrying out your engagement activities?

6. Publicity

• Do you have a social media strategy and  or communication plan to advertise your  activities to the groups you need to work with?

7. Launch

8. Close, analyse and feedback

• Are you clear what methods and criteria you will use to evaluate your engagement activities and feedback to residents? 
• You’ll get the best results from your engagement process if you plan it properly.

  

Giant: 

Amanda Renn

Policy & Communications Team

Slough Borough Council

amanda.renn@slough.gov.uk

01753 875560

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

A compendium of hints and tips for online consultation & engagement

Here, at Objective HQ, we’re a bit geeky about public policy and engagement.

Sure, we provide software that is used for collaboration and engagement by around 6,000 public servants in almost 200 public sector agencies so we do have a commercial interest!  But actually we just think it’s a really cool thing to be interested in and we love working with others who share our interest and care about helping to build a better world through high quality public services.  It’s that sociability, that constant drive to work intelligently with others who share our obsession that makes us geeks – and keeps us from straying down the path of nerdiness.

And it’s with this sociability in mind that we’ve worked with other public policy & engagement types to come up with a few ideas for improving online engagement in the public sector. With contributions from ‘giants’ from UK Councils, Government Agencies, Social Media companies and our own Consultation and Policy consultants we hope that it will prove to be a useful starting point for discussion.